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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Uncommercial Traveller, by Charles Dickens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Uncommercial Traveller
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Illustrator: Harry Furniss
+
+Release Date: May 20, 1997 [eBook #914]
+[Most recently updated: June 8, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: David Price
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER ***
+
+                          [Picture: Book cover]
+
+                       [Picture: Time and his Wife]
+
+
+
+
+
+                             THE UNCOMMERCIAL
+                                TRAVELLER
+
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                            By CHARLES DICKENS
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+         _With Illustrations by Harry Furniss and A. J. Goodman_
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                       LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LD.
+                    NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
+                                   1905
+
+                                 CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER I. His General Line of Business
+CHAPTER II. The Shipwreck
+CHAPTER III. Wapping Workhouse
+CHAPTER IV. Two Views of a Cheap Theatre
+CHAPTER V. Poor Mercantile Jack
+CHAPTER VI. Refreshments for Travellers
+CHAPTER VII. Travelling Abroad
+CHAPTER VIII. The Great Tasmania’s Cargo
+CHAPTER IX. City of London Churches
+CHAPTER X. Shy Neighbourhoods
+CHAPTER XI. Tramps
+CHAPTER XII. Dullborough Town
+CHAPTER XIII. Night Walks
+CHAPTER XIV. Chambers
+CHAPTER XV. Nurse’s Stories
+CHAPTER XVI. Arcadian London
+CHAPTER XVII. The Italian Prisoner
+CHAPTER XVIII. The Calais Night Mail
+CHAPTER XIX. Some Recollections of Mortality
+CHAPTER XX. Birthday Celebrations
+CHAPTER XXI. The Short-Timers
+CHAPTER XXII. Bound for the Great Salt Lake
+CHAPTER XXIII. The City of the Absent
+CHAPTER XXIV. An Old Stage-coaching House
+CHAPTER XXV. The Boiled Beef of New England
+CHAPTER XXVI. Chatham Dockyard
+CHAPTER XXVII. In the French-Flemish Country
+CHAPTER XXVIII. Medicine Men of Civilisation
+CHAPTER XXIX. Titbull’s Alms-Houses
+CHAPTER XXX. The Ruffian
+CHAPTER XXXI. Aboard Ship
+CHAPTER XXXII. A Small Star in the East
+CHAPTER XXXIII. A Little Dinner in an Hour
+CHAPTER XXXIV. Mr. Barlow
+CHAPTER XXXV. On an Amateur Beat
+CHAPTER XXXVI. A Fly-Leaf in a Life
+CHAPTER XXXVII. A Plea for Total Abstinence
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+_Time and his Wife_
+_A Cheap Theatre_
+_The City Personage_ 
+_Titbull’s Alms-Houses_
+
+
+
+
+I
+HIS GENERAL LINE OF BUSINESS
+
+
+ALLOW me to introduce myself—first negatively.
+
+No landlord is my friend and brother, no chambermaid loves me, no waiter
+worships me, no boots admires and envies me.  No round of beef or tongue
+or ham is expressly cooked for me, no pigeon-pie is especially made for
+me, no hotel-advertisement is personally addressed to me, no hotel-room
+tapestried with great-coats and railway wrappers is set apart for me, no
+house of public entertainment in the United Kingdom greatly cares for my
+opinion of its brandy or sherry.  When I go upon my journeys, I am not
+usually rated at a low figure in the bill; when I come home from my
+journeys, I never get any commission.  I know nothing about prices, and
+should have no idea, if I were put to it, how to wheedle a man into
+ordering something he doesn’t want.  As a town traveller, I am never to
+be seen driving a vehicle externally like a young and volatile pianoforte
+van, and internally like an oven in which a number of flat boxes are
+baking in layers.  As a country traveller, I am rarely to be found in a
+gig, and am never to be encountered by a pleasure train, waiting on the
+platform of a branch station, quite a Druid in the midst of a light
+Stonehenge of samples.
+
+And yet—proceeding now, to introduce myself positively—I am both a town
+traveller and a country traveller, and am always on the road.
+Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of Human Interest
+Brothers, and have rather a large connection in the fancy goods way.
+Literally speaking, I am always wandering here and there from my rooms in
+Covent-garden, London—now about the city streets: now, about the country
+by-roads—seeing many little things, and some great things, which, because
+they interest me, I think may interest others.
+
+These are my chief credentials as the Uncommercial Traveller.
+
+
+
+
+II
+THE SHIPWRECK
+
+
+NEVER had I seen a year going out, or going on, under quieter
+circumstances.  Eighteen hundred and fifty-nine had but another day to
+live, and truly its end was Peace on that sea-shore that morning.
+
+So settled and orderly was everything seaward, in the bright light of the
+sun and under the transparent shadows of the clouds, that it was hard to
+imagine the bay otherwise, for years past or to come, than it was that
+very day.  The Tug-steamer lying a little off the shore, the Lighter
+lying still nearer to the shore, the boat alongside the Lighter, the
+regularly-turning windlass aboard the Lighter, the methodical figures at
+work, all slowly and regularly heaving up and down with the breathing of
+the sea, all seemed as much a part of the nature of the place as the tide
+itself.  The tide was on the flow, and had been for some two hours and a
+half; there was a slight obstruction in the sea within a few yards of my
+feet: as if the stump of a tree, with earth enough about it to keep it
+from lying horizontally on the water, had slipped a little from the
+land—and as I stood upon the beach and observed it dimpling the light
+swell that was coming in, I cast a stone over it.
+
+So orderly, so quiet, so regular—the rising and falling of the
+Tug-steamer, the Lighter, and the boat—the turning of the windlass—the
+coming in of the tide—that I myself seemed, to my own thinking, anything
+but new to the spot.  Yet, I had never seen it in my life, a minute
+before, and had traversed two hundred miles to get at it.  That very
+morning I had come bowling down, and struggling up, hill-country roads;
+looking back at snowy summits; meeting courteous peasants well to do,
+driving fat pigs and cattle to market: noting the neat and thrifty
+dwellings, with their unusual quantity of clean white linen, drying on
+the bushes; having windy weather suggested by every cotter’s little rick,
+with its thatch straw-ridged and extra straw-ridged into overlapping
+compartments like the back of a rhinoceros.  Had I not given a lift of
+fourteen miles to the Coast-guardsman (kit and all), who was coming to
+his spell of duty there, and had we not just now parted company?  So it
+was; but the journey seemed to glide down into the placid sea, with other
+chafe and trouble, and for the moment nothing was so calmly and
+monotonously real under the sunlight as the gentle rising and falling of
+the water with its freight, the regular turning of the windlass aboard
+the Lighter, and the slight obstruction so very near my feet.
+
+O reader, haply turning this page by the fireside at Home, and hearing
+the night wind rumble in the chimney, that slight obstruction was the
+uppermost fragment of the Wreck of the Royal Charter, Australian trader
+and passenger ship, Homeward bound, that struck here on the terrible
+morning of the twenty-sixth of this October, broke into three parts, went
+down with her treasure of at least five hundred human lives, and has
+never stirred since!
+
+From which point, or from which, she drove ashore, stern foremost; on
+which side, or on which, she passed the little Island in the bay, for
+ages henceforth to be aground certain yards outside her; these are
+rendered bootless questions by the darkness of that night and the
+darkness of death.  Here she went down.
+
+Even as I stood on the beach with the words ‘Here she went down!’ in my
+ears, a diver in his grotesque dress, dipped heavily over the side of the
+boat alongside the Lighter, and dropped to the bottom.  On the shore by
+the water’s edge, was a rough tent, made of fragments of wreck, where
+other divers and workmen sheltered themselves, and where they had kept
+Christmas-day with rum and roast beef, to the destruction of their frail
+chimney.  Cast up among the stones and boulders of the beach, were great
+spars of the lost vessel, and masses of iron twisted by the fury of the
+sea into the strangest forms.  The timber was already bleached and iron
+rusted, and even these objects did no violence to the prevailing air the
+whole scene wore, of having been exactly the same for years and years.
+
+Yet, only two short months had gone, since a man, living on the nearest
+hill-top overlooking the sea, being blown out of bed at about daybreak by
+the wind that had begun to strip his roof off, and getting upon a ladder
+with his nearest neighbour to construct some temporary device for keeping
+his house over his head, saw from the ladder’s elevation as he looked
+down by chance towards the shore, some dark troubled object close in with
+the land.  And he and the other, descending to the beach, and finding the
+sea mercilessly beating over a great broken ship, had clambered up the
+stony ways, like staircases without stairs, on which the wild village
+hangs in little clusters, as fruit hangs on boughs, and had given the
+alarm.  And so, over the hill-slopes, and past the waterfall, and down
+the gullies where the land drains off into the ocean, the scattered
+quarrymen and fishermen inhabiting that part of Wales had come running to
+the dismal sight—their clergyman among them.  And as they stood in the
+leaden morning, stricken with pity, leaning hard against the wind, their
+breath and vision often failing as the sleet and spray rushed at them
+from the ever forming and dissolving mountains of sea, and as the wool
+which was a part of the vessel’s cargo blew in with the salt foam and
+remained upon the land when the foam melted, they saw the ship’s
+life-boat put off from one of the heaps of wreck; and first, there were
+three men in her, and in a moment she capsized, and there were but two;
+and again, she was struck by a vast mass of water, and there was but one;
+and again, she was thrown bottom upward, and that one, with his arm
+struck through the broken planks and waving as if for the help that could
+never reach him, went down into the deep.
+
+It was the clergyman himself from whom I heard this, while I stood on the
+shore, looking in his kind wholesome face as it turned to the spot where
+the boat had been.  The divers were down then, and busy.  They were
+‘lifting’ to-day the gold found yesterday—some five-and-twenty thousand
+pounds.  Of three hundred and fifty thousand pounds’ worth of gold, three
+hundred thousand pounds’ worth, in round numbers, was at that time
+recovered.  The great bulk of the remainder was surely and steadily
+coming up.  Some loss of sovereigns there would be, of course; indeed, at
+first sovereigns had drifted in with the sand, and been scattered far and
+wide over the beach, like sea-shells; but most other golden treasure
+would be found.  As it was brought up, it went aboard the Tug-steamer,
+where good account was taken of it.  So tremendous had the force of the
+sea been when it broke the ship, that it had beaten one great ingot of
+gold, deep into a strong and heavy piece of her solid iron-work: in
+which, also, several loose sovereigns that the ingot had swept in before
+it, had been found, as firmly embedded as though the iron had been liquid
+when they were forced there.  It had been remarked of such bodies come
+ashore, too, as had been seen by scientific men, that they had been
+stunned to death, and not suffocated.  Observation, both of the internal
+change that had been wrought in them, and of their external expression,
+showed death to have been thus merciful and easy.  The report was
+brought, while I was holding such discourse on the beach, that no more
+bodies had come ashore since last night.  It began to be very doubtful
+whether many more would be thrown up, until the north-east winds of the
+early spring set in.  Moreover, a great number of the passengers, and
+particularly the second-class women-passengers, were known to have been
+in the middle of the ship when she parted, and thus the collapsing wreck
+would have fallen upon them after yawning open, and would keep them down.
+A diver made known, even then, that he had come upon the body of a man,
+and had sought to release it from a great superincumbent weight; but
+that, finding he could not do so without mutilating the remains, he had
+left it where it was.
+
+It was the kind and wholesome face I have made mention of as being then
+beside me, that I had purposed to myself to see, when I left home for
+Wales.  I had heard of that clergyman, as having buried many scores of
+the shipwrecked people; of his having opened his house and heart to their
+agonised friends; of his having used a most sweet and patient diligence
+for weeks and weeks, in the performance of the forlornest offices that
+Man can render to his kind; of his having most tenderly and thoroughly
+devoted himself to the dead, and to those who were sorrowing for the
+dead.  I had said to myself, ‘In the Christmas season of the year, I
+should like to see that man!’  And he had swung the gate of his little
+garden in coming out to meet me, not half an hour ago.
+
+So cheerful of spirit and guiltless of affectation, as true practical
+Christianity ever is!  I read more of the New Testament in the fresh
+frank face going up the village beside me, in five minutes, than I have
+read in anathematising discourses (albeit put to press with enormous
+flourishing of trumpets), in all my life.  I heard more of the Sacred
+Book in the cordial voice that had nothing to say about its owner, than
+in all the would-be celestial pairs of bellows that have ever blown
+conceit at me.
+
+We climbed towards the little church, at a cheery pace, among the loose
+stones, the deep mud, the wet coarse grass, the outlying water, and other
+obstructions from which frost and snow had lately thawed.  It was a
+mistake (my friend was glad to tell me, on the way) to suppose that the
+peasantry had shown any superstitious avoidance of the drowned; on the
+whole, they had done very well, and had assisted readily.  Ten shillings
+had been paid for the bringing of each body up to the church, but the way
+was steep, and a horse and cart (in which it was wrapped in a sheet) were
+necessary, and three or four men, and, all things considered, it was not
+a great price.  The people were none the richer for the wreck, for it was
+the season of the herring-shoal—and who could cast nets for fish, and
+find dead men and women in the draught?
+
+He had the church keys in his hand, and opened the churchyard gate, and
+opened the church door; and we went in.
+
+It is a little church of great antiquity; there is reason to believe that
+some church has occupied the spot, these thousand years or more.  The
+pulpit was gone, and other things usually belonging to the church were
+gone, owing to its living congregation having deserted it for the
+neighbouring school-room, and yielded it up to the dead.  The very
+Commandments had been shouldered out of their places, in the bringing in
+of the dead; the black wooden tables on which they were painted, were
+askew, and on the stone pavement below them, and on the stone pavement
+all over the church, were the marks and stains where the drowned had been
+laid down.  The eye, with little or no aid from the imagination, could
+yet see how the bodies had been turned, and where the head had been and
+where the feet.  Some faded traces of the wreck of the Australian ship
+may be discernible on the stone pavement of this little church, hundreds
+of years hence, when the digging for gold in Australia shall have long
+and long ceased out of the land.
+
+Forty-four shipwrecked men and women lay here at one time, awaiting
+burial.  Here, with weeping and wailing in every room of his house, my
+companion worked alone for hours, solemnly surrounded by eyes that could
+not see him, and by lips that could not speak to him, patiently examining
+the tattered clothing, cutting off buttons, hair, marks from linen,
+anything that might lead to subsequent identification, studying faces,
+looking for a scar, a bent finger, a crooked toe, comparing letters sent
+to him with the ruin about him.  ‘My dearest brother had bright grey eyes
+and a pleasant smile,’ one sister wrote.  O poor sister! well for you to
+be far from here, and keep that as your last remembrance of him!
+
+The ladies of the clergyman’s family, his wife and two sisters-in-law,
+came in among the bodies often.  It grew to be the business of their
+lives to do so.  Any new arrival of a bereaved woman would stimulate
+their pity to compare the description brought, with the dread realities.
+Sometimes, they would go back able to say, ‘I have found him,’ or, ‘I
+think she lies there.’  Perhaps, the mourner, unable to bear the sight of
+all that lay in the church, would be led in blindfold.  Conducted to the
+spot with many compassionate words, and encouraged to look, she would
+say, with a piercing cry, ‘This is my boy!’ and drop insensible on the
+insensible figure.
+
+He soon observed that in some cases of women, the identification of
+persons, though complete, was quite at variance with the marks upon the
+linen; this led him to notice that even the marks upon the linen were
+sometimes inconsistent with one another; and thus he came to understand
+that they had dressed in great haste and agitation, and that their
+clothes had become mixed together.  The identification of men by their
+dress, was rendered extremely difficult, in consequence of a large
+proportion of them being dressed alike—in clothes of one kind, that is to
+say, supplied by slopsellers and outfitters, and not made by single
+garments but by hundreds.  Many of the men were bringing over parrots,
+and had receipts upon them for the price of the birds; others had bills
+of exchange in their pockets, or in belts.  Some of these documents,
+carefully unwrinkled and dried, were little less fresh in appearance that
+day, than the present page will be under ordinary circumstances, after
+having been opened three or four times.
+
+In that lonely place, it had not been easy to obtain even such common
+commodities in towns, as ordinary disinfectants.  Pitch had been burnt in
+the church, as the readiest thing at hand, and the frying-pan in which it
+had bubbled over a brazier of coals was still there, with its ashes.
+Hard by the Communion-Table, were some boots that had been taken off the
+drowned and preserved—a gold-digger’s boot, cut down the leg for its
+removal—a trodden-down man’s ankle-boot with a buff cloth top—and
+others—soaked and sandy, weedy and salt.
+
+From the church, we passed out into the churchyard.  Here, there lay, at
+that time, one hundred and forty-five bodies, that had come ashore from
+the wreck.  He had buried them, when not identified, in graves containing
+four each.  He had numbered each body in a register describing it, and
+had placed a corresponding number on each coffin, and over each grave.
+Identified bodies he had buried singly, in private graves, in another
+part of the church-yard.  Several bodies had been exhumed from the graves
+of four, as relatives had come from a distance and seen his register;
+and, when recognised, these have been reburied in private graves, so that
+the mourners might erect separate headstones over the remains.  In all
+such cases he had performed the funeral service a second time, and the
+ladies of his house had attended.  There had been no offence in the poor
+ashes when they were brought again to the light of day; the beneficent
+Earth had already absorbed it.  The drowned were buried in their clothes.
+To supply the great sudden demand for coffins, he had got all the
+neighbouring people handy at tools, to work the livelong day, and Sunday
+likewise.  The coffins were neatly formed;—I had seen two, waiting for
+occupants, under the lee of the ruined walls of a stone hut on the beach,
+within call of the tent where the Christmas Feast was held.  Similarly,
+one of the graves for four was lying open and ready, here, in the
+churchyard.  So much of the scanty space was already devoted to the
+wrecked people, that the villagers had begun to express uneasy doubts
+whether they themselves could lie in their own ground, with their
+forefathers and descendants, by-and-by.  The churchyard being but a step
+from the clergyman’s dwelling-house, we crossed to the latter; the white
+surplice was hanging up near the door ready to be put on at any time, for
+a funeral service.
+
+The cheerful earnestness of this good Christian minister was as
+consolatory, as the circumstances out of which it shone were sad.  I
+never have seen anything more delightfully genuine than the calm
+dismissal by himself and his household of all they had undergone, as a
+simple duty that was quietly done and ended.  In speaking of it, they
+spoke of it with great compassion for the bereaved; but laid no stress
+upon their own hard share in those weary weeks, except as it had attached
+many people to them as friends, and elicited many touching expressions of
+gratitude.  This clergyman’s brother—himself the clergyman of two
+adjoining parishes, who had buried thirty-four of the bodies in his own
+churchyard, and who had done to them all that his brother had done as to
+the larger number—must be understood as included in the family.  He was
+there, with his neatly arranged papers, and made no more account of his
+trouble than anybody else did.  Down to yesterday’s post outward, my
+clergyman alone had written one thousand and seventy-five letters to
+relatives and friends of the lost people.  In the absence of
+self-assertion, it was only through my now and then delicately putting a
+question as the occasion arose, that I became informed of these things.
+It was only when I had remarked again and again, in the church, on the
+awful nature of the scene of death he had been required so closely to
+familiarise himself with for the soothing of the living, that he had
+casually said, without the least abatement of his cheerfulness, ‘indeed,
+it had rendered him unable for a time to eat or drink more than a little
+coffee now and then, and a piece of bread.’
+
+In this noble modesty, in this beautiful simplicity, in this serene
+avoidance of the least attempt to ‘improve’ an occasion which might be
+supposed to have sunk of its own weight into my heart, I seemed to have
+happily come, in a few steps, from the churchyard with its open grave,
+which was the type of Death, to the Christian dwelling side by side with
+it, which was the type of Resurrection.  I never shall think of the
+former, without the latter.  The two will always rest side by side in my
+memory.  If I had lost any one dear to me in this unfortunate ship, if I
+had made a voyage from Australia to look at the grave in the churchyard,
+I should go away, thankful to GOD that that house was so close to it, and
+that its shadow by day and its domestic lights by night fell upon the
+earth in which its Master had so tenderly laid my dear one’s head.
+
+The references that naturally arose out of our conversation, to the
+descriptions sent down of shipwrecked persons, and to the gratitude of
+relations and friends, made me very anxious to see some of those letters.
+I was presently seated before a shipwreck of papers, all bordered with
+black, and from them I made the following few extracts.
+
+A mother writes:
+
+    REVEREND SIR.  Amongst the many who perished on your shore was
+    numbered my beloved son.  I was only just recovering from a severe
+    illness, and this fearful affliction has caused a relapse, so that I
+    am unable at present to go to identify the remains of the loved and
+    lost.  My darling son would have been sixteen on Christmas-day next.
+    He was a most amiable and obedient child, early taught the way of
+    salvation.  We fondly hoped that as a British seaman he might be an
+    ornament to his profession, but, ‘it is well;’ I feel assured my dear
+    boy is now with the redeemed.  Oh, he did not wish to go this last
+    voyage!  On the fifteenth of October, I received a letter from him
+    from Melbourne, date August twelfth; he wrote in high spirits, and in
+    conclusion he says: ‘Pray for a fair breeze, dear mamma, and I’ll not
+    forget to whistle for it! and, God permitting, I shall see you and
+    all my little pets again.  Good-bye, dear mother—good-bye, dearest
+    parents.  Good-bye, dear brother.’  Oh, it was indeed an eternal
+    farewell.  I do not apologise for thus writing you, for oh, my heart
+    is so very sorrowful.
+
+A husband writes:
+
+    MY DEAR KIND SIR.  Will you kindly inform me whether there are any
+    initials upon the ring and guard you have in possession, found, as
+    the Standard says, last Tuesday?  Believe me, my dear sir, when I say
+    that I cannot express my deep gratitude in words sufficiently for
+    your kindness to me on that fearful and appalling day.  Will you tell
+    me what I can do for you, and will you write me a consoling letter to
+    prevent my mind from going astray?
+
+A widow writes:
+
+    Left in such a state as I am, my friends and I thought it best that
+    my dear husband should be buried where he lies, and, much as I should
+    have liked to have had it otherwise, I must submit.  I feel, from all
+    I have heard of you, that you will see it done decently and in order.
+    Little does it signify to us, when the soul has departed, where this
+    poor body lies, but we who are left behind would do all we can to
+    show how we loved them.  This is denied me, but it is God’s hand that
+    afflicts us, and I try to submit.  Some day I may be able to visit
+    the spot, and see where he lies, and erect a simple stone to his
+    memory.  Oh! it will be long, long before I forget that dreadful
+    night!  Is there such a thing in the vicinity, or any shop in Bangor,
+    to which I could send for a small picture of Moelfra or Llanallgo
+    church, a spot now sacred to me?
+
+Another widow writes:
+
+    I have received your letter this morning, and do thank you most
+    kindly for the interest you have taken about my dear husband, as well
+    for the sentiments yours contains, evincing the spirit of a Christian
+    who can sympathise with those who, like myself, are broken down with
+    grief.
+
+    May God bless and sustain you, and all in connection with you, in
+    this great trial.  Time may roll on and bear all its sons away, but
+    your name as a disinterested person will stand in history, and, as
+    successive years pass, many a widow will think of your noble conduct,
+    and the tears of gratitude flow down many a cheek, the tribute of a
+    thankful heart, when other things are forgotten for ever.
+
+A father writes:
+
+    I am at a loss to find words to sufficiently express my gratitude to
+    you for your kindness to my son Richard upon the melancholy occasion
+    of his visit to his dear brother’s body, and also for your ready
+    attention in pronouncing our beautiful burial service over my poor
+    unfortunate son’s remains.  God grant that your prayers over him may
+    reach the Mercy Seat, and that his soul may be received (through
+    Christ’s intercession) into heaven!
+
+    His dear mother begs me to convey to you her heartfelt thanks.
+
+Those who were received at the clergyman’s house, write thus, after
+leaving it:
+
+    DEAR AND NEVER-TO-BE-FORGOTTEN FRIENDS.  I arrived here yesterday
+    morning without accident, and am about to proceed to my home by
+    railway.
+
+    I am overpowered when I think of you and your hospitable home.  No
+    words could speak language suited to my heart.  I refrain.  God
+    reward you with the same measure you have meted with!
+
+    I enumerate no names, but embrace you all.
+
+MY BELOVED FRIENDS.  This is the first day that I have been able to leave
+my bedroom since I returned, which will explain the reason of my not
+writing sooner.
+
+If I could only have had my last melancholy hope realised in recovering
+the body of my beloved and lamented son, I should have returned home
+somewhat comforted, and I think I could then have been comparatively
+resigned.
+
+I fear now there is but little prospect, and I mourn as one without hope.
+
+The only consolation to my distressed mind is in having been so feelingly
+allowed by you to leave the matter in your hands, by whom I well know
+that everything will be done that can be, according to arrangements made
+before I left the scene of the awful catastrophe, both as to the
+identification of my dear son, and also his interment.
+
+I feel most anxious to hear whether anything fresh has transpired since I
+left you; will you add another to the many deep obligations I am under to
+you by writing to me?  And should the body of my dear and unfortunate son
+be identified, let me hear from you immediately, and I will come again.
+
+Words cannot express the gratitude I feel I owe to you all for your
+benevolent aid, your kindness, and your sympathy.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+MY DEARLY BELOVED FRIENDS.  I arrived in safety at my house yesterday,
+and a night’s rest has restored and tranquillised me.  I must again
+repeat, that language has no words by which I can express my sense of
+obligation to you.  You are enshrined in my heart of hearts.
+
+I have seen him! and can now realise my misfortune more than I have
+hitherto been able to do.  Oh, the bitterness of the cup I drink!  But I
+bow submissive.  God _must_ have done right.  I do not want to feel less,
+but to acquiesce more simply.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+There were some Jewish passengers on board the Royal Charter, and the
+gratitude of the Jewish people is feelingly expressed in the following
+letter bearing date from ‘the office of the Chief Rabbi:’
+
+    REVEREND SIR.  I cannot refrain from expressing to you my heartfelt
+    thanks on behalf of those of my flock whose relatives have
+    unfortunately been among those who perished at the late wreck of the
+    Royal Charter.  You have, indeed, like Boaz, ‘not left off your
+    kindness to the living and the dead.’
+
+    You have not alone acted kindly towards the living by receiving them
+    hospitably at your house, and energetically assisting them in their
+    mournful duty, but also towards the dead, by exerting yourself to
+    have our co-religionists buried in our ground, and according to our
+    rites.  May our heavenly Father reward you for your acts of humanity
+    and true philanthropy!
+
+The ‘Old Hebrew congregation of Liverpool’ thus express themselves
+through their secretary:
+
+    REVEREND SIR.  The wardens of this congregation have learned with
+    great pleasure that, in addition to those indefatigable exertions, at
+    the scene of the late disaster to the Royal Charter, which have
+    received universal recognition, you have very benevolently employed
+    your valuable efforts to assist such members of our faith as have
+    sought the bodies of lost friends to give them burial in our
+    consecrated grounds, with the observances and rites prescribed by the
+    ordinances of our religion.
+
+The wardens desire me to take the earliest available opportunity to offer
+to you, on behalf of our community, the expression of their warm
+acknowledgments and grateful thanks, and their sincere wishes for your
+continued welfare and prosperity.
+
+A Jewish gentleman writes:
+
+    REVEREND AND DEAR SIR.  I take the opportunity of thanking you right
+    earnestly for the promptness you displayed in answering my note with
+    full particulars concerning my much lamented brother, and I also
+    herein beg to express my sincere regard for the willingness you
+    displayed and for the facility you afforded for getting the remains
+    of my poor brother exhumed.  It has been to us a most sorrowful and
+    painful event, but when we meet with such friends as yourself, it in
+    a measure, somehow or other, abates that mental anguish, and makes
+    the suffering so much easier to be borne.  Considering the
+    circumstances connected with my poor brother’s fate, it does, indeed,
+    appear a hard one.  He had been away in all seven years; he returned
+    four years ago to see his family.  He was then engaged to a very
+    amiable young lady.  He had been very successful abroad, and was now
+    returning to fulfil his sacred vow; he brought all his property with
+    him in gold uninsured.  We heard from him when the ship stopped at
+    Queenstown, when he was in the highest of hope, and in a few short
+    hours afterwards all was washed away.
+
+Mournful in the deepest degree, but too sacred for quotation here, were
+the numerous references to those miniatures of women worn round the necks
+of rough men (and found there after death), those locks of hair, those
+scraps of letters, those many many slight memorials of hidden tenderness.
+One man cast up by the sea bore about him, printed on a perforated lace
+card, the following singular (and unavailing) charm:
+
+                                 A BLESSING.
+
+    May the blessing of God await thee.  May the sun of glory shine
+    around thy bed; and may the gates of plenty, honour, and happiness be
+    ever open to thee.  May no sorrow distress thy days; may no grief
+    disturb thy nights.  May the pillow of peace kiss thy cheek, and the
+    pleasures of imagination attend thy dreams; and when length of years
+    makes thee tired of earthly joys, and the curtain of death gently
+    closes around thy last sleep of human existence, may the Angel of God
+    attend thy bed, and take care that the expiring lamp of life shall
+    not receive one rude blast to hasten on its extinction.
+
+A sailor had these devices on his right arm.  ‘Our Saviour on the Cross,
+the forehead of the Crucifix and the vesture stained red; on the lower
+part of the arm, a man and woman; on one side of the Cross, the
+appearance of a half moon, with a face; on the other side, the sun; on
+the top of the Cross, the letters I.H.S.; on the left arm, a man and
+woman dancing, with an effort to delineate the female’s dress; under
+which, initials.’  Another seaman ‘had, on the lower part of the right
+arm, the device of a sailor and a female; the man holding the Union Jack
+with a streamer, the folds of which waved over her head, and the end of
+it was held in her hand.  On the upper part of the arm, a device of Our
+Lord on the Cross, with stars surrounding the head of the Cross, and one
+large star on the side in Indian Ink.  On the left arm, a flag, a true
+lover’s knot, a face, and initials.’  This tattooing was found still
+plain, below the discoloured outer surface of a mutilated arm, when such
+surface was carefully scraped away with a knife.  It is not improbable
+that the perpetuation of this marking custom among seamen, may be
+referred back to their desire to be identified, if drowned and flung
+ashore.
+
+It was some time before I could sever myself from the many interesting
+papers on the table, and then I broke bread and drank wine with the kind
+family before I left them.  As I brought the Coast-guard down, so I took
+the Postman back, with his leathern wallet, walking-stick, bugle, and
+terrier dog.  Many a heart-broken letter had he brought to the Rectory
+House within two months many; a benignantly painstaking answer had he
+carried back.
+
+As I rode along, I thought of the many people, inhabitants of this mother
+country, who would make pilgrimages to the little churchyard in the years
+to come; I thought of the many people in Australia, who would have an
+interest in such a shipwreck, and would find their way here when they
+visit the Old World; I thought of the writers of all the wreck of letters
+I had left upon the table; and I resolved to place this little record
+where it stands.  Convocations, Conferences, Diocesan Epistles, and the
+like, will do a great deal for Religion, I dare say, and Heaven send they
+may! but I doubt if they will ever do their Master’s service half so
+well, in all the time they last, as the Heavens have seen it done in this
+bleak spot upon the rugged coast of Wales.
+
+Had I lost the friend of my life, in the wreck of the Royal Charter; had
+I lost my betrothed, the more than friend of my life; had I lost my
+maiden daughter, had I lost my hopeful boy, had I lost my little child; I
+would kiss the hands that worked so busily and gently in the church, and
+say, ‘None better could have touched the form, though it had lain at
+home.’  I could be sure of it, I could be thankful for it: I could be
+content to leave the grave near the house the good family pass in and out
+of every day, undisturbed, in the little churchyard where so many are so
+strangely brought together.
+
+Without the name of the clergyman to whom—I hope, not without carrying
+comfort to some heart at some time—I have referred, my reference would be
+as nothing.  He is the Reverend Stephen Roose Hughes, of Llanallgo, near
+Moelfra, Anglesey.  His brother is the Reverend Hugh Robert Hughes, of
+Penrhos, Alligwy.
+
+
+
+
+III
+WAPPING WORKHOUSE
+
+
+MY day’s no-business beckoning me to the East-end of London, I had turned
+my face to that point of the metropolitan compass on leaving
+Covent-garden, and had got past the India House, thinking in my idle
+manner of Tippoo-Sahib and Charles Lamb, and had got past my little
+wooden midshipman, after affectionately patting him on one leg of his
+knee-shorts for old acquaintance’ sake, and had got past Aldgate Pump,
+and had got past the Saracen’s Head (with an ignominious rash of posting
+bills disfiguring his swarthy countenance), and had strolled up the empty
+yard of his ancient neighbour the Black or Blue Boar, or Bull, who
+departed this life I don’t know when, and whose coaches are all gone I
+don’t know where; and I had come out again into the age of railways, and
+I had got past Whitechapel Church, and was—rather inappropriately for an
+Uncommercial Traveller—in the Commercial Road.  Pleasantly wallowing in
+the abundant mud of that thoroughfare, and greatly enjoying the huge
+piles of building belonging to the sugar refiners, the little masts and
+vanes in small back gardens in back streets, the neighbouring canals and
+docks, the India vans lumbering along their stone tramway, and the
+pawnbrokers’ shops where hard-up Mates had pawned so many sextants and
+quadrants, that I should have bought a few cheap if I had the least
+notion how to use them, I at last began to file off to the right, towards
+Wapping.
+
+Not that I intended to take boat at Wapping Old Stairs, or that I was
+going to look at the locality, because I believe (for I don’t) in the
+constancy of the young woman who told her sea-going lover, to such a
+beautiful old tune, that she had ever continued the same, since she gave
+him the ’baccer-box marked with his name; I am afraid he usually got the
+worst of those transactions, and was frightfully taken in.  No, I was
+going to Wapping, because an Eastern police magistrate had said, through
+the morning papers, that there was no classification at the Wapping
+workhouse for women, and that it was a disgrace and a shame, and divers
+other hard names, and because I wished to see how the fact really stood.
+For, that Eastern police magistrates are not always the wisest men of the
+East, may be inferred from their course of procedure respecting the
+fancy-dressing and pantomime-posturing at St. George’s in that quarter:
+which is usually, to discuss the matter at issue, in a state of mind
+betokening the weakest perplexity, with all parties concerned and
+unconcerned, and, for a final expedient, to consult the complainant as to
+what he thinks ought to be done with the defendant, and take the
+defendant’s opinion as to what he would recommend to be done with
+himself.
+
+Long before I reached Wapping, I gave myself up as having lost my way,
+and, abandoning myself to the narrow streets in a Turkish frame of mind,
+relied on predestination to bring me somehow or other to the place I
+wanted if I were ever to get there.  When I had ceased for an hour or so
+to take any trouble about the matter, I found myself on a swing-bridge
+looking down at some dark locks in some dirty water.  Over against me,
+stood a creature remotely in the likeness of a young man, with a puffed
+sallow face, and a figure all dirty and shiny and slimy, who may have
+been the youngest son of his filthy old father, Thames, or the drowned
+man about whom there was a placard on the granite post like a large
+thimble, that stood between us.
+
+I asked this apparition what it called the place?  Unto which, it
+replied, with a ghastly grin and a sound like gurgling water in its
+throat:
+
+‘Mr. Baker’s trap.’
+
+As it is a point of great sensitiveness with me on such occasions to be
+equal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation, I deeply
+considered the meaning of this speech, while I eyed the apparition—then
+engaged in hugging and sucking a horizontal iron bar at the top of the
+locks.  Inspiration suggested to me that Mr. Baker was the acting coroner
+of that neighbourhood.
+
+‘A common place for suicide,’ said I, looking down at the locks.
+
+‘Sue?’ returned the ghost, with a stare.  ‘Yes!  And Poll.  Likewise
+Emily.  And Nancy.  And Jane;’ he sucked the iron between each name; ‘and
+all the bileing.  Ketches off their bonnets or shorls, takes a run, and
+headers down here, they doos.  Always a headerin’ down here, they is.
+Like one o’clock.’
+
+‘And at about that hour of the morning, I suppose?’
+
+‘Ah!’ said the apparition.  ‘_They_ an’t partickler.  Two ’ull do for
+_them_.  Three.  All times o’ night.  On’y mind you!’  Here the
+apparition rested his profile on the bar, and gurgled in a sarcastic
+manner.  ‘There must be somebody comin’.  They don’t go a headerin’ down
+here, wen there an’t no Bobby nor gen’ral Cove, fur to hear the splash.’
+
+According to my interpretation of these words, I was myself a General
+Cove, or member of the miscellaneous public.  In which modest character I
+remarked:
+
+‘They are often taken out, are they, and restored?’
+
+‘I dunno about restored,’ said the apparition, who, for some occult
+reason, very much objected to that word; ‘they’re carried into the
+werkiss and put into a ’ot bath, and brought round.  But I dunno about
+restored,’ said the apparition; ‘blow _that_!’—and vanished.
+
+As it had shown a desire to become offensive, I was not sorry to find
+myself alone, especially as the ‘werkiss’ it had indicated with a twist
+of its matted head, was close at hand.  So I left Mr. Baker’s terrible
+trap (baited with a scum that was like the soapy rinsing of sooty
+chimneys), and made bold to ring at the workhouse gate, where I was
+wholly unexpected and quite unknown.
+
+A very bright and nimble little matron, with a bunch of keys in her hand,
+responded to my request to see the House.  I began to doubt whether the
+police magistrate was quite right in his facts, when I noticed her quick,
+active little figure and her intelligent eyes.
+
+The Traveller (the matron intimated) should see the worst first.  He was
+welcome to see everything.  Such as it was, there it all was.
+
+This was the only preparation for our entering ‘the Foul wards.’  They
+were in an old building squeezed away in a corner of a paved yard, quite
+detached from the more modern and spacious main body of the workhouse.
+They were in a building most monstrously behind the time—a mere series of
+garrets or lofts, with every inconvenient and objectionable circumstance
+in their construction, and only accessible by steep and narrow
+staircases, infamously ill-adapted for the passage up-stairs of the sick
+or down-stairs of the dead.
+
+A-bed in these miserable rooms, here on bedsteads, there (for a change,
+as I understood it) on the floor, were women in every stage of distress
+and disease.  None but those who have attentively observed such scenes,
+can conceive the extraordinary variety of expression still latent under
+the general monotony and uniformity of colour, attitude, and condition.
+The form a little coiled up and turned away, as though it had turned its
+back on this world for ever; the uninterested face at once lead-coloured
+and yellow, looking passively upward from the pillow; the haggard mouth a
+little dropped, the hand outside the coverlet, so dull and indifferent,
+so light, and yet so heavy; these were on every pallet; but when I
+stopped beside a bed, and said ever so slight a word to the figure lying
+there, the ghost of the old character came into the face, and made the
+Foul ward as various as the fair world.  No one appeared to care to live,
+but no one complained; all who could speak, said that as much was done
+for them as could be done there, that the attendance was kind and
+patient, that their suffering was very heavy, but they had nothing to ask
+for.  The wretched rooms were as clean and sweet as it is possible for
+such rooms to be; they would become a pest-house in a single week, if
+they were ill-kept.
+
+I accompanied the brisk matron up another barbarous staircase, into a
+better kind of loft devoted to the idiotic and imbecile.  There was at
+least Light in it, whereas the windows in the former wards had been like
+sides of school-boys’ bird-cages.  There was a strong grating over the
+fire here, and, holding a kind of state on either side of the hearth,
+separated by the breadth of this grating, were two old ladies in a
+condition of feeble dignity, which was surely the very last and lowest
+reduction of self-complacency to be found in this wonderful humanity of
+ours.  They were evidently jealous of each other, and passed their whole
+time (as some people do, whose fires are not grated) in mentally
+disparaging each other, and contemptuously watching their neighbours.
+One of these parodies on provincial gentlewomen was extremely talkative,
+and expressed a strong desire to attend the service on Sundays, from
+which she represented herself to have derived the greatest interest and
+consolation when allowed that privilege.  She gossiped so well, and
+looked altogether so cheery and harmless, that I began to think this a
+case for the Eastern magistrate, until I found that on the last occasion
+of her attending chapel she had secreted a small stick, and had caused
+some confusion in the responses by suddenly producing it and belabouring
+the congregation.
+
+So, these two old ladies, separated by the breadth of the
+grating—otherwise they would fly at one another’s caps—sat all day long,
+suspecting one another, and contemplating a world of fits.  For everybody
+else in the room had fits, except the wards-woman; an elderly,
+able-bodied pauperess, with a large upper lip, and an air of repressing
+and saving her strength, as she stood with her hands folded before her,
+and her eyes slowly rolling, biding her time for catching or holding
+somebody.  This civil personage (in whom I regretted to identify a
+reduced member of my honourable friend Mrs. Gamp’s family) said, ‘They
+has ’em continiwal, sir.  They drops without no more notice than if they
+was coach-horses dropped from the moon, sir.  And when one drops, another
+drops, and sometimes there’ll be as many as four or five on ’em at once,
+dear me, a rolling and a tearin’, bless you!—this young woman, now, has
+’em dreadful bad.’
+
+She turned up this young woman’s face with her hand as she said it.  This
+young woman was seated on the floor, pondering in the foreground of the
+afflicted.  There was nothing repellent either in her face or head.
+Many, apparently worse, varieties of epilepsy and hysteria were about
+her, but she was said to be the worst here.  When I had spoken to her a
+little, she still sat with her face turned up, pondering, and a gleam of
+the mid-day sun shone in upon her.
+
+—Whether this young woman, and the rest of these so sorely troubled, as
+they sit or lie pondering in their confused dull way, ever get mental
+glimpses among the motes in the sunlight, of healthy people and healthy
+things?  Whether this young woman, brooding like this in the summer
+season, ever thinks that somewhere there are trees and flowers, even
+mountains and the great sea?  Whether, not to go so far, this young woman
+ever has any dim revelation of that young woman—that young woman who is
+not here and never will come here; who is courted, and caressed, and
+loved, and has a husband, and bears children, and lives in a home, and
+who never knows what it is to have this lashing and tearing coming upon
+her?  And whether this young woman, God help her, gives herself up then
+and drops like a coach-horse from the moon?
+
+I hardly knew whether the voices of infant children, penetrating into so
+hopeless a place, made a sound that was pleasant or painful to me.  It
+was something to be reminded that the weary world was not all aweary, and
+was ever renewing itself; but, this young woman was a child not long ago,
+and a child not long hence might be such as she.  Howbeit, the active
+step and eye of the vigilant matron conducted me past the two provincial
+gentlewomen (whose dignity was ruffled by the children), and into the
+adjacent nursery.
+
+There were many babies here, and more than one handsome young mother.
+There were ugly young mothers also, and sullen young mothers, and callous
+young mothers.  But, the babies had not appropriated to themselves any
+bad expression yet, and might have been, for anything that appeared to
+the contrary in their soft faces, Princes Imperial, and Princesses Royal.
+I had the pleasure of giving a poetical commission to the baker’s man to
+make a cake with all despatch and toss it into the oven for one
+red-headed young pauper and myself, and felt much the better for it.
+Without that refreshment, I doubt if I should have been in a condition
+for ‘the Refractories,’ towards whom my quick little matron—for whose
+adaptation to her office I had by this time conceived a genuine
+respect—drew me next, and marshalled me the way that I was going.
+
+The Refractories were picking oakum, in a small room giving on a yard.
+They sat in line on a form, with their backs to a window; before them, a
+table, and their work.  The oldest Refractory was, say twenty; youngest
+Refractory, say sixteen.  I have never yet ascertained in the course of
+my uncommercial travels, why a Refractory habit should affect the tonsils
+and uvula; but, I have always observed that Refractories of both sexes
+and every grade, between a Ragged School and the Old Bailey, have one
+voice, in which the tonsils and uvula gain a diseased ascendency.
+
+‘Five pound indeed!  I hain’t a going fur to pick five pound,’ said the
+Chief of the Refractories, keeping time to herself with her head and
+chin.  ‘More than enough to pick what we picks now, in sich a place as
+this, and on wot we gets here!’
+
+(This was in acknowledgment of a delicate intimation that the amount of
+work was likely to be increased.  It certainly was not heavy then, for
+one Refractory had already done her day’s task—it was barely two
+o’clock—and was sitting behind it, with a head exactly matching it.)
+
+‘A pretty Ouse this is, matron, ain’t it?’ said Refractory Two, ‘where a
+pleeseman’s called in, if a gal says a word!’
+
+‘And wen you’re sent to prison for nothink or less!’ said the Chief,
+tugging at her oakum as if it were the matron’s hair.  ‘But any place is
+better than this; that’s one thing, and be thankful!’
+
+A laugh of Refractories led by Oakum Head with folded arms—who originated
+nothing, but who was in command of the skirmishers outside the
+conversation.
+
+‘If any place is better than this,’ said my brisk guide, in the calmest
+manner, ‘it is a pity you left a good place when you had one.’
+
+‘Ho, no, I didn’t, matron,’ returned the Chief, with another pull at her
+oakum, and a very expressive look at the enemy’s forehead.  ‘Don’t say
+that, matron, cos it’s lies!’
+
+Oakum Head brought up the skirmishers again, skirmished, and retired.
+
+‘And _I_ warn’t a going,’ exclaimed Refractory Two, ‘though I was in one
+place for as long as four year—_I_ warn’t a going fur to stop in a place
+that warn’t fit for me—there!  And where the family warn’t ’spectable
+characters—there!  And where I fortunately or hunfort’nately, found that
+the people warn’t what they pretended to make theirselves out to
+be—there!  And where it wasn’t their faults, by chalks, if I warn’t made
+bad and ruinated—Hah!’
+
+During this speech, Oakum Head had again made a diversion with the
+skirmishers, and had again withdrawn.
+
+The Uncommercial Traveller ventured to remark that he supposed Chief
+Refractory and Number One, to be the two young women who had been taken
+before the magistrate?
+
+‘Yes!’ said the Chief, ‘we har! and the wonder is, that a pleeseman an’t
+’ad in now, and we took off agen.  You can’t open your lips here, without
+a pleeseman.’
+
+Number Two laughed (very uvularly), and the skirmishers followed suit.
+
+‘I’m sure I’d be thankful,’ protested the Chief, looking sideways at the
+Uncommercial, ‘if I could be got into a place, or got abroad.  I’m sick
+and tired of this precious Ouse, I am, with reason.’
+
+So would be, and so was, Number Two.  So would be, and so was, Oakum
+Head.  So would be, and so were, Skirmishers.
+
+The Uncommercial took the liberty of hinting that he hardly thought it
+probable that any lady or gentleman in want of a likely young domestic of
+retiring manners, would be tempted into the engagement of either of the
+two leading Refractories, on her own presentation of herself as per
+sample.
+
+‘It ain’t no good being nothink else here,’ said the Chief.
+
+The Uncommercial thought it might be worth trying.
+
+‘Oh no it ain’t,’ said the Chief.
+
+‘Not a bit of good,’ said Number Two.
+
+‘And I’m sure I’d be very thankful to be got into a place, or got
+abroad,’ said the Chief.
+
+‘And so should I,’ said Number Two.  ‘Truly thankful, I should.’
+
+Oakum Head then rose, and announced as an entirely new idea, the mention
+of which profound novelty might be naturally expected to startle her
+unprepared hearers, that she would be very thankful to be got into a
+place, or got abroad.  And, as if she had then said, ‘Chorus, ladies!’
+all the Skirmishers struck up to the same purpose.  We left them,
+thereupon, and began a long walk among the women who were simply old and
+infirm; but whenever, in the course of this same walk, I looked out of
+any high window that commanded the yard, I saw Oakum Head and all the
+other Refractories looking out at their low window for me, and never
+failing to catch me, the moment I showed my head.
+
+In ten minutes I had ceased to believe in such fables of a golden time as
+youth, the prime of life, or a hale old age.  In ten minutes, all the
+lights of womankind seemed to have been blown out, and nothing in that
+way to be left this vault to brag of, but the flickering and expiring
+snuffs.
+
+And what was very curious, was, that these dim old women had one company
+notion which was the fashion of the place.  Every old woman who became
+aware of a visitor and was not in bed hobbled over a form into her
+accustomed seat, and became one of a line of dim old women confronting
+another line of dim old women across a narrow table.  There was no
+obligation whatever upon them to range themselves in this way; it was
+their manner of ‘receiving.’  As a rule, they made no attempt to talk to
+one another, or to look at the visitor, or to look at anything, but sat
+silently working their mouths, like a sort of poor old Cows.  In some of
+these wards, it was good to see a few green plants; in others, an
+isolated Refractory acting as nurse, who did well enough in that
+capacity, when separated from her compeers; every one of these wards, day
+room, night room, or both combined, was scrupulously clean and fresh.  I
+have seen as many such places as most travellers in my line, and I never
+saw one such, better kept.
+
+Among the bedridden there was great patience, great reliance on the books
+under the pillow, great faith in GOD.  All cared for sympathy, but none
+much cared to be encouraged with hope of recovery; on the whole, I should
+say, it was considered rather a distinction to have a complication of
+disorders, and to be in a worse way than the rest.  From some of the
+windows, the river could be seen with all its life and movement; the day
+was bright, but I came upon no one who was looking out.
+
+In one large ward, sitting by the fire in arm-chairs of distinction, like
+the President and Vice of the good company, were two old women, upwards
+of ninety years of age.  The younger of the two, just turned ninety, was
+deaf, but not very, and could easily be made to hear.  In her early time
+she had nursed a child, who was now another old woman, more infirm than
+herself, inhabiting the very same chamber.  She perfectly understood this
+when the matron told it, and, with sundry nods and motions of her
+forefinger, pointed out the woman in question.  The elder of this pair,
+ninety-three, seated before an illustrated newspaper (but not reading
+it), was a bright-eyed old soul, really not deaf, wonderfully preserved,
+and amazingly conversational.  She had not long lost her husband, and had
+been in that place little more than a year.  At Boston, in the State of
+Massachusetts, this poor creature would have been individually addressed,
+would have been tended in her own room, and would have had her life
+gently assimilated to a comfortable life out of doors.  Would that be
+much to do in England for a woman who has kept herself out of a workhouse
+more than ninety rough long years?  When Britain first, at Heaven’s
+command, arose, with a great deal of allegorical confusion, from out the
+azure main, did her guardian angels positively forbid it in the Charter
+which has been so much besung?
+
+The object of my journey was accomplished when the nimble matron had no
+more to show me.  As I shook hands with her at the gate, I told her that
+I thought justice had not used her very well, and that the wise men of
+the East were not infallible.
+
+Now, I reasoned with myself, as I made my journey home again, concerning
+those Foul wards.  They ought not to exist; no person of common decency
+and humanity can see them and doubt it.  But what is this Union to do?
+The necessary alteration would cost several thousands of pounds; it has
+already to support three workhouses; its inhabitants work hard for their
+bare lives, and are already rated for the relief of the Poor to the
+utmost extent of reasonable endurance.  One poor parish in this very
+Union is rated to the amount of FIVE AND SIXPENCE in the pound, at the
+very same time when the rich parish of Saint George’s, Hanover-square, is
+rated at about SEVENPENCE in the pound, Paddington at about FOURPENCE,
+Saint James’s, Westminster, at about TENPENCE!  It is only through the
+equalisation of Poor Rates that what is left undone in this wise, can be
+done.  Much more is left undone, or is ill-done, than I have space to
+suggest in these notes of a single uncommercial journey; but, the wise
+men of the East, before they can reasonably hold forth about it, must
+look to the North and South and West; let them also, any morning before
+taking the seat of Solomon, look into the shops and dwellings all around
+the Temple, and first ask themselves ‘how much more can these poor
+people—many of whom keep themselves with difficulty enough out of the
+workhouse—bear?’
+
+I had yet other matter for reflection as I journeyed home, inasmuch as,
+before I altogether departed from the neighbourhood of Mr. Baker’s trap,
+I had knocked at the gate of the workhouse of St. George’s-in-the-East,
+and had found it to be an establishment highly creditable to those parts,
+and thoroughly well administered by a most intelligent master.  I
+remarked in it, an instance of the collateral harm that obstinate vanity
+and folly can do.  ‘This was the Hall where those old paupers, male and
+female, whom I had just seen, met for the Church service, was
+it?’—‘Yes.’—‘Did they sing the Psalms to any instrument?’—‘They would
+like to, very much; they would have an extraordinary interest in doing
+so.’—‘And could none be got?’—‘Well, a piano could even have been got for
+nothing, but these unfortunate dissensions—’  Ah! better, far better, my
+Christian friend in the beautiful garment, to have let the singing boys
+alone, and left the multitude to sing for themselves!  You should know
+better than I, but I think I have read that they did so, once upon a
+time, and that ‘when they had sung an hymn,’ Some one (not in a beautiful
+garment) went up into the Mount of Olives.
+
+It made my heart ache to think of this miserable trifling, in the streets
+of a city where every stone seemed to call to me, as I walked along,
+‘Turn this way, man, and see what waits to be done!’  So I decoyed myself
+into another train of thought to ease my heart.  But, I don’t know that I
+did it, for I was so full of paupers, that it was, after all, only a
+change to a single pauper, who took possession of my remembrance instead
+of a thousand.
+
+‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ he had said, in a confidential manner, on
+another occasion, taking me aside; ‘but I have seen better days.’
+
+‘I am very sorry to hear it.’
+
+‘Sir, I have a complaint to make against the master.’
+
+‘I have no power here, I assure you.  And if I had—’
+
+‘But, allow me, sir, to mention it, as between yourself and a man who has
+seen better days, sir.  The master and myself are both masons, sir, and I
+make him the sign continually; but, because I am in this unfortunate
+position, sir, he won’t give me the counter-sign!’
+
+
+
+
+IV
+TWO VIEWS OF A CHEAP THEATRE
+
+
+AS I shut the door of my lodging behind me, and came out into the streets
+at six on a drizzling Saturday evening in the last past month of January,
+all that neighbourhood of Covent-garden looked very desolate.  It is so
+essentially a neighbourhood which has seen better days, that bad weather
+affects it sooner than another place which has not come down in the
+World.  In its present reduced condition it bears a thaw almost worse
+than any place I know.  It gets so dreadfully low-spirited when damp
+breaks forth.  Those wonderful houses about Drury-lane Theatre, which in
+the palmy days of theatres were prosperous and long-settled places of
+business, and which now change hands every week, but never change their
+character of being divided and sub-divided on the ground floor into
+mouldy dens of shops where an orange and half-a-dozen nuts, or a
+pomatum-pot, one cake of fancy soap, and a cigar box, are offered for
+sale and never sold, were most ruefully contemplated that evening, by the
+statue of Shakespeare, with the rain-drops coursing one another down its
+innocent nose.  Those inscrutable pigeon-hole offices, with nothing in
+them (not so much as an inkstand) but a model of a theatre before the
+curtain, where, in the Italian Opera season, tickets at reduced prices
+are kept on sale by nomadic gentlemen in smeary hats too tall for them,
+whom one occasionally seems to have seen on race-courses, not wholly
+unconnected with strips of cloth of various colours and a rolling
+ball—those Bedouin establishments, deserted by the tribe, and tenantless,
+except when sheltering in one corner an irregular row of ginger-beer
+bottles, which would have made one shudder on such a night, but for its
+being plain that they had nothing in them, shrunk from the shrill cries
+of the news-boys at their Exchange in the kennel of Catherine-street,
+like guilty things upon a fearful summons.  At the pipe-shop in Great
+Russell-street, the Death’s-head pipes were like theatrical memento mori,
+admonishing beholders of the decline of the playhouse as an Institution.
+I walked up Bow-street, disposed to be angry with the shops there, that
+were letting out theatrical secrets by exhibiting to work-a-day humanity
+the stuff of which diadems and robes of kings are made.  I noticed that
+some shops which had once been in the dramatic line, and had struggled
+out of it, were not getting on prosperously—like some actors I have
+known, who took to business and failed to make it answer.  In a word,
+those streets looked so dull, and, considered as theatrical streets, so
+broken and bankrupt, that the FOUND DEAD on the black board at the police
+station might have announced the decease of the Drama, and the pools of
+water outside the fire-engine maker’s at the corner of Long-acre might
+have been occasioned by his having brought out the whole of his stock to
+play upon its last smouldering ashes.
+
+And yet, on such a night in so degenerate a time, the object of my
+journey was theatrical.  And yet within half an hour I was in an immense
+theatre, capable of holding nearly five thousand people.
+
+What Theatre?  Her Majesty’s?  Far better.  Royal Italian Opera?  Far
+better.  Infinitely superior to the latter for hearing in; infinitely
+superior to both, for seeing in.  To every part of this Theatre, spacious
+fire-proof ways of ingress and egress.  For every part of it, convenient
+places of refreshment and retiring rooms.  Everything to eat and drink
+carefully supervised as to quality, and sold at an appointed price;
+respectable female attendants ready for the commonest women in the
+audience; a general air of consideration, decorum, and supervision, most
+commendable; an unquestionably humanising influence in all the social
+arrangements of the place.
+
+Surely a dear Theatre, then?  Because there were in London (not very long
+ago) Theatres with entrance-prices up to half-a-guinea a head, whose
+arrangements were not half so civilised.  Surely, therefore, a dear
+Theatre?  Not very dear.  A gallery at three-pence, another gallery at
+fourpence, a pit at sixpence, boxes and pit-stalls at a shilling, and a
+few private boxes at half-a-crown.
+
+My uncommercial curiosity induced me to go into every nook of this great
+place, and among every class of the audience assembled in it—amounting
+that evening, as I calculated, to about two thousand and odd hundreds.
+Magnificently lighted by a firmament of sparkling chandeliers, the
+building was ventilated to perfection.  My sense of smell, without being
+particularly delicate, has been so offended in some of the commoner
+places of public resort, that I have often been obliged to leave them
+when I have made an uncommercial journey expressly to look on.  The air
+of this Theatre was fresh, cool, and wholesome.  To help towards this
+end, very sensible precautions had been used, ingeniously combining the
+experience of hospitals and railway stations.  Asphalt pavements
+substituted for wooden floors, honest bare walls of glazed brick and
+tile—even at the back of the boxes—for plaster and paper, no benches
+stuffed, and no carpeting or baize used; a cool material with a light
+glazed surface, being the covering of the seats.
+
+                        [Picture: A Cheap Theatre]
+
+These various contrivances are as well considered in the place in
+question as if it were a Fever Hospital; the result is, that it is sweet
+and healthful.  It has been constructed from the ground to the roof, with
+a careful reference to sight and sound in every corner; the result is,
+that its form is beautiful, and that the appearance of the audience, as
+seen from the proscenium—with every face in it commanding the stage, and
+the whole so admirably raked and turned to that centre, that a hand can
+scarcely move in the great assemblage without the movement being seen
+from thence—is highly remarkable in its union of vastness with
+compactness.  The stage itself, and all its appurtenances of machinery,
+cellarage, height and breadth, are on a scale more like the Scala at
+Milan, or the San Carlo at Naples, or the Grand Opera at Paris, than any
+notion a stranger would be likely to form of the Britannia Theatre at
+Hoxton, a mile north of St. Luke’s Hospital in the Old-street-road,
+London.  The Forty Thieves might be played here, and every thief ride his
+real horse, and the disguised captain bring in his oil jars on a train of
+real camels, and nobody be put out of the way.  This really extraordinary
+place is the achievement of one man’s enterprise, and was erected on the
+ruins of an inconvenient old building in less than five months, at a
+round cost of five-and-twenty thousand pounds.  To dismiss this part of
+my subject, and still to render to the proprietor the credit that is
+strictly his due, I must add that his sense of the responsibility upon
+him to make the best of his audience, and to do his best for them, is a
+highly agreeable sign of these times.
+
+As the spectators at this theatre, for a reason I will presently show,
+were the object of my journey, I entered on the play of the night as one
+of the two thousand and odd hundreds, by looking about me at my
+neighbours.  We were a motley assemblage of people, and we had a good
+many boys and young men among us; we had also many girls and young women.
+To represent, however, that we did not include a very great number, and a
+very fair proportion of family groups, would be to make a gross
+mis-statement.  Such groups were to be seen in all parts of the house; in
+the boxes and stalls particularly, they were composed of persons of very
+decent appearance, who had many children with them.  Among our dresses
+there were most kinds of shabby and greasy wear, and much fustian and
+corduroy that was neither sound nor fragrant.  The caps of our young men
+were mostly of a limp character, and we who wore them, slouched,
+high-shouldered, into our places with our hands in our pockets, and
+occasionally twisted our cravats about our necks like eels, and
+occasionally tied them down our breasts like links of sausages, and
+occasionally had a screw in our hair over each cheek-bone with a slight
+Thief-flavour in it.  Besides prowlers and idlers, we were mechanics,
+dock-labourers, costermongers, petty tradesmen, small clerks, milliners,
+stay-makers, shoe-binders, slop-workers, poor workers in a hundred
+highways and byways.  Many of us—on the whole, the majority—were not at
+all clean, and not at all choice in our lives or conversation.  But we
+had all come together in a place where our convenience was well
+consulted, and where we were well looked after, to enjoy an evening’s
+entertainment in common.  We were not going to lose any part of what we
+had paid for through anybody’s caprice, and as a community we had a
+character to lose.  So, we were closely attentive, and kept excellent
+order; and let the man or boy who did otherwise instantly get out from
+this place, or we would put him out with the greatest expedition.
+
+We began at half-past six with a pantomime—with a pantomime so long, that
+before it was over I felt as if I had been travelling for six weeks—going
+to India, say, by the Overland Mail.  The Spirit of Liberty was the
+principal personage in the Introduction, and the Four Quarters of the
+World came out of the globe, glittering, and discoursed with the Spirit,
+who sang charmingly.  We were delighted to understand that there was no
+liberty anywhere but among ourselves, and we highly applauded the
+agreeable fact.  In an allegorical way, which did as well as any other
+way, we and the Spirit of Liberty got into a kingdom of Needles and Pins,
+and found them at war with a potentate who called in to his aid their old
+arch enemy Rust, and who would have got the better of them if the Spirit
+of Liberty had not in the nick of time transformed the leaders into
+Clown, Pantaloon, Harlequin, Columbine, Harlequina, and a whole family of
+Sprites, consisting of a remarkably stout father and three spineless
+sons.  We all knew what was coming when the Spirit of Liberty addressed
+the king with a big face, and His Majesty backed to the side-scenes and
+began untying himself behind, with his big face all on one side.  Our
+excitement at that crisis was great, and our delight unbounded.  After
+this era in our existence, we went through all the incidents of a
+pantomime; it was not by any means a savage pantomime, in the way of
+burning or boiling people, or throwing them out of window, or cutting
+them up; was often very droll; was always liberally got up, and cleverly
+presented.  I noticed that the people who kept the shops, and who
+represented the passengers in the thoroughfares, and so forth, had no
+conventionality in them, but were unusually like the real thing—from
+which I infer that you may take that audience in (if you wish to)
+concerning Knights and Ladies, Fairies, Angels, or such like, but they
+are not to be done as to anything in the streets.  I noticed, also, that
+when two young men, dressed in exact imitation of the
+eel-and-sausage-cravated portion of the audience, were chased by
+policemen, and, finding themselves in danger of being caught, dropped so
+suddenly as to oblige the policemen to tumble over them, there was great
+rejoicing among the caps—as though it were a delicate reference to
+something they had heard of before.
+
+The Pantomime was succeeded by a Melo-Drama.  Throughout the evening I
+was pleased to observe Virtue quite as triumphant as she usually is out
+of doors, and indeed I thought rather more so.  We all agreed (for the
+time) that honesty was the best policy, and we were as hard as iron upon
+Vice, and we wouldn’t hear of Villainy getting on in the world—no, not on
+any consideration whatever.
+
+Between the pieces, we almost all of us went out and refreshed.  Many of
+us went the length of drinking beer at the bar of the neighbouring
+public-house, some of us drank spirits, crowds of us had sandwiches and
+ginger-beer at the refreshment-bars established for us in the Theatre.
+The sandwich—as substantial as was consistent with portability, and as
+cheap as possible—we hailed as one of our greatest institutions.  It
+forced its way among us at all stages of the entertainment, and we were
+always delighted to see it; its adaptability to the varying moods of our
+nature was surprising; we could never weep so comfortably as when our
+tears fell on our sandwich; we could never laugh so heartily as when we
+choked with sandwich; Virtue never looked so beautiful or Vice so
+deformed as when we paused, sandwich in hand, to consider what would come
+of that resolution of Wickedness in boots, to sever Innocence in flowered
+chintz from Honest Industry in striped stockings.  When the curtain fell
+for the night, we still fell back upon sandwich, to help us through the
+rain and mire, and home to bed.
+
+This, as I have mentioned, was Saturday night.  Being Saturday night, I
+had accomplished but the half of my uncommercial journey; for, its object
+was to compare the play on Saturday evening with the preaching in the
+same Theatre on Sunday evening.
+
+Therefore, at the same hour of half-past six on the similarly damp and
+muddy Sunday evening, I returned to this Theatre.  I drove up to the
+entrance (fearful of being late, or I should have come on foot), and
+found myself in a large crowd of people who, I am happy to state, were
+put into excellent spirits by my arrival.  Having nothing to look at but
+the mud and the closed doors, they looked at me, and highly enjoyed the
+comic spectacle.  My modesty inducing me to draw off, some hundreds of
+yards, into a dark corner, they at once forgot me, and applied themselves
+to their former occupation of looking at the mud and looking in at the
+closed doors: which, being of grated ironwork, allowed the lighted
+passage within to be seen.  They were chiefly people of respectable
+appearance, odd and impulsive as most crowds are, and making a joke of
+being there as most crowds do.
+
+In the dark corner I might have sat a long while, but that a very
+obliging passer-by informed me that the Theatre was already full, and
+that the people whom I saw in the street were all shut out for want of
+room.  After that, I lost no time in worming myself into the building,
+and creeping to a place in a Proscenium box that had been kept for me.
+
+There must have been full four thousand people present.  Carefully
+estimating the pit alone, I could bring it out as holding little less
+than fourteen hundred.  Every part of the house was well filled, and I
+had not found it easy to make my way along the back of the boxes to where
+I sat.  The chandeliers in the ceiling were lighted; there was no light
+on the stage; the orchestra was empty.  The green curtain was down, and,
+packed pretty closely on chairs on the small space of stage before it,
+were some thirty gentlemen, and two or three ladies.  In the centre of
+these, in a desk or pulpit covered with red baize, was the presiding
+minister.  The kind of rostrum he occupied will be very well understood,
+if I liken it to a boarded-up fireplace turned towards the audience, with
+a gentleman in a black surtout standing in the stove and leaning forward
+over the mantelpiece.
+
+A portion of Scripture was being read when I went in.  It was followed by
+a discourse, to which the congregation listened with most exemplary
+attention and uninterrupted silence and decorum.  My own attention
+comprehended both the auditory and the speaker, and shall turn to both in
+this recalling of the scene, exactly as it did at the time.
+
+‘A very difficult thing,’ I thought, when the discourse began, ‘to speak
+appropriately to so large an audience, and to speak with tact.  Without
+it, better not to speak at all.  Infinitely better, to read the New
+Testament well, and to let _that_ speak.  In this congregation there is
+indubitably one pulse; but I doubt if any power short of genius can touch
+it as one, and make it answer as one.’
+
+I could not possibly say to myself as the discourse proceeded, that the
+minister was a good speaker.  I could not possibly say to myself that he
+expressed an understanding of the general mind and character of his
+audience.  There was a supposititious working-man introduced into the
+homily, to make supposititious objections to our Christian religion and
+be reasoned down, who was not only a very disagreeable person, but
+remarkably unlike life—very much more unlike it than anything I had seen
+in the pantomime.  The native independence of character this artisan was
+supposed to possess, was represented by a suggestion of a dialect that I
+certainly never heard in my uncommercial travels, and with a coarse swing
+of voice and manner anything but agreeable to his feelings, I should
+conceive, considered in the light of a portrait, and as far away from the
+fact as a Chinese Tartar.  There was a model pauper introduced in like
+manner, who appeared to me to be the most intolerably arrogant pauper
+ever relieved, and to show himself in absolute want and dire necessity of
+a course of Stone Yard.  For, how did this pauper testify to his having
+received the gospel of humility?  A gentleman met him in the workhouse,
+and said (which I myself really thought good-natured of him), ‘Ah, John?
+I am sorry to see you here.  I am sorry to see you so poor.’  ‘Poor,
+sir!’ replied that man, drawing himself up, ‘I am the son of a Prince!
+_My_ father is the King of Kings.  _My_ father is the Lord of Lords.
+_My_ father is the ruler of all the Princes of the Earth!’ &c.  And this
+was what all the preacher’s fellow-sinners might come to, if they would
+embrace this blessed book—which I must say it did some violence to my own
+feelings of reverence, to see held out at arm’s length at frequent
+intervals and soundingly slapped, like a slow lot at a sale.  Now, could
+I help asking myself the question, whether the mechanic before me, who
+must detect the preacher as being wrong about the visible manner of
+himself and the like of himself, and about such a noisy lip-server as
+that pauper, might not, most unhappily for the usefulness of the
+occasion, doubt that preacher’s being right about things not visible to
+human senses?
+
+Again.  Is it necessary or advisable to address such an audience
+continually as ‘fellow-sinners’?  Is it not enough to be
+fellow-creatures, born yesterday, suffering and striving to-day, dying
+to-morrow?  By our common humanity, my brothers and sisters, by our
+common capacities for pain and pleasure, by our common laughter and our
+common tears, by our common aspiration to reach something better than
+ourselves, by our common tendency to believe in something good, and to
+invest whatever we love or whatever we lose with some qualities that are
+superior to our own failings and weaknesses as we know them in our own
+poor hearts—by these, Hear me!—Surely, it is enough to be
+fellow-creatures.  Surely, it includes the other designation, and some
+touching meanings over and above.
+
+Again.  There was a personage introduced into the discourse (not an
+absolute novelty, to the best of my remembrance of my reading), who had
+been personally known to the preacher, and had been quite a Crichton in
+all the ways of philosophy, but had been an infidel.  Many a time had the
+preacher talked with him on that subject, and many a time had he failed
+to convince that intelligent man.  But he fell ill, and died, and before
+he died he recorded his conversion—in words which the preacher had taken
+down, my fellow-sinners, and would read to you from this piece of paper.
+I must confess that to me, as one of an uninstructed audience, they did
+not appear particularly edifying.  I thought their tone extremely
+selfish, and I thought they had a spiritual vanity in them which was of
+the before-mentioned refractory pauper’s family.
+
+All slangs and twangs are objectionable everywhere, but the slang and
+twang of the conventicle—as bad in its way as that of the House of
+Commons, and nothing worse can be said of it—should be studiously avoided
+under such circumstances as I describe.  The avoidance was not complete
+on this occasion.  Nor was it quite agreeable to see the preacher
+addressing his pet ‘points’ to his backers on the stage, as if appealing
+to those disciples to show him up, and testify to the multitude that each
+of those points was a clincher.
+
+But, in respect of the large Christianity of his general tone; of his
+renunciation of all priestly authority; of his earnest and reiterated
+assurance to the people that the commonest among them could work out
+their own salvation if they would, by simply, lovingly, and dutifully
+following Our Saviour, and that they needed the mediation of no erring
+man; in these particulars, this gentleman deserved all praise.  Nothing
+could be better than the spirit, or the plain emphatic words of his
+discourse in these respects.  And it was a most significant and
+encouraging circumstance that whenever he struck that chord, or whenever
+he described anything which Christ himself had done, the array of faces
+before him was very much more earnest, and very much more expressive of
+emotion, than at any other time.
+
+And now, I am brought to the fact, that the lowest part of the audience
+of the previous night, _was not there_.  There is no doubt about it.
+There was no such thing in that building, that Sunday evening.  I have
+been told since, that the lowest part of the audience of the Victoria
+Theatre has been attracted to its Sunday services.  I have been very glad
+to hear it, but on this occasion of which I write, the lowest part of the
+usual audience of the Britannia Theatre, decidedly and unquestionably
+stayed away.  When I first took my seat and looked at the house, my
+surprise at the change in its occupants was as great as my
+disappointment.  To the most respectable class of the previous evening,
+was added a great number of respectable strangers attracted by curiosity,
+and drafts from the regular congregations of various chapels.  It was
+impossible to fail in identifying the character of these last, and they
+were very numerous.  I came out in a strong, slow tide of them setting
+from the boxes.  Indeed, while the discourse was in progress, the
+respectable character of the auditory was so manifest in their
+appearance, that when the minister addressed a supposititious ‘outcast,’
+one really felt a little impatient of it, as a figure of speech not
+justified by anything the eye could discover.
+
+The time appointed for the conclusion of the proceedings was eight
+o’clock.  The address having lasted until full that time, and it being
+the custom to conclude with a hymn, the preacher intimated in a few
+sensible words that the clock had struck the hour, and that those who
+desired to go before the hymn was sung, could go now, without giving
+offence.  No one stirred.  The hymn was then sung, in good time and tune
+and unison, and its effect was very striking.  A comprehensive benevolent
+prayer dismissed the throng, and in seven or eight minutes there was
+nothing left in the Theatre but a light cloud of dust.
+
+That these Sunday meetings in Theatres are good things, I do not doubt.
+Nor do I doubt that they will work lower and lower down in the social
+scale, if those who preside over them will be very careful on two heads:
+firstly, not to disparage the places in which they speak, or the
+intelligence of their hearers; secondly, not to set themselves in
+antagonism to the natural inborn desire of the mass of mankind to
+recreate themselves and to be amused.
+
+There is a third head, taking precedence of all others, to which my
+remarks on the discourse I heard, have tended.  In the New Testament
+there is the most beautiful and affecting history conceivable by man, and
+there are the terse models for all prayer and for all preaching.  As to
+the models, imitate them, Sunday preachers—else why are they there,
+consider?  As to the history, tell it.  Some people cannot read, some
+people will not read, many people (this especially holds among the young
+and ignorant) find it hard to pursue the verse-form in which the book is
+presented to them, and imagine that those breaks imply gaps and want of
+continuity.  Help them over that first stumbling-block, by setting forth
+the history in narrative, with no fear of exhausting it.  You will never
+preach so well, you will never move them so profoundly, you will never
+send them away with half so much to think of.  Which is the better
+interest: Christ’s choice of twelve poor men to help in those merciful
+wonders among the poor and rejected; or the pious bullying of a whole
+Union-full of paupers?  What is your changed philosopher to wretched me,
+peeping in at the door out of the mud of the streets and of my life, when
+you have the widow’s son to tell me about, the ruler’s daughter, the
+other figure at the door when the brother of the two sisters was dead,
+and one of the two ran to the mourner, crying, ‘The Master is come and
+calleth for thee’?—Let the preacher who will thoroughly forget himself
+and remember no individuality but one, and no eloquence but one, stand up
+before four thousand men and women at the Britannia Theatre any Sunday
+night, recounting that narrative to them as fellow creatures, and he
+shall see a sight!
+
+
+
+
+V
+POOR MERCANTILE JACK
+
+
+Is the sweet little cherub who sits smiling aloft and keeps watch on
+the life of poor Jack, commissioned to take charge of Mercantile Jack,
+as well as Jack of the national navy?  If not, who is?  What is the
+cherub about, and what are we all about, when poor Mercantile Jack is
+having his brains slowly knocked out by penny-weights, aboard the brig
+Beelzebub, or the barque Bowie-knife—when he looks his last at that
+infernal craft, with the first officer’s iron boot-heel in his
+remaining eye, or with his dying body towed overboard in the ship’s
+wake, while the cruel wounds in it do ‘the multitudinous seas
+incarnadine’?
+
+Is it unreasonable to entertain a belief that if, aboard the brig
+Beelzebub or the barque Bowie-knife, the first officer did half the
+damage to cotton that he does to men, there would presently arise from
+both sides of the Atlantic so vociferous an invocation of the sweet
+little cherub who sits calculating aloft, keeping watch on the markets
+that pay, that such vigilant cherub would, with a winged sword, have that
+gallant officer’s organ of destructiveness out of his head in the space
+of a flash of lightning?
+
+If it be unreasonable, then am I the most unreasonable of men, for I
+believe it with all my soul.
+
+This was my thought as I walked the dock-quays at Liverpool, keeping
+watch on poor Mercantile Jack.  Alas for me!  I have long outgrown the
+state of sweet little cherub; but there I was, and there Mercantile Jack
+was, and very busy he was, and very cold he was: the snow yet lying in
+the frozen furrows of the land, and the north-east winds snipping off the
+tops of the little waves in the Mersey, and rolling them into hailstones
+to pelt him with.  Mercantile Jack was hard at it, in the hard weather:
+as he mostly is in all weathers, poor Jack.  He was girded to ships’
+masts and funnels of steamers, like a forester to a great oak, scraping
+and painting; he was lying out on yards, furling sails that tried to beat
+him off; he was dimly discernible up in a world of giant cobwebs, reefing
+and splicing; he was faintly audible down in holds, stowing and
+unshipping cargo; he was winding round and round at capstans melodious,
+monotonous, and drunk; he was of a diabolical aspect, with coaling for
+the Antipodes; he was washing decks barefoot, with the breast of his red
+shirt open to the blast, though it was sharper than the knife in his
+leathern girdle; he was looking over bulwarks, all eyes and hair; he was
+standing by at the shoot of the Cunard steamer, off to-morrow, as the
+stocks in trade of several butchers, poulterers, and fishmongers, poured
+down into the ice-house; he was coming aboard of other vessels, with his
+kit in a tarpaulin bag, attended by plunderers to the very last moment of
+his shore-going existence.  As though his senses, when released from the
+uproar of the elements, were under obligation to be confused by other
+turmoil, there was a rattling of wheels, a clattering of hoofs, a
+clashing of iron, a jolting of cotton and hides and casks and timber, an
+incessant deafening disturbance on the quays, that was the very madness
+of sound.  And as, in the midst of it, he stood swaying about, with his
+hair blown all manner of wild ways, rather crazedly taking leave of his
+plunderers, all the rigging in the docks was shrill in the wind, and
+every little steamer coming and going across the Mersey was sharp in its
+blowing off, and every buoy in the river bobbed spitefully up and down,
+as if there were a general taunting chorus of ‘Come along, Mercantile
+Jack!  Ill-lodged, ill-fed, ill-used, hocussed, entrapped, anticipated,
+cleaned out.  Come along, Poor Mercantile Jack, and be tempest-tossed
+till you are drowned!’
+
+The uncommercial transaction which had brought me and Jack together, was
+this:—I had entered the Liverpool police force, that I might have a look
+at the various unlawful traps which are every night set for Jack.  As my
+term of service in that distinguished corps was short, and as my personal
+bias in the capacity of one of its members has ceased, no suspicion will
+attach to my evidence that it is an admirable force.  Besides that it is
+composed, without favour, of the best men that can be picked, it is
+directed by an unusual intelligence.  Its organisation against Fires, I
+take to be much better than the metropolitan system, and in all respects
+it tempers its remarkable vigilance with a still more remarkable
+discretion.
+
+Jack had knocked off work in the docks some hours, and I had taken, for
+purposes of identification, a photograph-likeness of a thief, in the
+portrait-room at our head police office (on the whole, he seemed rather
+complimented by the proceeding), and I had been on police parade, and the
+small hand of the clock was moving on to ten, when I took up my lantern
+to follow Mr. Superintendent to the traps that were set for Jack.  In Mr.
+Superintendent I saw, as anybody might, a tall, well-looking, well-set-up
+man of a soldierly bearing, with a cavalry air, a good chest, and a
+resolute but not by any means ungentle face.  He carried in his hand a
+plain black walking-stick of hard wood; and whenever and wherever, at any
+after-time of the night, he struck it on the pavement with a ringing
+sound, it instantly produced a whistle out of the darkness, and a
+policeman.  To this remarkable stick, I refer an air of mystery and magic
+which pervaded the whole of my perquisition among the traps that were set
+for Jack.
+
+We began by diving into the obscurest streets and lanes of the port.
+Suddenly pausing in a flow of cheerful discourse, before a dead wall,
+apparently some ten miles long, Mr. Superintendent struck upon the
+ground, and the wall opened and shot out, with military salute of hand to
+temple, two policemen—not in the least surprised themselves, not in the
+least surprising Mr. Superintendent.
+
+‘All right, Sharpeye?’
+
+‘All right, sir.’
+
+‘All right, Trampfoot?’
+
+‘All right, sir.’
+
+‘Is Quickear there?’
+
+‘Here am I, sir.’
+
+‘Come with us.’
+
+‘Yes, sir.’
+
+So, Sharpeye went before, and Mr. Superintendent and I went next, and
+Trampfoot and Quickear marched as rear-guard.  Sharp-eye, I soon had
+occasion to remark, had a skilful and quite professional way of opening
+doors—touched latches delicately, as if they were keys of musical
+instruments—opened every door he touched, as if he were perfectly
+confident that there was stolen property behind it—instantly insinuated
+himself, to prevent its being shut.
+
+Sharpeye opened several doors of traps that were set for Jack, but Jack
+did not happen to be in any of them.  They were all such miserable places
+that really, Jack, if I were you, I would give them a wider berth.  In
+every trap, somebody was sitting over a fire, waiting for Jack.  Now, it
+was a crouching old woman, like the picture of the Norwood Gipsy in the
+old sixpenny dream-books; now, it was a crimp of the male sex, in a
+checked shirt and without a coat, reading a newspaper; now, it was a man
+crimp and a woman crimp, who always introduced themselves as united in
+holy matrimony; now, it was Jack’s delight, his (un)lovely Nan; but they
+were all waiting for Jack, and were all frightfully disappointed to see
+us.
+
+‘Who have you got up-stairs here?’ says Sharpeye, generally.  (In the
+Move-on tone.)
+
+‘Nobody, surr; sure not a blessed sowl!’  (Irish feminine reply.)
+
+‘What do you mean by nobody?  Didn’t I hear a woman’s step go up-stairs
+when my hand was on the latch?’
+
+‘Ah! sure thin you’re right, surr, I forgot her!  ’Tis on’y Betsy White,
+surr.  Ah! you know Betsy, surr.  Come down, Betsy darlin’, and say the
+gintlemin.’
+
+Generally, Betsy looks over the banisters (the steep staircase is in the
+room) with a forcible expression in her protesting face, of an intention
+to compensate herself for the present trial by grinding Jack finer than
+usual when he does come.  Generally, Sharpeye turns to Mr.
+Superintendent, and says, as if the subjects of his remarks were
+wax-work:
+
+‘One of the worst, sir, this house is.  This woman has been indicted
+three times.  This man’s a regular bad one likewise.  His real name is
+Pegg.  Gives himself out as Waterhouse.’
+
+‘Never had sitch a name as Pegg near me back, thin, since I was in this
+house, bee the good Lard!’ says the woman.
+
+Generally, the man says nothing at all, but becomes exceedingly
+round-shouldered, and pretends to read his paper with rapt attention.
+Generally, Sharpeye directs our observation with a look, to the prints
+and pictures that are invariably numerous on the walls.  Always,
+Trampfoot and Quickear are taking notice on the doorstep.  In default of
+Sharpeye being acquainted with the exact individuality of any gentleman
+encountered, one of these two is sure to proclaim from the outer air,
+like a gruff spectre, that Jackson is not Jackson, but knows himself to
+be Fogle; or that Canlon is Walker’s brother, against whom there was not
+sufficient evidence; or that the man who says he never was at sea since
+he was a boy, came ashore from a voyage last Thursday, or sails to-morrow
+morning.  ‘And that is a bad class of man, you see,’ says Mr.
+Superintendent, when he got out into the dark again, ‘and very difficult
+to deal with, who, when he has made this place too hot to hold him,
+enters himself for a voyage as steward or cook, and is out of knowledge
+for months, and then turns up again worse than ever.’
+
+When we had gone into many such houses, and had come out (always leaving
+everybody relapsing into waiting for Jack), we started off to a
+singing-house where Jack was expected to muster strong.
+
+The vocalisation was taking place in a long low room up-stairs; at one
+end, an orchestra of two performers, and a small platform; across the
+room, a series of open pews for Jack, with an aisle down the middle; at
+the other end a larger pew than the rest, entitled SNUG, and reserved for
+mates and similar good company.  About the room, some amazing
+coffee-coloured pictures varnished an inch deep, and some stuffed
+creatures in cases; dotted among the audience, in Snug and out of Snug,
+the ‘Professionals;’ among them, the celebrated comic favourite Mr. Banjo
+Bones, looking very hideous with his blackened face and limp sugar-loaf
+hat; beside him, sipping rum-and-water, Mrs. Banjo Bones, in her natural
+colours—a little heightened.
+
+It was a Friday night, and Friday night was considered not a good night
+for Jack.  At any rate, Jack did not show in very great force even here,
+though the house was one to which he much resorts, and where a good deal
+of money is taken.  There was British Jack, a little maudlin and sleepy,
+lolling over his empty glass, as if he were trying to read his fortune at
+the bottom; there was Loafing Jack of the Stars and Stripes, rather an
+unpromising customer, with his long nose, lank cheek, high cheek-bones,
+and nothing soft about him but his cabbage-leaf hat; there was Spanish
+Jack, with curls of black hair, rings in his ears, and a knife not far
+from his hand, if you got into trouble with him; there were Maltese Jack,
+and Jack of Sweden, and Jack the Finn, looming through the smoke of their
+pipes, and turning faces that looked as if they were carved out of dark
+wood, towards the young lady dancing the hornpipe: who found the platform
+so exceedingly small for it, that I had a nervous expectation of seeing
+her, in the backward steps, disappear through the window.  Still, if all
+hands had been got together, they would not have more than half-filled
+the room.  Observe, however, said Mr. Licensed Victualler, the host, that
+it was Friday night, and, besides, it was getting on for twelve, and Jack
+had gone aboard.  A sharp and watchful man, Mr. Licensed Victualler, the
+host, with tight lips and a complete edition of Cocker’s arithmetic in
+each eye.  Attended to his business himself, he said.  Always on the
+spot.  When he heard of talent, trusted nobody’s account of it, but went
+off by rail to see it.  If true talent, engaged it.  Pounds a week for
+talent—four pound—five pound.  Banjo Bones was undoubted talent.  Hear
+this instrument that was going to play—it was real talent!  In truth it
+was very good; a kind of piano-accordion, played by a young girl of a
+delicate prettiness of face, figure, and dress, that made the audience
+look coarser.  She sang to the instrument, too; first, a song about
+village bells, and how they chimed; then a song about how I went to sea;
+winding up with an imitation of the bagpipes, which Mercantile Jack
+seemed to understand much the best.  A good girl, said Mr. Licensed
+Victualler.  Kept herself select.  Sat in Snug, not listening to the
+blandishments of Mates.  Lived with mother.  Father dead.  Once a
+merchant well to do, but over-speculated himself.  On delicate inquiry as
+to salary paid for item of talent under consideration, Mr. Victualler’s
+pounds dropped suddenly to shillings—still it was a very comfortable
+thing for a young person like that, you know; she only went on six times
+a night, and was only required to be there from six at night to twelve.
+What was more conclusive was, Mr. Victualler’s assurance that he ‘never
+allowed any language, and never suffered any disturbance.’  Sharpeye
+confirmed the statement, and the order that prevailed was the best proof
+of it that could have been cited.  So, I came to the conclusion that poor
+Mercantile Jack might do (as I am afraid he does) much worse than trust
+himself to Mr. Victualler, and pass his evenings here.
+
+But we had not yet looked, Mr. Superintendent—said Trampfoot, receiving
+us in the street again with military salute—for Dark Jack.  True,
+Trampfoot.  Ring the wonderful stick, rub the wonderful lantern, and
+cause the spirits of the stick and lantern to convey us to the Darkies.
+
+There was no disappointment in the matter of Dark Jack; _he_ was
+producible.  The Genii set us down in the little first floor of a little
+public-house, and there, in a stiflingly close atmosphere, were Dark
+Jack, and Dark Jack’s delight, his _white_ unlovely Nan, sitting against
+the wall all round the room.  More than that: Dark Jack’s delight was the
+least unlovely Nan, both morally and physically, that I saw that night.
+
+As a fiddle and tambourine band were sitting among the company, Quickear
+suggested why not strike up?  ‘Ah, la’ads!’ said a negro sitting by the
+door, ‘gib the jebblem a darnse.  Tak’ yah pardlers, jebblem, for ’um
+QUAD-rill.’
+
+This was the landlord, in a Greek cap, and a dress half Greek and half
+English.  As master of the ceremonies, he called all the figures, and
+occasionally addressed himself parenthetically—after this manner.  When
+he was very loud, I use capitals.
+
+‘Now den!  Hoy!  ONE.  Right and left.  (Put a steam on, gib ’um powder.)
+LA-dies’ chail.  BAL-loon say.  Lemonade!  TWO.  AD-warnse and go back
+(gib ’ell a breakdown, shake it out o’ yerselbs, keep a movil).
+SWING-corners, BAL-loon say, and Lemonade!  (Hoy!)  THREE.  GENT come
+for’ard with a lady and go back, hoppersite come for’ard and do what yer
+can.  (Aeiohoy!)  BAL-loon say, and leetle lemonade.  (Dat hair nigger by
+’um fireplace ’hind a’ time, shake it out o’ yerselbs, gib ’ell a
+breakdown.)  Now den!  Hoy!  FOUR!  Lemonade.  BAL-loon say, and swing.
+FOUR ladies meet in ’um middle, FOUR gents goes round ’um ladies, FOUR
+gents passes out under ’um ladies’ arms, SWING—and Lemonade till ’a
+moosic can’t play no more!  (Hoy, Hoy!)’
+
+The male dancers were all blacks, and one was an unusually powerful man
+of six feet three or four.  The sound of their flat feet on the floor was
+as unlike the sound of white feet as their faces were unlike white faces.
+They toed and heeled, shuffled, double-shuffled, double-double-shuffled,
+covered the buckle, and beat the time out, rarely, dancing with a great
+show of teeth, and with a childish good-humoured enjoyment that was very
+prepossessing.  They generally kept together, these poor fellows, said
+Mr. Superintendent, because they were at a disadvantage singly, and
+liable to slights in the neighbouring streets.  But, if I were Light
+Jack, I should be very slow to interfere oppressively with Dark Jack,
+for, whenever I have had to do with him I have found him a simple and a
+gentle fellow.  Bearing this in mind, I asked his friendly permission to
+leave him restoration of beer, in wishing him good night, and thus it
+fell out that the last words I heard him say as I blundered down the worn
+stairs, were, ‘Jebblem’s elth!  Ladies drinks fust!’
+
+The night was now well on into the morning, but, for miles and hours we
+explored a strange world, where nobody ever goes to bed, but everybody is
+eternally sitting up, waiting for Jack.  This exploration was among a
+labyrinth of dismal courts and blind alleys, called Entries, kept in
+wonderful order by the police, and in much better order than by the
+corporation: the want of gaslight in the most dangerous and infamous of
+these places being quite unworthy of so spirited a town.  I need describe
+but two or three of the houses in which Jack was waited for as specimens
+of the rest.  Many we attained by noisome passages so profoundly dark
+that we felt our way with our hands.  Not one of the whole number we
+visited, was without its show of prints and ornamental crockery; the
+quantity of the latter set forth on little shelves and in little cases,
+in otherwise wretched rooms, indicating that Mercantile Jack must have an
+extraordinary fondness for crockery, to necessitate so much of that bait
+in his traps.
+
+Among such garniture, in one front parlour in the dead of the night, four
+women were sitting by a fire.  One of them had a male child in her arms.
+On a stool among them was a swarthy youth with a guitar, who had
+evidently stopped playing when our footsteps were heard.
+
+‘Well! how do _you_ do?’ says Mr. Superintendent, looking about him.
+
+‘Pretty well, sir, and hope you gentlemen are going to treat us ladies,
+now you have come to see us.’
+
+‘Order there!’ says Sharpeye.
+
+‘None of that!’ says Quickear.
+
+Trampfoot, outside, is heard to confide to himself, ‘Meggisson’s lot this
+is.  And a bad ’un!’
+
+‘Well!’ says Mr. Superintendent, laying his hand on the shoulder of the
+swarthy youth, ‘and who’s this?’
+
+‘Antonio, sir.’
+
+‘And what does _he_ do here?’
+
+‘Come to give us a bit of music.  No harm in that, I suppose?’
+
+‘A young foreign sailor?’
+
+‘Yes.  He’s a Spaniard.  You’re a Spaniard, ain’t you, Antonio?’
+
+‘Me Spanish.’
+
+‘And he don’t know a word you say, not he; not if you was to talk to him
+till doomsday.’  (Triumphantly, as if it redounded to the credit of the
+house.)
+
+‘Will he play something?’
+
+‘Oh, yes, if you like.  Play something, Antonio.  _You_ ain’t ashamed to
+play something; are you?’
+
+The cracked guitar raises the feeblest ghost of a tune, and three of the
+women keep time to it with their heads, and the fourth with the child.
+If Antonio has brought any money in with him, I am afraid he will never
+take it out, and it even strikes me that his jacket and guitar may be in
+a bad way.  But, the look of the young man and the tinkling of the
+instrument so change the place in a moment to a leaf out of Don Quixote,
+that I wonder where his mule is stabled, until he leaves off.
+
+I am bound to acknowledge (as it tends rather to my uncommercial
+confusion), that I occasioned a difficulty in this establishment, by
+having taken the child in my arms.  For, on my offering to restore it to
+a ferocious joker not unstimulated by rum, who claimed to be its mother,
+that unnatural parent put her hands behind her, and declined to accept
+it; backing into the fireplace, and very shrilly declaring, regardless of
+remonstrance from her friends, that she knowed it to be Law, that whoever
+took a child from its mother of his own will, was bound to stick to it.
+The uncommercial sense of being in a rather ridiculous position with the
+poor little child beginning to be frightened, was relieved by my worthy
+friend and fellow-constable, Trampfoot; who, laying hands on the article
+as if it were a Bottle, passed it on to the nearest woman, and bade her
+‘take hold of that.’  As we came out the Bottle was passed to the
+ferocious joker, and they all sat down as before, including Antonio and
+the guitar.  It was clear that there was no such thing as a nightcap to
+this baby’s head, and that even he never went to bed, but was always kept
+up—and would grow up, kept up—waiting for Jack.
+
+Later still in the night, we came (by the court ‘where the man was
+murdered,’ and by the other court across the street, into which his body
+was dragged) to another parlour in another Entry, where several people
+were sitting round a fire in just the same way.  It was a dirty and
+offensive place, with some ragged clothes drying in it; but there was a
+high shelf over the entrance-door (to be out of the reach of marauding
+hands, possibly) with two large white loaves on it, and a great piece of
+Cheshire cheese.
+
+‘Well!’ says Mr. Superintendent, with a comprehensive look all round.
+‘How do _you_ do?’
+
+‘Not much to boast of, sir.’  From the curtseying woman of the house.
+‘This is my good man, sir.’
+
+‘You are not registered as a common Lodging House?’
+
+‘No, sir.’
+
+Sharpeye (in the Move-on tone) puts in the pertinent inquiry, ‘Then why
+ain’t you?’
+
+‘Ain’t got no one here, Mr. Sharpeye,’ rejoin the woman and my good man
+together, ‘but our own family.’
+
+‘How many are you in family?’
+
+The woman takes time to count, under pretence of coughing, and adds, as
+one scant of breath, ‘Seven, sir.’
+
+But she has missed one, so Sharpeye, who knows all about it, says:
+
+‘Here’s a young man here makes eight, who ain’t of your family?’
+
+‘No, Mr. Sharpeye, he’s a weekly lodger.’
+
+‘What does he do for a living?’
+
+The young man here, takes the reply upon himself, and shortly answers,
+‘Ain’t got nothing to do.’
+
+The young man here, is modestly brooding behind a damp apron pendent from
+a clothes-line.  As I glance at him I become—but I don’t know why—vaguely
+reminded of Woolwich, Chatham, Portsmouth, and Dover.  When we get out,
+my respected fellow-constable Sharpeye, addressing Mr. Superintendent,
+says:
+
+‘You noticed that young man, sir, in at Darby’s?’
+
+‘Yes.  What is he?’
+
+‘Deserter, sir.’
+
+Mr. Sharpeye further intimates that when we have done with his services,
+he will step back and take that young man.  Which in course of time he
+does: feeling at perfect ease about finding him, and knowing for a moral
+certainty that nobody in that region will be gone to bed.
+
+Later still in the night, we came to another parlour up a step or two
+from the street, which was very cleanly, neatly, even tastefully, kept,
+and in which, set forth on a draped chest of drawers masking the
+staircase, was such a profusion of ornamental crockery, that it would
+have furnished forth a handsome sale-booth at a fair.  It backed up a
+stout old lady—HOGARTH drew her exact likeness more than once—and a boy
+who was carefully writing a copy in a copy-book.
+
+‘Well, ma’am, how do _you_ do?’
+
+Sweetly, she can assure the dear gentlemen, sweetly.  Charmingly,
+charmingly.  And overjoyed to see us!
+
+‘Why, this is a strange time for this boy to be writing his copy.  In the
+middle of the night!’
+
+‘So it is, dear gentlemen, Heaven bless your welcome faces and send ye
+prosperous, but he has been to the Play with a young friend for his
+diversion, and he combinates his improvement with entertainment, by doing
+his school-writing afterwards, God be good to ye!’
+
+The copy admonished human nature to subjugate the fire of every fierce
+desire.  One might have thought it recommended stirring the fire, the old
+lady so approved it.  There she sat, rosily beaming at the copy-book and
+the boy, and invoking showers of blessings on our heads, when we left her
+in the middle of the night, waiting for Jack.
+
+Later still in the night, we came to a nauseous room with an earth floor,
+into which the refuse scum of an alley trickled.  The stench of this
+habitation was abominable; the seeming poverty of it, diseased and dire.
+Yet, here again, was visitor or lodger—a man sitting before the fire,
+like the rest of them elsewhere, and apparently not distasteful to the
+mistress’s niece, who was also before the fire.  The mistress herself had
+the misfortune of being in jail.
+
+Three weird old women of transcendent ghastliness, were at needlework at
+a table in this room.  Says Trampfoot to First Witch, ‘What are you
+making?’  Says she, ‘Money-bags.’
+
+‘_What_ are you making?’ retorts Trampfoot, a little off his balance.
+
+‘Bags to hold your money,’ says the witch, shaking her head, and setting
+her teeth; ‘you as has got it.’
+
+She holds up a common cash-bag, and on the table is a heap of such bags.
+Witch Two laughs at us.  Witch Three scowls at us.  Witch sisterhood all,
+stitch, stitch.  First Witch has a circle round each eye.  I fancy it
+like the beginning of the development of a perverted diabolical halo, and
+that when it spreads all round her head, she will die in the odour of
+devilry.
+
+Trampfoot wishes to be informed what First Witch has got behind the
+table, down by the side of her, there?  Witches Two and Three croak
+angrily, ‘Show him the child!’
+
+She drags out a skinny little arm from a brown dustheap on the ground.
+Adjured not to disturb the child, she lets it drop again.  Thus we find
+at last that there is one child in the world of Entries who goes to
+bed—if this be bed.
+
+Mr. Superintendent asks how long are they going to work at those bags?
+
+How long?  First Witch repeats.  Going to have supper presently.  See the
+cups and saucers, and the plates.
+
+‘Late?  Ay!  But we has to ’arn our supper afore we eats it!’  Both the
+other witches repeat this after First Witch, and take the Uncommercial
+measurement with their eyes, as for a charmed winding-sheet.  Some grim
+discourse ensues, referring to the mistress of the cave, who will be
+released from jail to-morrow.  Witches pronounce Trampfoot ‘right there,’
+when he deems it a trying distance for the old lady to walk; she shall be
+fetched by niece in a spring-cart.
+
+As I took a parting look at First Witch in turning away, the red marks
+round her eyes seemed to have already grown larger, and she hungrily and
+thirstily looked out beyond me into the dark doorway, to see if Jack was
+there.  For, Jack came even here, and the mistress had got into jail
+through deluding Jack.
+
+When I at last ended this night of travel and got to bed, I failed to
+keep my mind on comfortable thoughts of Seaman’s Homes (not overdone with
+strictness), and improved dock regulations giving Jack greater benefit of
+fire and candle aboard ship, through my mind’s wandering among the vermin
+I had seen.  Afterwards the same vermin ran all over my sleep.  Evermore,
+when on a breezy day I see Poor Mercantile Jack running into port with a
+fair wind under all sail, I shall think of the unsleeping host of
+devourers who never go to bed, and are always in their set traps waiting
+for him.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+REFRESHMENTS FOR TRAVELLERS
+
+
+IN the late high winds I was blown to a great many places—and indeed,
+wind or no wind, I generally have extensive transactions on hand in the
+article of Air—but I have not been blown to any English place lately, and
+I very seldom have blown to any English place in my life, where I could
+get anything good to eat and drink in five minutes, or where, if I sought
+it, I was received with a welcome.
+
+This is a curious thing to consider.  But before (stimulated by my own
+experiences and the representations of many fellow-travellers of every
+uncommercial and commercial degree) I consider it further, I must utter a
+passing word of wonder concerning high winds.
+
+I wonder why metropolitan gales always blow so hard at Walworth.  I
+cannot imagine what Walworth has done, to bring such windy punishment
+upon itself, as I never fail to find recorded in the newspapers when the
+wind has blown at all hard.  Brixton seems to have something on its
+conscience; Peckham suffers more than a virtuous Peckham might be
+supposed to deserve; the howling neighbourhood of Deptford figures
+largely in the accounts of the ingenious gentlemen who are out in every
+wind that blows, and to whom it is an ill high wind that blows no good;
+but, there can hardly be any Walworth left by this time.  It must surely
+be blown away.  I have read of more chimney-stacks and house-copings
+coming down with terrific smashes at Walworth, and of more sacred
+edifices being nearly (not quite) blown out to sea from the same accursed
+locality, than I have read of practised thieves with the appearance and
+manners of gentlemen—a popular phenomenon which never existed on earth
+out of fiction and a police report.  Again: I wonder why people are
+always blown into the Surrey Canal, and into no other piece of water!
+Why do people get up early and go out in groups, to be blown into the
+Surrey Canal?  Do they say to one another, ‘Welcome death, so that we get
+into the newspapers’?  Even that would be an insufficient explanation,
+because even then they might sometimes put themselves in the way of being
+blown into the Regent’s Canal, instead of always saddling Surrey for the
+field.  Some nameless policeman, too, is constantly, on the slightest
+provocation, getting himself blown into this same Surrey Canal.  Will SIR
+RICHARD MAYNE see to it, and restrain that weak-minded and feeble-bodied
+constable?
+
+To resume the consideration of the curious question of Refreshment.  I am
+a Briton, and, as such, I am aware that I never will be a slave—and yet I
+have latent suspicion that there must be some slavery of wrong custom in
+this matter.
+
+I travel by railroad.  I start from home at seven or eight in the
+morning, after breakfasting hurriedly.  What with skimming over the open
+landscape, what with mining in the damp bowels of the earth, what with
+banging, booming and shrieking the scores of miles away, I am hungry when
+I arrive at the ‘Refreshment’ station where I am expected.  Please to
+observe, expected.  I have said, I am hungry; perhaps I might say, with
+greater point and force, that I am to some extent exhausted, and that I
+need—in the expressive French sense of the word—to be restored.  What is
+provided for my restoration?  The apartment that is to restore me is a
+wind-trap, cunningly set to inveigle all the draughts in that
+country-side, and to communicate a special intensity and velocity to them
+as they rotate in two hurricanes: one, about my wretched head: one, about
+my wretched legs.  The training of the young ladies behind the counter
+who are to restore me, has been from their infancy directed to the
+assumption of a defiant dramatic show that I am _not_ expected.  It is in
+vain for me to represent to them by my humble and conciliatory manners,
+that I wish to be liberal.  It is in vain for me to represent to myself,
+for the encouragement of my sinking soul, that the young ladies have a
+pecuniary interest in my arrival.  Neither my reason nor my feelings can
+make head against the cold glazed glare of eye with which I am assured
+that I am not expected, and not wanted.  The solitary man among the
+bottles would sometimes take pity on me, if he dared, but he is powerless
+against the rights and mights of Woman.  (Of the page I make no account,
+for, he is a boy, and therefore the natural enemy of Creation.)  Chilling
+fast, in the deadly tornadoes to which my upper and lower extremities are
+exposed, and subdued by the moral disadvantage at which I stand, I turn
+my disconsolate eyes on the refreshments that are to restore me.  I find
+that I must either scald my throat by insanely ladling into it, against
+time and for no wager, brown hot water stiffened with flour; or I must
+make myself flaky and sick with Banbury cake; or, I must stuff into my
+delicate organisation, a currant pincushion which I know will swell into
+immeasurable dimensions when it has got there; or, I must extort from an
+iron-bound quarry, with a fork, as if I were farming an inhospitable
+soil, some glutinous lumps of gristle and grease, called pork-pie.  While
+thus forlornly occupied, I find that the depressing banquet on the table
+is, in every phase of its profoundly unsatisfactory character, so like
+the banquet at the meanest and shabbiest of evening parties, that I begin
+to think I must have ‘brought down’ to supper, the old lady unknown, blue
+with cold, who is setting her teeth on edge with a cool orange at my
+elbow—that the pastrycook who has compounded for the company on the
+lowest terms per head, is a fraudulent bankrupt, redeeming his contract
+with the stale stock from his window—that, for some unexplained reason,
+the family giving the party have become my mortal foes, and have given it
+on purpose to affront me.  Or, I fancy that I am ‘breaking up’ again, at
+the evening conversazione at school, charged two-and-sixpence in the
+half-year’s bill; or breaking down again at that celebrated evening party
+given at Mrs. Bogles’s boarding-house when I was a boarder there, on
+which occasion Mrs. Bogles was taken in execution by a branch of the
+legal profession who got in as the harp, and was removed (with the keys
+and subscribed capital) to a place of durance, half an hour prior to the
+commencement of the festivities.
+
+Take another case.
+
+Mr. Grazinglands, of the Midland Counties, came to London by railroad one
+morning last week, accompanied by the amiable and fascinating Mrs.
+Grazinglands.  Mr. G. is a gentleman of a comfortable property, and had a
+little business to transact at the Bank of England, which required the
+concurrence and signature of Mrs. G.  Their business disposed of, Mr. and
+Mrs. Grazinglands viewed the Royal Exchange, and the exterior of St.
+Paul’s Cathedral.  The spirits of Mrs. Grazinglands then gradually
+beginning to flag, Mr. Grazinglands (who is the tenderest of husbands)
+remarked with sympathy, ‘Arabella’, my dear, ‘fear you are faint.’  Mrs.
+Grazing-lands replied, ‘Alexander, I am rather faint; but don’t mind me,
+I shall be better presently.’  Touched by the feminine meekness of this
+answer, Mr. Grazinglands looked in at a pastrycook’s window, hesitating
+as to the expediency of lunching at that establishment.  He beheld
+nothing to eat, but butter in various forms, slightly charged with jam,
+and languidly frizzling over tepid water.  Two ancient turtle-shells, on
+which was inscribed the legend, ‘SOUPS,’ decorated a glass partition
+within, enclosing a stuffy alcove, from which a ghastly mockery of a
+marriage-breakfast spread on a rickety table, warned the terrified
+traveller.  An oblong box of stale and broken pastry at reduced prices,
+mounted on a stool, ornamented the doorway; and two high chairs that
+looked as if they were performing on stilts, embellished the counter.
+Over the whole, a young lady presided, whose gloomy haughtiness as she
+surveyed the street, announced a deep-seated grievance against society,
+and an implacable determination to be avenged.  From a beetle-haunted
+kitchen below this institution, fumes arose, suggestive of a class of
+soup which Mr. Grazinglands knew, from painful experience, enfeebles the
+mind, distends the stomach, forces itself into the complexion, and tries
+to ooze out at the eyes.  As he decided against entering, and turned
+away, Mrs. Grazinglands becoming perceptibly weaker, repeated, ‘I am
+rather faint, Alexander, but don’t mind me.’  Urged to new efforts by
+these words of resignation, Mr. Grazinglands looked in at a cold and
+floury baker’s shop, where utilitarian buns unrelieved by a currant,
+consorted with hard biscuits, a stone filter of cold water, a hard pale
+clock, and a hard little old woman with flaxen hair, of an
+undeveloped-farinaceous aspect, as if she had been fed upon seeds.  He
+might have entered even here, but for the timely remembrance coming upon
+him that Jairing’s was but round the corner.
+
+Now, Jairing’s being an hotel for families and gentlemen, in high repute
+among the midland counties, Mr. Grazinglands plucked up a great spirit
+when he told Mrs. Grazinglands she should have a chop there.  That lady,
+likewise felt that she was going to see Life.  Arriving on that gay and
+festive scene, they found the second waiter, in a flabby undress,
+cleaning the windows of the empty coffee-room; and the first waiter,
+denuded of his white tie, making up his cruets behind the Post-Office
+Directory.  The latter (who took them in hand) was greatly put out by
+their patronage, and showed his mind to be troubled by a sense of the
+pressing necessity of instantly smuggling Mrs. Grazinglands into the
+obscurest corner of the building.  This slighted lady (who is the pride
+of her division of the county) was immediately conveyed, by several dark
+passages, and up and down several steps, into a penitential apartment at
+the back of the house, where five invalided old plate-warmers leaned up
+against one another under a discarded old melancholy sideboard, and where
+the wintry leaves of all the dining-tables in the house lay thick.  Also,
+a sofa, of incomprehensible form regarded from any sofane point of view,
+murmured ‘Bed;’ while an air of mingled fluffiness and heeltaps, added,
+‘Second Waiter’s.’  Secreted in this dismal hold, objects of a mysterious
+distrust and suspicion, Mr. Grazinglands and his charming partner waited
+twenty minutes for the smoke (for it never came to a fire), twenty-five
+minutes for the sherry, half an hour for the tablecloth, forty minutes
+for the knives and forks, three-quarters of an hour for the chops, and an
+hour for the potatoes.  On settling the little bill—which was not much
+more than the day’s pay of a Lieutenant in the navy—Mr. Grazinglands took
+heart to remonstrate against the general quality and cost of his
+reception.  To whom the waiter replied, substantially, that Jairing’s
+made it a merit to have accepted him on any terms: ‘for,’ added the
+waiter (unmistakably coughing at Mrs. Grazinglands, the pride of her
+division of the county), ‘when indiwiduals is not staying in the ’Ouse,
+their favours is not as a rule looked upon as making it worth Mr.
+Jairing’s while; nor is it, indeed, a style of business Mr. Jairing
+wishes.’  Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Grazinglands passed out of Jairing’s
+hotel for Families and Gentlemen, in a state of the greatest depression,
+scorned by the bar; and did not recover their self-respect for several
+days.
+
+Or take another case.  Take your own case.
+
+You are going off by railway, from any Terminus.  You have twenty minutes
+for dinner, before you go.  You want your dinner, and like Dr. Johnson,
+Sir, you like to dine.  You present to your mind, a picture of the
+refreshment-table at that terminus.  The conventional shabby
+evening-party supper—accepted as the model for all termini and all
+refreshment stations, because it is the last repast known to this state
+of existence of which any human creature would partake, but in the direst
+extremity—sickens your contemplation, and your words are these: ‘I cannot
+dine on stale sponge-cakes that turn to sand in the mouth.  I cannot dine
+on shining brown patties, composed of unknown animals within, and
+offering to my view the device of an indigestible star-fish in leaden
+pie-crust without.  I cannot dine on a sandwich that has long been pining
+under an exhausted receiver.  I cannot dine on barley-sugar.  I cannot
+dine on Toffee.’  You repair to the nearest hotel, and arrive, agitated,
+in the coffee-room.
+
+It is a most astonishing fact that the waiter is very cold to you.
+Account for it how you may, smooth it over how you will, you cannot deny
+that he is cold to you.  He is not glad to see you, he does not want you,
+he would much rather you hadn’t come.  He opposes to your flushed
+condition, an immovable composure.  As if this were not enough, another
+waiter, born, as it would seem, expressly to look at you in this passage
+of your life, stands at a little distance, with his napkin under his arm
+and his hands folded, looking at you with all his might.  You impress on
+your waiter that you have ten minutes for dinner, and he proposes that
+you shall begin with a bit of fish which will be ready in twenty.  That
+proposal declined, he suggests—as a neat originality—‘a weal or mutton
+cutlet.’  You close with either cutlet, any cutlet, anything.  He goes,
+leisurely, behind a door and calls down some unseen shaft.  A
+ventriloquial dialogue ensues, tending finally to the effect that weal
+only, is available on the spur of the moment.  You anxiously call out,
+‘Veal, then!’  Your waiter having settled that point, returns to array
+your tablecloth, with a table napkin folded cocked-hat-wise (slowly, for
+something out of window engages his eye), a white wine-glass, a green
+wine-glass, a blue finger-glass, a tumbler, and a powerful field battery
+of fourteen casters with nothing in them; or at all events—which is
+enough for your purpose—with nothing in them that will come out.  All
+this time, the other waiter looks at you—with an air of mental comparison
+and curiosity, now, as if it had occurred to him that you are rather like
+his brother.  Half your time gone, and nothing come but the jug of ale
+and the bread, you implore your waiter to ‘see after that cutlet, waiter;
+pray do!’  He cannot go at once, for he is carrying in seventeen pounds
+of American cheese for you to finish with, and a small Landed Estate of
+celery and water-cresses.  The other waiter changes his leg, and takes a
+new view of you, doubtfully, now, as if he had rejected the resemblance
+to his brother, and had begun to think you more like his aunt or his
+grandmother.  Again you beseech your waiter with pathetic indignation, to
+‘see after that cutlet!’  He steps out to see after it, and by-and-by,
+when you are going away without it, comes back with it.  Even then, he
+will not take the sham silver cover off, without a pause for a flourish,
+and a look at the musty cutlet as if he were surprised to see it—which
+cannot possibly be the case, he must have seen it so often before.  A
+sort of fur has been produced upon its surface by the cook’s art, and in
+a sham silver vessel staggering on two feet instead of three, is a
+cutaneous kind of sauce of brown pimples and pickled cucumber.  You order
+the bill, but your waiter cannot bring your bill yet, because he is
+bringing, instead, three flinty-hearted potatoes and two grim head of
+broccoli, like the occasional ornaments on area railings, badly boiled.
+You know that you will never come to this pass, any more than to the
+cheese and celery, and you imperatively demand your bill; but, it takes
+time to get, even when gone for, because your waiter has to communicate
+with a lady who lives behind a sash-window in a corner, and who appears
+to have to refer to several Ledgers before she can make it out—as if you
+had been staying there a year.  You become distracted to get away, and
+the other waiter, once more changing his leg, still looks at you—but
+suspiciously, now, as if you had begun to remind him of the party who
+took the great-coats last winter.  Your bill at last brought and paid, at
+the rate of sixpence a mouthful, your waiter reproachfully reminds you
+that ‘attendance is not charged for a single meal,’ and you have to
+search in all your pockets for sixpence more.  He has a worse opinion of
+you than ever, when you have given it to him, and lets you out into the
+street with the air of one saying to himself, as you cannot again doubt
+he is, ‘I hope we shall never see _you_ here again!’
+
+Or, take any other of the numerous travelling instances in which, with
+more time at your disposal, you are, have been, or may be, equally ill
+served.  Take the old-established Bull’s Head with its old-established
+knife-boxes on its old-established sideboards, its old-established flue
+under its old-established four-post bedsteads in its old-established
+airless rooms, its old-established frouziness up-stairs and down-stairs,
+its old-established cookery, and its old-established principles of
+plunder.  Count up your injuries, in its side-dishes of ailing
+sweetbreads in white poultices, of apothecaries’ powders in rice for
+curry, of pale stewed bits of calf ineffectually relying for an
+adventitious interest on forcemeat balls.  You have had experience of the
+old-established Bull’s Head stringy fowls, with lower extremities like
+wooden legs, sticking up out of the dish; of its cannibalic boiled
+mutton, gushing horribly among its capers, when carved; of its little
+dishes of pastry—roofs of spermaceti ointment, erected over half an apple
+or four gooseberries.  Well for you if you have yet forgotten the
+old-established Bull’s Head fruity port: whose reputation was gained
+solely by the old-established price the Bull’s Head put upon it, and by
+the old-established air with which the Bull’s Head set the glasses and
+D’Oyleys on, and held that Liquid Gout to the three-and-sixpenny
+wax-candle, as if its old-established colour hadn’t come from the dyer’s.
+
+Or lastly, take to finish with, two cases that we all know, every day.
+
+We all know the new hotel near the station, where it is always gusty,
+going up the lane which is always muddy, where we are sure to arrive at
+night, and where we make the gas start awfully when we open the front
+door.  We all know the flooring of the passages and staircases that is
+too new, and the walls that are too new, and the house that is haunted by
+the ghost of mortar.  We all know the doors that have cracked, and the
+cracked shutters through which we get a glimpse of the disconsolate moon.
+We all know the new people, who have come to keep the new hotel, and who
+wish they had never come, and who (inevitable result) wish _we_ had never
+come.  We all know how much too scant and smooth and bright the new
+furniture is, and how it has never settled down, and cannot fit itself
+into right places, and will get into wrong places.  We all know how the
+gas, being lighted, shows maps of Damp upon the walls.  We all know how
+the ghost of mortar passes into our sandwich, stirs our negus, goes up to
+bed with us, ascends the pale bedroom chimney, and prevents the smoke
+from following.  We all know how a leg of our chair comes off at
+breakfast in the morning, and how the dejected waiter attributes the
+accident to a general greenness pervading the establishment, and informs
+us, in reply to a local inquiry, that he is thankful to say he is an
+entire stranger in that part of the country and is going back to his own
+connexion on Saturday.
+
+We all know, on the other hand, the great station hotel belonging to the
+company of proprietors, which has suddenly sprung up in the back
+outskirts of any place we like to name, and where we look out of our
+palatial windows at little back yards and gardens, old summer-houses,
+fowl-houses, pigeon-traps, and pigsties.  We all know this hotel in which
+we can get anything we want, after its kind, for money; but where nobody
+is glad to see us, or sorry to see us, or minds (our bill paid) whether
+we come or go, or how, or when, or why, or cares about us.  We all know
+this hotel, where we have no individuality, but put ourselves into the
+general post, as it were, and are sorted and disposed of according to our
+division.  We all know that we can get on very well indeed at such a
+place, but still not perfectly well; and this may be, because the place
+is largely wholesale, and there is a lingering personal retail interest
+within us that asks to be satisfied.
+
+To sum up.  My uncommercial travelling has not yet brought me to the
+conclusion that we are close to perfection in these matters.  And just as
+I do not believe that the end of the world will ever be near at hand, so
+long as any of the very tiresome and arrogant people who constantly
+predict that catastrophe are left in it, so, I shall have small faith in
+the Hotel Millennium, while any of the uncomfortable superstitions I have
+glanced at remain in existence.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+TRAVELLING ABROAD
+
+
+I GOT into the travelling chariot—it was of German make, roomy, heavy,
+and unvarnished—I got into the travelling chariot, pulled up the steps
+after me, shut myself in with a smart bang of the door, and gave the
+word, ‘Go on!’
+
+Immediately, all that W. and S.W. division of London began to slide away
+at a pace so lively, that I was over the river, and past the Old Kent
+Road, and out on Blackheath, and even ascending Shooter’s Hill, before I
+had had time to look about me in the carriage, like a collected
+traveller.
+
+I had two ample Imperials on the roof, other fitted storage for luggage
+in front, and other up behind; I had a net for books overhead, great
+pockets to all the windows, a leathern pouch or two hung up for odds and
+ends, and a reading lamp fixed in the back of the chariot, in case I
+should be benighted.  I was amply provided in all respects, and had no
+idea where I was going (which was delightful), except that I was going
+abroad.
+
+So smooth was the old high road, and so fresh were the horses, and so
+fast went I, that it was midway between Gravesend and Rochester, and the
+widening river was bearing the ships, white sailed or black-smoked, out
+to sea, when I noticed by the wayside a very queer small boy.
+
+‘Holloa!’ said I, to the very queer small boy, ‘where do you live?’
+
+‘At Chatham,’ says he.
+
+‘What do you do there?’ says I.
+
+‘I go to school,’ says he.
+
+I took him up in a moment, and we went on.  Presently, the very queer
+small boy says, ‘This is Gads-hill we are coming to, where Falstaff went
+out to rob those travellers, and ran away.’
+
+‘You know something about Falstaff, eh?’ said I.
+
+‘All about him,’ said the very queer small boy.  ‘I am old (I am nine),
+and I read all sorts of books.  But _do_ let us stop at the top of the
+hill, and look at the house there, if you please!’
+
+‘You admire that house?’ said I.
+
+‘Bless you, sir,’ said the very queer small boy, ‘when I was not more
+than half as old as nine, it used to be a treat for me to be brought to
+look at it.  And now, I am nine, I come by myself to look at it.  And
+ever since I can recollect, my father, seeing me so fond of it, has often
+said to me, “If you were to be very persevering and were to work hard,
+you might some day come to live in it.”  Though that’s impossible!’ said
+the very queer small boy, drawing a low breath, and now staring at the
+house out of window with all his might.
+
+I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer small boy; for that
+house happens to be _my_ house, and I have reason to believe that what he
+said was true.
+
+Well!  I made no halt there, and I soon dropped the very queer small boy
+and went on.  Over the road where the old Romans used to march, over the
+road where the old Canterbury pilgrims used to go, over the road where
+the travelling trains of the old imperious priests and princes used to
+jingle on horseback between the continent and this Island through the mud
+and water, over the road where Shakespeare hummed to himself, ‘Blow,
+blow, thou winter wind,’ as he sat in the saddle at the gate of the inn
+yard noticing the carriers; all among the cherry orchards, apple
+orchards, corn-fields, and hop-gardens; so went I, by Canterbury to
+Dover.  There, the sea was tumbling in, with deep sounds, after dark, and
+the revolving French light on Cape Grinez was seen regularly bursting out
+and becoming obscured, as if the head of a gigantic light-keeper in an
+anxious state of mind were interposed every half-minute, to look how it
+was burning.
+
+Early in the morning I was on the deck of the steam-packet, and we were
+aiming at the bar in the usual intolerable manner, and the bar was aiming
+at us in the usual intolerable manner, and the bar got by far the best of
+it, and we got by far the worst—all in the usual intolerable manner.
+
+But, when I was clear of the Custom House on the other side, and when I
+began to make the dust fly on the thirsty French roads, and when the
+twigsome trees by the wayside (which, I suppose, never will grow leafy,
+for they never did) guarded here and there a dusty soldier, or field
+labourer, baking on a heap of broken stones, sound asleep in a fiction of
+shade, I began to recover my travelling spirits.  Coming upon the breaker
+of the broken stones, in a hard, hot, shining hat, on which the sun
+played at a distance as on a burning-glass, I felt that now, indeed, I
+was in the dear old France of my affections.  I should have known it,
+without the well-remembered bottle of rough ordinary wine, the cold roast
+fowl, the loaf, and the pinch of salt, on which I lunched with
+unspeakable satisfaction, from one of the stuffed pockets of the chariot.
+
+I must have fallen asleep after lunch, for when a bright face looked in
+at the window, I started, and said:
+
+‘Good God, Louis, I dreamed you were dead!’
+
+My cheerful servant laughed, and answered:
+
+‘Me?  Not at all, sir.’
+
+‘How glad I am to wake!  What are we doing Louis?’
+
+‘We go to take relay of horses.  Will you walk up the hill?’
+
+‘Certainly.’
+
+Welcome the old French hill, with the old French lunatic (not in the most
+distant degree related to Sterne’s Maria) living in a thatched dog-kennel
+half-way up, and flying out with his crutch and his big head and extended
+nightcap, to be beforehand with the old men and women exhibiting crippled
+children, and with the children exhibiting old men and women, ugly and
+blind, who always seemed by resurrectionary process to be recalled out of
+the elements for the sudden peopling of the solitude!
+
+‘It is well,’ said I, scattering among them what small coin I had; ‘here
+comes Louis, and I am quite roused from my nap.’
+
+We journeyed on again, and I welcomed every new assurance that France
+stood where I had left it.  There were the posting-houses, with their
+archways, dirty stable-yards, and clean post-masters’ wives, bright women
+of business, looking on at the putting-to of the horses; there were the
+postilions counting what money they got, into their hats, and never
+making enough of it; there were the standard population of grey horses of
+Flanders descent, invariably biting one another when they got a chance;
+there were the fleecy sheepskins, looped on over their uniforms by the
+postilions, like bibbed aprons when it blew and rained; there were their
+Jack-boots, and their cracking whips; there were the cathedrals that I
+got out to see, as under some cruel bondage, in no wise desiring to see
+them; there were the little towns that appeared to have no reason for
+being towns, since most of their houses were to let and nobody could be
+induced to look at them, except the people who couldn’t let them and had
+nothing else to do but look at them all day.  I lay a night upon the road
+and enjoyed delectable cookery of potatoes, and some other sensible
+things, adoption of which at home would inevitably be shown to be fraught
+with ruin, somehow or other, to that rickety national blessing, the
+British farmer; and at last I was rattled, like a single pill in a box,
+over leagues of stones, until—madly cracking, plunging, and flourishing
+two grey tails about—I made my triumphal entry into Paris.
+
+At Paris, I took an upper apartment for a few days in one of the hotels
+of the Rue de Rivoli; my front windows looking into the garden of the
+Tuileries (where the principal difference between the nursemaids and the
+flowers seemed to be that the former were locomotive and the latter not):
+my back windows looking at all the other back windows in the hotel, and
+deep down into a paved yard, where my German chariot had retired under a
+tight-fitting archway, to all appearance for life, and where bells rang
+all day without anybody’s minding them but certain chamberlains with
+feather brooms and green baize caps, who here and there leaned out of
+some high window placidly looking down, and where neat waiters with trays
+on their left shoulders passed and repassed from morning to night.
+
+Whenever I am at Paris, I am dragged by invisible force into the Morgue.
+I never want to go there, but am always pulled there.  One Christmas Day,
+when I would rather have been anywhere else, I was attracted in, to see
+an old grey man lying all alone on his cold bed, with a tap of water
+turned on over his grey hair, and running, drip, drip, drip, down his
+wretched face until it got to the corner of his mouth, where it took a
+turn, and made him look sly.  One New Year’s Morning (by the same token,
+the sun was shining outside, and there was a mountebank balancing a
+feather on his nose, within a yard of the gate), I was pulled in again to
+look at a flaxen-haired boy of eighteen, with a heart hanging on his
+breast—‘from his mother,’ was engraven on it—who had come into the net
+across the river, with a bullet wound in his fair forehead and his hands
+cut with a knife, but whence or how was a blank mystery.  This time, I
+was forced into the same dread place, to see a large dark man whose
+disfigurement by water was in a frightful manner comic, and whose
+expression was that of a prize-fighter who had closed his eyelids under a
+heavy blow, but was going immediately to open them, shake his head, and
+‘come up smiling.’  Oh what this large dark man cost me in that bright
+city!
+
+It was very hot weather, and he was none the better for that, and I was
+much the worse.  Indeed, a very neat and pleasant little woman with the
+key of her lodging on her forefinger, who had been showing him to her
+little girl while she and the child ate sweetmeats, observed monsieur
+looking poorly as we came out together, and asked monsieur, with her
+wondering little eyebrows prettily raised, if there were anything the
+matter?  Faintly replying in the negative, monsieur crossed the road to a
+wine-shop, got some brandy, and resolved to freshen himself with a dip in
+the great floating bath on the river.
+
+The bath was crowded in the usual airy manner, by a male population in
+striped drawers of various gay colours, who walked up and down arm in
+arm, drank coffee, smoked cigars, sat at little tables, conversed
+politely with the damsels who dispensed the towels, and every now and
+then pitched themselves into the river head foremost, and came out again
+to repeat this social routine.  I made haste to participate in the water
+part of the entertainments, and was in the full enjoyment of a delightful
+bath, when all in a moment I was seized with an unreasonable idea that
+the large dark body was floating straight at me.
+
+I was out of the river, and dressing instantly.  In the shock I had taken
+some water into my mouth, and it turned me sick, for I fancied that the
+contamination of the creature was in it.  I had got back to my cool
+darkened room in the hotel, and was lying on a sofa there, before I began
+to reason with myself.
+
+Of course, I knew perfectly well that the large dark creature was stone
+dead, and that I should no more come upon him out of the place where I
+had seen him dead, than I should come upon the cathedral of Notre-Dame in
+an entirely new situation.  What troubled me was the picture of the
+creature; and that had so curiously and strongly painted itself upon my
+brain, that I could not get rid of it until it was worn out.
+
+I noticed the peculiarities of this possession, while it was a real
+discomfort to me.  That very day, at dinner, some morsel on my plate
+looked like a piece of him, and I was glad to get up and go out.  Later
+in the evening, I was walking along the Rue St. Honoré, when I saw a bill
+at a public room there, announcing small-sword exercise, broad-sword
+exercise, wrestling, and other such feats.  I went in, and some of the
+sword-play being very skilful, remained.  A specimen of our own national
+sport, The British Boaxe, was announced to be given at the close of the
+evening.  In an evil hour, I determined to wait for this Boaxe, as became
+a Briton.  It was a clumsy specimen (executed by two English grooms out
+of place), but one of the combatants, receiving a straight right-hander
+with the glove between his eyes, did exactly what the large dark creature
+in the Morgue had seemed going to do—and finished me for that night.
+
+There was rather a sickly smell (not at all an unusual fragrance in
+Paris) in the little ante-room of my apartment at the hotel.  The large
+dark creature in the Morgue was by no direct experience associated with
+my sense of smell, because, when I came to the knowledge of him, he lay
+behind a wall of thick plate-glass as good as a wall of steel or marble
+for that matter.  Yet the whiff of the room never failed to reproduce
+him.  What was more curious, was the capriciousness with which his
+portrait seemed to light itself up in my mind, elsewhere.  I might be
+walking in the Palais Royal, lazily enjoying the shop windows, and might
+be regaling myself with one of the ready-made clothes shops that are set
+out there.  My eyes, wandering over impossible-waisted dressing-gowns and
+luminous waistcoats, would fall upon the master, or the shopman, or even
+the very dummy at the door, and would suggest to me, ‘Something like
+him!’—and instantly I was sickened again.
+
+This would happen at the theatre, in the same manner.  Often it would
+happen in the street, when I certainly was not looking for the likeness,
+and when probably there was no likeness there.  It was not because the
+creature was dead that I was so haunted, because I know that I might have
+been (and I know it because I have been) equally attended by the image of
+a living aversion.  This lasted about a week.  The picture did not fade
+by degrees, in the sense that it became a whit less forcible and
+distinct, but in the sense that it obtruded itself less and less
+frequently.  The experience may be worth considering by some who have the
+care of children.  It would be difficult to overstate the intensity and
+accuracy of an intelligent child’s observation.  At that impressible time
+of life, it must sometimes produce a fixed impression.  If the fixed
+impression be of an object terrible to the child, it will be (for want of
+reasoning upon) inseparable from great fear.  Force the child at such a
+time, be Spartan with it, send it into the dark against its will, leave
+it in a lonely bedroom against its will, and you had better murder it.
+
+On a bright morning I rattled away from Paris, in the German chariot, and
+left the large dark creature behind me for good.  I ought to confess,
+though, that I had been drawn back to the Morgue, after he was put
+underground, to look at his clothes, and that I found them frightfully
+like him—particularly his boots.  However, I rattled away for
+Switzerland, looking forward and not backward, and so we parted company.
+
+Welcome again, the long, long spell of France, with the queer country
+inns, full of vases of flowers and clocks, in the dull little town, and
+with the little population not at all dull on the little Boulevard in the
+evening, under the little trees!  Welcome Monsieur the Curé, walking
+alone in the early morning a short way out of the town, reading that
+eternal Breviary of yours, which surely might be almost read, without
+book, by this time!  Welcome Monsieur the Curé, later in the day, jolting
+through the highway dust (as if you had already ascended to the cloudy
+region), in a very big-headed cabriolet, with the dried mud of a dozen
+winters on it.  Welcome again Monsieur the Curé, as we exchange
+salutations; you, straightening your back to look at the German chariot,
+while picking in your little village garden a vegetable or two for the
+day’s soup: I, looking out of the German chariot window in that delicious
+traveller’s trance which knows no cares, no yesterdays, no to-morrows,
+nothing but the passing objects and the passing scents and sounds!  And
+so I came, in due course of delight, to Strasbourg, where I passed a wet
+Sunday evening at a window, while an idle trifle of a vaudeville was
+played for me at the opposite house.
+
+How such a large house came to have only three people living in it, was
+its own affair.  There were at least a score of windows in its high roof
+alone; how many in its grotesque front, I soon gave up counting.  The
+owner was a shopkeeper, by name Straudenheim; by trade—I couldn’t make
+out what by trade, for he had forborne to write that up, and his shop was
+shut.
+
+At first, as I looked at Straudenheim’s, through the steadily falling
+rain, I set him up in business in the goose-liver line.  But, inspection
+of Straudenheim, who became visible at a window on the second floor,
+convinced me that there was something more precious than liver in the
+case.  He wore a black velvet skull-cap, and looked usurious and rich.  A
+large-lipped, pear-nosed old man, with white hair, and keen eyes, though
+near-sighted.  He was writing at a desk, was Straudenheim, and ever and
+again left off writing, put his pen in his mouth, and went through
+actions with his right hand, like a man steadying piles of cash.
+Five-franc pieces, Straudenheim, or golden Napoleons?  A jeweller,
+Straudenheim, a dealer in money, a diamond merchant, or what?
+
+Below Straudenheim, at a window on the first floor, sat his
+housekeeper—far from young, but of a comely presence, suggestive of a
+well-matured foot and ankle.  She was cheerily dressed, had a fan in her
+hand, and wore large gold earrings and a large gold cross.  She would
+have been out holiday-making (as I settled it) but for the pestilent
+rain.  Strasbourg had given up holiday-making for that once, as a bad
+job, because the rain was jerking in gushes out of the old roof-spouts,
+and running in a brook down the middle of the street.  The housekeeper,
+her arms folded on her bosom and her fan tapping her chin, was bright and
+smiling at her open window, but otherwise Straudenheim’s house front was
+very dreary.  The housekeeper’s was the only open window in it;
+Straudenheim kept himself close, though it was a sultry evening when air
+is pleasant, and though the rain had brought into the town that vague
+refreshing smell of grass which rain does bring in the summer-time.
+
+The dim appearance of a man at Straudenheim’s shoulder, inspired me with
+a misgiving that somebody had come to murder that flourishing merchant
+for the wealth with which I had handsomely endowed him: the rather, as it
+was an excited man, lean and long of figure, and evidently stealthy of
+foot.  But, he conferred with Straudenheim instead of doing him a mortal
+injury, and then they both softly opened the other window of that
+room—which was immediately over the housekeeper’s—and tried to see her by
+looking down.  And my opinion of Straudenheim was much lowered when I saw
+that eminent citizen spit out of window, clearly with the hope of
+spitting on the housekeeper.
+
+The unconscious housekeeper fanned herself, tossed her head, and laughed.
+Though unconscious of Straudenheim, she was conscious of somebody else—of
+me?—there was nobody else.
+
+After leaning so far out of the window, that I confidently expected to
+see their heels tilt up, Straudenheim and the lean man drew their heads
+in and shut the window.  Presently, the house door secretly opened, and
+they slowly and spitefully crept forth into the pouring rain.  They were
+coming over to me (I thought) to demand satisfaction for my looking at
+the housekeeper, when they plunged into a recess in the architecture
+under my window and dragged out the puniest of little soldiers, begirt
+with the most innocent of little swords.  The tall glazed head-dress of
+this warrior, Straudenheim instantly knocked off, and out of it fell two
+sugar-sticks, and three or four large lumps of sugar.
+
+The warrior made no effort to recover his property or to pick up his
+shako, but looked with an expression of attention at Straudenheim when he
+kicked him five times, and also at the lean man when _he_ kicked him five
+times, and again at Straudenheim when he tore the breast of his (the
+warrior’s) little coat open, and shook all his ten fingers in his face,
+as if they were ten thousand.  When these outrages had been committed,
+Straudenheim and his man went into the house again and barred the door.
+A wonderful circumstance was, that the housekeeper who saw it all (and
+who could have taken six such warriors to her buxom bosom at once), only
+fanned herself and laughed as she had laughed before, and seemed to have
+no opinion about it, one way or other.
+
+But, the chief effect of the drama was the remarkable vengeance taken by
+the little warrior.  Left alone in the rain, he picked up his shako; put
+it on, all wet and dirty as it was; retired into a court, of which
+Straudenheim’s house formed the corner; wheeled about; and bringing his
+two forefingers close to the top of his nose, rubbed them over one
+another, cross-wise, in derision, defiance, and contempt of Straudenheim.
+Although Straudenheim could not possibly be supposed to be conscious of
+this strange proceeding, it so inflated and comforted the little
+warrior’s soul, that twice he went away, and twice came back into the
+court to repeat it, as though it must goad his enemy to madness.  Not
+only that, but he afterwards came back with two other small warriors, and
+they all three did it together.  Not only that—as I live to tell the
+tale!—but just as it was falling quite dark, the three came back,
+bringing with them a huge bearded Sapper, whom they moved, by recital of
+the original wrong, to go through the same performance, with the same
+complete absence of all possible knowledge of it on the part of
+Straudenheim.  And then they all went away, arm in arm, singing.
+
+I went away too, in the German chariot at sunrise, and rattled on, day
+after day, like one in a sweet dream; with so many clear little bells on
+the harness of the horses, that the nursery rhyme about Banbury Cross and
+the venerable lady who rode in state there, was always in my ears.  And
+now I came to the land of wooden houses, innocent cakes, thin butter
+soup, and spotless little inn bedrooms with a family likeness to Dairies.
+And now the Swiss marksmen were for ever rifle-shooting at marks across
+gorges, so exceedingly near my ear, that I felt like a new Gesler in a
+Canton of Tells, and went in highly-deserved danger of my tyrannical
+life.  The prizes at these shootings, were watches, smart handkerchiefs,
+hats, spoons, and (above all) tea-trays; and at these contests I came
+upon a more than usually accomplished and amiable countryman of my own,
+who had shot himself deaf in whole years of competition, and had won so
+many tea-trays that he went about the country with his carriage full of
+them, like a glorified Cheap-Jack.
+
+In the mountain-country into which I had now travelled, a yoke of oxen
+were sometimes hooked on before the post-horses, and I went lumbering up,
+up, up, through mist and rain, with the roar of falling water for change
+of music.  Of a sudden, mist and rain would clear away, and I would come
+down into picturesque little towns with gleaming spires and odd towers;
+and would stroll afoot into market-places in steep winding streets, where
+a hundred women in bodices, sold eggs and honey, butter and fruit, and
+suckled their children as they sat by their clean baskets, and had such
+enormous goîtres (or glandular swellings in the throat) that it became a
+science to know where the nurse ended and the child began.  About this
+time, I deserted my German chariot for the back of a mule (in colour and
+consistency so very like a dusty old hair trunk I once had at school,
+that I half expected to see my initials in brass-headed nails on his
+backbone), and went up a thousand rugged ways, and looked down at a
+thousand woods of fir and pine, and would on the whole have preferred my
+mule’s keeping a little nearer to the inside, and not usually travelling
+with a hoof or two over the precipice—though much consoled by explanation
+that this was to be attributed to his great sagacity, by reason of his
+carrying broad loads of wood at other times, and not being clear but that
+I myself belonged to that station of life, and required as much room as
+they.  He brought me safely, in his own wise way, among the passes of the
+Alps, and here I enjoyed a dozen climates a day; being now (like Don
+Quixote on the back of the wooden horse) in the region of wind, now in
+the region of fire, now in the region of unmelting ice and snow.  Here, I
+passed over trembling domes of ice, beneath which the cataract was
+roaring; and here was received under arches of icicles, of unspeakable
+beauty; and here the sweet air was so bracing and so light, that at
+halting-times I rolled in the snow when I saw my mule do it, thinking
+that he must know best.  At this part of the journey we would come, at
+mid-day, into half an hour’s thaw: when the rough mountain inn would be
+found on an island of deep mud in a sea of snow, while the baiting
+strings of mules, and the carts full of casks and bales, which had been
+in an Arctic condition a mile off, would steam again.  By such ways and
+means, I would come to the cluster of châlets where I had to turn out of
+the track to see the waterfall; and then, uttering a howl like a young
+giant, on espying a traveller—in other words, something to eat—coming up
+the steep, the idiot lying on the wood-pile who sunned himself and nursed
+his goître, would rouse the woman-guide within the hut, who would stream
+out hastily, throwing her child over one of her shoulders and her goître
+over the other, as she came along.  I slept at religious houses, and
+bleak refuges of many kinds, on this journey, and by the stove at night
+heard stories of travellers who had perished within call, in wreaths and
+drifts of snow.  One night the stove within, and the cold outside,
+awakened childish associations long forgotten, and I dreamed I was in
+Russia—the identical serf out of a picture-book I had, before I could
+read it for myself—and that I was going to be knouted by a noble
+personage in a fur cap, boots, and earrings, who, I think, must have come
+out of some melodrama.
+
+Commend me to the beautiful waters among these mountains!  Though I was
+not of their mind: they, being inveterately bent on getting down into the
+level country, and I ardently desiring to linger where I was.  What
+desperate leaps they took, what dark abysses they plunged into, what
+rocks they wore away, what echoes they invoked!  In one part where I
+went, they were pressed into the service of carrying wood down, to be
+burnt next winter, as costly fuel, in Italy.  But, their fierce savage
+nature was not to be easily constrained, and they fought with every limb
+of the wood; whirling it round and round, stripping its bark away,
+dashing it against pointed corners, driving it out of the course, and
+roaring and flying at the peasants who steered it back again from the
+bank with long stout poles.  Alas! concurrent streams of time and water
+carried _me_ down fast, and I came, on an exquisitely clear day, to the
+Lausanne shore of the Lake of Geneva, where I stood looking at the bright
+blue water, the flushed white mountains opposite, and the boats at my
+feet with their furled Mediterranean sails, showing like enormous
+magnifications of this goose-quill pen that is now in my hand.
+
+—The sky became overcast without any notice; a wind very like the March
+east wind of England, blew across me; and a voice said, ‘How do you like
+it?  Will it do?’
+
+I had merely shut myself, for half a minute, in a German travelling
+chariot that stood for sale in the Carriage Department of the London
+Pantechnicon.  I had a commission to buy it, for a friend who was going
+abroad; and the look and manner of the chariot, as I tried the cushions
+and the springs, brought all these hints of travelling remembrance before
+me.
+
+‘It will do very well,’ said I, rather sorrowfully, as I got out at the
+other door, and shut the carriage up.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+THE GREAT TASMANIA’S CARGO
+
+
+I TRAVEL constantly, up and down a certain line of railway that has a
+terminus in London.  It is the railway for a large military depôt, and
+for other large barracks.  To the best of my serious belief, I have never
+been on that railway by daylight, without seeing some handcuffed
+deserters in the train.
+
+It is in the nature of things that such an institution as our English
+army should have many bad and troublesome characters in it.  But, this is
+a reason for, and not against, its being made as acceptable as possible
+to well-disposed men of decent behaviour.  Such men are assuredly not
+tempted into the ranks, by the beastly inversion of natural laws, and the
+compulsion to live in worse than swinish foulness.  Accordingly, when any
+such Circumlocutional embellishments of the soldier’s condition have of
+late been brought to notice, we civilians, seated in outer darkness
+cheerfully meditating on an Income Tax, have considered the matter as
+being our business, and have shown a tendency to declare that we would
+rather not have it misregulated, if such declaration may, without
+violence to the Church Catechism, be hinted to those who are put in
+authority over us.
+
+Any animated description of a modern battle, any private soldier’s letter
+published in the newspapers, any page of the records of the Victoria
+Cross, will show that in the ranks of the army, there exists under all
+disadvantages as fine a sense of duty as is to be found in any station on
+earth.  Who doubts that if we all did our duty as faithfully as the
+soldier does his, this world would be a better place?  There may be
+greater difficulties in our way than in the soldier’s.  Not disputed.
+But, let us at least do our duty towards _him_.
+
+I had got back again to that rich and beautiful port where I had looked
+after Mercantile Jack, and I was walking up a hill there, on a wild March
+morning.  My conversation with my official friend Pangloss, by whom I was
+accidentally accompanied, took this direction as we took the up-hill
+direction, because the object of my uncommercial journey was to see some
+discharged soldiers who had recently come home from India.  There were
+men of HAVELOCK’S among them; there were men who had been in many of the
+great battles of the great Indian campaign, among them; and I was curious
+to note what our discharged soldiers looked like, when they were done
+with.
+
+I was not the less interested (as I mentioned to my official friend
+Pangloss) because these men had claimed to be discharged, when their
+right to be discharged was not admitted.  They had behaved with
+unblemished fidelity and bravery; but, a change of circumstances had
+arisen, which, as they considered, put an end to their compact and
+entitled them to enter on a new one.  Their demand had been blunderingly
+resisted by the authorities in India: but, it is to be presumed that the
+men were not far wrong, inasmuch as the bungle had ended in their being
+sent home discharged, in pursuance of orders from home.  (There was an
+immense waste of money, of course.)
+
+Under these circumstances—thought I, as I walked up the hill, on which I
+accidentally encountered my official friend—under these circumstances of
+the men having successfully opposed themselves to the Pagoda Department
+of that great Circumlocution Office on which the sun never sets and the
+light of reason never rises, the Pagoda Department will have been
+particularly careful of the national honour.  It will have shown these
+men, in the scrupulous good faith, not to say the generosity, of its
+dealing with them, that great national authorities can have no small
+retaliations and revenges.  It will have made every provision for their
+health on the passage home, and will have landed them, restored from
+their campaigning fatigues by a sea-voyage, pure air, sound food, and
+good medicines.  And I pleased myself with dwelling beforehand, on the
+great accounts of their personal treatment which these men would carry
+into their various towns and villages, and on the increasing popularity
+of the service that would insensibly follow.  I almost began to hope that
+the hitherto-never-failing deserters on my railroad would by-and-by
+become a phenomenon.
+
+In this agreeable frame of mind I entered the workhouse of
+Liverpool.—For, the cultivation of laurels in a sandy soil, had brought
+the soldiers in question to _that_ abode of Glory.
+
+Before going into their wards to visit them, I inquired how they had made
+their triumphant entry there?  They had been brought through the rain in
+carts it seemed, from the landing-place to the gate, and had then been
+carried up-stairs on the backs of paupers.  Their groans and pains during
+the performance of this glorious pageant, had been so distressing, as to
+bring tears into the eyes of spectators but too well accustomed to scenes
+of suffering.  The men were so dreadfully cold, that those who could get
+near the fires were hard to be restrained from thrusting their feet in
+among the blazing coals.  They were so horribly reduced, that they were
+awful to look upon.  Racked with dysentery and blackened with scurvy, one
+hundred and forty wretched soldiers had been revived with brandy and laid
+in bed.
+
+My official friend Pangloss is lineally descended from a learned doctor
+of that name, who was once tutor to Candide, an ingenious young gentleman
+of some celebrity.  In his personal character, he is as humane and worthy
+a gentleman as any I know; in his official capacity, he unfortunately
+preaches the doctrines of his renowned ancestor, by demonstrating on all
+occasions that we live in the best of all possible official worlds.
+
+‘In the name of Humanity,’ said I, ‘how did the men fall into this
+deplorable state?  Was the ship well found in stores?’
+
+‘I am not here to asseverate that I know the fact, of my own knowledge,’
+answered Pangloss, ‘but I have grounds for asserting that the stores were
+the best of all possible stores.’
+
+A medical officer laid before us, a handful of rotten biscuit, and a
+handful of split peas.  The biscuit was a honeycombed heap of maggots,
+and the excrement of maggots.  The peas were even harder than this filth.
+A similar handful had been experimentally boiled six hours, and had shown
+no signs of softening.  These were the stores on which the soldiers had
+been fed.
+
+‘The beef—’ I began, when Pangloss cut me short.
+
+‘Was the best of all possible beef,’ said he.
+
+But, behold, there was laid before us certain evidence given at the
+Coroner’s Inquest, holden on some of the men (who had obstinately died of
+their treatment), and from that evidence it appeared that the beef was
+the worst of possible beef!
+
+‘Then I lay my hand upon my heart, and take my stand,’ said Pangloss, ‘by
+the pork, which was the best of all possible pork.’
+
+‘But look at this food before our eyes, if one may so misuse the word,’
+said I.  ‘Would any Inspector who did his duty, pass such abomination?’
+
+‘It ought not to have been passed,’ Pangloss admitted.
+
+‘Then the authorities out there—’ I began, when Pangloss cut me short
+again.
+
+‘There would certainly seem to have been something wrong somewhere,’ said
+he; ‘but I am prepared to prove that the authorities out there, are the
+best of all possible authorities.’
+
+I never heard of any impeached public authority in my life, who was not
+the best public authority in existence.
+
+‘We are told of these unfortunate men being laid low by scurvy,’ said I.
+‘Since lime-juice has been regularly stored and served out in our navy,
+surely that disease, which used to devastate it, has almost disappeared?
+Was there lime-juice aboard this transport?’
+
+My official friend was beginning ‘the best of all possible—’ when an
+inconvenient medical forefinger pointed out another passage in the
+evidence, from which it appeared that the lime-juice had been bad too.
+Not to mention that the vinegar had been bad too, the vegetables bad too,
+the cooking accommodation insufficient (if there had been anything worth
+mentioning to cook), the water supply exceedingly inadequate, and the
+beer sour.
+
+‘Then the men,’ said Pangloss, a little irritated, ‘Were the worst of all
+possible men.’
+
+‘In what respect?’ I asked.
+
+‘Oh!  Habitual drunkards,’ said Pangloss.
+
+But, again the same incorrigible medical forefinger pointed out another
+passage in the evidence, showing that the dead men had been examined
+after death, and that they, at least, could not possibly have been
+habitual drunkards, because the organs within them which must have shown
+traces of that habit, were perfectly sound.
+
+‘And besides,’ said the three doctors present, ‘one and all, habitual
+drunkards brought as low as these men have been, could not recover under
+care and food, as the great majority of these men are recovering.  They
+would not have strength of constitution to do it.’
+
+‘Reckless and improvident dogs, then,’ said Pangloss.  ‘Always are—nine
+times out of ten.’
+
+I turned to the master of the workhouse, and asked him whether the men
+had any money?
+
+‘Money?’ said he.  ‘I have in my iron safe, nearly four hundred pounds of
+theirs; the agents have nearly a hundred pounds more and many of them
+have left money in Indian banks besides.’
+
+‘Hah!’ said I to myself, as we went up-stairs, ‘this is not the best of
+all possible stories, I doubt!’
+
+We went into a large ward, containing some twenty or five-and-twenty
+beds.  We went into several such wards, one after another.  I find it
+very difficult to indicate what a shocking sight I saw in them, without
+frightening the reader from the perusal of these lines, and defeating my
+object of making it known.
+
+O the sunken eyes that turned to me as I walked between the rows of beds,
+or—worse still—that glazedly looked at the white ceiling, and saw nothing
+and cared for nothing!  Here, lay the skeleton of a man, so lightly
+covered with a thin unwholesome skin, that not a bone in the anatomy was
+clothed, and I could clasp the arm above the elbow, in my finger and
+thumb.  Here, lay a man with the black scurvy eating his legs away, his
+gums gone, and his teeth all gaunt and bare.  This bed was empty, because
+gangrene had set in, and the patient had died but yesterday.  That bed
+was a hopeless one, because its occupant was sinking fast, and could only
+be roused to turn the poor pinched mask of face upon the pillow, with a
+feeble moan.  The awful thinness of the fallen cheeks, the awful
+brightness of the deep set eyes, the lips of lead, the hands of ivory,
+the recumbent human images lying in the shadow of death with a kind of
+solemn twilight on them, like the sixty who had died aboard the ship and
+were lying at the bottom of the sea, O Pangloss, GOD forgive you!
+
+In one bed, lay a man whose life had been saved (as it was hoped) by deep
+incisions in the feet and legs.  While I was speaking to him, a nurse
+came up to change the poultices which this operation had rendered
+necessary, and I had an instinctive feeling that it was not well to turn
+away, merely to spare myself.  He was sorely wasted and keenly
+susceptible, but the efforts he made to subdue any expression of
+impatience or suffering, were quite heroic.  It was easy to see, in the
+shrinking of the figure, and the drawing of the bed-clothes over the
+head, how acute the endurance was, and it made me shrink too, as if I
+were in pain; but, when the new bandages were on, and the poor feet were
+composed again, he made an apology for himself (though he had not uttered
+a word), and said plaintively, ‘I am so tender and weak, you see, sir!’
+Neither from him nor from any one sufferer of the whole ghastly number,
+did I hear a complaint.  Of thankfulness for present solicitude and care,
+I heard much; of complaint, not a word.
+
+I think I could have recognised in the dismalest skeleton there, the
+ghost of a soldier.  Something of the old air was still latent in the
+palest shadow of life I talked to.  One emaciated creature, in the
+strictest literality worn to the bone, lay stretched on his back, looking
+so like death that I asked one of the doctors if he were not dying, or
+dead?  A few kind words from the doctor, in his ear, and he opened his
+eyes, and smiled—looked, in a moment, as if he would have made a salute,
+if he could.  ‘We shall pull him through, please God,’ said the Doctor.
+‘Plase God, surr, and thankye,’ said the patient.  ‘You are much better
+to-day; are you not?’ said the Doctor.  ‘Plase God, surr; ’tis the slape
+I want, surr; ’tis my breathin’ makes the nights so long.’  ‘He is a
+careful fellow this, you must know,’ said the Doctor, cheerfully; ‘it was
+raining hard when they put him in the open cart to bring him here, and he
+had the presence of mind to ask to have a sovereign taken out of his
+pocket that he had there, and a cab engaged.  Probably it saved his
+life.’  The patient rattled out the skeleton of a laugh, and said, proud
+of the story, ‘’Deed, surr, an open cairt was a comical means o’ bringin’
+a dyin’ man here, and a clever way to kill him.’  You might have sworn to
+him for a soldier when he said it.
+
+One thing had perplexed me very much in going from bed to bed.  A very
+significant and cruel thing.  I could find no young man but one.  He had
+attracted my notice, by having got up and dressed himself in his
+soldier’s jacket and trousers, with the intention of sitting by the fire;
+but he had found himself too weak, and had crept back to his bed and laid
+himself down on the outside of it.  I could have pronounced him, alone,
+to be a young man aged by famine and sickness.  As we were standing by
+the Irish soldier’s bed, I mentioned my perplexity to the Doctor.  He
+took a board with an inscription on it from the head of the Irishman’s
+bed, and asked me what age I supposed that man to be?  I had observed him
+with attention while talking to him, and answered, confidently, ‘Fifty.’
+The Doctor, with a pitying glance at the patient, who had dropped into a
+stupor again, put the board back, and said, ‘Twenty-four.’
+
+All the arrangements of the wards were excellent.  They could not have
+been more humane, sympathising, gentle, attentive, or wholesome.  The
+owners of the ship, too, had done all they could, liberally.  There were
+bright fires in every room, and the convalescent men were sitting round
+them, reading various papers and periodicals.  I took the liberty of
+inviting my official friend Pangloss to look at those convalescent men,
+and to tell me whether their faces and bearing were or were not,
+generally, the faces and bearing of steady respectable soldiers?  The
+master of the workhouse, overhearing me, said he had had a pretty large
+experience of troops, and that better conducted men than these, he had
+never had to do with.  They were always (he added) as we saw them.  And
+of us visitors (I add) they knew nothing whatever, except that we were
+there.
+
+It was audacious in me, but I took another liberty with Pangloss.
+Prefacing it with the observation that, of course, I knew beforehand that
+there was not the faintest desire, anywhere, to hush up any part of this
+dreadful business, and that the Inquest was the fairest of all possible
+Inquests, I besought four things of Pangloss.  Firstly, to observe that
+the Inquest _was not held in that place_, but at some distance off.
+Secondly, to look round upon those helpless spectres in their beds.
+Thirdly, to remember that the witnesses produced from among them before
+that Inquest, could not have been selected because they were the men who
+had the most to tell it, but because they happened to be in a state
+admitting of their safe removal.  Fourthly, to say whether the coroner
+and jury could have come there, to those pillows, and taken a little
+evidence?  My official friend declined to commit himself to a reply.
+
+There was a sergeant, reading, in one of the fireside groups.  As he was
+a man of very intelligent countenance, and as I have a great respect for
+non-commissioned officers as a class, I sat down on the nearest bed, to
+have some talk with him.  (It was the bed of one of the grisliest of the
+poor skeletons, and he died soon afterwards.)
+
+‘I was glad to see, in the evidence of an officer at the Inquest,
+sergeant, that he never saw men behave better on board ship than these
+men.’
+
+‘They did behave very well, sir.’
+
+‘I was glad to see, too, that every man had a hammock.’  The sergeant
+gravely shook his head.  ‘There must be some mistake, sir.  The men of my
+own mess had no hammocks.  There were not hammocks enough on board, and
+the men of the two next messes laid hold of hammocks for themselves as
+soon as they got on board, and squeezed my men out, as I may say.’
+
+‘Had the squeezed-out men none then?’
+
+‘None, sir.  As men died, their hammocks were used by other men, who
+wanted hammocks; but many men had none at all.’
+
+‘Then you don’t agree with the evidence on that point?’
+
+‘Certainly not, sir.  A man can’t, when he knows to the contrary.’
+
+‘Did any of the men sell their bedding for drink?’
+
+‘There is some mistake on that point too, sir.  Men were under the
+impression—I knew it for a fact at the time—that it was not allowed to
+take blankets or bedding on board, and so men who had things of that sort
+came to sell them purposely.’
+
+‘Did any of the men sell their clothes for drink?’
+
+‘They did, sir.’  (I believe there never was a more truthful witness than
+the sergeant.  He had no inclination to make out a case.)
+
+‘Many?’
+
+‘Some, sir’ (considering the question).  ‘Soldier-like.  They had been
+long marching in the rainy season, by bad roads—no roads at all, in
+short—and when they got to Calcutta, men turned to and drank, before
+taking a last look at it.  Soldier-like.’
+
+‘Do you see any men in this ward, for example, who sold clothes for drink
+at that time?’
+
+The sergeant’s wan eye, happily just beginning to rekindle with health,
+travelled round the place and came back to me.  ‘Certainly, sir.’
+
+‘The marching to Calcutta in the rainy season must have been severe?’
+
+‘It was very severe, sir.’
+
+‘Yet what with the rest and the sea air, I should have thought that the
+men (even the men who got drunk) would have soon begun to recover on
+board ship?’
+
+‘So they might; but the bad food told upon them, and when we got into a
+cold latitude, it began to tell more, and the men dropped.’
+
+‘The sick had a general disinclination for food, I am told, sergeant?’
+
+‘Have you seen the food, sir?’
+
+‘Some of it.’
+
+‘Have you seen the state of their mouths, sir?’
+
+If the sergeant, who was a man of a few orderly words, had spoken the
+amount of this volume, he could not have settled that question better.  I
+believe the sick could as soon have eaten the ship, as the ship’s
+provisions.
+
+I took the additional liberty with my friend Pangloss, when I had left
+the sergeant with good wishes, of asking Pangloss whether he had ever
+heard of biscuit getting drunk and bartering its nutritious qualities for
+putrefaction and vermin; of peas becoming hardened in liquor; of hammocks
+drinking themselves off the face of the earth; of lime-juice, vegetables,
+vinegar, cooking accommodation, water supply, and beer, all taking to
+drinking together and going to ruin?  ‘If not (I asked him), what did he
+say in defence of the officers condemned by the Coroner’s jury, who, by
+signing the General Inspection report relative to the ship Great
+Tasmania, chartered for these troops, had deliberately asserted all that
+bad and poisonous dunghill refuse, to be good and wholesome food?’  My
+official friend replied that it was a remarkable fact, that whereas some
+officers were only positively good, and other officers only comparatively
+better, those particular officers were superlatively the very best of all
+possible officers.
+
+My hand and my heart fail me, in writing my record of this journey.  The
+spectacle of the soldiers in the hospital-beds of that Liverpool
+workhouse (a very good workhouse, indeed, be it understood), was so
+shocking and so shameful, that as an Englishman I blush to remember it.
+It would have been simply unbearable at the time, but for the
+consideration and pity with which they were soothed in their sufferings.
+
+No punishment that our inefficient laws provide, is worthy of the name
+when set against the guilt of this transaction.  But, if the memory of it
+die out unavenged, and if it do not result in the inexorable dismissal
+and disgrace of those who are responsible for it, their escape will be
+infamous to the Government (no matter of what party) that so neglects its
+duty, and infamous to the nation that tamely suffers such intolerable
+wrong to be done in its name.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES
+
+
+IF the confession that I have often travelled from this Covent Garden
+lodging of mine on Sundays, should give offence to those who never travel
+on Sundays, they will be satisfied (I hope) by my adding that the
+journeys in question were made to churches.
+
+Not that I have any curiosity to hear powerful preachers.  Time was, when
+I was dragged by the hair of my head, as one may say, to hear too many.
+On summer evenings, when every flower, and tree, and bird, might have
+better addressed my soft young heart, I have in my day been caught in the
+palm of a female hand by the crown, have been violently scrubbed from the
+neck to the roots of the hair as a purification for the Temple, and have
+then been carried off highly charged with saponaceous electricity, to be
+steamed like a potato in the unventilated breath of the powerful
+Boanerges Boiler and his congregation, until what small mind I had, was
+quite steamed out of me.  In which pitiable plight I have been haled out
+of the place of meeting, at the conclusion of the exercises, and
+catechised respecting Boanerges Boiler, his fifthly, his sixthly, and his
+seventhly, until I have regarded that reverend person in the light of a
+most dismal and oppressive Charade.  Time was, when I was carried off to
+platform assemblages at which no human child, whether of wrath or grace,
+could possibly keep its eyes open, and when I felt the fatal sleep
+stealing, stealing over me, and when I gradually heard the orator in
+possession, spinning and humming like a great top, until he rolled,
+collapsed, and tumbled over, and I discovered to my burning shame and
+fear, that as to that last stage it was not he, but I.  I have sat under
+Boanerges when he has specifically addressed himself to us—us, the
+infants—and at this present writing I hear his lumbering jocularity
+(which never amused us, though we basely pretended that it did), and I
+behold his big round face, and I look up the inside of his outstretched
+coat-sleeve as if it were a telescope with the stopper on, and I hate him
+with an unwholesome hatred for two hours.  Through such means did it come
+to pass that I knew the powerful preacher from beginning to end, all over
+and all through, while I was very young, and that I left him behind at an
+early period of life.  Peace be with him!  More peace than he brought to
+me!
+
+Now, I have heard many preachers since that time—not powerful; merely
+Christian, unaffected, and reverential—and I have had many such preachers
+on my roll of friends.  But, it was not to hear these, any more than the
+powerful class, that I made my Sunday journeys.  They were journeys of
+curiosity to the numerous churches in the City of London.  It came into
+my head one day, here had I been cultivating a familiarity with all the
+churches of Rome, and I knew nothing of the insides of the old churches
+of London!  This befell on a Sunday morning.  I began my expeditions that
+very same day, and they lasted me a year.
+
+I never wanted to know the names of the churches to which I went, and to
+this hour I am profoundly ignorant in that particular of at least
+nine-tenths of them.  Indeed, saying that I know the church of old
+GOWER’S tomb (he lies in effigy with his head upon his books) to be the
+church of Saint Saviour’s, Southwark; and the church of MILTON’S tomb to
+be the church of Cripplegate; and the church on Cornhill with the great
+golden keys to be the church of Saint Peter; I doubt if I could pass a
+competitive examination in any of the names.  No question did I ever ask
+of living creature concerning these churches, and no answer to any
+antiquarian question on the subject that I ever put to books, shall
+harass the reader’s soul.  A full half of my pleasure in them arose out
+of their mystery; mysterious I found them; mysterious they shall remain
+for me.
+
+Where shall I begin my round of hidden and forgotten old churches in the
+City of London?
+
+It is twenty minutes short of eleven on a Sunday morning, when I stroll
+down one of the many narrow hilly streets in the City that tend due south
+to the Thames.  It is my first experiment, and I have come to the region
+of Whittington in an omnibus, and we have put down a fierce-eyed, spare
+old woman, whose slate-coloured gown smells of herbs, and who walked up
+Aldersgate-street to some chapel where she comforts herself with
+brimstone doctrine, I warrant.  We have also put down a stouter and
+sweeter old lady, with a pretty large prayer-book in an unfolded
+pocket-handkerchief, who got out at a corner of a court near Stationers’
+Hall, and who I think must go to church there, because she is the widow
+of some deceased old Company’s Beadle.  The rest of our freight were mere
+chance pleasure-seekers and rural walkers, and went on to the Blackwall
+railway.  So many bells are ringing, when I stand undecided at a street
+corner, that every sheep in the ecclesiastical fold might be a
+bell-wether.  The discordance is fearful.  My state of indecision is
+referable to, and about equally divisible among, four great churches,
+which are all within sight and sound, all within the space of a few
+square yards.
+
+As I stand at the street corner, I don’t see as many as four people at
+once going to church, though I see as many as four churches with their
+steeples clamouring for people.  I choose my church, and go up the flight
+of steps to the great entrance in the tower.  A mouldy tower within, and
+like a neglected washhouse.  A rope comes through the beamed roof, and a
+man in the corner pulls it and clashes the bell—a whity-brown man, whose
+clothes were once black—a man with flue on him, and cobweb.  He stares at
+me, wondering how I come there, and I stare at him, wondering how he
+comes there.  Through a screen of wood and glass, I peep into the dim
+church.  About twenty people are discernible, waiting to begin.
+Christening would seem to have faded out of this church long ago, for the
+font has the dust of desuetude thick upon it, and its wooden cover
+(shaped like an old-fashioned tureen-cover) looks as if it wouldn’t come
+off, upon requirement.  I perceive the altar to be rickety and the
+Commandments damp.  Entering after this survey, I jostle the clergyman in
+his canonicals, who is entering too from a dark lane behind a pew of
+state with curtains, where nobody sits.  The pew is ornamented with four
+blue wands, once carried by four somebodys, I suppose, before somebody
+else, but which there is nobody now to hold or receive honour from.  I
+open the door of a family pew, and shut myself in; if I could occupy
+twenty family pews at once I might have them.  The clerk, a brisk young
+man (how does _he_ come here?), glances at me knowingly, as who should
+say, ‘You have done it now; you must stop.’  Organ plays.  Organ-loft is
+in a small gallery across the church; gallery congregation, two girls.  I
+wonder within myself what will happen when we are required to sing.
+
+There is a pale heap of books in the corner of my pew, and while the
+organ, which is hoarse and sleepy, plays in such fashion that I can hear
+more of the rusty working of the stops than of any music, I look at the
+books, which are mostly bound in faded baize and stuff.  They belonged in
+1754, to the Dowgate family; and who were they?  Jane Comport must have
+married Young Dowgate, and come into the family that way; Young Dowgate
+was courting Jane Comport when he gave her her prayer-book, and recorded
+the presentation in the fly-leaf; if Jane were fond of Young Dowgate, why
+did she die and leave the book here?  Perhaps at the rickety altar, and
+before the damp Commandments, she, Comport, had taken him, Dowgate, in a
+flush of youthful hope and joy, and perhaps it had not turned out in the
+long run as great a success as was expected?
+
+The opening of the service recalls my wandering thoughts.  I then find,
+to my astonishment, that I have been, and still am, taking a strong kind
+of invisible snuff, up my nose, into my eyes, and down my throat.  I
+wink, sneeze, and cough.  The clerk sneezes; the clergyman winks; the
+unseen organist sneezes and coughs (and probably winks); all our little
+party wink, sneeze, and cough.  The snuff seems to be made of the decay
+of matting, wood, cloth, stone, iron, earth, and something else.  Is the
+something else, the decay of dead citizens in the vaults below?  As sure
+as Death it is!  Not only in the cold, damp February day, do we cough and
+sneeze dead citizens, all through the service, but dead citizens have got
+into the very bellows of the organ, and half choked the same.  We stamp
+our feet to warm them, and dead citizens arise in heavy clouds.  Dead
+citizens stick upon the walls, and lie pulverised on the sounding-board
+over the clergyman’s head, and, when a gust of air comes, tumble down
+upon him.
+
+In this first experience I was so nauseated by too much snuff, made of
+the Dowgate family, the Comport branch, and other families and branches,
+that I gave but little heed to our dull manner of ambling through the
+service; to the brisk clerk’s manner of encouraging us to try a note or
+two at psalm time; to the gallery-congregation’s manner of enjoying a
+shrill duet, without a notion of time or tune; to the whity-brown man’s
+manner of shutting the minister into the pulpit, and being very
+particular with the lock of the door, as if he were a dangerous animal.
+But, I tried again next Sunday, and soon accustomed myself to the dead
+citizens when I found that I could not possibly get on without them among
+the City churches.
+
+Another Sunday.
+
+After being again rung for by conflicting bells, like a leg of mutton or
+a laced hat a hundred years ago, I make selection of a church oddly put
+away in a corner among a number of lanes—a smaller church than the last,
+and an ugly: of about the date of Queen Anne.  As a congregation, we are
+fourteen strong: not counting an exhausted charity school in a gallery,
+which has dwindled away to four boys, and two girls.  In the porch, is a
+benefaction of loaves of bread, which there would seem to be nobody left
+in the exhausted congregation to claim, and which I saw an exhausted
+beadle, long faded out of uniform, eating with his eyes for self and
+family when I passed in.  There is also an exhausted clerk in a brown
+wig, and two or three exhausted doors and windows have been bricked up,
+and the service books are musty, and the pulpit cushions are threadbare,
+and the whole of the church furniture is in a very advanced stage of
+exhaustion.  We are three old women (habitual), two young lovers
+(accidental), two tradesmen, one with a wife and one alone, an aunt and
+nephew, again two girls (these two girls dressed out for church with
+everything about them limp that should be stiff, and _vice versâ_, are an
+invariable experience), and three sniggering boys.  The clergyman is,
+perhaps, the chaplain of a civic company; he has the moist and vinous
+look, and eke the bulbous boots, of one acquainted with ’Twenty port, and
+comet vintages.
+
+We are so quiet in our dulness that the three sniggering boys, who have
+got away into a corner by the altar-railing, give us a start, like
+crackers, whenever they laugh.  And this reminds me of my own village
+church where, during sermon-time on bright Sundays when the birds are
+very musical indeed, farmers’ boys patter out over the stone pavement,
+and the clerk steps out from his desk after them, and is distinctly heard
+in the summer repose to pursue and punch them in the churchyard, and is
+seen to return with a meditative countenance, making believe that nothing
+of the sort has happened.  The aunt and nephew in this City church are
+much disturbed by the sniggering boys.  The nephew is himself a boy, and
+the sniggerers tempt him to secular thoughts of marbles and string, by
+secretly offering such commodities to his distant contemplation.  This
+young Saint Anthony for a while resists, but presently becomes a
+backslider, and in dumb show defies the sniggerers to ‘heave’ a marble or
+two in his direction.  Here in he is detected by the aunt (a rigorous
+reduced gentlewoman who has the charge of offices), and I perceive that
+worthy relative to poke him in the side, with the corrugated hooked
+handle of an ancient umbrella.  The nephew revenges himself for this, by
+holding his breath and terrifying his kinswoman with the dread belief
+that he has made up his mind to burst.  Regardless of whispers and
+shakes, he swells and becomes discoloured, and yet again swells and
+becomes discoloured, until the aunt can bear it no longer, but leads him
+out, with no visible neck, and with his eyes going before him like a
+prawn’s.  This causes the sniggerers to regard flight as an eligible
+move, and I know which of them will go out first, because of the
+over-devout attention that he suddenly concentrates on the clergyman.  In
+a little while, this hypocrite, with an elaborate demonstration of
+hushing his footsteps, and with a face generally expressive of having
+until now forgotten a religious appointment elsewhere, is gone.  Number
+two gets out in the same way, but rather quicker.  Number three getting
+safely to the door, there turns reckless, and banging it open, flies
+forth with a Whoop! that vibrates to the top of the tower above us.
+
+The clergyman, who is of a prandial presence and a muffled voice, may be
+scant of hearing as well as of breath, but he only glances up, as having
+an idea that somebody has said Amen in a wrong place, and continues his
+steady jog-trot, like a farmer’s wife going to market.  He does all he
+has to do, in the same easy way, and gives us a concise sermon, still
+like the jog-trot of the farmer’s wife on a level road.  Its drowsy
+cadence soon lulls the three old women asleep, and the unmarried
+tradesman sits looking out at window, and the married tradesman sits
+looking at his wife’s bonnet, and the lovers sit looking at one another,
+so superlatively happy, that I mind when I, turned of eighteen, went with
+my Angelica to a City church on account of a shower (by this special
+coincidence that it was in Huggin-lane), and when I said to my Angelica,
+‘Let the blessed event, Angelica, occur at no altar but this!’ and when
+my Angelica consented that it should occur at no other—which it certainly
+never did, for it never occurred anywhere.  And O, Angelica, what has
+become of you, this present Sunday morning when I can’t attend to the
+sermon; and, more difficult question than that, what has become of Me as
+I was when I sat by your side!
+
+But, we receive the signal to make that unanimous dive which surely is a
+little conventional—like the strange rustlings and settlings and
+clearings of throats and noses, which are never dispensed with, at
+certain points of the Church service, and are never held to be necessary
+under any other circumstances.  In a minute more it is all over, and the
+organ expresses itself to be as glad of it as it can be of anything in
+its rheumatic state, and in another minute we are all of us out of the
+church, and Whity-brown has locked it up.  Another minute or little more,
+and, in the neighbouring churchyard—not the yard of that church, but of
+another—a churchyard like a great shabby old mignonette box, with two
+trees in it and one tomb—I meet Whity-brown, in his private capacity,
+fetching a pint of beer for his dinner from the public-house in the
+corner, where the keys of the rotting fire-ladders are kept and were
+never asked for, and where there is a ragged, white-seamed,
+out-at-elbowed bagatelle board on the first floor.
+
+In one of these City churches, and only in one, I found an individual who
+might have been claimed as expressly a City personage.  I remember the
+church, by the feature that the clergyman couldn’t get to his own desk
+without going through the clerk’s, or couldn’t get to the pulpit without
+going through the reading-desk—I forget which, and it is no matter—and by
+the presence of this personage among the exceedingly sparse congregation.
+I doubt if we were a dozen, and we had no exhausted charity school to
+help us out.  The personage was dressed in black of square cut, and was
+stricken in years, and wore a black velvet cap, and cloth shoes.  He was
+of a staid, wealthy, and dissatisfied aspect.  In his hand, he conducted
+to church a mysterious child: a child of the feminine gender.  The child
+had a beaver hat, with a stiff drab plume that surely never belonged to
+any bird of the air.  The child was further attired in a nankeen frock
+and spencer, brown boxing-gloves, and a veil.  It had a blemish, in the
+nature of currant jelly, on its chin; and was a thirsty child.  Insomuch
+that the personage carried in his pocket a green bottle, from which, when
+the first psalm was given out, the child was openly refreshed.  At all
+other times throughout the service it was motionless, and stood on the
+seat of the large pew, closely fitted into the corner, like a rain-water
+pipe.
+
+                      [Picture: The City Personage]
+
+The personage never opened his book, and never looked at the clergyman.
+He never sat down either, but stood with his arms leaning on the top of
+the pew, and his forehead sometimes shaded with his right hand, always
+looking at the church door.  It was a long church for a church of its
+size, and he was at the upper end, but he always looked at the door.
+That he was an old bookkeeper, or an old trader who had kept his own
+books, and that he might be seen at the Bank of England about Dividend
+times, no doubt.  That he had lived in the City all his life and was
+disdainful of other localities, no doubt.  Why he looked at the door, I
+never absolutely proved, but it is my belief that he lived in expectation
+of the time when the citizens would come back to live in the City, and
+its ancient glories would be renewed.  He appeared to expect that this
+would occur on a Sunday, and that the wanderers would first appear, in
+the deserted churches, penitent and humbled.  Hence, he looked at the
+door which they never darkened.  Whose child the child was, whether the
+child of a disinherited daughter, or some parish orphan whom the
+personage had adopted, there was nothing to lead up to.  It never played,
+or skipped, or smiled.  Once, the idea occurred to me that it was an
+automaton, and that the personage had made it; but following the strange
+couple out one Sunday, I heard the personage say to it, ‘Thirteen
+thousand pounds;’ to which it added in a weak human voice, ‘Seventeen and
+fourpence.’  Four Sundays I followed them out, and this is all I ever
+heard or saw them say.  One Sunday, I followed them home.  They lived
+behind a pump, and the personage opened their abode with an exceeding
+large key.  The one solitary inscription on their house related to a
+fire-plug.  The house was partly undermined by a deserted and closed
+gateway; its windows were blind with dirt; and it stood with its face
+disconsolately turned to a wall.  Five great churches and two small ones
+rang their Sunday bells between this house and the church the couple
+frequented, so they must have had some special reason for going a quarter
+of a mile to it.  The last time I saw them, was on this wise.  I had been
+to explore another church at a distance, and happened to pass the church
+they frequented, at about two of the afternoon when that edifice was
+closed.  But, a little side-door, which I had never observed before,
+stood open, and disclosed certain cellarous steps.  Methought ‘They are
+airing the vaults to-day,’ when the personage and the child silently
+arrived at the steps, and silently descended.  Of course, I came to the
+conclusion that the personage had at last despaired of the looked-for
+return of the penitent citizens, and that he and the child went down to
+get themselves buried.
+
+In the course of my pilgrimages I came upon one obscure church which had
+broken out in the melodramatic style, and was got up with various tawdry
+decorations, much after the manner of the extinct London may-poles.
+These attractions had induced several young priests or deacons in black
+bibs for waistcoats, and several young ladies interested in that holy
+order (the proportion being, as I estimated, seventeen young ladies to a
+deacon), to come into the City as a new and odd excitement.  It was
+wonderful to see how these young people played out their little play in
+the heart of the City, all among themselves, without the deserted City’s
+knowing anything about it.  It was as if you should take an empty
+counting-house on a Sunday, and act one of the old Mysteries there.  They
+had impressed a small school (from what neighbourhood I don’t know) to
+assist in the performances, and it was pleasant to notice frantic
+garlands of inscription on the walls, especially addressing those poor
+innocents in characters impossible for them to decipher.  There was a
+remarkably agreeable smell of pomatum in this congregation.
+
+But, in other cases, rot and mildew and dead citizens formed the
+uppermost scent, while, infused into it in a dreamy way not at all
+displeasing, was the staple character of the neighbourhood.  In the
+churches about Mark-lane, for example, there was a dry whiff of wheat;
+and I accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of an aged hassock
+in one of them.  From Rood-lane to Tower-street, and thereabouts, there
+was often a subtle flavour of wine: sometimes, of tea.  One church near
+Mincing-lane smelt like a druggist’s drawer.  Behind the Monument the
+service had a flavour of damaged oranges, which, a little further down
+towards the river, tempered into herrings, and gradually toned into a
+cosmopolitan blast of fish.  In one church, the exact counterpart of the
+church in the Rake’s Progress where the hero is being married to the
+horrible old lady, there was no speciality of atmosphere, until the organ
+shook a perfume of hides all over us from some adjacent warehouse.
+
+Be the scent what it would, however, there was no speciality in the
+people.  There were never enough of them to represent any calling or
+neighbourhood.  They had all gone elsewhere over-night, and the few
+stragglers in the many churches languished there inexpressively.
+
+Among the Uncommercial travels in which I have engaged, this year of
+Sunday travel occupies its own place, apart from all the rest.  Whether I
+think of the church where the sails of the oyster-boats in the river
+almost flapped against the windows, or of the church where the railroad
+made the bells hum as the train rushed by above the roof, I recall a
+curious experience.  On summer Sundays, in the gentle rain or the bright
+sunshine—either, deepening the idleness of the idle City—I have sat, in
+that singular silence which belongs to resting-places usually astir, in
+scores of buildings at the heart of the world’s metropolis, unknown to
+far greater numbers of people speaking the English tongue, than the
+ancient edifices of the Eternal City, or the Pyramids of Egypt.  The dark
+vestries and registries into which I have peeped, and the little
+hemmed-in churchyards that have echoed to my feet, have left impressions
+on my memory as distinct and quaint as any it has in that way received.
+In all those dusty registers that the worms are eating, there is not a
+line but made some hearts leap, or some tears flow, in their day.  Still
+and dry now, still and dry! and the old tree at the window with no room
+for its branches, has seen them all out.  So with the tomb of the old
+Master of the old Company, on which it drips.  His son restored it and
+died, his daughter restored it and died, and then he had been remembered
+long enough, and the tree took possession of him, and his name cracked
+out.
+
+There are few more striking indications of the changes of manners and
+customs that two or three hundred years have brought about, than these
+deserted churches.  Many of them are handsome and costly structures,
+several of them were designed by WREN, many of them arose from the ashes
+of the great fire, others of them outlived the plague and the fire too,
+to die a slow death in these later days.  No one can be sure of the
+coming time; but it is not too much to say of it that it has no sign in
+its outsetting tides, of the reflux to these churches of their
+congregations and uses.  They remain like the tombs of the old citizens
+who lie beneath them and around them, Monuments of another age.  They are
+worth a Sunday-exploration, now and then, for they yet echo, not
+unharmoniously, to the time when the City of London really was London;
+when the ’Prentices and Trained Bands were of mark in the state; when
+even the Lord Mayor himself was a Reality—not a Fiction conventionally
+be-puffed on one day in the year by illustrious friends, who no less
+conventionally laugh at him on the remaining three hundred and sixty-four
+days.
+
+
+
+
+X
+SHY NEIGHBOURHOODS
+
+
+SO much of my travelling is done on foot, that if I cherished betting
+propensities, I should probably be found registered in sporting
+newspapers under some such title as the Elastic Novice, challenging all
+eleven stone mankind to competition in walking.  My last special feat was
+turning out of bed at two, after a hard day, pedestrian and otherwise,
+and walking thirty miles into the country to breakfast.  The road was so
+lonely in the night, that I fell asleep to the monotonous sound of my own
+feet, doing their regular four miles an hour.  Mile after mile I walked,
+without the slightest sense of exertion, dozing heavily and dreaming
+constantly.  It was only when I made a stumble like a drunken man, or
+struck out into the road to avoid a horseman close upon me on the
+path—who had no existence—that I came to myself and looked about.  The
+day broke mistily (it was autumn time), and I could not disembarrass
+myself of the idea that I had to climb those heights and banks of cloud,
+and that there was an Alpine Convent somewhere behind the sun, where I
+was going to breakfast.  This sleepy notion was so much stronger than
+such substantial objects as villages and haystacks, that, after the sun
+was up and bright, and when I was sufficiently awake to have a sense of
+pleasure in the prospect, I still occasionally caught myself looking
+about for wooden arms to point the right track up the mountain, and
+wondering there was no snow yet.  It is a curiosity of broken sleep that
+I made immense quantities of verses on that pedestrian occasion (of
+course I never make any when I am in my right senses), and that I spoke a
+certain language once pretty familiar to me, but which I have nearly
+forgotten from disuse, with fluency.  Of both these phenomena I have such
+frequent experience in the state between sleeping and waking, that I
+sometimes argue with myself that I know I cannot be awake, for, if I
+were, I should not be half so ready.  The readiness is not imaginary,
+because I often recall long strings of the verses, and many turns of the
+fluent speech, after I am broad awake.
+
+My walking is of two kinds: one, straight on end to a definite goal at a
+round pace; one, objectless, loitering, and purely vagabond.  In the
+latter state, no gipsy on earth is a greater vagabond than myself; it is
+so natural to me, and strong with me, that I think I must be the
+descendant, at no great distance, of some irreclaimable tramp.
+
+One of the pleasantest things I have lately met with, in a vagabond
+course of shy metropolitan neighbourhoods and small shops, is the fancy
+of a humble artist, as exemplified in two portraits representing Mr.
+Thomas Sayers, of Great Britain, and Mr. John Heenan, of the United
+States of America.  These illustrious men are highly coloured in fighting
+trim, and fighting attitude.  To suggest the pastoral and meditative
+nature of their peaceful calling, Mr. Heenan is represented on emerald
+sward, with primroses and other modest flowers springing up under the
+heels of his half-boots; while Mr. Sayers is impelled to the
+administration of his favourite blow, the Auctioneer, by the silent
+eloquence of a village church.  The humble homes of England, with their
+domestic virtues and honeysuckle porches, urge both heroes to go in and
+win; and the lark and other singing birds are observable in the upper
+air, ecstatically carolling their thanks to Heaven for a fight.  On the
+whole, the associations entwined with the pugilistic art by this artist
+are much in the manner of Izaak Walton.
+
+But, it is with the lower animals of back streets and by-ways that my
+present purpose rests.  For human notes we may return to such
+neighbourhoods when leisure and opportunity serve.
+
+Nothing in shy neighbourhoods perplexes my mind more, than the bad
+company birds keep.  Foreign birds often get into good society, but
+British birds are inseparable from low associates.  There is a whole
+street of them in St. Giles’s; and I always find them in poor and immoral
+neighbourhoods, convenient to the public-house and the pawnbroker’s.
+They seem to lead people into drinking, and even the man who makes their
+cages usually gets into a chronic state of black eye.  Why is this?
+Also, they will do things for people in short-skirted velveteen coats
+with bone buttons, or in sleeved waistcoats and fur caps, which they
+cannot be persuaded by the respectable orders of society to undertake.
+In a dirty court in Spitalfields, once, I found a goldfinch drawing his
+own water, and drawing as much of it as if he were in a consuming fever.
+That goldfinch lived at a bird-shop, and offered, in writing, to barter
+himself against old clothes, empty bottles, or even kitchen stuff.
+Surely a low thing and a depraved taste in any finch!  I bought that
+goldfinch for money.  He was sent home, and hung upon a nail over against
+my table.  He lived outside a counterfeit dwelling-house, supposed (as I
+argued) to be a dyer’s; otherwise it would have been impossible to
+account for his perch sticking out of the garret window.  From the time
+of his appearance in my room, either he left off being thirsty—which was
+not in the bond—or he could not make up his mind to hear his little
+bucket drop back into his well when he let it go: a shock which in the
+best of times had made him tremble.  He drew no water but by stealth and
+under the cloak of night.  After an interval of futile and at length
+hopeless expectation, the merchant who had educated him was appealed to.
+The merchant was a bow-legged character, with a flat and cushiony nose,
+like the last new strawberry.  He wore a fur cap, and shorts, and was of
+the velveteen race, velveteeny.  He sent word that he would ‘look round.’
+He looked round, appeared in the doorway of the room, and slightly cocked
+up his evil eye at the goldfinch.  Instantly a raging thirst beset that
+bird; when it was appeased, he still drew several unnecessary buckets of
+water; and finally, leaped about his perch and sharpened his bill, as if
+he had been to the nearest wine vaults and got drunk.
+
+Donkeys again.  I know shy neighbourhoods where the Donkey goes in at the
+street door, and appears to live up-stairs, for I have examined the
+back-yard from over the palings, and have been unable to make him out.
+Gentility, nobility, Royalty, would appeal to that donkey in vain to do
+what he does for a costermonger.  Feed him with oats at the highest
+price, put an infant prince and princess in a pair of panniers on his
+back, adjust his delicate trappings to a nicety, take him to the softest
+slopes at Windsor, and try what pace you can get out of him.  Then,
+starve him, harness him anyhow to a truck with a flat tray on it, and see
+him bowl from Whitechapel to Bayswater.  There appears to be no
+particular private understanding between birds and donkeys, in a state of
+nature; but in the shy neighbourhood state, you shall see them always in
+the same hands and always developing their very best energies for the
+very worst company.  I have known a donkey—by sight; we were not on
+speaking terms—who lived over on the Surrey side of London-bridge, among
+the fastnesses of Jacob’s Island and Dockhead.  It was the habit of that
+animal, when his services were not in immediate requisition, to go out
+alone, idling.  I have met him a mile from his place of residence,
+loitering about the streets; and the expression of his countenance at
+such times was most degraded.  He was attached to the establishment of an
+elderly lady who sold periwinkles, and he used to stand on Saturday
+nights with a cartful of those delicacies outside a gin-shop, pricking up
+his ears when a customer came to the cart, and too evidently deriving
+satisfaction from the knowledge that they got bad measure.  His mistress
+was sometimes overtaken by inebriety.  The last time I ever saw him
+(about five years ago) he was in circumstances of difficulty, caused by
+this failing.  Having been left alone with the cart of periwinkles, and
+forgotten, he went off idling.  He prowled among his usual low haunts for
+some time, gratifying his depraved tastes, until, not taking the cart
+into his calculations, he endeavoured to turn up a narrow alley, and
+became greatly involved.  He was taken into custody by the police, and,
+the Green Yard of the district being near at hand, was backed into that
+place of durance.  At that crisis, I encountered him; the stubborn sense
+he evinced of being—not to compromise the expression—a blackguard, I
+never saw exceeded in the human subject.  A flaring candle in a paper
+shade, stuck in among his periwinkles, showed him, with his ragged
+harness broken and his cart extensively shattered, twitching his mouth
+and shaking his hanging head, a picture of disgrace and obduracy.  I have
+seen boys being taken to station-houses, who were as like him as his own
+brother.
+
+The dogs of shy neighbourhoods, I observe to avoid play, and to be
+conscious of poverty.  They avoid work, too, if they can, of course; that
+is in the nature of all animals.  I have the pleasure to know a dog in a
+back street in the neighbourhood of Walworth, who has greatly
+distinguished himself in the minor drama, and who takes his portrait with
+him when he makes an engagement, for the illustration of the play-bill.
+His portrait (which is not at all like him) represents him in the act of
+dragging to the earth a recreant Indian, who is supposed to have
+tomahawked, or essayed to tomahawk, a British officer.  The design is
+pure poetry, for there is no such Indian in the piece, and no such
+incident.  He is a dog of the Newfoundland breed, for whose honesty I
+would be bail to any amount; but whose intellectual qualities in
+association with dramatic fiction, I cannot rate high.  Indeed, he is too
+honest for the profession he has entered.  Being at a town in Yorkshire
+last summer, and seeing him posted in the bill of the night, I attended
+the performance.  His first scene was eminently successful; but, as it
+occupied a second in its representation (and five lines in the bill), it
+scarcely afforded ground for a cool and deliberate judgment of his
+powers.  He had merely to bark, run on, and jump through an inn window,
+after a comic fugitive.  The next scene of importance to the fable was a
+little marred in its interest by his over-anxiety; forasmuch as while his
+master (a belated soldier in a den of robbers on a tempestuous night) was
+feelingly lamenting the absence of his faithful dog, and laying great
+stress on the fact that he was thirty leagues away, the faithful dog was
+barking furiously in the prompter’s box, and clearly choking himself
+against his collar.  But it was in his greatest scene of all, that his
+honesty got the better of him.  He had to enter a dense and trackless
+forest, on the trail of the murderer, and there to fly at the murderer
+when he found him resting at the foot of a tree, with his victim bound
+ready for slaughter.  It was a hot night, and he came into the forest
+from an altogether unexpected direction, in the sweetest temper, at a
+very deliberate trot, not in the least excited; trotted to the
+foot-lights with his tongue out; and there sat down, panting, and amiably
+surveying the audience, with his tail beating on the boards, like a Dutch
+clock.  Meanwhile the murderer, impatient to receive his doom, was
+audibly calling to him ‘CO-O-OME here!’ while the victim, struggling with
+his bonds, assailed him with the most injurious expressions.  It happened
+through these means, that when he was in course of time persuaded to trot
+up and rend the murderer limb from limb, he made it (for dramatic
+purposes) a little too obvious that he worked out that awful retribution
+by licking butter off his blood-stained hands.
+
+In a shy street, behind Long-acre, two honest dogs live, who perform in
+Punch’s shows.  I may venture to say that I am on terms of intimacy with
+both, and that I never saw either guilty of the falsehood of failing to
+look down at the man inside the show, during the whole performance.  The
+difficulty other dogs have in satisfying their minds about these dogs,
+appears to be never overcome by time.  The same dogs must encounter them
+over and over again, as they trudge along in their off-minutes behind the
+legs of the show and beside the drum; but all dogs seem to suspect their
+frills and jackets, and to sniff at them as if they thought those
+articles of personal adornment, an eruption—a something in the nature of
+mange, perhaps.  From this Covent-garden window of mine I noticed a
+country dog, only the other day, who had come up to Covent-garden Market
+under a cart, and had broken his cord, an end of which he still trailed
+along with him.  He loitered about the corners of the four streets
+commanded by my window; and bad London dogs came up, and told him lies
+that he didn’t believe; and worse London dogs came up, and made proposals
+to him to go and steal in the market, which his principles rejected; and
+the ways of the town confused him, and he crept aside and lay down in a
+doorway.  He had scarcely got a wink of sleep, when up comes Punch with
+Toby.  He was darting to Toby for consolation and advice, when he saw the
+frill, and stopped, in the middle of the street, appalled.  The show was
+pitched, Toby retired behind the drapery, the audience formed, the drum
+and pipes struck up.  My country dog remained immovable, intently staring
+at these strange appearances, until Toby opened the drama by appearing on
+his ledge, and to him entered Punch, who put a tobacco-pipe into Toby’s
+mouth.  At this spectacle, the country dog threw up his head, gave one
+terrible howl, and fled due west.
+
+We talk of men keeping dogs, but we might often talk more expressively of
+dogs keeping men.  I know a bull-dog in a shy corner of Hammersmith who
+keeps a man.  He keeps him up a yard, and makes him go to public-houses
+and lay wagers on him, and obliges him to lean against posts and look at
+him, and forces him to neglect work for him, and keeps him under rigid
+coercion.  I once knew a fancy terrier who kept a gentleman—a gentleman
+who had been brought up at Oxford, too.  The dog kept the gentleman
+entirely for his glorification, and the gentleman never talked about
+anything but the terrier.  This, however, was not in a shy neighbourhood,
+and is a digression consequently.
+
+There are a great many dogs in shy neighbourhoods, who keep boys.  I have
+my eye on a mongrel in Somerstown who keeps three boys.  He feigns that
+he can bring down sparrows, and unburrow rats (he can do neither), and he
+takes the boys out on sporting pretences into all sorts of suburban
+fields.  He has likewise made them believe that he possesses some
+mysterious knowledge of the art of fishing, and they consider themselves
+incompletely equipped for the Hampstead ponds, with a pickle-jar and
+wide-mouthed bottle, unless he is with them and barking tremendously.
+There is a dog residing in the Borough of Southwark who keeps a blind
+man.  He may be seen, most days, in Oxford-street, haling the blind man
+away on expeditions wholly uncontemplated by, and unintelligible to, the
+man: wholly of the dog’s conception and execution.  Contrariwise, when
+the man has projects, the dog will sit down in a crowded thoroughfare and
+meditate.  I saw him yesterday, wearing the money-tray like an easy
+collar, instead of offering it to the public, taking the man against his
+will, on the invitation of a disreputable cur, apparently to visit a dog
+at Harrow—he was so intent on that direction.  The north wall of
+Burlington House Gardens, between the Arcade and the Albany, offers a shy
+spot for appointments among blind men at about two or three o’clock in
+the afternoon.  They sit (very uncomfortably) on a sloping stone there,
+and compare notes.  Their dogs may always be observed at the same time,
+openly disparaging the men they keep, to one another, and settling where
+they shall respectively take their men when they begin to move again.  At
+a small butcher’s, in a shy neighbourhood (there is no reason for
+suppressing the name; it is by Notting-hill, and gives upon the district
+called the Potteries), I know a shaggy black and white dog who keeps a
+drover.  He is a dog of an easy disposition, and too frequently allows
+this drover to get drunk.  On these occasions, it is the dog’s custom to
+sit outside the public-house, keeping his eye on a few sheep, and
+thinking.  I have seen him with six sheep, plainly casting up in his mind
+how many he began with when he left the market, and at what places he has
+left the rest.  I have seen him perplexed by not being able to account to
+himself for certain particular sheep.  A light has gradually broken on
+him, he has remembered at what butcher’s he left them, and in a burst of
+grave satisfaction has caught a fly off his nose, and shown himself much
+relieved.  If I could at any time have doubted the fact that it was he
+who kept the drover, and not the drover who kept him, it would have been
+abundantly proved by his way of taking undivided charge of the six sheep,
+when the drover came out besmeared with red ochre and beer, and gave him
+wrong directions, which he calmly disregarded.  He has taken the sheep
+entirely into his own hands, has merely remarked with respectful
+firmness, ‘That instruction would place them under an omnibus; you had
+better confine your attention to yourself—you will want it all;’ and has
+driven his charge away, with an intelligence of ears and tail, and a
+knowledge of business, that has left his lout of a man very, very far
+behind.
+
+As the dogs of shy neighbourhoods usually betray a slinking consciousness
+of being in poor circumstances—for the most part manifested in an aspect
+of anxiety, an awkwardness in their play, and a misgiving that somebody
+is going to harness them to something, to pick up a living—so the cats of
+shy neighbourhoods exhibit a strong tendency to relapse into barbarism.
+Not only are they made selfishly ferocious by ruminating on the surplus
+population around them, and on the densely crowded state of all the
+avenues to cat’s meat; not only is there a moral and politico-economical
+haggardness in them, traceable to these reflections; but they evince a
+physical deterioration.  Their linen is not clean, and is wretchedly got
+up; their black turns rusty, like old mourning; they wear very
+indifferent fur; and take to the shabbiest cotton velvet, instead of silk
+velvet.  I am on terms of recognition with several small streets of cats,
+about the Obelisk in Saint George’s Fields, and also in the vicinity of
+Clerkenwell-green, and also in the back settlements of Drury-lane.  In
+appearance, they are very like the women among whom they live.  They seem
+to turn out of their unwholesome beds into the street, without any
+preparation.  They leave their young families to stagger about the
+gutters, unassisted, while they frouzily quarrel and swear and scratch
+and spit, at street corners.  In particular, I remark that when they are
+about to increase their families (an event of frequent recurrence) the
+resemblance is strongly expressed in a certain dusty dowdiness,
+down-at-heel self-neglect, and general giving up of things.  I cannot
+honestly report that I have ever seen a feline matron of this class
+washing her face when in an interesting condition.
+
+Not to prolong these notes of uncommercial travel among the lower animals
+of shy neighbourhoods, by dwelling at length upon the exasperated
+moodiness of the tom-cats, and their resemblance in many respects to a
+man and a brother, I will come to a close with a word on the fowls of the
+same localities.
+
+That anything born of an egg and invested with wings, should have got to
+the pass that it hops contentedly down a ladder into a cellar, and calls
+_that_ going home, is a circumstance so amazing as to leave one nothing
+more in this connexion to wonder at.  Otherwise I might wonder at the
+completeness with which these fowls have become separated from all the
+birds of the air—have taken to grovelling in bricks and mortar and
+mud—have forgotten all about live trees, and make roosting-places of
+shop-boards, barrows, oyster-tubs, bulk-heads, and door-scrapers.  I
+wonder at nothing concerning them, and take them as they are.  I accept
+as products of Nature and things of course, a reduced Bantam family of my
+acquaintance in the Hackney-road, who are incessantly at the
+pawnbroker’s.  I cannot say that they enjoy themselves, for they are of a
+melancholy temperament; but what enjoyment they are capable of, they
+derive from crowding together in the pawnbroker’s side-entry.  Here, they
+are always to be found in a feeble flutter, as if they were newly come
+down in the world, and were afraid of being identified.  I know a low
+fellow, originally of a good family from Dorking, who takes his whole
+establishment of wives, in single file, in at the door of the jug
+Department of a disorderly tavern near the Haymarket, manœuvres them
+among the company’s legs, emerges with them at the Bottle Entrance, and
+so passes his life: seldom, in the season, going to bed before two in the
+morning.  Over Waterloo-bridge, there is a shabby old speckled couple
+(they belong to the wooden French-bedstead, washing-stand, and
+towel-horse-making trade), who are always trying to get in at the door of
+a chapel.  Whether the old lady, under a delusion reminding one of Mrs.
+Southcott, has an idea of entrusting an egg to that particular
+denomination, or merely understands that she has no business in the
+building and is consequently frantic to enter it, I cannot determine; but
+she is constantly endeavouring to undermine the principal door: while her
+partner, who is infirm upon his legs, walks up and down, encouraging her
+and defying the Universe.  But, the family I have been best acquainted
+with, since the removal from this trying sphere of a Chinese circle at
+Brentford, reside in the densest part of Bethnal-green.  Their
+abstraction from the objects among which they live, or rather their
+conviction that those objects have all come into existence in express
+subservience to fowls, has so enchanted me, that I have made them the
+subject of many journeys at divers hours.  After careful observation of
+the two lords and the ten ladies of whom this family consists, I have
+come to the conclusion that their opinions are represented by the leading
+lord and leading lady: the latter, as I judge, an aged personage,
+afflicted with a paucity of feather and visibility of quill, that gives
+her the appearance of a bundle of office pens.  When a railway goods van
+that would crush an elephant comes round the corner, tearing over these
+fowls, they emerge unharmed from under the horses, perfectly satisfied
+that the whole rush was a passing property in the air, which may have
+left something to eat behind it.  They look upon old shoes, wrecks of
+kettles and saucepans, and fragments of bonnets, as a kind of meteoric
+discharge, for fowls to peck at.  Peg-tops and hoops they account, I
+think, as a sort of hail; shuttlecocks, as rain, or dew.  Gaslight comes
+quite as natural to them as any other light; and I have more than a
+suspicion that, in the minds of the two lords, the early public-house at
+the corner has superseded the sun.  I have established it as a certain
+fact, that they always begin to crow when the public-house shutters begin
+to be taken down, and that they salute the potboy, the instant he appears
+to perform that duty, as if he were Phoebus in person.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+TRAMPS
+
+
+THE chance use of the word ‘Tramp’ in my last paper, brought that
+numerous fraternity so vividly before my mind’s eye, that I had no sooner
+laid down my pen than a compulsion was upon me to take it up again, and
+make notes of the Tramps whom I perceived on all the summer roads in all
+directions.
+
+Whenever a tramp sits down to rest by the wayside, he sits with his legs
+in a dry ditch; and whenever he goes to sleep (which is very often
+indeed), he goes to sleep on his back.  Yonder, by the high road, glaring
+white in the bright sunshine, lies, on the dusty bit of turf under the
+bramble-bush that fences the coppice from the highway, the tramp of the
+order savage, fast asleep.  He lies on the broad of his back, with his
+face turned up to the sky, and one of his ragged arms loosely thrown
+across his face.  His bundle (what can be the contents of that mysterious
+bundle, to make it worth his while to carry it about?) is thrown down
+beside him, and the waking woman with him sits with her legs in the
+ditch, and her back to the road.  She wears her bonnet rakishly perched
+on the front of her head, to shade her face from the sun in walking, and
+she ties her skirts round her in conventionally tight tramp-fashion with
+a sort of apron.  You can seldom catch sight of her, resting thus,
+without seeing her in a despondently defiant manner doing something to
+her hair or her bonnet, and glancing at you between her fingers.  She
+does not often go to sleep herself in the daytime, but will sit for any
+length of time beside the man.  And his slumberous propensities would not
+seem to be referable to the fatigue of carrying the bundle, for she
+carries it much oftener and further than he.  When they are afoot, you
+will mostly find him slouching on ahead, in a gruff temper, while she
+lags heavily behind with the burden.  He is given to personally
+correcting her, too—which phase of his character develops itself
+oftenest, on benches outside alehouse doors—and she appears to become
+strongly attached to him for these reasons; it may usually be noticed
+that when the poor creature has a bruised face, she is the most
+affectionate.  He has no occupation whatever, this order of tramp, and
+has no object whatever in going anywhere.  He will sometimes call himself
+a brickmaker, or a sawyer, but only when he takes an imaginary flight.
+He generally represents himself, in a vague way, as looking out for a job
+of work; but he never did work, he never does, and he never will.  It is
+a favourite fiction with him, however (as if he were the most industrious
+character on earth), that _you_ never work; and as he goes past your
+garden and sees you looking at your flowers, you will overhear him growl
+with a strong sense of contrast, ‘_You_ are a lucky hidle devil, _you_
+are!’
+
+The slinking tramp is of the same hopeless order, and has the same
+injured conviction on him that you were born to whatever you possess, and
+never did anything to get it: but he is of a less audacious disposition.
+He will stop before your gate, and say to his female companion with an
+air of constitutional humility and propitiation—to edify any one who may
+be within hearing behind a blind or a bush—‘This is a sweet spot, ain’t
+it?  A lovelly spot!  And I wonder if they’d give two poor footsore
+travellers like me and you, a drop of fresh water out of such a pretty
+gen-teel crib?  We’d take it wery koind on ’em, wouldn’t us?  Wery koind,
+upon my word, us would?’  He has a quick sense of a dog in the vicinity,
+and will extend his modestly-injured propitiation to the dog chained up
+in your yard; remarking, as he slinks at the yard gate, ‘Ah!  You are a
+foine breed o’ dog, too, and _you_ ain’t kep for nothink!  I’d take it
+wery koind o’ your master if he’d elp a traveller and his woife as envies
+no gentlefolk their good fortun, wi’ a bit o’ your broken wittles.  He’d
+never know the want of it, nor more would you.  Don’t bark like that, at
+poor persons as never done you no arm; the poor is down-trodden and broke
+enough without that; O DON’T!’  He generally heaves a prodigious sigh in
+moving away, and always looks up the lane and down the lane, and up the
+road and down the road, before going on.
+
+Both of these orders of tramp are of a very robust habit; let the
+hard-working labourer at whose cottage-door they prowl and beg, have the
+ague never so badly, these tramps are sure to be in good health.
+
+There is another kind of tramp, whom you encounter this bright summer
+day—say, on a road with the sea-breeze making its dust lively, and sails
+of ships in the blue distance beyond the slope of Down.  As you walk
+enjoyingly on, you descry in the perspective at the bottom of a steep
+hill up which your way lies, a figure that appears to be sitting airily
+on a gate, whistling in a cheerful and disengaged manner.  As you
+approach nearer to it, you observe the figure to slide down from the
+gate, to desist from whistling, to uncock its hat, to become tender of
+foot, to depress its head and elevate its shoulders, and to present all
+the characteristics of profound despondency.  Arriving at the bottom of
+the hill and coming close to the figure, you observe it to be the figure
+of a shabby young man.  He is moving painfully forward, in the direction
+in which you are going, and his mind is so preoccupied with his
+misfortunes that he is not aware of your approach until you are close
+upon him at the hill-foot.  When he is aware of you, you discover him to
+be a remarkably well-behaved young man, and a remarkably well-spoken
+young man.  You know him to be well-behaved, by his respectful manner of
+touching his hat: you know him to be well-spoken, by his smooth manner of
+expressing himself.  He says in a flowing confidential voice, and without
+punctuation, ‘I ask your pardon sir but if you would excuse the liberty
+of being so addressed upon the public Iway by one who is almost reduced
+to rags though it as not always been so and by no fault of his own but
+through ill elth in his family and many unmerited sufferings it would be
+a great obligation sir to know the time.’  You give the well-spoken young
+man the time.  The well-spoken young man, keeping well up with you,
+resumes: ‘I am aware sir that it is a liberty to intrude a further
+question on a gentleman walking for his entertainment but might I make so
+bold as ask the favour of the way to Dover sir and about the distance?’
+You inform the well-spoken young man that the way to Dover is straight
+on, and the distance some eighteen miles.  The well-spoken young man
+becomes greatly agitated.  ‘In the condition to which I am reduced,’ says
+he, ‘I could not ope to reach Dover before dark even if my shoes were in
+a state to take me there or my feet were in a state to old out over the
+flinty road and were not on the bare ground of which any gentleman has
+the means to satisfy himself by looking Sir may I take the liberty of
+speaking to you?’  As the well-spoken young man keeps so well up with you
+that you can’t prevent his taking the liberty of speaking to you, he goes
+on, with fluency: ‘Sir it is not begging that is my intention for I was
+brought up by the best of mothers and begging is not my trade I should
+not know sir how to follow it as a trade if such were my shameful wishes
+for the best of mothers long taught otherwise and in the best of omes
+though now reduced to take the present liberty on the Iway Sir my
+business was the law-stationering and I was favourably known to the
+Solicitor-General the Attorney-General the majority of the judges and the
+ole of the legal profession but through ill elth in my family and the
+treachery of a friend for whom I became security and he no other than my
+own wife’s brother the brother of my own wife I was cast forth with my
+tender partner and three young children not to beg for I will sooner die
+of deprivation but to make my way to the sea-port town of Dover where I
+have a relative i in respect not only that will assist me but that would
+trust me with untold gold Sir in appier times and hare this calamity fell
+upon me I made for my amusement when I little thought that I should ever
+need it excepting for my air this’—here the well-spoken young man put his
+hand into his breast—‘this comb!  Sir I implore you in the name of
+charity to purchase a tortoiseshell comb which is a genuine article at
+any price that your humanity may put upon it and may the blessings of a
+ouseless family awaiting with beating arts the return of a husband and a
+father from Dover upon the cold stone seats of London-bridge ever attend
+you Sir may I take the liberty of speaking to you I implore you to buy
+this comb!’  By this time, being a reasonably good walker, you will have
+been too much for the well-spoken young man, who will stop short and
+express his disgust and his want of breath, in a long expectoration, as
+you leave him behind.
+
+Towards the end of the same walk, on the same bright summer day, at the
+corner of the next little town or village, you may find another kind of
+tramp, embodied in the persons of a most exemplary couple whose only
+improvidence appears to have been, that they spent the last of their
+little All on soap.  They are a man and woman, spotless to behold—John
+Anderson, with the frost on his short smock-frock instead of his ‘pow,’
+attended by Mrs. Anderson.  John is over-ostentatious of the frost upon
+his raiment, and wears a curious and, you would say, an almost
+unnecessary demonstration of girdle of white linen wound about his
+waist—a girdle, snowy as Mrs. Anderson’s apron.  This cleanliness was the
+expiring effort of the respectable couple, and nothing then remained to
+Mr. Anderson but to get chalked upon his spade in snow-white copy-book
+characters, HUNGRY! and to sit down here.  Yes; one thing more remained
+to Mr. Anderson—his character; Monarchs could not deprive him of his
+hard-earned character.  Accordingly, as you come up with this spectacle
+of virtue in distress, Mrs. Anderson rises, and with a decent curtsey
+presents for your consideration a certificate from a Doctor of Divinity,
+the reverend the Vicar of Upper Dodgington, who informs his Christian
+friends and all whom it may concern that the bearers, John Anderson and
+lawful wife, are persons to whom you cannot be too liberal.  This
+benevolent pastor omitted no work of his hands to fit the good couple
+out, for with half an eye you can recognise his autograph on the spade.
+
+Another class of tramp is a man, the most valuable part of whose
+stock-in-trade is a highly perplexed demeanour.  He is got up like a
+countryman, and you will often come upon the poor fellow, while he is
+endeavouring to decipher the inscription on a milestone—quite a fruitless
+endeavour, for he cannot read.  He asks your pardon, he truly does (he is
+very slow of speech, this tramp, and he looks in a bewildered way all
+round the prospect while he talks to you), but all of us shold do as we
+wold be done by, and he’ll take it kind, if you’ll put a power man in the
+right road fur to jine his eldest son as has broke his leg bad in the
+masoning, and is in this heere Orspit’l as is wrote down by Squire
+Pouncerby’s own hand as wold not tell a lie fur no man.  He then produces
+from under his dark frock (being always very slow and perplexed) a neat
+but worn old leathern purse, from which he takes a scrap of paper.  On
+this scrap of paper is written, by Squire Pouncerby, of The Grove,
+‘Please to direct the Bearer, a poor but very worthy man, to the Sussex
+County Hospital, near Brighton’—a matter of some difficulty at the
+moment, seeing that the request comes suddenly upon you in the depths of
+Hertfordshire.  The more you endeavour to indicate where Brighton is—when
+you have with the greatest difficulty remembered—the less the devoted
+father can be made to comprehend, and the more obtusely he stares at the
+prospect; whereby, being reduced to extremity, you recommend the faithful
+parent to begin by going to St. Albans, and present him with
+half-a-crown.  It does him good, no doubt, but scarcely helps him
+forward, since you find him lying drunk that same evening in the
+wheelwright’s sawpit under the shed where the felled trees are, opposite
+the sign of the Three Jolly Hedgers.
+
+But, the most vicious, by far, of all the idle tramps, is the tramp who
+pretends to have been a gentleman.  ‘Educated,’ he writes, from the
+village beer-shop in pale ink of a ferruginous complexion; ‘educated at
+Trin. Coll. Cam.—nursed in the lap of affluence—once in my small way the
+pattron of the Muses,’ &c. &c. &c.—surely a sympathetic mind will not
+withhold a trifle, to help him on to the market-town where he thinks of
+giving a Lecture to the _fruges consumere nati_, on things in general?
+This shameful creature lolling about hedge tap-rooms in his ragged
+clothes, now so far from being black that they look as if they never can
+have been black, is more selfish and insolent than even the savage tramp.
+He would sponge on the poorest boy for a farthing, and spurn him when he
+had got it; he would interpose (if he could get anything by it) between
+the baby and the mother’s breast.  So much lower than the company he
+keeps, for his maudlin assumption of being higher, this pitiless rascal
+blights the summer road as he maunders on between the luxuriant hedges;
+where (to my thinking) even the wild convolvulus and rose and
+sweet-briar, are the worse for his going by, and need time to recover
+from the taint of him in the air.
+
+The young fellows who trudge along barefoot, five or six together, their
+boots slung over their shoulders, their shabby bundles under their arms,
+their sticks newly cut from some roadside wood, are not eminently
+prepossessing, but are much less objectionable.  There is a
+tramp-fellowship among them.  They pick one another up at resting
+stations, and go on in companies.  They always go at a fast swing—though
+they generally limp too—and there is invariably one of the company who
+has much ado to keep up with the rest.  They generally talk about horses,
+and any other means of locomotion than walking: or, one of the company
+relates some recent experiences of the road—which are always disputes and
+difficulties.  As for example.  ‘So as I’m a standing at the pump in the
+market, blest if there don’t come up a Beadle, and he ses, “Mustn’t stand
+here,” he ses.  “Why not?” I ses.  “No beggars allowed in this town,” he
+ses.  “Who’s a beggar?” I ses.  “You are,” he ses.  “Who ever see _me_
+beg?  Did _you_?” I ses.  “Then you’re a tramp,” he ses.  “I’d rather be
+that than a Beadle,” I ses.’  (The company express great approval.)
+‘“Would you?” he ses to me.  “Yes, I would,” I ses to him.  “Well,” he
+ses, “anyhow, get out of this town.”  “Why, blow your little town!” I
+ses, “who wants to be in it?  Wot does your dirty little town mean by
+comin’ and stickin’ itself in the road to anywhere?  Why don’t you get a
+shovel and a barrer, and clear your town out o’ people’s way?”’  (The
+company expressing the highest approval and laughing aloud, they all go
+down the hill.)
+
+Then, there are the tramp handicraft men.  Are they not all over England,
+in this Midsummer time?  Where does the lark sing, the corn grow, the
+mill turn, the river run, and they are not among the lights and shadows,
+tinkering, chair-mending, umbrella-mending, clock-mending,
+knife-grinding?  Surely, a pleasant thing, if we were in that condition
+of life, to grind our way through Kent, Sussex, and Surrey.  For the
+worst six weeks or so, we should see the sparks we ground off, fiery
+bright against a background of green wheat and green leaves.  A little
+later, and the ripe harvest would pale our sparks from red to yellow,
+until we got the dark newly-turned land for a background again, and they
+were red once more.  By that time, we should have ground our way to the
+sea cliffs, and the whirr of our wheel would be lost in the breaking of
+the waves.  Our next variety in sparks would be derived from contrast
+with the gorgeous medley of colours in the autumn woods, and, by the time
+we had ground our way round to the heathy lands between Reigate and
+Croydon, doing a prosperous stroke of business all along, we should show
+like a little firework in the light frosty air, and be the next best
+thing to the blacksmith’s forge.  Very agreeable, too, to go on a
+chair-mending tour.  What judges we should be of rushes, and how
+knowingly (with a sheaf and a bottomless chair at our back) we should
+lounge on bridges, looking over at osier-beds!  Among all the innumerable
+occupations that cannot possibly be transacted without the assistance of
+lookers-on, chair-mending may take a station in the first rank.  When we
+sat down with our backs against the barn or the public-house, and began
+to mend, what a sense of popularity would grow upon us!  When all the
+children came to look at us, and the tailor, and the general dealer, and
+the farmer who had been giving a small order at the little saddler’s, and
+the groom from the great house, and the publican, and even the two
+skittle-players (and here note that, howsoever busy all the rest of
+village human-kind may be, there will always be two people with leisure
+to play at skittles, wherever village skittles are), what encouragement
+would be on us to plait and weave!  No one looks at us while we plait and
+weave these words.  Clock-mending again.  Except for the slight
+inconvenience of carrying a clock under our arm, and the monotony of
+making the bell go, whenever we came to a human habitation, what a
+pleasant privilege to give a voice to the dumb cottage-clock, and set it
+talking to the cottage family again!  Likewise we foresee great interest
+in going round by the park plantations, under the overhanging boughs
+(hares, rabbits, partridges, and pheasants, scudding like mad across and
+across the chequered ground before us), and so over the park ladder, and
+through the wood, until we came to the Keeper’s lodge.  Then, would the
+Keeper be discoverable at his door, in a deep nest of leaves, smoking his
+pipe.  Then, on our accosting him in the way of our trade, would he call
+to Mrs. Keeper, respecting ‘t’ould clock’ in the kitchen.  Then, would
+Mrs. Keeper ask us into the lodge, and on due examination we should offer
+to make a good job of it for eighteenpence; which offer, being accepted,
+would set us tinkling and clinking among the chubby, awe-struck little
+Keepers for an hour and more.  So completely to the family’s satisfaction
+would we achieve our work, that the Keeper would mention how that there
+was something wrong with the bell of the turret stable-clock up at the
+Hall, and that if we thought good of going up to the housekeeper on the
+chance of that job too, why he would take us.  Then, should we go, among
+the branching oaks and the deep fern, by silent ways of mystery known to
+the Keeper, seeing the herd glancing here and there as we went along,
+until we came to the old Hall, solemn and grand.  Under the Terrace
+Flower Garden, and round by the stables, would the Keeper take us in, and
+as we passed we should observe how spacious and stately the stables, and
+how fine the painting of the horses’ names over their stalls, and how
+solitary all: the family being in London.  Then, should we find ourselves
+presented to the housekeeper, sitting, in hushed state, at needlework, in
+a bay-window looking out upon a mighty grim red-brick quadrangle, guarded
+by stone lions disrespectfully throwing somersaults over the escutcheons
+of the noble family.  Then, our services accepted and we insinuated with
+a candle into the stable-turret, we should find it to be a mere question
+of pendulum, but one that would hold us until dark.  Then, should we fall
+to work, with a general impression of Ghosts being about, and of pictures
+indoors that of a certainty came out of their frames and ‘walked,’ if the
+family would only own it.  Then, should we work and work, until the day
+gradually turned to dusk, and even until the dusk gradually turned to
+dark.  Our task at length accomplished, we should be taken into an
+enormous servants’ hall, and there regaled with beef and bread, and
+powerful ale.  Then, paid freely, we should be at liberty to go, and
+should be told by a pointing helper to keep round over yinder by the
+blasted ash, and so straight through the woods, till we should see the
+town-lights right afore us.  Then, feeling lonesome, should we desire
+upon the whole, that the ash had not been blasted, or that the helper had
+had the manners not to mention it.  However, we should keep on, all
+right, till suddenly the stable bell would strike ten in the dolefullest
+way, quite chilling our blood, though we had so lately taught him how to
+acquit himself.  Then, as we went on, should we recall old stories, and
+dimly consider what it would be most advisable to do, in the event of a
+tall figure, all in white, with saucer eyes, coming up and saying, ‘I
+want you to come to a churchyard and mend a church clock.  Follow me!’
+Then, should we make a burst to get clear of the trees, and should soon
+find ourselves in the open, with the town-lights bright ahead of us.  So
+should we lie that night at the ancient sign of the Crispin and
+Crispanus, and rise early next morning to be betimes on tramp again.
+
+Bricklayers often tramp, in twos and threes, lying by night at their
+‘lodges,’ which are scattered all over the country.  Bricklaying is
+another of the occupations that can by no means be transacted in rural
+parts, without the assistance of spectators—of as many as can be
+convened.  In thinly-peopled spots, I have known brick-layers on tramp,
+coming up with bricklayers at work, to be so sensible of the
+indispensability of lookers-on, that they themselves have sat up in that
+capacity, and have been unable to subside into the acceptance of a
+proffered share in the job, for two or three days together.  Sometimes,
+the ‘navvy,’ on tramp, with an extra pair of half-boots over his
+shoulder, a bag, a bottle, and a can, will take a similar part in a job
+of excavation, and will look at it without engaging in it, until all his
+money is gone.  The current of my uncommercial pursuits caused me only
+last summer to want a little body of workmen for a certain spell of work
+in a pleasant part of the country; and I was at one time honoured with
+the attendance of as many as seven-and-twenty, who were looking at six.
+
+Who can be familiar with any rustic highway in summer-time, without
+storing up knowledge of the many tramps who go from one oasis of town or
+village to another, to sell a stock in trade, apparently not worth a
+shilling when sold?  Shrimps are a favourite commodity for this kind of
+speculation, and so are cakes of a soft and spongy character, coupled
+with Spanish nuts and brandy balls.  The stock is carried on the head in
+a basket, and, between the head and the basket, are the trestles on which
+the stock is displayed at trading times.  Fleet of foot, but a careworn
+class of tramp this, mostly; with a certain stiffness of neck, occasioned
+by much anxious balancing of baskets; and also with a long, Chinese sort
+of eye, which an overweighted forehead would seem to have squeezed into
+that form.
+
+On the hot dusty roads near seaport towns and great rivers, behold the
+tramping Soldier.  And if you should happen never to have asked yourself
+whether his uniform is suited to his work, perhaps the poor fellow’s
+appearance as he comes distressfully towards you, with his absurdly tight
+jacket unbuttoned, his neck-gear in his hand, and his legs well chafed by
+his trousers of baize, may suggest the personal inquiry, how you think
+_you_ would like it.  Much better the tramping Sailor, although his cloth
+is somewhat too thick for land service.  But, why the tramping
+merchant-mate should put on a black velvet waistcoat, for a chalky
+country in the dog-days, is one of the great secrets of nature that will
+never be discovered.
+
+I have my eye upon a piece of Kentish road, bordered on either side by a
+wood, and having on one hand, between the road-dust and the trees, a
+skirting patch of grass.  Wild flowers grow in abundance on this spot,
+and it lies high and airy, with a distant river stealing steadily away to
+the ocean, like a man’s life.  To gain the milestone here, which the
+moss, primroses, violets, blue-bells, and wild roses, would soon render
+illegible but for peering travellers pushing them aside with their
+sticks, you must come up a steep hill, come which way you may.  So, all
+the tramps with carts or caravans—the Gipsy-tramp, the Show-tramp, the
+Cheap Jack—find it impossible to resist the temptations of the place, and
+all turn the horse loose when they come to it, and boil the pot.  Bless
+the place, I love the ashes of the vagabond fires that have scorched its
+grass!  What tramp children do I see here, attired in a handful of rags,
+making a gymnasium of the shafts of the cart, making a feather-bed of the
+flints and brambles, making a toy of the hobbled old horse who is not
+much more like a horse than any cheap toy would be!  Here, do I encounter
+the cart of mats and brooms and baskets—with all thoughts of business
+given to the evening wind—with the stew made and being served out—with
+Cheap Jack and Dear Jill striking soft music out of the plates that are
+rattled like warlike cymbals when put up for auction at fairs and
+markets—their minds so influenced (no doubt) by the melody of the
+nightingales as they begin to sing in the woods behind them, that if I
+were to propose to deal, they would sell me anything at cost price.  On
+this hallowed ground has it been my happy privilege (let me whisper it),
+to behold the White-haired Lady with the pink eyes, eating meat-pie with
+the Giant: while, by the hedge-side, on the box of blankets which I knew
+contained the snakes, were set forth the cups and saucers and the teapot.
+It was on an evening in August, that I chanced upon this ravishing
+spectacle, and I noticed that, whereas the Giant reclined half concealed
+beneath the overhanging boughs and seemed indifferent to Nature, the
+white hair of the gracious Lady streamed free in the breath of evening,
+and her pink eyes found pleasure in the landscape.  I heard only a single
+sentence of her uttering, yet it bespoke a talent for modest repartee.
+The ill-mannered Giant—accursed be his evil race!—had interrupted the
+Lady in some remark, and, as I passed that enchanted corner of the wood,
+she gently reproved him, with the words, ‘Now, Cobby;’—Cobby! so short a
+name!—‘ain’t one fool enough to talk at a time?’
+
+Within appropriate distance of this magic ground, though not so near it
+as that the song trolled from tap or bench at door, can invade its
+woodland silence, is a little hostelry which no man possessed of a penny
+was ever known to pass in warm weather.  Before its entrance, are certain
+pleasant, trimmed limes; likewise, a cool well, with so musical a
+bucket-handle that its fall upon the bucket rim will make a horse prick
+up his ears and neigh, upon the droughty road half a mile off.  This is a
+house of great resort for haymaking tramps and harvest tramps, insomuch
+that as they sit within, drinking their mugs of beer, their relinquished
+scythes and reaping-hooks glare out of the open windows, as if the whole
+establishment were a family war-coach of Ancient Britons.  Later in the
+season, the whole country-side, for miles and miles, will swarm with
+hopping tramps.  They come in families, men, women, and children, every
+family provided with a bundle of bedding, an iron pot, a number of
+babies, and too often with some poor sick creature quite unfit for the
+rough life, for whom they suppose the smell of the fresh hop to be a
+sovereign remedy.  Many of these hoppers are Irish, but many come from
+London.  They crowd all the roads, and camp under all the hedges and on
+all the scraps of common-land, and live among and upon the hops until
+they are all picked, and the hop-gardens, so beautiful through the
+summer, look as if they had been laid waste by an invading army.  Then,
+there is a vast exodus of tramps out of the country; and if you ride or
+drive round any turn of any road, at more than a foot pace, you will be
+bewildered to find that you have charged into the bosom of fifty
+families, and that there are splashing up all around you, in the utmost
+prodigality of confusion, bundles of bedding, babies, iron pots, and a
+good-humoured multitude of both sexes and all ages, equally divided
+between perspiration and intoxication.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+DULLBOROUGH TOWN
+
+
+IT lately happened that I found myself rambling about the scenes among
+which my earliest days were passed; scenes from which I departed when I
+was a child, and which I did not revisit until I was a man.  This is no
+uncommon chance, but one that befalls some of us any day; perhaps it may
+not be quite uninteresting to compare notes with the reader respecting an
+experience so familiar and a journey so uncommercial.
+
+I call my boyhood’s home (and I feel like a Tenor in an English Opera
+when I mention it) Dullborough.  Most of us come from Dullborough who
+come from a country town.
+
+As I left Dullborough in the days when there were no railroads in the
+land, I left it in a stage-coach.  Through all the years that have since
+passed, have I ever lost the smell of the damp straw in which I was
+packed—like game—and forwarded, carriage paid, to the Cross Keys,
+Wood-street, Cheapside, London?  There was no other inside passenger, and
+I consumed my sandwiches in solitude and dreariness, and it rained hard
+all the way, and I thought life sloppier than I had expected to find it.
+
+With this tender remembrance upon me, I was cavalierly shunted back into
+Dullborough the other day, by train.  My ticket had been previously
+collected, like my taxes, and my shining new portmanteau had had a great
+plaster stuck upon it, and I had been defied by Act of Parliament to
+offer an objection to anything that was done to it, or me, under a
+penalty of not less than forty shillings or more than five pounds,
+compoundable for a term of imprisonment.  When I had sent my disfigured
+property on to the hotel, I began to look about me; and the first
+discovery I made, was, that the Station had swallowed up the
+playing-field.
+
+It was gone.  The two beautiful hawthorn-trees, the hedge, the turf, and
+all those buttercups and daisies, had given place to the stoniest of
+jolting roads: while, beyond the Station, an ugly dark monster of a
+tunnel kept its jaws open, as if it had swallowed them and were ravenous
+for more destruction.  The coach that had carried me away, was
+melodiously called Timpson’s Blue-Eyed Maid, and belonged to Timpson, at
+the coach-office up-street; the locomotive engine that had brought me
+back, was called severely No. 97, and belonged to S.E.R., and was
+spitting ashes and hot water over the blighted ground.
+
+When I had been let out at the platform-door, like a prisoner whom his
+turnkey grudgingly released, I looked in again over the low wall, at the
+scene of departed glories.  Here, in the haymaking time, had I been
+delivered from the dungeons of Seringapatam, an immense pile (of
+haycock), by my own countrymen, the victorious British (boy next door and
+his two cousins), and had been recognised with ecstasy by my affianced
+one (Miss Green), who had come all the way from England (second house in
+the terrace) to ransom me, and marry me.  Here, had I first heard in
+confidence, from one whose father was greatly connected, being under
+Government, of the existence of a terrible banditti, called ‘The
+Radicals,’ whose principles were, that the Prince Regent wore stays, and
+that nobody had a right to any salary, and that the army and navy ought
+to be put down—horrors at which I trembled in my bed, after supplicating
+that the Radicals might be speedily taken and hanged.  Here, too, had we,
+the small boys of Boles’s, had that cricket match against the small boys
+of Coles’s, when Boles and Coles had actually met upon the ground, and
+when, instead of instantly hitting out at one another with the utmost
+fury, as we had all hoped and expected, those sneaks had said
+respectively, ‘I hope Mrs. Boles is well,’ and ‘I hope Mrs. Coles and the
+baby are doing charmingly.’  Could it be that, after all this, and much
+more, the Playing-field was a Station, and No. 97 expectorated boiling
+water and redhot cinders on it, and the whole belonged by Act of
+Parliament to S.E.R.?
+
+As it could be, and was, I left the place with a heavy heart for a walk
+all over the town.  And first of Timpson’s up-street.  When I departed
+from Dullborough in the strawy arms of Timpson’s Blue-Eyed Maid,
+Timpson’s was a moderate-sized coach-office (in fact, a little
+coach-office), with an oval transparency in the window, which looked
+beautiful by night, representing one of Timpson’s coaches in the act of
+passing a milestone on the London road with great velocity, completely
+full inside and out, and all the passengers dressed in the first style of
+fashion, and enjoying themselves tremendously.  I found no such place as
+Timpson’s now—no such bricks and rafters, not to mention the name—no such
+edifice on the teeming earth.  Pickford had come and knocked Timpson’s
+down.  Pickford had not only knocked Timpson’s down, but had knocked two
+or three houses down on each side of Timpson’s, and then had knocked the
+whole into one great establishment with a pair of big gates, in and out
+of which, his (Pickford’s) waggons are, in these days, always rattling,
+with their drivers sitting up so high, that they look in at the
+second-floor windows of the old-fashioned houses in the High-street as
+they shake the town.  I have not the honour of Pickford’s acquaintance,
+but I felt that he had done me an injury, not to say committed an act of
+boyslaughter, in running over my Childhood in this rough manner; and if
+ever I meet Pickford driving one of his own monsters, and smoking a pipe
+the while (which is the custom of his men), he shall know by the
+expression of my eye, if it catches his, that there is something wrong
+between us.
+
+Moreover, I felt that Pickford had no right to come rushing into
+Dullborough and deprive the town of a public picture.  He is not Napoleon
+Bonaparte.  When he took down the transparent stage-coach, he ought to
+have given the town a transparent van.  With a gloomy conviction that
+Pickford is wholly utilitarian and unimaginative, I proceeded on my way.
+
+It is a mercy I have not a red and green lamp and a night-bell at my
+door, for in my very young days I was taken to so many lyings-in that I
+wonder I escaped becoming a professional martyr to them in after-life.  I
+suppose I had a very sympathetic nurse, with a large circle of married
+acquaintance.  However that was, as I continued my walk through
+Dullborough, I found many houses to be solely associated in my mind with
+this particular interest.  At one little greengrocer’s shop, down certain
+steps from the street, I remember to have waited on a lady who had had
+four children (I am afraid to write five, though I fully believe it was
+five) at a birth.  This meritorious woman held quite a reception in her
+room on the morning when I was introduced there, and the sight of the
+house brought vividly to my mind how the four (five) deceased young
+people lay, side by side, on a clean cloth on a chest of drawers;
+reminding me by a homely association, which I suspect their complexion to
+have assisted, of pigs’ feet as they are usually displayed at a neat
+tripe-shop.  Hot candle was handed round on the occasion, and I further
+remembered as I stood contemplating the greengrocer’s, that a
+subscription was entered into among the company, which became extremely
+alarming to my consciousness of having pocket-money on my person.  This
+fact being known to my conductress, whoever she was, I was earnestly
+exhorted to contribute, but resolutely declined: therein disgusting the
+company, who gave me to understand that I must dismiss all expectations
+of going to Heaven.
+
+How does it happen that when all else is change wherever one goes, there
+yet seem, in every place, to be some few people who never alter?  As the
+sight of the greengrocer’s house recalled these trivial incidents of long
+ago, the identical greengrocer appeared on the steps, with his hands in
+his pockets, and leaning his shoulder against the door-post, as my
+childish eyes had seen him many a time; indeed, there was his old mark on
+the door-post yet, as if his shadow had become a fixture there.  It was
+he himself; he might formerly have been an old-looking young man, or he
+might now be a young-looking old man, but there he was.  In walking along
+the street, I had as yet looked in vain for a familiar face, or even a
+transmitted face; here was the very greengrocer who had been weighing and
+handling baskets on the morning of the reception.  As he brought with him
+a dawning remembrance that he had had no proprietary interest in those
+babies, I crossed the road, and accosted him on the subject.  He was not
+in the least excited or gratified, or in any way roused, by the accuracy
+of my recollection, but said, Yes, summut out of the common—he didn’t
+remember how many it was (as if half-a-dozen babes either way made no
+difference)—had happened to a Mrs. What’s-her-name, as once lodged
+there—but he didn’t call it to mind, particular.  Nettled by this
+phlegmatic conduct, I informed him that I had left the town when I was a
+child.  He slowly returned, quite unsoftened, and not without a sarcastic
+kind of complacency, _Had_ I?  Ah!  And did I find it had got on
+tolerably well without me?  Such is the difference (I thought, when I had
+left him a few hundred yards behind, and was by so much in a better
+temper) between going away from a place and remaining in it.  I had no
+right, I reflected, to be angry with the greengrocer for his want of
+interest, I was nothing to him: whereas he was the town, the cathedral,
+the bridge, the river, my childhood, and a large slice of my life, to me.
+
+Of course the town had shrunk fearfully, since I was a child there.  I
+had entertained the impression that the High-street was at least as wide
+as Regent-street, London, or the Italian Boulevard at Paris.  I found it
+little better than a lane.  There was a public clock in it, which I had
+supposed to be the finest clock in the world: whereas it now turned out
+to be as inexpressive, moon-faced, and weak a clock as ever I saw.  It
+belonged to a Town Hall, where I had seen an Indian (who I now suppose
+wasn’t an Indian) swallow a sword (which I now suppose he didn’t).  The
+edifice had appeared to me in those days so glorious a structure, that I
+had set it up in my mind as the model on which the Genie of the Lamp
+built the palace for Aladdin.  A mean little brick heap, like a demented
+chapel, with a few yawning persons in leather gaiters, and in the last
+extremity for something to do, lounging at the door with their hands in
+their pockets, and calling themselves a Corn Exchange!
+
+The Theatre was in existence, I found, on asking the fishmonger, who had
+a compact show of stock in his window, consisting of a sole and a quart
+of shrimps—and I resolved to comfort my mind by going to look at it.
+Richard the Third, in a very uncomfortable cloak, had first appeared to
+me there, and had made my heart leap with terror by backing up against
+the stage-box in which I was posted, while struggling for life against
+the virtuous Richmond.  It was within those walls that I had learnt as
+from a page of English history, how that wicked King slept in war-time on
+a sofa much too short for him, and how fearfully his conscience troubled
+his boots.  There, too, had I first seen the funny countryman, but
+countryman of noble principles, in a flowered waistcoat, crunch up his
+little hat and throw it on the ground, and pull off his coat, saying,
+‘Dom thee, squire, coom on with thy fistes then!’  At which the lovely
+young woman who kept company with him (and who went out gleaning, in a
+narrow white muslin apron with five beautiful bars of five
+different-coloured ribbons across it) was so frightened for his sake,
+that she fainted away.  Many wondrous secrets of Nature had I come to the
+knowledge of in that sanctuary: of which not the least terrific were,
+that the witches in Macbeth bore an awful resemblance to the Thanes and
+other proper inhabitants of Scotland; and that the good King Duncan
+couldn’t rest in his grave, but was constantly coming out of it and
+calling himself somebody else.  To the Theatre, therefore, I repaired for
+consolation.  But I found very little, for it was in a bad and declining
+way.  A dealer in wine and bottled beer had already squeezed his trade
+into the box-office, and the theatrical money was taken—when it came—in a
+kind of meat-safe in the passage.  The dealer in wine and bottled beer
+must have insinuated himself under the stage too; for he announced that
+he had various descriptions of alcoholic drinks ‘in the wood,’ and there
+was no possible stowage for the wood anywhere else.  Evidently, he was by
+degrees eating the establishment away to the core, and would soon have
+sole possession of it.  It was To Let, and hopelessly so, for its old
+purposes; and there had been no entertainment within its walls for a long
+time except a Panorama; and even that had been announced as ‘pleasingly
+instructive,’ and I know too well the fatal meaning and the leaden import
+of those terrible expressions.  No, there was no comfort in the Theatre.
+It was mysteriously gone, like my own youth.  Unlike my own youth, it
+might be coming back some day; but there was little promise of it.
+
+As the town was placarded with references to the Dullborough Mechanics’
+Institution, I thought I would go and look at that establishment next.
+There had been no such thing in the town, in my young day, and it
+occurred to me that its extreme prosperity might have brought adversity
+upon the Drama.  I found the Institution with some difficulty, and should
+scarcely have known that I had found it if I had judged from its external
+appearance only; but this was attributable to its never having been
+finished, and having no front: consequently, it led a modest and retired
+existence up a stable-yard.  It was (as I learnt, on inquiry) a most
+flourishing Institution, and of the highest benefit to the town: two
+triumphs which I was glad to understand were not at all impaired by the
+seeming drawbacks that no mechanics belonged to it, and that it was
+steeped in debt to the chimney-pots.  It had a large room, which was
+approached by an infirm step-ladder: the builder having declined to
+construct the intended staircase, without a present payment in cash,
+which Dullborough (though profoundly appreciative of the Institution)
+seemed unaccountably bashful about subscribing.  The large room had
+cost—or would, when paid for—five hundred pounds; and it had more mortar
+in it and more echoes, than one might have expected to get for the money.
+It was fitted up with a platform, and the usual lecturing tools,
+including a large black board of a menacing appearance.  On referring to
+lists of the courses of lectures that had been given in this thriving
+Hall, I fancied I detected a shyness in admitting that human nature when
+at leisure has any desire whatever to be relieved and diverted; and a
+furtive sliding in of any poor make-weight piece of amusement,
+shame-facedly and edgewise.  Thus, I observed that it was necessary for
+the members to be knocked on the head with Gas, Air, Water, Food, the
+Solar System, the Geological periods, Criticism on Milton, the
+Steam-engine, John Bunyan, and Arrow-Headed Inscriptions, before they
+might be tickled by those unaccountable choristers, the negro singers in
+the court costume of the reign of George the Second.  Likewise, that they
+must be stunned by a weighty inquiry whether there was internal evidence
+in Shakespeare’s works, to prove that his uncle by the mother’s side
+lived for some years at Stoke Newington, before they were brought-to by a
+Miscellaneous Concert.  But, indeed, the masking of entertainment, and
+pretending it was something else—as people mask bedsteads when they are
+obliged to have them in sitting-rooms, and make believe that they are
+book-cases, sofas, chests of drawers, anything rather than bedsteads—was
+manifest even in the pretence of dreariness that the unfortunate
+entertainers themselves felt obliged in decency to put forth when they
+came here.  One very agreeable professional singer, who travelled with
+two professional ladies, knew better than to introduce either of those
+ladies to sing the ballad ‘Comin’ through the Rye’ without prefacing it
+himself, with some general remarks on wheat and clover; and even then, he
+dared not for his life call the song, a song, but disguised it in the
+bill as an ‘Illustration.’  In the library, also—fitted with shelves for
+three thousand books, and containing upwards of one hundred and seventy
+(presented copies mostly), seething their edges in damp plaster—there was
+such a painfully apologetic return of 62 offenders who had read Travels,
+Popular Biography, and mere Fiction descriptive of the aspirations of the
+hearts and souls of mere human creatures like themselves; and such an
+elaborate parade of 2 bright examples who had had down Euclid after the
+day’s occupation and confinement; and 3 who had had down Metaphysics
+after ditto; and I who had had down Theology after ditto; and 4 who had
+worried Grammar, Political Economy, Botany, and Logarithms all at once
+after ditto; that I suspected the boasted class to be one man, who had
+been hired to do it.
+
+Emerging from the Mechanics’ Institution and continuing my walk about the
+town, I still noticed everywhere the prevalence, to an extraordinary
+degree, of this custom of putting the natural demand for amusement out of
+sight, as some untidy housekeepers put dust, and pretending that it was
+swept away.  And yet it was ministered to, in a dull and abortive manner,
+by all who made this feint.  Looking in at what is called in Dullborough
+‘the serious bookseller’s,’ where, in my childhood, I had studied the
+faces of numbers of gentlemen depicted in rostrums with a gaslight on
+each side of them, and casting my eyes over the open pages of certain
+printed discourses there, I found a vast deal of aiming at jocosity and
+dramatic effect, even in them—yes, verily, even on the part of one very
+wrathful expounder who bitterly anathematised a poor little Circus.
+Similarly, in the reading provided for the young people enrolled in the
+Lasso of Love, and other excellent unions, I found the writers generally
+under a distressing sense that they must start (at all events) like
+story-tellers, and delude the young persons into the belief that they
+were going to be interesting.  As I looked in at this window for twenty
+minutes by the clock, I am in a position to offer a friendly
+remonstrance—not bearing on this particular point—to the designers and
+engravers of the pictures in those publications.  Have they considered
+the awful consequences likely to flow from their representations of
+Virtue?  Have they asked themselves the question, whether the terrific
+prospect of acquiring that fearful chubbiness of head, unwieldiness of
+arm, feeble dislocation of leg, crispiness of hair, and enormity of
+shirt-collar, which they represent as inseparable from Goodness, may not
+tend to confirm sensitive waverers, in Evil?  A most impressive example
+(if I had believed it) of what a Dustman and a Sailor may come to, when
+they mend their ways, was presented to me in this same shop-window.  When
+they were leaning (they were intimate friends) against a post, drunk and
+reckless, with surpassingly bad hats on, and their hair over their
+foreheads, they were rather picturesque, and looked as if they might be
+agreeable men, if they would not be beasts.  But, when they had got over
+their bad propensities, and when, as a consequence, their heads had
+swelled alarmingly, their hair had got so curly that it lifted their
+blown-out cheeks up, their coat-cuffs were so long that they never could
+do any work, and their eyes were so wide open that they never could do
+any sleep, they presented a spectacle calculated to plunge a timid nature
+into the depths of Infamy.
+
+But, the clock that had so degenerated since I saw it last, admonished me
+that I had stayed here long enough; and I resumed my walk.
+
+I had not gone fifty paces along the street when I was suddenly brought
+up by the sight of a man who got out of a little phaeton at the doctor’s
+door, and went into the doctor’s house.  Immediately, the air was filled
+with the scent of trodden grass, and the perspective of years opened, and
+at the end of it was a little likeness of this man keeping a wicket, and
+I said, ‘God bless my soul!  Joe Specks!’
+
+Through many changes and much work, I had preserved a tenderness for the
+memory of Joe, forasmuch as we had made the acquaintance of Roderick
+Random together, and had believed him to be no ruffian, but an ingenuous
+and engaging hero.  Scorning to ask the boy left in the phaeton whether
+it was really Joe, and scorning even to read the brass plate on the
+door—so sure was I—I rang the bell and informed the servant maid that a
+stranger sought audience of Mr. Specks.  Into a room, half surgery, half
+study, I was shown to await his coming, and I found it, by a series of
+elaborate accidents, bestrewn with testimonies to Joe.  Portrait of Mr.
+Specks, bust of Mr. Specks, silver cup from grateful patient to Mr.
+Specks, presentation sermon from local clergyman, dedication poem from
+local poet, dinner-card from local nobleman, tract on balance of power
+from local refugee, inscribed _Hommage de l’auteur à Specks_.
+
+When my old schoolfellow came in, and I informed him with a smile that I
+was not a patient, he seemed rather at a loss to perceive any reason for
+smiling in connexion with that fact, and inquired to what was he to
+attribute the honour?  I asked him with another smile, could he remember
+me at all?  He had not (he said) that pleasure.  I was beginning to have
+but a poor opinion of Mr. Specks, when he said reflectively, ‘And yet
+there’s a something too.’  Upon that, I saw a boyish light in his eyes
+that looked well, and I asked him if he could inform me, as a stranger
+who desired to know and had not the means of reference at hand, what the
+name of the young lady was, who married Mr. Random?  Upon that, he said
+‘Narcissa,’ and, after staring for a moment, called me by my name, shook
+me by the hand, and melted into a roar of laughter.  ‘Why, of course,
+you’ll remember Lucy Green,’ he said, after we had talked a little.  ‘Of
+course,’ said I.  ‘Whom do you think she married?’ said he.  ‘You?’ I
+hazarded.  ‘Me,’ said Specks, ‘and you shall see her.’  So I saw her, and
+she was fat, and if all the hay in the world had been heaped upon her, it
+could scarcely have altered her face more than Time had altered it from
+my remembrance of the face that had once looked down upon me into the
+fragrant dungeons of Seringapatam.  But when her youngest child came in
+after dinner (for I dined with them, and we had no other company than
+Specks, Junior, Barrister-at-law, who went away as soon as the cloth was
+removed, to look after the young lady to whom he was going to be married
+next week), I saw again, in that little daughter, the little face of the
+hayfield, unchanged, and it quite touched my foolish heart.  We talked
+immensely, Specks and Mrs. Specks, and I, and we spoke of our old selves
+as though our old selves were dead and gone, and indeed, indeed they
+were—dead and gone as the playing-field that had become a wilderness of
+rusty iron, and the property of S.E.R.
+
+Specks, however, illuminated Dullborough with the rays of interest that I
+wanted and should otherwise have missed in it, and linked its present to
+its past, with a highly agreeable chain.  And in Specks’s society I had
+new occasion to observe what I had before noticed in similar
+communications among other men.  All the schoolfellows and others of old,
+whom I inquired about, had either done superlatively well or
+superlatively ill—had either become uncertificated bankrupts, or been
+felonious and got themselves transported; or had made great hits in life,
+and done wonders.  And this is so commonly the case, that I never can
+imagine what becomes of all the mediocre people of people’s
+youth—especially considering that we find no lack of the species in our
+maturity.  But, I did not propound this difficulty to Specks, for no
+pause in the conversation gave me an occasion.  Nor, could I discover one
+single flaw in the good doctor—when he reads this, he will receive in a
+friendly spirit the pleasantly meant record—except that he had forgotten
+his Roderick Random, and that he confounded Strap with Lieutenant
+Hatchway; who never knew Random, howsoever intimate with Pickle.
+
+When I went alone to the Railway to catch my train at night (Specks had
+meant to go with me, but was inopportunely called out), I was in a more
+charitable mood with Dullborough than I had been all day; and yet in my
+heart I had loved it all day too.  Ah! who was I that I should quarrel
+with the town for being changed to me, when I myself had come back, so
+changed, to it!  All my early readings and early imaginations dated from
+this place, and I took them away so full of innocent construction and
+guileless belief, and I brought them back so worn and torn, so much the
+wiser and so much the worse!
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+NIGHT WALKS
+
+
+SOME years ago, a temporary inability to sleep, referable to a
+distressing impression, caused me to walk about the streets all night,
+for a series of several nights.  The disorder might have taken a long
+time to conquer, if it had been faintly experimented on in bed; but, it
+was soon defeated by the brisk treatment of getting up directly after
+lying down, and going out, and coming home tired at sunrise.
+
+In the course of those nights, I finished my education in a fair amateur
+experience of houselessness.  My principal object being to get through
+the night, the pursuit of it brought me into sympathetic relations with
+people who have no other object every night in the year.
+
+The month was March, and the weather damp, cloudy, and cold.  The sun not
+rising before half-past five, the night perspective looked sufficiently
+long at half-past twelve: which was about my time for confronting it.
+
+The restlessness of a great city, and the way in which it tumbles and
+tosses before it can get to sleep, formed one of the first entertainments
+offered to the contemplation of us houseless people.  It lasted about two
+hours.  We lost a great deal of companionship when the late public-houses
+turned their lamps out, and when the potmen thrust the last brawling
+drunkards into the street; but stray vehicles and stray people were left
+us, after that.  If we were very lucky, a policeman’s rattle sprang and a
+fray turned up; but, in general, surprisingly little of this diversion
+was provided.  Except in the Haymarket, which is the worst kept part of
+London, and about Kent-street in the Borough, and along a portion of the
+line of the Old Kent-road, the peace was seldom violently broken.  But,
+it was always the case that London, as if in imitation of individual
+citizens belonging to it, had expiring fits and starts of restlessness.
+After all seemed quiet, if one cab rattled by, half-a-dozen would surely
+follow; and Houselessness even observed that intoxicated people appeared
+to be magnetically attracted towards each other; so that we knew when we
+saw one drunken object staggering against the shutters of a shop, that
+another drunken object would stagger up before five minutes were out, to
+fraternise or fight with it.  When we made a divergence from the regular
+species of drunkard, the thin-armed, puff-faced, leaden-lipped
+gin-drinker, and encountered a rarer specimen of a more decent
+appearance, fifty to one but that specimen was dressed in soiled
+mourning.  As the street experience in the night, so the street
+experience in the day; the common folk who come unexpectedly into a
+little property, come unexpectedly into a deal of liquor.
+
+At length these flickering sparks would die away, worn out—the last
+veritable sparks of waking life trailed from some late pieman or
+hot-potato man—and London would sink to rest.  And then the yearning of
+the houseless mind would be for any sign of company, any lighted place,
+any movement, anything suggestive of any one being up—nay, even so much
+as awake, for the houseless eye looked out for lights in windows.
+
+Walking the streets under the pattering rain, Houselessness would walk
+and walk and walk, seeing nothing but the interminable tangle of streets,
+save at a corner, here and there, two policemen in conversation, or the
+sergeant or inspector looking after his men.  Now and then in the
+night—but rarely—Houselessness would become aware of a furtive head
+peering out of a doorway a few yards before him, and, coming up with the
+head, would find a man standing bolt upright to keep within the doorway’s
+shadow, and evidently intent upon no particular service to society.
+Under a kind of fascination, and in a ghostly silence suitable to the
+time, Houselessness and this gentleman would eye one another from head to
+foot, and so, without exchange of speech, part, mutually suspicious.
+Drip, drip, drip, from ledge and coping, splash from pipes and
+water-spouts, and by-and-by the houseless shadow would fall upon the
+stones that pave the way to Waterloo-bridge; it being in the houseless
+mind to have a halfpenny worth of excuse for saying ‘Good-night’ to the
+toll-keeper, and catching a glimpse of his fire.  A good fire and a good
+great-coat and a good woollen neck-shawl, were comfortable things to see
+in conjunction with the toll-keeper; also his brisk wakefulness was
+excellent company when he rattled the change of halfpence down upon that
+metal table of his, like a man who defied the night, with all its
+sorrowful thoughts, and didn’t care for the coming of dawn.  There was
+need of encouragement on the threshold of the bridge, for the bridge was
+dreary.  The chopped-up murdered man, had not been lowered with a rope
+over the parapet when those nights were; he was alive, and slept then
+quietly enough most likely, and undisturbed by any dream of where he was
+to come.  But the river had an awful look, the buildings on the banks
+were muffled in black shrouds, and the reflected lights seemed to
+originate deep in the water, as if the spectres of suicides were holding
+them to show where they went down.  The wild moon and clouds were as
+restless as an evil conscience in a tumbled bed, and the very shadow of
+the immensity of London seemed to lie oppressively upon the river.
+
+Between the bridge and the two great theatres, there was but the distance
+of a few hundred paces, so the theatres came next.  Grim and black
+within, at night, those great dry Wells, and lonesome to imagine, with
+the rows of faces faded out, the lights extinguished, and the seats all
+empty.  One would think that nothing in them knew itself at such a time
+but Yorick’s skull.  In one of my night walks, as the church steeples
+were shaking the March winds and rain with the strokes of Four, I passed
+the outer boundary of one of these great deserts, and entered it.  With a
+dim lantern in my hand, I groped my well-known way to the stage and
+looked over the orchestra—which was like a great grave dug for a time of
+pestilence—into the void beyond.  A dismal cavern of an immense aspect,
+with the chandelier gone dead like everything else, and nothing visible
+through mist and fog and space, but tiers of winding-sheets.  The ground
+at my feet where, when last there, I had seen the peasantry of Naples
+dancing among the vines, reckless of the burning mountain which
+threatened to overwhelm them, was now in possession of a strong serpent
+of engine-hose, watchfully lying in wait for the serpent Fire, and ready
+to fly at it if it showed its forked tongue.  A ghost of a watchman,
+carrying a faint corpse candle, haunted the distant upper gallery and
+flitted away.  Retiring within the proscenium, and holding my light above
+my head towards the rolled-up curtain—green no more, but black as
+ebony—my sight lost itself in a gloomy vault, showing faint indications
+in it of a shipwreck of canvas and cordage.  Methought I felt much as a
+diver might, at the bottom of the sea.
+
+In those small hours when there was no movement in the streets, it
+afforded matter for reflection to take Newgate in the way, and, touching
+its rough stone, to think of the prisoners in their sleep, and then to
+glance in at the lodge over the spiked wicket, and see the fire and light
+of the watching turnkeys, on the white wall.  Not an inappropriate time
+either, to linger by that wicked little Debtors’ Door—shutting tighter
+than any other door one ever saw—which has been Death’s Door to so many.
+In the days of the uttering of forged one-pound notes by people tempted
+up from the country, how many hundreds of wretched creatures of both
+sexes—many quite innocent—swung out of a pitiless and inconsistent world,
+with the tower of yonder Christian church of Saint Sepulchre monstrously
+before their eyes!  Is there any haunting of the Bank Parlour, by the
+remorseful souls of old directors, in the nights of these later days, I
+wonder, or is it as quiet as this degenerate Aceldama of an Old Bailey?
+
+To walk on to the Bank, lamenting the good old times and bemoaning the
+present evil period, would be an easy next step, so I would take it, and
+would make my houseless circuit of the Bank, and give a thought to the
+treasure within; likewise to the guard of soldiers passing the night
+there, and nodding over the fire.  Next, I went to Billingsgate, in some
+hope of market-people, but it proving as yet too early, crossed
+London-bridge and got down by the water-side on the Surrey shore among
+the buildings of the great brewery.  There was plenty going on at the
+brewery; and the reek, and the smell of grains, and the rattling of the
+plump dray horses at their mangers, were capital company.  Quite
+refreshed by having mingled with this good society, I made a new start
+with a new heart, setting the old King’s Bench prison before me for my
+next object, and resolving, when I should come to the wall, to think of
+poor Horace Kinch, and the Dry Rot in men.
+
+A very curious disease the Dry Rot in men, and difficult to detect the
+beginning of.  It had carried Horace Kinch inside the wall of the old
+King’s Bench prison, and it had carried him out with his feet foremost.
+He was a likely man to look at, in the prime of life, well to do, as
+clever as he needed to be, and popular among many friends.  He was
+suitably married, and had healthy and pretty children.  But, like some
+fair-looking houses or fair-looking ships, he took the Dry Rot.  The
+first strong external revelation of the Dry Rot in men, is a tendency to
+lurk and lounge; to be at street-corners without intelligible reason; to
+be going anywhere when met; to be about many places rather than at any;
+to do nothing tangible, but to have an intention of performing a variety
+of intangible duties to-morrow or the day after.  When this manifestation
+of the disease is observed, the observer will usually connect it with a
+vague impression once formed or received, that the patient was living a
+little too hard.  He will scarcely have had leisure to turn it over in
+his mind and form the terrible suspicion ‘Dry Rot,’ when he will notice a
+change for the worse in the patient’s appearance: a certain slovenliness
+and deterioration, which is not poverty, nor dirt, nor intoxication, nor
+ill-health, but simply Dry Rot.  To this, succeeds a smell as of strong
+waters, in the morning; to that, a looseness respecting money; to that, a
+stronger smell as of strong waters, at all times; to that, a looseness
+respecting everything; to that, a trembling of the limbs, somnolency,
+misery, and crumbling to pieces.  As it is in wood, so it is in men.  Dry
+Rot advances at a compound usury quite incalculable.  A plank is found
+infected with it, and the whole structure is devoted.  Thus it had been
+with the unhappy Horace Kinch, lately buried by a small subscription.
+Those who knew him had not nigh done saying, ‘So well off, so comfortably
+established, with such hope before him—and yet, it is feared, with a
+slight touch of Dry Rot!’ when lo! the man was all Dry Rot and dust.
+
+From the dead wall associated on those houseless nights with this too
+common story, I chose next to wander by Bethlehem Hospital; partly,
+because it lay on my road round to Westminster; partly, because I had a
+night fancy in my head which could be best pursued within sight of its
+walls and dome.  And the fancy was this: Are not the sane and the insane
+equal at night as the sane lie a dreaming?  Are not all of us outside
+this hospital, who dream, more or less in the condition of those inside
+it, every night of our lives?  Are we not nightly persuaded, as they
+daily are, that we associate preposterously with kings and queens,
+emperors and empresses, and notabilities of all sorts?  Do we not nightly
+jumble events and personages and times and places, as these do daily?
+Are we not sometimes troubled by our own sleeping inconsistencies, and do
+we not vexedly try to account for them or excuse them, just as these do
+sometimes in respect of their waking delusions?  Said an afflicted man to
+me, when I was last in a hospital like this, ‘Sir, I can frequently fly.’
+I was half ashamed to reflect that so could I—by night.  Said a woman to
+me on the same occasion, ‘Queen Victoria frequently comes to dine with
+me, and her Majesty and I dine off peaches and maccaroni in our
+night-gowns, and his Royal Highness the Prince Consort does us the honour
+to make a third on horseback in a Field-Marshal’s uniform.’  Could I
+refrain from reddening with consciousness when I remembered the amazing
+royal parties I myself had given (at night), the unaccountable viands I
+had put on table, and my extraordinary manner of conducting myself on
+those distinguished occasions?  I wonder that the great master who knew
+everything, when he called Sleep the death of each day’s life, did not
+call Dreams the insanity of each day’s sanity.
+
+By this time I had left the Hospital behind me, and was again setting
+towards the river; and in a short breathing space I was on
+Westminster-bridge, regaling my houseless eyes with the external walls of
+the British Parliament—the perfection of a stupendous institution, I
+know, and the admiration of all surrounding nations and succeeding ages,
+I do not doubt, but perhaps a little the better now and then for being
+pricked up to its work.  Turning off into Old Palace-yard, the Courts of
+Law kept me company for a quarter of an hour; hinting in low whispers
+what numbers of people they were keeping awake, and how intensely
+wretched and horrible they were rendering the small hours to unfortunate
+suitors.  Westminster Abbey was fine gloomy society for another quarter
+of an hour; suggesting a wonderful procession of its dead among the dark
+arches and pillars, each century more amazed by the century following it
+than by all the centuries going before.  And indeed in those houseless
+night walks—which even included cemeteries where watchmen went round
+among the graves at stated times, and moved the tell-tale handle of an
+index which recorded that they had touched it at such an hour—it was a
+solemn consideration what enormous hosts of dead belong to one old great
+city, and how, if they were raised while the living slept, there would
+not be the space of a pin’s point in all the streets and ways for the
+living to come out into.  Not only that, but the vast armies of dead
+would overflow the hills and valleys beyond the city, and would stretch
+away all round it, God knows how far.
+
+When a church clock strikes, on houseless ears in the dead of the night,
+it may be at first mistaken for company and hailed as such.  But, as the
+spreading circles of vibration, which you may perceive at such a time
+with great clearness, go opening out, for ever and ever afterwards
+widening perhaps (as the philosopher has suggested) in eternal space, the
+mistake is rectified and the sense of loneliness is profounder.  Once—it
+was after leaving the Abbey and turning my face north—I came to the great
+steps of St. Martin’s church as the clock was striking Three.  Suddenly,
+a thing that in a moment more I should have trodden upon without seeing,
+rose up at my feet with a cry of loneliness and houselessness, struck out
+of it by the bell, the like of which I never heard.  We then stood face
+to face looking at one another, frightened by one another.  The creature
+was like a beetle-browed hair-lipped youth of twenty, and it had a loose
+bundle of rags on, which it held together with one of its hands.  It
+shivered from head to foot, and its teeth chattered, and as it stared at
+me—persecutor, devil, ghost, whatever it thought me—it made with its
+whining mouth as if it were snapping at me, like a worried dog.
+Intending to give this ugly object money, I put out my hand to stay
+it—for it recoiled as it whined and snapped—and laid my hand upon its
+shoulder.  Instantly, it twisted out of its garment, like the young man
+in the New Testament, and left me standing alone with its rags in my
+hands.
+
+Covent-garden Market, when it was market morning, was wonderful company.
+The great waggons of cabbages, with growers’ men and boys lying asleep
+under them, and with sharp dogs from market-garden neighbourhoods looking
+after the whole, were as good as a party.  But one of the worst night
+sights I know in London, is to be found in the children who prowl about
+this place; who sleep in the baskets, fight for the offal, dart at any
+object they think they can lay their thieving hands on, dive under the
+carts and barrows, dodge the constables, and are perpetually making a
+blunt pattering on the pavement of the Piazza with the rain of their
+naked feet.  A painful and unnatural result comes of the comparison one
+is forced to institute between the growth of corruption as displayed in
+the so much improved and cared for fruits of the earth, and the growth of
+corruption as displayed in these all uncared for (except inasmuch as
+ever-hunted) savages.
+
+There was early coffee to be got about Covent-garden Market, and that was
+more company—warm company, too, which was better.  Toast of a very
+substantial quality, was likewise procurable: though the towzled-headed
+man who made it, in an inner chamber within the coffee-room, hadn’t got
+his coat on yet, and was so heavy with sleep that in every interval of
+toast and coffee he went off anew behind the partition into complicated
+cross-roads of choke and snore, and lost his way directly.  Into one of
+these establishments (among the earliest) near Bow-street, there came one
+morning as I sat over my houseless cup, pondering where to go next, a man
+in a high and long snuff-coloured coat, and shoes, and, to the best of my
+belief, nothing else but a hat, who took out of his hat a large cold meat
+pudding; a meat pudding so large that it was a very tight fit, and
+brought the lining of the hat out with it.  This mysterious man was known
+by his pudding, for on his entering, the man of sleep brought him a pint
+of hot tea, a small loaf, and a large knife and fork and plate.  Left to
+himself in his box, he stood the pudding on the bare table, and, instead
+of cutting it, stabbed it, overhand, with the knife, like a mortal enemy;
+then took the knife out, wiped it on his sleeve, tore the pudding asunder
+with his fingers, and ate it all up.  The remembrance of this man with
+the pudding remains with me as the remembrance of the most spectral
+person my houselessness encountered.  Twice only was I in that
+establishment, and twice I saw him stalk in (as I should say, just out of
+bed, and presently going back to bed), take out his pudding, stab his
+pudding, wipe the dagger, and eat his pudding all up.  He was a man whose
+figure promised cadaverousness, but who had an excessively red face,
+though shaped like a horse’s.  On the second occasion of my seeing him,
+he said huskily to the man of sleep, ‘Am I red to-night?’  ‘You are,’ he
+uncompromisingly answered.  ‘My mother,’ said the spectre, ‘was a
+red-faced woman that liked drink, and I looked at her hard when she laid
+in her coffin, and I took the complexion.’  Somehow, the pudding seemed
+an unwholesome pudding after that, and I put myself in its way no more.
+
+When there was no market, or when I wanted variety, a railway terminus
+with the morning mails coming in, was remunerative company.  But like
+most of the company to be had in this world, it lasted only a very short
+time.  The station lamps would burst out ablaze, the porters would emerge
+from places of concealment, the cabs and trucks would rattle to their
+places (the post-office carts were already in theirs), and, finally, the
+bell would strike up, and the train would come banging in.  But there
+were few passengers and little luggage, and everything scuttled away with
+the greatest expedition.  The locomotive post-offices, with their great
+nets—as if they had been dragging the country for bodies—would fly open
+as to their doors, and would disgorge a smell of lamp, an exhausted
+clerk, a guard in a red coat, and their bags of letters; the engine would
+blow and heave and perspire, like an engine wiping its forehead and
+saying what a run it had had; and within ten minutes the lamps were out,
+and I was houseless and alone again.
+
+But now, there were driven cattle on the high road near, wanting (as
+cattle always do) to turn into the midst of stone walls, and squeeze
+themselves through six inches’ width of iron railing, and getting their
+heads down (also as cattle always do) for tossing-purchase at quite
+imaginary dogs, and giving themselves and every devoted creature
+associated with them a most extraordinary amount of unnecessary trouble.
+Now, too, the conscious gas began to grow pale with the knowledge that
+daylight was coming, and straggling workpeople were already in the
+streets, and, as waking life had become extinguished with the last
+pieman’s sparks, so it began to be rekindled with the fires of the first
+street-corner breakfast-sellers.  And so by faster and faster degrees,
+until the last degrees were very fast, the day came, and I was tired and
+could sleep.  And it is not, as I used to think, going home at such
+times, the least wonderful thing in London, that in the real desert
+region of the night, the houseless wanderer is alone there.  I knew well
+enough where to find Vice and Misfortune of all kinds, if I had chosen;
+but they were put out of sight, and my houselessness had many miles upon
+miles of streets in which it could, and did, have its own solitary way.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+CHAMBERS
+
+
+HAVING occasion to transact some business with a solicitor who occupies a
+highly suicidal set of chambers in Gray’s Inn, I afterwards took a turn
+in the large square of that stronghold of Melancholy, reviewing, with
+congenial surroundings, my experiences of Chambers.
+
+I began, as was natural, with the Chambers I had just left.  They were an
+upper set on a rotten staircase, with a mysterious bunk or bulkhead on
+the landing outside them, of a rather nautical and Screw Collier-like
+appearance than otherwise, and painted an intense black.  Many dusty
+years have passed since the appropriation of this Davy Jones’s locker to
+any purpose, and during the whole period within the memory of living man,
+it has been hasped and padlocked.  I cannot quite satisfy my mind whether
+it was originally meant for the reception of coals, or bodies, or as a
+place of temporary security for the plunder ‘looted’ by laundresses; but
+I incline to the last opinion.  It is about breast high, and usually
+serves as a bulk for defendants in reduced circumstances to lean against
+and ponder at, when they come on the hopeful errand of trying to make an
+arrangement without money—under which auspicious circumstances it mostly
+happens that the legal gentleman they want to see, is much engaged, and
+they pervade the staircase for a considerable period.  Against this
+opposing bulk, in the absurdest manner, the tomb-like outer door of the
+solicitor’s chambers (which is also of an intense black) stands in dark
+ambush, half open, and half shut, all day.  The solicitor’s apartments
+are three in number; consisting of a slice, a cell, and a wedge.  The
+slice is assigned to the two clerks, the cell is occupied by the
+principal, and the wedge is devoted to stray papers, old game baskets
+from the country, a washing-stand, and a model of a patent Ship’s Caboose
+which was exhibited in Chancery at the commencement of the present
+century on an application for an injunction to restrain infringement.  At
+about half-past nine on every week-day morning, the younger of the two
+clerks (who, I have reason to believe, leads the fashion at Pentonville
+in the articles of pipes and shirts) may be found knocking the dust out
+of his official door-key on the bunk or locker before mentioned; and so
+exceedingly subject to dust is his key, and so very retentive of that
+superfluity, that in exceptional summer weather when a ray of sunlight
+has fallen on the locker in my presence, I have noticed its inexpressive
+countenance to be deeply marked by a kind of Bramah erysipelas or
+small-pox.
+
+This set of chambers (as I have gradually discovered, when I have had
+restless occasion to make inquiries or leave messages, after office
+hours) is under the charge of a lady named Sweeney, in figure extremely
+like an old family-umbrella: whose dwelling confronts a dead wall in a
+court off Gray’s Inn-lane, and who is usually fetched into the passage of
+that bower, when wanted, from some neighbouring home of industry, which
+has the curious property of imparting an inflammatory appearance to her
+visage.  Mrs. Sweeney is one of the race of professed laundresses, and is
+the compiler of a remarkable manuscript volume entitled ‘Mrs. Sweeney’s
+Book,’ from which much curious statistical information may be gathered
+respecting the high prices and small uses of soda, soap, sand, firewood,
+and other such articles.  I have created a legend in my mind—and
+consequently I believe it with the utmost pertinacity—that the late Mr.
+Sweeney was a ticket-porter under the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn,
+and that, in consideration of his long and valuable services, Mrs.
+Sweeney was appointed to her present post.  For, though devoid of
+personal charms, I have observed this lady to exercise a fascination over
+the elderly ticker-porter mind (particularly under the gateway, and in
+corners and entries), which I can only refer to her being one of the
+fraternity, yet not competing with it.  All that need be said concerning
+this set of chambers, is said, when I have added that it is in a large
+double house in Gray’s Inn-square, very much out of repair, and that the
+outer portal is ornamented in a hideous manner with certain stone
+remains, which have the appearance of the dismembered bust, torso, and
+limbs of a petrified bencher.
+
+Indeed, I look upon Gray’s Inn generally as one of the most depressing
+institutions in brick and mortar, known to the children of men.  Can
+anything be more dreary than its arid Square, Sahara Desert of the law,
+with the ugly old tiled-topped tenements, the dirty windows, the bills To
+Let, To Let, the door-posts inscribed like gravestones, the crazy gateway
+giving upon the filthy Lane, the scowling, iron-barred prison-like
+passage into Verulam-buildings, the mouldy red-nosed ticket-porters with
+little coffin plates, and why with aprons, the dry, hard, atomy-like
+appearance of the whole dust-heap?  When my uncommercial travels tend to
+this dismal spot, my comfort is its rickety state.  Imagination gloats
+over the fulness of time when the staircases shall have quite tumbled
+down—they are daily wearing into an ill-savoured powder, but have not
+quite tumbled down yet—when the last old prolix bencher all of the olden
+time, shall have been got out of an upper window by means of a Fire
+Ladder, and carried off to the Holborn Union; when the last clerk shall
+have engrossed the last parchment behind the last splash on the last of
+the mud-stained windows, which, all through the miry year, are pilloried
+out of recognition in Gray’s Inn-lane.  Then, shall a squalid little
+trench, with rank grass and a pump in it, lying between the coffee-house
+and South-square, be wholly given up to cats and rats, and not, as now,
+have its empire divided between those animals and a few briefless
+bipeds—surely called to the Bar by voices of deceiving spirits, seeing
+that they are wanted there by no mortal—who glance down, with eyes better
+glazed than their casements, from their dreary and lacklustre rooms.
+Then shall the way Nor’ Westward, now lying under a short grim colonnade
+where in summer-time pounce flies from law-stationering windows into the
+eyes of laymen, be choked with rubbish and happily become impassable.
+Then shall the gardens where turf, trees, and gravel wear a legal livery
+of black, run rank, and pilgrims go to Gorhambury to see Bacon’s effigy
+as he sat, and not come here (which in truth they seldom do) to see where
+he walked.  Then, in a word, shall the old-established vendor of
+periodicals sit alone in his little crib of a shop behind the Holborn
+Gate, like that lumbering Marius among the ruins of Carthage, who has sat
+heavy on a thousand million of similes.
+
+At one period of my uncommercial career I much frequented another set of
+chambers in Gray’s Inn-square.  They were what is familiarly called ‘a
+top set,’ and all the eatables and drinkables introduced into them
+acquired a flavour of Cockloft.  I have known an unopened Strasbourg pâté
+fresh from Fortnum and Mason’s, to draw in this cockloft tone through its
+crockery dish, and become penetrated with cockloft to the core of its
+inmost truffle in three-quarters of an hour.  This, however, was not the
+most curious feature of those chambers; that, consisted in the profound
+conviction entertained by my esteemed friend Parkle (their tenant) that
+they were clean.  Whether it was an inborn hallucination, or whether it
+was imparted to him by Mrs. Miggot the laundress, I never could
+ascertain.  But, I believe he would have gone to the stake upon the
+question.  Now, they were so dirty that I could take off the distinctest
+impression of my figure on any article of furniture by merely lounging
+upon it for a few moments; and it used to be a private amusement of mine
+to print myself off—if I may use the expression—all over the rooms.  It
+was the first large circulation I had.  At other times I have
+accidentally shaken a window curtain while in animated conversation with
+Parkle, and struggling insects which were certainly red, and were
+certainly not ladybirds, have dropped on the back of my hand.  Yet Parkle
+lived in that top set years, bound body and soul to the superstition that
+they were clean.  He used to say, when congratulated upon them, ‘Well,
+they are not like chambers in one respect, you know; they are clean.’
+Concurrently, he had an idea which he could never explain, that Mrs.
+Miggot was in some way connected with the Church.  When he was in
+particularly good spirits, he used to believe that a deceased uncle of
+hers had been a Dean; when he was poorly and low, he believed that her
+brother had been a Curate.  I and Mrs. Miggot (she was a genteel woman)
+were on confidential terms, but I never knew her to commit herself to any
+distinct assertion on the subject; she merely claimed a proprietorship in
+the Church, by looking when it was mentioned, as if the reference
+awakened the slumbering Past, and were personal.  It may have been his
+amiable confidence in Mrs. Miggot’s better days that inspired my friend
+with his delusion respecting the chambers, but he never wavered in his
+fidelity to it for a moment, though he wallowed in dirt seven years.
+
+Two of the windows of these chambers looked down into the garden; and we
+have sat up there together many a summer evening, saying how pleasant it
+was, and talking of many things.  To my intimacy with that top set, I am
+indebted for three of my liveliest personal impressions of the loneliness
+of life in chambers.  They shall follow here, in order; first, second,
+and third.
+
+First.  My Gray’s Inn friend, on a time, hurt one of his legs, and it
+became seriously inflamed.  Not knowing of his indisposition, I was on my
+way to visit him as usual, one summer evening, when I was much surprised
+by meeting a lively leech in Field-court, Gray’s Inn, seemingly on his
+way to the West End of London.  As the leech was alone, and was of course
+unable to explain his position, even if he had been inclined to do so
+(which he had not the appearance of being), I passed him and went on.
+Turning the corner of Gray’s Inn-square, I was beyond expression amazed
+by meeting another leech—also entirely alone, and also proceeding in a
+westerly direction, though with less decision of purpose.  Ruminating on
+this extraordinary circumstance, and endeavouring to remember whether I
+had ever read, in the Philosophical Transactions or any work on Natural
+History, of a migration of Leeches, I ascended to the top set, past the
+dreary series of closed outer doors of offices and an empty set or two,
+which intervened between that lofty region and the surface.  Entering my
+friend’s rooms, I found him stretched upon his back, like Prometheus
+Bound, with a perfectly demented ticket-porter in attendance on him
+instead of the Vulture: which helpless individual, who was feeble and
+frightened, and had (my friend explained to me, in great choler) been
+endeavouring for some hours to apply leeches to his leg, and as yet had
+only got on two out of twenty.  To this Unfortunate’s distraction between
+a damp cloth on which he had placed the leeches to freshen them, and the
+wrathful adjurations of my friend to ‘Stick ’em on, sir!’ I referred the
+phenomenon I had encountered: the rather as two fine specimens were at
+that moment going out at the door, while a general insurrection of the
+rest was in progress on the table.  After a while our united efforts
+prevailed, and, when the leeches came off and had recovered their
+spirits, we carefully tied them up in a decanter.  But I never heard more
+of them than that they were all gone next morning, and that the
+Out-of-door young man of Bickle, Bush and Bodger, on the ground floor,
+had been bitten and blooded by some creature not identified.  They never
+‘took’ on Mrs. Miggot, the laundress; but, I have always preserved fresh,
+the belief that she unconsciously carried several about her, until they
+gradually found openings in life.
+
+Second.  On the same staircase with my friend Parkle, and on the same
+floor, there lived a man of law who pursued his business elsewhere, and
+used those chambers as his place of residence.  For three or four years,
+Parkle rather knew of him than knew him, but after that—for
+Englishmen—short pause of consideration, they began to speak.  Parkle
+exchanged words with him in his private character only, and knew nothing
+of his business ways, or means.  He was a man a good deal about town, but
+always alone.  We used to remark to one another, that although we often
+encountered him in theatres, concert-rooms, and similar public places, he
+was always alone.  Yet he was not a gloomy man, and was of a decidedly
+conversational turn; insomuch that he would sometimes of an evening
+lounge with a cigar in his mouth, half in and half out of Parkle’s rooms,
+and discuss the topics of the day by the hour.  He used to hint on these
+occasions that he had four faults to find with life; firstly, that it
+obliged a man to be always winding up his watch; secondly, that London
+was too small; thirdly, that it therefore wanted variety; fourthly, that
+there was too much dust in it.  There was so much dust in his own faded
+chambers, certainly, that they reminded me of a sepulchre, furnished in
+prophetic anticipation of the present time, which had newly been brought
+to light, after having remained buried a few thousand years.  One dry,
+hot autumn evening at twilight, this man, being then five years turned of
+fifty, looked in upon Parkle in his usual lounging way, with his cigar in
+his mouth as usual, and said, ‘I am going out of town.’  As he never went
+out of town, Parkle said, ‘Oh indeed!  At last?’  ‘Yes,’ says he, ‘at
+last.  For what is a man to do?  London is so small!  If you go West, you
+come to Hounslow.  If you go East, you come to Bow.  If you go South,
+there’s Brixton or Norwood.  If you go North, you can’t get rid of
+Barnet.  Then, the monotony of all the streets, streets, streets—and of
+all the roads, roads, roads—and the dust, dust, dust!’  When he had said
+this, he wished Parkle a good evening, but came back again and said, with
+his watch in his hand, ‘Oh, I really cannot go on winding up this watch
+over and over again; I wish you would take care of it.’  So, Parkle
+laughed and consented, and the man went out of town.  The man remained
+out of town so long, that his letter-box became choked, and no more
+letters could be got into it, and they began to be left at the lodge and
+to accumulate there.  At last the head-porter decided, on conference with
+the steward, to use his master-key and look into the chambers, and give
+them the benefit of a whiff of air.  Then, it was found that he had
+hanged himself to his bedstead, and had left this written memorandum: ‘I
+should prefer to be cut down by my neighbour and friend (if he will allow
+me to call him so), H. Parkle, Esq.’  This was an end of Parkle’s
+occupancy of chambers.  He went into lodgings immediately.
+
+Third.  While Parkle lived in Gray’s Inn, and I myself was uncommercially
+preparing for the Bar—which is done, as everybody knows, by having a
+frayed old gown put on in a pantry by an old woman in a chronic state of
+Saint Anthony’s fire and dropsy, and, so decorated, bolting a bad dinner
+in a party of four, whereof each individual mistrusts the other three—I
+say, while these things were, there was a certain elderly gentleman who
+lived in a court of the Temple, and was a great judge and lover of port
+wine.  Every day he dined at his club and drank his bottle or two of port
+wine, and every night came home to the Temple and went to bed in his
+lonely chambers.  This had gone on many years without variation, when one
+night he had a fit on coming home, and fell and cut his head deep, but
+partly recovered and groped about in the dark to find the door.  When he
+was afterwards discovered, dead, it was clearly established by the marks
+of his hands about the room that he must have done so.  Now, this chanced
+on the night of Christmas Eve, and over him lived a young fellow who had
+sisters and young country friends, and who gave them a little party that
+night, in the course of which they played at Blindman’s Buff.  They
+played that game, for their greater sport, by the light of the fire only;
+and once, when they were all quietly rustling and stealing about, and the
+blindman was trying to pick out the prettiest sister (for which I am far
+from blaming him), somebody cried, Hark!  The man below must be playing
+Blindman’s Buff by himself to-night!  They listened, and they heard
+sounds of some one falling about and stumbling against furniture, and
+they all laughed at the conceit, and went on with their play, more
+light-hearted and merry than ever.  Thus, those two so different games of
+life and death were played out together, blindfolded, in the two sets of
+chambers.
+
+Such are the occurrences, which, coming to my knowledge, imbued me long
+ago with a strong sense of the loneliness of chambers.  There was a
+fantastic illustration to much the same purpose implicitly believed by a
+strange sort of man now dead, whom I knew when I had not quite arrived at
+legal years of discretion, though I was already in the uncommercial line.
+
+This was a man who, though not more than thirty, had seen the world in
+divers irreconcilable capacities—had been an officer in a South American
+regiment among other odd things—but had not achieved much in any way of
+life, and was in debt, and in hiding.  He occupied chambers of the
+dreariest nature in Lyons Inn; his name, however, was not up on the door,
+or door-post, but in lieu of it stood the name of a friend who had died
+in the chambers, and had given him the furniture.  The story arose out of
+the furniture, and was to this effect:—Let the former holder of the
+chambers, whose name was still upon the door and door-post, be Mr.
+Testator.
+
+Mr. Testator took a set of chambers in Lyons Inn when he had but very
+scanty furniture for his bedroom, and none for his sitting-room.  He had
+lived some wintry months in this condition, and had found it very bare
+and cold.  One night, past midnight, when he sat writing and still had
+writing to do that must be done before he went to bed, he found himself
+out of coals.  He had coals down-stairs, but had never been to his
+cellar; however the cellar-key was on his mantelshelf, and if he went
+down and opened the cellar it fitted, he might fairly assume the coals in
+that cellar to be his.  As to his laundress, she lived among the
+coal-waggons and Thames watermen—for there were Thames watermen at that
+time—in some unknown rat-hole by the river, down lanes and alleys on the
+other side of the Strand.  As to any other person to meet him or obstruct
+him, Lyons Inn was dreaming, drunk, maudlin, moody, betting, brooding
+over bill-discounting or renewing—asleep or awake, minding its own
+affairs.  Mr. Testator took his coal-scuttle in one hand, his candle and
+key in the other, and descended to the dismallest underground dens of
+Lyons Inn, where the late vehicles in the streets became thunderous, and
+all the water-pipes in the neighbourhood seemed to have Macbeth’s Amen
+sticking in their throats, and to be trying to get it out.  After groping
+here and there among low doors to no purpose, Mr. Testator at length came
+to a door with a rusty padlock which his key fitted.  Getting the door
+open with much trouble, and looking in, he found, no coals, but a
+confused pile of furniture.  Alarmed by this intrusion on another man’s
+property, he locked the door again, found his own cellar, filled his
+scuttle, and returned up-stairs.
+
+But the furniture he had seen, ran on castors across and across Mr.
+Testator’s mind incessantly, when, in the chill hour of five in the
+morning, he got to bed.  He particularly wanted a table to write at, and
+a table expressly made to be written at, had been the piece of furniture
+in the foreground of the heap.  When his laundress emerged from her
+burrow in the morning to make his kettle boil, he artfully led up to the
+subject of cellars and furniture; but the two ideas had evidently no
+connexion in her mind.  When she left him, and he sat at his breakfast,
+thinking about the furniture, he recalled the rusty state of the padlock,
+and inferred that the furniture must have been stored in the cellars for
+a long time—was perhaps forgotten—owner dead, perhaps?  After thinking it
+over, a few days, in the course of which he could pump nothing out of
+Lyons Inn about the furniture, he became desperate, and resolved to
+borrow that table.  He did so, that night.  He had not had the table
+long, when he determined to borrow an easy-chair; he had not had that
+long, when he made up his mind to borrow a bookcase; then, a couch; then,
+a carpet and rug.  By that time, he felt he was ‘in furniture stepped in
+so far,’ as that it could be no worse to borrow it all.  Consequently, he
+borrowed it all, and locked up the cellar for good.  He had always locked
+it, after every visit.  He had carried up every separate article in the
+dead of the night, and, at the best, had felt as wicked as a Resurrection
+Man.  Every article was blue and furry when brought into his rooms, and
+he had had, in a murderous and guilty sort of way, to polish it up while
+London slept.
+
+Mr. Testator lived in his furnished chambers two or three years, or more,
+and gradually lulled himself into the opinion that the furniture was his
+own.  This was his convenient state of mind when, late one night, a step
+came up the stairs, and a hand passed over his door feeling for his
+knocker, and then one deep and solemn rap was rapped that might have been
+a spring in Mr. Testator’s easy-chair to shoot him out of it; so promptly
+was it attended with that effect.
+
+With a candle in his hand, Mr. Testator went to the door, and found
+there, a very pale and very tall man; a man who stooped; a man with very
+high shoulders, a very narrow chest, and a very red nose; a
+shabby-genteel man.  He was wrapped in a long thread-bare black coat,
+fastened up the front with more pins than buttons, and under his arm he
+squeezed an umbrella without a handle, as if he were playing bagpipes.
+He said, ‘I ask your pardon, but can you tell me—’ and stopped; his eyes
+resting on some object within the chambers.
+
+‘Can I tell you what?’ asked Mr. Testator, noting his stoppage with quick
+alarm.
+
+‘I ask your pardon,’ said the stranger, ‘but—this is not the inquiry I
+was going to make—_do_ I see in there, any small article of property
+belonging to _me_?’
+
+Mr. Testator was beginning to stammer that he was not aware—when the
+visitor slipped past him, into the chambers.  There, in a goblin way
+which froze Mr. Testator to the marrow, he examined, first, the
+writing-table, and said, ‘Mine;’ then, the easy-chair, and said, ‘Mine;’
+then, the bookcase, and said, ‘Mine;’ then, turned up a corner of the
+carpet, and said, ‘Mine!’ in a word, inspected every item of furniture
+from the cellar, in succession, and said, ‘Mine!’  Towards the end of
+this investigation, Mr. Testator perceived that he was sodden with
+liquor, and that the liquor was gin.  He was not unsteady with gin,
+either in his speech or carriage; but he was stiff with gin in both
+particulars.
+
+Mr. Testator was in a dreadful state, for (according to his making out of
+the story) the possible consequences of what he had done in recklessness
+and hardihood, flashed upon him in their fulness for the first time.
+When they had stood gazing at one another for a little while, he
+tremulously began:
+
+‘Sir, I am conscious that the fullest explanation, compensation, and
+restitution, are your due.  They shall be yours.  Allow me to entreat
+that, without temper, without even natural irritation on your part, we
+may have a little—’
+
+‘Drop of something to drink,’ interposed the stranger.  ‘I am agreeable.’
+
+Mr. Testator had intended to say, ‘a little quiet conversation,’ but with
+great relief of mind adopted the amendment.  He produced a decanter of
+gin, and was bustling about for hot water and sugar, when he found that
+his visitor had already drunk half of the decanter’s contents.  With hot
+water and sugar the visitor drank the remainder before he had been an
+hour in the chambers by the chimes of the church of St. Mary in the
+Strand; and during the process he frequently whispered to himself,
+‘Mine!’
+
+The gin gone, and Mr. Testator wondering what was to follow it, the
+visitor rose and said, with increased stiffness, ‘At what hour of the
+morning, sir, will it be convenient?’  Mr. Testator hazarded, ‘At ten?’
+‘Sir,’ said the visitor, ‘at ten, to the moment, I shall be here.’  He
+then contemplated Mr. Testator somewhat at leisure, and said, ‘God bless
+you!  How is your wife?’  Mr. Testator (who never had a wife) replied
+with much feeling, ‘Deeply anxious, poor soul, but otherwise well.’  The
+visitor thereupon turned and went away, and fell twice in going
+down-stairs.  From that hour he was never heard of.  Whether he was a
+ghost, or a spectral illusion of conscience, or a drunken man who had no
+business there, or the drunken rightful owner of the furniture, with a
+transitory gleam of memory; whether he got safe home, or had no time to
+get to; whether he died of liquor on the way, or lived in liquor ever
+afterwards; he never was heard of more.  This was the story, received
+with the furniture and held to be as substantial, by its second possessor
+in an upper set of chambers in grim Lyons Inn.
+
+It is to be remarked of chambers in general, that they must have been
+built for chambers, to have the right kind of loneliness.  You may make a
+great dwelling-house very lonely, by isolating suites of rooms and
+calling them chambers, but you cannot make the true kind of loneliness.
+In dwelling-houses, there have been family festivals; children have grown
+in them, girls have bloomed into women in them, courtships and marriages
+have taken place in them.  True chambers never were young, childish,
+maidenly; never had dolls in them, or rocking-horses, or christenings, or
+betrothals, or little coffins.  Let Gray’s Inn identify the child who
+first touched hands and hearts with Robinson Crusoe, in any one of its
+many ‘sets,’ and that child’s little statue, in white marble with a
+golden inscription, shall be at its service, at my cost and charge, as a
+drinking fountain for the spirit, to freshen its thirsty square.  Let
+Lincoln’s produce from all its houses, a twentieth of the procession
+derivable from any dwelling-house one-twentieth of its age, of fair young
+brides who married for love and hope, not settlements, and all the
+Vice-Chancellors shall thenceforward be kept in nosegays for nothing, on
+application to the writer hereof.  It is not denied that on the terrace
+of the Adelphi, or in any of the streets of that
+subterranean-stable-haunted spot, or about Bedford-row, or James-street
+of that ilk (a grewsome place), or anywhere among the neighbourhoods that
+have done flowering and have run to seed, you may find Chambers replete
+with the accommodations of Solitude, Closeness, and Darkness, where you
+may be as low-spirited as in the genuine article, and might be as easily
+murdered, with the placid reputation of having merely gone down to the
+sea-side.  But, the many waters of life did run musical in those dry
+channels once;—among the Inns, never.  The only popular legend known in
+relation to any one of the dull family of Inns, is a dark Old Bailey
+whisper concerning Clement’s, and importing how the black creature who
+holds the sun-dial there, was a negro who slew his master and built the
+dismal pile out of the contents of his strong box—for which architectural
+offence alone he ought to have been condemned to live in it.  But, what
+populace would waste fancy upon such a place, or on New Inn, Staple Inn,
+Barnard’s Inn, or any of the shabby crew?
+
+The genuine laundress, too, is an institution not to be had in its
+entirety out of and away from the genuine Chambers.  Again, it is not
+denied that you may be robbed elsewhere.  Elsewhere you may have—for
+money—dishonesty, drunkenness, dirt, laziness, and profound incapacity.
+But the veritable shining-red-faced shameless laundress; the true Mrs.
+Sweeney—in figure, colour, texture, and smell, like the old damp family
+umbrella; the tip-top complicated abomination of stockings, spirits,
+bonnet, limpness, looseness, and larceny; is only to be drawn at the
+fountain-head.  Mrs. Sweeney is beyond the reach of individual art.  It
+requires the united efforts of several men to ensure that great result,
+and it is only developed in perfection under an Honourable Society and in
+an Inn of Court.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+NURSE’S STORIES
+
+
+THERE are not many places that I find it more agreeable to revisit when I
+am in an idle mood, than some places to which I have never been.  For, my
+acquaintance with those spots is of such long standing, and has ripened
+into an intimacy of so affectionate a nature, that I take a particular
+interest in assuring myself that they are unchanged.
+
+I never was in Robinson Crusoe’s Island, yet I frequently return there.
+The colony he established on it soon faded away, and it is uninhabited by
+any descendants of the grave and courteous Spaniards, or of Will Atkins
+and the other mutineers, and has relapsed into its original condition.
+Not a twig of its wicker houses remains, its goats have long run wild
+again, its screaming parrots would darken the sun with a cloud of many
+flaming colours if a gun were fired there, no face is ever reflected in
+the waters of the little creek which Friday swam across when pursued by
+his two brother cannibals with sharpened stomachs.  After comparing notes
+with other travellers who have similarly revisited the Island and
+conscientiously inspected it, I have satisfied myself that it contains no
+vestige of Mr. Atkins’s domesticity or theology, though his track on the
+memorable evening of his landing to set his captain ashore, when he was
+decoyed about and round about until it was dark, and his boat was stove,
+and his strength and spirits failed him, is yet plainly to be traced.  So
+is the hill-top on which Robinson was struck dumb with joy when the
+reinstated captain pointed to the ship, riding within half a mile of the
+shore, that was to bear him away, in the nine-and-twentieth year of his
+seclusion in that lonely place.  So is the sandy beach on which the
+memorable footstep was impressed, and where the savages hauled up their
+canoes when they came ashore for those dreadful public dinners, which led
+to a dancing worse than speech-making.  So is the cave where the flaring
+eyes of the old goat made such a goblin appearance in the dark.  So is
+the site of the hut where Robinson lived with the dog and the parrot and
+the cat, and where he endured those first agonies of solitude,
+which—strange to say—never involved any ghostly fancies; a circumstance
+so very remarkable, that perhaps he left out something in writing his
+record?  Round hundreds of such objects, hidden in the dense tropical
+foliage, the tropical sea breaks evermore; and over them the tropical
+sky, saving in the short rainy season, shines bright and cloudless.
+
+Neither, was I ever belated among wolves, on the borders of France and
+Spain; nor, did I ever, when night was closing in and the ground was
+covered with snow, draw up my little company among some felled trees
+which served as a breastwork, and there fire a train of gunpowder so
+dexterously that suddenly we had three or four score blazing wolves
+illuminating the darkness around us.  Nevertheless, I occasionally go
+back to that dismal region and perform the feat again; when indeed to
+smell the singeing and the frying of the wolves afire, and to see them
+setting one another alight as they rush and tumble, and to behold them
+rolling in the snow vainly attempting to put themselves out, and to hear
+their howlings taken up by all the echoes as well as by all the unseen
+wolves within the woods, makes me tremble.
+
+I was never in the robbers’ cave, where Gil Blas lived, but I often go
+back there and find the trap-door just as heavy to raise as it used to
+be, while that wicked old disabled Black lies everlastingly cursing in
+bed.  I was never in Don Quixote’s study, where he read his books of
+chivalry until he rose and hacked at imaginary giants, and then refreshed
+himself with great draughts of water, yet you couldn’t move a book in it
+without my knowledge, or with my consent.  I was never (thank Heaven) in
+company with the little old woman who hobbled out of the chest and told
+the merchant Abudah to go in search of the Talisman of Oromanes, yet I
+make it my business to know that she is well preserved and as intolerable
+as ever.  I was never at the school where the boy Horatio Nelson got out
+of bed to steal the pears: not because he wanted any, but because every
+other boy was afraid: yet I have several times been back to this Academy,
+to see him let down out of window with a sheet.  So with Damascus, and
+Bagdad, and Brobingnag (which has the curious fate of being usually
+misspelt when written), and Lilliput, and Laputa, and the Nile, and
+Abyssinia, and the Ganges, and the North Pole, and many hundreds of
+places—I was never at them, yet it is an affair of my life to keep them
+intact, and I am always going back to them.
+
+But, when I was in Dullborough one day, revisiting the associations of my
+childhood as recorded in previous pages of these notes, my experience in
+this wise was made quite inconsiderable and of no account, by the
+quantity of places and people—utterly impossible places and people, but
+none the less alarmingly real—that I found I had been introduced to by my
+nurse before I was six years old, and used to be forced to go back to at
+night without at all wanting to go.  If we all knew our own minds (in a
+more enlarged sense than the popular acceptation of that phrase), I
+suspect we should find our nurses responsible for most of the dark
+corners we are forced to go back to, against our wills.
+
+The first diabolical character who intruded himself on my peaceful youth
+(as I called to mind that day at Dullborough), was a certain Captain
+Murderer.  This wretch must have been an off-shoot of the Blue Beard
+family, but I had no suspicion of the consanguinity in those times.  His
+warning name would seem to have awakened no general prejudice against
+him, for he was admitted into the best society and possessed immense
+wealth.  Captain Murderer’s mission was matrimony, and the gratification
+of a cannibal appetite with tender brides.  On his marriage morning, he
+always caused both sides of the way to church to be planted with curious
+flowers; and when his bride said, ‘Dear Captain Murderer, I ever saw
+flowers like these before: what are they called?’ he answered, ‘They are
+called Garnish for house-lamb,’ and laughed at his ferocious practical
+joke in a horrid manner, disquieting the minds of the noble bridal
+company, with a very sharp show of teeth, then displayed for the first
+time.  He made love in a coach and six, and married in a coach and
+twelve, and all his horses were milk-white horses with one red spot on
+the back which he caused to be hidden by the harness.  For, the spot
+_would_ come there, though every horse was milk-white when Captain
+Murderer bought him.  And the spot was young bride’s blood.  (To this
+terrific point I am indebted for my first personal experience of a
+shudder and cold beads on the forehead.)  When Captain Murderer had made
+an end of feasting and revelry, and had dismissed the noble guests, and
+was alone with his wife on the day month after their marriage, it was his
+whimsical custom to produce a golden rolling-pin and a silver pie-board.
+Now, there was this special feature in the Captain’s courtships, that he
+always asked if the young lady could make pie-crust; and if she couldn’t
+by nature or education, she was taught.  Well.  When the bride saw
+Captain Murderer produce the golden rolling-pin and silver pie-board, she
+remembered this, and turned up her laced-silk sleeves to make a pie.  The
+Captain brought out a silver pie-dish of immense capacity, and the
+Captain brought out flour and butter and eggs and all things needful,
+except the inside of the pie; of materials for the staple of the pie
+itself, the Captain brought out none.  Then said the lovely bride, ‘Dear
+Captain Murderer, what pie is this to be?’  He replied, ‘A meat pie.’
+Then said the lovely bride, ‘Dear Captain Murderer, I see no meat.’  The
+Captain humorously retorted, ‘Look in the glass.’  She looked in the
+glass, but still she saw no meat, and then the Captain roared with
+laughter, and suddenly frowning and drawing his sword, bade her roll out
+the crust.  So she rolled out the crust, dropping large tears upon it all
+the time because he was so cross, and when she had lined the dish with
+crust and had cut the crust all ready to fit the top, the Captain called
+out, ‘I see the meat in the glass!’  And the bride looked up at the
+glass, just in time to see the Captain cutting her head off; and he
+chopped her in pieces, and peppered her, and salted her, and put her in
+the pie, and sent it to the baker’s, and ate it all, and picked the
+bones.
+
+Captain Murderer went on in this way, prospering exceedingly, until he
+came to choose a bride from two twin sisters, and at first didn’t know
+which to choose.  For, though one was fair and the other dark, they were
+both equally beautiful.  But the fair twin loved him, and the dark twin
+hated him, so he chose the fair one.  The dark twin would have prevented
+the marriage if she could, but she couldn’t; however, on the night before
+it, much suspecting Captain Murderer, she stole out and climbed his
+garden wall, and looked in at his window through a chink in the shutter,
+and saw him having his teeth filed sharp.  Next day she listened all day,
+and heard him make his joke about the house-lamb.  And that day month, he
+had the paste rolled out, and cut the fair twin’s head off, and chopped
+her in pieces, and peppered her, and salted her, and put her in the pie,
+and sent it to the baker’s, and ate it all, and picked the bones.
+
+Now, the dark twin had had her suspicions much increased by the filing of
+the Captain’s teeth, and again by the house-lamb joke.  Putting all
+things together when he gave out that her sister was dead, she divined
+the truth, and determined to be revenged.  So, she went up to Captain
+Murderer’s house, and knocked at the knocker and pulled at the bell, and
+when the Captain came to the door, said: ‘Dear Captain Murderer, marry me
+next, for I always loved you and was jealous of my sister.’  The Captain
+took it as a compliment, and made a polite answer, and the marriage was
+quickly arranged.  On the night before it, the bride again climbed to his
+window, and again saw him having his teeth filed sharp.  At this sight
+she laughed such a terrible laugh at the chink in the shutter, that the
+Captain’s blood curdled, and he said: ‘I hope nothing has disagreed with
+me!’  At that, she laughed again, a still more terrible laugh, and the
+shutter was opened and search made, but she was nimbly gone, and there
+was no one.  Next day they went to church in a coach and twelve, and were
+married.  And that day month, she rolled the pie-crust out, and Captain
+Murderer cut her head off, and chopped her in pieces, and peppered her,
+and salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent it to the baker’s, and
+ate it all, and picked the bones.
+
+But before she began to roll out the paste she had taken a deadly poison
+of a most awful character, distilled from toads’ eyes and spiders’ knees;
+and Captain Murderer had hardly picked her last bone, when he began to
+swell, and to turn blue, and to be all over spots, and to scream.  And he
+went on swelling and turning bluer, and being more all over spots and
+screaming, until he reached from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall;
+and then, at one o’clock in the morning, he blew up with a loud
+explosion.  At the sound of it, all the milk-white horses in the stables
+broke their halters and went mad, and then they galloped over everybody
+in Captain Murderer’s house (beginning with the family blacksmith who had
+filed his teeth) until the whole were dead, and then they galloped away.
+
+Hundreds of times did I hear this legend of Captain Murderer, in my early
+youth, and added hundreds of times was there a mental compulsion upon me
+in bed, to peep in at his window as the dark twin peeped, and to revisit
+his horrible house, and look at him in his blue and spotty and screaming
+stage, as he reached from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall.  The
+young woman who brought me acquainted with Captain Murderer had a
+fiendish enjoyment of my terrors, and used to begin, I remember—as a sort
+of introductory overture—by clawing the air with both hands, and uttering
+a long low hollow groan.  So acutely did I suffer from this ceremony in
+combination with this infernal Captain, that I sometimes used to plead I
+thought I was hardly strong enough and old enough to hear the story again
+just yet.  But, she never spared me one word of it, and indeed commanded
+the awful chalice to my lips as the only preservative known to science
+against ‘The Black Cat’—a weird and glaring-eyed supernatural Tom, who
+was reputed to prowl about the world by night, sucking the breath of
+infancy, and who was endowed with a special thirst (as I was given to
+understand) for mine.
+
+This female bard—may she have been repaid my debt of obligation to her in
+the matter of nightmares and perspirations!—reappears in my memory as the
+daughter of a shipwright.  Her name was Mercy, though she had none on me.
+There was something of a shipbuilding flavour in the following story.  As
+it always recurs to me in a vague association with calomel pills, I
+believe it to have been reserved for dull nights when I was low with
+medicine.
+
+There was once a shipwright, and he wrought in a Government Yard, and his
+name was Chips.  And his father’s name before him was Chips, and _his_
+father’s name before _him_ was Chips, and they were all Chipses.  And
+Chips the father had sold himself to the Devil for an iron pot and a
+bushel of tenpenny nails and half a ton of copper and a rat that could
+speak; and Chips the grandfather had sold himself to the Devil for an
+iron pot and a bushel of tenpenny nails and half a ton of copper and a
+rat that could speak; and Chips the great-grandfather had disposed of
+himself in the same direction on the same terms; and the bargain had run
+in the family for a long, long time.  So, one day, when young Chips was
+at work in the Dock Slip all alone, down in the dark hold of an old
+Seventy-four that was haled up for repairs, the Devil presented himself,
+and remarked:
+
+    ‘A Lemon has pips,
+    And a Yard has ships,
+    And _I_’ll have Chips!’
+
+(I don’t know why, but this fact of the Devil’s expressing himself in
+rhyme was peculiarly trying to me.)  Chips looked up when he heard the
+words, and there he saw the Devil with saucer eyes that squinted on a
+terrible great scale, and that struck out sparks of blue fire
+continually.  And whenever he winked his eyes, showers of blue sparks
+came out, and his eyelashes made a clattering like flints and steels
+striking lights.  And hanging over one of his arms by the handle was an
+iron pot, and under that arm was a bushel of tenpenny nails, and under
+his other arm was half a ton of copper, and sitting on one of his
+shoulders was a rat that could speak.  So, the Devil said again:
+
+    ‘A Lemon has pips,
+    And a Yard has ships,
+    And _I_’ll have Chips!’
+
+(The invariable effect of this alarming tautology on the part of the Evil
+Spirit was to deprive me of my senses for some moments.)  So, Chips
+answered never a word, but went on with his work.  ‘What are you doing,
+Chips?’ said the rat that could speak.  ‘I am putting in new planks where
+you and your gang have eaten old away,’ said Chips.  ‘But we’ll eat them
+too,’ said the rat that could speak; ‘and we’ll let in the water and
+drown the crew, and we’ll eat them too.’  Chips, being only a shipwright,
+and not a Man-of-war’s man, said, ‘You are welcome to it.’  But he
+couldn’t keep his eyes off the half a ton of copper or the bushel of
+tenpenny nails; for nails and copper are a shipwright’s sweethearts, and
+shipwrights will run away with them whenever they can.  So, the Devil
+said, ‘I see what you are looking at, Chips.  You had better strike the
+bargain.  You know the terms.  Your father before you was well acquainted
+with them, and so were your grandfather and great-grandfather before
+him.’  Says Chips, ‘I like the copper, and I like the nails, and I don’t
+mind the pot, but I don’t like the rat.’  Says the Devil, fiercely, ‘You
+can’t have the metal without him—and _he’s_ a curiosity.  I’m going.’
+Chips, afraid of losing the half a ton of copper and the bushel of nails,
+then said, ‘Give us hold!’  So, he got the copper and the nails and the
+pot and the rat that could speak, and the Devil vanished.  Chips sold the
+copper, and he sold the nails, and he would have sold the pot; but
+whenever he offered it for sale, the rat was in it, and the dealers
+dropped it, and would have nothing to say to the bargain.  So, Chips
+resolved to kill the rat, and, being at work in the Yard one day with a
+great kettle of hot pitch on one side of him and the iron pot with the
+rat in it on the other, he turned the scalding pitch into the pot, and
+filled it full.  Then, he kept his eye upon it till it cooled and
+hardened, and then he let it stand for twenty days, and then he heated
+the pitch again and turned it back into the kettle, and then he sank the
+pot in water for twenty days more, and then he got the smelters to put it
+in the furnace for twenty days more, and then they gave it him out, red
+hot, and looking like red-hot glass instead of iron-yet there was the rat
+in it, just the same as ever!  And the moment it caught his eye, it said
+with a jeer:
+
+    ‘A Lemon has pips,
+    And a Yard has ships,
+    And _I_’ll have Chips!’
+
+(For this Refrain I had waited since its last appearance, with
+inexpressible horror, which now culminated.)  Chips now felt certain in
+his own mind that the rat would stick to him; the rat, answering his
+thought, said, ‘I will—like pitch!’
+
+Now, as the rat leaped out of the pot when it had spoken, and made off,
+Chips began to hope that it wouldn’t keep its word.  But, a terrible
+thing happened next day.  For, when dinner-time came, and the Dock-bell
+rang to strike work, he put his rule into the long pocket at the side of
+his trousers, and there he found a rat—not that rat, but another rat.
+And in his hat, he found another; and in his pocket-handkerchief,
+another; and in the sleeves of his coat, when he pulled it on to go to
+dinner, two more.  And from that time he found himself so frightfully
+intimate with all the rats in the Yard, that they climbed up his legs
+when he was at work, and sat on his tools while he used them.  And they
+could all speak to one another, and he understood what they said.  And
+they got into his lodging, and into his bed, and into his teapot, and
+into his beer, and into his boots.  And he was going to be married to a
+corn-chandler’s daughter; and when he gave her a workbox he had himself
+made for her, a rat jumped out of it; and when he put his arm round her
+waist, a rat clung about her; so the marriage was broken off, though the
+banns were already twice put up—which the parish clerk well remembers,
+for, as he handed the book to the clergyman for the second time of
+asking, a large fat rat ran over the leaf.  (By this time a special
+cascade of rats was rolling down my back, and the whole of my small
+listening person was overrun with them.  At intervals ever since, I have
+been morbidly afraid of my own pocket, lest my exploring hand should find
+a specimen or two of those vermin in it.)
+
+You may believe that all this was very terrible to Chips; but even all
+this was not the worst.  He knew besides, what the rats were doing,
+wherever they were.  So, sometimes he would cry aloud, when he was at his
+club at night, ‘Oh!  Keep the rats out of the convicts’ burying-ground!
+Don’t let them do that!’  Or, ‘There’s one of them at the cheese
+down-stairs!’  Or, ‘There’s two of them smelling at the baby in the
+garret!’  Or, other things of that sort.  At last, he was voted mad, and
+lost his work in the Yard, and could get no other work.  But, King George
+wanted men, so before very long he got pressed for a sailor.  And so he
+was taken off in a boat one evening to his ship, lying at Spithead, ready
+to sail.  And so the first thing he made out in her as he got near her,
+was the figure-head of the old Seventy-four, where he had seen the Devil.
+She was called the Argonaut, and they rowed right under the bowsprit
+where the figure-head of the Argonaut, with a sheepskin in his hand and a
+blue gown on, was looking out to sea; and sitting staring on his forehead
+was the rat who could speak, and his exact words were these: ‘Chips ahoy!
+Old boy!  We’ve pretty well eat them too, and we’ll drown the crew, and
+will eat them too!’  (Here I always became exceedingly faint, and would
+have asked for water, but that I was speechless.)
+
+The ship was bound for the Indies; and if you don’t know where that is,
+you ought to it, and angels will never love you.  (Here I felt myself an
+outcast from a future state.)  The ship set sail that very night, and she
+sailed, and sailed, and sailed.  Chips’s feelings were dreadful.  Nothing
+ever equalled his terrors.  No wonder.  At last, one day he asked leave
+to speak to the Admiral.  The Admiral giv’ leave.  Chips went down on his
+knees in the Great State Cabin.  ‘Your Honour, unless your Honour,
+without a moment’s loss of time, makes sail for the nearest shore, this
+is a doomed ship, and her name is the Coffin!’  ‘Young man, your words
+are a madman’s words.’  ‘Your Honour no; they are nibbling us away.’
+‘They?’  ‘Your Honour, them dreadful rats.  Dust and hollowness where
+solid oak ought to be!  Rats nibbling a grave for every man on board!
+Oh!  Does your Honour love your Lady and your pretty children?’  ‘Yes, my
+man, to be sure.’  ‘Then, for God’s sake, make for the nearest shore, for
+at this present moment the rats are all stopping in their work, and are
+all looking straight towards you with bare teeth, and are all saying to
+one another that you shall never, never, never, never, see your Lady and
+your children more.’  ‘My poor fellow, you are a case for the doctor.
+Sentry, take care of this man!’
+
+So, he was bled and he was blistered, and he was this and that, for six
+whole days and nights.  So, then he again asked leave to speak to the
+Admiral.  The Admiral giv’ leave.  He went down on his knees in the Great
+State Cabin.  ‘Now, Admiral, you must die!  You took no warning; you must
+die!  The rats are never wrong in their calculations, and they make out
+that they’ll be through, at twelve to-night.  So, you must die!—With me
+and all the rest!’  And so at twelve o’clock there was a great leak
+reported in the ship, and a torrent of water rushed in and nothing could
+stop it, and they all went down, every living soul.  And what the
+rats—being water-rats—left of Chips, at last floated to shore, and
+sitting on him was an immense overgrown rat, laughing, that dived when
+the corpse touched the beach and never came up.  And there was a deal of
+seaweed on the remains.  And if you get thirteen bits of seaweed, and dry
+them and burn them in the fire, they will go off like in these thirteen
+words as plain as plain can be:
+
+    ‘A Lemon has pips,
+    And a Yard has ships,
+    And _I_’ve got Chips!’
+
+The same female bard—descended, possibly, from those terrible old Scalds
+who seem to have existed for the express purpose of addling the brains of
+mankind when they begin to investigate languages—made a standing pretence
+which greatly assisted in forcing me back to a number of hideous places
+that I would by all means have avoided.  This pretence was, that all her
+ghost stories had occurred to her own relations.  Politeness towards a
+meritorious family, therefore, forbade my doubting them, and they
+acquired an air of authentication that impaired my digestive powers for
+life.  There was a narrative concerning an unearthly animal foreboding
+death, which appeared in the open street to a parlour-maid who ‘went to
+fetch the beer’ for supper: first (as I now recall it) assuming the
+likeness of a black dog, and gradually rising on its hind-legs and
+swelling into the semblance of some quadruped greatly surpassing a
+hippopotamus: which apparition—not because I deemed it in the least
+improbable, but because I felt it to be really too large to bear—I feebly
+endeavoured to explain away.  But, on Mercy’s retorting with wounded
+dignity that the parlour-maid was her own sister-in-law, I perceived
+there was no hope, and resigned myself to this zoological phenomenon as
+one of my many pursuers.  There was another narrative describing the
+apparition of a young woman who came out of a glass-case and haunted
+another young woman until the other young woman questioned it and
+elicited that its bones (Lord!  To think of its being so particular about
+its bones!) were buried under the glass-case, whereas she required them
+to be interred, with every Undertaking solemnity up to twenty-four pound
+ten, in another particular place.  This narrative I considered—I had a
+personal interest in disproving, because we had glass-cases at home, and
+how, otherwise, was I to be guaranteed from the intrusion of young women
+requiring _me_ to bury them up to twenty-four pound ten, when I had only
+twopence a week?  But my remorseless nurse cut the ground from under my
+tender feet, by informing me that She was the other young woman; and I
+couldn’t say ‘I don’t believe you;’ it was not possible.
+
+Such are a few of the uncommercial journeys that I was forced to make,
+against my will, when I was very young and unreasoning.  And really, as
+to the latter part of them, it is not so very long ago—now I come to
+think of it—that I was asked to undertake them once again, with a steady
+countenance.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+ARCADIAN LONDON
+
+
+BEING in a humour for complete solitude and uninterrupted meditation this
+autumn, I have taken a lodging for six weeks in the most unfrequented
+part of England—in a word, in London.
+
+The retreat into which I have withdrawn myself, is Bond-street.  From
+this lonely spot I make pilgrimages into the surrounding wilderness, and
+traverse extensive tracts of the Great Desert.  The first solemn feeling
+of isolation overcome, the first oppressive consciousness of profound
+retirement conquered, I enjoy that sense of freedom, and feel reviving
+within me that latent wildness of the original savage, which has been
+(upon the whole somewhat frequently) noticed by Travellers.
+
+My lodgings are at a hatter’s—my own hatter’s.  After exhibiting no
+articles in his window for some weeks, but sea-side wide-awakes,
+shooting-caps, and a choice of rough waterproof head-gear for the moors
+and mountains, he has put upon the heads of his family as much of this
+stock as they could carry, and has taken them off to the Isle of Thanet.
+His young man alone remains—and remains alone in the shop.  The young man
+has let out the fire at which the irons are heated, and, saving his
+strong sense of duty, I see no reason why he should take the shutters
+down.
+
+Happily for himself and for his country the young man is a Volunteer;
+most happily for himself, or I think he would become the prey of a
+settled melancholy.  For, to live surrounded by human hats, and alienated
+from human heads to fit them on, is surely a great endurance.  But, the
+young man, sustained by practising his exercise, and by constantly
+furbishing up his regulation plume (it is unnecessary to observe that, as
+a hatter, he is in a cock’s-feather corps), is resigned, and
+uncomplaining.  On a Saturday, when he closes early and gets his
+Knickerbockers on, he is even cheerful.  I am gratefully particular in
+this reference to him, because he is my companion through many peaceful
+hours.
+
+My hatter has a desk up certain steps behind his counter, enclosed like
+the clerk’s desk at Church.  I shut myself into this place of seclusion,
+after breakfast, and meditate.  At such times, I observe the young man
+loading an imaginary rifle with the greatest precision, and maintaining a
+most galling and destructive fire upon the national enemy.  I thank him
+publicly for his companionship and his patriotism.
+
+The simple character of my life, and the calm nature of the scenes by
+which I am surrounded, occasion me to rise early.  I go forth in my
+slippers, and promenade the pavement.  It is pastoral to feel the
+freshness of the air in the uninhabited town, and to appreciate the
+shepherdess character of the few milkwomen who purvey so little milk that
+it would be worth nobody’s while to adulterate it, if anybody were left
+to undertake the task.  On the crowded sea-shore, the great demand for
+milk, combined with the strong local temptation of chalk, would betray
+itself in the lowered quality of the article.  In Arcadian London I
+derive it from the cow.
+
+The Arcadian simplicity of the metropolis altogether, and the primitive
+ways into which it has fallen in this autumnal Golden Age, make it
+entirely new to me.  Within a few hundred yards of my retreat, is the
+house of a friend who maintains a most sumptuous butler.  I never, until
+yesterday, saw that butler out of superfine black broadcloth.  Until
+yesterday, I never saw him off duty, never saw him (he is the best of
+butlers) with the appearance of having any mind for anything but the
+glory of his master and his master’s friends.  Yesterday morning, walking
+in my slippers near the house of which he is the prop and ornament—a
+house now a waste of shutters—I encountered that butler, also in his
+slippers, and in a shooting suit of one colour, and in a low-crowned
+straw-hat, smoking an early cigar.  He felt that we had formerly met in
+another state of existence, and that we were translated into a new
+sphere.  Wisely and well, he passed me without recognition.  Under his
+arm he carried the morning paper, and shortly afterwards I saw him
+sitting on a rail in the pleasant open landscape of Regent-street,
+perusing it at his ease under the ripening sun.
+
+My landlord having taken his whole establishment to be salted down, I am
+waited on by an elderly woman labouring under a chronic sniff, who, at
+the shadowy hour of half-past nine o’clock of every evening, gives
+admittance at the street door to a meagre and mouldy old man whom I have
+never yet seen detached from a flat pint of beer in a pewter pot.  The
+meagre and mouldy old man is her husband, and the pair have a dejected
+consciousness that they are not justified in appearing on the surface of
+the earth.  They come out of some hole when London empties itself, and go
+in again when it fills.  I saw them arrive on the evening when I myself
+took possession, and they arrived with the flat pint of beer, and their
+bed in a bundle.  The old man is a weak old man, and appeared to me to
+get the bed down the kitchen stairs by tumbling down with and upon it.
+They make their bed in the lowest and remotest corner of the basement,
+and they smell of bed, and have no possession but bed: unless it be
+(which I rather infer from an under-current of flavour in them) cheese.
+I know their name, through the chance of having called the wife’s
+attention, at half-past nine on the second evening of our acquaintance,
+to the circumstance of there being some one at the house door; when she
+apologetically explained, ‘It’s only Mr. Klem.’  What becomes of Mr. Klem
+all day, or when he goes out, or why, is a mystery I cannot penetrate;
+but at half-past nine he never fails to turn up on the door-step with the
+flat pint of beer.  And the pint of beer, flat as it is, is so much more
+important than himself, that it always seems to my fancy as if it had
+found him drivelling in the street and had humanely brought him home.  In
+making his way below, Mr. Klem never goes down the middle of the passage,
+like another Christian, but shuffles against the wall as if entreating me
+to take notice that he is occupying as little space as possible in the
+house; and whenever I come upon him face to face, he backs from me in
+fascinated confusion.  The most extraordinary circumstance I have traced
+in connexion with this aged couple, is, that there is a Miss Klem, their
+daughter, apparently ten years older than either of them, who has also a
+bed and smells of it, and carries it about the earth at dusk and hides it
+in deserted houses.  I came into this piece of knowledge through Mrs.
+Klem’s beseeching me to sanction the sheltering of Miss Klem under that
+roof for a single night, ‘between her takin’ care of the upper part in
+Pall Mall which the family of his back, and a ’ouse in Serjameses-street,
+which the family of leaves towng ter-morrer.’  I gave my gracious consent
+(having nothing that I know of to do with it), and in the shadowy hours
+Miss Klem became perceptible on the door-step, wrestling with a bed in a
+bundle.  Where she made it up for the night I cannot positively state,
+but, I think, in a sink.  I know that with the instinct of a reptile or
+an insect, she stowed it and herself away in deep obscurity.  In the Klem
+family, I have noticed another remarkable gift of nature, and that is a
+power they possess of converting everything into flue.  Such broken
+victuals as they take by stealth, appear (whatever the nature of the
+viands) invariably to generate flue; and even the nightly pint of beer,
+instead of assimilating naturally, strikes me as breaking out in that
+form, equally on the shabby gown of Mrs. Klem, and the threadbare coat of
+her husband.
+
+Mrs. Klem has no idea of my name—as to Mr. Klem he has no idea of
+anything—and only knows me as her good gentleman.  Thus, if doubtful
+whether I am in my room or no, Mrs. Klem taps at the door and says, ‘Is
+my good gentleman here?’  Or, if a messenger desiring to see me were
+consistent with my solitude, she would show him in with ‘Here is my good
+gentleman.’  I find this to be a generic custom.  For, I meant to have
+observed before now, that in its Arcadian time all my part of London is
+indistinctly pervaded by the Klem species.  They creep about with beds,
+and go to bed in miles of deserted houses.  They hold no companionship
+except that sometimes, after dark, two of them will emerge from opposite
+houses, and meet in the middle of the road as on neutral ground, or will
+peep from adjoining houses over an interposing barrier of area railings,
+and compare a few reserved mistrustful notes respecting their good ladies
+or good gentlemen.  This I have discovered in the course of various
+solitary rambles I have taken Northward from my retirement, along the
+awful perspectives of Wimpole-street, Harley-street, and similar frowning
+regions.  Their effect would be scarcely distinguishable from that of the
+primeval forests, but for the Klem stragglers; these may be dimly
+observed, when the heavy shadows fall, flitting to and fro, putting up
+the door-chain, taking in the pint of beer, lowering like phantoms at the
+dark parlour windows, or secretly consorting underground with the
+dust-bin and the water-cistern.
+
+In the Burlington Arcade, I observe, with peculiar pleasure, a primitive
+state of manners to have superseded the baneful influences of ultra
+civilisation.  Nothing can surpass the innocence of the ladies’
+shoe-shops, the artificial-flower repositories, and the head-dress
+depots.  They are in strange hands at this time of year—hands of
+unaccustomed persons, who are imperfectly acquainted with the prices of
+the goods, and contemplate them with unsophisticated delight and wonder.
+The children of these virtuous people exchange familiarities in the
+Arcade, and temper the asperity of the two tall beadles.  Their youthful
+prattle blends in an unwonted manner with the harmonious shade of the
+scene, and the general effect is, as of the voices of birds in a grove.
+In this happy restoration of the golden time, it has been my privilege
+even to see the bigger beadle’s wife.  She brought him his dinner in a
+basin, and he ate it in his arm-chair, and afterwards fell asleep like a
+satiated child.  At Mr. Truefitt’s, the excellent hairdresser’s, they are
+learning French to beguile the time; and even the few solitaries left on
+guard at Mr. Atkinson’s, the perfumer’s round the corner (generally the
+most inexorable gentleman in London, and the most scornful of
+three-and-sixpence), condescend a little, as they drowsily bide or recall
+their turn for chasing the ebbing Neptune on the ribbed sea-sand.  From
+Messrs. Hunt and Roskell’s, the jewellers, all things are absent but the
+precious stones, and the gold and silver, and the soldierly pensioner at
+the door with his decorated breast.  I might stand night and day for a
+month to come, in Saville-row, with my tongue out, yet not find a doctor
+to look at it for love or money.  The dentists’ instruments are rusting
+in their drawers, and their horrible cool parlours, where people pretend
+to read the Every-Day Book and not to be afraid, are doing penance for
+their grimness in white sheets.  The light-weight of shrewd appearance,
+with one eye always shut up, as if he were eating a sharp gooseberry in
+all seasons, who usually stands at the gateway of the livery-stables on
+very little legs under a very large waistcoat, has gone to Doncaster.  Of
+such undesigning aspect is his guileless yard now, with its gravel and
+scarlet beans, and the yellow Break housed under a glass roof in a
+corner, that I almost believe I could not be taken in there, if I tried.
+In the places of business of the great tailors, the cheval-glasses are
+dim and dusty for lack of being looked into.  Ranges of brown paper coat
+and waistcoat bodies look as funereal as if they were the hatchments of
+the customers with whose names they are inscribed; the measuring tapes
+hang idle on the wall; the order-taker, left on the hopeless chance of
+some one looking in, yawns in the last extremity over the book of
+patterns, as if he were trying to read that entertaining library.  The
+hotels in Brook-street have no one in them, and the staffs of servants
+stare disconsolately for next season out of all the windows.  The very
+man who goes about like an erect Turtle, between two boards
+recommendatory of the Sixteen Shilling Trousers, is aware of himself as a
+hollow mockery, and eats filberts while he leans his hinder shell against
+a wall.
+
+Among these tranquillising objects, it is my delight to walk and
+meditate.  Soothed by the repose around me, I wander insensibly to
+considerable distances, and guide myself back by the stars.  Thus, I
+enjoy the contrast of a few still partially inhabited and busy spots
+where all the lights are not fled, where all the garlands are not dead,
+whence all but I have not departed.  Then, does it appear to me that in
+this age three things are clamorously required of Man in the
+miscellaneous thoroughfares of the metropolis.  Firstly, that he have his
+boots cleaned.  Secondly, that he eat a penny ice.  Thirdly, that he get
+himself photographed.  Then do I speculate, What have those seam-worn
+artists been who stand at the photograph doors in Greek caps, sample in
+hand, and mysteriously salute the public—the female public with a
+pressing tenderness—to come in and be ‘took’?  What did they do with
+their greasy blandishments, before the era of cheap photography?  Of what
+class were their previous victims, and how victimised?  And how did they
+get, and how did they pay for, that large collection of likenesses, all
+purporting to have been taken inside, with the taking of none of which
+had that establishment any more to do than with the taking of Delhi?
+
+But, these are small oases, and I am soon back again in metropolitan
+Arcadia.  It is my impression that much of its serene and peaceful
+character is attributable to the absence of customary Talk.  How do I
+know but there may be subtle influences in Talk, to vex the souls of men
+who don’t hear it?  How do I know but that Talk, five, ten, twenty miles
+off, may get into the air and disagree with me?  If I rise from my bed,
+vaguely troubled and wearied and sick of my life, in the session of
+Parliament, who shall say that my noble friend, my right reverend friend,
+my right honourable friend, my honourable friend, my honourable and
+learned friend, or my honourable and gallant friend, may not be
+responsible for that effect upon my nervous system?  Too much Ozone in
+the air, I am informed and fully believe (though I have no idea what it
+is), would affect me in a marvellously disagreeable way; why may not too
+much Talk?  I don’t see or hear the Ozone; I don’t see or hear the Talk.
+And there is so much Talk; so much too much; such loud cry, and such
+scant supply of wool; such a deal of fleecing, and so little fleece!
+Hence, in the Arcadian season, I find it a delicious triumph to walk down
+to deserted Westminster, and see the Courts shut up; to walk a little
+further and see the Two Houses shut up; to stand in the Abbey Yard, like
+the New Zealander of the grand English History (concerning which
+unfortunate man, a whole rookery of mares’ nests is generally being
+discovered), and gloat upon the ruins of Talk.  Returning to my primitive
+solitude and lying down to sleep, my grateful heart expands with the
+consciousness that there is no adjourned Debate, no ministerial
+explanation, nobody to give notice of intention to ask the noble Lord at
+the head of her Majesty’s Government five-and-twenty bootless questions
+in one, no term time with legal argument, no Nisi Prius with eloquent
+appeal to British Jury; that the air will to-morrow, and to-morrow, and
+to-morrow, remain untroubled by this superabundant generating of Talk.
+In a minor degree it is a delicious triumph to me to go into the club,
+and see the carpets up, and the Bores and the other dust dispersed to the
+four winds.  Again, New Zealander-like, I stand on the cold hearth, and
+say in the solitude, ‘Here I watched Bore A 1, with voice always
+mysteriously low and head always mysteriously drooped, whispering
+political secrets into the ears of Adam’s confiding children.  Accursed
+be his memory for ever and a day!’
+
+But, I have all this time been coming to the point, that the happy nature
+of my retirement is most sweetly expressed in its being the abode of
+Love.  It is, as it were, an inexpensive Agapemone: nobody’s speculation:
+everybody’s profit.  The one great result of the resumption of primitive
+habits, and (convertible terms) the not having much to do, is, the
+abounding of Love.
+
+The Klem species are incapable of the softer emotions; probably, in that
+low nomadic race, the softer emotions have all degenerated into flue.
+But, with this exception, all the sharers of my retreat make love.
+
+I have mentioned Saville-row.  We all know the Doctor’s servant.  We all
+know what a respectable man he is, what a hard dry man, what a firm man,
+what a confidential man: how he lets us into the waiting-room, like a man
+who knows minutely what is the matter with us, but from whom the rack
+should not wring the secret.  In the prosaic “season,” he has distinctly
+the appearance of a man conscious of money in the savings bank, and
+taking his stand on his respectability with both feet.  At that time it
+is as impossible to associate him with relaxation, or any human weakness,
+as it is to meet his eye without feeling guilty of indisposition.  In the
+blest Arcadian time, how changed!  I have seen him, in a pepper-and-salt
+jacket—jacket—and drab trousers, with his arm round the waist of a
+bootmaker’s housemaid, smiling in open day.  I have seen him at the pump
+by the Albany, unsolicitedly pumping for two fair young creatures, whose
+figures as they bent over their cans, were—if I may be allowed an
+original expression—a model for the sculptor.  I have seen him trying the
+piano in the Doctor’s drawing-room with his forefinger, and have heard
+him humming tunes in praise of lovely woman.  I have seen him seated on a
+fire-engine, and going (obviously in search of excitement) to a fire.  I
+saw him, one moonlight evening when the peace and purity of our Arcadian
+west were at their height, polk with the lovely daughter of a cleaner of
+gloves, from the door-steps of his own residence, across Saville-row,
+round by Clifford-street and Old Burlington-street, back to
+Burlington-gardens.  Is this the Golden Age revived, or Iron London?
+
+The Dentist’s servant.  Is that man no mystery to us, no type of
+invisible power?  The tremendous individual knows (who else does?) what
+is done with the extracted teeth; he knows what goes on in the little
+room where something is always being washed or filed; he knows what warm
+spicy infusion is put into the comfortable tumbler from which we rinse
+our wounded mouth, with a gap in it that feels a foot wide; he knows
+whether the thing we spit into is a fixture communicating with the
+Thames, or could be cleared away for a dance; he sees the horrible
+parlour where there are no patients in it, and he could reveal, if he
+would, what becomes of the Every-Day Book then.  The conviction of my
+coward conscience when I see that man in a professional light, is, that
+he knows all the statistics of my teeth and gums, my double teeth, my
+single teeth, my stopped teeth, and my sound.  In this Arcadian rest, I
+am fearless of him as of a harmless, powerless creature in a Scotch cap,
+who adores a young lady in a voluminous crinoline, at a neighbouring
+billiard-room, and whose passion would be uninfluenced if every one of
+her teeth were false.  They may be.  He takes them all on trust.
+
+In secluded corners of the place of my seclusion, there are little shops
+withdrawn from public curiosity, and never two together, where servants’
+perquisites are bought.  The cook may dispose of grease at these modest
+and convenient marts; the butler, of bottles; the valet and lady’s maid,
+of clothes; most servants, indeed, of most things they may happen to lay
+hold of.  I have been told that in sterner times loving correspondence,
+otherwise interdicted, may be maintained by letter through the agency of
+some of these useful establishments.  In the Arcadian autumn, no such
+device is necessary.  Everybody loves, and openly and blamelessly loves.
+My landlord’s young man loves the whole of one side of the way of Old
+Bond-street, and is beloved several doors up New Bond-street besides.  I
+never look out of window but I see kissing of hands going on all around
+me.  It is the morning custom to glide from shop to shop and exchange
+tender sentiments; it is the evening custom for couples to stand hand in
+hand at house doors, or roam, linked in that flowery manner, through the
+unpeopled streets.  There is nothing else to do but love; and what there
+is to do, is done.
+
+In unison with this pursuit, a chaste simplicity obtains in the domestic
+habits of Arcadia.  Its few scattered people dine early, live moderately,
+sup socially, and sleep soundly.  It is rumoured that the Beadles of the
+Arcade, from being the mortal enemies of boys, have signed with tears an
+address to Lord Shaftesbury, and subscribed to a ragged school.  No
+wonder!  For, they might turn their heavy maces into crooks and tend
+sheep in the Arcade, to the purling of the water-carts as they give the
+thirsty streets much more to drink than they can carry.
+
+A happy Golden Age, and a serene tranquillity.  Charming picture, but it
+will fade.  The iron age will return, London will come back to town, if I
+show my tongue then in Saville-row for half a minute I shall be
+prescribed for, the Doctor’s man and the Dentist’s man will then pretend
+that these days of unprofessional innocence never existed.  Where Mr. and
+Mrs. Klem and their bed will be at that time, passes human knowledge; but
+my hatter hermitage will then know them no more, nor will it then know
+me.  The desk at which I have written these meditations will
+retributively assist at the making out of my account, and the wheels of
+gorgeous carriages and the hoofs of high-stepping horses will crush the
+silence out of Bond-street—will grind Arcadia away, and give it to the
+elements in granite powder.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+THE ITALIAN PRISONER
+
+
+THE rising of the Italian people from under their unutterable wrongs, and
+the tardy burst of day upon them after the long long night of oppression
+that has darkened their beautiful country, have naturally caused my mind
+to dwell often of late on my own small wanderings in Italy.  Connected
+with them, is a curious little drama, in which the character I myself
+sustained was so very subordinate that I may relate its story without any
+fear of being suspected of self-display.  It is strictly a true story.
+
+I am newly arrived one summer evening, in a certain small town on the
+Mediterranean.  I have had my dinner at the inn, and I and the mosquitoes
+are coming out into the streets together.  It is far from Naples; but a
+bright, brown, plump little woman-servant at the inn, is a Neapolitan,
+and is so vivaciously expert in panto-mimic action, that in the single
+moment of answering my request to have a pair of shoes cleaned which I
+have left up-stairs, she plies imaginary brushes, and goes completely
+through the motions of polishing the shoes up, and laying them at my
+feet.  I smile at the brisk little woman in perfect satisfaction with her
+briskness; and the brisk little woman, amiably pleased with me because I
+am pleased with her, claps her hands and laughs delightfully.  We are in
+the inn yard.  As the little woman’s bright eyes sparkle on the cigarette
+I am smoking, I make bold to offer her one; she accepts it none the less
+merrily, because I touch a most charming little dimple in her fat cheek,
+with its light paper end.  Glancing up at the many green lattices to
+assure herself that the mistress is not looking on, the little woman then
+puts her two little dimple arms a-kimbo, and stands on tiptoe to light
+her cigarette at mine.  ‘And now, dear little sir,’ says she, puffing out
+smoke in a most innocent and cherubic manner, ‘keep quite straight on,
+take the first to the right and probably you will see him standing at his
+door.’
+
+I gave a commission to ‘him,’ and I have been inquiring about him.  I
+have carried the commission about Italy several months.  Before I left
+England, there came to me one night a certain generous and gentle English
+nobleman (he is dead in these days when I relate the story, and exiles
+have lost their best British friend), with this request: ‘Whenever you
+come to such a town, will you seek out one Giovanni Carlavero, who keeps
+a little wine-shop there, mention my name to him suddenly, and observe
+how it affects him?’  I accepted the trust, and am on my way to discharge
+it.
+
+The sirocco has been blowing all day, and it is a hot unwholesome evening
+with no cool sea-breeze.  Mosquitoes and fire-flies are lively enough,
+but most other creatures are faint.  The coquettish airs of pretty young
+women in the tiniest and wickedest of dolls’ straw hats, who lean out at
+opened lattice blinds, are almost the only airs stirring.  Very ugly and
+haggard old women with distaffs, and with a grey tow upon them that looks
+as if they were spinning out their own hair (I suppose they were once
+pretty, too, but it is very difficult to believe so), sit on the footway
+leaning against house walls.  Everybody who has come for water to the
+fountain, stays there, and seems incapable of any such energetic idea as
+going home.  Vespers are over, though not so long but that I can smell
+the heavy resinous incense as I pass the church.  No man seems to be at
+work, save the coppersmith.  In an Italian town he is always at work, and
+always thumping in the deadliest manner.
+
+I keep straight on, and come in due time to the first on the right: a
+narrow dull street, where I see a well-favoured man of good stature and
+military bearing, in a great cloak, standing at a door.  Drawing nearer
+to this threshold, I see it is the threshold of a small wine-shop; and I
+can just make out, in the dim light, the inscription that it is kept by
+Giovanni Carlavero.
+
+I touch my hat to the figure in the cloak, and pass in, and draw a stool
+to a little table.  The lamp (just such another as they dig out of
+Pompeii) is lighted, but the place is empty.  The figure in the cloak has
+followed me in, and stands before me.
+
+‘The master?’
+
+‘At your service, sir.’
+
+‘Please to give me a glass of the wine of the country.’
+
+He turns to a little counter, to get it.  As his striking face is pale,
+and his action is evidently that of an enfeebled man, I remark that I
+fear he has been ill.  It is not much, he courteously and gravely
+answers, though bad while it lasts: the fever.
+
+As he sets the wine on the little table, to his manifest surprise I lay
+my hand on the back of his, look him in the face, and say in a low voice:
+‘I am an Englishman, and you are acquainted with a friend of mine.  Do
+you recollect—?’ and I mentioned the name of my generous countryman.
+
+Instantly, he utters a loud cry, bursts into tears, and falls on his
+knees at my feet, clasping my legs in both his arms and bowing his head
+to the ground.
+
+Some years ago, this man at my feet, whose over-fraught heart is heaving
+as if it would burst from his breast, and whose tears are wet upon the
+dress I wear, was a galley-slave in the North of Italy.  He was a
+political offender, having been concerned in the then last rising, and
+was sentenced to imprisonment for life.  That he would have died in his
+chains, is certain, but for the circumstance that the Englishman happened
+to visit his prison.
+
+It was one of the vile old prisons of Italy, and a part of it was below
+the waters of the harbour.  The place of his confinement was an arched
+under-ground and under-water gallery, with a grill-gate at the entrance,
+through which it received such light and air as it got.  Its condition
+was insufferably foul, and a stranger could hardly breathe in it, or see
+in it with the aid of a torch.  At the upper end of this dungeon, and
+consequently in the worst position, as being the furthest removed from
+light and air, the Englishman first beheld him, sitting on an iron
+bedstead to which he was chained by a heavy chain.  His countenance
+impressed the Englishmen as having nothing in common with the faces of
+the malefactors with whom he was associated, and he talked with him, and
+learnt how he came to be there.
+
+When the Englishman emerged from the dreadful den into the light of day,
+he asked his conductor, the governor of the jail, why Giovanni Carlavero
+was put into the worst place?
+
+‘Because he is particularly recommended,’ was the stringent answer.
+
+‘Recommended, that is to say, for death?’
+
+‘Excuse me; particularly recommended,’ was again the answer.
+
+‘He has a bad tumour in his neck, no doubt occasioned by the hardship of
+his miserable life.  If he continues to be neglected, and he remains
+where he is, it will kill him.’
+
+‘Excuse me, I can do nothing.  He is particularly recommended.’  The
+Englishman was staying in that town, and he went to his home there; but
+the figure of this man chained to the bedstead made it no home, and
+destroyed his rest and peace.  He was an Englishman of an extraordinarily
+tender heart, and he could not bear the picture.  He went back to the
+prison grate; went back again and again, and talked to the man and
+cheered him.  He used his utmost influence to get the man unchained from
+the bedstead, were it only for ever so short a time in the day, and
+permitted to come to the grate.  It look a long time, but the
+Englishman’s station, personal character, and steadiness of purpose, wore
+out opposition so far, and that grace was at last accorded.  Through the
+bars, when he could thus get light upon the tumour, the Englishman lanced
+it, and it did well, and healed.  His strong interest in the prisoner had
+greatly increased by this time, and he formed the desperate resolution
+that he would exert his utmost self-devotion and use his utmost efforts,
+to get Carlavero pardoned.
+
+If the prisoner had been a brigand and a murderer, if he had committed
+every non-political crime in the Newgate Calendar and out of it, nothing
+would have been easier than for a man of any court or priestly influence
+to obtain his release.  As it was, nothing could have been more
+difficult.  Italian authorities, and English authorities who had interest
+with them, alike assured the Englishman that his object was hopeless.  He
+met with nothing but evasion, refusal, and ridicule.  His political
+prisoner became a joke in the place.  It was especially observable that
+English Circumlocution, and English Society on its travels, were as
+humorous on the subject as Circumlocution and Society may be on any
+subject without loss of caste.  But, the Englishman possessed (and proved
+it well in his life) a courage very uncommon among us: he had not the
+least fear of being considered a bore, in a good humane cause.  So he
+went on persistently trying, and trying, and trying, to get Giovanni
+Carlavero out.  That prisoner had been rigorously re-chained, after the
+tumour operation, and it was not likely that his miserable life could
+last very long.
+
+One day, when all the town knew about the Englishman and his political
+prisoner, there came to the Englishman, a certain sprightly Italian
+Advocate of whom he had some knowledge; and he made this strange
+proposal.  ‘Give me a hundred pounds to obtain Carlavero’s release.  I
+think I can get him a pardon, with that money.  But I cannot tell you
+what I am going to do with the money, nor must you ever ask me the
+question if I succeed, nor must you ever ask me for an account of the
+money if I fail.’  The Englishman decided to hazard the hundred pounds.
+He did so, and heard not another word of the matter.  For half a year and
+more, the Advocate made no sign, and never once ‘took on’ in any way, to
+have the subject on his mind.  The Englishman was then obliged to change
+his residence to another and more famous town in the North of Italy.  He
+parted from the poor prisoner with a sorrowful heart, as from a doomed
+man for whom there was no release but Death.
+
+The Englishman lived in his new place of abode another half-year and
+more, and had no tidings of the wretched prisoner.  At length, one day,
+he received from the Advocate a cool, concise, mysterious note, to this
+effect.  ‘If you still wish to bestow that benefit upon the man in whom
+you were once interested, send me fifty pounds more, and I think it can
+be ensured.’  Now, the Englishman had long settled in his mind that the
+Advocate was a heartless sharper, who had preyed upon his credulity and
+his interest in an unfortunate sufferer.  So, he sat down and wrote a dry
+answer, giving the Advocate to understand that he was wiser now than he
+had been formerly, and that no more money was extractable from his
+pocket.
+
+He lived outside the city gates, some mile or two from the post-office,
+and was accustomed to walk into the city with his letters and post them
+himself.  On a lovely spring day, when the sky was exquisitely blue, and
+the sea Divinely beautiful, he took his usual walk, carrying this letter
+to the Advocate in his pocket.  As he went along, his gentle heart was
+much moved by the loveliness of the prospect, and by the thought of the
+slowly dying prisoner chained to the bedstead, for whom the universe had
+no delights.  As he drew nearer and nearer to the city where he was to
+post the letter, he became very uneasy in his mind.  He debated with
+himself, was it remotely possible, after all, that this sum of fifty
+pounds could restore the fellow-creature whom he pitied so much, and for
+whom he had striven so hard, to liberty?  He was not a conventionally
+rich Englishman—very far from that—but, he had a spare fifty pounds at
+the banker’s.  He resolved to risk it.  Without doubt, GOD has
+recompensed him for the resolution.
+
+He went to the banker’s, and got a bill for the amount, and enclosed it
+in a letter to the Advocate that I wish I could have seen.  He simply
+told the Advocate that he was quite a poor man, and that he was sensible
+it might be a great weakness in him to part with so much money on the
+faith of so vague a communication; but, that there it was, and that he
+prayed the Advocate to make a good use of it.  If he did otherwise no
+good could ever come of it, and it would lie heavy on his soul one day.
+
+Within a week, the Englishman was sitting at his breakfast, when he heard
+some suppressed sounds of agitation on the staircase, and Giovanni
+Carlavero leaped into the room and fell upon his breast, a free man!
+
+Conscious of having wronged the Advocate in his own thoughts, the
+Englishman wrote him an earnest and grateful letter, avowing the fact,
+and entreating him to confide by what means and through what agency he
+had succeeded so well.  The Advocate returned for answer through the
+post, ‘There are many things, as you know, in this Italy of ours, that
+are safest and best not even spoken of—far less written of.  We may meet
+some day, and then I may tell you what you want to know; not here, and
+now.’  But, the two never did meet again.  The Advocate was dead when the
+Englishman gave me my trust; and how the man had been set free, remained
+as great a mystery to the Englishman, and to the man himself, as it was
+to me.
+
+But, I knew this:—here was the man, this sultry night, on his knees at my
+feet, because I was the Englishman’s friend; here were his tears upon my
+dress; here were his sobs choking his utterance; here were his kisses on
+my hands, because they had touched the hands that had worked out his
+release.  He had no need to tell me it would be happiness to him to die
+for his benefactor; I doubt if I ever saw real, sterling, fervent
+gratitude of soul, before or since.
+
+He was much watched and suspected, he said, and had had enough to do to
+keep himself out of trouble.  This, and his not having prospered in his
+worldly affairs, had led to his having failed in his usual communications
+to the Englishman for—as I now remember the period—some two or three
+years.  But, his prospects were brighter, and his wife who had been very
+ill had recovered, and his fever had left him, and he had bought a little
+vineyard, and would I carry to his benefactor the first of its wine?  Ay,
+that I would (I told him with enthusiasm), and not a drop of it should be
+spilled or lost!
+
+He had cautiously closed the door before speaking of himself, and had
+talked with such excess of emotion, and in a provincial Italian so
+difficult to understand, that I had more than once been obliged to stop
+him, and beg him to have compassion on me and be slower and calmer.  By
+degrees he became so, and tranquilly walked back with me to the hotel.
+There, I sat down before I went to bed and wrote a faithful account of
+him to the Englishman: which I concluded by saying that I would bring the
+wine home, against any difficulties, every drop.
+
+Early next morning, when I came out at the hotel door to pursue my
+journey, I found my friend waiting with one of those immense bottles in
+which the Italian peasants store their wine—a bottle holding some
+half-dozen gallons—bound round with basket-work for greater safety on the
+journey.  I see him now, in the bright sunshine, tears of gratitude in
+his eyes, proudly inviting my attention to this corpulent bottle.  (At
+the street-comer hard by, two high-flavoured, able-bodied
+monks—pretending to talk together, but keeping their four evil eyes upon
+us.)
+
+How the bottle had been got there, did not appear; but the difficulty of
+getting it into the ramshackle vetturino carriage in which I was
+departing, was so great, and it took up so much room when it was got in,
+that I elected to sit outside.  The last I saw of Giovanni Carlavero was
+his running through the town by the side of the jingling wheels, clasping
+my hand as I stretched it down from the box, charging me with a thousand
+last loving and dutiful messages to his dear patron, and finally looking
+in at the bottle as it reposed inside, with an admiration of its
+honourable way of travelling that was beyond measure delightful.
+
+And now, what disquiet of mind this dearly-beloved and highly-treasured
+Bottle began to cost me, no man knows.  It was my precious charge through
+a long tour, and, for hundreds of miles, I never had it off my mind by
+day or by night.  Over bad roads—and they were many—I clung to it with
+affectionate desperation.  Up mountains, I looked in at it and saw it
+helplessly tilting over on its back, with terror.  At innumerable inn
+doors when the weather was bad, I was obliged to be put into my vehicle
+before the Bottle could be got in, and was obliged to have the Bottle
+lifted out before human aid could come near me.  The Imp of the same
+name, except that his associations were all evil and these associations
+were all good, would have been a less troublesome travelling companion.
+I might have served Mr. Cruikshank as a subject for a new illustration of
+the miseries of the Bottle.  The National Temperance Society might have
+made a powerful Tract of me.
+
+The suspicions that attached to this innocent Bottle, greatly aggravated
+my difficulties.  It was like the apple-pie in the child’s book.  Parma
+pouted at it, Modena mocked it, Tuscany tackled it, Naples nibbled it,
+Rome refused it, Austria accused it, Soldiers suspected it, Jesuits
+jobbed it.  I composed a neat Oration, developing my inoffensive
+intentions in connexion with this Bottle, and delivered it in an infinity
+of guard-houses, at a multitude of town gates, and on every drawbridge,
+angle, and rampart, of a complete system of fortifications.  Fifty times
+a day, I got down to harangue an infuriated soldiery about the Bottle.
+Through the filthy degradation of the abject and vile Roman States, I had
+as much difficulty in working my way with the Bottle, as if it had
+bottled up a complete system of heretical theology.  In the Neapolitan
+country, where everybody was a spy, a soldier, a priest, or a lazzarone,
+the shameless beggars of all four denominations incessantly pounced on
+the Bottle and made it a pretext for extorting money from me.
+Quires—quires do I say?  Reams—of forms illegibly printed on whity-brown
+paper were filled up about the Bottle, and it was the subject of more
+stamping and sanding than I had ever seen before.  In consequence of
+which haze of sand, perhaps, it was always irregular, and always latent
+with dismal penalties of going back or not going forward, which were only
+to be abated by the silver crossing of a base hand, poked shirtless out
+of a ragged uniform sleeve.  Under all discouragements, however, I stuck
+to my Bottle, and held firm to my resolution that every drop of its
+contents should reach the Bottle’s destination.
+
+The latter refinement cost me a separate heap of troubles on its own
+separate account.  What corkscrews did I see the military power bring out
+against that Bottle; what gimlets, spikes, divining rods, gauges, and
+unknown tests and instruments!  At some places, they persisted in
+declaring that the wine must not be passed, without being opened and
+tasted; I, pleading to the contrary, used then to argue the question
+seated on the Bottle lest they should open it in spite of me.  In the
+southern parts of Italy more violent shrieking, face-making, and
+gesticulating, greater vehemence of speech and countenance and action,
+went on about that Bottle than would attend fifty murders in a northern
+latitude.  It raised important functionaries out of their beds, in the
+dead of night.  I have known half-a-dozen military lanterns to disperse
+themselves at all points of a great sleeping Piazza, each lantern
+summoning some official creature to get up, put on his cocked-hat
+instantly, and come and stop the Bottle.  It was characteristic that
+while this innocent Bottle had such immense difficulty in getting from
+little town to town, Signor Mazzini and the fiery cross were traversing
+Italy from end to end.
+
+Still, I stuck to my Bottle, like any fine old English gentleman all of
+the olden time.  The more the Bottle was interfered with, the stauncher I
+became (if possible) in my first determination that my countryman should
+have it delivered to him intact, as the man whom he had so nobly restored
+to life and liberty had delivered it to me.  If ever I had been obstinate
+in my days—and I may have been, say, once or twice—I was obstinate about
+the Bottle.  But, I made it a rule always to keep a pocket full of small
+coin at its service, and never to be out of temper in its cause.  Thus, I
+and the Bottle made our way.  Once we had a break-down; rather a bad
+break-down, on a steep high place with the sea below us, on a tempestuous
+evening when it blew great guns.  We were driving four wild horses
+abreast, Southern fashion, and there was some little difficulty in
+stopping them.  I was outside, and not thrown off; but no words can
+describe my feelings when I saw the Bottle—travelling inside, as
+usual—burst the door open, and roll obesely out into the road.  A blessed
+Bottle with a charmed existence, he took no hurt, and we repaired damage,
+and went on triumphant.
+
+A thousand representations were made to me that the Bottle must be left
+at this place, or that, and called for again.  I never yielded to one of
+them, and never parted from the Bottle, on any pretence, consideration,
+threat, or entreaty.  I had no faith in any official receipt for the
+Bottle, and nothing would induce me to accept one.  These unmanageable
+politics at last brought me and the Bottle, still triumphant, to Genoa.
+There, I took a tender and reluctant leave of him for a few weeks, and
+consigned him to a trusty English captain, to be conveyed to the Port of
+London by sea.
+
+While the Bottle was on his voyage to England, I read the Shipping
+Intelligence as anxiously as if I had been an underwriter.  There was
+some stormy weather after I myself had got to England by way of
+Switzerland and France, and my mind greatly misgave me that the Bottle
+might be wrecked.  At last to my great joy, I received notice of his safe
+arrival, and immediately went down to Saint Katharine’s Docks, and found
+him in a state of honourable captivity in the Custom House.
+
+The wine was mere vinegar when I set it down before the generous
+Englishman—probably it had been something like vinegar when I took it up
+from Giovanni Carlavero—but not a drop of it was spilled or gone.  And
+the Englishman told me, with much emotion in his face and voice, that he
+had never tasted wine that seemed to him so sweet and sound.  And long
+afterwards, the Bottle graced his table.  And the last time I saw him in
+this world that misses him, he took me aside in a crowd, to say, with his
+amiable smile: ‘We were talking of you only to-day at dinner, and I
+wished you had been there, for I had some Claret up in Carlavero’s
+Bottle.’
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+THE CALAIS NIGHT MAIL
+
+
+IT is an unsettled question with me whether I shall leave Calais
+something handsome in my will, or whether I shall leave it my
+malediction.  I hate it so much, and yet I am always so very glad to see
+it, that I am in a state of constant indecision on this subject.  When I
+first made acquaintance with Calais, it was as a maundering young wretch
+in a clammy perspiration and dripping saline particles, who was conscious
+of no extremities but the one great extremity, sea-sickness—who was a
+mere bilious torso, with a mislaid headache somewhere in its stomach—who
+had been put into a horrible swing in Dover Harbour, and had tumbled
+giddily out of it on the French coast, or the Isle of Man, or anywhere.
+Times have changed, and now I enter Calais self-reliant and rational.  I
+know where it is beforehand, I keep a look out for it, I recognise its
+landmarks when I see any of them, I am acquainted with its ways, and I
+know—and I can bear—its worst behaviour.
+
+Malignant Calais!  Low-lying alligator, evading the eyesight and
+discouraging hope!  Dodging flat streak, now on this bow, now on that,
+now anywhere, now everywhere, now nowhere!  In vain Cape Grinez, coming
+frankly forth into the sea, exhorts the failing to be stout of heart and
+stomach: sneaking Calais, prone behind its bar, invites emetically to
+despair.  Even when it can no longer quite conceal itself in its muddy
+dock, it has an evil way of falling off, has Calais, which is more
+hopeless than its invisibility.  The pier is all but on the bowsprit, and
+you think you are there—roll, roar, wash!—Calais has retired miles
+inland, and Dover has burst out to look for it.  It has a last dip and
+slide in its character, has Calais, to be especially commanded to the
+infernal gods.  Thrice accursed be that garrison-town, when it dives
+under the boat’s keel, and comes up a league or two to the right, with
+the packet shivering and spluttering and staring about for it!
+
+Not but what I have my animosities towards Dover.  I particularly detest
+Dover for the self-complacency with which it goes to bed.  It always goes
+to bed (when I am going to Calais) with a more brilliant display of lamp
+and candle than any other town.  Mr. and Mrs. Birmingham, host and
+hostess of the Lord Warden Hotel, are my much esteemed friends, but they
+are too conceited about the comforts of that establishment when the Night
+Mail is starting.  I know it is a good house to stay at, and I don’t want
+the fact insisted upon in all its warm bright windows at such an hour.  I
+know the Warden is a stationary edifice that never rolls or pitches, and
+I object to its big outline seeming to insist upon that circumstance,
+and, as it were, to come over me with it, when I am reeling on the deck
+of the boat.  Beshrew the Warden likewise, for obstructing that corner,
+and making the wind so angry as it rushes round.  Shall I not know that
+it blows quite soon enough, without the officious Warden’s interference?
+
+As I wait here on board the night packet, for the South-Eastern Train to
+come down with the Mail, Dover appears to me to be illuminated for some
+intensely aggravating festivity in my personal dishonour.  All its noises
+smack of taunting praises of the land, and dispraises of the gloomy sea,
+and of me for going on it.  The drums upon the heights have gone to bed,
+or I know they would rattle taunts against me for having my unsteady
+footing on this slippery deck.  The many gas eyes of the Marine Parade
+twinkle in an offensive manner, as if with derision.  The distant dogs of
+Dover bark at me in my misshapen wrappers, as if I were Richard the
+Third.
+
+A screech, a bell, and two red eyes come gliding down the Admiralty Pier
+with a smoothness of motion rendered more smooth by the heaving of the
+boat.  The sea makes noises against the pier, as if several hippopotami
+were lapping at it, and were prevented by circumstances over which they
+had no control from drinking peaceably.  We, the boat, become violently
+agitated—rumble, hum, scream, roar, and establish an immense family
+washing-day at each paddle-box.  Bright patches break out in the train as
+the doors of the post-office vans are opened, and instantly stooping
+figures with sacks upon their backs begin to be beheld among the piles,
+descending as it would seem in ghostly procession to Davy Jones’s Locker.
+The passengers come on board; a few shadowy Frenchmen, with hatboxes
+shaped like the stoppers of gigantic case-bottles; a few shadowy Germans
+in immense fur coats and boots; a few shadowy Englishmen prepared for the
+worst and pretending not to expect it.  I cannot disguise from my
+uncommercial mind the miserable fact that we are a body of outcasts; that
+the attendants on us are as scant in number as may serve to get rid of us
+with the least possible delay; that there are no night-loungers
+interested in us; that the unwilling lamps shiver and shudder at us; that
+the sole object is to commit us to the deep and abandon us.  Lo, the two
+red eyes glaring in increasing distance, and then the very train itself
+has gone to bed before we are off!
+
+What is the moral support derived by some sea-going amateurs from an
+umbrella?  Why do certain voyagers across the Channel always put up that
+article, and hold it up with a grim and fierce tenacity?  A
+fellow-creature near me—whom I only know to _be_ a fellow-creature,
+because of his umbrella: without which he might be a dark bit of cliff,
+pier, or bulkbead—clutches that instrument with a desperate grasp, that
+will not relax until he lands at Calais.  Is there any analogy, in
+certain constitutions, between keeping an umbrella up, and keeping the
+spirits up?  A hawser thrown on board with a flop replies ‘Stand by!’
+‘Stand by, below!’  ‘Half a turn a head!’  ‘Half a turn a head!’  ‘Half
+speed!’  ‘Half speed!’  ‘Port!’  ‘Port!’  ‘Steady!’  ‘Steady!’  ‘Go on!’
+‘Go on!’
+
+A stout wooden wedge driven in at my right temple and out at my left, a
+floating deposit of lukewarm oil in my throat, and a compression of the
+bridge of my nose in a blunt pair of pincers,—these are the personal
+sensations by which I know we are off, and by which I shall continue to
+know it until I am on the soil of France.  My symptoms have scarcely
+established themselves comfortably, when two or three skating shadows
+that have been trying to walk or stand, get flung together, and other two
+or three shadows in tarpaulin slide with them into corners and cover them
+up.  Then the South Foreland lights begin to hiccup at us in a way that
+bodes no good.
+
+It is at about this period that my detestation of Calais knows no bounds.
+Inwardly I resolve afresh that I never will forgive that hated town.  I
+have done so before, many times, but that is past.  Let me register a
+vow.  Implacable animosity to Calais everm— that was an awkward sea, and
+the funnel seems of my opinion, for it gives a complaining roar.
+
+The wind blows stiffly from the Nor-East, the sea runs high, we ship a
+deal of water, the night is dark and cold, and the shapeless passengers
+lie about in melancholy bundles, as if they were sorted out for the
+laundress; but for my own uncommercial part I cannot pretend that I am
+much inconvenienced by any of these things.  A general howling,
+whistling, flopping, gurgling, and scooping, I am aware of, and a general
+knocking about of Nature; but the impressions I receive are very vague.
+In a sweet faint temper, something like the smell of damaged oranges, I
+think I should feel languidly benevolent if I had time.  I have not time,
+because I am under a curious compulsion to occupy myself with the Irish
+melodies.  ‘Rich and rare were the gems she wore,’ is the particular
+melody to which I find myself devoted.  I sing it to myself in the most
+charming manner and with the greatest expression.  Now and then, I raise
+my head (I am sitting on the hardest of wet seats, in the most
+uncomfortable of wet attitudes, but I don’t mind it,) and notice that I
+am a whirling shuttlecock between a fiery battledore of a lighthouse on
+the French coast and a fiery battledore of a lighthouse on the English
+coast; but I don’t notice it particularly, except to feel envenomed in my
+hatred of Calais.  Then I go on again, ‘Rich and rare were the ge-ems
+she-e-e-e wore, And a bright gold ring on her wa-and she bo-ore, But O
+her beauty was fa-a-a-a-r beyond’—I am particularly proud of my execution
+here, when I become aware of another awkward shock from the sea, and
+another protest from the funnel, and a fellow-creature at the paddle-box
+more audibly indisposed than I think he need be—‘Her sparkling gems, or
+snow-white wand, But O her beauty was fa-a-a-a-a-r beyond’—another
+awkward one here, and the fellow-creature with the umbrella down and
+picked up—‘Her spa-a-rkling ge-ems, or her Port! port! steady! steady!
+snow-white fellow-creature at the paddle-box very selfishly audible,
+bump, roar, wash, white wand.’
+
+As my execution of the Irish melodies partakes of my imperfect
+perceptions of what is going on around me, so what is going on around me
+becomes something else than what it is.  The stokers open the furnace
+doors below, to feed the fires, and I am again on the box of the old
+Exeter Telegraph fast coach, and that is the light of the for ever
+extinguished coach-lamps, and the gleam on the hatches and paddle-boxes
+is _their_ gleam on cottages and haystacks, and the monotonous noise of
+the engines is the steady jingle of the splendid team.  Anon, the
+intermittent funnel roar of protest at every violent roll, becomes the
+regular blast of a high pressure engine, and I recognise the exceedingly
+explosive steamer in which I ascended the Mississippi when the American
+civil war was not, and when only its causes were.  A fragment of mast on
+which the light of a lantern falls, an end of rope, and a jerking block
+or so, become suggestive of Franconi’s Circus at Paris where I shall be
+this very night mayhap (for it must be morning now), and they dance to
+the self-same time and tune as the trained steed, Black Raven.  What may
+be the speciality of these waves as they come rushing on, I cannot desert
+the pressing demands made upon me by the gems she wore, to inquire, but
+they are charged with something about Robinson Crusoe, and I think it was
+in Yarmouth Roads that he first went a seafaring and was near foundering
+(what a terrific sound that word had for me when I was a boy!) in his
+first gale of wind.  Still, through all this, I must ask her (who _was_
+she I wonder!) for the fiftieth time, and without ever stopping, Does she
+not fear to stray, So lone and lovely through this bleak way, And are
+Erin’s sons so good or so cold, As not to be tempted by more
+fellow-creatures at the paddle-box or gold?  Sir Knight I feel not the
+least alarm, No son of Erin will offer me harm, For though they love
+fellow-creature with umbrella down again and golden store, Sir Knight
+they what a tremendous one love honour and virtue more: For though they
+love Stewards with a bull’s eye bright, they’ll trouble you for your
+ticket, sir-rough passage to-night!
+
+I freely admit it to be a miserable piece of human weakness and
+inconsistency, but I no sooner become conscious of those last words from
+the steward than I begin to soften towards Calais.  Whereas I have been
+vindictively wishing that those Calais burghers who came out of their
+town by a short cut into the History of England, with those fatal ropes
+round their necks by which they have since been towed into so many
+cartoons, had all been hanged on the spot, I now begin to regard them as
+highly respectable and virtuous tradesmen.  Looking about me, I see the
+light of Cape Grinez well astern of the boat on the davits to leeward,
+and the light of Calais Harbour undeniably at its old tricks, but still
+ahead and shining.  Sentiments of forgiveness of Calais, not to say of
+attachment to Calais, begin to expand my bosom.  I have weak notions that
+I will stay there a day or two on my way back.  A faded and recumbent
+stranger pausing in a profound reverie over the rim of a basin, asks me
+what kind of place Calais is?  I tell him (Heaven forgive me!) a very
+agreeable place indeed—rather hilly than otherwise.
+
+So strangely goes the time, and on the whole so quickly—though still I
+seem to have been on board a week—that I am bumped, rolled, gurgled,
+washed and pitched into Calais Harbour before her maiden smile has
+finally lighted her through the Green Isle, When blest for ever is she
+who relied, On entering Calais at the top of the tide.  For we have not
+to land to-night down among those slimy timbers—covered with green hair
+as if it were the mermaids’ favourite combing-place—where one crawls to
+the surface of the jetty, like a stranded shrimp, but we go steaming up
+the harbour to the Railway Station Quay.  And as we go, the sea washes in
+and out among piles and planks, with dead heavy beats and in quite a
+furious manner (whereof we are proud), and the lamps shake in the wind,
+and the bells of Calais striking One seem to send their vibrations
+struggling against troubled air, as we have come struggling against
+troubled water.  And now, in the sudden relief and wiping of faces,
+everybody on board seems to have had a prodigious double-tooth out, and
+to be this very instant free of the Dentist’s hands.  And now we all know
+for the first time how wet and cold we are, and how salt we are; and now
+I love Calais with my heart of hearts!
+
+‘Hôtel Dessin!’ (but in this one case it is not a vocal cry; it is but a
+bright lustre in the eyes of the cheery representative of that best of
+inns).  ‘Hôtel Meurice!’  ‘Hôtel de France!’  ‘Hôtel de Calais!’  ‘The
+Royal Hotel, Sir, Angaishe ouse!’  ‘You going to Parry, Sir?’  ‘Your
+baggage, registair froo, Sir?’  Bless ye, my Touters, bless ye, my
+commissionaires, bless ye, my hungry-eyed mysteries in caps of a military
+form, who are always here, day or night, fair weather or foul, seeking
+inscrutable jobs which I never see you get!  Bless ye, my Custom House
+officers in green and grey; permit me to grasp the welcome hands that
+descend into my travelling-bag, one on each side, and meet at the bottom
+to give my change of linen a peculiar shake up, as if it were a measure
+of chaff or grain!  I have nothing to declare, Monsieur le Douanier,
+except that when I cease to breathe, Calais will be found written on my
+heart.  No article liable to local duty have I with me, Monsieur
+l’Officier de l’Octroi, unless the overflowing of a breast devoted to
+your charming town should be in that wise chargeable.  Ah! see at the
+gangway by the twinkling lantern, my dearest brother and friend, he once
+of the Passport Office, he who collects the names!  May he be for ever
+changeless in his buttoned black surtout, with his note-book in his hand,
+and his tall black hat, surmounting his round, smiling, patient face!
+Let us embrace, my dearest brother.  I am yours à tout jamais—for the
+whole of ever.
+
+Calais up and doing at the railway station, and Calais down and dreaming
+in its bed; Calais with something of ‘an ancient and fish-like smell’
+about it, and Calais blown and sea-washed pure; Calais represented at the
+Buffet by savoury roast fowls, hot coffee, cognac, and Bordeaux; and
+Calais represented everywhere by flitting persons with a monomania for
+changing money—though I never shall be able to understand in my present
+state of existence how they live by it, but I suppose I should, if I
+understood the currency question—Calais _en gros_, and Calais _en
+détail_, forgive one who has deeply wronged you.—I was not fully aware of
+it on the other side, but I meant Dover.
+
+Ding, ding!  To the carriages, gentlemen the travellers.  Ascend then,
+gentlemen the travellers, for Hazebroucke, Lille, Douai, Bruxelles,
+Arras, Amiens, and Paris!  I, humble representative of the uncommercial
+interest, ascend with the rest.  The train is light to-night, and I share
+my compartment with but two fellow-travellers; one, a compatriot in an
+obsolete cravat, who thinks it a quite unaccountable thing that they
+don’t keep ‘London time’ on a French railway, and who is made angry by my
+modestly suggesting the possibility of Paris time being more in their
+way; the other, a young priest, with a very small bird in a very small
+cage, who feeds the small bird with a quill, and then puts him up in the
+network above his head, where he advances twittering, to his front wires,
+and seems to address me in an electioneering manner.  The compatriot (who
+crossed in the boat, and whom I judge to be some person of distinction,
+as he was shut up, like a stately species of rabbit, in a private hutch
+on deck) and the young priest (who joined us at Calais) are soon asleep,
+and then the bird and I have it all to ourselves.
+
+A stormy night still; a night that sweeps the wires of the electric
+telegraph with a wild and fitful hand; a night so very stormy, with the
+added storm of the train-progress through it, that when the Guard comes
+clambering round to mark the tickets while we are at full speed (a really
+horrible performance in an express train, though he holds on to the open
+window by his elbows in the most deliberate manner), he stands in such a
+whirlwind that I grip him fast by the collar, and feel it next to
+manslaughter to let him go.  Still, when he is gone, the small, small
+bird remains at his front wires feebly twittering to me—twittering and
+twittering, until, leaning back in my place and looking at him in drowsy
+fascination, I find that he seems to jog my memory as we rush along.
+
+Uncommercial travels (thus the small, small bird) have lain in their idle
+thriftless way through all this range of swamp and dyke, as through many
+other odd places; and about here, as you very well know, are the queer
+old stone farm-houses, approached by drawbridges, and the windmills that
+you get at by boats.  Here, are the lands where the women hoe and dig,
+paddling canoe-wise from field to field, and here are the cabarets and
+other peasant-houses where the stone dove-cotes in the littered yards are
+as strong as warders’ towers in old castles.  Here, are the long
+monotonous miles of canal, with the great Dutch-built barges garishly
+painted, and the towing girls, sometimes harnessed by the forehead,
+sometimes by the girdle and the shoulders, not a pleasant sight to see.
+Scattered through this country are mighty works of VAUBAN, whom you know
+about, and regiments of such corporals as you heard of once upon a time,
+and many a blue-eyed Bebelle.  Through these flat districts, in the
+shining summer days, walk those long, grotesque files of young novices in
+enormous shovel-hats, whom you remember blackening the ground checkered
+by the avenues of leafy trees.  And now that Hazebroucke slumbers certain
+kilometres ahead, recall the summer evening when your dusty feet
+strolling up from the station tended hap-hazard to a Fair there, where
+the oldest inhabitants were circling round and round a barrel-organ on
+hobby-horses, with the greatest gravity, and where the principal show in
+the Fair was a Religious Richardson’s—literally, on its own announcement
+in great letters, THEATRE RELIGIEUX.  In which improving Temple, the
+dramatic representation was of ‘all the interesting events in the life of
+our Lord, from the Manger to the Tomb;’ the principal female character,
+without any reservation or exception, being at the moment of your
+arrival, engaged in trimming the external Moderators (as it was growing
+dusk), while the next principal female character took the money, and the
+Young Saint John disported himself upside down on the platform.
+
+Looking up at this point to confirm the small, small bird in every
+particular he has mentioned, I find he has ceased to twitter, and has put
+his head under his wing.  Therefore, in my different way I follow the
+good example.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF MORTALITY
+
+
+I HAD parted from the small bird at somewhere about four o’clock in the
+morning, when he had got out at Arras, and had been received by two
+shovel-hats in waiting at the station, who presented an appropriately
+ornithological and crow-like appearance.  My compatriot and I had gone on
+to Paris; my compatriot enlightening me occasionally with a long list of
+the enormous grievances of French railway travelling: every one of which,
+as I am a sinner, was perfectly new to me, though I have as much
+experience of French railways as most uncommercials.  I had left him at
+the terminus (through his conviction, against all explanation and
+remonstrance, that his baggage-ticket was his passenger-ticket),
+insisting in a very high temper to the functionary on duty, that in his
+own personal identity he was four packages weighing so many
+kilogrammes—as if he had been Cassim Baba!  I had bathed and breakfasted,
+and was strolling on the bright quays.  The subject of my meditations was
+the question whether it is positively in the essence and nature of
+things, as a certain school of Britons would seem to think it, that a
+Capital must be ensnared and enslaved before it can be made beautiful:
+when I lifted up my eyes and found that my feet, straying like my mind,
+had brought me to Notre-Dame.
+
+That is to say, Notre-Dame was before me, but there was a large open
+space between us.  A very little while gone, I had left that space
+covered with buildings densely crowded; and now it was cleared for some
+new wonder in the way of public Street, Place, Garden, Fountain, or all
+four.  Only the obscene little Morgue, slinking on the brink of the river
+and soon to come down, was left there, looking mortally ashamed of
+itself, and supremely wicked.  I had but glanced at this old
+acquaintance, when I beheld an airy procession coming round in front of
+Notre-Dame, past the great hospital.  It had something of a Masaniello
+look, with fluttering striped curtains in the midst of it, and it came
+dancing round the cathedral in the liveliest manner.
+
+I was speculating on a marriage in Blouse-life, or a Christening, or some
+other domestic festivity which I would see out, when I found, from the
+talk of a quick rush of Blouses past me, that it was a Body coming to the
+Morgue.  Having never before chanced upon this initiation, I constituted
+myself a Blouse likewise, and ran into the Morgue with the rest.  It was
+a very muddy day, and we took in a quantity of mire with us, and the
+procession coming in upon our heels brought a quantity more.  The
+procession was in the highest spirits, and consisted of idlers who had
+come with the curtained litter from its starting-place, and of all the
+reinforcements it had picked up by the way.  It set the litter down in
+the midst of the Morgue, and then two Custodians proclaimed aloud that we
+were all ‘invited’ to go out.  This invitation was rendered the more
+pressing, if not the more flattering, by our being shoved out, and the
+folding-gates being barred upon us.
+
+Those who have never seen the Morgue, may see it perfectly, by presenting
+to themselves on indifferently paved coach-house accessible from the
+street by a pair of folding-gates; on the left of the coach-house,
+occupying its width, any large London tailor’s or linendraper’s
+plate-glass window reaching to the ground; within the window, on two rows
+of inclined plane, what the coach-house has to show; hanging above, like
+irregular stalactites from the roof of a cave, a quantity of clothes—the
+clothes of the dead and buried shows of the coach-house.
+
+We had been excited in the highest degree by seeing the Custodians pull
+off their coats and tuck up their shirt-sleeves, as the procession came
+along.  It looked so interestingly like business.  Shut out in the muddy
+street, we now became quite ravenous to know all about it.  Was it river,
+pistol, knife, love, gambling, robbery, hatred, how many stabs, how many
+bullets, fresh or decomposed, suicide or murder?  All wedged together,
+and all staring at one another with our heads thrust forward, we
+propounded these inquiries and a hundred more such.  Imperceptibly, it
+came to be known that Monsieur the tall and sallow mason yonder, was
+acquainted with the facts.  Would Monsieur the tall and sallow mason,
+surged at by a new wave of us, have the goodness to impart?  It was but a
+poor old man, passing along the street under one of the new buildings, on
+whom a stone had fallen, and who had tumbled dead.  His age?  Another
+wave surged up against the tall and sallow mason, and our wave swept on
+and broke, and he was any age from sixty-five to ninety.
+
+An old man was not much: moreover, we could have wished he had been
+killed by human agency—his own, or somebody else’s: the latter,
+preferable—but our comfort was, that he had nothing about him to lead to
+his identification, and that his people must seek him here.  Perhaps they
+were waiting dinner for him even now?  We liked that.  Such of us as had
+pocket-handkerchiefs took a slow, intense, protracted wipe at our noses,
+and then crammed our handkerchiefs into the breast of our blouses.
+Others of us who had no handkerchiefs administered a similar relief to
+our overwrought minds, by means of prolonged smears or wipes of our
+mouths on our sleeves.  One man with a gloomy malformation of brow—a
+homicidal worker in white-lead, to judge from his blue tone of colour,
+and a certain flavour of paralysis pervading him—got his coat-collar
+between his teeth, and bit at it with an appetite.  Several decent women
+arrived upon the outskirts of the crowd, and prepared to launch
+themselves into the dismal coach-house when opportunity should come;
+among them, a pretty young mother, pretending to bite the forefinger of
+her baby-boy, kept it between her rosy lips that it might be handy for
+guiding to point at the show.  Meantime, all faces were turned towards
+the building, and we men waited with a fixed and stern resolution:—for
+the most part with folded arms.  Surely, it was the only public French
+sight these uncommercial eyes had seen, at which the expectant people did
+not form _en queue_.  But there was no such order of arrangement here;
+nothing but a general determination to make a rush for it, and a
+disposition to object to some boys who had mounted on the two stone posts
+by the hinges of the gates, with the design of swooping in when the
+hinges should turn.
+
+Now, they turned, and we rushed!  Great pressure, and a scream or two
+from the front.  Then a laugh or two, some expressions of disappointment,
+and a slackening of the pressure and subsidence of the struggle.—Old man
+not there.
+
+‘But what would you have?’ the Custodian reasonably argues, as he looks
+out at his little door.  ‘Patience, patience!  We make his toilette,
+gentlemen.  He will be exposed presently.  It is necessary to proceed
+according to rule.  His toilette is not made all at a blow.  He will be
+exposed in good time, gentlemen, in good time.’  And so retires, smoking,
+with a wave of his sleeveless arm towards the window, importing,
+‘Entertain yourselves in the meanwhile with the other curiosities.
+Fortunately the Museum is not empty to-day.’
+
+Who would have thought of public fickleness even at the Morgue?  But
+there it was, on that occasion.  Three lately popular articles that had
+been attracting greatly when the litter was first descried coming dancing
+round the corner by the great cathedral, were so completely deposed now,
+that nobody save two little girls (one showing them to a doll) would look
+at them.  Yet the chief of the three, the article in the front row, had
+received jagged injury of the left temple; and the other two in the back
+row, the drowned two lying side by side with their heads very slightly
+turned towards each other, seemed to be comparing notes about it.
+Indeed, those two of the back row were so furtive of appearance, and so
+(in their puffed way) assassinatingly knowing as to the one of the front,
+that it was hard to think the three had never come together in their
+lives, and were only chance companions after death.  Whether or no this
+was the general, as it was the uncommercial, fancy, it is not to be
+disputed that the group had drawn exceedingly within ten minutes.  Yet
+now, the inconstant public turned its back upon them, and even leaned its
+elbows carelessly against the bar outside the window and shook off the
+mud from its shoes, and also lent and borrowed fire for pipes.
+
+Custodian re-enters from his door.  ‘Again once, gentlemen, you are
+invited—’  No further invitation necessary.  Ready dash into the street.
+Toilette finished.  Old man coming out.
+
+This time, the interest was grown too hot to admit of toleration of the
+boys on the stone posts.  The homicidal white-lead worker made a pounce
+upon one boy who was hoisting himself up, and brought him to earth amidst
+general commendation.  Closely stowed as we were, we yet formed into
+groups—groups of conversation, without separation from the mass—to
+discuss the old man.  Rivals of the tall and sallow mason sprang into
+being, and here again was popular inconstancy.  These rivals attracted
+audiences, and were greedily listened to; and whereas they had derived
+their information solely from the tall and sallow one, officious members
+of the crowd now sought to enlighten _him_ on their authority.  Changed
+by this social experience into an iron-visaged and inveterate
+misanthrope, the mason glared at mankind, and evidently cherished in his
+breast the wish that the whole of the present company could change places
+with the deceased old man.  And now listeners became inattentive, and
+people made a start forward at a slight sound, and an unholy fire kindled
+in the public eye, and those next the gates beat at them impatiently, as
+if they were of the cannibal species and hungry.
+
+Again the hinges creaked, and we rushed.  Disorderly pressure for some
+time ensued before the uncommercial unit got figured into the front row
+of the sum.  It was strange to see so much heat and uproar seething about
+one poor spare, white-haired old man, quiet for evermore.  He was calm of
+feature and undisfigured, as he lay on his back—having been struck upon
+the hinder part of his head, and thrown forward—and something like a tear
+or two had started from the closed eyes, and lay wet upon the face.  The
+uncommercial interest, sated at a glance, directed itself upon the
+striving crowd on either side and behind: wondering whether one might
+have guessed, from the expression of those faces merely, what kind of
+sight they were looking at.  The differences of expression were not many.
+There was a little pity, but not much, and that mostly with a selfish
+touch in it—as who would say, ‘Shall I, poor I, look like that, when the
+time comes!’  There was more of a secretly brooding contemplation and
+curiosity, as ‘That man I don’t like, and have the grudge against; would
+such be his appearance, if some one—not to mention names—by any chance
+gave him an knock?’  There was a wolfish stare at the object, in which
+homicidal white-lead worker shone conspicuous.  And there was a much more
+general, purposeless, vacant staring at it—like looking at waxwork,
+without a catalogue, and not knowing what to make of it.  But all these
+expressions concurred in possessing the one underlying expression of
+_looking at something that could not return a look_.  The uncommercial
+notice had established this as very remarkable, when a new pressure all
+at once coming up from the street pinioned him ignominiously, and hurried
+him into the arms (now sleeved again) of the Custodian smoking at his
+door, and answering questions, between puffs, with a certain placid
+meritorious air of not being proud, though high in office.  And
+mentioning pride, it may be observed, by the way, that one could not well
+help investing the original sole occupant of the front row with an air
+depreciatory of the legitimate attraction of the poor old man: while the
+two in the second row seemed to exult at this superseded popularity.
+
+Pacing presently round the garden of the Tower of St. Jacques de la
+Boucherie, and presently again in front of the Hôtel de Ville, I called
+to mind a certain desolate open-air Morgue that I happened to light upon
+in London, one day in the hard winter of 1861, and which seemed as
+strange to me, at the time of seeing it, as if I had found it in China.
+Towards that hour of a winter’s afternoon when the lamp-lighters are
+beginning to light the lamps in the streets a little before they are
+wanted, because the darkness thickens fast and soon, I was walking in
+from the country on the northern side of the Regent’s Park—hard frozen
+and deserted—when I saw an empty Hansom cab drive up to the lodge at
+Gloucester-gate, and the driver with great agitation call to the man
+there: who quickly reached a long pole from a tree, and, deftly collared
+by the driver, jumped to the step of his little seat, and so the Hansom
+rattled out at the gate, galloping over the iron-bound road.  I followed
+running, though not so fast but that when I came to the right-hand Canal
+Bridge, near the cross-path to Chalk Farm, the Hansom was stationary, the
+horse was smoking hot, the long pole was idle on the ground, and the
+driver and the park-keeper were looking over the bridge parapet.  Looking
+over too, I saw, lying on the towing-path with her face turned up towards
+us, a woman, dead a day or two, and under thirty, as I guessed, poorly
+dressed in black.  The feet were lightly crossed at the ankles, and the
+dark hair, all pushed back from the face, as though that had been the
+last action of her desperate hands, streamed over the ground.  Dabbled
+all about her, was the water and the broken ice that had dropped from her
+dress, and had splashed as she was got out.  The policeman who had just
+got her out, and the passing costermonger who had helped him, were
+standing near the body; the latter with that stare at it which I have
+likened to being at a waxwork exhibition without a catalogue; the former,
+looking over his stock, with professional stiffness and coolness, in the
+direction in which the bearers he had sent for were expected.  So
+dreadfully forlorn, so dreadfully sad, so dreadfully mysterious, this
+spectacle of our dear sister here departed!  A barge came up, breaking
+the floating ice and the silence, and a woman steered it.  The man with
+the horse that towed it, cared so little for the body, that the stumbling
+hoofs had been among the hair, and the tow-rope had caught and turned the
+head, before our cry of horror took him to the bridle.  At which sound
+the steering woman looked up at us on the bridge, with contempt
+unutterable, and then looking down at the body with a similar
+expression—as if it were made in another likeness from herself, had been
+informed with other passions, had been lost by other chances, had had
+another nature dragged down to perdition—steered a spurning streak of mud
+at it, and passed on.
+
+A better experience, but also of the Morgue kind, in which chance happily
+made me useful in a slight degree, arose to my remembrance as I took my
+way by the Boulevard de Sébastopol to the brighter scenes of Paris.
+
+The thing happened, say five-and-twenty years ago.  I was a modest young
+uncommercial then, and timid and inexperienced.  Many suns and winds have
+browned me in the line, but those were my pale days.  Having newly taken
+the lease of a house in a certain distinguished metropolitan parish—a
+house which then appeared to me to be a frightfully first-class Family
+Mansion, involving awful responsibilities—I became the prey of a Beadle.
+I think the Beadle must have seen me going in or coming out, and must
+have observed that I tottered under the weight of my grandeur.  Or he may
+have been in hiding under straw when I bought my first horse (in the
+desirable stable-yard attached to the first-class Family Mansion), and
+when the vendor remarked to me, in an original manner, on bringing him
+for approval, taking his cloth off and smacking him, ‘There, Sir!
+_There’s_ a Orse!’  And when I said gallantly, ‘How much do you want for
+him?’ and when the vendor said, ‘No more than sixty guineas, from you,’
+and when I said smartly, ‘Why not more than sixty from _me_?’  And when
+he said crushingly, ‘Because upon my soul and body he’d be considered
+cheap at seventy, by one who understood the subject—but you don’t.’—I
+say, the Beadle may have been in hiding under straw, when this disgrace
+befell me, or he may have noted that I was too raw and young an Atlas to
+carry the first-class Family Mansion in a knowing manner.  Be this as it
+may, the Beadle did what Melancholy did to the youth in Gray’s Elegy—he
+marked me for his own.  And the way in which the Beadle did it, was this:
+he summoned me as a Juryman on his Coroner’s Inquests.
+
+In my first feverish alarm I repaired ‘for safety and for succour’—like
+those sagacious Northern shepherds who, having had no previous reason
+whatever to believe in young Norval, very prudently did not originate the
+hazardous idea of believing in him—to a deep householder.  This profound
+man informed me that the Beadle counted on my buying him off; on my
+bribing him not to summon me; and that if I would attend an Inquest with
+a cheerful countenance, and profess alacrity in that branch of my
+country’s service, the Beadle would be disheartened, and would give up
+the game.
+
+I roused my energies, and the next time the wily Beadle summoned me, I
+went.  The Beadle was the blankest Beadle I have ever looked on when I
+answered to my name; and his discomfiture gave me courage to go through
+with it.
+
+We were impanelled to inquire concerning the death of a very little mite
+of a child.  It was the old miserable story.  Whether the mother had
+committed the minor offence of concealing the birth, or whether she had
+committed the major offence of killing the child, was the question on
+which we were wanted.  We must commit her on one of the two issues.
+
+The Inquest came off in the parish workhouse, and I have yet a lively
+impression that I was unanimously received by my brother Jurymen as a
+brother of the utmost conceivable insignificance.  Also, that before we
+began, a broker who had lately cheated me fearfully in the matter of a
+pair of card-tables, was for the utmost rigour of the law.  I remember
+that we sat in a sort of board-room, on such very large square horse-hair
+chairs that I wondered what race of Patagonians they were made for; and
+further, that an undertaker gave me his card when we were in the full
+moral freshness of having just been sworn, as ‘an inhabitant that was
+newly come into the parish, and was likely to have a young family.’  The
+case was then stated to us by the Coroner, and then we went
+down-stairs—led by the plotting Beadle—to view the body.  From that day
+to this, the poor little figure, on which that sounding legal appellation
+was bestowed, has lain in the same place and with the same surroundings,
+to my thinking.  In a kind of crypt devoted to the warehousing of the
+parochial coffins, and in the midst of a perfect Panorama of coffins of
+all sizes, it was stretched on a box; the mother had put it in her
+box—this box—almost as soon as it was born, and it had been presently
+found there.  It had been opened, and neatly sewn up, and regarded from
+that point of view, it looked like a stuffed creature.  It rested on a
+clean white cloth, with a surgical instrument or so at hand, and regarded
+from that point of view, it looked as if the cloth were ‘laid,’ and the
+Giant were coming to dinner.  There was nothing repellent about the poor
+piece of innocence, and it demanded a mere form of looking at.  So, we
+looked at an old pauper who was going about among the coffins with a foot
+rule, as if he were a case of Self-Measurement; and we looked at one
+another; and we said the place was well whitewashed anyhow; and then our
+conversational powers as a British Jury flagged, and the foreman said,
+‘All right, gentlemen?  Back again, Mr. Beadle!’
+
+The miserable young creature who had given birth to this child within a
+very few days, and who had cleaned the cold wet door-steps immediately
+afterwards, was brought before us when we resumed our horse-hair chairs,
+and was present during the proceedings.  She had a horse-hair chair
+herself, being very weak and ill; and I remember how she turned to the
+unsympathetic nurse who attended her, and who might have been the
+figure-head of a pauper-ship, and how she hid her face and sobs and tears
+upon that wooden shoulder.  I remember, too, how hard her mistress was
+upon her (she was a servant-of-all-work), and with what a cruel
+pertinacity that piece of Virtue spun her thread of evidence double, by
+intertwisting it with the sternest thread of construction.  Smitten hard
+by the terrible low wail from the utterly friendless orphan girl, which
+never ceased during the whole inquiry, I took heart to ask this witness a
+question or two, which hopefully admitted of an answer that might give a
+favourable turn to the case.  She made the turn as little favourable as
+it could be, but it did some good, and the Coroner, who was nobly patient
+and humane (he was the late Mr. Wakley), cast a look of strong
+encouragement in my direction.  Then, we had the doctor who had made the
+examination, and the usual tests as to whether the child was born alive;
+but he was a timid, muddle-headed doctor, and got confused and
+contradictory, and wouldn’t say this, and couldn’t answer for that, and
+the immaculate broker was too much for him, and our side slid back again.
+However, I tried again, and the Coroner backed me again, for which I ever
+afterwards felt grateful to him as I do now to his memory; and we got
+another favourable turn, out of some other witness, some member of the
+family with a strong prepossession against the sinner; and I think we had
+the doctor back again; and I know that the Coroner summed up for our
+side, and that I and my British brothers turned round to discuss our
+verdict, and get ourselves into great difficulties with our large chairs
+and the broker.  At that stage of the case I tried hard again, being
+convinced that I had cause for it; and at last we found for the minor
+offence of only concealing the birth; and the poor desolate creature, who
+had been taken out during our deliberation, being brought in again to be
+told of the verdict, then dropped upon her knees before us, with
+protestations that we were right—protestations among the most affecting
+that I have ever heard in my life—and was carried away insensible.
+
+(In private conversation after this was all over, the Coroner showed me
+his reasons as a trained surgeon, for perceiving it to be impossible that
+the child could, under the most favourable circumstances, have drawn many
+breaths, in the very doubtful case of its having ever breathed at all;
+this, owing to the discovery of some foreign matter in the windpipe,
+quite irreconcilable with many moments of life.)
+
+When the agonised girl had made those final protestations, I had seen her
+face, and it was in unison with her distracted heartbroken voice, and it
+was very moving.  It certainly did not impress me by any beauty that it
+had, and if I ever see it again in another world I shall only know it by
+the help of some new sense or intelligence.  But it came to me in my
+sleep that night, and I selfishly dismissed it in the most efficient way
+I could think of.  I caused some extra care to be taken of her in the
+prison, and counsel to be retained for her defence when she was tried at
+the Old Bailey; and her sentence was lenient, and her history and conduct
+proved that it was right.  In doing the little I did for her, I remember
+to have had the kind help of some gentle-hearted functionary to whom I
+addressed myself—but what functionary I have long forgotten—who I suppose
+was officially present at the Inquest.
+
+I regard this as a very notable uncommercial experience, because this
+good came of a Beadle.  And to the best of my knowledge, information, and
+belief, it is the only good that ever did come of a Beadle since the
+first Beadle put on his cocked-hat.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS
+
+
+IT came into my mind that I would recall in these notes a few of the many
+hostelries I have rested at in the course of my journeys; and, indeed, I
+had taken up my pen for the purpose, when I was baffled by an accidental
+circumstance.  It was the having to leave off, to wish the owner of a
+certain bright face that looked in at my door, ‘many happy returns of the
+day.’  Thereupon a new thought came into my mind, driving its predecessor
+out, and I began to recall—instead of Inns—the birthdays that I have put
+up at, on my way to this present sheet of paper.
+
+I can very well remember being taken out to visit some peach-faced
+creature in a blue sash, and shoes to correspond, whose life I supposed
+to consist entirely of birthdays.  Upon seed-cake, sweet wine, and
+shining presents, that glorified young person seemed to me to be
+exclusively reared.  At so early a stage of my travels did I assist at
+the anniversary of her nativity (and become enamoured of her), that I had
+not yet acquired the recondite knowledge that a birthday is the common
+property of all who are born, but supposed it to be a special gift
+bestowed by the favouring Heavens on that one distinguished infant.
+There was no other company, and we sat in a shady bower—under a table, as
+my better (or worse) knowledge leads me to believe—and were regaled with
+saccharine substances and liquids, until it was time to part.  A bitter
+powder was administered to me next morning, and I was wretched.  On the
+whole, a pretty accurate foreshadowing of my more mature experiences in
+such wise!
+
+Then came the time when, inseparable from one’s own birthday, was a
+certain sense of merit, a consciousness of well-earned distinction.  When
+I regarded my birthday as a graceful achievement of my own, a monument of
+my perseverance, independence, and good sense, redounding greatly to my
+honour.  This was at about the period when Olympia Squires became
+involved in the anniversary.  Olympia was most beautiful (of course), and
+I loved her to that degree, that I used to be obliged to get out of my
+little bed in the night, expressly to exclaim to Solitude, ‘O, Olympia
+Squires!’  Visions of Olympia, clothed entirely in sage-green, from which
+I infer a defectively educated taste on the part of her respected
+parents, who were necessarily unacquainted with the South Kensington
+Museum, still arise before me.  Truth is sacred, and the visions are
+crowned by a shining white beaver bonnet, impossibly suggestive of a
+little feminine postboy.  My memory presents a birthday when Olympia and
+I were taken by an unfeeling relative—some cruel uncle, or the like—to a
+slow torture called an Orrery.  The terrible instrument was set up at the
+local Theatre, and I had expressed a profane wish in the morning that it
+was a Play: for which a serious aunt had probed my conscience deep, and
+my pocket deeper, by reclaiming a bestowed half-crown.  It was a
+venerable and a shabby Orrery, at least one thousand stars and
+twenty-five comets behind the age.  Nevertheless, it was awful.  When the
+low-spirited gentleman with a wand said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen’ (meaning
+particularly Olympia and me), ‘the lights are about to be put out, but
+there is not the slightest cause for alarm,’ it was very alarming.  Then
+the planets and stars began.  Sometimes they wouldn’t come on, sometimes
+they wouldn’t go off, sometimes they had holes in them, and mostly they
+didn’t seem to be good likenesses.  All this time the gentleman with the
+wand was going on in the dark (tapping away at the heavenly bodies
+between whiles, like a wearisome woodpecker), about a sphere revolving on
+its own axis eight hundred and ninety-seven thousand millions of times—or
+miles—in two hundred and sixty-three thousand five hundred and
+twenty-four millions of something elses, until I thought if this was a
+birthday it were better never to have been born.  Olympia, also, became
+much depressed, and we both slumbered and woke cross, and still the
+gentleman was going on in the dark—whether up in the stars, or down on
+the stage, it would have been hard to make out, if it had been worth
+trying—cyphering away about planes of orbits, to such an infamous extent
+that Olympia, stung to madness, actually kicked me.  A pretty birthday
+spectacle, when the lights were turned up again, and all the schools in
+the town (including the National, who had come in for nothing, and serve
+them right, for they were always throwing stones) were discovered with
+exhausted countenances, screwing their knuckles into their eyes, or
+clutching their heads of hair.  A pretty birthday speech when Dr. Sleek
+of the City-Free bobbed up his powdered head in the stage-box, and said
+that before this assembly dispersed he really must beg to express his
+entire approval of a lecture as improving, as informing, as devoid of
+anything that could call a blush into the cheek of youth, as any it had
+ever been his lot to hear delivered.  A pretty birthday altogether, when
+Astronomy couldn’t leave poor Small Olympia Squires and me alone, but
+must put an end to our loves!  For, we never got over it; the threadbare
+Orrery outwore our mutual tenderness; the man with the wand was too much
+for the boy with the bow.
+
+When shall I disconnect the combined smells of oranges, brown paper, and
+straw, from those other birthdays at school, when the coming hamper casts
+its shadow before, and when a week of social harmony—shall I add of
+admiring and affectionate popularity—led up to that Institution?  What
+noble sentiments were expressed to me in the days before the hamper, what
+vows of friendship were sworn to me, what exceedingly old knives were
+given me, what generous avowals of having been in the wrong emanated from
+else obstinate spirits once enrolled among my enemies!  The birthday of
+the potted game and guava jelly, is still made special to me by the noble
+conduct of Bully Globson.  Letters from home had mysteriously inquired
+whether I should be much surprised and disappointed if among the
+treasures in the coming hamper I discovered potted game, and guava jelly
+from the Western Indies.  I had mentioned those hints in confidence to a
+few friends, and had promised to give away, as I now see reason to
+believe, a handsome covey of partridges potted, and about a hundredweight
+of guava jelly.  It was now that Globson, Bully no more, sought me out in
+the playground.  He was a big fat boy, with a big fat head and a big fat
+fist, and at the beginning of that Half had raised such a bump on my
+forehead that I couldn’t get my hat of state on, to go to church.  He
+said that after an interval of cool reflection (four months) he now felt
+this blow to have been an error of judgment, and that he wished to
+apologise for the same.  Not only that, but holding down his big head
+between his two big hands in order that I might reach it conveniently, he
+requested me, as an act of justice which would appease his awakened
+conscience, to raise a retributive bump upon it, in the presence of
+witnesses.  This handsome proposal I modestly declined, and he then
+embraced me, and we walked away conversing.  We conversed respecting the
+West India Islands, and, in the pursuit of knowledge he asked me with
+much interest whether in the course of my reading I had met with any
+reliable description of the mode of manufacturing guava jelly; or whether
+I had ever happened to taste that conserve, which he had been given to
+understand was of rare excellence.
+
+Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty; and then with the waning months
+came an ever augmenting sense of the dignity of twenty-one.  Heaven knows
+I had nothing to ‘come into,’ save the bare birthday, and yet I esteemed
+it as a great possession.  I now and then paved the way to my state of
+dignity, by beginning a proposition with the casual words, ‘say that a
+man of twenty-one,’ or by the incidental assumption of a fact that could
+not sanely be disputed, as, ‘for when a fellow comes to be a man of
+twenty-one.’  I gave a party on the occasion.  She was there.  It is
+unnecessary to name Her, more particularly; She was older than I, and had
+pervaded every chink and crevice of my mind for three or four years.  I
+had held volumes of Imaginary Conversations with her mother on the
+subject of our union, and I had written letters more in number than
+Horace Walpole’s, to that discreet woman, soliciting her daughter’s hand
+in marriage.  I had never had the remotest intention of sending any of
+those letters; but to write them, and after a few days tear them up, had
+been a sublime occupation.  Sometimes, I had begun ‘Honoured Madam.  I
+think that a lady gifted with those powers of observation which I know
+you to possess, and endowed with those womanly sympathies with the young
+and ardent which it were more than heresy to doubt, can scarcely have
+failed to discover that I love your adorable daughter, deeply,
+devotedly.’  In less buoyant states of mind I had begun, ‘Bear with me,
+Dear Madam, bear with a daring wretch who is about to make a surprising
+confession to you, wholly unanticipated by yourself, and which he
+beseeches you to commit to the flames as soon as you have become aware to
+what a towering height his mad ambition soars.’  At other times—periods
+of profound mental depression, when She had gone out to balls where I was
+not—the draft took the affecting form of a paper to be left on my table
+after my departure to the confines of the globe.  As thus: ‘For Mrs.
+Onowenever, these lines when the hand that traces them shall be far away.
+I could not bear the daily torture of hopelessly loving the dear one whom
+I will not name.  Broiling on the coast of Africa, or congealing on the
+shores of Greenland, I am far far better there than here.’  (In this
+sentiment my cooler judgment perceives that the family of the beloved
+object would have most completely concurred.)  ‘If I ever emerge from
+obscurity, and my name is ever heralded by Fame, it will be for her dear
+sake.  If I ever amass Gold, it will be to pour it at her feet.  Should I
+on the other hand become the prey of Ravens—’  I doubt if I ever quite
+made up my mind what was to be done in that affecting case; I tried ‘then
+it is better so;’ but not feeling convinced that it would be better so, I
+vacillated between leaving all else blank, which looked expressive and
+bleak, or winding up with ‘Farewell!’
+
+This fictitious correspondence of mine is to blame for the foregoing
+digression.  I was about to pursue the statement that on my twenty-first
+birthday I gave a party, and She was there.  It was a beautiful party.
+There was not a single animate or inanimate object connected with it
+(except the company and myself) that I had ever seen before.  Everything
+was hired, and the mercenaries in attendance were profound strangers to
+me.  Behind a door, in the crumby part of the night when wine-glasses
+were to be found in unexpected spots, I spoke to Her—spoke out to Her.
+What passed, I cannot as a man of honour reveal.  She was all angelical
+gentleness, but a word was mentioned—a short and dreadful word of three
+letters, beginning with a B— which, as I remarked at the moment,
+‘scorched my brain.’  She went away soon afterwards, and when the hollow
+throng (though to be sure it was no fault of theirs) dispersed, I issued
+forth, with a dissipated scorner, and, as I mentioned expressly to him,
+‘sought oblivion.’  It was found, with a dreadful headache in it, but it
+didn’t last; for, in the shaming light of next day’s noon, I raised my
+heavy head in bed, looking back to the birthdays behind me, and tracking
+the circle by which I had got round, after all, to the bitter powder and
+the wretchedness again.
+
+This reactionary powder (taken so largely by the human race I am inclined
+to regard it as the Universal Medicine once sought for in Laboratories)
+is capable of being made up in another form for birthday use.  Anybody’s
+long-lost brother will do ill to turn up on a birthday.  If I had a
+long-lost brother I should know beforehand that he would prove a
+tremendous fraternal failure if he appointed to rush into my arms on my
+birthday.  The first Magic Lantern I ever saw, was secretly and
+elaborately planned to be the great effect of a very juvenile birthday;
+but it wouldn’t act, and its images were dim.  My experience of adult
+birthday Magic Lanterns may possibly have been unfortunate, but has
+certainly been similar.  I have an illustrative birthday in my eye: a
+birthday of my friend Flipfield, whose birthdays had long been remarkable
+as social successes.  There had been nothing set or formal about them;
+Flipfield having been accustomed merely to say, two or three days before,
+‘Don’t forget to come and dine, old boy, according to custom;’—I don’t
+know what he said to the ladies he invited, but I may safely assume it
+_not_ to have been ‘old girl.’  Those were delightful gatherings, and
+were enjoyed by all participators.  In an evil hour, a long-lost brother
+of Flipfield’s came to light in foreign parts.  Where he had been hidden,
+or what he had been doing, I don’t know, for Flipfield vaguely informed
+me that he had turned up ‘on the banks of the Ganges’—speaking of him as
+if he had been washed ashore.  The Long-lost was coming home, and
+Flipfield made an unfortunate calculation, based on the well-known
+regularity of the P. and O. Steamers, that matters might be so contrived
+as that the Long-lost should appear in the nick of time on his
+(Flipfield’s) birthday.  Delicacy commanded that I should repress the
+gloomy anticipations with which my soul became fraught when I heard of
+this plan.  The fatal day arrived, and we assembled in force.  Mrs.
+Flipfield senior formed an interesting feature in the group, with a
+blue-veined miniature of the late Mr. Flipfield round her neck, in an
+oval, resembling a tart from the pastrycook’s: his hair powdered, and the
+bright buttons on his coat, evidently very like.  She was accompanied by
+Miss Flipfield, the eldest of her numerous family, who held her
+pocket-handkerchief to her bosom in a majestic manner, and spoke to all
+of us (none of us had ever seen her before), in pious and condoning
+tones, of all the quarrels that had taken place in the family, from her
+infancy—which must have been a long time ago—down to that hour.  The
+Long-lost did not appear.  Dinner, half an hour later than usual, was
+announced, and still no Long-lost.  We sat down to table.  The knife and
+fork of the Long-lost made a vacuum in Nature, and when the champagne
+came round for the first time, Flipfield gave him up for the day, and had
+them removed.  It was then that the Long-lost gained the height of his
+popularity with the company; for my own part, I felt convinced that I
+loved him dearly.  Flipfield’s dinners are perfect, and he is the easiest
+and best of entertainers.  Dinner went on brilliantly, and the more the
+Long-lost didn’t come, the more comfortable we grew, and the more highly
+we thought of him.  Flipfield’s own man (who has a regard for me) was in
+the act of struggling with an ignorant stipendiary, to wrest from him the
+wooden leg of a Guinea-fowl which he was pressing on my acceptance, and
+to substitute a slice of the breast, when a ringing at the door-bell
+suspended the strife.  I looked round me, and perceived the sudden pallor
+which I knew my own visage revealed, reflected in the faces of the
+company.  Flipfield hurriedly excused himself, went out, was absent for
+about a minute or two, and then re-entered with the Long-lost.
+
+I beg to say distinctly that if the stranger had brought Mont Blanc with
+him, or had come attended by a retinue of eternal snows, he could not
+have chilled the circle to the marrow in a more efficient manner.
+Embodied Failure sat enthroned upon the Long-lost’s brow, and pervaded
+him to his Long-lost boots.  In vain Mrs. Flipfield senior, opening her
+arms, exclaimed, ‘My Tom!’ and pressed his nose against the counterfeit
+presentment of his other parent.  In vain Miss Flipfield, in the first
+transports of this re-union, showed him a dint upon her maidenly cheek,
+and asked him if he remembered when he did that with the bellows?  We,
+the bystanders, were overcome, but overcome by the palpable,
+undisguisable, utter, and total break-down of the Long-lost.  Nothing he
+could have done would have set him right with us but his instant return
+to the Ganges.  In the very same moments it became established that the
+feeling was reciprocal, and that the Long-lost detested us.  When a
+friend of the family (not myself, upon my honour), wishing to set things
+going again, asked him, while he partook of soup—asked him with an
+amiability of intention beyond all praise, but with a weakness of
+execution open to defeat—what kind of river he considered the Ganges, the
+Long-lost, scowling at the friend of the family over his spoon, as one of
+an abhorrent race, replied, ‘Why, a river of water, I suppose,’ and
+spooned his soup into himself with a malignancy of hand and eye that
+blighted the amiable questioner.  Not an opinion could be elicited from
+the Long-lost, in unison with the sentiments of any individual present.
+He contradicted Flipfield dead, before he had eaten his salmon.  He had
+no idea—or affected to have no idea—that it was his brother’s birthday,
+and on the communication of that interesting fact to him, merely wanted
+to make him out four years older than he was.  He was an antipathetical
+being, with a peculiar power and gift of treading on everybody’s
+tenderest place.  They talk in America of a man’s ‘Platform.’  I should
+describe the Platform of the Long-lost as a Platform composed of other
+people’s corns, on which he had stumped his way, with all his might and
+main, to his present position.  It is needless to add that Flipfield’s
+great birthday went by the board, and that he was a wreck when I
+pretended at parting to wish him many happy returns of it.
+
+There is another class of birthdays at which I have so frequently
+assisted, that I may assume such birthdays to be pretty well known to the
+human race.  My friend Mayday’s birthday is an example.  The guests have
+no knowledge of one another except on that one day in the year, and are
+annually terrified for a week by the prospect of meeting one another
+again.  There is a fiction among us that we have uncommon reasons for
+being particularly lively and spirited on the occasion, whereas deep
+despondency is no phrase for the expression of our feelings.  But the
+wonderful feature of the case is, that we are in tacit accordance to
+avoid the subject—to keep it as far off as possible, as long as
+possible—and to talk about anything else, rather than the joyful event.
+I may even go so far as to assert that there is a dumb compact among us
+that we will pretend that it is NOT Mayday’s birthday.  A mysterious and
+gloomy Being, who is said to have gone to school with Mayday, and who is
+so lank and lean that he seriously impugns the Dietary of the
+establishment at which they were jointly educated, always leads us, as I
+may say, to the block, by laying his grisly hand on a decanter and
+begging us to fill our glasses.  The devices and pretences that I have
+seen put in practice to defer the fatal moment, and to interpose between
+this man and his purpose, are innumerable.  I have known desperate
+guests, when they saw the grisly hand approaching the decanter, wildly to
+begin, without any antecedent whatsoever, ‘That reminds me—’ and to
+plunge into long stories.  When at last the hand and the decanter come
+together, a shudder, a palpable perceptible shudder, goes round the
+table.  We receive the reminder that it is Mayday’s birthday, as if it
+were the anniversary of some profound disgrace he had undergone, and we
+sought to comfort him.  And when we have drunk Mayday’s health, and
+wished him many happy returns, we are seized for some moments with a
+ghastly blitheness, an unnatural levity, as if we were in the first
+flushed reaction of having undergone a surgical operation.
+
+Birthdays of this species have a public as well as a private phase.  My
+‘boyhood’s home,’ Dullborough, presents a case in point.  An Immortal
+Somebody was wanted in Dullborough, to dimple for a day the stagnant face
+of the waters; he was rather wanted by Dullborough generally, and much
+wanted by the principal hotel-keeper.  The County history was looked up
+for a locally Immortal Somebody, but the registered Dullborough worthies
+were all Nobodies.  In this state of things, it is hardly necessary to
+record that Dullborough did what every man does when he wants to write a
+book or deliver a lecture, and is provided with all the materials except
+a subject.  It fell back upon Shakespeare.
+
+No sooner was it resolved to celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday in
+Dullborough, than the popularity of the immortal bard became surprising.
+You might have supposed the first edition of his works to have been
+published last week, and enthusiastic Dullborough to have got half
+through them.  (I doubt, by the way, whether it had ever done half that,
+but that is a private opinion.)  A young gentleman with a sonnet, the
+retention of which for two years had enfeebled his mind and undermined
+his knees, got the sonnet into the Dullborough Warden, and gained flesh.
+Portraits of Shakespeare broke out in the bookshop windows, and our
+principal artist painted a large original portrait in oils for the
+decoration of the dining-room.  It was not in the least like any of the
+other Portraits, and was exceedingly admired, the head being much
+swollen.  At the Institution, the Debating Society discussed the new
+question, Was there sufficient ground for supposing that the Immortal
+Shakespeare ever stole deer?  This was indignantly decided by an
+overwhelming majority in the negative; indeed, there was but one vote on
+the Poaching side, and that was the vote of the orator who had undertaken
+to advocate it, and who became quite an obnoxious character—particularly
+to the Dullborough ‘roughs,’ who were about as well informed on the
+matter as most other people.  Distinguished speakers were invited down,
+and very nearly came (but not quite).  Subscriptions were opened, and
+committees sat, and it would have been far from a popular measure in the
+height of the excitement, to have told Dullborough that it wasn’t
+Stratford-upon-Avon.  Yet, after all these preparations, when the great
+festivity took place, and the portrait, elevated aloft, surveyed the
+company as if it were in danger of springing a mine of intellect and
+blowing itself up, it did undoubtedly happen, according to the
+inscrutable mysteries of things, that nobody could be induced, not to say
+to touch upon Shakespeare, but to come within a mile of him, until the
+crack speaker of Dullborough rose to propose the immortal memory.  Which
+he did with the perplexing and astonishing result that before he had
+repeated the great name half-a-dozen times, or had been upon his legs as
+many minutes, he was assailed with a general shout of ‘Question.’
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+THE SHORT-TIMERS
+
+
+‘WITHIN so many yards of this Covent-garden lodging of mine, as within so
+many yards of Westminster Abbey, Saint Paul’s Cathedral, the Houses of
+Parliament, the Prisons, the Courts of Justice, all the Institutions that
+govern the land, I can find—_must_ find, whether I will or no—in the open
+streets, shameful instances of neglect of children, intolerable
+toleration of the engenderment of paupers, idlers, thieves, races of
+wretched and destructive cripples both in body and mind, a misery to
+themselves, a misery to the community, a disgrace to civilisation, and an
+outrage on Christianity.—I know it to be a fact as easy of demonstration
+as any sum in any of the elementary rules of arithmetic, that if the
+State would begin its work and duty at the beginning, and would with the
+strong hand take those children out of the streets, while they are yet
+children, and wisely train them, it would make them a part of England’s
+glory, not its shame—of England’s strength, not its weakness—would raise
+good soldiers and sailors, and good citizens, and many great men, out of
+the seeds of its criminal population.  Yet I go on bearing with the
+enormity as if it were nothing, and I go on reading the Parliamentary
+Debates as if they were something, and I concern myself far more about
+one railway-bridge across a public thoroughfare, than about a dozen
+generations of scrofula, ignorance, wickedness, prostitution, poverty,
+and felony.  I can slip out at my door, in the small hours after any
+midnight, and, in one circuit of the purlieus of Covent-garden Market,
+can behold a state of infancy and youth, as vile as if a Bourbon sat upon
+the English throne; a great police force looking on with authority to do
+no more than worry and hunt the dreadful vermin into corners, and there
+leave them.  Within the length of a few streets I can find a workhouse,
+mismanaged with that dull short-sighted obstinacy that its greatest
+opportunities as to the children it receives are lost, and yet not a
+farthing saved to any one.  But the wheel goes round, and round, and
+round; and because it goes round—so I am told by the politest
+authorities—it goes well.’
+
+Thus I reflected, one day in the Whitsun week last past, as I floated
+down the Thames among the bridges, looking—not inappropriately—at the
+drags that were hanging up at certain dirty stairs to hook the drowned
+out, and at the numerous conveniences provided to facilitate their
+tumbling in.  My object in that uncommercial journey called up another
+train of thought, and it ran as follows:
+
+‘When I was at school, one of seventy boys, I wonder by what secret
+understanding our attention began to wander when we had pored over our
+books for some hours.  I wonder by what ingenuity we brought on that
+confused state of mind when sense became nonsense, when figures wouldn’t
+work, when dead languages wouldn’t construe, when live languages wouldn’t
+be spoken, when memory wouldn’t come, when dulness and vacancy wouldn’t
+go.  I cannot remember that we ever conspired to be sleepy after dinner,
+or that we ever particularly wanted to be stupid, and to have flushed
+faces and hot beating heads, or to find blank hopelessness and obscurity
+this afternoon in what would become perfectly clear and bright in the
+freshness of to-morrow morning.  We suffered for these things, and they
+made us miserable enough.  Neither do I remember that we ever bound
+ourselves by any secret oath or other solemn obligation, to find the
+seats getting too hard to be sat upon after a certain time; or to have
+intolerable twitches in our legs, rendering us aggressive and malicious
+with those members; or to be troubled with a similar uneasiness in our
+elbows, attended with fistic consequences to our neighbours; or to carry
+two pounds of lead in the chest, four pounds in the head, and several
+active blue-bottles in each ear.  Yet, for certain, we suffered under
+those distresses, and were always charged at for labouring under them, as
+if we had brought them on, of our own deliberate act and deed.  As to the
+mental portion of them being my own fault in my own case—I should like to
+ask any well-trained and experienced teacher, not to say psychologist.
+And as to the physical portion—I should like to ask PROFESSOR OWEN.’
+
+It happened that I had a small bundle of papers with me, on what is
+called ‘The Half-Time System’ in schools.  Referring to one of those
+papers I found that the indefatigable MR. CHADWICK had been beforehand
+with me, and had already asked Professor Owen: who had handsomely replied
+that I was not to blame, but that, being troubled with a skeleton, and
+having been constituted according to certain natural laws, I and my
+skeleton were unfortunately bound by those laws even in school—and had
+comported ourselves accordingly.  Much comforted by the good Professor’s
+being on my side, I read on to discover whether the indefatigable Mr.
+Chadwick had taken up the mental part of my afflictions.  I found that he
+had, and that he had gained on my behalf, SIR BENJAMIN BRODIE, SIR DAVID
+WILKIE, SIR WALTER SCOTT, and the common sense of mankind.  For which I
+beg Mr. Chadwick, if this should meet his eye, to accept my warm
+acknowledgments.
+
+Up to that time I had retained a misgiving that the seventy unfortunates
+of whom I was one, must have been, without knowing it, leagued together
+by the spirit of evil in a sort of perpetual Guy Fawkes Plot, to grope
+about in vaults with dark lanterns after a certain period of continuous
+study.  But now the misgiving vanished, and I floated on with a quieted
+mind to see the Half-Time System in action.  For that was the purpose of
+my journey, both by steamboat on the Thames, and by very dirty railway on
+the shore.  To which last institution, I beg to recommend the legal use
+of coke as engine-fuel, rather than the illegal use of coal; the
+recommendation is quite disinterested, for I was most liberally supplied
+with small coal on the journey, for which no charge was made.  I had not
+only my eyes, nose, and ears filled, but my hat, and all my pockets, and
+my pocket-book, and my watch.
+
+The V.D.S.C.R.C. (or Very Dirty and Small Coal Railway Company) delivered
+me close to my destination, and I soon found the Half-Time System
+established in spacious premises, and freely placed at my convenience and
+disposal.
+
+What would I see first of the Half-Time System?  I chose Military Drill.
+‘Atten-tion!’  Instantly a hundred boys stood forth in the paved yard as
+one boy; bright, quick, eager, steady, watchful for the look of command,
+instant and ready for the word.  Not only was there complete
+precision—complete accord to the eye and to the ear—but an alertness in
+the doing of the thing which deprived it, curiously, of its monotonous or
+mechanical character.  There was perfect uniformity, and yet an
+individual spirit and emulation.  No spectator could doubt that the boys
+liked it.  With non-commissioned officers varying from a yard to a yard
+and a half high, the result could not possibly have been attained
+otherwise.  They marched, and counter-marched, and formed in line and
+square, and company, and single file and double file, and performed a
+variety of evolutions; all most admirably.  In respect of an air of
+enjoyable understanding of what they were about, which seems to be
+forbidden to English soldiers, the boys might have been small French
+troops.  When they were dismissed and the broadsword exercise, limited to
+a much smaller number, succeeded, the boys who had no part in that new
+drill, either looked on attentively, or disported themselves in a
+gymnasium hard by.  The steadiness of the broadsword boys on their short
+legs, and the firmness with which they sustained the different positions,
+was truly remarkable.
+
+The broadsword exercise over, suddenly there was great excitement and a
+rush.  Naval Drill!
+
+In the corner of the ground stood a decked mimic ship, with real masts,
+yards, and sails—mainmast seventy feet high.  At the word of command from
+the Skipper of this ship—a mahogany-faced Old Salt, with the
+indispensable quid in his cheek, the true nautical roll, and all
+wonderfully complete—the rigging was covered with a swarm of boys: one,
+the first to spring into the shrouds, outstripping all the others, and
+resting on the truck of the main-topmast in no time.
+
+And now we stood out to sea, in a most amazing manner; the Skipper
+himself, the whole crew, the Uncommercial, and all hands present,
+implicitly believing that there was not a moment to lose, that the wind
+had that instant chopped round and sprung up fair, and that we were away
+on a voyage round the world.  Get all sail upon her!  With a will, my
+lads!  Lay out upon the main-yard there!  Look alive at the weather
+earring!  Cheery, my boys!  Let go the sheet, now!  Stand by at the
+braces, you!  With a will, aloft there!  Belay, starboard watch!  Fifer!
+Come aft, fifer, and give ’em a tune!  Forthwith, springs up fifer, fife
+in hand—smallest boy ever seen—big lump on temple, having lately fallen
+down on a paving-stone—gives ’em a tune with all his might and main.
+Hoo-roar, fifer!  With a will, my lads!  Tip ’em a livelier one, fifer!
+Fifer tips ’em a livelier one, and excitement increases.  Shake ’em out,
+my lads!  Well done!  There you have her!  Pretty, pretty!  Every rag
+upon her she can carry, wind right astarn, and ship cutting through the
+water fifteen knots an hour!
+
+At this favourable moment of her voyage, I gave the alarm ‘A man
+overboard!’ (on the gravel), but he was immediately recovered, none the
+worse.  Presently, I observed the Skipper overboard, but forbore to
+mention it, as he seemed in no wise disconcerted by the accident.
+Indeed, I soon came to regard the Skipper as an amphibious creature, for
+he was so perpetually plunging overboard to look up at the hands aloft,
+that he was oftener in the bosom of the ocean than on deck.  His pride in
+his crew on those occasions was delightful, and the conventional
+unintelligibility of his orders in the ears of uncommercial landlubbers
+and loblolly boys, though they were always intelligible to the crew, was
+hardly less pleasant.  But we couldn’t expect to go on in this way for
+ever; dirty weather came on, and then worse weather, and when we least
+expected it we got into tremendous difficulties.  Screw loose in the
+chart perhaps—something certainly wrong somewhere—but here we were with
+breakers ahead, my lads, driving head on, slap on a lee shore!  The
+Skipper broached this terrific announcement in such great agitation, that
+the small fifer, not fifeing now, but standing looking on near the wheel
+with his fife under his arm, seemed for the moment quite unboyed, though
+he speedily recovered his presence of mind.  In the trying circumstances
+that ensued, the Skipper and the crew proved worthy of one another.  The
+Skipper got dreadfully hoarse, but otherwise was master of the situation.
+The man at the wheel did wonders; all hands (except the fifer) were
+turned up to wear ship; and I observed the fifer, when we were at our
+greatest extremity, to refer to some document in his waistcoat-pocket,
+which I conceived to be his will.  I think she struck.  I was not myself
+conscious of any collision, but I saw the Skipper so very often washed
+overboard and back again, that I could only impute it to the beating of
+the ship.  I am not enough of a seaman to describe the manœuvres by which
+we were saved, but they made the Skipper very hot (French polishing his
+mahogany face) and the crew very nimble, and succeeded to a marvel; for,
+within a few minutes of the first alarm, we had wore ship and got her
+off, and were all a-tauto—which I felt very grateful for: not that I knew
+what it was, but that I perceived that we had not been all a-tauto
+lately.  Land now appeared on our weather-bow, and we shaped our course
+for it, having the wind abeam, and frequently changing the man at the
+helm, in order that every man might have his spell.  We worked into
+harbour under prosperous circumstances, and furled our sails, and squared
+our yards, and made all ship-shape and handsome, and so our voyage ended.
+When I complimented the Skipper at parting on his exertions and those of
+his gallant crew, he informed me that the latter were provided for the
+worst, all hands being taught to swim and dive; and he added that the
+able seaman at the main-topmast truck especially, could dive as deep as
+he could go high.
+
+The next adventure that befell me in my visit to the Short-Timers, was
+the sudden apparition of a military band.  I had been inspecting the
+hammocks of the crew of the good ship, when I saw with astonishment that
+several musical instruments, brazen and of great size, appeared to have
+suddenly developed two legs each, and to be trotting about a yard.  And
+my astonishment was heightened when I observed a large drum, that had
+previously been leaning helpless against a wall, taking up a stout
+position on four legs.  Approaching this drum and looking over it, I
+found two boys behind it (it was too much for one), and then I found that
+each of the brazen instruments had brought out a boy, and was going to
+discourse sweet sounds.  The boys—not omitting the fifer, now playing a
+new instrument—were dressed in neat uniform, and stood up in a circle at
+their music-stands, like any other Military Band.  They played a march or
+two, and then we had Cheer boys, Cheer, and then we had Yankee Doodle,
+and we finished, as in loyal duty bound, with God save the Queen.  The
+band’s proficiency was perfectly wonderful, and it was not at all
+wonderful that the whole body corporate of Short-Timers listened with
+faces of the liveliest interest and pleasure.
+
+What happened next among the Short-Timers?  As if the band had blown me
+into a great class-room out of their brazen tubes, _in_ a great
+class-room I found myself now, with the whole choral force of
+Short-Timers singing the praises of a summer’s day to the harmonium, and
+my small but highly respected friend the fifer blazing away vocally, as
+if he had been saving up his wind for the last twelvemonth; also the
+whole crew of the good ship Nameless swarming up and down the scale as if
+they had never swarmed up and down the rigging.  This done, we threw our
+whole power into God bless the Prince of Wales, and blessed his Royal
+Highness to such an extent that, for my own Uncommercial part, I gasped
+again when it was over.  The moment this was done, we formed, with
+surpassing freshness, into hollow squares, and fell to work at oral
+lessons as if we never did, and had never thought of doing, anything
+else.
+
+Let a veil be drawn over the self-committals into which the Uncommercial
+Traveller would have been betrayed but for a discreet reticence, coupled
+with an air of absolute wisdom on the part of that artful personage.
+Take the square of five, multiply it by fifteen, divide it by three,
+deduct eight from it, add four dozen to it, give me the result in pence,
+and tell me how many eggs I could get for it at three farthings apiece.
+The problem is hardly stated, when a dozen small boys pour out answers.
+Some wide, some very nearly right, some worked as far as they go with
+such accuracy, as at once to show what link of the chain has been dropped
+in the hurry.  For the moment, none are quite right; but behold a
+labouring spirit beating the buttons on its corporeal waistcoat, in a
+process of internal calculation, and knitting an accidental bump on its
+corporeal forehead in a concentration of mental arithmetic!  It is my
+honourable friend (if he will allow me to call him so) the fifer.  With
+right arm eagerly extended in token of being inspired with an answer, and
+with right leg foremost, the fifer solves the mystery: then recalls both
+arm and leg, and with bump in ambush awaits the next poser.  Take the
+square of three, multiply it by seven, divide it by four, add fifty to
+it, take thirteen from it, multiply it by two, double it, give me the
+result in pence, and say how many halfpence.  Wise as the serpent is the
+four feet of performer on the nearest approach to that instrument, whose
+right arm instantly appears, and quenches this arithmetical fire.  Tell
+me something about Great Britain, tell me something about its principal
+productions, tell me something about its ports, tell me something about
+its seas and rivers, tell me something about coal, iron, cotton, timber,
+tin, and turpentine.  The hollow square bristles with extended right
+arms; but ever faithful to fact is the fifer, ever wise as the serpent is
+the performer on that instrument, ever prominently buoyant and brilliant
+are all members of the band.  I observe the player of the cymbals to dash
+at a sounding answer now and then rather than not cut in at all; but I
+take that to be in the way of his instrument.  All these questions, and
+many such, are put on the spur of the moment, and by one who has never
+examined these boys.  The Uncommercial, invited to add another,
+falteringly demands how many birthdays a man born on the twenty-ninth of
+February will have had on completing his fiftieth year?  A general
+perception of trap and pitfall instantly arises, and the fifer is seen to
+retire behind the corduroys of his next neighbours, as perceiving special
+necessity for collecting himself and communing with his mind.  Meanwhile,
+the wisdom of the serpent suggests that the man will have had only one
+birthday in all that time, for how can any man have more than one, seeing
+that he is born once and dies once?  The blushing Uncommercial stands
+corrected, and amends the formula.  Pondering ensues, two or three wrong
+answers are offered, and Cymbals strikes up ‘Six!’ but doesn’t know why.
+Then modestly emerging from his Academic Grove of corduroys appears the
+fifer, right arm extended, right leg foremost, bump irradiated.  ‘Twelve,
+and two over!’
+
+The feminine Short-Timers passed a similar examination, and very
+creditably too.  Would have done better perhaps, with a little more
+geniality on the part of their pupil-teacher; for a cold eye, my young
+friend, and a hard, abrupt manner, are not by any means the powerful
+engines that your innocence supposes them to be.  Both girls and boys
+wrote excellently, from copy and dictation; both could cook; both could
+mend their own clothes; both could clean up everything about them in an
+orderly and skilful way, the girls having womanly household knowledge
+superadded.  Order and method began in the songs of the Infant School
+which I visited likewise, and they were even in their dwarf degree to be
+found in the Nursery, where the Uncommercial walking-stick was carried
+off with acclamations, and where ‘the Doctor’—a medical gentleman of two,
+who took his degree on the night when he was found at an apothecary’s
+door—did the honours of the establishment with great urbanity and gaiety.
+
+These have long been excellent schools; long before the days of the
+Short-Time.  I first saw them, twelve or fifteen years ago.  But since
+the introduction of the Short-Time system it has been proved here that
+eighteen hours a week of book-learning are more profitable than
+thirty-six, and that the pupils are far quicker and brighter than of
+yore.  The good influences of music on the whole body of children have
+likewise been surprisingly proved.  Obviously another of the immense
+advantages of the Short-Time system to the cause of good education is the
+great diminution of its cost, and of the period of time over which it
+extends.  The last is a most important consideration, as poor parents are
+always impatient to profit by their children’s labour.
+
+It will be objected: Firstly, that this is all very well, but special
+local advantages and special selection of children must be necessary to
+such success.  Secondly, that this is all very well, but must be very
+expensive.  Thirdly, that this is all very well, but we have no proof of
+the results, sir, no proof.
+
+On the first head of local advantages and special selection.  Would
+Limehouse Hole be picked out for the site of a Children’s Paradise?  Or
+would the legitimate and illegitimate pauper children of the long-shore
+population of such a riverside district, be regarded as unusually
+favourable specimens to work with?  Yet these schools are at Limehouse,
+and are the Pauper Schools of the Stepney Pauper Union.
+
+On the second head of expense.  Would sixpence a week be considered a
+very large cost for the education of each pupil, including all salaries
+of teachers and rations of teachers?  But supposing the cost were not
+sixpence a week, not fivepence? it is FOURPENCE-HALFPENNY.
+
+On the third head of no proof, sir, no proof.  Is there any proof in the
+facts that Pupil Teachers more in number, and more highly qualified, have
+been produced here under the Short-Time system than under the Long-Time
+system?  That the Short-Timers, in a writing competition, beat the
+Long-Timers of a first-class National School?  That the sailor-boys are
+in such demand for merchant ships, that whereas, before they were
+trained, 10_l._ premium used to be given with each boy—too often to some
+greedy brute of a drunken skipper, who disappeared before the term of
+apprenticeship was out, if the ill-used boy didn’t—captains of the best
+character now take these boys more than willingly, with no premium at
+all?  That they are also much esteemed in the Royal Navy, which they
+prefer, ‘because everything is so neat and clean and orderly’?  Or, is
+there any proof in Naval captains writing ‘Your little fellows are all
+that I can desire’?  Or, is there any proof in such testimony as this:
+‘The owner of a vessel called at the school, and said that as his ship
+was going down Channel on her last voyage, with one of the boys from the
+school on board, the pilot said, “It would be as well if the royal were
+lowered; I wish it were down.”  Without waiting for any orders, and
+unobserved by the pilot, the lad, whom they had taken on board from the
+school, instantly mounted the mast and lowered the royal, and at the next
+glance of the pilot to the masthead, he perceived that the sail had been
+let down.  He exclaimed, “Who’s done that job?”  The owner, who was on
+board, said, “That was the little fellow whom I put on board two days
+ago.”  The pilot immediately said, “Why, where could he have been brought
+up?”  The boy had never seen the sea or been on a real ship before’?  Or,
+is there any proof in these boys being in greater demand for Regimental
+Bands than the Union can meet?  Or, in ninety-eight of them having gone
+into Regimental Bands in three years?  Or, in twelve of them being in the
+band of one regiment?  Or, in the colonel of that regiment writing, ‘We
+want six more boys; they are excellent lads’?  Or, in one of the boys
+having risen to be band-corporal in the same regiment?  Or, in employers
+of all kinds chorusing, ‘Give us drilled boys, for they are prompt,
+obedient, and punctual’?  Other proofs I have myself beheld with these
+Uncommercial eyes, though I do not regard myself as having a right to
+relate in what social positions they have seen respected men and women
+who were once pauper children of the Stepney Union.
+
+Into what admirable soldiers others of these boys have the capabilities
+for being turned, I need not point out.  Many of them are always
+ambitious of military service; and once upon a time when an old boy came
+back to see the old place, a cavalry soldier all complete, _with his
+spurs on_, such a yearning broke out to get into cavalry regiments and
+wear those sublime appendages, that it was one of the greatest
+excitements ever known in the school.  The girls make excellent domestic
+servants, and at certain periods come back, a score or two at a time, to
+see the old building, and to take tea with the old teachers, and to hear
+the old band, and to see the old ship with her masts towering up above
+the neighbouring roofs and chimneys.  As to the physical health of these
+schools, it is so exceptionally remarkable (simply because the sanitary
+regulations are as good as the other educational arrangements), that when
+Mr. TUFNELL, the Inspector, first stated it in a report, he was supposed,
+in spite of his high character, to have been betrayed into some
+extraordinary mistake or exaggeration.  In the moral health of these
+schools—where corporal punishment is unknown—Truthfulness stands high.
+When the ship was first erected, the boys were forbidden to go aloft,
+until the nets, which are now always there, were stretched as a
+precaution against accidents.  Certain boys, in their eagerness,
+disobeyed the injunction, got out of window in the early daylight, and
+climbed to the masthead.  One boy unfortunately fell, and was killed.
+There was no clue to the others; but all the boys were assembled, and the
+chairman of the Board addressed them.  ‘I promise nothing; you see what a
+dreadful thing has happened; you know what a grave offence it is that has
+led to such a consequence; I cannot say what will be done with the
+offenders; but, boys, you have been trained here, above all things, to
+respect the truth.  I want the truth.  Who are the delinquents?’
+Instantly, the whole number of boys concerned, separated from the rest,
+and stood out.
+
+Now, the head and heart of that gentleman (it is needless to say, a good
+head and a good heart) have been deeply interested in these schools for
+many years, and are so still; and the establishment is very fortunate in
+a most admirable master, and moreover the schools of the Stepney Union
+cannot have got to be what they are, without the Stepney Board of
+Guardians having been earnest and humane men strongly imbued with a sense
+of their responsibility.  But what one set of men can do in this wise,
+another set of men can do; and this is a noble example to all other
+Bodies and Unions, and a noble example to the State.  Followed, and
+enlarged upon by its enforcement on bad parents, it would clear London
+streets of the most terrible objects they smite the sight with—myriads of
+little children who awfully reverse Our Saviour’s words, and are not of
+the Kingdom of Heaven, but of the Kingdom of Hell.
+
+Clear the public streets of such shame, and the public conscience of such
+reproach?  Ah!  Almost prophetic, surely, the child’s jingle:
+
+    When will that be,
+    Say the bells of Step-ney!
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+BOUND FOR THE GREAT SALT LAKE
+
+
+BEHOLD me on my way to an Emigrant Ship, on a hot morning early in June.
+My road lies through that part of London generally known to the initiated
+as ‘Down by the Docks.’  Down by the Docks, is home to a good many
+people—to too many, if I may judge from the overflow of local population
+in the streets—but my nose insinuates that the number to whom it is Sweet
+Home might be easily counted.  Down by the Docks, is a region I would
+choose as my point of embarkation aboard ship if I were an emigrant.  It
+would present my intention to me in such a sensible light; it would show
+me so many things to be run away from.
+
+Down by the Docks, they eat the largest oysters and scatter the roughest
+oyster-shells, known to the descendants of Saint George and the Dragon.
+Down by the Docks, they consume the slimiest of shell-fish, which seem to
+have been scraped off the copper bottoms of ships.  Down by the Docks,
+the vegetables at green-grocers’ doors acquire a saline and a scaly look,
+as if they had been crossed with fish and seaweed.  Down by the Docks,
+they ‘board seamen’ at the eating-houses, the public-houses, the
+slop-shops, the coffee-shops, the tally-shops, all kinds of shops
+mentionable and unmentionable—board them, as it were, in the piratical
+sense, making them bleed terribly, and giving no quarter.  Down by the
+Docks, the seamen roam in mid-street and mid-day, their pockets inside
+out, and their heads no better.  Down by the Docks, the daughters of
+wave-ruling Britannia also rove, clad in silken attire, with uncovered
+tresses streaming in the breeze, bandanna kerchiefs floating from their
+shoulders, and crinoline not wanting.  Down by the Docks, you may hear
+the Incomparable Joe Jackson sing the Standard of England, with a
+hornpipe, any night; or any day may see at the waxwork, for a penny and
+no waiting, him as killed the policeman at Acton and suffered for it.
+Down by the Docks, you may buy polonies, saveloys, and sausage
+preparations various, if you are not particular what they are made of
+besides seasoning.  Down by the Docks, the children of Israel creep into
+any gloomy cribs and entries they can hire, and hang slops there—pewter
+watches, sou’-wester hats, waterproof overalls—‘firtht rate articleth,
+Thjack.’  Down by the Docks, such dealers exhibiting on a frame a
+complete nautical suit without the refinement of a waxen visage in the
+hat, present the imaginary wearer as drooping at the yard-arm, with his
+seafaring and earthfaring troubles over.  Down by the Docks, the placards
+in the shops apostrophise the customer, knowing him familiarly
+beforehand, as, ‘Look here, Jack!’  ‘Here’s your sort, my lad!’  ‘Try our
+sea-going mixed, at two and nine!’  ‘The right kit for the British tar!’
+‘Ship ahoy!’  ‘Splice the main-brace, brother!’  ‘Come, cheer up, my
+lads.  We’ve the best liquors here, And you’ll find something new In our
+wonderful Beer!’  Down by the Docks, the pawnbroker lends money on
+Union-Jack pocket-handkerchiefs, on watches with little ships pitching
+fore and aft on the dial, on telescopes, nautical instruments in cases,
+and such-like.  Down by the Docks, the apothecary sets up in business on
+the wretchedest scale—chiefly on lint and plaster for the strapping of
+wounds—and with no bright bottles, and with no little drawers.  Down by
+the Docks, the shabby undertaker’s shop will bury you for next to
+nothing, after the Malay or Chinaman has stabbed you for nothing at all:
+so you can hardly hope to make a cheaper end.  Down by the Docks, anybody
+drunk will quarrel with anybody drunk or sober, and everybody else will
+have a hand in it, and on the shortest notice you may revolve in a
+whirlpool of red shirts, shaggy beards, wild heads of hair, bare tattooed
+arms, Britannia’s daughters, malice, mud, maundering, and madness.  Down
+by the Docks, scraping fiddles go in the public-houses all day long, and,
+shrill above their din and all the din, rises the screeching of
+innumerable parrots brought from foreign parts, who appear to be very
+much astonished by what they find on these native shores of ours.
+Possibly the parrots don’t know, possibly they do, that Down by the Docks
+is the road to the Pacific Ocean, with its lovely islands, where the
+savage girls plait flowers, and the savage boys carve cocoa-nut shells,
+and the grim blind idols muse in their shady groves to exactly the same
+purpose as the priests and chiefs.  And possibly the parrots don’t know,
+possibly they do, that the noble savage is a wearisome impostor wherever
+he is, and has five hundred thousand volumes of indifferent rhyme, and no
+reason, to answer for.
+
+Shadwell church!  Pleasant whispers of there being a fresher air down the
+river than down by the Docks, go pursuing one another, playfully, in and
+out of the openings in its spire.  Gigantic in the basin just beyond the
+church, looms my Emigrant Ship: her name, the Amazon.  Her figure-head is
+not disfigured as those beauteous founders of the race of strong-minded
+women are fabled to have been, for the convenience of drawing the bow;
+but I sympathise with the carver:
+
+    A flattering carver who made it his care
+    To carve busts as they ought to be—not as they were.
+
+My Emigrant Ship lies broadside-on to the wharf.  Two great gangways made
+of spars and planks connect her with the wharf; and up and down these
+gangways, perpetually crowding to and fro and in and out, like ants, are
+the Emigrants who are going to sail in my Emigrant Ship.  Some with
+cabbages, some with loaves of bread, some with cheese and butter, some
+with milk and beer, some with boxes, beds, and bundles, some with
+babies—nearly all with children—nearly all with bran-new tin cans for
+their daily allowance of water, uncomfortably suggestive of a tin flavour
+in the drink.  To and fro, up and down, aboard and ashore, swarming here
+and there and everywhere, my Emigrants.  And still as the Dock-Gate
+swings upon its hinges, cabs appear, and carts appear, and vans appear,
+bringing more of my Emigrants, with more cabbages, more loaves, more
+cheese and butter, more milk and beer, more boxes, beds, and bundles,
+more tin cans, and on those shipping investments accumulated compound
+interest of children.
+
+I go aboard my Emigrant Ship.  I go first to the great cabin, and find it
+in the usual condition of a Cabin at that pass.  Perspiring landsmen,
+with loose papers, and with pens and inkstands, pervade it; and the
+general appearance of things is as if the late Mr. Amazon’s funeral had
+just come home from the cemetery, and the disconsolate Mrs. Amazon’s
+trustees found the affairs in great disorder, and were looking high and
+low for the will.  I go out on the poop-deck, for air, and surveying the
+emigrants on the deck below (indeed they are crowded all about me, up
+there too), find more pens and inkstands in action, and more papers, and
+interminable complication respecting accounts with individuals for tin
+cans and what not.  But nobody is in an ill-temper, nobody is the worse
+for drink, nobody swears an oath or uses a coarse word, nobody appears
+depressed, nobody is weeping, and down upon the deck in every corner
+where it is possible to find a few square feet to kneel, crouch, or lie
+in, people, in every unsuitable attitude for writing, are writing
+letters.
+
+Now, I have seen emigrant ships before this day in June.  And these
+people are so strikingly different from all other people in like
+circumstances whom I have ever seen, that I wonder aloud, ‘What _would_ a
+stranger suppose these emigrants to be!’
+
+The vigilant, bright face of the weather-browned captain of the Amazon is
+at my shoulder, and he says, ‘What, indeed!  The most of these came
+aboard yesterday evening.  They came from various parts of England in
+small parties that had never seen one another before.  Yet they had not
+been a couple of hours on board, when they established their own police,
+made their own regulations, and set their own watches at all the
+hatchways.  Before nine o’clock, the ship was as orderly and as quiet as
+a man-of-war.’
+
+I looked about me again, and saw the letter-writing going on with the
+most curious composure.  Perfectly abstracted in the midst of the crowd;
+while great casks were swinging aloft, and being lowered into the hold;
+while hot agents were hurrying up and down, adjusting the interminable
+accounts; while two hundred strangers were searching everywhere for two
+hundred other strangers, and were asking questions about them of two
+hundred more; while the children played up and down all the steps, and in
+and out among all the people’s legs, and were beheld, to the general
+dismay, toppling over all the dangerous places; the letter-writers wrote
+on calmly.  On the starboard side of the ship, a grizzled man dictated a
+long letter to another grizzled man in an immense fur cap: which letter
+was of so profound a quality, that it became necessary for the amanuensis
+at intervals to take off his fur cap in both his hands, for the
+ventilation of his brain, and stare at him who dictated, as a man of many
+mysteries who was worth looking at.  On the lar-board side, a woman had
+covered a belaying-pin with a white cloth to make a neat desk of it, and
+was sitting on a little box, writing with the deliberation of a
+bookkeeper.  Down, upon her breast on the planks of the deck at this
+woman’s feet, with her head diving in under a beam of the bulwarks on
+that side, as an eligible place of refuge for her sheet of paper, a neat
+and pretty girl wrote for a good hour (she fainted at last), only rising
+to the surface occasionally for a dip of ink.  Alongside the boat, close
+to me on the poop-deck, another girl, a fresh, well-grown country girl,
+was writing another letter on the bare deck.  Later in the day, when this
+self-same boat was filled with a choir who sang glees and catches for a
+long time, one of the singers, a girl, sang her part mechanically all the
+while, and wrote a letter in the bottom of the boat while doing so.
+
+‘A stranger would be puzzled to guess the right name for these people,
+Mr. Uncommercial,’ says the captain.
+
+‘Indeed he would.’
+
+‘If you hadn’t known, could you ever have supposed—?’
+
+‘How could I!  I should have said they were in their degree, the pick and
+flower of England.’
+
+‘So should I,’ says the captain.
+
+‘How many are they?’
+
+‘Eight hundred in round numbers.’
+
+I went between-decks, where the families with children swarmed in the
+dark, where unavoidable confusion had been caused by the last arrivals,
+and where the confusion was increased by the little preparations for
+dinner that were going on in each group.  A few women here and there, had
+got lost, and were laughing at it, and asking their way to their own
+people, or out on deck again.  A few of the poor children were crying;
+but otherwise the universal cheerfulness was amazing.  ‘We shall shake
+down by to-morrow.’  ‘We shall come all right in a day or so.’  ‘We shall
+have more light at sea.’  Such phrases I heard everywhere, as I groped my
+way among chests and barrels and beams and unstowed cargo and ring-bolts
+and Emigrants, down to the lower-deck, and thence up to the light of day
+again, and to my former station.
+
+Surely, an extraordinary people in their power of self-abstraction!  All
+the former letter-writers were still writing calmly, and many more
+letter-writers had broken out in my absence.  A boy with a bag of books
+in his hand and a slate under his arm, emerged from below, concentrated
+himself in my neighbourhood (espying a convenient skylight for his
+purpose), and went to work at a sum as if he were stone deaf.  A father
+and mother and several young children, on the main deck below me, had
+formed a family circle close to the foot of the crowded restless gangway,
+where the children made a nest for themselves in a coil of rope, and the
+father and mother, she suckling the youngest, discussed family affairs as
+peaceably as if they were in perfect retirement.  I think the most
+noticeable characteristic in the eight hundred as a mass, was their
+exemption from hurry.
+
+Eight hundred what?  ‘Geese, villain?’  EIGHT HUNDRED MORMONS.  I,
+Uncommercial Traveller for the firm of Human Interest Brothers, had come
+aboard this Emigrant Ship to see what Eight hundred Latter-day Saints
+were like, and I found them (to the rout and overthrow of all my
+expectations) like what I now describe with scrupulous exactness.
+
+The Mormon Agent who had been active in getting them together, and in
+making the contract with my friends the owners of the ship to take them
+as far as New York on their way to the Great Salt Lake, was pointed out
+to me.  A compactly-made handsome man in black, rather short, with rich
+brown hair and beard, and clear bright eyes.  From his speech, I should
+set him down as American.  Probably, a man who had ‘knocked about the
+world’ pretty much.  A man with a frank open manner, and unshrinking
+look; withal a man of great quickness.  I believe he was wholly ignorant
+of my Uncommercial individuality, and consequently of my immense
+Uncommercial importance.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  These are a very fine set of people you have brought
+together here.
+
+MORMON AGENT.  Yes, sir, they are a _very_ fine set of people.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL (looking about).  Indeed, I think it would be difficult to
+find Eight hundred people together anywhere else, and find so much beauty
+and so much strength and capacity for work among them.
+
+MORMON AGENT (not looking about, but looking steadily at Uncommercial).
+I think so.—We sent out about a thousand more, yes’day, from Liverpool.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  You are not going with these emigrants?
+
+MORMON AGENT.  No, sir.  I remain.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  But you have been in the Mormon Territory?
+
+MORMON AGENT.  Yes; I left Utah about three years ago.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  It is surprising to me that these people are all so
+cheery, and make so little of the immense distance before them.
+
+MORMON AGENT.  Well, you see; many of ’em have friends out at Utah, and
+many of ’em look forward to meeting friends on the way.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  On the way?
+
+MORMON AGENT.  This way ’tis.  This ship lands ’em in New York City.
+Then they go on by rail right away beyond St. Louis, to that part of the
+Banks of the Missouri where they strike the Plains.  There, waggons from
+the settlement meet ’em to bear ’em company on their journey
+’cross-twelve hundred miles about.  Industrious people who come out to
+the settlement soon get waggons of their own, and so the friends of some
+of these will come down in their own waggons to meet ’em.  They look
+forward to that, greatly.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  On their long journey across the Desert, do you arm them?
+
+MORMON AGENT.  Mostly you would find they have arms of some kind or
+another already with them.  Such as had not arms we should arm across the
+Plains, for the general protection and defence.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  Will these waggons bring down any produce to the Missouri?
+
+MORMON AGENT.  Well, since the war broke out, we’ve taken to growing
+cotton, and they’ll likely bring down cotton to be exchanged for
+machinery.  We want machinery.  Also we have taken to growing indigo,
+which is a fine commodity for profit.  It has been found that the climate
+on the further side of the Great Salt Lake suits well for raising indigo.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  I am told that these people now on board are principally
+from the South of England?
+
+MORMON AGENT.  And from Wales.  That’s true.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  Do you get many Scotch?
+
+MORMON AGENT.  Not many.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  Highlanders, for instance?
+
+MORMON AGENT.  No, not Highlanders.  They ain’t interested enough in
+universal brotherhood and peace and good will.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  The old fighting blood is strong in them?
+
+MORMON AGENT.  Well, yes.  And besides; they’ve no faith.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL (who has been burning to get at the Prophet Joe Smith, and
+seems to discover an opening).  Faith in—!
+
+MORMON AGENT (far too many for Uncommercial).  Well.—In anything!
+
+Similarly on this same head, the Uncommercial underwent discomfiture from
+a Wiltshire labourer: a simple, fresh-coloured farm-labourer, of
+eight-and-thirty, who at one time stood beside him looking on at new
+arrivals, and with whom he held this dialogue:
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  Would you mind my asking you what part of the country you
+come from?
+
+WILTSHIRE.  Not a bit.  Theer! (exultingly) I’ve worked all my life o’
+Salisbury Plain, right under the shadder o’ Stonehenge.  You mightn’t
+think it, but I haive.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  And a pleasant country too.
+
+WILTSHIRE.  Ah!  ’Tis a pleasant country.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  Have you any family on board?
+
+WILTSHIRE.  Two children, boy and gal.  I am a widderer, _I_ am, and I’m
+going out alonger my boy and gal.  That’s my gal, and she’s a fine gal o’
+sixteen (pointing out the girl who is writing by the boat).  I’ll go and
+fetch my boy.  I’d like to show you my boy.  (Here Wiltshire disappears,
+and presently comes back with a big, shy boy of twelve, in a
+superabundance of boots, who is not at all glad to be presented.)  He is
+a fine boy too, and a boy fur to work!  (Boy having undutifully bolted,
+Wiltshire drops him.)
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  It must cost you a great deal of money to go so far, three
+strong.
+
+WILTSHIRE.  A power of money.  Theer!  Eight shillen a week, eight
+shillen a week, eight shillen a week, put by out of the week’s wages for
+ever so long.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  I wonder how you did it.
+
+WILTSHIRE (recognising in this a kindred spirit).  See theer now!  I
+wonder how I done it!  But what with a bit o’ subscription heer, and what
+with a bit o’ help theer, it were done at last, though I don’t hardly
+know how.  Then it were unfort’net for us, you see, as we got kep’ in
+Bristol so long—nigh a fortnight, it were—on accounts of a mistake wi’
+Brother Halliday.  Swaller’d up money, it did, when we might have come
+straight on.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL (delicately approaching Joe Smith).  You are of the Mormon
+religion, of course?
+
+WILTSHIRE (confidently).  O yes, I’m a Mormon.  (Then reflectively.)  I’m
+a Mormon.  (Then, looking round the ship, feigns to descry a particular
+friend in an empty spot, and evades the Uncommercial for evermore.)
+
+After a noontide pause for dinner, during which my Emigrants were nearly
+all between-decks, and the Amazon looked deserted, a general muster took
+place.  The muster was for the ceremony of passing the Government
+Inspector and the Doctor.  Those authorities held their temporary state
+amidships, by a cask or two; and, knowing that the whole Eight hundred
+emigrants must come face to face with them, I took my station behind the
+two.  They knew nothing whatever of me, I believe, and my testimony to
+the unpretending gentleness and good nature with which they discharged
+their duty, may be of the greater worth.  There was not the slightest
+flavour of the Circumlocution Office about their proceedings.
+
+The emigrants were now all on deck.  They were densely crowded aft, and
+swarmed upon the poop-deck like bees.  Two or three Mormon agents stood
+ready to hand them on to the Inspector, and to hand them forward when
+they had passed.  By what successful means, a special aptitude for
+organisation had been infused into these people, I am, of course, unable
+to report.  But I know that, even now, there was no disorder, hurry, or
+difficulty.
+
+All being ready, the first group are handed on.  That member of the party
+who is entrusted with the passenger-ticket for the whole, has been warned
+by one of the agents to have it ready, and here it is in his hand.  In
+every instance through the whole eight hundred, without an exception,
+this paper is always ready.
+
+INSPECTOR (reading the ticket).  Jessie Jobson, Sophronia Jobson, Jessie
+Jobson again, Matilda Jobson, William Jobson, Jane Jobson, Matilda Jobson
+again, Brigham Jobson, Leonardo Jobson, and Orson Jobson.  Are you all
+here? (glancing at the party, over his spectacles).
+
+JESSIE JOBSON NUMBER TWO.  All here, sir.
+
+This group is composed of an old grandfather and grandmother, their
+married son and his wife, and _their_ family of children.  Orson Jobson
+is a little child asleep in his mother’s arms.  The Doctor, with a kind
+word or so, lifts up the corner of the mother’s shawl, looks at the
+child’s face, and touches the little clenched hand.  If we were all as
+well as Orson Jobson, doctoring would be a poor profession.
+
+INSPECTOR.  Quite right, Jessie Jobson.  Take your ticket, Jessie, and
+pass on.
+
+And away they go.  Mormon agent, skilful and quiet, hands them on.
+Mormon agent, skilful and quiet, hands next party up.
+
+INSPECTOR (reading ticket again).  Susannah Cleverly and William
+Cleverly.  Brother and sister, eh?
+
+SISTER (young woman of business, hustling slow brother).  Yes, sir.
+
+INSPECTOR.  Very good, Susannah Cleverly.  Take your ticket, Susannah,
+and take care of it.
+
+And away they go.
+
+INSPECTOR (taking ticket again).  Sampson Dibble and Dorothy Dibble
+(surveying a very old couple over his spectacles, with some surprise).
+Your husband quite blind, Mrs. Dibble?
+
+MRS. DIBBLE.  Yes, sir, he be stone-blind.
+
+MR. DIBBLE (addressing the mast).  Yes, sir, I be stone-blind.
+
+INSPECTOR.  That’s a bad job.  Take your ticket, Mrs. Dibble, and don’t
+lose it, and pass on.
+
+Doctor taps Mr. Dibble on the eyebrow with his forefinger, and away they
+go.
+
+INSPECTOR (taking ticket again).  Anastatia Weedle.
+
+ANASTATIA (a pretty girl, in a bright Garibaldi, this morning elected by
+universal suffrage the Beauty of the Ship).  That is me, sir.
+
+INSPECTOR.  Going alone, Anastatia?
+
+ANASTATIA (shaking her curls).  I am with Mrs. Jobson, sir, but I’ve got
+separated for the moment.
+
+INSPECTOR.  Oh!  You are with the Jobsons?  Quite right.  That’ll do,
+Miss Weedle.  Don’t lose your ticket.
+
+Away she goes, and joins the Jobsons who are waiting for her, and stoops
+and kisses Brigham Jobson—who appears to be considered too young for the
+purpose, by several Mormons rising twenty, who are looking on.  Before
+her extensive skirts have departed from the casks, a decent widow stands
+there with four children, and so the roll goes.
+
+The faces of some of the Welsh people, among whom there were many old
+persons, were certainly the least intelligent.  Some of these emigrants
+would have bungled sorely, but for the directing hand that was always
+ready.  The intelligence here was unquestionably of a low order, and the
+heads were of a poor type.  Generally the case was the reverse.  There
+were many worn faces bearing traces of patient poverty and hard work, and
+there was great steadiness of purpose and much undemonstrative
+self-respect among this class.  A few young men were going singly.
+Several girls were going, two or three together.  These latter I found it
+very difficult to refer back, in my mind, to their relinquished homes and
+pursuits.  Perhaps they were more like country milliners, and pupil
+teachers rather tawdrily dressed, than any other classes of young women.
+I noticed, among many little ornaments worn, more than one
+photograph-brooch of the Princess of Wales, and also of the late Prince
+Consort.  Some single women of from thirty to forty, whom one might
+suppose to be embroiderers, or straw-bonnet-makers, were obviously going
+out in quest of husbands, as finer ladies go to India.  That they had any
+distinct notions of a plurality of husbands or wives, I do not believe.
+To suppose the family groups of whom the majority of emigrants were
+composed, polygamically possessed, would be to suppose an absurdity,
+manifest to any one who saw the fathers and mothers.
+
+I should say (I had no means of ascertaining the fact) that most familiar
+kinds of handicraft trades were represented here.  Farm-labourers,
+shepherds, and the like, had their full share of representation, but I
+doubt if they preponderated.  It was interesting to see how the leading
+spirit in the family circle never failed to show itself, even in the
+simple process of answering to the names as they were called, and
+checking off the owners of the names.  Sometimes it was the father, much
+oftener the mother, sometimes a quick little girl second or third in
+order of seniority.  It seemed to occur for the first time to some heavy
+fathers, what large families they had; and their eyes rolled about,
+during the calling of the list, as if they half misdoubted some other
+family to have been smuggled into their own.  Among all the fine handsome
+children, I observed but two with marks upon their necks that were
+probably scrofulous.  Out of the whole number of emigrants, but one old
+woman was temporarily set aside by the doctor, on suspicion of fever; but
+even she afterwards obtained a clean bill of health.
+
+When all had ‘passed,’ and the afternoon began to wear on, a black box
+became visible on deck, which box was in charge of certain personages
+also in black, of whom only one had the conventional air of an itinerant
+preacher.  This box contained a supply of hymn-books, neatly printed and
+got up, published at Liverpool, and also in London at the ‘Latter-Day
+Saints’ Book Depôt, 30, Florence-street.’  Some copies were handsomely
+bound; the plainer were the more in request, and many were bought.  The
+title ran: ‘Sacred Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the Church of Jesus
+Church of Latter-Day Saints.’  The Preface, dated Manchester, 1840, ran
+thus:—‘The Saints in this country have been very desirous for a Hymn Book
+adapted to their faith and worship, that they might sing the truth with
+an understanding heart, and express their praise, joy, and gratitude in
+songs adapted to the New and Everlasting Covenant.  In accordance with
+their wishes, we have selected the following volume, which we hope will
+prove acceptable until a greater variety can be added.  With sentiments
+of high consideration and esteem, we subscribe ourselves your brethren in
+the New and Everlasting Covenant, BRIGHAM YOUNG, PARLEY P. PRATT, JOHN
+TAYLOR.’  From this book—by no means explanatory to myself of the New and
+Everlasting Covenant, and not at all making my heart an understanding one
+on the subject of that mystery—a hymn was sung, which did not attract any
+great amount of attention, and was supported by a rather select circle.
+But the choir in the boat was very popular and pleasant; and there was to
+have been a Band, only the Cornet was late in coming on board.  In the
+course of the afternoon, a mother appeared from shore, in search of her
+daughter, ‘who had run away with the Mormons.’  She received every
+assistance from the Inspector, but her daughter was not found to be on
+board.  The saints did not seem to me, particularly interested in finding
+her.
+
+Towards five o’clock, the galley became full of tea-kettles, and an
+agreeable fragrance of tea pervaded the ship.  There was no scrambling or
+jostling for the hot water, no ill humour, no quarrelling.  As the Amazon
+was to sail with the next tide, and as it would not be high water before
+two o’clock in the morning, I left her with her tea in full action, and
+her idle Steam Tug lying by, deputing steam and smoke for the time being
+to the Tea-kettles.
+
+I afterwards learned that a Despatch was sent home by the captain before
+he struck out into the wide Atlantic, highly extolling the behaviour of
+these Emigrants, and the perfect order and propriety of all their social
+arrangements.  What is in store for the poor people on the shores of the
+Great Salt Lake, what happy delusions they are labouring under now, on
+what miserable blindness their eyes may be opened then, I do not pretend
+to say.  But I went on board their ship to bear testimony against them if
+they deserved it, as I fully believed they would; to my great
+astonishment they did not deserve it; and my predispositions and
+tendencies must not affect me as an honest witness.  I went over the
+Amazon’s side, feeling it impossible to deny that, so far, some
+remarkable influence had produced a remarkable result, which better known
+influences have often missed. {188}
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+THE CITY OF THE ABSENT
+
+
+WHEN I think I deserve particularly well of myself, and have earned the
+right to enjoy a little treat, I stroll from Covent-garden into the City
+of London, after business-hours there, on a Saturday, or—better yet—on a
+Sunday, and roam about its deserted nooks and corners.  It is necessary
+to the full enjoyment of these journeys that they should be made in
+summer-time, for then the retired spots that I love to haunt, are at
+their idlest and dullest.  A gentle fall of rain is not objectionable,
+and a warm mist sets off my favourite retreats to decided advantage.
+
+Among these, City Churchyards hold a high place.  Such strange
+churchyards hide in the City of London; churchyards sometimes so entirely
+detached from churches, always so pressed upon by houses; so small, so
+rank, so silent, so forgotten, except by the few people who ever look
+down into them from their smoky windows.  As I stand peeping in through
+the iron gates and rails, I can peel the rusty metal off, like bark from
+an old tree.  The illegible tombstones are all lop-sided, the
+grave-mounds lost their shape in the rains of a hundred years ago, the
+Lombardy Poplar or Plane-Tree that was once a drysalter’s daughter and
+several common-councilmen, has withered like those worthies, and its
+departed leaves are dust beneath it.  Contagion of slow ruin overhangs
+the place.  The discoloured tiled roofs of the environing buildings stand
+so awry, that they can hardly be proof against any stress of weather.
+Old crazy stacks of chimneys seem to look down as they overhang,
+dubiously calculating how far they will have to fall.  In an angle of the
+walls, what was once the tool-house of the grave-digger rots away,
+encrusted with toadstools.  Pipes and spouts for carrying off the rain
+from the encompassing gables, broken or feloniously cut for old lead long
+ago, now let the rain drip and splash as it list, upon the weedy earth.
+Sometimes there is a rusty pump somewhere near, and, as I look in at the
+rails and meditate, I hear it working under an unknown hand with a
+creaking protest: as though the departed in the churchyard urged, ‘Let us
+lie here in peace; don’t suck us up and drink us!’
+
+One of my best beloved churchyards, I call the churchyard of Saint
+Ghastly Grim; touching what men in general call it, I have no
+information.  It lies at the heart of the City, and the Blackwall Railway
+shrieks at it daily.  It is a small small churchyard, with a ferocious,
+strong, spiked iron gate, like a jail.  This gate is ornamented with
+skulls and cross-bones, larger than the life, wrought in stone; but it
+likewise came into the mind of Saint Ghastly Grim, that to stick iron
+spikes a-top of the stone skulls, as though they were impaled, would be a
+pleasant device.  Therefore the skulls grin aloft horribly, thrust
+through and through with iron spears.  Hence, there is attraction of
+repulsion for me in Saint Ghastly Grim, and, having often contemplated it
+in the daylight and the dark, I once felt drawn towards it in a
+thunderstorm at midnight.  ‘Why not?’ I said, in self-excuse.  ‘I have
+been to see the Colosseum by the light of the moon; is it worse to go to
+see Saint Ghastly Grim by the light of the lightning?’  I repaired to the
+Saint in a hackney cab, and found the skulls most effective, having the
+air of a public execution, and seeming, as the lightning flashed, to wink
+and grin with the pain of the spikes.  Having no other person to whom to
+impart my satisfaction, I communicated it to the driver.  So far from
+being responsive, he surveyed me—he was naturally a bottled-nosed,
+red-faced man—with a blanched countenance.  And as he drove me back, he
+ever and again glanced in over his shoulder through the little front
+window of his carriage, as mistrusting that I was a fare originally from
+a grave in the churchyard of Saint Ghastly Grim, who might have flitted
+home again without paying.
+
+Sometimes, the queer Hall of some queer Company gives upon a churchyard
+such as this, and, when the Livery dine, you may hear them (if you are
+looking in through the iron rails, which you never are when I am)
+toasting their own Worshipful prosperity.  Sometimes, a wholesale house
+of business, requiring much room for stowage, will occupy one or two or
+even all three sides of the enclosing space, and the backs of bales of
+goods will lumber up the windows, as if they were holding some crowded
+trade-meeting of themselves within.  Sometimes, the commanding windows
+are all blank, and show no more sign of life than the graves below—not so
+much, for _they_ tell of what once upon a time was life undoubtedly.
+Such was the surrounding of one City churchyard that I saw last summer,
+on a Volunteering Saturday evening towards eight of the clock, when with
+astonishment I beheld an old old man and an old old woman in it, making
+hay.  Yes, of all occupations in this world, making hay!  It was a very
+confined patch of churchyard lying between Gracechurch-street and the
+Tower, capable of yielding, say an apronful of hay.  By what means the
+old old man and woman had got into it, with an almost toothless
+hay-making rake, I could not fathom.  No open window was within view; no
+window at all was within view, sufficiently near the ground to have
+enabled their old legs to descend from it; the rusty churchyard-gate was
+locked, the mouldy church was locked.  Gravely among the graves, they
+made hay, all alone by themselves.  They looked like Time and his wife.
+There was but the one rake between them, and they both had hold of it in
+a pastorally-loving manner, and there was hay on the old woman’s black
+bonnet, as if the old man had recently been playful.  The old man was
+quite an obsolete old man, in knee-breeches and coarse grey stockings,
+and the old woman wore mittens like unto his stockings in texture and in
+colour.  They took no heed of me as I looked on, unable to account for
+them.  The old woman was much too bright for a pew-opener, the old man
+much too meek for a beadle.  On an old tombstone in the foreground
+between me and them, were two cherubim; but for those celestial
+embellishments being represented as having no possible use for
+knee-breeches, stockings, or mittens, I should have compared them with
+the hay-makers, and sought a likeness.  I coughed and awoke the echoes,
+but the hay-makers never looked at me.  They used the rake with a
+measured action, drawing the scanty crop towards them; and so I was fain
+to leave them under three yards and a half of darkening sky, gravely
+making hay among the graves, all alone by themselves.  Perhaps they were
+Spectres, and I wanted a Medium.
+
+In another City churchyard of similar cramped dimensions, I saw, that
+selfsame summer, two comfortable charity children.  They were making
+love—tremendous proof of the vigour of that immortal article, for they
+were in the graceful uniform under which English Charity delights to hide
+herself—and they were overgrown, and their legs (his legs at least, for I
+am modestly incompetent to speak of hers) were as much in the wrong as
+mere passive weakness of character can render legs.  O it was a leaden
+churchyard, but no doubt a golden ground to those young persons!  I first
+saw them on a Saturday evening, and, perceiving from their occupation
+that Saturday evening was their trysting-time, I returned that evening
+se’nnight, and renewed the contemplation of them.  They came there to
+shake the bits of matting which were spread in the church aisles, and
+they afterwards rolled them up, he rolling his end, she rolling hers,
+until they met, and over the two once divided now united rolls—sweet
+emblem!—gave and received a chaste salute.  It was so refreshing to find
+one of my faded churchyards blooming into flower thus, that I returned a
+second time, and a third, and ultimately this befell:—They had left the
+church door open, in their dusting and arranging.  Walking in to look at
+the church, I became aware, by the dim light, of him in the pulpit, of
+her in the reading-desk, of him looking down, of her looking up,
+exchanging tender discourse.  Immediately both dived, and became as it
+were non-existent on this sphere.  With an assumption of innocence I
+turned to leave the sacred edifice, when an obese form stood in the
+portal, puffily demanding Joseph, or in default of Joseph, Celia.  Taking
+this monster by the sleeve, and luring him forth on pretence of showing
+him whom he sought, I gave time for the emergence of Joseph and Celia,
+who presently came towards us in the churchyard, bending under dusty
+matting, a picture of thriving and unconscious industry.  It would be
+superfluous to hint that I have ever since deemed this the proudest
+passage in my life.
+
+But such instances, or any tokens of vitality, are rare indeed in my City
+churchyards.  A few sparrows occasionally try to raise a lively chirrup
+in their solitary tree—perhaps, as taking a different view of worms from
+that entertained by humanity—but they are flat and hoarse of voice, like
+the clerk, the organ, the bell, the clergyman, and all the rest of the
+Church-works when they are wound up for Sunday.  Caged larks, thrushes,
+or blackbirds, hanging in neighbouring courts, pour forth their strains
+passionately, as scenting the tree, trying to break out, and see leaves
+again before they die, but their song is Willow, Willow—of a churchyard
+cast.  So little light lives inside the churches of my churchyards, when
+the two are co-existent, that it is often only by an accident and after
+long acquaintance that I discover their having stained glass in some odd
+window.  The westering sun slants into the churchyard by some unwonted
+entry, a few prismatic tears drop on an old tombstone, and a window that
+I thought was only dirty, is for the moment all bejewelled.  Then the
+light passes and the colours die.  Though even then, if there be room
+enough for me to fall back so far as that I can gaze up to the top of the
+Church Tower, I see the rusty vane new burnished, and seeming to look out
+with a joyful flash over the sea of smoke at the distant shore of
+country.
+
+Blinking old men who are let out of workhouses by the hour, have a
+tendency to sit on bits of coping stone in these churchyards, leaning
+with both hands on their sticks and asthmatically gasping.  The more
+depressed class of beggars too, bring hither broken meats, and munch.  I
+am on nodding terms with a meditative turncock who lingers in one of
+them, and whom I suspect of a turn for poetry; the rather, as he looks
+out of temper when he gives the fire-plug a disparaging wrench with that
+large tuning-fork of his which would wear out the shoulder of his coat,
+but for a precautionary piece of inlaid leather.  Fire-ladders, which I
+am satisfied nobody knows anything about, and the keys of which were lost
+in ancient times, moulder away in the larger churchyards, under eaves
+like wooden eyebrows; and so removed are those corners from the haunts of
+men and boys, that once on a fifth of November I found a ‘Guy’ trusted to
+take care of himself there, while his proprietors had gone to dinner.  Of
+the expression of his face I cannot report, because it was turned to the
+wall; but his shrugged shoulders and his ten extended fingers, appeared
+to denote that he had moralised in his little straw chair on the mystery
+of mortality until he gave it up as a bad job.
+
+You do not come upon these churchyards violently; there are shapes of
+transition in the neighbourhood.  An antiquated news shop, or barber’s
+shop, apparently bereft of customers in the earlier days of George the
+Third, would warn me to look out for one, if any discoveries in this
+respect were left for me to make.  A very quiet court, in combination
+with an unaccountable dyer’s and scourer’s, would prepare me for a
+churchyard.  An exceedingly retiring public-house, with a bagatelle-board
+shadily visible in a sawdusty parlour shaped like an omnibus, and with a
+shelf of punch-bowls in the bar, would apprise me that I stood near
+consecrated ground.  A ‘Dairy,’ exhibiting in its modest window one very
+little milk-can and three eggs, would suggest to me the certainty of
+finding the poultry hard by, pecking at my forefathers.  I first inferred
+the vicinity of Saint Ghastly Grim, from a certain air of extra repose
+and gloom pervading a vast stack of warehouses.
+
+From the hush of these places, it is congenial to pass into the hushed
+resorts of business.  Down the lanes I like to see the carts and waggons
+huddled together in repose, the cranes idle, and the warehouses shut.
+Pausing in the alleys behind the closed Banks of mighty Lombard-street,
+it gives one as good as a rich feeling to think of the broad counters
+with a rim along the edge, made for telling money out on, the scales for
+weighing precious metals, the ponderous ledgers, and, above all, the
+bright copper shovels for shovelling gold.  When I draw money, it never
+seems so much money as when it is shovelled at me out of a bright copper
+shovel.  I like to say, ‘In gold,’ and to see seven pounds musically
+pouring out of the shovel, like seventy; the Bank appearing to remark to
+me—I italicise _appearing_—‘if you want more of this yellow earth, we
+keep it in barrows at your service.’  To think of the banker’s clerk with
+his deft finger turning the crisp edges of the Hundred-Pound Notes he has
+taken in a fat roll out of a drawer, is again to hear the rustling of
+that delicious south-cash wind.  ‘How will you have it?’  I once heard
+this usual question asked at a Bank Counter of an elderly female, habited
+in mourning and steeped in simplicity, who answered, open-eyed,
+crook-fingered, laughing with expectation, ‘Anyhow!’  Calling these
+things to mind as I stroll among the Banks, I wonder whether the other
+solitary Sunday man I pass, has designs upon the Banks.  For the interest
+and mystery of the matter, I almost hope he may have, and that his
+confederate may be at this moment taking impressions of the keys of the
+iron closets in wax, and that a delightful robbery may be in course of
+transaction.  About College-hill, Mark-lane, and so on towards the Tower,
+and Dockward, the deserted wine-merchants’ cellars are fine subjects for
+consideration; but the deserted money-cellars of the Bankers, and their
+plate-cellars, and their jewel-cellars, what subterranean regions of the
+Wonderful Lamp are these!  And again: possibly some shoeless boy in rags,
+passed through this street yesterday, for whom it is reserved to be a
+Banker in the fulness of time, and to be surpassing rich.  Such reverses
+have been, since the days of Whittington; and were, long before.  I want
+to know whether the boy has any foreglittering of that glittering fortune
+now, when he treads these stones, hungry.  Much as I also want to know
+whether the next man to be hanged at Newgate yonder, had any suspicion
+upon him that he was moving steadily towards that fate, when he talked so
+much about the last man who paid the same great debt at the same small
+Debtors’ Door.
+
+Where are all the people who on busy working-days pervade these scenes?
+The locomotive banker’s clerk, who carries a black portfolio chained to
+him by a chain of steel, where is he?  Does he go to bed with his chain
+on—to church with his chain on—or does he lay it by?  And if he lays it
+by, what becomes of his portfolio when he is unchained for a holiday?
+The wastepaper baskets of these closed counting-houses would let me into
+many hints of business matters if I had the exploration of them; and what
+secrets of the heart should I discover on the ‘pads’ of the young
+clerks—the sheets of cartridge-paper and blotting-paper interposed
+between their writing and their desks!  Pads are taken into confidence on
+the tenderest occasions, and oftentimes when I have made a business
+visit, and have sent in my name from the outer office, have I had it
+forced on my discursive notice that the officiating young gentleman has
+over and over again inscribed AMELIA, in ink of various dates, on corners
+of his pad.  Indeed, the pad may be regarded as the legitimate modern
+successor of the old forest-tree: whereon these young knights (having no
+attainable forest nearer than Epping) engrave the names of their
+mistresses.  After all, it is a more satisfactory process than carving,
+and can be oftener repeated.  So these courts in their Sunday rest are
+courts of Love Omnipotent (I rejoice to bethink myself), dry as they
+look.  And here is Garraway’s, bolted and shuttered hard and fast!  It is
+possible to imagine the man who cuts the sandwiches, on his back in a
+hayfield; it is possible to imagine his desk, like the desk of a clerk at
+church, without him; but imagination is unable to pursue the men who wait
+at Garraway’s all the week for the men who never come.  When they are
+forcibly put out of Garraway’s on Saturday night—which they must be, for
+they never would go out of their own accord—where do they vanish until
+Monday morning?  On the first Sunday that I ever strayed here, I expected
+to find them hovering about these lanes, like restless ghosts, and trying
+to peep into Garraway’s through chinks in the shutters, if not
+endeavouring to turn the lock of the door with false keys, picks, and
+screw-drivers.  But the wonder is, that they go clean away!  And now I
+think of it, the wonder is, that every working-day pervader of these
+scenes goes clean away.  The man who sells the dogs’ collars and the
+little toy coal-scuttles, feels under as great an obligation to go afar
+off, as Glyn and Co., or Smith, Payne, and Smith.  There is an old
+monastery-crypt under Garraway’s (I have been in it among the port wine),
+and perhaps Garraway’s, taking pity on the mouldy men who wait in its
+public-room all their lives, gives them cool house-room down there over
+Sundays; but the catacombs of Paris would not be large enough to hold the
+rest of the missing.  This characteristic of London City greatly helps
+its being the quaint place it is in the weekly pause of business, and
+greatly helps my Sunday sensation in it of being the Last Man.  In my
+solitude, the ticket-porters being all gone with the rest, I venture to
+breathe to the quiet bricks and stones my confidential wonderment why a
+ticket-porter, who never does any work with his hands, is bound to wear a
+white apron, and why a great Ecclesiastical Dignitary, who never does any
+work with his hands either, is equally bound to wear a black one.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+AN OLD STAGE-COACHING HOUSE
+
+
+BEFORE the waitress had shut the door, I had forgotten how many
+stage-coaches she said used to change horses in the town every day.  But
+it was of little moment; any high number would do as well as another.  It
+had been a great stage-coaching town in the great stage-coaching times,
+and the ruthless railways had killed and buried it.
+
+The sign of the house was the Dolphin’s Head.  Why only head, I don’t
+know; for the Dolphin’s effigy at full length, and upside down—as a
+Dolphin is always bound to be when artistically treated, though I suppose
+he is sometimes right side upward in his natural condition—graced the
+sign-board.  The sign-board chafed its rusty hooks outside the bow-window
+of my room, and was a shabby work.  No visitor could have denied that the
+Dolphin was dying by inches, but he showed no bright colours.  He had
+once served another master; there was a newer streak of paint below him,
+displaying with inconsistent freshness the legend, By J. MELLOWS.
+
+My door opened again, and J. Mellows’s representative came back.  I had
+asked her what I could have for dinner, and she now returned with the
+counter question, what would I like?  As the Dolphin stood possessed of
+nothing that I do like, I was fain to yield to the suggestion of a duck,
+which I don’t like.  J. Mellows’s representative was a mournful young
+woman with eye susceptible of guidance, and one uncontrollable eye; which
+latter, seeming to wander in quest of stage-coaches, deepened the
+melancholy in which the Dolphin was steeped.
+
+This young woman had but shut the door on retiring again when I bethought
+me of adding to my order, the words, ‘with nice vegetables.’  Looking out
+at the door to give them emphatic utterance, I found her already in a
+state of pensive catalepsy in the deserted gallery, picking her teeth
+with a pin.
+
+At the Railway Station seven miles off, I had been the subject of wonder
+when I ordered a fly in which to come here.  And when I gave the
+direction ‘To the Dolphin’s Head,’ I had observed an ominous stare on the
+countenance of the strong young man in velveteen, who was the platform
+servant of the Company.  He had also called to my driver at parting, ‘All
+ri-ight!  Don’t hang yourself when you get there, Geo-o-rge!’ in a
+sarcastic tone, for which I had entertained some transitory thoughts of
+reporting him to the General Manager.
+
+I had no business in the town—I never have any business in any town—but I
+had been caught by the fancy that I would come and look at it in its
+degeneracy.  My purpose was fitly inaugurated by the Dolphin’s Head,
+which everywhere expressed past coachfulness and present coachlessness.
+Coloured prints of coaches, starting, arriving, changing horses, coaches
+in the sunshine, coaches in the snow, coaches in the wind, coaches in the
+mist and rain, coaches on the King’s birthday, coaches in all
+circumstances compatible with their triumph and victory, but never in the
+act of breaking down or overturning, pervaded the house.  Of these works
+of art, some, framed and not glazed, had holes in them; the varnish of
+others had become so brown and cracked, that they looked like overdone
+pie-crust; the designs of others were almost obliterated by the flies of
+many summers.  Broken glasses, damaged frames, lop-sided hanging, and
+consignment of incurable cripples to places of refuge in dark corners,
+attested the desolation of the rest.  The old room on the ground floor
+where the passengers of the Highflyer used to dine, had nothing in it but
+a wretched show of twigs and flower-pots in the broad window to hide the
+nakedness of the land, and in a corner little Mellows’s perambulator,
+with even its parasol-head turned despondently to the wall.  The other
+room, where post-horse company used to wait while relays were getting
+ready down the yard, still held its ground, but was as airless as I
+conceive a hearse to be: insomuch that Mr. Pitt, hanging high against the
+partition (with spots on him like port wine, though it is mysterious how
+port wine ever got squirted up there), had good reason for perking his
+nose and sniffing.  The stopperless cruets on the spindle-shanked
+sideboard were in a miserably dejected state: the anchovy sauce having
+turned blue some years ago, and the cayenne pepper (with a scoop in it
+like a small model of a wooden leg) having turned solid.  The old
+fraudulent candles which were always being paid for and never used, were
+burnt out at last; but their tall stilts of candlesticks still lingered,
+and still outraged the human intellect by pretending to be silver.  The
+mouldy old unreformed Borough Member, with his right hand buttoned up in
+the breast of his coat, and his back characteristically turned on bales
+of petitions from his constituents, was there too; and the poker which
+never had been among the fire-irons, lest post-horse company should
+overstir the fire, was _not_ there, as of old.
+
+Pursuing my researches in the Dolphin’s Head, I found it sorely shrunken.
+When J. Mellows came into possession, he had walled off half the bar,
+which was now a tobacco-shop with its own entrance in the yard—the once
+glorious yard where the postboys, whip in hand and always buttoning their
+waistcoats at the last moment, used to come running forth to mount and
+away.  A ‘Scientific Shoeing—Smith and Veterinary Surgeon,’ had further
+encroached upon the yard; and a grimly satirical jobber, who announced
+himself as having to Let ‘A neat one-horse fly, and a one-horse cart,’
+had established his business, himself, and his family, in a part of the
+extensive stables.  Another part was lopped clean off from the Dolphin’s
+Head, and now comprised a chapel, a wheelwright’s, and a Young Men’s
+Mutual Improvement and Discussion Society (in a loft): the whole forming
+a back lane.  No audacious hand had plucked down the vane from the
+central cupola of the stables, but it had grown rusty and stuck at N-Nil:
+while the score or two of pigeons that remained true to their ancestral
+traditions and the place, had collected in a row on the roof-ridge of the
+only outhouse retained by the Dolphin, where all the inside pigeons tried
+to push the outside pigeon off.  This I accepted as emblematical of the
+struggle for post and place in railway times.
+
+Sauntering forth into the town, by way of the covered and pillared
+entrance to the Dolphin’s Yard, once redolent of soup and stable-litter,
+now redolent of musty disuse, I paced the street.  It was a hot day, and
+the little sun-blinds of the shops were all drawn down, and the more
+enterprising tradesmen had caused their ’Prentices to trickle water on
+the pavement appertaining to their frontage.  It looked as if they had
+been shedding tears for the stage-coaches, and drying their ineffectual
+pocket-handkerchiefs.  Such weakness would have been excusable; for
+business was—as one dejected porkman who kept a shop which refused to
+reciprocate the compliment by keeping him, informed me—‘bitter bad.’
+Most of the harness-makers and corn-dealers were gone the way of the
+coaches, but it was a pleasant recognition of the eternal procession of
+Children down that old original steep Incline, the Valley of the Shadow,
+that those tradesmen were mostly succeeded by vendors of sweetmeats and
+cheap toys.  The opposition house to the Dolphin, once famous as the New
+White Hart, had long collapsed.  In a fit of abject depression, it had
+cast whitewash on its windows, and boarded up its front door, and reduced
+itself to a side entrance; but even that had proved a world too wide for
+the Literary Institution which had been its last phase; for the
+Institution had collapsed too, and of the ambitious letters of its
+inscription on the White Hart’s front, all had fallen off but these:
+
+                             L      Y   INS    T
+
+—suggestive of Lamentably Insolvent.  As to the neighbouring
+market-place, it seemed to have wholly relinquished marketing, to the
+dealer in crockery whose pots and pans straggled half across it, and to
+the Cheap Jack who sat with folded arms on the shafts of his cart,
+superciliously gazing around; his velveteen waistcoat, evidently
+harbouring grave doubts whether it was worth his while to stay a night in
+such a place.
+
+The church bells began to ring as I left this spot, but they by no means
+improved the case, for they said, in a petulant way, and speaking with
+some difficulty in their irritation, WHAT’S-be-come-of-THE-coach-ES!’
+Nor would they (I found on listening) ever vary their emphasis, save in
+respect of growing more sharp and vexed, but invariably went on,
+‘WHAT’S-be-come-of-THE-coach-ES!’—always beginning the inquiry with an
+unpolite abruptness.  Perhaps from their elevation they saw the railway,
+and it aggravated them.
+
+Coming upon a coachmaker’s workshop, I began to look about me with a
+revived spirit, thinking that perchance I might behold there some remains
+of the old times of the town’s greatness.  There was only one man at
+work—a dry man, grizzled, and far advanced in years, but tall and
+upright, who, becoming aware of me looking on, straightened his back,
+pushed up his spectacles against his brown-paper cap, and appeared
+inclined to defy me.  To whom I pacifically said:
+
+‘Good day, sir!’
+
+‘What?’ said he.
+
+‘Good day, sir.’
+
+He seemed to consider about that, and not to agree with me.—‘Was you a
+looking for anything?’ he then asked, in a pointed manner.
+
+‘I was wondering whether there happened to be any fragment of an old
+stage-coach here.’
+
+‘Is that all?’
+
+‘That’s all.’
+
+‘No, there ain’t.’
+
+It was now my turn to say ‘Oh!’ and I said it.  Not another word did the
+dry and grizzled man say, but bent to his work again.  In the
+coach-making days, the coach-painters had tried their brushes on a post
+beside him; and quite a Calendar of departed glories was to be read upon
+it, in blue and yellow and red and green, some inches thick.  Presently
+he looked up again.
+
+‘You seem to have a deal of time on your hands,’ was his querulous
+remark.
+
+I admitted the fact.
+
+‘I think it’s a pity you was not brought up to something,’ said he.
+
+I said I thought so too.
+
+Appearing to be informed with an idea, he laid down his plane (for it was
+a plane he was at work with), pushed up his spectacles again, and came to
+the door.
+
+‘Would a po-shay do for you?’ he asked.
+
+‘I am not sure that I understand what you mean.’
+
+‘Would a po-shay,’ said the coachmaker, standing close before me, and
+folding his arms in the manner of a cross-examining counsel—‘would a
+po-shay meet the views you have expressed?  Yes, or no?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘Then you keep straight along down there till you see one.  _You’ll_ see
+one if you go fur enough.’
+
+With that, he turned me by the shoulder in the direction I was to take,
+and went in and resumed his work against a background of leaves and
+grapes.  For, although he was a soured man and a discontented, his
+workshop was that agreeable mixture of town and country, street and
+garden, which is often to be seen in a small English town.
+
+I went the way he had turned me, and I came to the Beer-shop with the
+sign of The First and Last, and was out of the town on the old London
+road.  I came to the Turnpike, and I found it, in its silent way,
+eloquent respecting the change that had fallen on the road.  The
+Turnpike-house was all overgrown with ivy; and the Turnpike-keeper,
+unable to get a living out of the tolls, plied the trade of a cobbler.
+Not only that, but his wife sold ginger-beer, and, in the very window of
+espial through which the Toll-takers of old times used with awe to behold
+the grand London coaches coming on at a gallop, exhibited for sale little
+barber’s-poles of sweetstuff in a sticky lantern.
+
+The political economy of the master of the turnpike thus expressed
+itself.
+
+‘How goes turnpike business, master?’ said I to him, as he sat in his
+little porch, repairing a shoe.
+
+‘It don’t go at all, master,’ said he to me.  ‘It’s stopped.’
+
+‘That’s bad,’ said I.
+
+‘Bad?’ he repeated.  And he pointed to one of his sunburnt dusty children
+who was climbing the turnpike-gate, and said, extending his open right
+hand in remonstrance with Universal Nature.  ‘Five on ’em!’
+
+‘But how to improve Turnpike business?’ said I.
+
+‘There’s a way, master,’ said he, with the air of one who had thought
+deeply on the subject.
+
+‘I should like to know it.’
+
+‘Lay a toll on everything as comes through; lay a toll on walkers.  Lay
+another toll on everything as don’t come through; lay a toll on them as
+stops at home.’
+
+‘Would the last remedy be fair?’
+
+‘Fair?  Them as stops at home, could come through if they liked; couldn’t
+they?’
+
+‘Say they could.’
+
+‘Toll ’em.  If they don’t come through, it’s _their_ look out.
+Anyways,—Toll ’em!’
+
+Finding it was as impossible to argue with this financial genius as if he
+had been Chancellor of the Exchequer, and consequently the right man in
+the right place, I passed on meekly.
+
+My mind now began to misgive me that the disappointed coach-maker had
+sent me on a wild-goose errand, and that there was no post-chaise in
+those parts.  But coming within view of certain allotment-gardens by the
+roadside, I retracted the suspicion, and confessed that I had done him an
+injustice.  For, there I saw, surely, the poorest superannuated
+post-chaise left on earth.
+
+It was a post-chaise taken off its axletree and wheels, and plumped down
+on the clayey soil among a ragged growth of vegetables.  It was a
+post-chaise not even set straight upon the ground, but tilted over, as if
+it had fallen out of a balloon.  It was a post-chaise that had been a
+long time in those decayed circumstances, and against which scarlet beans
+were trained.  It was a post-chaise patched and mended with old
+tea-trays, or with scraps of iron that looked like them, and boarded up
+as to the windows, but having A KNOCKER on the off-side door.  Whether it
+was a post-chaise used as tool-house, summer-house, or dwelling-house, I
+could not discover, for there was nobody at home at the post-chaise when
+I knocked, but it was certainly used for something, and locked up.  In
+the wonder of this discovery, I walked round and round the post-chaise
+many times, and sat down by the post-chaise, waiting for further
+elucidation.  None came.  At last, I made my way back to the old London
+road by the further end of the allotment-gardens, and consequently at a
+point beyond that from which I had diverged.  I had to scramble through a
+hedge and down a steep bank, and I nearly came down a-top of a little
+spare man who sat breaking stones by the roadside.
+
+He stayed his hammer, and said, regarding me mysteriously through his
+dark goggles of wire:
+
+‘Are you aware, sir, that you’ve been trespassing?’
+
+‘I turned out of the way,’ said I, in explanation, ‘to look at that odd
+post-chaise.  Do you happen to know anything about it?’
+
+‘I know it was many a year upon the road,’ said he.
+
+‘So I supposed.  Do you know to whom it belongs?’
+
+The stone-breaker bent his brows and goggles over his heap of stones, as
+if he were considering whether he should answer the question or not.
+Then, raising his barred eyes to my features as before, he said:
+
+‘To me.’
+
+Being quite unprepared for the reply, I received it with a sufficiently
+awkward ‘Indeed!  Dear me!’  Presently I added, ‘Do you—’ I was going to
+say ‘live there,’ but it seemed so absurd a question, that I substituted
+‘live near here?’
+
+The stone-breaker, who had not broken a fragment since we began to
+converse, then did as follows.  He raised himself by poising his finger
+on his hammer, and took his coat, on which he had been seated, over his
+arm.  He then backed to an easier part of the bank than that by which I
+had come down, keeping his dark goggles silently upon me all the time,
+and then shouldered his hammer, suddenly turned, ascended, and was gone.
+His face was so small, and his goggles were so large, that he left me
+wholly uninformed as to his countenance; but he left me a profound
+impression that the curved legs I had seen from behind as he vanished,
+were the legs of an old postboy.  It was not until then that I noticed he
+had been working by a grass-grown milestone, which looked like a
+tombstone erected over the grave of the London road.
+
+My dinner-hour being close at hand, I had no leisure to pursue the
+goggles or the subject then, but made my way back to the Dolphin’s Head.
+In the gateway I found J. Mellows, looking at nothing, and apparently
+experiencing that it failed to raise his spirits.
+
+‘_I_ don’t care for the town,’ said J. Mellows, when I complimented him
+on the sanitary advantages it may or may not possess; ‘I wish I had never
+seen the town!’
+
+‘You don’t belong to it, Mr. Mellows?’
+
+‘Belong to it!’ repeated Mellows.  ‘If I didn’t belong to a better style
+of town than this, I’d take and drown myself in a pail.’  It then
+occurred to me that Mellows, having so little to do, was habitually
+thrown back on his internal resources—by which I mean the Dolphin’s
+cellar.
+
+‘What we want,’ said Mellows, pulling off his hat, and making as if he
+emptied it of the last load of Disgust that had exuded from his brain,
+before he put it on again for another load; ‘what we want, is a Branch.
+The Petition for the Branch Bill is in the coffee-room.  Would you put
+your name to it?  Every little helps.’
+
+I found the document in question stretched out flat on the coffee-room
+table by the aid of certain weights from the kitchen, and I gave it the
+additional weight of my uncommercial signature.  To the best of my
+belief, I bound myself to the modest statement that universal traffic,
+happiness, prosperity, and civilisation, together with unbounded national
+triumph in competition with the foreigner, would infallibly flow from the
+Branch.
+
+Having achieved this constitutional feat, I asked Mr. Mellows if he could
+grace my dinner with a pint of good wine?  Mr. Mellows thus replied.
+
+‘If I couldn’t give you a pint of good wine, I’d—there!—I’d take and
+drown myself in a pail.  But I was deceived when I bought this business,
+and the stock was higgledy-piggledy, and I haven’t yet tasted my way
+quite through it with a view to sorting it.  Therefore, if you order one
+kind and get another, change till it comes right.  For what,’ said
+Mellows, unloading his hat as before, ‘what would you or any gentleman
+do, if you ordered one kind of wine and was required to drink another?
+Why, you’d (and naturally and properly, having the feelings of a
+gentleman), you’d take and drown yourself in a pail!’
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+THE BOILED BEEF OF NEW ENGLAND
+
+
+THE shabbiness of our English capital, as compared with Paris, Bordeaux,
+Frankfort, Milan, Geneva—almost any important town on the continent of
+Europe—I find very striking after an absence of any duration in foreign
+parts.  London is shabby in contrast with Edinburgh, with Aberdeen, with
+Exeter, with Liverpool, with a bright little town like Bury St. Edmunds.
+London is shabby in contrast with New York, with Boston, with
+Philadelphia.  In detail, one would say it can rarely fail to be a
+disappointing piece of shabbiness, to a stranger from any of those
+places.  There is nothing shabbier than Drury-lane, in Rome itself.  The
+meanness of Regent-street, set against the great line of Boulevards in
+Paris, is as striking as the abortive ugliness of Trafalgar-square, set
+against the gallant beauty of the Place de la Concorde.  London is shabby
+by daylight, and shabbier by gaslight.  No Englishman knows what gaslight
+is, until he sees the Rue de Rivoli and the Palais Royal after dark.
+
+The mass of London people are shabby.  The absence of distinctive dress
+has, no doubt, something to do with it.  The porters of the Vintners’
+Company, the draymen, and the butchers, are about the only people who
+wear distinctive dresses; and even these do not wear them on holidays.
+We have nothing which for cheapness, cleanliness, convenience, or
+picturesqueness, can compare with the belted blouse.  As to our
+women;—next Easter or Whitsuntide, look at the bonnets at the British
+Museum or the National Gallery, and think of the pretty white French cap,
+the Spanish mantilla, or the Genoese mezzero.
+
+Probably there are not more second-hand clothes sold in London than in
+Paris, and yet the mass of the London population have a second-hand look
+which is not to be detected on the mass of the Parisian population.  I
+think this is mainly because a Parisian workman does not in the least
+trouble himself about what is worn by a Parisian idler, but dresses in
+the way of his own class, and for his own comfort.  In London, on the
+contrary, the fashions descend; and you never fully know how inconvenient
+or ridiculous a fashion is, until you see it in its last descent.  It was
+but the other day, on a race-course, that I observed four people in a
+barouche deriving great entertainment from the contemplation of four
+people on foot.  The four people on foot were two young men and two young
+women; the four people in the barouche were two young men and two young
+women.  The four young women were dressed in exactly the same style; the
+four young men were dressed in exactly the same style.  Yet the two
+couples on wheels were as much amused by the two couples on foot, as if
+they were quite unconscious of having themselves set those fashions, or
+of being at that very moment engaged in the display of them.
+
+Is it only in the matter of clothes that fashion descends here in
+London—and consequently in England—and thence shabbiness arises?  Let us
+think a little, and be just.  The ‘Black Country’ round about Birmingham,
+is a very black country; but is it quite as black as it has been lately
+painted?  An appalling accident happened at the People’s Park near
+Birmingham, this last July, when it was crowded with people from the
+Black Country—an appalling accident consequent on a shamefully dangerous
+exhibition.  Did the shamefully dangerous exhibition originate in the
+moral blackness of the Black Country, and in the Black People’s peculiar
+love of the excitement attendant on great personal hazard, which they
+looked on at, but in which they did not participate?  Light is much
+wanted in the Black Country.  O we are all agreed on that.  But, we must
+not quite forget the crowds of gentlefolks who set the shamefully
+dangerous fashion, either.  We must not quite forget the enterprising
+Directors of an Institution vaunting mighty educational pretences, who
+made the low sensation as strong as they possibly could make it, by
+hanging the Blondin rope as high as they possibly could hang it.  All
+this must not be eclipsed in the Blackness of the Black Country.  The
+reserved seats high up by the rope, the cleared space below it, so that
+no one should be smashed but the performer, the pretence of slipping and
+falling off, the baskets for the feet and the sack for the head, the
+photographs everywhere, and the virtuous indignation nowhere—all this
+must not be wholly swallowed up in the blackness of the jet-black
+country.
+
+Whatsoever fashion is set in England, is certain to descend.  This is a
+text for a perpetual sermon on care in setting fashions.  When you find a
+fashion low down, look back for the time (it will never be far off) when
+it was the fashion high up.  This is the text for a perpetual sermon on
+social justice.  From imitations of Ethiopian Serenaders, to imitations
+of Prince’s coats and waistcoats, you will find the original model in St.
+James’s Parish.  When the Serenaders become tiresome, trace them beyond
+the Black Country; when the coats and waistcoats become insupportable,
+refer them to their source in the Upper Toady Regions.
+
+Gentlemen’s clubs were once maintained for purposes of savage party
+warfare; working men’s clubs of the same day assumed the same character.
+Gentlemen’s clubs became places of quiet inoffensive recreation; working
+men’s clubs began to follow suit.  If working men have seemed rather slow
+to appreciate advantages of combination which have saved the pockets of
+gentlemen, and enhanced their comforts, it is because working men could
+scarcely, for want of capital, originate such combinations without help;
+and because help has not been separable from that great impertinence,
+Patronage.  The instinctive revolt of his spirit against patronage, is a
+quality much to be respected in the English working man.  It is the base
+of the base of his best qualities.  Nor is it surprising that he should
+be unduly suspicious of patronage, and sometimes resentful of it even
+where it is not, seeing what a flood of washy talk has been let loose on
+his devoted head, or with what complacent condescension the same devoted
+head has been smoothed and patted.  It is a proof to me of his
+self-control that he never strikes out pugilistically, right and left,
+when addressed as one of ‘My friends,’ or ‘My assembled friends;’ that he
+does not become inappeasable, and run amuck like a Malay, whenever he
+sees a biped in broadcloth getting on a platform to talk to him; that any
+pretence of improving his mind, does not instantly drive him out of his
+mind, and cause him to toss his obliging patron like a mad bull.
+
+For, how often have I heard the unfortunate working man lectured, as if
+he were a little charity-child, humid as to his nasal development,
+strictly literal as to his Catechism, and called by Providence to walk
+all his days in a station in life represented on festive occasions by a
+mug of warm milk-and-water and a bun!  What popguns of jokes have these
+ears tingled to hear let off at him, what asinine sentiments, what
+impotent conclusions, what spelling-book moralities, what adaptations of
+the orator’s insufferable tediousness to the assumed level of his
+understanding!  If his sledge-hammers, his spades and pick-axes, his saws
+and chisels, his paint-pots and brushes, his forges, furnaces, and
+engines, the horses that he drove at his work, and the machines that
+drove him at his work, were all toys in one little paper box, and he the
+baby who played with them, he could not have been discoursed to, more
+impertinently and absurdly than I have heard him discoursed to times
+innumerable.  Consequently, not being a fool or a fawner, he has come to
+acknowledge his patronage by virtually saying: ‘Let me alone.  If you
+understand me no better than _that_, sir and madam, let me alone.  You
+mean very well, I dare say, but I don’t like it, and I won’t come here
+again to have any more of it.’
+
+Whatever is done for the comfort and advancement of the working man must
+be so far done by himself as that it is maintained by himself.  And there
+must be in it no touch of condescension, no shadow of patronage.  In the
+great working districts, this truth is studied and understood.  When the
+American civil war rendered it necessary, first in Glasgow, and
+afterwards in Manchester, that the working people should be shown how to
+avail themselves of the advantages derivable from system, and from the
+combination of numbers, in the purchase and the cooking of their food,
+this truth was above all things borne in mind.  The quick consequence
+was, that suspicion and reluctance were vanquished, and that the effort
+resulted in an astonishing and a complete success.
+
+Such thoughts passed through my mind on a July morning of this summer, as
+I walked towards Commercial Street (not Uncommercial Street),
+Whitechapel.  The Glasgow and Manchester system had been lately set
+a-going there, by certain gentlemen who felt an interest in its
+diffusion, and I had been attracted by the following hand-bill printed on
+rose-coloured paper:
+
+                             SELF-SUPPORTING
+                              COOKING DEPÔT
+                         FOR THE WORKING CLASSES
+
+                     Commercial-street, Whitechapel,
+
+          Where Accommodation is provided for Dining comfortably
+                          300 Persons at a time.
+
+                       Open from 7 A.M. till 7 P.M.
+
+                                 PRICES.
+
+                    All Articles of the BEST QUALITY.
+
+Cup of Tea or Coffee                 One Penny
+Bread and Butter                     One Penny
+Bread and Cheese                     One Penny
+Slice of bread   One half-penny or   One Penny
+Boiled Egg                           One Penny
+Ginger Beer                          One Penny
+         The above Articles always ready.
+Besides the above may be had, from 12 to 3
+o’clock,
+Bowl of Scotch Broth                 One Penny
+Bowl of Soup                         One Penny
+Plate of Potatoes                    One Penny
+Plate of Minced Beef                 Twopence
+Plate of Cold Beef                   Twopence
+Plate of Cold Ham                    Twopence
+Plate of Plum Pudding or Rice        One Penny
+
+As the Economy of Cooking depends greatly upon the simplicity of the
+arrangements with which a great number of persons can be served at one
+time, the Upper Room of this Establishment will be especially set apart
+for a
+
+                         PUBLIC DINNER EVERY DAY
+
+                         From 12 till 3 o’clock,
+
+                  _Consisting of the following Dishes_:
+
+                         Bowl of Broth, or Soup,
+                        Plate of Cold Beef or Ham,
+                            Plate of Potatoes,
+                          Plum Pudding, or Rice.
+
+                           FIXED CHARGE 4½_d._
+
+                        THE DAILY PAPERS PROVIDED.
+
+N.B.—This Establishment is conducted on the strictest business
+principles, with the full intention of making it self-supporting, so that
+every one may frequent it with a feeling of perfect independence.
+
+The assistance of all frequenting the Depôt is confidently expected in
+checking anything interfering with the comfort, quiet, and regularity of
+the establishment.
+
+Please do not destroy this Hand Bill, but hand it to some other person
+whom it may interest.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+The Self-Supporting Cooking Depôt (not a very good name, and one would
+rather give it an English one) had hired a newly-built warehouse that it
+found to let; therefore it was not established in premises specially
+designed for the purpose.  But, at a small cost they were exceedingly
+well adapted to the purpose: being light, well ventilated, clean, and
+cheerful.  They consisted of three large rooms.  That on the basement
+story was the kitchen; that on the ground floor was the general
+dining-room; that on the floor above was the Upper Room referred to in
+the hand-bill, where the Public Dinner at fourpence-halfpenny a head was
+provided every day.  The cooking was done, with much economy of space and
+fuel, by American cooking-stoves, and by young women not previously,
+brought up as cooks; the walls and pillars of the two dining-rooms were
+agreeably brightened with ornamental colours; the tables were capable of
+accommodating six or eight persons each; the attendants were all young
+women, becomingly and neatly dressed, and dressed alike.  I think the
+whole staff was female, with the exception of the steward or manager.
+
+My first inquiries were directed to the wages of this staff; because, if
+any establishment claiming to be self-supporting, live upon the
+spoliation of anybody or anything, or eke out a feeble existence by poor
+mouths and beggarly resources (as too many so-called Mechanics’
+Institutions do), I make bold to express my Uncommercial opinion that it
+has no business to live, and had better die.  It was made clear to me by
+the account books, that every person employed was properly paid.  My next
+inquiries were directed to the quality of the provisions purchased, and
+to the terms on which they were bought.  It was made equally clear to me
+that the quality was the very best, and that all bills were paid weekly.
+My next inquiries were directed to the balance-sheet for the last two
+weeks—only the third and fourth of the establishment’s career.  It was
+made equally clear to me, that after everything bought was paid for, and
+after each week was charged with its full share of wages, rent and taxes,
+depreciation of plant in use, and interest on capital at the rate of four
+per cent. per annum, the last week had yielded a profit of (in round
+numbers) one pound ten; and the previous week a profit of six pounds ten.
+By this time I felt that I had a healthy appetite for the dinners.
+
+It had just struck twelve, and a quick succession of faces had already
+begun to appear at a little window in the wall of the partitioned space
+where I sat looking over the books.  Within this little window, like a
+pay-box at a theatre, a neat and brisk young woman presided to take money
+and issue tickets.  Every one coming in must take a ticket.  Either the
+fourpence-halfpenny ticket for the upper room (the most popular ticket, I
+think), or a penny ticket for a bowl of soup, or as many penny tickets as
+he or she choose to buy.  For three penny tickets one had quite a wide
+range of choice.  A plate of cold boiled beef and potatoes; or a plate of
+cold ham and potatoes; or a plate of hot minced beef and potatoes; or a
+bowl of soup, bread and cheese, and a plate of plum-pudding.  Touching
+what they should have, some customers on taking their seats fell into a
+reverie—became mildly distracted—postponed decision, and said in
+bewilderment, they would think of it.  One old man I noticed when I sat
+among the tables in the lower room, who was startled by the bill of fare,
+and sat contemplating it as if it were something of a ghostly nature.
+The decision of the boys was as rapid as their execution, and always
+included pudding.
+
+There were several women among the diners, and several clerks and
+shopmen.  There were carpenters and painters from the neighbouring
+buildings under repair, and there were nautical men, and there were, as
+one diner observed to me, ‘some of most sorts.’  Some were solitary, some
+came two together, some dined in parties of three or four, or six.  The
+latter talked together, but assuredly no one was louder than at my club
+in Pall-Mall.  One young fellow whistled in rather a shrill manner while
+he waited for his dinner, but I was gratified to observe that he did so
+in evident defiance of my Uncommercial individuality.  Quite agreeing
+with him, on consideration, that I had no business to be there, unless I
+dined like the rest, ‘I went in,’ as the phrase is, for
+fourpence-halfpenny.
+
+The room of the fourpence-halfpenny banquet had, like the lower room, a
+counter in it, on which were ranged a great number of cold portions ready
+for distribution.  Behind this counter, the fragrant soup was steaming in
+deep cans, and the best-cooked of potatoes were fished out of similar
+receptacles.  Nothing to eat was touched with his hand.  Every waitress
+had her own tables to attend to.  As soon as she saw a new customer seat
+himself at one of her tables, she took from the counter all his
+dinner—his soup, potatoes, meat, and pudding—piled it up dexterously in
+her two hands, set it before him, and took his ticket.  This serving of
+the whole dinner at once, had been found greatly to simplify the business
+of attendance, and was also popular with the customers: who were thus
+enabled to vary the meal by varying the routine of dishes: beginning with
+soup-to-day, putting soup in the middle to-morrow, putting soup at the
+end the day after to-morrow, and ringing similar changes on meat and
+pudding.  The rapidity with which every new-comer got served, was
+remarkable; and the dexterity with which the waitresses (quite new to the
+art a month before) discharged their duty, was as agreeable to see, as
+the neat smartness with which they wore their dress and had dressed their
+hair.
+
+If I seldom saw better waiting, so I certainly never ate better meat,
+potatoes, or pudding.  And the soup was an honest and stout soup, with
+rice and barley in it, and ‘little matters for the teeth to touch,’ as
+had been observed to me by my friend below stairs already quoted.  The
+dinner-service, too, was neither conspicuously hideous for High Art nor
+for Low Art, but was of a pleasant and pure appearance.  Concerning the
+viands and their cookery, one last remark.  I dined at my club in
+Pall-Mall aforesaid, a few days afterwards, for exactly twelve times the
+money, and not half as well.
+
+The company thickened after one o’clock struck, and changed pretty
+quickly.  Although experience of the place had been so recently
+attainable, and although there was still considerable curiosity out in
+the street and about the entrance, the general tone was as good as could
+be, and the customers fell easily into the ways of the place.  It was
+clear to me, however, that they were there to have what they paid for,
+and to be on an independent footing.  To the best of my judgment, they
+might be patronised out of the building in a month.  With judicious
+visiting, and by dint of being questioned, read to, and talked at, they
+might even be got rid of (for the next quarter of a century) in half the
+time.
+
+This disinterested and wise movement is fraught with so many wholesome
+changes in the lives of the working people, and with so much good in the
+way of overcoming that suspicion which our own unconscious impertinence
+has engendered, that it is scarcely gracious to criticise details as yet;
+the rather, because it is indisputable that the managers of the
+Whitechapel establishment most thoroughly feel that they are upon their
+honour with the customers, as to the minutest points of administration.
+But, although the American stoves cannot roast, they can surely boil one
+kind of meat as well as another, and need not always circumscribe their
+boiling talents within the limits of ham and beef.  The most enthusiastic
+admirer of those substantials, would probably not object to occasional
+inconstancy in respect of pork and mutton: or, especially in cold
+weather, to a little innocent trifling with Irish stews, meat pies, and
+toads in holes.  Another drawback on the Whitechapel establishment, is
+the absence of beer.  Regarded merely as a question of policy, it is very
+impolitic, as having a tendency to send the working men to the
+public-house, where gin is reported to be sold.  But, there is a much
+higher ground on which this absence of beer is objectionable.  It
+expresses distrust of the working man.  It is a fragment of that old
+mantle of patronage in which so many estimable Thugs, so darkly wandering
+up and down the moral world, are sworn to muffle him.  Good beer is a
+good thing for him, he says, and he likes it; the Depôt could give it him
+good, and he now gets it bad.  Why does the Depôt not give it him good?
+Because he would get drunk.  Why does the Depôt not let him have a pint
+with his dinner, which would not make him drunk?  Because he might have
+had another pint, or another two pints, before he came.  Now, this
+distrust is an affront, is exceedingly inconsistent with the confidence
+the managers express in their hand-bills, and is a timid stopping-short
+upon the straight highway.  It is unjust and unreasonable, also.  It is
+unjust, because it punishes the sober man for the vice of the drunken
+man.  It is unreasonable, because any one at all experienced in such
+things knows that the drunken workman does not get drunk where he goes to
+eat and drink, but where he goes to drink—expressly to drink.  To suppose
+that the working man cannot state this question to himself quite as
+plainly as I state it here, is to suppose that he is a baby, and is again
+to tell him in the old wearisome, condescending, patronising way that he
+must be goody-poody, and do as he is toldy-poldy, and not be a
+manny-panny or a voter-poter, but fold his handy-pandys, and be a
+childy-pildy.
+
+I found from the accounts of the Whitechapel Self-Supporting Cooking
+Depôt, that every article sold in it, even at the prices I have quoted,
+yields a certain small profit!  Individual speculators are of course
+already in the field, and are of course already appropriating the name.
+The classes for whose benefit the real depôts are designed, will
+distinguish between the two kinds of enterprise.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+CHATHAM DOCKYARD
+
+
+THERE are some small out-of-the-way landing places on the Thames and the
+Medway, where I do much of my summer idling.  Running water is favourable
+to day-dreams, and a strong tidal river is the best of running water for
+mine.  I like to watch the great ships standing out to sea or coming home
+richly laden, the active little steam-tugs confidently puffing with them
+to and from the sea-horizon, the fleet of barges that seem to have
+plucked their brown and russet sails from the ripe trees in the
+landscape, the heavy old colliers, light in ballast, floundering down
+before the tide, the light screw barks and schooners imperiously holding
+a straight course while the others patiently tack and go about, the
+yachts with their tiny hulls and great white sheets of canvas, the little
+sailing-boats bobbing to and fro on their errands of pleasure or
+business, and—as it is the nature of little people to do—making a
+prodigious fuss about their small affairs.  Watching these objects, I
+still am under no obligation to think about them, or even so much as to
+see them, unless it perfectly suits my humour.  As little am I obliged to
+hear the plash and flop of the tide, the ripple at my feet, the clinking
+windlass afar off, or the humming steam-ship paddles further away yet.
+These, with the creaking little jetty on which I sit, and the gaunt
+high-water marks and low-water marks in the mud, and the broken causeway,
+and the broken bank, and the broken stakes and piles leaning forward as
+if they were vain of their personal appearance and looking for their
+reflection in the water, will melt into any train of fancy.  Equally
+adaptable to any purpose or to none, are the posturing sheep and kine
+upon the marshes, the gulls that wheel and dip around me, the crows (well
+out of gunshot) going home from the rich harvest-fields, the heron that
+has been out a-fishing and looks as melancholy, up there in the sky, as
+if it hadn’t agreed with him.  Everything within the range of the senses
+will, by the aid of the running water, lend itself to everything beyond
+that range, and work into a drowsy whole, not unlike a kind of tune, but
+for which there is no exact definition.
+
+One of these landing-places is near an old fort (I can see the Nore Light
+from it with my pocket-glass), from which fort mysteriously emerges a
+boy, to whom I am much indebted for additions to my scanty stock of
+knowledge.  He is a young boy, with an intelligent face burnt to a dust
+colour by the summer sun, and with crisp hair of the same hue.  He is a
+boy in whom I have perceived nothing incompatible with habits of studious
+inquiry and meditation, unless an evanescent black eye (I was delicate of
+inquiring how occasioned) should be so considered.  To him am I indebted
+for ability to identify a Custom-house boat at any distance, and for
+acquaintance with all the forms and ceremonies observed by a
+homeward-bound Indiaman coming up the river, when the Custom-house
+officers go aboard her.  But for him, I might never have heard of ‘the
+dumb-ague,’ respecting which malady I am now learned.  Had I never sat at
+his feet, I might have finished my mortal career and never known that
+when I see a white horse on a barge’s sail, that barge is a lime barge.
+For precious secrets in reference to beer, am I likewise beholden to him,
+involving warning against the beer of a certain establishment, by reason
+of its having turned sour through failure in point of demand: though my
+young sage is not of opinion that similar deterioration has befallen the
+ale.  He has also enlightened me touching the mushrooms of the marshes,
+and has gently reproved my ignorance in having supposed them to be
+impregnated with salt.  His manner of imparting information, is
+thoughtful, and appropriate to the scene.  As he reclines beside me, he
+pitches into the river, a little stone or piece of grit, and then
+delivers himself oracularly, as though he spoke out of the centre of the
+spreading circle that it makes in the water.  He never improves my mind
+without observing this formula.
+
+With the wise boy—whom I know by no other name than the Spirit of the
+Fort—I recently consorted on a breezy day when the river leaped about us
+and was full of life.  I had seen the sheaved corn carrying in the golden
+fields as I came down to the river; and the rosy farmer, watching his
+labouring-men in the saddle on his cob, had told me how he had reaped his
+two hundred and sixty acres of long-strawed corn last week, and how a
+better week’s work he had never done in all his days.  Peace and
+abundance were on the country-side in beautiful forms and beautiful
+colours, and the harvest seemed even to be sailing out to grace the
+never-reaped sea in the yellow-laden barges that mellowed the distance.
+
+It was on this occasion that the Spirit of the Fort, directing his
+remarks to a certain floating iron battery lately lying in that reach of
+the river, enriched my mind with his opinions on naval architecture, and
+informed me that he would like to be an engineer.  I found him up to
+everything that is done in the contracting line by Messrs. Peto and
+Brassey—cunning in the article of concrete—mellow in the matter of
+iron—great on the subject of gunnery.  When he spoke of pile-driving and
+sluice-making, he left me not a leg to stand on, and I can never
+sufficiently acknowledge his forbearance with me in my disabled state.
+While he thus discoursed, he several times directed his eyes to one
+distant quarter of the landscape, and spoke with vague mysterious awe of
+‘the Yard.’  Pondering his lessons after we had parted, I bethought me
+that the Yard was one of our large public Dockyards, and that it lay
+hidden among the crops down in the dip behind the windmills, as if it
+modestly kept itself out of view in peaceful times, and sought to trouble
+no man.  Taken with this modesty on the part of the Yard, I resolved to
+improve the Yard’s acquaintance.
+
+My good opinion of the Yard’s retiring character was not dashed by nearer
+approach.  It resounded with the noise of hammers beating upon iron; and
+the great sheds or slips under which the mighty men-of-war are built,
+loomed business-like when contemplated from the opposite side of the
+river.  For all that, however, the Yard made no display, but kept itself
+snug under hill-sides of corn-fields, hop-gardens, and orchards; its
+great chimneys smoking with a quiet—almost a lazy—air, like giants
+smoking tobacco; and the great Shears moored off it, looking meekly and
+inoffensively out of proportion, like the Giraffe of the machinery
+creation.  The store of cannon on the neighbouring gun-wharf, had an
+innocent toy-like appearance, and the one red-coated sentry on duty over
+them was a mere toy figure, with a clock-work movement.  As the hot
+sunlight sparkled on him he might have passed for the identical little
+man who had the little gun, and whose bullets they were made of lead,
+lead, lead.
+
+Crossing the river and landing at the Stairs, where a drift of chips and
+weed had been trying to land before me and had not succeeded, but had got
+into a corner instead, I found the very street posts to be cannon, and
+the architectural ornaments to be shells.  And so I came to the Yard,
+which was shut up tight and strong with great folded gates, like an
+enormous patent safe.  These gates devouring me, I became digested into
+the Yard; and it had, at first, a clean-swept holiday air, as if it had
+given over work until next war-time.  Though indeed a quantity of hemp
+for rope was tumbling out of store-houses, even there, which would hardly
+be lying like so much hay on the white stones if the Yard were as placid
+as it pretended.
+
+Ding, Clash, Dong, BANG, Boom, Rattle, Clash, BANG, Clink, BANG, Dong,
+BANG, Clatter, BANG BANG BANG!  What on earth is this!  This is, or soon
+will be, the Achilles, iron armour-plated ship.  Twelve hundred men are
+working at her now; twelve hundred men working on stages over her sides,
+over her bows, over her stern, under her keel, between her decks, down in
+her hold, within her and without, crawling and creeping into the finest
+curves of her lines wherever it is possible for men to twist.  Twelve
+hundred hammerers, measurers, caulkers, armourers, forgers, smiths,
+shipwrights; twelve hundred dingers, clashers, dongers, rattlers,
+clinkers, bangers bangers bangers!  Yet all this stupendous uproar around
+the rising Achilles is as nothing to the reverberations with which the
+perfected Achilles shall resound upon the dreadful day when the full work
+is in hand for which this is but note of preparation—the day when the
+scuppers that are now fitting like great, dry, thirsty conduit-pipes,
+shall run red.  All these busy figures between decks, dimly seen bending
+at their work in smoke and fire, are as nothing to the figures that shall
+do work here of another kind in smoke and fire, that day.  These
+steam-worked engines alongside, helping the ship by travelling to and
+fro, and wafting tons of iron plates about, as though they were so many
+leaves of trees, would be rent limb from limb if they stood by her for a
+minute then.  To think that this Achilles, monstrous compound of iron
+tank and oaken chest, can ever swim or roll!  To think that any force of
+wind and wave could ever break her!  To think that wherever I see a
+glowing red-hot iron point thrust out of her side from within—as I do
+now, there, and there, and there!—and two watching men on a stage
+without, with bared arms and sledge-hammers, strike at it fiercely, and
+repeat their blows until it is black and flat, I see a rivet being driven
+home, of which there are many in every iron plate, and thousands upon
+thousands in the ship!  To think that the difficulty I experience in
+appreciating the ship’s size when I am on board, arises from her being a
+series of iron tanks and oaken chests, so that internally she is ever
+finishing and ever beginning, and half of her might be smashed, and yet
+the remaining half suffice and be sound.  Then, to go over the side again
+and down among the ooze and wet to the bottom of the dock, in the depths
+of the subterranean forest of dog-shores and stays that hold her up, and
+to see the immense mass bulging out against the upper light, and tapering
+down towards me, is, with great pains and much clambering, to arrive at
+an impossibility of realising that this is a ship at all, and to become
+possessed by the fancy that it is an enormous immovable edifice set up in
+an ancient amphitheatre (say, that at Verona), and almost filling it! Yet
+what would even these things be, without the tributary workshops and the
+mechanical powers for piercing the iron plates—four inches and a half
+thick—for rivets, shaping them under hydraulic pressure to the finest
+tapering turns of the ship’s lines, and paring them away, with knives
+shaped like the beaks of strong and cruel birds, to the nicest
+requirements of the design!  These machines of tremendous force, so
+easily directed by one attentive face and presiding hand, seem to me to
+have in them something of the retiring character of the Yard.  ‘Obedient
+monster, please to bite this mass of iron through and through, at equal
+distances, where these regular chalk-marks are, all round.’  Monster
+looks at its work, and lifting its ponderous head, replies, ‘I don’t
+particularly want to do it; but if it must be done—!’  The solid metal
+wriggles out, hot from the monster’s crunching tooth, and it _is_ done.
+‘Dutiful monster, observe this other mass of iron.  It is required to be
+pared away, according to this delicately lessening and arbitrary line,
+which please to look at.’  Monster (who has been in a reverie) brings
+down its blunt head, and, much in the manner of Doctor Johnson, closely
+looks along the line—very closely, being somewhat near-sighted.  ‘I don’t
+particularly want to do it; but if it must be done—!’  Monster takes
+another near-sighted look, takes aim, and the tortured piece writhes off,
+and falls, a hot, tight-twisted snake, among the ashes.  The making of
+the rivets is merely a pretty round game, played by a man and a boy, who
+put red-hot barley sugar in a Pope Joan board, and immediately rivets
+fall out of window; but the tone of the great machines is the tone of the
+great Yard and the great country: ‘We don’t particularly want to do it;
+but if it must be done—!’
+
+How such a prodigious mass as the Achilles can ever be held by such
+comparatively little anchors as those intended for her and lying near her
+here, is a mystery of seamanship which I will refer to the wise boy.  For
+my own part, I should as soon have thought of tethering an elephant to a
+tent-peg, or the larger hippopotamus in the Zoological Gardens to my
+shirt-pin.  Yonder in the river, alongside a hulk, lie two of this ship’s
+hollow iron masts.  _They_ are large enough for the eye, I find, and so
+are all her other appliances.  I wonder why only her anchors look small.
+
+I have no present time to think about it, for I am going to see the
+workshops where they make all the oars used in the British Navy.  A
+pretty large pile of building, I opine, and a pretty long job!  As to the
+building, I am soon disappointed, because the work is all done in one
+loft.  And as to a long job—what is this?  Two rather large mangles with
+a swarm of butterflies hovering over them?  What can there be in the
+mangles that attracts butterflies?
+
+Drawing nearer, I discern that these are not mangles, but intricate
+machines, set with knives and saws and planes, which cut smooth and
+straight here, and slantwise there, and now cut such a depth, and now
+miss cutting altogether, according to the predestined requirements of the
+pieces of wood that are pushed on below them: each of which pieces is to
+be an oar, and is roughly adapted to that purpose before it takes its
+final leave of far-off forests, and sails for England.  Likewise I
+discern that the butterflies are not true butterflies, but wooden
+shavings, which, being spirted up from the wood by the violence of the
+machinery, and kept in rapid and not equal movement by the impulse of its
+rotation on the air, flutter and play, and rise and fall, and conduct
+themselves as like butterflies as heart could wish.  Suddenly the noise
+and motion cease, and the butterflies drop dead.  An oar has been made
+since I came in, wanting the shaped handle.  As quickly as I can follow
+it with my eye and thought, the same oar is carried to a turning lathe.
+A whirl and a Nick!  Handle made.  Oar finished.
+
+The exquisite beauty and efficiency of this machinery need no
+illustration, but happen to have a pointed illustration to-day.  A pair
+of oars of unusual size chance to be wanted for a special purpose, and
+they have to be made by hand.  Side by side with the subtle and facile
+machine, and side by side with the fast-growing pile of oars on the
+floor, a man shapes out these special oars with an axe.  Attended by no
+butterflies, and chipping and dinting, by comparison as leisurely as if
+he were a labouring Pagan getting them ready against his decease at
+threescore and ten, to take with him as a present to Charon for his boat,
+the man (aged about thirty) plies his task.  The machine would make a
+regulation oar while the man wipes his forehead.  The man might be buried
+in a mound made of the strips of thin, broad, wooden ribbon torn from the
+wood whirled into oars as the minutes fall from the clock, before he had
+done a forenoon’s work with his axe.
+
+Passing from this wonderful sight to the Ships again—for my heart, as to
+the Yard, is where the ships are—I notice certain unfinished wooden walls
+left seasoning on the stocks, pending the solution of the merits of the
+wood and iron question, and having an air of biding their time with surly
+confidence.  The names of these worthies are set up beside them, together
+with their capacity in guns—a custom highly conducive to ease and
+satisfaction in social intercourse, if it could be adapted to mankind.
+By a plank more gracefully pendulous than substantial, I make bold to go
+aboard a transport ship (iron screw) just sent in from the contractor’s
+yard to be inspected and passed.  She is a very gratifying experience, in
+the simplicity and humanity of her arrangements for troops, in her
+provision for light and air and cleanliness, and in her care for women
+and children.  It occurs to me, as I explore her, that I would require a
+handsome sum of money to go aboard her, at midnight by the Dockyard bell,
+and stay aboard alone till morning; for surely she must be haunted by a
+crowd of ghosts of obstinate old martinets, mournfully flapping their
+cherubic epaulettes over the changed times.  Though still we may learn
+from the astounding ways and means in our Yards now, more highly than
+ever to respect the forefathers who got to sea, and fought the sea, and
+held the sea, without them.  This remembrance putting me in the best of
+tempers with an old hulk, very green as to her copper, and generally dim
+and patched, I pull off my hat to her.  Which salutation a callow and
+downy-faced young officer of Engineers, going by at the moment,
+perceiving, appropriates—and to which he is most heartily welcome, I am
+sure.
+
+Having been torn to pieces (in imagination) by the steam circular saws,
+perpendicular saws, horizontal saws, and saws of eccentric action, I come
+to the sauntering part of my expedition, and consequently to the core of
+my Uncommercial pursuits.
+
+Everywhere, as I saunter up and down the Yard, I meet with tokens of its
+quiet and retiring character.  There is a gravity upon its red brick
+offices and houses, a staid pretence of having nothing worth mentioning
+to do, an avoidance of display, which I never saw out of England.  The
+white stones of the pavement present no other trace of Achilles and his
+twelve hundred banging men (not one of whom strikes an attitude) than a
+few occasional echoes.  But for a whisper in the air suggestive of
+sawdust and shavings, the oar-making and the saws of many movements might
+be miles away.  Down below here, is the great reservoir of water where
+timber is steeped in various temperatures, as a part of its seasoning
+process.  Above it, on a tramroad supported by pillars, is a Chinese
+Enchanter’s Car, which fishes the logs up, when sufficiently steeped, and
+rolls smoothly away with them to stack them.  When I was a child (the
+Yard being then familiar to me) I used to think that I should like to
+play at Chinese Enchanter, and to have that apparatus placed at my
+disposal for the purpose by a beneficent country.  I still think that I
+should rather like to try the effect of writing a book in it.  Its
+retirement is complete, and to go gliding to and fro among the stacks of
+timber would be a convenient kind of travelling in foreign
+countries—among the forests of North America, the sodden Honduras swamps,
+the dark pine woods, the Norwegian frosts, and the tropical heats, rainy
+seasons, and thunderstorms.  The costly store of timber is stacked and
+stowed away in sequestered places, with the pervading avoidance of
+flourish or effect.  It makes as little of itself as possible, and calls
+to no one ‘Come and look at me!’  And yet it is picked out from the trees
+of the world; picked out for length, picked out for breadth, picked out
+for straightness, picked out for crookedness, chosen with an eye to every
+need of ship and boat.  Strangely twisted pieces lie about, precious in
+the sight of shipwrights.  Sauntering through these groves, I come upon
+an open glade where workmen are examining some timber recently delivered.
+Quite a pastoral scene, with a background of river and windmill! and no
+more like War than the American States are at present like an Union.
+
+Sauntering among the ropemaking, I am spun into a state of blissful
+indolence, wherein my rope of life seems to be so untwisted by the
+process as that I can see back to very early days indeed, when my bad
+dreams—they were frightful, though my more mature understanding has never
+made out why—were of an interminable sort of ropemaking, with long minute
+filaments for strands, which, when they were spun home together close to
+my eyes, occasioned screaming.  Next, I walk among the quiet lofts of
+stores—of sails, spars, rigging, ships’ boats—determined to believe that
+somebody in authority wears a girdle and bends beneath the weight of a
+massive bunch of keys, and that, when such a thing is wanted, he comes
+telling his keys like Blue Beard, and opens such a door.  Impassive as
+the long lofts look, let the electric battery send down the word, and the
+shutters and doors shall fly open, and such a fleet of armed ships, under
+steam and under sail, shall burst forth as will charge the old
+Medway—where the merry Stuart let the Dutch come, while his not so merry
+sailors starved in the streets—with something worth looking at to carry
+to the sea.  Thus I idle round to the Medway again, where it is now flood
+tide; and I find the river evincing a strong solicitude to force a way
+into the dry dock where Achilles is waited on by the twelve hundred
+bangers, with intent to bear the whole away before they are ready.
+
+To the last, the Yard puts a quiet face upon it; for I make my way to the
+gates through a little quiet grove of trees, shading the quaintest of
+Dutch landing-places, where the leaf-speckled shadow of a shipwright just
+passing away at the further end might be the shadow of Russian Peter
+himself.  So, the doors of the great patent safe at last close upon me,
+and I take boat again: somehow, thinking as the oars dip, of braggart
+Pistol and his brood, and of the quiet monsters of the Yard, with their
+‘We don’t particularly want to do it; but if it must be done—!’  Scrunch.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+IN THE FRENCH-FLEMISH COUNTRY
+
+
+‘IT is neither a bold nor a diversified country,’ said I to myself, ‘this
+country which is three-quarters Flemish, and a quarter French; yet it has
+its attractions too.  Though great lines of railway traverse it, the
+trains leave it behind, and go puffing off to Paris and the South, to
+Belgium and Germany, to the Northern Sea-Coast of France, and to England,
+and merely smoke it a little in passing.  Then I don’t know it, and that
+is a good reason for being here; and I can’t pronounce half the long
+queer names I see inscribed over the shops, and that is another good
+reason for being here, since I surely ought to learn how.’  In short, I
+was ‘here,’ and I wanted an excuse for not going away from here, and I
+made it to my satisfaction, and stayed here.
+
+What part in my decision was borne by Monsieur P. Salcy, is of no moment,
+though I own to encountering that gentleman’s name on a red bill on the
+wall, before I made up my mind.  Monsieur P. Salcy, ‘par permission de M.
+le Maire,’ had established his theatre in the whitewashed Hôtel de Ville,
+on the steps of which illustrious edifice I stood.  And Monsieur P.
+Salcy, privileged director of such theatre, situate in ‘the first
+theatrical arrondissement of the department of the North,’ invited
+French-Flemish mankind to come and partake of the intellectual banquet
+provided by his family of dramatic artists, fifteen subjects in number.
+‘La Famille P. SALCY, composée d’artistes dramatiques, au nombre de 15
+sujets.’
+
+Neither a bold nor a diversified country, I say again, and withal an
+untidy country, but pleasant enough to ride in, when the paved roads over
+the flats and through the hollows, are not too deep in black mud.  A
+country so sparely inhabited, that I wonder where the peasants who till
+and sow and reap the ground, can possibly dwell, and also by what
+invisible balloons they are conveyed from their distant homes into the
+fields at sunrise and back again at sunset.  The occasional few poor
+cottages and farms in this region, surely cannot afford shelter to the
+numbers necessary to the cultivation, albeit the work is done so very
+deliberately, that on one long harvest day I have seen, in twelve miles,
+about twice as many men and women (all told) reaping and binding.  Yet
+have I seen more cattle, more sheep, more pigs, and all in better case,
+than where there is purer French spoken, and also better ricks—round
+swelling peg-top ricks, well thatched; not a shapeless brown heap, like
+the toast of a Giant’s toast-and-water, pinned to the earth with one of
+the skewers out of his kitchen.  A good custom they have about here,
+likewise, of prolonging the sloping tiled roof of farm or cottage, so
+that it overhangs three or four feet, carrying off the wet, and making a
+good drying-place wherein to hang up herbs, or implements, or what not.
+A better custom than the popular one of keeping the refuse-heap and
+puddle close before the house door: which, although I paint my dwelling
+never so brightly blue (and it cannot be too blue for me, hereabouts),
+will bring fever inside my door.  Wonderful poultry of the French-Flemish
+country, why take the trouble to _be_ poultry?  Why not stop short at
+eggs in the rising generation, and die out and have done with it?
+Parents of chickens have I seen this day, followed by their wretched
+young families, scratching nothing out of the mud with an air—tottering
+about on legs so scraggy and weak, that the valiant word drumsticks
+becomes a mockery when applied to them, and the crow of the lord and
+master has been a mere dejected case of croup.  Carts have I seen, and
+other agricultural instruments, unwieldy, dislocated, monstrous.
+Poplar-trees by the thousand fringe the fields and fringe the end of the
+flat landscape, so that I feel, looking straight on before me, as if,
+when I pass the extremest fringe on the low horizon, I shall tumble over
+into space.  Little whitewashed black holes of chapels, with barred doors
+and Flemish inscriptions, abound at roadside corners, and often they are
+garnished with a sheaf of wooden crosses, like children’s swords; or, in
+their default, some hollow old tree with a saint roosting in it, is
+similarly decorated, or a pole with a very diminutive saint enshrined
+aloft in a sort of sacred pigeon-house.  Not that we are deficient in
+such decoration in the town here, for, over at the church yonder, outside
+the building, is a scenic representation of the Crucifixion, built up
+with old bricks and stones, and made out with painted canvas and wooden
+figures: the whole surmounting the dusty skull of some holy personage
+(perhaps), shut up behind a little ashy iron grate, as if it were
+originally put there to be cooked, and the fire had long gone out.  A
+windmilly country this, though the windmills are so damp and rickety,
+that they nearly knock themselves off their legs at every turn of their
+sails, and creak in loud complaint.  A weaving country, too, for in the
+wayside cottages the loom goes wearily—rattle and click, rattle and
+click—and, looking in, I see the poor weaving peasant, man or woman,
+bending at the work, while the child, working too, turns a little
+hand-wheel put upon the ground to suit its height.  An unconscionable
+monster, the loom in a small dwelling, asserting himself ungenerously as
+the bread-winner, straddling over the children’s straw beds, cramping the
+family in space and air, and making himself generally objectionable and
+tyrannical.  He is tributary, too, to ugly mills and factories and
+bleaching-grounds, rising out of the sluiced fields in an abrupt bare
+way, disdaining, like himself, to be ornamental or accommodating.
+Surrounded by these things, here I stood on the steps of the Hôtel de
+Ville, persuaded to remain by the P. Salcy family, fifteen dramatic
+subjects strong.
+
+There was a Fair besides.  The double persuasion being irresistible, and
+my sponge being left behind at the last Hotel, I made the tour of the
+little town to buy another.  In the small sunny shops—mercers, opticians,
+and druggist-grocers, with here and there an emporium of religious
+images—the gravest of old spectacled Flemish husbands and wives sat
+contemplating one another across bare counters, while the wasps, who
+seemed to have taken military possession of the town, and to have placed
+it under wasp-martial law, executed warlike manœuvres in the windows.
+Other shops the wasps had entirely to themselves, and nobody cared and
+nobody came when I beat with a five-franc piece upon the board of custom.
+What I sought was no more to be found than if I had sought a nugget of
+Californian gold: so I went, spongeless, to pass the evening with the
+Family P. Salcy.
+
+The members of the Family P. Salcy were so fat and so like one
+another—fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, uncles, and aunts—that I
+think the local audience were much confused about the plot of the piece
+under representation, and to the last expected that everybody must turn
+out to be the long-lost relative of everybody else.  The Theatre was
+established on the top story of the Hôtel de Ville, and was approached by
+a long bare staircase, whereon, in an airy situation, one of the P. Salcy
+Family—a stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt—took the money.
+This occasioned the greatest excitement of the evening; for, no sooner
+did the curtain rise on the introductory Vaudeville, and reveal in the
+person of the young lover (singing a very short song with his eyebrows)
+apparently the very same identical stout gentleman imperfectly repressed
+by a belt, than everybody rushed out to the paying-place, to ascertain
+whether he could possibly have put on that dress-coat, that clear
+complexion, and those arched black vocal eyebrows, in so short a space of
+time.  It then became manifest that this was another stout gentleman
+imperfectly repressed by a belt: to whom, before the spectators had
+recovered their presence of mind, entered a third stout gentleman
+imperfectly repressed by a belt, exactly like him.  These two ‘subjects,’
+making with the money-taker three of the announced fifteen, fell into
+conversation touching a charming young widow: who, presently appearing,
+proved to be a stout lady altogether irrepressible by any means—quite a
+parallel case to the American Negro—fourth of the fifteen subjects, and
+sister of the fifth who presided over the check-department.  In good time
+the whole of the fifteen subjects were dramatically presented, and we had
+the inevitable Ma Mère, Ma Mère! and also the inevitable malédiction d’un
+père, and likewise the inevitable Marquis, and also the inevitable
+provincial young man, weak-minded but faithful, who followed Julie to
+Paris, and cried and laughed and choked all at once.  The story was
+wrought out with the help of a virtuous spinning-wheel in the beginning,
+a vicious set of diamonds in the middle, and a rheumatic blessing (which
+arrived by post) from Ma Mère towards the end; the whole resulting in a
+small sword in the body of one of the stout gentlemen imperfectly
+repressed by a belt, fifty thousand francs per annum and a decoration to
+the other stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt, and an
+assurance from everybody to the provincial young man that if he were not
+supremely happy—which he seemed to have no reason whatever for being—he
+ought to be.  This afforded him a final opportunity of crying and
+laughing and choking all at once, and sent the audience home
+sentimentally delighted.  Audience more attentive or better behaved there
+could not possibly be, though the places of second rank in the Theatre of
+the Family P. Salcy were sixpence each in English money, and the places
+of first rank a shilling.  How the fifteen subjects ever got so fat upon
+it, the kind Heavens know.
+
+What gorgeous china figures of knights and ladies, gilded till they
+gleamed again, I might have bought at the Fair for the garniture of my
+home, if I had been a French-Flemish peasant, and had had the money!
+What shining coffee-cups and saucers I might have won at the turntables,
+if I had had the luck!  Ravishing perfumery also, and sweetmeats, I might
+have speculated in, or I might have fired for prizes at a multitude of
+little dolls in niches, and might have hit the doll of dolls, and won
+francs and fame.  Or, being a French-Flemish youth, I might have been
+drawn in a hand-cart by my compeers, to tilt for municipal rewards at the
+water-quintain; which, unless I sent my lance clean through the ring,
+emptied a full bucket over me; to fend off which, the competitors wore
+grotesque old scarecrow hats.  Or, being French-Flemish man or woman, boy
+or girl, I might have circled all night on my hobby-horse in a stately
+cavalcade of hobby-horses four abreast, interspersed with triumphal cars,
+going round and round and round and round, we the goodly company singing
+a ceaseless chorus to the music of the barrel-organ, drum, and cymbals.
+On the whole, not more monotonous than the Ring in Hyde Park, London, and
+much merrier; for when do the circling company sing chorus, _there_, to
+the barrel-organ, when do the ladies embrace their horses round the neck
+with both arms, when do the gentlemen fan the ladies with the tails of
+their gallant steeds?  On all these revolving delights, and on their own
+especial lamps and Chinese lanterns revolving with them, the thoughtful
+weaver-face brightens, and the Hôtel de Ville sheds an illuminated line
+of gaslight: while above it, the Eagle of France, gas-outlined and
+apparently afflicted with the prevailing infirmities that have lighted on
+the poultry, is in a very undecided state of policy, and as a bird
+moulting.  Flags flutter all around.  Such is the prevailing gaiety that
+the keeper of the prison sits on the stone steps outside the prison-door,
+to have a look at the world that is not locked up; while that agreeable
+retreat, the wine-shop opposite to the prison in the prison-alley (its
+sign La Tranquillité, because of its charming situation), resounds with
+the voices of the shepherds and shepherdesses who resort there this
+festive night.  And it reminds me that only this afternoon, I saw a
+shepherd in trouble, tending this way, over the jagged stones of a
+neighbouring street.  A magnificent sight it was, to behold him in his
+blouse, a feeble little jog-trot rustic, swept along by the wind of two
+immense gendarmes, in cocked-hats for which the street was hardly wide
+enough, each carrying a bundle of stolen property that would not have
+held his shoulder-knot, and clanking a sabre that dwarfed the prisoner.
+
+‘Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you at this Fair, as a mark of my
+confidence in the people of this so-renowned town, and as an act of
+homage to their good sense and fine taste, the Ventriloquist, the
+Ventriloquist!  Further, Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you the
+Face-Maker, the Physiognomist, the great Changer of Countenances, who
+transforms the features that Heaven has bestowed upon him into an endless
+succession of surprising and extraordinary visages, comprehending,
+Messieurs et Mesdames, all the contortions, energetic and expressive, of
+which the human face is capable, and all the passions of the human heart,
+as Love, Jealousy, Revenge, Hatred, Avarice, Despair!  Hi hi!  Ho ho!  Lu
+lu!  Come in!’  To this effect, with an occasional smite upon a sonorous
+kind of tambourine—bestowed with a will, as if it represented the people
+who won’t come in—holds forth a man of lofty and severe demeanour; a man
+in stately uniform, gloomy with the knowledge he possesses of the inner
+secrets of the booth.  ‘Come in, come in!  Your opportunity presents
+itself to-night; to-morrow it will be gone for ever.  To-morrow morning
+by the Express Train the railroad will reclaim the Ventriloquist and the
+Face-Maker!  Algeria will reclaim the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker!
+Yes!  For the honour of their country they have accepted propositions of
+a magnitude incredible, to appear in Algeria.  See them for the last time
+before their departure!  We go to commence on the instant.  Hi hi!  Ho
+ho!  Lu lu!  Come in!  Take the money that now ascends, Madame; but after
+that, no more, for we commence!  Come in!’
+
+Nevertheless, the eyes both of the gloomy Speaker and of Madame receiving
+sous in a muslin bower, survey the crowd pretty sharply after the
+ascending money has ascended, to detect any lingering sous at the
+turning-point.  ‘Come in, come in!  Is there any more money, Madame, on
+the point of ascending?  If so, we wait for it.  If not, we commence!’
+The orator looks back over his shoulder to say it, lashing the spectators
+with the conviction that he beholds through the folds of the drapery into
+which he is about to plunge, the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker.
+Several sous burst out of pockets, and ascend.  ‘Come up, then,
+Messieurs!’ exclaims Madame in a shrill voice, and beckoning with a
+bejewelled finger.  ‘Come up!  This presses.  Monsieur has commanded that
+they commence!’  Monsieur dives into his Interior, and the last
+half-dozen of us follow.  His Interior is comparatively severe; his
+Exterior also.  A true Temple of Art needs nothing but seats, drapery, a
+small table with two moderator lamps hanging over it, and an ornamental
+looking-glass let into the wall.  Monsieur in uniform gets behind the
+table and surveys us with disdain, his forehead becoming diabolically
+intellectual under the moderators.  ‘Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to
+you the Ventriloquist.  He will commence with the celebrated Experience
+of the bee in the window.  The bee, apparently the veritable bee of
+Nature, will hover in the window, and about the room.  He will be with
+difficulty caught in the hand of Monsieur the Ventriloquist—he will
+escape—he will again hover—at length he will be recaptured by Monsieur
+the Ventriloquist, and will be with difficulty put into a bottle.
+Achieve then, Monsieur!’  Here the proprietor is replaced behind the
+table by the Ventriloquist, who is thin and sallow, and of a weakly
+aspect.  While the bee is in progress, Monsieur the Proprietor sits apart
+on a stool, immersed in dark and remote thought.  The moment the bee is
+bottled, he stalks forward, eyes us gloomily as we applaud, and then
+announces, sternly waving his hand: ‘The magnificent Experience of the
+child with the whooping-cough!’  The child disposed of, he starts up as
+before.  ‘The superb and extraordinary Experience of the dialogue between
+Monsieur Tatambour in his dining-room, and his domestic, Jerome, in the
+cellar; concluding with the songsters of the grove, and the Concert of
+domestic Farm-yard animals.’  All this done, and well done, Monsieur the
+Ventriloquist withdraws, and Monsieur the Face-Maker bursts in, as if his
+retiring-room were a mile long instead of a yard.  A corpulent little man
+in a large white waistcoat, with a comic countenance, and with a wig in
+his hand.  Irreverent disposition to laugh, instantly checked by the
+tremendous gravity of the Face-Maker, who intimates in his bow that if we
+expect that sort of thing we are mistaken.  A very little shaving-glass
+with a leg behind it is handed in, and placed on the table before the
+Face-Maker.  ‘Messieurs et Mesdames, with no other assistance than this
+mirror and this wig, I shall have the honour of showing you a thousand
+characters.’  As a preparation, the Face-Maker with both hands gouges
+himself, and turns his mouth inside out.  He then becomes frightfully
+grave again, and says to the Proprietor, ‘I am ready!’  Proprietor stalks
+forth from baleful reverie, and announces ‘The Young Conscript!’
+Face-Maker claps his wig on, hind side before, looks in the glass, and
+appears above it as a conscript so very imbecile, and squinting so
+extremely hard, that I should think the State would never get any good of
+him.  Thunders of applause.  Face-Maker dips behind the looking-glass,
+brings his own hair forward, is himself again, is awfully grave.  ‘A
+distinguished inhabitant of the Faubourg St. Germain.’  Face-Maker dips,
+rises, is supposed to be aged, blear-eyed, toothless, slightly palsied,
+supernaturally polite, evidently of noble birth.  ‘The oldest member of
+the Corps of Invalides on the fête-day of his master.’  Face-Maker dips,
+rises, wears the wig on one side, has become the feeblest military bore
+in existence, and (it is clear) would lie frightfully about his past
+achievements, if he were not confined to pantomime.  ‘The Miser!’
+Face-Maker dips, rises, clutches a bag, and every hair of the wig is on
+end to express that he lives in continual dread of thieves.  ‘The Genius
+of France!’  Face-Maker dips, rises, wig pushed back and smoothed flat,
+little cocked-hat (artfully concealed till now) put a-top of it,
+Face-Maker’s white waistcoat much advanced, Face-Maker’s left hand in
+bosom of white waistcoat, Face-Maker’s right hand behind his back.
+Thunders.  This is the first of three positions of the Genius of France.
+In the second position, the Face-Maker takes snuff; in the third, rolls
+up his fight hand, and surveys illimitable armies through that
+pocket-glass.  The Face-Maker then, by putting out his tongue, and
+wearing the wig nohow in particular, becomes the Village Idiot.  The most
+remarkable feature in the whole of his ingenious performance, is, that
+whatever he does to disguise himself, has the effect of rendering him
+rather more like himself than he was at first.
+
+There were peep-shows in this Fair, and I had the pleasure of recognising
+several fields of glory with which I became well acquainted a year or two
+ago as Crimean battles, now doing duty as Mexican victories.  The change
+was neatly effected by some extra smoking of the Russians, and by
+permitting the camp followers free range in the foreground to despoil the
+enemy of their uniforms.  As no British troops had ever happened to be
+within sight when the artist took his original sketches, it followed
+fortunately that none were in the way now.
+
+The Fair wound up with a ball.  Respecting the particular night of the
+week on which the ball took place, I decline to commit myself; merely
+mentioning that it was held in a stable-yard so very close to the
+railway, that it was a mercy the locomotive did not set fire to it.  (In
+Scotland, I suppose, it would have done so.)  There, in a tent prettily
+decorated with looking-glasses and a myriad of toy flags, the people
+danced all night. It was not an expensive recreation, the price of a
+double ticket for a cavalier and lady being one and threepence in English
+money, and even of that small sum fivepence was reclaimable for
+‘consommation:’ which word I venture to translate into refreshments of no
+greater strength, at the strongest, than ordinary wine made hot, with
+sugar and lemon in it.  It was a ball of great good humour and of great
+enjoyment, though very many of the dancers must have been as poor as the
+fifteen subjects of the P. Salcy Family.
+
+In short, not having taken my own pet national pint pot with me to this
+Fair, I was very well satisfied with the measure of simple enjoyment that
+it poured into the dull French-Flemish country life.  How dull that is, I
+had an opportunity of considering—when the Fair was over—when the
+tri-coloured flags were withdrawn from the windows of the houses on the
+Place where the Fair was held—when the windows were close shut,
+apparently until next Fair-time—when the Hôtel de Ville had cut off its
+gas and put away its eagle—when the two paviours, whom I take to form the
+entire paving population of the town, were ramming down the stones which
+had been pulled up for the erection of decorative poles—when the jailer
+had slammed his gate, and sulkily locked himself in with his charges.
+But then, as I paced the ring which marked the track of the departed
+hobby-horses on the market-place, pondering in my mind how long some
+hobby-horses do leave their tracks in public ways, and how difficult they
+are to erase, my eyes were greeted with a goodly sight.  I beheld four
+male personages thoughtfully pacing the Place together, in the sunlight,
+evidently not belonging to the town, and having upon them a certain loose
+cosmopolitan air of not belonging to any town.  One was clad in a suit of
+white canvas, another in a cap and blouse, the third in an old military
+frock, the fourth in a shapeless dress that looked as if it had been made
+out of old umbrellas.  All wore dust-coloured shoes.  My heart beat high;
+for, in those four male personages, although complexionless and
+eyebrowless, I beheld four subjects of the Family P. Salcy.  Blue-bearded
+though they were, and bereft of the youthful smoothness of cheek which is
+imparted by what is termed in Albion a ‘Whitechapel shave’ (and which is,
+in fact, whitening, judiciously applied to the jaws with the palm of the
+hand), I recognised them.  As I stood admiring, there emerged from the
+yard of a lowly Cabaret, the excellent Ma Mère, Ma Mère, with the words,
+‘The soup is served;’ words which so elated the subject in the canvas
+suit, that when they all ran in to partake, he went last, dancing with
+his hands stuck angularly into the pockets of his canvas trousers, after
+the Pierrot manner.  Glancing down the Yard, the last I saw of him was,
+that he looked in through a window (at the soup, no doubt) on one leg.
+
+Full of this pleasure, I shortly afterwards departed from the town,
+little dreaming of an addition to my good fortune.  But more was in
+reserve.  I went by a train which was heavy with third-class carriages,
+full of young fellows (well guarded) who had drawn unlucky numbers in the
+last conscription, and were on their way to a famous French garrison town
+where much of the raw military material is worked up into soldiery.  At
+the station they had been sitting about, in their threadbare homespun
+blue garments, with their poor little bundles under their arms, covered
+with dust and clay, and the various soils of France; sad enough at heart,
+most of them, but putting a good face upon it, and slapping their breasts
+and singing choruses on the smallest provocation; the gayest spirits
+shouldering half loaves of black bread speared upon their walking-sticks.
+As we went along, they were audible at every station, chorusing wildly
+out of tune, and feigning the highest hilarity.  After a while, however,
+they began to leave off singing, and to laugh naturally, while at
+intervals there mingled with their laughter the barking of a dog.  Now, I
+had to alight short of their destination, and, as that stoppage of the
+train was attended with a quantity of horn blowing, bell ringing, and
+proclamation of what Messieurs les Voyageurs were to do, and were not to
+do, in order to reach their respective destinations, I had ample leisure
+to go forward on the platform to take a parting look at my recruits,
+whose heads were all out at window, and who were laughing like delighted
+children.  Then I perceived that a large poodle with a pink nose, who had
+been their travelling companion and the cause of their mirth, stood on
+his hind-legs presenting arms on the extreme verge of the platform, ready
+to salute them as the train went off.  This poodle wore a military shako
+(it is unnecessary to add, very much on one side over one eye), a little
+military coat, and the regulation white gaiters.  He was armed with a
+little musket and a little sword-bayonet, and he stood presenting arms in
+perfect attitude, with his unobscured eye on his master or superior
+officer, who stood by him.  So admirable was his discipline, that, when
+the train moved, and he was greeted with the parting cheers of the
+recruits, and also with a shower of centimes, several of which struck his
+shako, and had a tendency to discompose him, he remained staunch on his
+post, until the train was gone.  He then resigned his arms to his
+officer, took off his shako by rubbing his paw over it, dropped on four
+legs, bringing his uniform coat into the absurdest relations with the
+overarching skies, and ran about the platform in his white gaiters,
+waging his tail to an exceeding great extent.  It struck me that there
+was more waggery than this in the poodle, and that he knew that the
+recruits would neither get through their exercises, nor get rid of their
+uniforms, as easily as he; revolving which in my thoughts, and seeking in
+my pockets some small money to bestow upon him, I casually directed my
+eyes to the face of his superior officer, and in him beheld the
+Face-Maker!  Though it was not the way to Algeria, but quite the reverse,
+the military poodle’s Colonel was the Face-Maker in a dark blouse, with a
+small bundle dangling over his shoulder at the end of an umbrella, and
+taking a pipe from his breast to smoke as he and the poodle went their
+mysterious way.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+MEDICINE MEN OF CIVILISATION
+
+
+MY voyages (in paper boats) among savages often yield me matter for
+reflection at home.  It is curious to trace the savage in the civilised
+man, and to detect the hold of some savage customs on conditions of
+society rather boastful of being high above them.
+
+I wonder, is the Medicine Man of the North American Indians never to be
+got rid of, out of the North American country?  He comes into my Wigwam
+on all manner of occasions, and with the absurdest ‘Medicine.’  I always
+find it extremely difficult, and I often find it simply impossible, to
+keep him out of my Wigwam.  For his legal ‘Medicine’ he sticks upon his
+head the hair of quadrupeds, and plasters the same with fat, and dirty
+white powder, and talks a gibberish quite unknown to the men and squaws
+of his tribe.  For his religious ‘Medicine’ he puts on puffy white
+sleeves, little black aprons, large black waistcoats of a peculiar cut,
+collarless coats with Medicine button-holes, Medicine stockings and
+gaiters and shoes, and tops the whole with a highly grotesque Medicinal
+hat.  In one respect, to be sure, I am quite free from him.  On occasions
+when the Medicine Men in general, together with a large number of the
+miscellaneous inhabitants of his village, both male and female, are
+presented to the principal Chief, his native ‘Medicine’ is a comical
+mixture of old odds and ends (hired of traders) and new things in
+antiquated shapes, and pieces of red cloth (of which he is particularly
+fond), and white and red and blue paint for the face.  The irrationality
+of this particular Medicine culminates in a mock battle-rush, from which
+many of the squaws are borne out, much dilapidated.  I need not observe
+how unlike this is to a Drawing Room at St. James’s Palace.
+
+The African magician I find it very difficult to exclude from my Wigwam
+too.  This creature takes cases of death and mourning under his
+supervision, and will frequently impoverish a whole family by his
+preposterous enchantments.  He is a great eater and drinker, and always
+conceals a rejoicing stomach under a grieving exterior.  His charms
+consist of an infinite quantity of worthless scraps, for which he charges
+very high.  He impresses on the poor bereaved natives, that the more of
+his followers they pay to exhibit such scraps on their persons for an
+hour or two (though they never saw the deceased in their lives, and are
+put in high spirits by his decease), the more honourably and piously they
+grieve for the dead.  The poor people submitting themselves to this
+conjurer, an expensive procession is formed, in which bits of stick,
+feathers of birds, and a quantity of other unmeaning objects besmeared
+with black paint, are carried in a certain ghastly order of which no one
+understands the meaning, if it ever had any, to the brink of the grave,
+and are then brought back again.
+
+In the Tonga Islands everything is supposed to have a soul, so that when
+a hatchet is irreparably broken, they say, ‘His immortal part has
+departed; he is gone to the happy hunting-plains.’  This belief leads to
+the logical sequence that when a man is buried, some of his eating and
+drinking vessels, and some of his warlike implements, must be broken and
+buried with him.  Superstitious and wrong, but surely a more respectable
+superstition than the hire of antic scraps for a show that has no meaning
+based on any sincere belief.
+
+Let me halt on my Uncommercial road, to throw a passing glance on some
+funeral solemnities that I have seen where North American Indians,
+African Magicians, and Tonga Islanders, are supposed not to be.
+
+Once, I dwelt in an Italian city, where there dwelt with me for a while,
+an Englishman of an amiable nature, great enthusiasm, and no discretion.
+This friend discovered a desolate stranger, mourning over the unexpected
+death of one very dear to him, in a solitary cottage among the vineyards
+of an outlying village.  The circumstances of the bereavement were
+unusually distressing; and the survivor, new to the peasants and the
+country, sorely needed help, being alone with the remains.  With some
+difficulty, but with the strong influence of a purpose at once gentle,
+disinterested, and determined, my friend—Mr. Kindheart—obtained access to
+the mourner, and undertook to arrange the burial.
+
+There was a small Protestant cemetery near the city walls, and as Mr.
+Kindheart came back to me, he turned into it and chose the spot.  He was
+always highly flushed when rendering a service unaided, and I knew that
+to make him happy I must keep aloof from his ministration.  But when at
+dinner he warmed with the good action of the day, and conceived the
+brilliant idea of comforting the mourner with ‘an English funeral,’ I
+ventured to intimate that I thought that institution, which was not
+absolutely sublime at home, might prove a failure in Italian hands.
+However, Mr. Kindheart was so enraptured with his conception, that he
+presently wrote down into the town requesting the attendance with
+to-morrow’s earliest light of a certain little upholsterer.  This
+upholsterer was famous for speaking the unintelligible local dialect (his
+own) in a far more unintelligible manner than any other man alive.
+
+When from my bath next morning I overheard Mr. Kindheart and the
+upholsterer in conference on the top of an echoing staircase; and when I
+overheard Mr. Kindheart rendering English Undertaking phrases into very
+choice Italian, and the upholsterer replying in the unknown Tongues; and
+when I furthermore remembered that the local funerals had no resemblance
+to English funerals; I became in my secret bosom apprehensive.  But Mr.
+Kindheart informed me at breakfast that measures had been taken to ensure
+a signal success.
+
+As the funeral was to take place at sunset, and as I knew to which of the
+city gates it must tend, I went out at that gate as the sun descended,
+and walked along the dusty, dusty road.  I had not walked far, when I
+encountered this procession:
+
+1.  Mr. Kindheart, much abashed, on an immense grey horse.
+
+2.  A bright yellow coach and pair, driven by a coachman in bright red
+velvet knee-breeches and waistcoat.  (This was the established local idea
+of State.)  Both coach doors kept open by the coffin, which was on its
+side within, and sticking out at each.
+
+3.  Behind the coach, the mourner, for whom the coach was intended,
+walking in the dust.
+
+4. Concealed behind a roadside well for the irrigation of a garden, the
+unintelligible Upholsterer, admiring.
+
+It matters little now.  Coaches of all colours are alike to poor
+Kindheart, and he rests far North of the little cemetery with the
+cypress-trees, by the city walls where the Mediterranean is so beautiful.
+
+My first funeral, a fair representative funeral after its kind, was that
+of the husband of a married servant, once my nurse.  She married for
+money.  Sally Flanders, after a year or two of matrimony, became the
+relict of Flanders, a small master builder; and either she or Flanders
+had done me the honour to express a desire that I should ‘follow.’  I may
+have been seven or eight years old;—young enough, certainly, to feel
+rather alarmed by the expression, as not knowing where the invitation was
+held to terminate, and how far I was expected to follow the deceased
+Flanders.  Consent being given by the heads of houses, I was jobbed up
+into what was pronounced at home decent mourning (comprehending somebody
+else’s shirt, unless my memory deceives me), and was admonished that if,
+when the funeral was in action, I put my hands in my pockets, or took my
+eyes out of my pocket-handkerchief, I was personally lost, and my family
+disgraced.  On the eventful day, having tried to get myself into a
+disastrous frame of mind, and having formed a very poor opinion of myself
+because I couldn’t cry, I repaired to Sally’s.  Sally was an excellent
+creature, and had been a good wife to old Flanders, but the moment I saw
+her I knew that she was not in her own real natural state.  She formed a
+sort of Coat of Arms, grouped with a smelling-bottle, a handkerchief, an
+orange, a bottle of vinegar, Flanders’s sister, her own sister,
+Flanders’s brother’s wife, and two neighbouring gossips—all in mourning,
+and all ready to hold her whenever she fainted.  At sight of poor little
+me she became much agitated (agitating me much more), and having
+exclaimed, ‘O here’s dear Master Uncommercial!’ became hysterical, and
+swooned as if I had been the death of her.  An affecting scene followed,
+during which I was handed about and poked at her by various people, as if
+I were the bottle of salts.  Reviving a little, she embraced me, said,
+‘You knew him well, dear Master Uncommercial, and he knew you!’ and
+fainted again: which, as the rest of the Coat of Arms soothingly said,
+‘done her credit.’  Now, I knew that she needn’t have fainted unless she
+liked, and that she wouldn’t have fainted unless it had been expected of
+her, quite as well as I know it at this day.  It made me feel
+uncomfortable and hypocritical besides.  I was not sure but that it might
+be manners in _me_ to faint next, and I resolved to keep my eye on
+Flanders’s uncle, and if I saw any signs of his going in that direction,
+to go too, politely.  But Flanders’s uncle (who was a weak little old
+retail grocer) had only one idea, which was that we all wanted tea; and
+he handed us cups of tea all round, incessantly, whether we refused or
+not.  There was a young nephew of Flanders’s present, to whom Flanders,
+it was rumoured, had left nineteen guineas.  He drank all the tea that
+was offered him, this nephew—amounting, I should say, to several
+quarts—and ate as much plum-cake as he could possibly come by; but he
+felt it to be decent mourning that he should now and then stop in the
+midst of a lump of cake, and appear to forget that his mouth was full, in
+the contemplation of his uncle’s memory.  I felt all this to be the fault
+of the undertaker, who was handing us gloves on a tea-tray as if they
+were muffins, and tying us into cloaks (mine had to be pinned up all
+round, it was so long for me), because I knew that he was making game.
+So, when we got out into the streets, and I constantly disarranged the
+procession by tumbling on the people before me because my handkerchief
+blinded my eyes, and tripping up the people behind me because my cloak
+was so long, I felt that we were all making game.  I was truly sorry for
+Flanders, but I knew that it was no reason why we should be trying (the
+women with their heads in hoods like coal-scuttles with the black side
+outward) to keep step with a man in a scarf, carrying a thing like a
+mourning spy-glass, which he was going to open presently and sweep the
+horizon with.  I knew that we should not all have been speaking in one
+particular key-note struck by the undertaker, if we had not been making
+game.  Even in our faces we were every one of us as like the undertaker
+as if we had been his own family, and I perceived that this could not
+have happened unless we had been making game.  When we returned to
+Sally’s, it was all of a piece.  The continued impossibility of getting
+on without plum-cake; the ceremonious apparition of a pair of decanters
+containing port and sherry and cork; Sally’s sister at the tea-table,
+clinking the best crockery and shaking her head mournfully every time she
+looked down into the teapot, as if it were the tomb; the Coat of Arms
+again, and Sally as before; lastly, the words of consolation administered
+to Sally when it was considered right that she should ‘come round
+nicely:’ which were, that the deceased had had ‘as com-for-ta-ble a
+fu-ne-ral as comfortable could be!’
+
+Other funerals have I seen with grown-up eyes, since that day, of which
+the burden has been the same childish burden.  Making game.  Real
+affliction, real grief and solemnity, have been outraged, and the funeral
+has been ‘performed.’  The waste for which the funeral customs of many
+tribes of savages are conspicuous, has attended these civilised
+obsequies; and once, and twice, have I wished in my soul that if the
+waste must be, they would let the undertaker bury the money, and let me
+bury the friend.
+
+In France, upon the whole, these ceremonies are more sensibly regulated,
+because they are upon the whole less expensively regulated.  I cannot say
+that I have ever been much edified by the custom of tying a bib and apron
+on the front of the house of mourning, or that I would myself
+particularly care to be driven to my grave in a nodding and bobbing car,
+like an infirm four-post bedstead, by an inky fellow-creature in a
+cocked-hat.  But it may be that I am constitutionally insensible to the
+virtues of a cocked-hat.  In provincial France, the solemnities are
+sufficiently hideous, but are few and cheap.  The friends and townsmen of
+the departed, in their own dresses and not masquerading under the
+auspices of the African Conjurer, surround the hand-bier, and often carry
+it.  It is not considered indispensable to stifle the bearers, or even to
+elevate the burden on their shoulders; consequently it is easily taken
+up, and easily set down, and is carried through the streets without the
+distressing floundering and shuffling that we see at home.  A dirty
+priest or two, and a dirtier acolyte or two, do not lend any especial
+grace to the proceedings; and I regard with personal animosity the
+bassoon, which is blown at intervals by the big-legged priest (it is
+always a big-legged priest who blows the bassoon), when his fellows
+combine in a lugubrious stalwart drawl.  But there is far less of the
+Conjurer and the Medicine Man in the business than under like
+circumstances here.  The grim coaches that we reserve expressly for such
+shows, are non-existent; if the cemetery be far out of the town, the
+coaches that are hired for other purposes of life are hired for this
+purpose; and although the honest vehicles make no pretence of being
+overcome, I have never noticed that the people in them were the worse for
+it.  In Italy, the hooded Members of Confraternities who attend on
+funerals, are dismal and ugly to look upon; but the services they render
+are at least voluntarily rendered, and impoverish no one, and cost
+nothing.  Why should high civilisation and low savagery ever come
+together on the point of making them a wantonly wasteful and contemptible
+set of forms?
+
+Once I lost a friend by death, who had been troubled in his time by the
+Medicine Man and the Conjurer, and upon whose limited resources there
+were abundant claims.  The Conjurer assured me that I must positively
+‘follow,’ and both he and the Medicine Man entertained no doubt that I
+must go in a black carriage, and must wear ‘fittings.’  I objected to
+fittings as having nothing to do with my friendship, and I objected to
+the black carriage as being in more senses than one a job.  So, it came
+into my mind to try what would happen if I quietly walked, in my own way,
+from my own house to my friend’s burial-place, and stood beside his open
+grave in my own dress and person, reverently listening to the best of
+Services.  It satisfied my mind, I found, quite as well as if I had been
+disguised in a hired hatband and scarf both trailing to my very heels,
+and as if I had cost the orphan children, in their greatest need, ten
+guineas.
+
+Can any one who ever beheld the stupendous absurdities attendant on ‘A
+message from the Lords’ in the House of Commons, turn upon the Medicine
+Man of the poor Indians?  Has he any ‘Medicine’ in that dried skin pouch
+of his, so supremely ludicrous as the two Masters in Chancery holding up
+their black petticoats and butting their ridiculous wigs at Mr. Speaker?
+Yet there are authorities innumerable to tell me—as there are authorities
+innumerable among the Indians to tell them—that the nonsense is
+indispensable, and that its abrogation would involve most awful
+consequences.  What would any rational creature who had never heard of
+judicial and forensic ‘fittings,’ think of the Court of Common Pleas on
+the first day of Term?  Or with what an awakened sense of humour would
+LIVINGSTONE’S account of a similar scene be perused, if the fur and red
+cloth and goats’ hair and horse hair and powdered chalk and black patches
+on the top of the head, were all at Tala Mungongo instead of Westminster?
+That model missionary and good brave man found at least one tribe of
+blacks with a very strong sense of the ridiculous, insomuch that although
+an amiable and docile people, they never could see the Missionaries
+dispose of their legs in the attitude of kneeling, or hear them begin a
+hymn in chorus, without bursting into roars of irrepressible laughter.
+It is much to be hoped that no member of this facetious tribe may ever
+find his way to England and get committed for contempt of Court.
+
+In the Tonga Island already mentioned, there are a set of personages
+called Mataboos—or some such name—who are the masters of all the public
+ceremonies, and who know the exact place in which every chief must sit
+down when a solemn public meeting takes place: a meeting which bears a
+family resemblance to our own Public Dinner, in respect of its being a
+main part of the proceedings that every gentleman present is required to
+drink something nasty.  These Mataboos are a privileged order, so
+important is their avocation, and they make the most of their high
+functions.  A long way out of the Tonga Islands, indeed, rather near the
+British Islands, was there no calling in of the Mataboos the other day to
+settle an earth-convulsing question of precedence; and was there no
+weighty opinion delivered on the part of the Mataboos which, being
+interpreted to that unlucky tribe of blacks with the sense of the
+ridiculous, would infallibly set the whole population screaming with
+laughter?
+
+My sense of justice demands the admission, however, that this is not
+quite a one-sided question.  If we submit ourselves meekly to the
+Medicine Man and the Conjurer, and are not exalted by it, the savages may
+retort upon us that we act more unwisely than they in other matters
+wherein we fail to imitate them.  It is a widely diffused custom among
+savage tribes, when they meet to discuss any affair of public importance,
+to sit up all night making a horrible noise, dancing, blowing shells, and
+(in cases where they are familiar with fire-arms) flying out into open
+places and letting off guns.  It is questionable whether our legislative
+assemblies might not take a hint from this.  A shell is not a melodious
+wind-instrument, and it is monotonous; but it is as musical as, and not
+more monotonous than, my Honourable friend’s own trumpet, or the trumpet
+that he blows so hard for the Minister.  The uselessness of arguing with
+any supporter of a Government or of an Opposition, is well known.  Try
+dancing.  It is a better exercise, and has the unspeakable recommendation
+that it couldn’t be reported.  The honourable and savage member who has a
+loaded gun, and has grown impatient of debate, plunges out of doors,
+fires in the air, and returns calm and silent to the Palaver.  Let the
+honourable and civilised member similarly charged with a speech, dart
+into the cloisters of Westminster Abbey in the silence of night, let his
+speech off, and come back harmless.  It is not at first sight a very
+rational custom to paint a broad blue stripe across one’s nose and both
+cheeks, and a broad red stripe from the forehead to the chin, to attach a
+few pounds of wood to one’s under lip, to stick fish-bones in one’s ears
+and a brass curtain-ring in one’s nose, and to rub one’s body all over
+with rancid oil, as a preliminary to entering on business.  But this is a
+question of taste and ceremony, and so is the Windsor Uniform.  The
+manner of entering on the business itself is another question.  A council
+of six hundred savage gentlemen entirely independent of tailors, sitting
+on their hams in a ring, smoking, and occasionally grunting, seem to me,
+according to the experience I have gathered in my voyages and travels,
+somehow to do what they come together for; whereas that is not at all the
+general experience of a council of six hundred civilised gentlemen very
+dependent on tailors and sitting on mechanical contrivances.  It is
+better that an Assembly should do its utmost to envelop itself in smoke,
+than that it should direct its endeavours to enveloping the public in
+smoke; and I would rather it buried half a hundred hatchets than buried
+one subject demanding attention.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+TITBULL’S ALMS-HOUSES
+
+
+BY the side of most railways out of London, one may see Alms-Houses and
+Retreats (generally with a Wing or a Centre wanting, and ambitious of
+being much bigger than they are), some of which are newly-founded
+Institutions, and some old establishments transplanted.  There is a
+tendency in these pieces of architecture to shoot upward unexpectedly,
+like Jack’s bean-stalk, and to be ornate in spires of Chapels and
+lanterns of Halls, which might lead to the embellishment of the air with
+many castles of questionable beauty but for the restraining consideration
+of expense.  However, the manners, being always of a sanguine
+temperament, comfort themselves with plans and elevations of Loomings in
+the future, and are influenced in the present by philanthropy towards the
+railway passengers.  For, the question how prosperous and promising the
+buildings can be made to look in their eyes, usually supersedes the
+lesser question how they can be turned to the best account for the
+inmates.
+
+Why none of the people who reside in these places ever look out of
+window, or take an airing in the piece of ground which is going to be a
+garden by-and-by, is one of the wonders I have added to my
+always-lengthening list of the wonders of the world.  I have got it into
+my mind that they live in a state of chronic injury and resentment, and
+on that account refuse to decorate the building with a human interest.
+As I have known legatees deeply injured by a bequest of five hundred
+pounds because it was not five thousand, and as I was once acquainted
+with a pensioner on the Public to the extent of two hundred a year, who
+perpetually anathematised his Country because he was not in the receipt
+of four, having no claim whatever to sixpence: so perhaps it usually
+happens, within certain limits, that to get a little help is to get a
+notion of being defrauded of more.  ‘How do they pass their lives in this
+beautiful and peaceful place!’ was the subject of my speculation with a
+visitor who once accompanied me to a charming rustic retreat for old men
+and women: a quaint ancient foundation in a pleasant English country,
+behind a picturesque church and among rich old convent gardens.  There
+were but some dozen or so of houses, and we agreed that we would talk
+with the inhabitants, as they sat in their groined rooms between the
+light of their fires and the light shining in at their latticed windows,
+and would find out.  They passed their lives in considering themselves
+mulcted of certain ounces of tea by a deaf old steward who lived among
+them in the quadrangle.  There was no reason to suppose that any such
+ounces of tea had ever been in existence, or that the old steward so much
+as knew what was the matter;—he passed _his_ life in considering himself
+periodically defrauded of a birch-broom by the beadle.
+
+But it is neither to old Alms-Houses in the country, nor to new
+Alms-Houses by the railroad, that these present Uncommercial notes
+relate.  They refer back to journeys made among those common-place,
+smoky-fronted London Alms-Houses, with a little paved court-yard in front
+enclosed by iron railings, which have got snowed up, as it were, by
+bricks and mortar; which were once in a suburb, but are now in the
+densely populated town; gaps in the busy life around them, parentheses in
+the close and blotted texts of the streets.
+
+Sometimes, these Alms-Houses belong to a Company or Society.  Sometimes,
+they were established by individuals, and are maintained out of private
+funds bequeathed in perpetuity long ago.  My favourite among them is
+Titbull’s, which establishment is a picture of many.  Of Titbull I know
+no more than that he deceased in 1723, that his Christian name was
+Sampson, and his social designation Esquire, and that he founded these
+Alms-Houses as Dwellings for Nine Poor Women and Six Poor Men by his Will
+and Testament.  I should not know even this much, but for its being
+inscribed on a grim stone very difficult to read, let into the front of
+the centre house of Titbull’s Alms-Houses, and which stone is ornamented
+a-top with a piece of sculptured drapery resembling the effigy of
+Titbull’s bath-towel.
+
+Titbull’s Alms-Houses are in the east of London, in a great highway, in a
+poor, busy, and thronged neighbourhood.  Old iron and fried fish, cough
+drops and artificial flowers, boiled pigs’-feet and household furniture
+that looks as if it were polished up with lip-salve, umbrellas full of
+vocal literature and saucers full of shell-fish in a green juice which I
+hope is natural to them when their health is good, garnish the paved
+sideways as you go to Titbull’s.  I take the ground to have risen in
+those parts since Titbull’s time, and you drop into his domain by three
+stone steps.  So did I first drop into it, very nearly striking my brows
+against Titbull’s pump, which stands with its back to the thoroughfare
+just inside the gate, and has a conceited air of reviewing Titbull’s
+pensioners.
+
+‘And a worse one,’ said a virulent old man with a pitcher, ‘there isn’t
+nowhere.  A harder one to work, nor a grudginer one to yield, there isn’t
+nowhere!’  This old man wore a long coat, such as we see Hogarth’s
+Chairmen represented with, and it was of that peculiar green-pea hue
+without the green, which seems to come of poverty.  It had also that
+peculiar smell of cupboard which seems to come of poverty.
+
+‘The pump is rusty, perhaps,’ said I.
+
+‘Not _it_,’ said the old man, regarding it with undiluted virulence in
+his watery eye.  ‘It never were fit to be termed a pump.  That’s what’s
+the matter with _it_.’
+
+‘Whose fault is that?’ said I.
+
+The old man, who had a working mouth which seemed to be trying to
+masticate his anger and to find that it was too hard and there was too
+much of it, replied, ‘Them gentlemen.’
+
+‘What gentlemen?’
+
+‘Maybe you’re one of ’em?’ said the old man, suspiciously.
+
+‘The trustees?’
+
+‘I wouldn’t trust ’em myself,’ said the virulent old man.
+
+‘If you mean the gentlemen who administer this place, no, I am not one of
+them; nor have I ever so much as heard of them.’
+
+‘I wish _I_ never heard of them,’ gasped the old man: ‘at my time of
+life—with the rheumatics—drawing water-from that thing!’  Not to be
+deluded into calling it a Pump, the old man gave it another virulent
+look, took up his pitcher, and carried it into a corner dwelling-house,
+shutting the door after him.
+
+Looking around and seeing that each little house was a house of two
+little rooms; and seeing that the little oblong court-yard in front was
+like a graveyard for the inhabitants, saving that no word was engraven on
+its flat dry stones; and seeing that the currents of life and noise ran
+to and fro outside, having no more to do with the place than if it were a
+sort of low-water mark on a lively beach; I say, seeing this and nothing
+else, I was going out at the gate when one of the doors opened.
+
+‘Was you looking for anything, sir?’ asked a tidy, well-favoured woman.
+
+Really, no; I couldn’t say I was.
+
+‘Not wanting any one, sir?’
+
+‘No—at least I—pray what is the name of the elderly gentleman who lives
+in the corner there?’
+
+The tidy woman stepped out to be sure of the door I indicated, and she
+and the pump and I stood all three in a row with our backs to the
+thoroughfare.
+
+‘Oh!  _His_ name is Mr. Battens,’ said the tidy woman, dropping her
+voice.
+
+‘I have just been talking with him.’
+
+‘Indeed?’ said the tidy woman.  ‘Ho!  I wonder Mr. Battens talked!’
+
+‘Is he usually so silent?’
+
+‘Well, Mr. Battens is the oldest here—that is to say, the oldest of the
+old gentlemen—in point of residence.’
+
+She had a way of passing her hands over and under one another as she
+spoke, that was not only tidy but propitiatory; so I asked her if I might
+look at her little sitting-room?  She willingly replied Yes, and we went
+into it together: she leaving the door open, with an eye as I understood
+to the social proprieties.  The door opening at once into the room
+without any intervening entry, even scandal must have been silenced by
+the precaution.
+
+It was a gloomy little chamber, but clean, and with a mug of wallflower
+in the window.  On the chimney-piece were two peacock’s feathers, a
+carved ship, a few shells, and a black profile with one eyelash; whether
+this portrait purported to be male or female passed my comprehension,
+until my hostess informed me that it was her only son, and ‘quite a
+speaking one.’
+
+‘He is alive, I hope?’
+
+‘No, sir,’ said the widow, ‘he were cast away in China.’  This was said
+with a modest sense of its reflecting a certain geographical distinction
+on his mother.
+
+‘If the old gentlemen here are not given to talking,’ said I, ‘I hope the
+old ladies are?—not that you are one.’
+
+She shook her head.  ‘You see they get so cross.’
+
+‘How is that?’
+
+‘Well, whether the gentlemen really do deprive us of any little matters
+which ought to be ours by rights, I cannot say for certain; but the
+opinion of the old ones is they do.  And Mr. Battens he do even go so far
+as to doubt whether credit is due to the Founder.  For Mr. Battens he do
+say, anyhow he got his name up by it and he done it cheap.’
+
+‘I am afraid the pump has soured Mr. Battens.’
+
+‘It may be so,’ returned the tidy widow, ‘but the handle does go very
+hard.  Still, what I say to myself is, the gentlemen _may_ not pocket the
+difference between a good pump and a bad one, and I would wish to think
+well of them.  And the dwellings,’ said my hostess, glancing round her
+room; ‘perhaps they were convenient dwellings in the Founder’s time,
+considered _as_ his time, and therefore he should not be blamed.  But
+Mrs. Saggers is very hard upon them.’
+
+‘Mrs. Saggers is the oldest here?’
+
+‘The oldest but one.  Mrs. Quinch being the oldest, and have totally lost
+her head.’
+
+‘And you?’
+
+‘I am the youngest in residence, and consequently am not looked up to.
+But when Mrs. Quinch makes a happy release, there will be one below me.
+Nor is it to be expected that Mrs. Saggers will prove herself immortal.’
+
+‘True.  Nor Mr. Battens.’
+
+‘Regarding the old gentlemen,’ said my widow slightingly, ‘they count
+among themselves.  They do not count among us.  Mr. Battens is that
+exceptional that he have written to the gentlemen many times and have
+worked the case against them.  Therefore he have took a higher ground.
+But we do not, as a rule, greatly reckon the old gentlemen.’
+
+Pursuing the subject, I found it to be traditionally settled among the
+poor ladies that the poor gentlemen, whatever their ages, were all very
+old indeed, and in a state of dotage.  I also discovered that the juniors
+and newcomers preserved, for a time, a waning disposition to believe in
+Titbull and his trustees, but that as they gained social standing they
+lost this faith, and disparaged Titbull and all his works.
+
+Improving my acquaintance subsequently with this respected lady, whose
+name was Mrs. Mitts, and occasionally dropping in upon her with a little
+offering of sound Family Hyson in my pocket, I gradually became familiar
+with the inner politics and ways of Titbull’s Alms-Houses.  But I never
+could find out who the trustees were, or where they were: it being one of
+the fixed ideas of the place that those authorities must be vaguely and
+mysteriously mentioned as ‘the gentlemen’ only.  The secretary of ‘the
+gentlemen’ was once pointed out to me, evidently engaged in championing
+the obnoxious pump against the attacks of the discontented Mr. Battens;
+but I am not in a condition to report further of him than that he had the
+sprightly bearing of a lawyer’s clerk.  I had it from Mrs. Mitts’s lips
+in a very confidential moment, that Mr. Battens was once ‘had up before
+the gentlemen’ to stand or fall by his accusations, and that an old shoe
+was thrown after him on his departure from the building on this dread
+errand;—not ineffectually, for, the interview resulting in a plumber, was
+considered to have encircled the temples of Mr. Battens with the wreath
+of victory.
+
+In Titbull’s Alms-Houses, the local society is not regarded as good
+society.  A gentleman or lady receiving visitors from without, or going
+out to tea, counts, as it were, accordingly; but visitings or
+tea-drinkings interchanged among Titbullians do not score.  Such
+interchanges, however, are rare, in consequence of internal dissensions
+occasioned by Mrs. Saggers’s pail: which household article has split
+Titbull’s into almost as many parties as there are dwellings in that
+precinct.  The extremely complicated nature of the conflicting articles
+of belief on the subject prevents my stating them here with my usual
+perspicuity, but I think they have all branched off from the
+root-and-trunk question, Has Mrs. Saggers any right to stand her pail
+outside her dwelling?  The question has been much refined upon, but
+roughly stated may be stated in those terms.
+
+There are two old men in Titbull’s Alms-Houses who, I have been given to
+understand, knew each other in the world beyond its pump and iron
+railings, when they were both ‘in trade.’  They make the best of their
+reverses, and are looked upon with great contempt.  They are little,
+stooping, blear-eyed old men of cheerful countenance, and they hobble up
+and down the court-yard wagging their chins and talking together quite
+gaily.  This has given offence, and has, moreover, raised the question
+whether they are justified in passing any other windows than their own.
+Mr. Battens, however, permitting them to pass _his_ windows, on the
+disdainful ground that their imbecility almost amounts to
+irresponsibility, they are allowed to take their walk in peace.  They
+live next door to one another, and take it by turns to read the newspaper
+aloud (that is to say, the newest newspaper they can get), and they play
+cribbage at night.  On warm and sunny days they have been known to go so
+far as to bring out two chairs and sit by the iron railings, looking
+forth; but this low conduct, being much remarked upon throughout
+Titbull’s, they were deterred by an outraged public opinion from
+repeating it.  There is a rumour—but it may be malicious—that they hold
+the memory of Titbull in some weak sort of veneration, and that they once
+set off together on a pilgrimage to the parish churchyard to find his
+tomb.  To this, perhaps, might be traced a general suspicion that they
+are spies of ‘the gentlemen:’ to which they were supposed to have given
+colour in my own presence on the occasion of the weak attempt at
+justification of the pump by the gentlemen’s clerk; when they emerged
+bare-headed from the doors of their dwellings, as if their dwellings and
+themselves constituted an old-fashioned weather-glass of double action
+with two figures of old ladies inside, and deferentially bowed to him at
+intervals until he took his departure.  They are understood to be
+perfectly friendless and relationless.  Unquestionably the two poor
+fellows make the very best of their lives in Titbull’s Alms-Houses, and
+unquestionably they are (as before mentioned) the subjects of unmitigated
+contempt there.
+
+On Saturday nights, when there is a greater stir than usual outside, and
+when itinerant vendors of miscellaneous wares even take their stations
+and light up their smoky lamps before the iron railings, Titbull’s
+becomes flurried.  Mrs. Saggers has her celebrated palpitations of the
+heart, for the most part, on Saturday nights.  But Titbull’s is unfit to
+strive with the uproar of the streets in any of its phases.  It is
+religiously believed at Titbull’s that people push more than they used,
+and likewise that the foremost object of the population of England and
+Wales is to get you down and trample on you.  Even of railroads they
+know, at Titbull’s, little more than the shriek (which Mrs. Saggers says
+goes through her, and ought to be taken up by Government); and the penny
+postage may even yet be unknown there, for I have never seen a letter
+delivered to any inhabitant.  But there is a tall, straight, sallow lady
+resident in Number Seven, Titbull’s, who never speaks to anybody, who is
+surrounded by a superstitious halo of lost wealth, who does her household
+work in housemaid’s gloves, and who is secretly much deferred to, though
+openly cavilled at; and it has obscurely leaked out that this old lady
+has a son, grandson, nephew, or other relative, who is ‘a Contractor,’
+and who would think it nothing of a job to knock down Titbull’s, pack it
+off into Cornwall, and knock it together again.  An immense sensation was
+made by a gipsy-party calling in a spring-van, to take this old lady up
+to go for a day’s pleasure into Epping Forest, and notes were compared as
+to which of the company was the son, grandson, nephew, or other relative,
+the Contractor.  A thick-set personage with a white hat and a cigar in
+his mouth, was the favourite: though as Titbull’s had no other reason to
+believe that the Contractor was there at all, than that this man was
+supposed to eye the chimney stacks as if he would like to knock them down
+and cart them off, the general mind was much unsettled in arriving at a
+conclusion.  As a way out of this difficulty, it concentrated itself on
+the acknowledged Beauty of the party, every stitch in whose dress was
+verbally unripped by the old ladies then and there, and whose ‘goings on’
+with another and a thinner personage in a white hat might have suffused
+the pump (where they were principally discussed) with blushes, for months
+afterwards.  Herein Titbull’s was to Titbull’s true, for it has a
+constitutional dislike of all strangers.  As concerning innovations and
+improvements, it is always of opinion that what it doesn’t want itself,
+nobody ought to want.  But I think I have met with this opinion outside
+Titbull’s.
+
+Of the humble treasures of furniture brought into Titbull’s by the
+inmates when they establish themselves in that place of contemplation for
+the rest of their days, by far the greater and more valuable part belongs
+to the ladies.  I may claim the honour of having either crossed the
+threshold, or looked in at the door, of every one of the nine ladies, and
+I have noticed that they are all particular in the article of bedsteads,
+and maintain favourite and long-established bedsteads and bedding as a
+regular part of their rest.  Generally an antiquated chest of drawers is
+among their cherished possessions; a tea-tray always is.  I know of at
+least two rooms in which a little tea-kettle of genuine burnished copper,
+vies with the cat in winking at the fire; and one old lady has a tea-urn
+set forth in state on the top of her chest of drawers, which urn is used
+as her library, and contains four duodecimo volumes, and a black-bordered
+newspaper giving an account of the funeral of Her Royal Highness the
+Princess Charlotte.  Among the poor old gentlemen there are no such
+niceties.  Their furniture has the air of being contributed, like some
+obsolete Literary Miscellany, ‘by several hands;’ their few chairs never
+match; old patchwork coverlets linger among them; and they have an untidy
+habit of keeping their wardrobes in hat-boxes.  When I recall one old
+gentleman who is rather choice in his shoe-brushes and blacking-bottle, I
+have summed up the domestic elegances of that side of the building.
+
+On the occurrence of a death in Titbull’s, it is invariably agreed among
+the survivors—and it is the only subject on which they do agree—that the
+departed did something ‘to bring it on.’  Judging by Titbull’s, I should
+say the human race need never die, if they took care.  But they don’t
+take care, and they do die, and when they die in Titbull’s they are
+buried at the cost of the Foundation.  Some provision has been made for
+the purpose, in virtue of which (I record this on the strength of having
+seen the funeral of Mrs. Quinch) a lively neighbouring undertaker dresses
+up four of the old men, and four of the old women, hustles them into a
+procession of four couples, and leads off with a large black bow at the
+back of his hat, looking over his shoulder at them airily from time to
+time to see that no member of the party has got lost, or has tumbled
+down; as if they were a company of dim old dolls.
+
+Resignation of a dwelling is of very rare occurrence in Titbull’s.  A
+story does obtain there, how an old lady’s son once drew a prize of
+Thirty Thousand Pounds in the Lottery, and presently drove to the gate in
+his own carriage, with French Horns playing up behind, and whisked his
+mother away, and left ten guineas for a Feast.  But I have been unable to
+substantiate it by any evidence, and regard it as an Alms-House Fairy
+Tale.  It is curious that the only proved case of resignation happened
+within my knowledge.
+
+It happened on this wise.  There is a sharp competition among the ladies
+respecting the gentility of their visitors, and I have so often observed
+visitors to be dressed as for a holiday occasion, that I suppose the
+ladies to have besought them to make all possible display when they come.
+In these circumstances much excitement was one day occasioned by Mrs.
+Mitts receiving a visit from a Greenwich Pensioner.  He was a Pensioner
+of a bluff and warlike appearance, with an empty coat-sleeve, and he was
+got up with unusual care; his coat-buttons were extremely bright, he wore
+his empty coat-sleeve in a graceful festoon, and he had a walking-stick
+in his hand that must have cost money.  When, with the head of his
+walking-stick, he knocked at Mrs. Mitts’s door—there are no knockers in
+Titbull’s—Mrs. Mitts was overheard by a next-door neighbour to utter a
+cry of surprise expressing much agitation; and the same neighbour did
+afterwards solemnly affirm that when he was admitted into Mrs. Mitts’s
+room, she heard a smack.  Heard a smack which was not a blow.
+
+There was an air about this Greenwich Pensioner when he took his
+departure, which imbued all Titbull’s with the conviction that he was
+coming again.  He was eagerly looked for, and Mrs. Mitts was closely
+watched.  In the meantime, if anything could have placed the unfortunate
+six old gentlemen at a greater disadvantage than that at which they
+chronically stood, it would have been the apparition of this Greenwich
+Pensioner.  They were well shrunken already, but they shrunk to nothing
+in comparison with the Pensioner.  Even the poor old gentlemen themselves
+seemed conscious of their inferiority, and to know submissively that they
+could never hope to hold their own against the Pensioner with his warlike
+and maritime experience in the past, and his tobacco money in the
+present: his chequered career of blue water, black gunpowder, and red
+bloodshed for England, home, and beauty.
+
+Before three weeks were out, the Pensioner reappeared.  Again he knocked
+at Mrs. Mitts’s door with the handle of his stick, and again was he
+admitted.  But not again did he depart alone; for Mrs. Mitts, in a bonnet
+identified as having been re-embellished, went out walking with him, and
+stayed out till the ten o’clock beer, Greenwich time.
+
+There was now a truce, even as to the troubled waters of Mrs. Saggers’s
+pail; nothing was spoken of among the ladies but the conduct of Mrs.
+Mitts and its blighting influence on the reputation of Titbull’s.  It was
+agreed that Mr. Battens ‘ought to take it up,’ and Mr. Battens was
+communicated with on the subject.  That unsatisfactory individual replied
+‘that he didn’t see his way yet,’ and it was unanimously voted by the
+ladies that aggravation was in his nature.
+
+How it came to pass, with some appearance of inconsistency, that Mrs.
+Mitts was cut by all the ladies and the Pensioner admired by all the
+ladies, matters not.  Before another week was out, Titbull’s was startled
+by another phenomenon.  At ten o’clock in the forenoon appeared a cab,
+containing not only the Greenwich Pensioner with one arm, but, to boot, a
+Chelsea Pensioner with one leg.  Both dismounting to assist Mrs. Mitts
+into the cab, the Greenwich Pensioner bore her company inside, and the
+Chelsea Pensioner mounted the box by the driver: his wooden leg sticking
+out after the manner of a bowsprit, as if in jocular homage to his
+friend’s sea-going career.  Thus the equipage drove away.  No Mrs. Mitts
+returned that night.
+
+                     [Picture: Titbull’s Alms-Houses]
+
+What Mr. Battens might have done in the matter of taking it up, goaded by
+the infuriated state of public feeling next morning, was anticipated by
+another phenomenon.  A Truck, propelled by the Greenwich Pensioner and
+the Chelsea Pensioner, each placidly smoking a pipe, and pushing his
+warrior breast against the handle.
+
+The display on the part of the Greenwich Pensioner of his
+‘marriage-lines,’ and his announcement that himself and friend had looked
+in for the furniture of Mrs. G. Pensioner, late Mitts, by no means
+reconciled the ladies to the conduct of their sister; on the contrary, it
+is said that they appeared more than ever exasperated.  Nevertheless, my
+stray visits to Titbull’s since the date of this occurrence, have
+confirmed me in an impression that it was a wholesome fillip.  The nine
+ladies are smarter, both in mind and dress, than they used to be, though
+it must be admitted that they despise the six gentlemen to the last
+extent.  They have a much greater interest in the external thoroughfare
+too, than they had when I first knew Titbull’s.  And whenever I chance to
+be leaning my back against the pump or the iron railings, and to be
+talking to one of the junior ladies, and to see that a flush has passed
+over her face, I immediately know without looking round that a Greenwich
+Pensioner has gone past.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+THE RUFFIAN
+
+
+I ENTERTAIN so strong an objection to the euphonious softening of Ruffian
+into Rough, which has lately become popular, that I restore the right
+word to the heading of this paper; the rather, as my object is to dwell
+upon the fact that the Ruffian is tolerated among us to an extent that
+goes beyond all unruffianly endurance.  I take the liberty to believe
+that if the Ruffian besets my life, a professional Ruffian at large in
+the open streets of a great city, notoriously having no other calling
+than that of Ruffian, and of disquieting and despoiling me as I go
+peacefully about my lawful business, interfering with no one, then the
+Government under which I have the great constitutional privilege, supreme
+honour and happiness, and all the rest of it, to exist, breaks down in
+the discharge of any Government’s most simple elementary duty.
+
+What did I read in the London daily papers, in the early days of this
+last September?  That the Police had ‘AT LENGTH SUCCEEDED IN CAPTURING
+TWO OF THE NOTORIOUS GANG THAT HAVE SO LONG INVESTED THE WATERLOO ROAD.’
+Is it possible?  What a wonderful Police!  Here is a straight, broad,
+public thoroughfare of immense resort; half a mile long; gas-lighted by
+night; with a great gas-lighted railway station in it, extra the street
+lamps; full of shops; traversed by two popular cross thoroughfares of
+considerable traffic; itself the main road to the South of London; and
+the admirable Police have, after long infestment of this dark and lonely
+spot by a gang of Ruffians, actually got hold of two of them.  Why, can
+it be doubted that any man of fair London knowledge and common
+resolution, armed with the powers of the Law, could have captured the
+whole confederacy in a week?
+
+It is to the saving up of the Ruffian class by the Magistracy and
+Police—to the conventional preserving of them, as if they were
+Partridges—that their number and audacity must be in great part referred.
+Why is a notorious Thief and Ruffian ever left at large?  He never turns
+his liberty to any account but violence and plunder, he never did a day’s
+work out of gaol, he never will do a day’s work out of gaol.  As a proved
+notorious Thief he is always consignable to prison for three months.
+When he comes out, he is surely as notorious a Thief as he was when he
+went in.  Then send him back again.  ‘Just Heaven!’ cries the Society for
+the protection of remonstrant Ruffians.  ‘This is equivalent to a
+sentence of perpetual imprisonment!’  Precisely for that reason it has my
+advocacy.  I demand to have the Ruffian kept out of my way, and out of
+the way of all decent people.  I demand to have the Ruffian employed,
+perforce, in hewing wood and drawing water somewhere for the general
+service, instead of hewing at her Majesty’s subjects and drawing their
+watches out of their pockets.  If this be termed an unreasonable demand,
+then the tax-gatherer’s demand on me must be far more unreasonable, and
+cannot be otherwise than extortionate and unjust.
+
+It will be seen that I treat of the Thief and Ruffian as one.  I do so,
+because I know the two characters to be one, in the vast majority of
+cases, just as well as the Police know it.  (As to the Magistracy, with a
+few exceptions, they know nothing about it but what the Police choose to
+tell them.)  There are disorderly classes of men who are not thieves; as
+railway-navigators, brickmakers, wood-sawyers, costermongers.  These
+classes are often disorderly and troublesome; but it is mostly among
+themselves, and at any rate they have their industrious avocations, they
+work early and late, and work hard.  The generic Ruffian—honourable
+member for what is tenderly called the Rough Element—is either a Thief,
+or the companion of Thieves.  When he infamously molests women coming out
+of chapel on Sunday evenings (for which I would have his back scarified
+often and deep) it is not only for the gratification of his pleasant
+instincts, but that there may be a confusion raised by which either he or
+his friends may profit, in the commission of highway robberies or in
+picking pockets.  When he gets a police-constable down and kicks him
+helpless for life, it is because that constable once did his duty in
+bringing him to justice.  When he rushes into the bar of a public-house
+and scoops an eye out of one of the company there, or bites his ear off,
+it is because the man he maims gave evidence against him.  When he and a
+line of comrades extending across the footway—say of that solitary
+mountain-spur of the Abruzzi, the Waterloo Road—advance towards me
+‘skylarking’ among themselves, my purse or shirt-pin is in predestined
+peril from his playfulness.  Always a Ruffian, always a Thief.  Always a
+Thief, always a Ruffian.
+
+Now, when I, who am not paid to know these things, know them daily on the
+evidence of my senses and experience; when I know that the Ruffian never
+jostles a lady in the streets, or knocks a hat off, but in order that the
+Thief may profit, is it surprising that I should require from those who
+_are_ paid to know these things, prevention of them?
+
+Look at this group at a street corner.  Number one is a shirking fellow
+of five-and-twenty, in an ill-favoured and ill-savoured suit, his
+trousers of corduroy, his coat of some indiscernible groundwork for the
+deposition of grease, his neckerchief like an eel, his complexion like
+dirty dough, his mangy fur cap pulled low upon his beetle brows to hide
+the prison cut of his hair.  His hands are in his pockets.  He puts them
+there when they are idle, as naturally as in other people’s pockets when
+they are busy, for he knows that they are not roughened by work, and that
+they tell a tale.  Hence, whenever he takes one out to draw a sleeve
+across his nose—which is often, for he has weak eyes and a constitutional
+cold in his head—he restores it to its pocket immediately afterwards.
+Number two is a burly brute of five-and-thirty, in a tall stiff hat; is a
+composite as to his clothes of betting-man and fighting-man; is
+whiskered; has a staring pin in his breast, along with his right hand;
+has insolent and cruel eyes: large shoulders; strong legs booted and
+tipped for kicking.  Number three is forty years of age; is short,
+thick-set, strong, and bow-legged; wears knee cords and white stockings,
+a very long-sleeved waistcoat, a very large neckerchief doubled or
+trebled round his throat, and a crumpled white hat crowns his ghastly
+parchment face.  This fellow looks like an executed postboy of other
+days, cut down from the gallows too soon, and restored and preserved by
+express diabolical agency.  Numbers five, six, and seven, are hulking,
+idle, slouching young men, patched and shabby, too short in the sleeves
+and too tight in the legs, slimily clothed, foul-spoken, repulsive
+wretches inside and out.  In all the party there obtains a certain
+twitching character of mouth and furtiveness of eye, that hint how the
+coward is lurking under the bully.  The hint is quite correct, for they
+are a slinking sneaking set, far more prone to lie down on their backs
+and kick out, when in difficulty, than to make a stand for it.  (This may
+account for the street mud on the backs of Numbers five, six, and seven,
+being much fresher than the stale splashes on their legs.)
+
+These engaging gentry a Police-constable stands contemplating.  His
+Station, with a Reserve of assistance, is very near at hand.  They cannot
+pretend to any trade, not even to be porters or messengers.  It would be
+idle if they did, for he knows them, and they know that he knows them, to
+be nothing but professed Thieves and Ruffians.  He knows where they
+resort, knows by what slang names they call one another, knows how often
+they have been in prison, and how long, and for what.  All this is known
+at his Station, too, and is (or ought to be) known at Scotland Yard, too.
+But does he know, or does his Station know, or does Scotland Yard know,
+or does anybody know, why these fellows should be here at liberty, when,
+as reputed Thieves to whom a whole Division of Police could swear, they
+might all be under lock and key at hard labour?  Not he; truly he would
+be a wise man if he did!  He only knows that these are members of the
+‘notorious gang,’ which, according to the newspaper Police-office reports
+of this last past September, ‘have so long infested’ the awful solitudes
+of the Waterloo Road, and out of which almost impregnable fastnesses the
+Police have at length dragged Two, to the unspeakable admiration of all
+good civilians.
+
+The consequences of this contemplative habit on the part of the
+Executive—a habit to be looked for in a hermit, but not in a Police
+System—are familiar to us all.  The Ruffian becomes one of the
+established orders of the body politic.  Under the playful name of Rough
+(as if he were merely a practical joker) his movements and successes are
+recorded on public occasions.  Whether he mustered in large numbers, or
+small; whether he was in good spirits, or depressed; whether he turned
+his generous exertions to very prosperous account, or Fortune was against
+him; whether he was in a sanguinary mood, or robbed with amiable
+horse-play and a gracious consideration for life and limb; all this is
+chronicled as if he were an Institution.  Is there any city in Europe,
+out of England, in which these terms are held with the pests of Society?
+Or in which, at this day, such violent robberies from the person are
+constantly committed as in London?
+
+The Preparatory Schools of Ruffianism are similarly borne with.  The
+young Ruffians of London—not Thieves yet, but training for scholarships
+and fellowships in the Criminal Court Universities—molest quiet people
+and their property, to an extent that is hardly credible.  The throwing
+of stones in the streets has become a dangerous and destructive offence,
+which surely could have got to no greater height though we had had no
+Police but our own riding-whips and walking-sticks—the Police to which I
+myself appeal on these occasions.  The throwing of stones at the windows
+of railway carriages in motion—an act of wanton wickedness with the very
+Arch-Fiend’s hand in it—had become a crying evil, when the railway
+companies forced it on Police notice.  Constabular contemplation had
+until then been the order of the day.
+
+Within these twelve months, there arose among the young gentlemen of
+London aspiring to Ruffianism, and cultivating that much-encouraged
+social art, a facetious cry of ‘I’ll have this!’ accompanied with a
+clutch at some article of a passing lady’s dress.  I have known a lady’s
+veil to be thus humorously torn from her face and carried off in the open
+streets at noon; and I have had the honour of myself giving chase, on
+Westminster Bridge, to another young Ruffian, who, in full daylight early
+on a summer evening, had nearly thrown a modest young woman into a swoon
+of indignation and confusion, by his shameful manner of attacking her
+with this cry as she harmlessly passed along before me.  Mr. CARLYLE,
+some time since, awakened a little pleasantry by writing of his own
+experience of the Ruffian of the streets.  I have seen the Ruffian act in
+exact accordance with Mr. Carlyle’s description, innumerable times, and I
+never saw him checked.
+
+The blaring use of the very worst language possible, in our public
+thoroughfares—especially in those set apart for recreation—is another
+disgrace to us, and another result of constabular contemplation, the like
+of which I have never heard in any other country to which my uncommercial
+travels have extended.  Years ago, when I had a near interest in certain
+children who were sent with their nurses, for air and exercise, into the
+Regent’s Park, I found this evil to be so abhorrent and horrible there,
+that I called public attention to it, and also to its contemplative
+reception by the Police.  Looking afterwards into the newest Police Act,
+and finding that the offence was punishable under it, I resolved, when
+striking occasion should arise, to try my hand as prosecutor.  The
+occasion arose soon enough, and I ran the following gauntlet.
+
+The utterer of the base coin in question was a girl of seventeen or
+eighteen, who, with a suitable attendance of blackguards, youths, and
+boys, was flaunting along the streets, returning from an Irish funeral,
+in a Progress interspersed with singing and dancing.  She had turned
+round to me and expressed herself in the most audible manner, to the
+great delight of that select circle.  I attended the party, on the
+opposite side of the way, for a mile further, and then encountered a
+Police-constable.  The party had made themselves merry at my expense
+until now, but seeing me speak to the constable, its male members
+instantly took to their heels, leaving the girl alone.  I asked the
+constable did he know my name?  Yes, he did.  ‘Take that girl into
+custody, on my charge, for using bad language in the streets.’  He had
+never heard of such a charge.  I had.  Would he take my word that he
+should get into no trouble?  Yes, sir, he would do that.  So he took the
+girl, and I went home for my Police Act.
+
+With this potent instrument in my pocket, I literally as well as
+figuratively ‘returned to the charge,’ and presented myself at the Police
+Station of the district.  There, I found on duty a very intelligent
+Inspector (they are all intelligent men), who, likewise, had never heard
+of such a charge.  I showed him my clause, and we went over it together
+twice or thrice.  It was plain, and I engaged to wait upon the suburban
+Magistrate to-morrow morning at ten o’clock.
+
+In the morning I put my Police Act in my pocket again, and waited on the
+suburban Magistrate.  I was not quite so courteously received by him as I
+should have been by The Lord Chancellor or The Lord Chief Justice, but
+that was a question of good breeding on the suburban Magistrate’s part,
+and I had my clause ready with its leaf turned down.  Which was enough
+for _me_.
+
+Conference took place between the Magistrate and clerk respecting the
+charge.  During conference I was evidently regarded as a much more
+objectionable person than the prisoner;—one giving trouble by coming
+there voluntarily, which the prisoner could not be accused of doing.  The
+prisoner had been got up, since I last had the pleasure of seeing her,
+with a great effect of white apron and straw bonnet.  She reminded me of
+an elder sister of Red Riding Hood, and I seemed to remind the
+sympathising Chimney Sweep by whom she was attended, of the Wolf.
+
+The Magistrate was doubtful, Mr. Uncommercial Traveller, whether this
+charge could be entertained.  It was not known.  Mr. Uncommercial
+Traveller replied that he wished it were better known, and that, if he
+could afford the leisure, he would use his endeavours to make it so.
+There was no question about it, however, he contended.  Here was the
+clause.
+
+The clause was handed in, and more conference resulted.  After which I
+was asked the extraordinary question: ‘Mr. Uncommercial, do you really
+wish this girl to be sent to prison?’  To which I grimly answered,
+staring: ‘If I didn’t, why should I take the trouble to come here?’
+Finally, I was sworn, and gave my agreeable evidence in detail, and White
+Riding Hood was fined ten shillings, under the clause, or sent to prison
+for so many days.  ‘Why, Lord bless you, sir,’ said the Police-officer,
+who showed me out, with a great enjoyment of the jest of her having been
+got up so effectively, and caused so much hesitation: ‘if she goes to
+prison, that will be nothing new to _her_.  She comes from Charles
+Street, Drury Lane!’
+
+The Police, all things considered, are an excellent force, and I have
+borne my small testimony to their merits.  Constabular contemplation is
+the result of a bad system; a system which is administered, not invented,
+by the man in constable’s uniform, employed at twenty shillings a week.
+He has his orders, and would be marked for discouragement if he
+overstepped them.  That the system is bad, there needs no lengthened
+argument to prove, because the fact is self-evident.  If it were anything
+else, the results that have attended it could not possibly have come to
+pass.  Who will say that under a good system, our streets could have got
+into their present state?
+
+The objection to the whole Police system, as concerning the Ruffian, may
+be stated, and its failure exemplified, as follows.  It is well known
+that on all great occasions, when they come together in numbers, the mass
+of the English people are their own trustworthy Police.  It is well known
+that wheresoever there is collected together any fair general
+representation of the people, a respect for law and order, and a
+determination to discountenance lawlessness and disorder, may be relied
+upon.  As to one another, the people are a very good Police, and yet are
+quite willing in their good-nature that the stipendiary Police should
+have the credit of the people’s moderation.  But we are all of us
+powerless against the Ruffian, because we submit to the law, and it is
+his only trade, by superior force and by violence, to defy it.  Moreover,
+we are constantly admonished from high places (like so many Sunday-school
+children out for a holiday of buns and milk-and-water) that we are not to
+take the law into our own hands, but are to hand our defence over to it.
+It is clear that the common enemy to be punished and exterminated first
+of all is the Ruffian.  It is clear that he is, of all others, _the_
+offender for whose repressal we maintain a costly system of Police.  Him,
+therefore, we expressly present to the Police to deal with, conscious
+that, on the whole, we can, and do, deal reasonably well with one
+another.  Him the Police deal with so inefficiently and absurdly that he
+flourishes, and multiplies, and, with all his evil deeds upon his head as
+notoriously as his hat is, pervades the streets with no more let or
+hindrance than ourselves.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+ABOARD SHIP
+
+
+MY journeys as Uncommercial Traveller for the firm of Human-Interest
+Brothers have not slackened since I last reported of them, but have kept
+me continually on the move.  I remain in the same idle employment.  I
+never solicit an order, I never get any commission, I am the rolling
+stone that gathers no moss,—unless any should by chance be found among
+these samples.
+
+Some half a year ago, I found myself in my idlest, dreamiest, and least
+accountable condition altogether, on board ship, in the harbour of the
+city of New York, in the United States of America.  Of all the good ships
+afloat, mine was the good steamship ‘RUSSIA,’ CAPT. COOK, Cunard Line,
+bound for Liverpool.  What more could I wish for?
+
+I had nothing to wish for but a prosperous passage.  My salad-days, when
+I was green of visage and sea-sick, being gone with better things (and no
+worse), no coming event cast its shadow before.
+
+I might but a few moments previously have imitated Sterne, and said,
+‘“And yet, methinks, Eugenius,”—laying my forefinger wistfully on his
+coat-sleeve, thus,—“and yet, methinks, Eugenius, ’tis but sorry work to
+part with thee, for what fresh fields, . . . my dear Eugenius, . . . can
+be fresher than thou art, and in what pastures new shall I find Eliza, or
+call her, Eugenius, if thou wilt, Annie?”’—I say I might have done this;
+but Eugenius was gone, and I hadn’t done it.
+
+I was resting on a skylight on the hurricane-deck, watching the working
+of the ship very slowly about, that she might head for England.  It was
+high noon on a most brilliant day in April, and the beautiful bay was
+glorious and glowing.  Full many a time, on shore there, had I seen the
+snow come down, down, down (itself like down), until it lay deep in all
+the ways of men, and particularly, as it seemed, in my way, for I had not
+gone dry-shod many hours for months.  Within two or three days last past
+had I watched the feathery fall setting in with the ardour of a new idea,
+instead of dragging at the skirts of a worn-out winter, and permitting
+glimpses of a fresh young spring.  But a bright sun and a clear sky had
+melted the snow in the great crucible of nature; and it had been poured
+out again that morning over sea and land, transformed into myriads of
+gold and silver sparkles.
+
+The ship was fragrant with flowers.  Something of the old Mexican passion
+for flowers may have gradually passed into North America, where flowers
+are luxuriously grown, and tastefully combined in the richest profusion;
+but, be that as it may, such gorgeous farewells in flowers had come on
+board, that the small officer’s cabin on deck, which I tenanted, bloomed
+over into the adjacent scuppers, and banks of other flowers that it
+couldn’t hold made a garden of the unoccupied tables in the passengers’
+saloon.  These delicious scents of the shore, mingling with the fresh
+airs of the sea, made the atmosphere a dreamy, an enchanting one.  And
+so, with the watch aloft setting all the sails, and with the screw below
+revolving at a mighty rate, and occasionally giving the ship an angry
+shake for resisting, I fell into my idlest ways, and lost myself.
+
+As, for instance, whether it was I lying there, or some other entity even
+more mysterious, was a matter I was far too lazy to look into.  What did
+it signify to me if it were I? or to the more mysterious entity, if it
+were he?  Equally as to the remembrances that drowsily floated by me, or
+by him, why ask when or where the things happened?  Was it not enough
+that they befell at some time, somewhere?
+
+There was that assisting at the church service on board another
+steamship, one Sunday, in a stiff breeze.  Perhaps on the passage out.
+No matter.  Pleasant to hear the ship’s bells go as like church-bells as
+they could; pleasant to see the watch off duty mustered and come in: best
+hats, best Guernseys, washed hands and faces, smoothed heads.  But then
+arose a set of circumstances so rampantly comical, that no check which
+the gravest intentions could put upon them would hold them in hand.  Thus
+the scene.  Some seventy passengers assembled at the saloon tables.
+Prayer-books on tables.  Ship rolling heavily.  Pause.  No minister.
+Rumour has related that a modest young clergyman on board has responded
+to the captain’s request that he will officiate.  Pause again, and very
+heavy rolling.
+
+Closed double doors suddenly burst open, and two strong stewards skate
+in, supporting minister between them.  General appearance as of somebody
+picked up drunk and incapable, and under conveyance to station-house.
+Stoppage, pause, and particularly heavy rolling.  Stewards watch their
+opportunity, and balance themselves, but cannot balance minister; who,
+struggling with a drooping head and a backward tendency, seems determined
+to return below, while they are as determined that he shall be got to the
+reading-desk in mid-saloon.  Desk portable, sliding away down a long
+table, and aiming itself at the breasts of various members of the
+congregation.  Here the double doors, which have been carefully closed by
+other stewards, fly open again, and worldly passenger tumbles in,
+seemingly with pale-ale designs: who, seeking friend, says ‘Joe!’
+Perceiving incongruity, says, ‘Hullo!  Beg yer pardon!’ and tumbles out
+again.  All this time the congregation have been breaking up into
+sects,—as the manner of congregations often is, each sect sliding away by
+itself, and all pounding the weakest sect which slid first into the
+corner.  Utmost point of dissent soon attained in every corner, and
+violent rolling.  Stewards at length make a dash; conduct minister to the
+mast in the centre of the saloon, which he embraces with both arms; skate
+out; and leave him in that condition to arrange affairs with flock.
+
+There was another Sunday, when an officer of the ship read the service.
+It was quiet and impressive, until we fell upon the dangerous and
+perfectly unnecessary experiment of striking up a hymn.  After it was
+given out, we all rose, but everybody left it to somebody else to begin.
+Silence resulting, the officer (no singer himself) rather reproachfully
+gave us the first line again, upon which a rosy pippin of an old
+gentleman, remarkable throughout the passage for his cheerful politeness,
+gave a little stamp with his boot (as if he were leading off a country
+dance), and blithely warbled us into a show of joining.  At the end of
+the first verse we became, through these tactics, so much refreshed and
+encouraged, that none of us, howsoever unmelodious, would submit to be
+left out of the second verse; while as to the third we lifted up our
+voices in a sacred howl that left it doubtful whether we were the more
+boastful of the sentiments we united in professing, or of professing them
+with a most discordant defiance of time and tune.
+
+‘Lord bless us!’ thought I, when the fresh remembrance of these things
+made me laugh heartily alone in the dead water-gurgling waste of the
+night, what time I was wedged into my berth by a wooden bar, or I must
+have rolled out of it, ‘what errand was I then upon, and to what
+Abyssinian point had public events then marched?  No matter as to me.
+And as to them, if the wonderful popular rage for a plaything (utterly
+confounding in its inscrutable unreason) I had not then lighted on a poor
+young savage boy, and a poor old screw of a horse, and hauled the first
+off by the hair of his princely head to “inspect” the British volunteers,
+and hauled the second off by the hair of his equine tail to the Crystal
+Palace, why so much the better for all of us outside Bedlam!’
+
+So, sticking to the ship, I was at the trouble of asking myself would I
+like to show the grog distribution in ‘the fiddle’ at noon to the Grand
+United Amalgamated Total Abstinence Society?  Yes, I think I should.  I
+think it would do them good to smell the rum, under the circumstances.
+Over the grog, mixed in a bucket, presides the boatswain’s mate, small
+tin can in hand.  Enter the crew, the guilty consumers, the grown-up
+brood of Giant Despair, in contradistinction to the band of youthful
+angel Hope.  Some in boots, some in leggings, some in tarpaulin overalls,
+some in frocks, some in pea-coats, a very few in jackets, most with
+sou’wester hats, all with something rough and rugged round the throat;
+all, dripping salt water where they stand; all pelted by weather,
+besmeared with grease, and blackened by the sooty rigging.
+
+Each man’s knife in its sheath in his girdle, loosened for dinner.  As
+the first man, with a knowingly kindled eye, watches the filling of the
+poisoned chalice (truly but a very small tin mug, to be prosaic), and,
+tossing back his head, tosses the contents into himself, and passes the
+empty chalice and passes on, so the second man with an anticipatory wipe
+of his mouth on sleeve or handkerchief, bides his turn, and drinks and
+hands and passes on, in whom, and in each as his turn approaches, beams a
+knowingly kindled eye, a brighter temper, and a suddenly awakened
+tendency to be jocose with some shipmate.  Nor do I even observe that the
+man in charge of the ship’s lamps, who in right of his office has a
+double allowance of poisoned chalices, seems thereby vastly degraded,
+even though he empties the chalices into himself, one after the other,
+much as if he were delivering their contents at some absorbent
+establishment in which he had no personal interest.  But vastly
+comforted, I note them all to be, on deck presently, even to the
+circulation of redder blood in their cold blue knuckles; and when I look
+up at them lying out on the yards, and holding on for life among the
+beating sails, I cannot for _my_ life see the justice of visiting on
+them—or on me—the drunken crimes of any number of criminals arraigned at
+the heaviest of assizes.
+
+Abetting myself in my idle humour, I closed my eyes, and recalled life on
+board of one of those mail-packets, as I lay, part of that day, in the
+Bay of New York, O!  The regular life began—mine always did, for I never
+got to sleep afterwards—with the rigging of the pump while it was yet
+dark, and washing down of decks.  Any enormous giant at a prodigious
+hydropathic establishment, conscientiously undergoing the water-cure in
+all its departments, and extremely particular about cleaning his teeth,
+would make those noises.  Swash, splash, scrub, rub, toothbrush, bubble,
+swash, splash, bubble, toothbrush, splash, splash, bubble, rub.  Then the
+day would break, and, descending from my berth by a graceful ladder
+composed of half-opened drawers beneath it, I would reopen my outer
+dead-light and my inner sliding window (closed by a watchman during the
+water-cure), and would look out at the long-rolling, lead-coloured, white
+topped waves over which the dawn, on a cold winter morning, cast a level,
+lonely glance, and through which the ship fought her melancholy way at a
+terrific rate.  And now, lying down again, awaiting the season for
+broiled ham and tea, I would be compelled to listen to the voice of
+conscience,—the screw.
+
+It might be, in some cases, no more than the voice of stomach; but I
+called it in my fancy by the higher name.  Because it seemed to me that
+we were all of us, all day long, endeavouring to stifle the voice.
+Because it was under everybody’s pillow, everybody’s plate, everybody’s
+camp-stool, everybody’s book, everybody’s occupation.  Because we
+pretended not to hear it, especially at meal-times, evening whist, and
+morning conversation on deck; but it was always among us in an under
+monotone, not to be drowned in pea-soup, not to be shuffled with cards,
+not to be diverted by books, not to be knitted into any pattern, not to
+be walked away from.  It was smoked in the weediest cigar, and drunk in
+the strongest cocktail; it was conveyed on deck at noon with limp ladies,
+who lay there in their wrappers until the stars shone; it waited at table
+with the stewards; nobody could put it out with the lights.  It was
+considered (as on shore) ill-bred to acknowledge the voice of conscience.
+It was not polite to mention it.  One squally day an amiable gentleman in
+love gave much offence to a surrounding circle, including the object of
+his attachment, by saying of it, after it had goaded him over two
+easy-chairs and a skylight, ‘Screw!’
+
+Sometimes it would appear subdued.  In fleeting moments, when bubbles of
+champagne pervaded the nose, or when there was ‘hot pot’ in the bill of
+fare, or when an old dish we had had regularly every day was described in
+that official document by a new name,—under such excitements, one would
+almost believe it hushed.  The ceremony of washing plates on deck,
+performed after every meal by a circle as of ringers of crockery
+triple-bob majors for a prize, would keep it down.  Hauling the reel,
+taking the sun at noon, posting the twenty-four hours’ run, altering the
+ship’s time by the meridian, casting the waste food overboard, and
+attracting the eager gulls that followed in our wake,—these events would
+suppress it for a while.  But the instant any break or pause took place
+in any such diversion, the voice would be at it again, importuning us to
+the last extent.  A newly married young pair, who walked the deck
+affectionately some twenty miles per day, would, in the full flush of
+their exercise, suddenly become stricken by it, and stand trembling, but
+otherwise immovable, under its reproaches.
+
+When this terrible monitor was most severe with us was when the time
+approached for our retiring to our dens for the night; when the lighted
+candles in the saloon grew fewer and fewer; when the deserted glasses
+with spoons in them grew more and more numerous; when waifs of toasted
+cheese and strays of sardines fried in batter slid languidly to and fro
+in the table-racks; when the man who always read had shut up his book,
+and blown out his candle; when the man who always talked had ceased from
+troubling; when the man who was always medically reported as going to
+have delirium tremens had put it off till to-morrow; when the man who
+every night devoted himself to a midnight smoke on deck two hours in
+length, and who every night was in bed within ten minutes afterwards, was
+buttoning himself up in his third coat for his hardy vigil: for then, as
+we fell off one by one, and, entering our several hutches, came into a
+peculiar atmosphere of bilge-water and Windsor soap, the voice would
+shake us to the centre.  Woe to us when we sat down on our sofa, watching
+the swinging candle for ever trying and retrying to stand upon his head!
+or our coat upon its peg, imitating us as we appeared in our gymnastic
+days by sustaining itself horizontally from the wall, in emulation of the
+lighter and more facile towels!  Then would the voice especially claim us
+for its prey, and rend us all to pieces.
+
+Lights out, we in our berths, and the wind rising, the voice grows
+angrier and deeper.  Under the mattress and under the pillow, under the
+sofa and under the washing-stand, under the ship and under the sea,
+seeming to rise from the foundations under the earth with every scoop of
+the great Atlantic (and oh! why scoop so?), always the voice.  Vain to
+deny its existence in the night season; impossible to be hard of hearing;
+screw, screw, screw!  Sometimes it lifts out of the water, and revolves
+with a whirr, like a ferocious firework,—except that it never expends
+itself, but is always ready to go off again; sometimes it seems to be in
+anguish, and shivers; sometimes it seems to be terrified by its last
+plunge, and has a fit which causes it to struggle, quiver, and for an
+instant stop.  And now the ship sets in rolling, as only ships so
+fiercely screwed through time and space, day and night, fair weather and
+foul, _can_ roll.
+
+Did she ever take a roll before like that last?  Did she ever take a roll
+before like this worse one that is coming now?  Here is the partition at
+my ear down in the deep on the lee side.  Are we ever coming up again
+together?  I think not; the partition and I are so long about it that I
+really do believe we have overdone it this time.  Heavens, what a scoop!
+What a deep scoop, what a hollow scoop, what a long scoop!  Will it ever
+end, and can we bear the heavy mass of water we have taken on board, and
+which has let loose all the table furniture in the officers’ mess, and
+has beaten open the door of the little passage between the purser and me,
+and is swashing about, even there and even here?  The purser snores
+reassuringly, and the ship’s bells striking, I hear the cheerful ‘All’s
+well!’ of the watch musically given back the length of the deck, as the
+lately diving partition, now high in air, tries (unsoftened by what we
+have gone through together) to force me out of bed and berth.
+
+‘All’s well!’  Comforting to know, though surely all might be better.
+Put aside the rolling and the rush of water, and think of darting through
+such darkness with such velocity.  Think of any other similar object
+coming in the opposite direction!
+
+Whether there may be an attraction in two such moving bodies out at sea,
+which may help accident to bring them into collision?  Thoughts, too,
+arise (the voice never silent all the while, but marvellously suggestive)
+of the gulf below; of the strange, unfruitful mountain ranges and deep
+valleys over which we are passing; of monstrous fish midway; of the
+ship’s suddenly altering her course on her own account, and with a wild
+plunge settling down, and making _that_ voyage with a crew of dead
+discoverers.  Now, too, one recalls an almost universal tendency on the
+part of passengers to stumble, at some time or other in the day, on the
+topic of a certain large steamer making this same run, which was lost at
+sea, and never heard of more.  Everybody has seemed under a spell,
+compelling approach to the threshold of the grim subject, stoppage,
+discomfiture, and pretence of never having been near it.  The boatswain’s
+whistle sounds!  A change in the wind, hoarse orders issuing, and the
+watch very busy.  Sails come crashing home overhead, ropes (that seem all
+knot) ditto; every man engaged appears to have twenty feet, with twenty
+times the average amount of stamping power in each.  Gradually the noise
+slackens, the hoarse cries die away, the boatswain’s whistle softens into
+the soothing and contented notes, which rather reluctantly admit that the
+job is done for the time, and the voice sets in again.
+
+Thus come unintelligible dreams of up hill and down, and swinging and
+swaying, until consciousness revives of atmospherical Windsor soap and
+bilge-water, and the voice announces that the giant has come for the
+water-cure again.
+
+Such were my fanciful reminiscences as I lay, part of that day, in the
+Bay of New York, O!  Also as we passed clear of the Narrows, and got out
+to sea; also in many an idle hour at sea in sunny weather!  At length the
+observations and computations showed that we should make the coast of
+Ireland to-night.  So I stood watch on deck all night to-night, to see
+how we made the coast of Ireland.
+
+Very dark, and the sea most brilliantly phosphorescent.  Great way on the
+ship, and double look-out kept.  Vigilant captain on the bridge, vigilant
+first officer looking over the port side, vigilant second officer
+standing by the quarter-master at the compass, vigilant third officer
+posted at the stern rail with a lantern.  No passengers on the quiet
+decks, but expectation everywhere nevertheless.  The two men at the wheel
+very steady, very serious, and very prompt to answer orders.  An order
+issued sharply now and then, and echoed back; otherwise the night drags
+slowly, silently, with no change.
+
+All of a sudden, at the blank hour of two in the morning, a vague
+movement of relief from a long strain expresses itself in all hands; the
+third officer’s lantern tinkles, and he fires a rocket, and another
+rocket.  A sullen solitary light is pointed out to me in the black sky
+yonder.  A change is expected in the light, but none takes place.  ‘Give
+them two more rockets, Mr. Vigilant.’  Two more, and a blue-light burnt.
+All eyes watch the light again.  At last a little toy sky-rocket is
+flashed up from it; and, even as that small streak in the darkness dies
+away, we are telegraphed to Queenstown, Liverpool, and London, and back
+again under the ocean to America.
+
+Then up come the half-dozen passengers who are going ashore at Queenstown
+and up comes the mail-agent in charge of the bags, and up come the men
+who are to carry the bags into the mail-tender that will come off for
+them out of the harbour.  Lamps and lanterns gleam here and there about
+the decks, and impeding bulks are knocked away with handspikes; and the
+port-side bulwark, barren but a moment ago, bursts into a crop of heads
+of seamen, stewards, and engineers.
+
+The light begins to be gained upon, begins to be alongside, begins to be
+left astern.  More rockets, and, between us and the land, steams
+beautifully the Inman steamship City of Paris, for New York, outward
+bound.  We observe with complacency that the wind is dead against her (it
+being _with_ us), and that she rolls and pitches.  (The sickest passenger
+on board is the most delighted by this circumstance.)  Time rushes by as
+we rush on; and now we see the light in Queenstown Harbour, and now the
+lights of the mail-tender coming out to us.  What vagaries the
+mail-tender performs on the way, in every point of the compass,
+especially in those where she has no business, and why she performs them,
+Heaven only knows!  At length she is seen plunging within a cable’s
+length of our port broadside, and is being roared at through our
+speaking-trumpets to do this thing, and not to do that, and to stand by
+the other, as if she were a very demented tender indeed.  Then, we
+slackening amidst a deafening roar of steam, this much-abused tender is
+made fast to us by hawsers, and the men in readiness carry the bags
+aboard, and return for more, bending under their burdens, and looking
+just like the pasteboard figures of the miller and his men in the theatre
+of our boyhood, and comporting themselves almost as unsteadily.  All the
+while the unfortunate tender plunges high and low, and is roared at.
+Then the Queenstown passengers are put on board of her, with infinite
+plunging and roaring, and the tender gets heaved up on the sea to that
+surprising extent that she looks within an ace of washing aboard of us,
+high and dry.  Roared at with contumely to the last, this wretched tender
+is at length let go, with a final plunge of great ignominy, and falls
+spinning into our wake.
+
+The voice of conscience resumed its dominion as the day climbed up the
+sky, and kept by all of us passengers into port; kept by us as we passed
+other lighthouses, and dangerous islands off the coast, where some of the
+officers, with whom I stood my watch, had gone ashore in sailing-ships in
+fogs (and of which by that token they seemed to have quite an
+affectionate remembrance), and past the Welsh coast, and past the
+Cheshire coast, and past everything and everywhere lying between our ship
+and her own special dock in the Mersey.  Off which, at last, at nine of
+the clock, on a fair evening early in May, we stopped, and the voice
+ceased.  A very curious sensation, not unlike having my own ears stopped,
+ensued upon that silence; and it was with a no less curious sensation
+that I went over the side of the good Cunard ship ‘Russia’ (whom
+prosperity attend through all her voyages!) and surveyed the outer hull
+of the gracious monster that the voice had inhabited.  So, perhaps, shall
+we all, in the spirit, one day survey the frame that held the busier
+voice from which my vagrant fancy derived this similitude.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST
+
+
+I HAD been looking, yesternight, through the famous ‘Dance of Death,’ and
+to-day the grim old woodcuts arose in my mind with the new significance
+of a ghastly monotony not to be found in the original.  The weird
+skeleton rattled along the streets before me, and struck fiercely; but it
+was never at the pains of assuming a disguise.  It played on no dulcimer
+here, was crowned with no flowers, waved no plume, minced in no flowing
+robe or train, lifted no wine-cup, sat at no feast, cast no dice, counted
+no gold.  It was simply a bare, gaunt, famished skeleton, slaying his way
+along.
+
+The borders of Ratcliff and Stepney, eastward of London, and giving on
+the impure river, were the scene of this uncompromising dance of death,
+upon a drizzling November day.  A squalid maze of streets, courts, and
+alleys of miserable houses let out in single rooms.  A wilderness of
+dirt, rags, and hunger.  A mud-desert, chiefly inhabited by a tribe from
+whom employment has departed, or to whom it comes but fitfully and
+rarely.  They are not skilled mechanics in any wise.  They are but
+labourers,—dock-labourers, water-side labourers, coal-porters,
+ballast-heavers, such-like hewers of wood and drawers of water.  But they
+have come into existence, and they propagate their wretched race.
+
+One grisly joke alone, methought, the skeleton seemed to play off here.
+It had stuck election-bills on the walls, which the wind and rain had
+deteriorated into suitable rags.  It had even summed up the state of the
+poll, in chalk, on the shutters of one ruined house.  It adjured the free
+and independent starvers to vote for Thisman and vote for Thatman; not to
+plump, as they valued the state of parties and the national prosperity
+(both of great importance to them, I think); but, by returning Thisman
+and Thatman, each naught without the other, to compound a glorious and
+immortal whole.  Surely the skeleton is nowhere more cruelly ironical in
+the original monkish idea!
+
+Pondering in my mind the far-seeing schemes of Thisman and Thatman, and
+of the public blessing called Party, for staying the degeneracy, physical
+and moral, of many thousands (who shall say how many?) of the English
+race; for devising employment useful to the community for those who want
+but to work and live; for equalising rates, cultivating waste lands,
+facilitating emigration, and, above all things, saving and utilising the
+oncoming generations, and thereby changing ever-growing national weakness
+into strength: pondering in my mind, I say, these hopeful exertions, I
+turned down a narrow street to look into a house or two.
+
+It was a dark street with a dead wall on one side.  Nearly all the outer
+doors of the houses stood open.  I took the first entry, and knocked at a
+parlour-door.  Might I come in?  I might, if I plased, sur.
+
+The woman of the room (Irish) had picked up some long strips of wood,
+about some wharf or barge; and they had just now been thrust into the
+otherwise empty grate to make two iron pots boil.  There was some fish in
+one, and there were some potatoes in the other.  The flare of the burning
+wood enabled me to see a table, and a broken chair or so, and some old
+cheap crockery ornaments about the chimney-piece.  It was not until I had
+spoken with the woman a few minutes, that I saw a horrible brown heap on
+the floor in a corner, which, but for previous experience in this dismal
+wise, I might not have suspected to be ‘the bed.’  There was something
+thrown upon it; and I asked what that was.
+
+‘’Tis the poor craythur that stays here, sur; and ’tis very bad she is,
+and ’tis very bad she’s been this long time, and ’tis better she’ll never
+be, and ’tis slape she does all day, and ’tis wake she does all night,
+and ’tis the lead, sur.’
+
+‘The what?’
+
+‘The lead, sur.  Sure ’tis the lead-mills, where the women gets took on
+at eighteen-pence a day, sur, when they makes application early enough,
+and is lucky and wanted; and ’tis lead-pisoned she is, sur, and some of
+them gets lead-pisoned soon, and some of them gets lead-pisoned later,
+and some, but not many, niver; and ’tis all according to the
+constitooshun, sur, and some constitooshuns is strong, and some is weak;
+and her constitooshun is lead-pisoned, bad as can be, sur; and her brain
+is coming out at her ear, and it hurts her dreadful; and that’s what it
+is, and niver no more, and niver no less, sur.’
+
+The sick young woman moaning here, the speaker bent over her, took a
+bandage from her head, and threw open a back door to let in the daylight
+upon it, from the smallest and most miserable backyard I ever saw.
+
+‘That’s what cooms from her, sur, being lead-pisoned; and it cooms from
+her night and day, the poor, sick craythur; and the pain of it is
+dreadful; and God he knows that my husband has walked the sthreets these
+four days, being a labourer, and is walking them now, and is ready to
+work, and no work for him, and no fire and no food but the bit in the
+pot, and no more than ten shillings in a fortnight; God be good to us!
+and it is poor we are, and dark it is and could it is indeed.’
+
+Knowing that I could compensate myself thereafter for my self-denial, if
+I saw fit, I had resolved that I would give nothing in the course of
+these visits.  I did this to try the people.  I may state at once that my
+closest observation could not detect any indication whatever of an
+expectation that I would give money: they were grateful to be talked to
+about their miserable affairs, and sympathy was plainly a comfort to
+them; but they neither asked for money in any case, nor showed the least
+trace of surprise or disappointment or resentment at my giving none.
+
+The woman’s married daughter had by this time come down from her room on
+the floor above, to join in the conversation.  She herself had been to
+the lead-mills very early that morning to be ‘took on,’ but had not
+succeeded.  She had four children; and her husband, also a water-side
+labourer, and then out seeking work, seemed in no better case as to
+finding it than her father.  She was English, and by nature, of a buxom
+figure and cheerful.  Both in her poor dress and in her mother’s there
+was an effort to keep up some appearance of neatness.  She knew all about
+the sufferings of the unfortunate invalid, and all about the
+lead-poisoning, and how the symptoms came on, and how they grew,—having
+often seen them.  The very smell when you stood inside the door of the
+works was enough to knock you down, she said: yet she was going back
+again to get ‘took on.’  What could she do?  Better be ulcerated and
+paralysed for eighteen-pence a day, while it lasted, than see the
+children starve.
+
+A dark and squalid cupboard in this room, touching the back door and all
+manner of offence, had been for some time the sleeping-place of the sick
+young woman.  But the nights being now wintry, and the blankets and
+coverlets ‘gone to the leaving shop,’ she lay all night where she lay all
+day, and was lying then.  The woman of the room, her husband, this most
+miserable patient, and two others, lay on the one brown heap together for
+warmth.
+
+‘God bless you, sir, and thank you!’ were the parting words from these
+people,—gratefully spoken too,—with which I left this place.
+
+Some streets away, I tapped at another parlour-door on another
+ground-floor.  Looking in, I found a man, his wife, and four children,
+sitting at a washing-stool by way of table, at their dinner of bread and
+infused tea-leaves.  There was a very scanty cinderous fire in the grate
+by which they sat; and there was a tent bedstead in the room with a bed
+upon it and a coverlet.  The man did not rise when I went in, nor during
+my stay, but civilly inclined his head on my pulling off my hat, and, in
+answer to my inquiry whether I might ask him a question or two, said,
+‘Certainly.’  There being a window at each end of this room, back and
+front, it might have been ventilated; but it was shut up tight, to keep
+the cold out, and was very sickening.
+
+The wife, an intelligent, quick woman, rose and stood at her husband’s
+elbow; and he glanced up at her as if for help.  It soon appeared that he
+was rather deaf.  He was a slow, simple fellow of about thirty.
+
+‘What was he by trade?’
+
+‘Gentleman asks what are you by trade, John?’
+
+‘I am a boilermaker;’ looking about him with an exceedingly perplexed
+air, as if for a boiler that had unaccountably vanished.
+
+‘He ain’t a mechanic, you understand, sir,’ the wife put in: ‘he’s only a
+labourer.’
+
+‘Are you in work?’
+
+He looked up at his wife again.  ‘Gentleman says are you in work, John?’
+
+‘In work!’ cried this forlorn boilermaker, staring aghast at his wife,
+and then working his vision’s way very slowly round to me: ‘Lord, no!’
+
+‘Ah, he ain’t indeed!’ said the poor woman, shaking her head, as she
+looked at the four children in succession, and then at him.
+
+‘Work!’ said the boilermaker, still seeking that evaporated boiler, first
+in my countenance, then in the air, and then in the features of his
+second son at his knee: ‘I wish I _was_ in work!  I haven’t had more than
+a day’s work to do this three weeks.’
+
+‘How have you lived?’
+
+A faint gleam of admiration lighted up the face of the would-be
+boilermaker, as he stretched out the short sleeve of his thread-bare
+canvas jacket, and replied, pointing her out, ‘On the work of the wife.’
+
+I forget where boilermaking had gone to, or where he supposed it had gone
+to; but he added some resigned information on that head, coupled with an
+expression of his belief that it was never coming back.
+
+The cheery helpfulness of the wife was very remarkable.  She did
+slop-work; made pea-jackets.  She produced the pea-jacket then in hand,
+and spread it out upon the bed,—the only piece of furniture in the room
+on which to spread it.  She showed how much of it she made, and how much
+was afterwards finished off by the machine.  According to her calculation
+at the moment, deducting what her trimming cost her, she got for making a
+pea-jacket tenpence half-penny, and she could make one in something less
+than two days.
+
+But, you see, it come to her through two hands, and of course it didn’t
+come through the second hand for nothing.  Why did it come through the
+second hand at all?  Why, this way.  The second hand took the risk of the
+given-out work, you see.  If she had money enough to pay the security
+deposit,—call it two pound,—she could get the work from the first hand,
+and so the second would not have to be deducted for.  But, having no
+money at all, the second hand come in and took its profit, and so the
+whole worked down to tenpence half-penny.  Having explained all this with
+great intelligence, even with some little pride, and without a whine or
+murmur, she folded her work again, sat down by her husband’s side at the
+washing-stool, and resumed her dinner of dry bread.  Mean as the meal
+was, on the bare board, with its old gallipots for cups, and what not
+other sordid makeshifts; shabby as the woman was in dress, and toning
+done towards the Bosjesman colour, with want of nutriment and
+washing,—there was positively a dignity in her, as the family anchor just
+holding the poor ship-wrecked boilermaker’s bark.  When I left the room,
+the boiler-maker’s eyes were slowly turned towards her, as if his last
+hope of ever again seeing that vanished boiler lay in her direction.
+
+These people had never applied for parish relief but once; and that was
+when the husband met with a disabling accident at his work.
+
+Not many doors from here, I went into a room on the first floor.  The
+woman apologised for its being in ‘an untidy mess.’  The day was
+Saturday, and she was boiling the children’s clothes in a saucepan on the
+hearth.  There was nothing else into which she could have put them.
+There was no crockery, or tinware, or tub, or bucket.  There was an old
+gallipot or two, and there was a broken bottle or so, and there were some
+broken boxes for seats.  The last small scraping of coals left was raked
+together in a corner of the floor.  There were some rags in an open
+cupboard, also on the floor.  In a corner of the room was a crazy old
+French bed-stead, with a man lying on his back upon it in a ragged pilot
+jacket, and rough oil-skin fantail hat.  The room was perfectly black.
+It was difficult to believe, at first, that it was not purposely coloured
+black, the walls were so begrimed.
+
+As I stood opposite the woman boiling the children’s clothes,—she had not
+even a piece of soap to wash them with,—and apologising for her
+occupation, I could take in all these things without appearing to notice
+them, and could even correct my inventory.  I had missed, at the first
+glance, some half a pound of bread in the otherwise empty safe, an old
+red ragged crinoline hanging on the handle of the door by which I had
+entered, and certain fragments of rusty iron scattered on the floor,
+which looked like broken tools and a piece of stove-pipe.  A child stood
+looking on.  On the box nearest to the fire sat two younger children; one
+a delicate and pretty little creature, whom the other sometimes kissed.
+
+This woman, like the last, was wofully shabby, and was degenerating to
+the Bosjesman complexion.  But her figure, and the ghost of a certain
+vivacity about her, and the spectre of a dimple in her cheek, carried my
+memory strangely back to the old days of the Adelphi Theatre, London,
+when Mrs. Fitzwilliam was the friend of Victorine.
+
+‘May I ask you what your husband is?’
+
+‘He’s a coal-porter, sir,’—with a glance and a sigh towards the bed.
+
+‘Is he out of work?’
+
+‘Oh, yes, sir! and work’s at all times very, very scanty with him; and
+now he’s laid up.’
+
+‘It’s my legs,’ said the man upon the bed.  ‘I’ll unroll ’em.’  And
+immediately began.
+
+‘Have you any older children?’
+
+‘I have a daughter that does the needle-work, and I have a son that does
+what he can.  She’s at her work now, and he’s trying for work.’
+
+‘Do they live here?’
+
+‘They sleep here.  They can’t afford to pay more rent, and so they come
+here at night.  The rent is very hard upon us.  It’s rose upon us too,
+now,—sixpence a week,—on account of these new changes in the law, about
+the rates.  We are a week behind; the landlord’s been shaking and
+rattling at that door frightfully; he says he’ll turn us out.  I don’t
+know what’s to come of it.’
+
+The man upon the bed ruefully interposed, ‘Here’s my legs.  The skin’s
+broke, besides the swelling.  I have had a many kicks, working, one way
+and another.’
+
+He looked at his legs (which were much discoloured and misshapen) for a
+while, and then appearing to remember that they were not popular with his
+family, rolled them up again, as if they were something in the nature of
+maps or plans that were not wanted to be referred to, lay hopelessly down
+on his back once more with his fantail hat over his face, and stirred
+not.
+
+‘Do your eldest son and daughter sleep in that cupboard?’
+
+‘Yes,’ replied the woman.
+
+‘With the children?’
+
+‘Yes.  We have to get together for warmth.  We have little to cover us.’
+
+‘Have you nothing by you to eat but the piece of bread I see there?’
+
+‘Nothing.  And we had the rest of the loaf for our breakfast, with water.
+I don’t know what’s to come of it.’
+
+‘Have you no prospect of improvement?’
+
+‘If my eldest son earns anything to-day, he’ll bring it home.  Then we
+shall have something to eat to-night, and may be able to do something
+towards the rent.  If not, I don’t know what’s to come of it.’
+
+‘This is a sad state of things.’
+
+‘Yes, sir; it’s a hard, hard life.  Take care of the stairs as you go,
+sir,—they’re broken,—and good day, sir!’
+
+These people had a mortal dread of entering the workhouse, and received
+no out-of-door relief.
+
+In another room, in still another tenement, I found a very decent woman
+with five children,—the last a baby, and she herself a patient of the
+parish doctor,—to whom, her husband being in the hospital, the Union
+allowed for the support of herself and family, four shillings a week and
+five loaves.  I suppose when Thisman, M.P., and Thatman, M.P., and the
+Public-blessing Party, lay their heads together in course of time, and
+come to an equalization of rating, she may go down to the dance of death
+to the tune of sixpence more.
+
+I could enter no other houses for that one while, for I could not bear
+the contemplation of the children.  Such heart as I had summoned to
+sustain me against the miseries of the adults failed me when I looked at
+the children.  I saw how young they were, how hungry, how serious and
+still.  I thought of them, sick and dying in those lairs.  I think of
+them dead without anguish; but to think of them so suffering and so dying
+quite unmanned me.
+
+Down by the river’s bank in Ratcliff, I was turning upward by a
+side-street, therefore, to regain the railway, when my eyes rested on the
+inscription across the road, ‘East London Children’s Hospital.’  I could
+scarcely have seen an inscription better suited to my frame of mind; and
+I went across and went straight in.
+
+I found the children’s hospital established in an old sail-loft or
+storehouse, of the roughest nature, and on the simplest means.  There
+were trap-doors in the floors, where goods had been hoisted up and down;
+heavy feet and heavy weights had started every knot in the well-trodden
+planking: inconvenient bulks and beams and awkward staircases perplexed
+my passage through the wards.  But I found it airy, sweet, and clean.  In
+its seven and thirty beds I saw but little beauty; for starvation in the
+second or third generation takes a pinched look: but I saw the sufferings
+both of infancy and childhood tenderly assuaged; I heard the little
+patients answering to pet playful names, the light touch of a delicate
+lady laid bare the wasted sticks of arms for me to pity; and the
+claw-like little hands, as she did so, twined themselves lovingly around
+her wedding-ring.
+
+One baby mite there was as pretty as any of Raphael’s angels.  The tiny
+head was bandaged for water on the brain; and it was suffering with acute
+bronchitis too, and made from time to time a plaintive, though not
+impatient or complaining, little sound.  The smooth curve of the cheeks
+and of the chin was faultless in its condensation of infantine beauty,
+and the large bright eyes were most lovely.  It happened as I stopped at
+the foot of the bed, that these eyes rested upon mine with that wistful
+expression of wondering thoughtfulness which we all know sometimes in
+very little children.  They remained fixed on mine, and never turned from
+me while I stood there.  When the utterance of that plaintive sound shook
+the little form, the gaze still remained unchanged.  I felt as though the
+child implored me to tell the story of the little hospital in which it
+was sheltered to any gentle heart I could address.  Laying my world-worn
+hand upon the little unmarked clasped hand at the chin, I gave it a
+silent promise that I would do so.
+
+A gentleman and lady, a young husband and wife, have bought and fitted up
+this building for its present noble use, and have quietly settled
+themselves in it as its medical officers and directors.  Both have had
+considerable practical experience of medicine and surgery; he as
+house-surgeon of a great London hospital; she as a very earnest student,
+tested by severe examination, and also as a nurse of the sick poor during
+the prevalence of cholera.
+
+With every qualification to lure them away, with youth and
+accomplishments and tastes and habits that can have no response in any
+breast near them, close begirt by every repulsive circumstance
+inseparable from such a neighbourhood, there they dwell.  They live in
+the hospital itself, and their rooms are on its first floor.  Sitting at
+their dinner-table, they could hear the cry of one of the children in
+pain.  The lady’s piano, drawing-materials, books, and other such
+evidences of refinement are as much a part of the rough place as the iron
+bedsteads of the little patients.  They are put to shifts for room, like
+passengers on board ship.  The dispenser of medicines (attracted to them
+not by self-interest, but by their own magnetism and that of their cause)
+sleeps in a recess in the dining-room, and has his washing apparatus in
+the sideboard.
+
+Their contented manner of making the best of the things around them, I
+found so pleasantly inseparable from their usefulness!  Their pride in
+this partition that we put up ourselves, or in that partition that we
+took down, or in that other partition that we moved, or in the stove that
+was given us for the waiting-room, or in our nightly conversion of the
+little consulting-room into a smoking-room!  Their admiration of the
+situation, if we could only get rid of its one objectionable incident,
+the coal-yard at the back!  ‘Our hospital carriage, presented by a
+friend, and very useful.’  That was my presentation to a perambulator,
+for which a coach-house had been discovered in a corner down-stairs, just
+large enough to hold it.  Coloured prints, in all stages of preparation
+for being added to those already decorating the wards, were plentiful; a
+charming wooden phenomenon of a bird, with an impossible top-knot, who
+ducked his head when you set a counter weight going, had been inaugurated
+as a public statue that very morning; and trotting about among the beds,
+on familiar terms with all the patients, was a comical mongrel dog,
+called Poodles.  This comical dog (quite a tonic in himself) was found
+characteristically starving at the door of the institution, and was taken
+in and fed, and has lived here ever since.  An admirer of his mental
+endowments has presented him with a collar bearing the legend, ‘Judge not
+Poodles by external appearances.’  He was merrily wagging his tail on a
+boy’s pillow when he made this modest appeal to me.
+
+When this hospital was first opened, in January of the present year, the
+people could not possibly conceive but that somebody paid for the
+services rendered there; and were disposed to claim them as a right, and
+to find fault if out of temper.  They soon came to understand the case
+better, and have much increased in gratitude.  The mothers of the
+patients avail themselves very freely of the visiting rules; the fathers
+often on Sundays.  There is an unreasonable (but still, I think, touching
+and intelligible) tendency in the parents to take a child away to its
+wretched home, if on the point of death.  One boy who had been thus
+carried off on a rainy night, when in a violent state of inflammation,
+and who had been afterwards brought back, had been recovered with
+exceeding difficulty; but he was a jolly boy, with a specially strong
+interest in his dinner, when I saw him.
+
+Insufficient food and unwholesome living are the main causes of disease
+among these small patients.  So nourishment, cleanliness, and ventilation
+are the main remedies.  Discharged patients are looked after, and invited
+to come and dine now and then; so are certain famishing creatures who
+were never patients.  Both the lady and the gentleman are well
+acquainted, not only with the histories of the patients and their
+families, but with the characters and circumstances of great numbers of
+their neighbours—of these they keep a register.  It is their common
+experience, that people, sinking down by inches into deeper and deeper
+poverty, will conceal it, even from them, if possible, unto the very last
+extremity.
+
+The nurses of this hospital are all young,—ranging, say, from nineteen to
+four and twenty.  They have even within these narrow limits, what many
+well-endowed hospitals would not give them, a comfortable room of their
+own in which to take their meals.  It is a beautiful truth, that interest
+in the children and sympathy with their sorrows bind these young women to
+their places far more strongly than any other consideration could.  The
+best skilled of the nurses came originally from a kindred neighbourhood,
+almost as poor; and she knew how much the work was needed.  She is a fair
+dressmaker.  The hospital cannot pay her as many pounds in the year as
+there are months in it; and one day the lady regarded it as a duty to
+speak to her about her improving her prospects and following her trade.
+‘No,’ she said: she could never be so useful or so happy elsewhere any
+more; she must stay among the children.
+
+And she stays.  One of the nurses, as I passed her, was washing a
+baby-boy.  Liking her pleasant face, I stopped to speak to her charge,—a
+common, bullet-headed, frowning charge enough, laying hold of his own
+nose with a slippery grasp, and staring very solemnly out of a blanket.
+The melting of the pleasant face into delighted smiles, as this young
+gentleman gave an unexpected kick, and laughed at me, was almost worth my
+previous pain.
+
+An affecting play was acted in Paris years ago, called ‘The Children’s
+Doctor.’  As I parted from my children’s doctor, now in question, I saw
+in his easy black necktie, in his loose buttoned black frock-coat, in his
+pensive face, in the flow of his dark hair, in his eyelashes, in the very
+turn of his moustache, the exact realisation of the Paris artist’s ideal
+as it was presented on the stage.  But no romancer that I know of has had
+the boldness to prefigure the life and home of this young husband and
+young wife in the Children’s Hospital in the east of London.
+
+I came away from Ratcliff by the Stepney railway station to the terminus
+at Fenchurch Street.  Any one who will reverse that route may retrace my
+steps.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR
+
+
+IT fell out on a day in this last autumn, that I had to go down from
+London to a place of seaside resort, on an hour’s business, accompanied
+by my esteemed friend Bullfinch.  Let the place of seaside resort be, for
+the nonce, called Namelesston.
+
+I had been loitering about Paris in very hot weather, pleasantly
+breakfasting in the open air in the garden of the Palais Royal or the
+Tuileries, pleasantly dining in the open air in the Elysian Fields,
+pleasantly taking my cigar and lemonade in the open air on the Italian
+Boulevard towards the small hours after midnight.  Bullfinch—an excellent
+man of business—has summoned me back across the Channel, to transact this
+said hour’s business at Namelesston; and thus it fell out that Bullfinch
+and I were in a railway carriage together on our way to Namelesston, each
+with his return-ticket in his waistcoat-pocket.
+
+Says Bullfinch, ‘I have a proposal to make.  Let us dine at the
+Temeraire.’
+
+I asked Bullfinch, did he recommend the Temeraire? inasmuch as I had not
+been rated on the books of the Temeraire for many years.
+
+Bullfinch declined to accept the responsibility of recommending the
+Temeraire, but on the whole was rather sanguine about it.  He ‘seemed to
+remember,’ Bullfinch said, that he had dined well there.  A plain dinner,
+but good.  Certainly not like a Parisian dinner (here Bullfinch obviously
+became the prey of want of confidence), but of its kind very fair.
+
+I appeal to Bullfinch’s intimate knowledge of my wants and ways to decide
+whether I was usually ready to be pleased with any dinner, or—for the
+matter of that—with anything that was fair of its kind and really what it
+claimed to be.  Bullfinch doing me the honour to respond in the
+affirmative, I agreed to ship myself as an able trencherman on board the
+Temeraire.
+
+‘Now, our plan shall be this,’ says Bullfinch, with his forefinger at his
+nose.  ‘As soon as we get to Namelesston, we’ll drive straight to the
+Temeraire, and order a little dinner in an hour.  And as we shall not
+have more than enough time in which to dispose of it comfortably, what do
+you say to giving the house the best opportunities of serving it hot and
+quickly by dining in the coffee-room?’
+
+What I had to say was, Certainly.  Bullfinch (who is by nature of a
+hopeful constitution) then began to babble of green geese.  But I checked
+him in that Falstaffian vein, urging considerations of time and cookery.
+
+In due sequence of events we drove up to the Temeraire, and alighted.  A
+youth in livery received us on the door-step.  ‘Looks well,’ said
+Bullfinch confidentially.  And then aloud, ‘Coffee-room!’
+
+The youth in livery (now perceived to be mouldy) conducted us to the
+desired haven, and was enjoined by Bullfinch to send the waiter at once,
+as we wished to order a little dinner in an hour.  Then Bullfinch and I
+waited for the waiter, until, the waiter continuing to wait in some
+unknown and invisible sphere of action, we rang for the waiter; which
+ring produced the waiter, who announced himself as not the waiter who
+ought to wait upon us, and who didn’t wait a moment longer.
+
+So Bullfinch approached the coffee-room door, and melodiously pitching
+his voice into a bar where two young ladies were keeping the books of the
+Temeraire, apologetically explained that we wished to order a little
+dinner in an hour, and that we were debarred from the execution of our
+inoffensive purpose by consignment to solitude.
+
+Hereupon one of the young ladies ran a bell, which reproduced—at the bar
+this time—the waiter who was not the waiter who ought to wait upon us;
+that extraordinary man, whose life seemed consumed in waiting upon people
+to say that he wouldn’t wait upon them, repeated his former protest with
+great indignation, and retired.
+
+Bullfinch, with a fallen countenance, was about to say to me, ‘This won’t
+do,’ when the waiter who ought to wait upon us left off keeping us
+waiting at last.  ‘Waiter,’ said Bullfinch piteously, ‘we have been a
+long time waiting.’  The waiter who ought to wait upon us laid the blame
+upon the waiter who ought not to wait upon us, and said it was all that
+waiter’s fault.
+
+‘We wish,’ said Bullfinch, much depressed, ‘to order a little dinner in
+an hour.  What can we have?’
+
+‘What would you like to have, gentlemen?’
+
+Bullfinch, with extreme mournfulness of speech and action, and with a
+forlorn old fly-blown bill of fare in his hand which the waiter had given
+him, and which was a sort of general manuscript index to any cookery-book
+you please, moved the previous question.
+
+We could have mock-turtle soup, a sole, curry, and roast duck.  Agreed.
+At this table by this window.  Punctually in an hour.
+
+I had been feigning to look out of this window; but I had been taking
+note of the crumbs on all the tables, the dirty table-cloths, the stuffy,
+soupy, airless atmosphere, the stale leavings everywhere about, the deep
+gloom of the waiter who ought to wait upon us, and the stomach-ache with
+which a lonely traveller at a distant table in a corner was too evidently
+afflicted.  I now pointed out to Bullfinch the alarming circumstance that
+this traveller had _dined_.  We hurriedly debated whether, without
+infringement of good breeding, we could ask him to disclose if he had
+partaken of mock-turtle, sole, curry, or roast duck?  We decided that the
+thing could not be politely done, and we had set our own stomachs on a
+cast, and they must stand the hazard of the die.
+
+I hold phrenology, within certain limits, to be true; I am much of the
+same mind as to the subtler expressions of the hand; I hold physiognomy
+to be infallible; though all these sciences demand rare qualities in the
+student.  But I also hold that there is no more certain index to personal
+character than the condition of a set of casters is to the character of
+any hotel.  Knowing, and having often tested this theory of mine,
+Bullfinch resigned himself to the worst, when, laying aside any remaining
+veil of disguise, I held up before him in succession the cloudy oil and
+furry vinegar, the clogged cayenne, the dirty salt, the obscene dregs of
+soy, and the anchovy sauce in a flannel waistcoat of decomposition.
+
+We went out to transact our business.  So inspiriting was the relief of
+passing into the clean and windy streets of Namelesston from the heavy
+and vapid closeness of the coffee-room of the Temeraire, that hope began
+to revive within us.  We began to consider that perhaps the lonely
+traveller had taken physic, or done something injudicious to bring his
+complaint on.  Bullfinch remarked that he thought the waiter who ought to
+wait upon us had brightened a little when suggesting curry; and although
+I knew him to have been at that moment the express image of despair, I
+allowed myself to become elevated in spirits.  As we walked by the
+softly-lapping sea, all the notabilities of Namelesston, who are for ever
+going up and down with the changelessness of the tides, passed to and fro
+in procession.  Pretty girls on horseback, and with detested
+riding-masters; pretty girls on foot; mature ladies in hats,—spectacled,
+strong-minded, and glaring at the opposite or weaker sex.  The Stock
+Exchange was strongly represented, Jerusalem was strongly represented,
+the bores of the prosier London clubs were strongly represented.
+Fortune-hunters of all denominations were there, from hirsute insolvency,
+in a curricle, to closely-buttoned swindlery in doubtful boots, on the
+sharp look-out for any likely young gentleman disposed to play a game at
+billiards round the corner.  Masters of languages, their lessons finished
+for the day, were going to their homes out of sight of the sea;
+mistresses of accomplishments, carrying small portfolios, likewise
+tripped homeward; pairs of scholastic pupils, two and two, went languidly
+along the beach, surveying the face of the waters as if waiting for some
+Ark to come and take them off.  Spectres of the George the Fourth days
+flitted unsteadily among the crowd, bearing the outward semblance of
+ancient dandies, of every one of whom it might be said, not that he had
+one leg in the grave, or both legs, but that he was steeped in grave to
+the summit of his high shirt-collar, and had nothing real about him but
+his bones.  Alone stationary in the midst of all the movements, the
+Namelesston boatmen leaned against the railings and yawned, and looked
+out to sea, or looked at the moored fishing-boats and at nothing.  Such
+is the unchanging manner of life with this nursery of our hardy seamen;
+and very dry nurses they are, and always wanting something to drink.  The
+only two nautical personages detached from the railing were the two
+fortunate possessors of the celebrated monstrous unknown barking-fish,
+just caught (frequently just caught off Namelesston), who carried him
+about in a hamper, and pressed the scientific to look in at the lid.
+
+The sands of the hour had all run out when we got back to the Temeraire.
+Says Bullfinch, then, to the youth in livery, with boldness, ‘Lavatory!’
+
+When we arrived at the family vault with a skylight, which the youth in
+livery presented as the institution sought, we had already whisked off
+our cravats and coats; but finding ourselves in the presence of an evil
+smell, and no linen but two crumpled towels newly damp from the
+countenances of two somebody elses, we put on our cravats and coats
+again, and fled unwashed to the coffee-room.
+
+There the waiter who ought to wait upon us had set forth our knives and
+forks and glasses, on the cloth whose dirty acquaintance we had already
+had the pleasure of making, and which we were pleased to recognise by the
+familiar expression of its stains.  And now there occurred the truly
+surprising phenomenon, that the waiter who ought not to wait upon us
+swooped down upon us, clutched our loaf of bread, and vanished with the
+same.
+
+Bullfinch, with distracted eyes, was following this unaccountable figure
+‘out at the portal,’ like the ghost in Hamlet, when the waiter who ought
+to wait upon us jostled against it, carrying a tureen.
+
+‘Waiter!’ said a severe diner, lately finished, perusing his bill
+fiercely through his eye-glass.
+
+The waiter put down our tureen on a remote side-table, and went to see
+what was amiss in this new direction.
+
+‘This is not right, you know, waiter.  Look here! here’s yesterday’s
+sherry, one and eightpence, and here we are again, two shillings.  And
+what does sixpence mean?’
+
+So far from knowing what sixpence meant, the waiter protested that he
+didn’t know what anything meant.  He wiped the perspiration from his
+clammy brow, and said it was impossible to do it,—not particularising
+what,—and the kitchen was so far off.
+
+‘Take the bill to the bar, and get it altered,’ said Mr. Indignation
+Cocker, so to call him.
+
+The waiter took it, looked intensely at it, didn’t seem to like the idea
+of taking it to the bar, and submitted, as a new light upon the case,
+that perhaps sixpence meant sixpence.
+
+‘I tell you again,’ said Mr. Indignation Cocker, ‘here’s yesterday’s
+sherry—can’t you see it?—one and eightpence, and here we are again, two
+shillings.  What do you make of one and eightpence and two shillings?’
+
+Totally unable to make anything of one and eightpence and two shillings,
+the waiter went out to try if anybody else could; merely casting a
+helpless backward glance at Bullfinch, in acknowledgement of his pathetic
+entreaties for our soup-tureen.  After a pause, during which Mr.
+Indignation Cocker read a newspaper and coughed defiant coughs, Bullfinch
+arose to get the tureen, when the waiter reappeared and brought
+it,—dropping Mr. Indignation Cocker’s altered bill on Mr. Indignation
+Cocker’s table as he came along.
+
+‘It’s quite impossible to do it, gentlemen,’ murmured the waiter; ‘and
+the kitchen is so far off.’
+
+‘Well, you don’t keep the house; it’s not your fault, we suppose.  Bring
+some sherry.’
+
+‘Waiter!’ from Mr. Indignation Cocker, with a new and burning sense of
+injury upon him.
+
+The waiter, arrested on his way to our sherry, stopped short, and came
+back to see what was wrong now.
+
+‘Will you look here?  This is worse than before.  _Do_ you understand?
+Here’s yesterday’s sherry, one and eightpence, and here we are again two
+shillings.  And what the devil does ninepence mean?’
+
+This new portent utterly confounded the waiter.  He wrung his napkin, and
+mutely appealed to the ceiling.
+
+‘Waiter, fetch that sherry,’ says Bullfinch, in open wrath and revolt.
+
+‘I want to know,’ persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker, ‘the meaning of
+ninepence.  I want to know the meaning of sherry one and eightpence
+yesterday, and of here we are again two shillings.  Send somebody.’
+
+The distracted waiter got out of the room on pretext of sending somebody,
+and by that means got our wine.  But the instant he appeared with our
+decanter, Mr. Indignation Cocker descended on him again.
+
+‘Waiter!’
+
+‘You will now have the goodness to attend to our dinner, waiter,’ said
+Bullfinch, sternly.
+
+‘I am very sorry, but it’s quite impossible to do it, gentlemen,’ pleaded
+the waiter; ‘and the kitchen—’
+
+‘Waiter!’ said Mr. Indignation Cocker.
+
+‘—Is,’ resumed the waiter, ‘so far off, that—’
+
+‘Waiter!’ persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker, ‘send somebody.’
+
+We were not without our fears that the waiter rushed out to hang himself;
+and we were much relieved by his fetching somebody,—in graceful, flowing
+skirts and with a waist,—who very soon settled Mr. Indignation Cocker’s
+business.
+
+‘Oh!’ said Mr. Cocker, with his fire surprisingly quenched by this
+apparition; ‘I wished to ask about this bill of mine, because it appears
+to me that there’s a little mistake here.  Let me show you.  Here’s
+yesterday’s sherry one and eightpence, and here we are again two
+shillings.  And how do you explain ninepence?’
+
+However it was explained, in tones too soft to be overheard.  Mr. Cocker
+was heard to say nothing more than ‘Ah-h-h!  Indeed; thank you!  Yes,’
+and shortly afterwards went out, a milder man.
+
+The lonely traveller with the stomach-ache had all this time suffered
+severely, drawing up a leg now and then, and sipping hot brandy-and-water
+with grated ginger in it.  When we tasted our (very) mock-turtle soup,
+and were instantly seized with symptoms of some disorder simulating
+apoplexy, and occasioned by the surcharge of nose and brain with lukewarm
+dish-water holding in solution sour flour, poisonous condiments, and
+(say) seventy-five per cent. of miscellaneous kitchen stuff rolled into
+balls, we were inclined to trace his disorder to that source.  On the
+other hand, there was a silent anguish upon him too strongly resembling
+the results established within ourselves by the sherry, to be discarded
+from alarmed consideration.  Again, we observed him, with terror, to be
+much overcome by our sole’s being aired in a temporary retreat close to
+him, while the waiter went out (as we conceived) to see his friends.  And
+when the curry made its appearance he suddenly retired in great disorder.
+
+In fine, for the uneatable part of this little dinner (as
+contradistinguished from the undrinkable) we paid only seven shillings
+and sixpence each.  And Bullfinch and I agreed unanimously, that no such
+ill-served, ill-appointed, ill-cooked, nasty little dinner could be got
+for the money anywhere else under the sun.  With that comfort to our
+backs, we turned them on the dear old Temeraire, the charging Temeraire,
+and resolved (in the Scotch dialect) to gang nae mair to the flabby
+Temeraire.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+MR. BARLOW
+
+
+A GREAT reader of good fiction at an unusually early age, it seems to me
+as though I had been born under the superintendence of the estimable but
+terrific gentleman whose name stands at the head of my present
+reflections.  The instructive monomaniac, Mr. Barlow, will be remembered
+as the tutor of Master Harry Sandford and Master Tommy Merton.  He knew
+everything, and didactically improved all sorts of occasions, from the
+consumption of a plate of cherries to the contemplation of a starlight
+night.  What youth came to without Mr. Barlow was displayed in the
+history of Sandford and Merton, by the example of a certain awful Master
+Mash.  This young wretch wore buckles and powder, conducted himself with
+insupportable levity at the theatre, had no idea of facing a mad bull
+single-handed (in which I think him less reprehensible, as remotely
+reflecting my own character), and was a frightful instance of the
+enervating effects of luxury upon the human race.
+
+Strange destiny on the part of Mr. Barlow, to go down to posterity as
+childhood’s experience of a bore!  Immortal Mr. Barlow, boring his way
+through the verdant freshness of ages!
+
+My personal indictment against Mr. Barlow is one of many counts.  I will
+proceed to set forth a few of the injuries he has done me.
+
+In the first place, he never made or took a joke.  This insensibility on
+Mr. Barlow’s part not only cast its own gloom over my boyhood, but
+blighted even the sixpenny jest-books of the time; for, groaning under a
+moral spell constraining me to refer all things to Mr. Barlow, I could
+not choose but ask myself in a whisper when tickled by a printed jest,
+‘What would _he_ think of it?  What would _he_ see in it?’  The point of
+the jest immediately became a sting, and stung my conscience.  For my
+mind’s eye saw him stolid, frigid, perchance taking from its shelf some
+dreary Greek book, and translating at full length what some dismal sage
+said (and touched up afterwards, perhaps, for publication), when he
+banished some unlucky joker from Athens.
+
+The incompatibility of Mr. Barlow with all other portions of my young
+life but himself, the adamantine inadaptability of the man to my
+favourite fancies and amusements, is the thing for which I hate him most.
+What right had he to bore his way into my Arabian Nights?  Yet he did.
+He was always hinting doubts of the veracity of Sindbad the Sailor.  If
+he could have got hold of the Wonderful Lamp, I knew he would have
+trimmed it and lighted it, and delivered a lecture over it on the
+qualities of sperm-oil, with a glance at the whale fisheries.  He would
+so soon have found out—on mechanical principles—the peg in the neck of
+the Enchanted Horse, and would have turned it the right way in so
+workmanlike a manner, that the horse could never have got any height into
+the air, and the story couldn’t have been.  He would have proved, by map
+and compass, that there was no such kingdom as the delightful kingdom of
+Casgar, on the frontiers of Tartary.  He would have caused that
+hypocritical young prig Harry to make an experiment,—with the aid of a
+temporary building in the garden and a dummy,—demonstrating that you
+couldn’t let a choked hunchback down an Eastern chimney with a cord, and
+leave him upright on the hearth to terrify the sultan’s purveyor.
+
+The golden sounds of the overture to the first metropolitan pantomime, I
+remember, were alloyed by Mr. Barlow.  Click click, ting ting, bang bang,
+weedle weedle weedle, bang!  I recall the chilling air that ran across my
+frame and cooled my hot delight, as the thought occurred to me, ‘This
+would never do for Mr. Barlow!’  After the curtain drew up, dreadful
+doubts of Mr. Barlow’s considering the costumes of the Nymphs of the
+Nebula as being sufficiently opaque, obtruded themselves on my enjoyment.
+In the clown I perceived two persons; one a fascinating unaccountable
+creature of a hectic complexion, joyous in spirits though feeble in
+intellect, with flashes of brilliancy; the other a pupil for Mr. Barlow.
+I thought how Mr. Barlow would secretly rise early in the morning, and
+butter the pavement for _him_, and, when he had brought him down, would
+look severely out of his study window and ask _him_ how he enjoyed the
+fun.
+
+I thought how Mr. Barlow would heat all the pokers in the house, and
+singe him with the whole collection, to bring him better acquainted with
+the properties of incandescent iron, on which he (Barlow) would fully
+expatiate.  I pictured Mr. Barlow’s instituting a comparison between the
+clown’s conduct at his studies,—drinking up the ink, licking his
+copy-book, and using his head for blotting-paper,—and that of the already
+mentioned young prig of prigs, Harry, sitting at the Barlovian feet,
+sneakingly pretending to be in a rapture of youthful knowledge.  I
+thought how soon Mr. Barlow would smooth the clown’s hair down, instead
+of letting it stand erect in three tall tufts; and how, after a couple of
+years or so with Mr. Barlow, he would keep his legs close together when
+he walked, and would take his hands out of his big loose pockets, and
+wouldn’t have a jump left in him.
+
+That I am particularly ignorant what most things in the universe are made
+of, and how they are made, is another of my charges against Mr. Barlow.
+With the dread upon me of developing into a Harry, and with a further
+dread upon me of being Barlowed if I made inquiries, by bringing down
+upon myself a cold shower-bath of explanations and experiments, I forbore
+enlightenment in my youth, and became, as they say in melodramas, ‘the
+wreck you now behold.’  That I consorted with idlers and dunces is
+another of the melancholy facts for which I hold Mr. Barlow responsible.
+That pragmatical prig, Harry, became so detestable in my sight, that, he
+being reported studious in the South, I would have fled idle to the
+extremest North.  Better to learn misconduct from a Master Mash than
+science and statistics from a Sandford!  So I took the path, which, but
+for Mr. Barlow, I might never have trodden.  Thought I, with a shudder,
+‘Mr. Barlow is a bore, with an immense constructive power of making
+bores.  His prize specimen is a bore.  He seeks to make a bore of me.
+That knowledge is power I am not prepared to gainsay; but, with Mr.
+Barlow, knowledge is power to bore.’  Therefore I took refuge in the
+caves of ignorance, wherein I have resided ever since, and which are
+still my private address.
+
+But the weightiest charge of all my charges against Mr. Barlow is, that
+he still walks the earth in various disguises, seeking to make a Tommy of
+me, even in my maturity.  Irrepressible, instructive monomaniac, Mr.
+Barlow fills my life with pitfalls, and lies hiding at the bottom to
+burst out upon me when I least expect him.
+
+A few of these dismal experiences of mine shall suffice.
+
+Knowing Mr. Barlow to have invested largely in the moving panorama trade,
+and having on various occasions identified him in the dark with a long
+wand in his hand, holding forth in his old way (made more appalling in
+this connection by his sometimes cracking a piece of Mr. Carlyle’s own
+Dead-Sea fruit in mistake for a joke), I systematically shun pictorial
+entertainment on rollers.  Similarly, I should demand responsible bail
+and guaranty against the appearance of Mr. Barlow, before committing
+myself to attendance at any assemblage of my fellow-creatures where a
+bottle of water and a note-book were conspicuous objects; for in either
+of those associations, I should expressly expect him.  But such is the
+designing nature of the man, that he steals in where no reasoning
+precaution or provision could expect him.  As in the following case:—
+
+Adjoining the Caves of Ignorance is a country town.  In this country town
+the Mississippi Momuses, nine in number, were announced to appear in the
+town-hall, for the general delectation, this last Christmas week.
+Knowing Mr. Barlow to be unconnected with the Mississippi, though holding
+republican opinions, and deeming myself secure, I took a stall.  My
+object was to hear and see the Mississippi Momuses in what the bills
+described as their ‘National ballads, plantation break-downs, nigger
+part-songs, choice conundrums, sparkling repartees, &c.’  I found the
+nine dressed alike, in the black coat and trousers, white waistcoat, very
+large shirt-front, very large shirt-collar, and very large white tie and
+wristbands, which constitute the dress of the mass of the African race,
+and which has been observed by travellers to prevail over a vast number
+of degrees of latitude.  All the nine rolled their eyes exceedingly, and
+had very red lips.  At the extremities of the curve they formed, seated
+in their chairs, were the performers on the tambourine and bones.  The
+centre Momus, a black of melancholy aspect (who inspired me with a vague
+uneasiness for which I could not then account), performed on a
+Mississippi instrument closely resembling what was once called in this
+island a hurdy-gurdy.  The Momuses on either side of him had each another
+instrument peculiar to the Father of Waters, which may be likened to a
+stringed weather-glass held upside down.  There were likewise a little
+flute and a violin.  All went well for awhile, and we had had several
+sparkling repartees exchanged between the performers on the tambourine
+and bones, when the black of melancholy aspect, turning to the latter,
+and addressing him in a deep and improving voice as ‘Bones, sir,’
+delivered certain grave remarks to him concerning the juveniles present,
+and the season of the year; whereon I perceived that I was in the
+presence of Mr. Barlow—corked!
+
+Another night—and this was in London—I attended the representation of a
+little comedy.  As the characters were lifelike (and consequently not
+improving), and as they went upon their several ways and designs without
+personally addressing themselves to me, I felt rather confident of coming
+through it without being regarded as Tommy, the more so, as we were
+clearly getting close to the end.  But I deceived myself.  All of a
+sudden, Apropos of nothing, everybody concerned came to a check and halt,
+advanced to the foot-lights in a general rally to take dead aim at me,
+and brought me down with a moral homily, in which I detected the dread
+hand of Barlow.
+
+Nay, so intricate and subtle are the toils of this hunter, that on the
+very next night after that, I was again entrapped, where no vestige of a
+spring could have been apprehended by the timidest.  It was a burlesque
+that I saw performed; an uncompromising burlesque, where everybody
+concerned, but especially the ladies, carried on at a very considerable
+rate indeed.  Most prominent and active among the corps of performers was
+what I took to be (and she really gave me very fair opportunities of
+coming to a right conclusion) a young lady of a pretty figure.  She was
+dressed as a picturesque young gentleman, whose pantaloons had been cut
+off in their infancy; and she had very neat knees and very neat satin
+boots.  Immediately after singing a slang song and dancing a slang dance,
+this engaging figure approached the fatal lamps, and, bending over them,
+delivered in a thrilling voice a random eulogium on, and exhortation to
+pursue, the virtues.  ‘Great Heaven!’ was my exclamation; ‘Barlow!’
+
+There is still another aspect in which Mr. Barlow perpetually insists on
+my sustaining the character of Tommy, which is more unendurable yet, on
+account of its extreme aggressiveness.  For the purposes of a review or
+newspaper, he will get up an abstruse subject with definite pains, will
+Barlow, utterly regardless of the price of midnight oil, and indeed of
+everything else, save cramming himself to the eyes.
+
+But mark.  When Mr. Barlow blows his information off, he is not contented
+with having rammed it home, and discharged it upon me, Tommy, his target,
+but he pretends that he was always in possession of it, and made nothing
+of it,—that he imbibed it with mother’s milk,—and that I, the wretched
+Tommy, am most abjectly behindhand in not having done the same.  I ask,
+why is Tommy to be always the foil of Mr. Barlow to this extent?  What
+Mr. Barlow had not the slightest notion of himself, a week ago, it surely
+cannot be any very heavy backsliding in me not to have at my fingers’
+ends to-day!  And yet Mr. Barlow systematically carries it over me with a
+high hand, and will tauntingly ask me, in his articles, whether it is
+possible that I am not aware that every school-boy knows that the
+fourteenth turning on the left in the steppes of Russia will conduct to
+such and such a wandering tribe? with other disparaging questions of like
+nature.  So, when Mr. Barlow addresses a letter to any journal as a
+volunteer correspondent (which I frequently find him doing), he will
+previously have gotten somebody to tell him some tremendous technicality,
+and will write in the coolest manner, ‘Now, sir, I may assume that every
+reader of your columns, possessing average information and intelligence,
+knows as well as I do that’—say that the draught from the touch-hole of a
+cannon of such a calibre bears such a proportion in the nicest fractions
+to the draught from the muzzle; or some equally familiar little fact.
+But whatever it is, be certain that it always tends to the exaltation of
+Mr. Barlow, and the depression of his enforced and enslaved pupil.
+
+Mr. Barlow’s knowledge of my own pursuits I find to be so profound, that
+my own knowledge of them becomes as nothing.  Mr. Barlow (disguised and
+bearing a feigned name, but detected by me) has occasionally taught me,
+in a sonorous voice, from end to end of a long dinner-table, trifles that
+I took the liberty of teaching him five-and-twenty years ago.  My closing
+article of impeachment against Mr. Barlow is, that he goes out to
+breakfast, goes out to dinner, goes out everywhere, high and low, and
+that he WILL preach to me, and that I CAN’T get rid of him.  He makes me
+a Promethean Tommy, bound; and he is the vulture that gorges itself upon
+the liver of my uninstructed mind.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+ON AN AMATEUR BEAT
+
+
+IT is one of my fancies, that even my idlest walk must always have its
+appointed destination.  I set myself a task before I leave my lodging in
+Covent-garden on a street expedition, and should no more think of
+altering my route by the way, or turning back and leaving a part of it
+unachieved, than I should think of fraudulently violating an agreement
+entered into with somebody else.  The other day, finding myself under
+this kind of obligation to proceed to Limehouse, I started punctually at
+noon, in compliance with the terms of the contract with myself to which
+my good faith was pledged.
+
+On such an occasion, it is my habit to regard my walk as my beat, and
+myself as a higher sort of police-constable doing duty on the same.
+There is many a ruffian in the streets whom I mentally collar and clear
+out of them, who would see mighty little of London, I can tell him, if I
+could deal with him physically.
+
+Issuing forth upon this very beat, and following with my eyes three
+hulking garrotters on their way home,—which home I could confidently
+swear to be within so many yards of Drury-lane, in such a narrow and
+restricted direction (though they live in their lodging quite as
+undisturbed as I in mine),—I went on duty with a consideration which I
+respectfully offer to the new Chief Commissioner,—in whom I thoroughly
+confide as a tried and efficient public servant.  How often (thought I)
+have I been forced to swallow, in police-reports, the intolerable
+stereotyped pill of nonsense, how that the police-constable informed the
+worthy magistrate how that the associates of the prisoner did, at that
+present speaking, dwell in a street or court which no man dared go down,
+and how that the worthy magistrate had heard of the dark reputation of
+such street or court, and how that our readers would doubtless remember
+that it was always the same street or court which was thus edifyingly
+discoursed about, say once a fortnight.
+
+Now, suppose that a Chief Commissioner sent round a circular to every
+division of police employed in London, requiring instantly the names in
+all districts of all such much-puffed streets or courts which no man
+durst go down; and suppose that in such circular he gave plain warning,
+‘If those places really exist, they are a proof of police inefficiency
+which I mean to punish; and if they do not exist, but are a conventional
+fiction, then they are a proof of lazy tacit police connivance with
+professional crime, which I also mean to punish’—what then?  Fictions or
+realities, could they survive the touchstone of this atom of common
+sense?  To tell us in open court, until it has become as trite a feature
+of news as the great gooseberry, that a costly police-system such as was
+never before heard of, has left in London, in the days of steam and gas
+and photographs of thieves and electric telegraphs, the sanctuaries and
+stews of the Stuarts!  Why, a parity of practice, in all departments,
+would bring back the Plague in two summers, and the Druids in a century!
+
+Walking faster under my share of this public injury, I overturned a
+wretched little creature, who, clutching at the rags of a pair of
+trousers with one of its claws, and at its ragged hair with the other,
+pattered with bare feet over the muddy stones.  I stopped to raise and
+succour this poor weeping wretch, and fifty like it, but of both sexes,
+were about me in a moment, begging, tumbling, fighting, clamouring,
+yelling, shivering in their nakedness and hunger.  The piece of money I
+had put into the claw of the child I had over-turned was clawed out of
+it, and was again clawed out of that wolfish gripe, and again out of
+that, and soon I had no notion in what part of the obscene scuffle in the
+mud, of rags and legs and arms and dirt, the money might be.  In raising
+the child, I had drawn it aside out of the main thoroughfare, and this
+took place among some wooden hoardings and barriers and ruins of
+demolished buildings, hard by Temple Bar.
+
+Unexpectedly, from among them emerged a genuine police-constable, before
+whom the dreadful brood dispersed in various directions, he making feints
+and darts in this direction and in that, and catching nothing.  When all
+were frightened away, he took off his hat, pulled out a handkerchief from
+it, wiped his heated brow, and restored the handkerchief and hat to their
+places, with the air of a man who had discharged a great moral duty,—as
+indeed he had, in doing what was set down for him.  I looked at him, and
+I looked about at the disorderly traces in the mud, and I thought of the
+drops of rain and the footprints of an extinct creature, hoary ages upon
+ages old, that geologists have identified on the face of a cliff; and
+this speculation came over me: If this mud could petrify at this moment,
+and could lie concealed here for ten thousand years, I wonder whether the
+race of men then to be our successors on the earth could, from these or
+any marks, by the utmost force of the human intellect, unassisted by
+tradition, deduce such an astounding inference as the existence of a
+polished state of society that bore with the public savagery of neglected
+children in the streets of its capital city, and was proud of its power
+by sea and land, and never used its power to seize and save them!
+
+After this, when I came to the Old Bailey and glanced up it towards
+Newgate, I found that the prison had an inconsistent look.  There seemed
+to be some unlucky inconsistency in the atmosphere that day; for though
+the proportions of St. Paul’s Cathedral are very beautiful, it had an air
+of being somewhat out of drawing, in my eyes.  I felt as though the cross
+were too high up, and perched upon the intervening golden ball too far
+away.
+
+Facing eastward, I left behind me Smithfield and Old Bailey,—fire and
+faggot, condemned hold, public hanging, whipping through the city at the
+cart-tail, pillory, branding-iron, and other beautiful ancestral
+landmarks, which rude hands have rooted up, without bringing the stars
+quite down upon us as yet,—and went my way upon my beat, noting how oddly
+characteristic neighbourhoods are divided from one another, hereabout, as
+though by an invisible line across the way.  Here shall cease the bankers
+and the money-changers; here shall begin the shipping interest and the
+nautical-instrument shops; here shall follow a scarcely perceptible
+flavouring of groceries and drugs; here shall come a strong infusion of
+butchers; now, small hosiers shall be in the ascendant; henceforth,
+everything exposed for sale shall have its ticketed price attached.  All
+this as if specially ordered and appointed.
+
+A single stride at Houndsditch Church, no wider than sufficed to cross
+the kennel at the bottom of the Canon-gate, which the debtors in Holyrood
+sanctuary were wont to relieve their minds by skipping over, as Scott
+relates, and standing in delightful daring of catchpoles on the free
+side,—a single stride, and everything is entirely changed in grain and
+character.  West of the stride, a table, or a chest of drawers on sale,
+shall be of mahogany and French-polished; east of the stride, it shall be
+of deal, smeared with a cheap counterfeit resembling lip-salve.  West of
+the stride, a penny loaf or bun shall be compact and self-contained; east
+of the stride, it shall be of a sprawling and splay-footed character, as
+seeking to make more of itself for the money.  My beat lying round by
+Whitechapel Church, and the adjacent sugar-refineries,—great buildings,
+tier upon tier, that have the appearance of being nearly related to the
+dock-warehouses at Liverpool,—I turned off to my right, and, passing
+round the awkward corner on my left, came suddenly on an apparition
+familiar to London streets afar off.
+
+What London peripatetic of these times has not seen the woman who has
+fallen forward, double, through some affection of the spine, and whose
+head has of late taken a turn to one side, so that it now droops over the
+back of one of her arms at about the wrist?  Who does not know her staff,
+and her shawl, and her basket, as she gropes her way along, capable of
+seeing nothing but the pavement, never begging, never stopping, for ever
+going somewhere on no business?  How does she live, whence does she come,
+whither does she go, and why?  I mind the time when her yellow arms were
+naught but bone and parchment.  Slight changes steal over her; for there
+is a shadowy suggestion of human skin on them now.  The Strand may be
+taken as the central point about which she revolves in a half-mile orbit.
+How comes she so far east as this?  And coming back too!  Having been how
+much farther?  She is a rare spectacle in this neighbourhood.  I receive
+intelligent information to this effect from a dog—a lop-sided mongrel
+with a foolish tail, plodding along with his tail up, and his ears
+pricked, and displaying an amiable interest in the ways of his
+fellow-men,—if I may be allowed the expression.  After pausing at a
+pork-shop, he is jogging eastward like myself, with a benevolent
+countenance and a watery mouth, as though musing on the many excellences
+of pork, when he beholds this doubled-up bundle approaching.  He is not
+so much astonished at the bundle (though amazed by that), as the
+circumstance that it has within itself the means of locomotion.  He
+stops, pricks his ears higher, makes a slight point, stares, utters a
+short, low growl, and glistens at the nose,—as I conceive with terror.
+The bundle continuing to approach, he barks, turns tail, and is about to
+fly, when, arguing with himself that flight is not becoming in a dog, he
+turns, and once more faces the advancing heap of clothes.  After much
+hesitation, it occurs to him that there may be a face in it somewhere.
+Desperately resolving to undertake the adventure, and pursue the inquiry,
+he goes slowly up to the bundle, goes slowly round it, and coming at
+length upon the human countenance down there where never human
+countenance should be, gives a yelp of horror, and flies for the East
+India Docks.
+
+Being now in the Commercial Road district of my beat, and bethinking
+myself that Stepney Station is near, I quicken my pace that I may turn
+out of the road at that point, and see how my small eastern star is
+shining.
+
+The Children’s Hospital, to which I gave that name, is in full force.
+All its beds are occupied.  There is a new face on the bed where my
+pretty baby lay, and that sweet little child is now at rest for ever.
+Much kind sympathy has been here since my former visit, and it is good to
+see the walls profusely garnished with dolls.  I wonder what Poodles may
+think of them, as they stretch out their arms above the beds, and stare,
+and display their splendid dresses.  Poodles has a greater interest in
+the patients.  I find him making the round of the beds, like a
+house-surgeon, attended by another dog,—a friend,—who appears to trot
+about with him in the character of his pupil dresser.  Poodles is anxious
+to make me known to a pretty little girl looking wonderfully healthy, who
+had had a leg taken off for cancer of the knee.  A difficult operation,
+Poodles intimates, wagging his tail on the counterpane, but perfectly
+successful, as you see, dear sir!  The patient, patting Poodles, adds
+with a smile, ‘The leg was so much trouble to me, that I am glad it’s
+gone.’  I never saw anything in doggery finer than the deportment of
+Poodles, when another little girl opens her mouth to show a peculiar
+enlargement of the tongue.  Poodles (at that time on a table, to be on a
+level with the occasion) looks at the tongue (with his own
+sympathetically out) so very gravely and knowingly, that I feel inclined
+to put my hand in my waistcoat-pocket, and give him a guinea, wrapped in
+paper.
+
+On my beat again, and close to Limehouse Church, its termination, I found
+myself near to certain ‘Lead-Mills.’  Struck by the name, which was fresh
+in my memory, and finding, on inquiry, that these same lead-mills were
+identified with those same lead-mills of which I made mention when I
+first visited the East London Children’s Hospital and its neighbourhood
+as Uncommercial Traveller, I resolved to have a look at them.
+
+Received by two very intelligent gentlemen, brothers, and partners with
+their father in the concern, and who testified every desire to show their
+works to me freely, I went over the lead-mills.  The purport of such
+works is the conversion of pig-lead into white-lead.  This conversion is
+brought about by the slow and gradual effecting of certain successive
+chemical changes in the lead itself.  The processes are picturesque and
+interesting,—the most so, being the burying of the lead, at a certain
+stage of preparation, in pots, each pot containing a certain quantity of
+acid besides, and all the pots being buried in vast numbers, in layers,
+under tan, for some ten weeks.
+
+Hopping up ladders, and across planks, and on elevated perches, until I
+was uncertain whether to liken myself to a bird or a brick-layer, I
+became conscious of standing on nothing particular, looking down into one
+of a series of large cocklofts, with the outer day peeping in through the
+chinks in the tiled roof above.  A number of women were ascending to, and
+descending from, this cockloft, each carrying on the upward journey a pot
+of prepared lead and acid, for deposition under the smoking tan.  When
+one layer of pots was completely filled, it was carefully covered in with
+planks, and those were carefully covered with tan again, and then another
+layer of pots was begun above; sufficient means of ventilation being
+preserved through wooden tubes.  Going down into the cockloft then
+filling, I found the heat of the tan to be surprisingly great, and also
+the odour of the lead and acid to be not absolutely exquisite, though I
+believe not noxious at that stage.  In other cocklofts, where the pots
+were being exhumed, the heat of the steaming tan was much greater, and
+the smell was penetrating and peculiar.  There were cocklofts in all
+stages; full and empty, half filled and half emptied; strong, active
+women were clambering about them busily; and the whole thing had rather
+the air of the upper part of the house of some immensely rich old Turk,
+whose faithful seraglio were hiding his money because the sultan or the
+pasha was coming.
+
+As is the case with most pulps or pigments, so in the instance of this
+white-lead, processes of stirring, separating, washing, grinding,
+rolling, and pressing succeed.  Some of these are unquestionably inimical
+to health, the danger arising from inhalation of particles of lead, or
+from contact between the lead and the touch, or both.  Against these
+dangers, I found good respirators provided (simply made of flannel and
+muslin, so as to be inexpensively renewed, and in some instances washed
+with scented soap), and gauntlet gloves, and loose gowns.  Everywhere,
+there was as much fresh air as windows, well placed and opened, could
+possibly admit.  And it was explained that the precaution of frequently
+changing the women employed in the worst parts of the work (a precaution
+originating in their own experience or apprehension of its ill effects)
+was found salutary.  They had a mysterious and singular appearance, with
+the mouth and nose covered, and the loose gown on, and yet bore out the
+simile of the old Turk and the seraglio all the better for the disguise.
+
+At last this vexed white-lead, having been buried and resuscitated, and
+heated and cooled and stirred, and separated and washed and ground, and
+rolled and pressed, is subjected to the action of intense fiery heat.  A
+row of women, dressed as above described, stood, let us say, in a large
+stone bakehouse, passing on the baking-dishes as they were given out by
+the cooks, from hand to hand, into the ovens.  The oven, or stove, cold
+as yet, looked as high as an ordinary house, and was full of men and
+women on temporary footholds, briskly passing up and stowing away the
+dishes.  The door of another oven, or stove, about to be cooled and
+emptied, was opened from above, for the uncommercial countenance to peer
+down into.  The uncommercial countenance withdrew itself, with expedition
+and a sense of suffocation, from the dull-glowing heat and the
+overpowering smell.  On the whole, perhaps the going into these stoves to
+work, when they are freshly opened, may be the worst part of the
+occupation.
+
+But I made it out to be indubitable that the owners of these lead-mills
+honestly and sedulously try to reduce the dangers of the occupation to
+the lowest point.
+
+A washing-place is provided for the women (I thought there might have
+been more towels), and a room in which they hang their clothes, and take
+their meals, and where they have a good fire-range and fire, and a female
+attendant to help them, and to watch that they do not neglect the
+cleansing of their hands before touching their food.  An experienced
+medical attendant is provided for them, and any premonitory symptoms of
+lead-poisoning are carefully treated.  Their teapots and such things were
+set out on tables ready for their afternoon meal, when I saw their room;
+and it had a homely look.  It is found that they bear the work much
+better than men: some few of them have been at it for years, and the
+great majority of those I observed were strong and active.  On the other
+hand, it should be remembered that most of them are very capricious and
+irregular in their attendance.
+
+American inventiveness would seem to indicate that before very long
+white-lead may be made entirely by machinery.  The sooner, the better.
+In the meantime, I parted from my two frank conductors over the mills, by
+telling them that they had nothing there to be concealed, and nothing to
+be blamed for.  As to the rest, the philosophy of the matter of
+lead-poisoning and workpeople seems to me to have been pretty fairly
+summed up by the Irishwoman whom I quoted in my former paper: ‘Some of
+them gets lead-pisoned soon, and some of them gets lead-pisoned later,
+and some, but not many, niver; and ’tis all according to the
+constitooshun, sur; and some constitooshuns is strong and some is weak.’
+Retracing my footsteps over my beat, I went off duty.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+A FLY-LEAF IN A LIFE
+
+
+ONCE upon a time (no matter when), I was engaged in a pursuit (no matter
+what), which could be transacted by myself alone; in which I could have
+no help; which imposed a constant strain on the attention, memory,
+observation, and physical powers; and which involved an almost fabulous
+amount of change of place and rapid railway travelling.  I had followed
+this pursuit through an exceptionally trying winter in an always trying
+climate, and had resumed it in England after but a brief repose.  Thus it
+came to be prolonged until, at length—and, as it seemed, all of a
+sudden—it so wore me out that I could not rely, with my usual cheerful
+confidence, upon myself to achieve the constantly recurring task, and
+began to feel (for the first time in my life) giddy, jarred, shaken,
+faint, uncertain of voice and sight and tread and touch, and dull of
+spirit.  The medical advice I sought within a few hours, was given in two
+words: ‘instant rest.’  Being accustomed to observe myself as curiously
+as if I were another man, and knowing the advice to meet my only need, I
+instantly halted in the pursuit of which I speak, and rested.
+
+My intention was, to interpose, as it were, a fly-leaf in the book of my
+life, in which nothing should be written from without for a brief season
+of a few weeks.  But some very singular experiences recorded themselves
+on this same fly-leaf, and I am going to relate them literally.  I repeat
+the word: literally.
+
+My first odd experience was of the remarkable coincidence between my
+case, in the general mind, and one Mr. Merdle’s as I find it recorded in
+a work of fiction called LITTLE DORRIT.  To be sure, Mr. Merdle was a
+swindler, forger, and thief, and my calling had been of a less harmful
+(and less remunerative) nature; but it was all one for that.
+
+Here is Mr. Merdle’s case:
+
+‘At first, he was dead of all the diseases that ever were known, and of
+several bran-new maladies invented with the speed of Light to meet the
+demand of the occasion.  He had concealed a dropsy from infancy, he had
+inherited a large estate of water on the chest from his grandfather, he
+had had an operation performed upon him every morning of his life for
+eighteen years, he had been subject to the explosion of important veins
+in his body after the manner of fireworks, he had had something the
+matter with his lungs, he had had something the matter with his heart, he
+had had something the matter with his brain.  Five hundred people who sat
+down to breakfast entirely uninformed on the whole subject, believed
+before they had done breakfast, that they privately and personally knew
+Physician to have said to Mr. Merdle, “You must expect to go out, some
+day, like the snuff of a candle;” and that they knew Mr. Merdle to have
+said to Physician, “A man can die but once.”  By about eleven o’clock in
+the forenoon, something the matter with the brain, became the favourite
+theory against the field; and by twelve the something had been distinctly
+ascertained to be “Pressure.”
+
+‘Pressure was so entirely satisfactory to the public mind, and seemed to
+make every one so comfortable, that it might have lasted all day but for
+Bar’s having taken the real state of the case into Court at half-past
+nine.  Pressure, however, so far from being overthrown by the discovery,
+became a greater favourite than ever.  There was a general moralising
+upon Pressure, in every street.  All the people who had tried to make
+money and had not been able to do it, said, There you were!  You no
+sooner began to devote yourself to the pursuit of wealth, than you got
+Pressure.  The idle people improved the occasion in a similar manner.
+See, said they, what you brought yourself to by work, work, work!  You
+persisted in working, you overdid it, Pressure came on, and you were done
+for!  This consideration was very potent in many quarters, but nowhere
+more so than among the young clerks and partners who had never been in
+the slightest danger of overdoing it.  These, one and all declared, quite
+piously, that they hoped they would never forget the warning as long as
+they lived, and that their conduct might be so regulated as to keep off
+Pressure, and preserve them, a comfort to their friends, for many years.’
+
+Just my case—if I had only known it—when I was quietly basking in the
+sunshine in my Kentish meadow!
+
+But while I so rested, thankfully recovering every hour, I had
+experiences more odd than this.  I had experiences of spiritual conceit,
+for which, as giving me a new warning against that curse of mankind, I
+shall always feel grateful to the supposition that I was too far gone to
+protest against playing sick lion to any stray donkey with an itching
+hoof.  All sorts of people seemed to become vicariously religious at my
+expense.  I received the most uncompromising warning that I was a
+Heathen: on the conclusive authority of a field preacher, who, like the
+most of his ignorant and vain and daring class, could not construct a
+tolerable sentence in his native tongue or pen a fair letter.  This
+inspired individual called me to order roundly, and knew in the freest
+and easiest way where I was going to, and what would become of me if I
+failed to fashion myself on his bright example, and was on terms of
+blasphemous confidence with the Heavenly Host.  He was in the secrets of
+my heart, and in the lowest soundings of my soul—he!—and could read the
+depths of my nature better than his A B C, and could turn me inside out,
+like his own clammy glove.  But what is far more extraordinary than
+this—for such dirty water as this could alone be drawn from such a
+shallow and muddy source—I found from the information of a beneficed
+clergyman, of whom I never heard and whom I never saw, that I had not, as
+I rather supposed I had, lived a life of some reading, contemplation, and
+inquiry; that I had not studied, as I rather supposed I had, to inculcate
+some Christian lessons in books; that I had never tried, as I rather
+supposed I had, to turn a child or two tenderly towards the knowledge and
+love of our Saviour; that I had never had, as I rather supposed I had
+had, departed friends, or stood beside open graves; but that I had lived
+a life of ‘uninterrupted prosperity,’ and that I needed this ‘check,
+overmuch,’ and that the way to turn it to account was to read these
+sermons and these poems, enclosed, and written and issued by my
+correspondent!  I beg it may be understood that I relate facts of my own
+uncommercial experience, and no vain imaginings.  The documents in proof
+lie near my hand.
+
+Another odd entry on the fly-leaf, of a more entertaining character, was
+the wonderful persistency with which kind sympathisers assumed that I had
+injuriously coupled with the so suddenly relinquished pursuit, those
+personal habits of mine most obviously incompatible with it, and most
+plainly impossible of being maintained, along with it.  As, all that
+exercise, all that cold bathing, all that wind and weather, all that
+uphill training—all that everything else, say, which is usually carried
+about by express trains in a portmanteau and hat-box, and partaken of
+under a flaming row of gas-lights in the company of two thousand people.
+This assuming of a whole case against all fact and likelihood, struck me
+as particularly droll, and was an oddity of which I certainly had had no
+adequate experience in life until I turned that curious fly-leaf.
+
+My old acquaintances the begging-letter writers came out on the fly-leaf,
+very piously indeed.  They were glad, at such a serious crisis, to afford
+me another opportunity of sending that Post-office order.  I needn’t make
+it a pound, as previously insisted on; ten shillings might ease my mind.
+And Heaven forbid that they should refuse, at such an insignificant
+figure, to take a weight off the memory of an erring fellow-creature!
+One gentleman, of an artistic turn (and copiously illustrating the books
+of the Mendicity Society), thought it might soothe my conscience, in the
+tender respect of gifts misused, if I would immediately cash up in aid of
+his lowly talent for original design—as a specimen of which he enclosed
+me a work of art which I recognized as a tracing from a woodcut
+originally published in the late Mrs. Trollope’s book on America, forty
+or fifty years ago.  The number of people who were prepared to live long
+years after me, untiring benefactors to their species, for fifty pounds
+apiece down, was astonishing.  Also, of those who wanted bank-notes for
+stiff penitential amounts, to give away:—not to keep, on any account.
+
+Divers wonderful medicines and machines insinuated recommendations of
+themselves into the fly-leaf that was to have been so blank.  It was
+specially observable that every prescriber, whether in a moral or
+physical direction, knew me thoroughly—knew me from head to heel, in and
+out, through and through, upside down.  I was a glass piece of general
+property, and everybody was on the most surprisingly intimate terms with
+me.  A few public institutions had complimentary perceptions of corners
+in my mind, of which, after considerable self-examination, I have not
+discovered any indication.  Neat little printed forms were addressed to
+those corners, beginning with the words: ‘I give and bequeath.’
+
+Will it seem exaggerative to state my belief that the most honest, the
+most modest, and the least vain-glorious of all the records upon this
+strange fly-leaf, was a letter from the self-deceived discoverer of the
+recondite secret ‘how to live four or five hundred years’?  Doubtless it
+will seem so, yet the statement is not exaggerative by any means, but is
+made in my serious and sincere conviction.  With this, and with a laugh
+at the rest that shall not be cynical, I turn the Fly-leaf, and go on
+again.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE
+
+
+ONE day this last Whitsuntide, at precisely eleven o’clock in the
+forenoon, there suddenly rode into the field of view commanded by the
+windows of my lodging an equestrian phenomenon.  It was a fellow-creature
+on horseback, dressed in the absurdest manner.  The fellow-creature wore
+high boots; some other (and much larger) fellow-creature’s breeches, of a
+slack-baked doughy colour and a baggy form; a blue shirt, whereof the
+skirt, or tail, was puffily tucked into the waist-band of the said
+breeches; no coat; a red shoulder-belt; and a demi-semi-military scarlet
+hat, with a feathered ornament in front, which, to the uninstructed human
+vision, had the appearance of a moulting shuttlecock.  I laid down the
+newspaper with which I had been occupied, and surveyed the fellow-man in
+question with astonishment.  Whether he had been sitting to any painter
+as a frontispiece for a new edition of ‘Sartor Resartus;’ whether ‘the
+husk or shell of him,’ as the esteemed Herr Teufelsdroch might put it,
+were founded on a jockey, on a circus, on General Garibaldi, on cheap
+porcelain, on a toy shop, on Guy Fawkes, on waxwork, on gold-digging, on
+Bedlam, or on all,—were doubts that greatly exercised my mind.
+Meanwhile, my fellow-man stumbled and slided, excessively against his
+will, on the slippery stones of my Covent-garden street, and elicited
+shrieks from several sympathetic females, by convulsively restraining
+himself from pitching over his horse’s head.  In the very crisis of these
+evolutions, and indeed at the trying moment when his charger’s tail was
+in a tobacconist’s shop, and his head anywhere about town, this cavalier
+was joined by two similar portents, who, likewise stumbling and sliding,
+caused him to stumble and slide the more distressingly.  At length this
+Gilpinian triumvirate effected a halt, and, looking northward, waved
+their three right hands as commanding unseen troops, to ‘Up, guards! and
+at ’em.’  Hereupon a brazen band burst forth, which caused them to be
+instantly bolted with to some remote spot of earth in the direction of
+the Surrey Hills.
+
+Judging from these appearances that a procession was under way, I threw
+up my window, and, craning out, had the satisfaction of beholding it
+advancing along the streets.  It was a Teetotal procession, as I learnt
+from its banners, and was long enough to consume twenty minutes in
+passing.  There were a great number of children in it, some of them so
+very young in their mothers’ arms as to be in the act of practically
+exemplifying their abstinence from fermented liquors, and attachment to
+an unintoxicating drink, while the procession defiled.  The display was,
+on the whole, pleasant to see, as any good-humoured holiday assemblage of
+clean, cheerful, and well-conducted people should be.  It was bright with
+ribbons, tinsel, and shoulder-belts, and abounded in flowers, as if those
+latter trophies had come up in profusion under much watering.  The day
+being breezy, the insubordination of the large banners was very
+reprehensible.  Each of these being borne aloft on two poles and stayed
+with some half-dozen lines, was carried, as polite books in the last
+century used to be written, by ‘various hands,’ and the anxiety expressed
+in the upturned faces of those officers,—something between the anxiety
+attendant on the balancing art, and that inseparable from the pastime of
+kite-flying, with a touch of the angler’s quality in landing his scaly
+prey,—much impressed me.  Suddenly, too, a banner would shiver in the
+wind, and go about in the most inconvenient manner.  This always happened
+oftenest with such gorgeous standards as those representing a gentleman
+in black, corpulent with tea and water, in the laudable act of summarily
+reforming a family, feeble and pinched with beer.  The gentleman in black
+distended by wind would then conduct himself with the most unbecoming
+levity, while the beery family, growing beerier, would frantically try to
+tear themselves away from his ministration.  Some of the inscriptions
+accompanying the banners were of a highly determined character, as ‘We
+never, never will give up the temperance cause,’ with similar sound
+resolutions rather suggestive to the profane mind of Mrs. Micawber’s ‘I
+never will desert Mr. Micawber,’ and of Mr. Micawber’s retort, ‘Really,
+my dear, I am not aware that you were ever required by any human being to
+do anything of the sort.’
+
+At intervals, a gloom would fall on the passing members of the
+procession, for which I was at first unable to account.  But this I
+discovered, after a little observation, to be occasioned by the coming on
+of the executioners,—the terrible official beings who were to make the
+speeches by-and-by,—who were distributed in open carriages at various
+points of the cavalcade.  A dark cloud and a sensation of dampness, as
+from many wet blankets, invariably preceded the rolling on of the
+dreadful cars containing these headsmen; and I noticed that the wretched
+people who closely followed them, and who were in a manner forced to
+contemplate their folded arms, complacent countenances, and threatening
+lips, were more overshadowed by the cloud and damp than those in front.
+Indeed, I perceived in some of these so moody an implacability towards
+the magnates of the scaffold, and so plain a desire to tear them limb
+from limb, that I would respectfully suggest to the managers the
+expediency of conveying the executioners to the scene of their dismal
+labours by unfrequented ways, and in closely-tilted carts, next
+Whitsuntide.
+
+The procession was composed of a series of smaller processions, which had
+come together, each from its own metropolitan district.  An infusion of
+allegory became perceptible when patriotic Peckham advanced.  So I
+judged, from the circumstance of Peckham’s unfurling a silken banner that
+fanned heaven and earth with the words, ‘The Peckham Lifeboat.’  No boat
+being in attendance, though life, in the likeness of ‘a gallant, gallant
+crew,’ in nautical uniform, followed the flag, I was led to meditate on
+the fact that Peckham is described by geographers as an inland
+settlement, with no larger or nearer shore-line than the towing-path of
+the Surrey Canal, on which stormy station I had been given to understand
+no lifeboat exists.  Thus I deduced an allegorical meaning, and came to
+the conclusion, that if patriotic Peckham picked a peck of pickled
+poetry, this _was_ the peck of pickled poetry which patriotic Peckham
+picked.
+
+I have observed that the aggregate procession was on the whole pleasant
+to see.  I made use of that qualified expression with a direct meaning,
+which I will now explain.  It involves the title of this paper, and a
+little fair trying of teetotalism by its own tests.  There were many
+people on foot, and many people in vehicles of various kinds.  The former
+were pleasant to see, and the latter were not pleasant to see; for the
+reason that I never, on any occasion or under any circumstances, have
+beheld heavier overloading of horses than in this public show.  Unless
+the imposition of a great van laden with from ten to twenty people on a
+single horse be a moderate tasking of the poor creature, then the
+temperate use of horses was immoderate and cruel.  From the smallest and
+lightest horse to the largest and heaviest, there were many instances in
+which the beast of burden was so shamefully overladen, that the Society
+for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals have frequently interposed in
+less gross cases.
+
+Now, I have always held that there may be, and that there unquestionably
+is, such a thing as use without abuse, and that therefore the total
+abolitionists are irrational and wrong-headed.  But the procession
+completely converted me.  For so large a number of the people using
+draught-horses in it were so clearly unable to use them without abusing
+them, that I perceived total abstinence from horseflesh to be the only
+remedy of which the case admitted.  As it is all one to teetotalers
+whether you take half a pint of beer or half a gallon, so it was all one
+here whether the beast of burden were a pony or a cart-horse.  Indeed, my
+case had the special strength that the half-pint quadruped underwent as
+much suffering as the half-gallon quadruped.  Moral: total abstinence
+from horseflesh through the whole length and breadth of the scale.  This
+pledge will be in course of administration to all teetotal
+processionists, not pedestrians, at the publishing office of ‘All the
+Year Round,’ on the 1st day of April, 1870.
+
+Observe a point for consideration.  This procession comprised many
+persons in their gigs, broughams, tax-carts, barouches, chaises, and what
+not, who were merciful to the dumb beasts that drew them, and did not
+overcharge their strength.  What is to be done with those unoffending
+persons?  I will not run amuck and vilify and defame them, as teetotal
+tracts and platforms would most assuredly do, if the question were one of
+drinking instead of driving: I merely ask what is to be done with them!
+The reply admits of no dispute whatever.  Manifestly, in strict
+accordance with teetotal doctrines, THEY must come in too, and take the
+total abstinence from horseflesh pledge.  It is not pretended that those
+members of the procession misused certain auxiliaries which in most
+countries and all ages have been bestowed upon man for his use, but it is
+undeniable that other members of the procession did.  Teetotal
+mathematics demonstrate that the less includes the greater; that the
+guilty include the innocent, the blind the seeing, the deaf the hearing,
+the dumb the speaking, the drunken the sober.  If any of the moderate
+users of draught-cattle in question should deem that there is any gentle
+violence done to their reason by these elements of logic, they are
+invited to come out of the procession next Whitsuntide, and look at it
+from my window.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES.
+
+
+{188}  After this Uncommercial Journey was printed, I happened to mention
+the experience it describes to Lord Houghton.  That gentleman then showed
+me an article of his writing, in _The Edinburgh Review_ for January,
+1862, which is highly remarkable for its philosophical and literary
+research concerning these Latter-Day Saints.  I find in it the following
+sentences:—‘The Select Committee of the House of Commons on emigrant
+ships for 1854 summoned the Mormon agent and passenger-broker before it,
+and came to the conclusion that no ships under the provisions of the
+“Passengers Act” could be depended upon for comfort and security in the
+same degree as those under his administration. The Mormon ship is a
+Family under strong and accepted discipline, with every provision for
+comfort, decorum and internal peace.’
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER ***
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diff --git a/914-0.zip b/914-0.zip
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+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg Book of The Uncommercial Traveller, by Charles Dickens</title>
+<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" />
+<style type="text/css">
+
+body { margin-left: 20%;
+       margin-right: 20%;
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+<body>
+
+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Uncommercial Traveller, by Charles Dickens</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world 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 <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Uncommercial Traveller</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Charles Dickens</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Illustrator: Harry Furniss</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: May 20, 1997 [eBook #914]<br />
+[Most recently updated: June 8, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: David Price</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER ***</div>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]" />
+</div>
+
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="fp"></a>
+<a href="images/fpb.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Time and his Wife"
+title=
+"Time and his Wife"
+ src="images/fps.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h1><span class="smcap">The Uncommercial</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Traveller</span></h1>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center">By CHARLES DICKENS</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><b><i>With Illustrations by Harry
+Furniss and A. J. Goodman</i></b></p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center">LONDON: CHAPMAN &amp; HALL, LD.<br
+/>
+NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER&rsquo;S SONS<br />
+1905</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER I. His General Line of Business</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER II. The Shipwreck</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER III. Wapping Workhouse</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER IV. Two Views of a Cheap Theatre</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER V. Poor Mercantile Jack</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">CHAPTER VI. Refreshments for Travellers</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">CHAPTER VII. Travelling Abroad</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII. The Great Tasmania’s Cargo</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap09">CHAPTER IX. City of London Churches</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap10">CHAPTER X. Shy Neighbourhoods</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap11">CHAPTER XI. Tramps</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap12">CHAPTER XII. Dullborough Town</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII. Night Walks</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV. Chambers</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap15">CHAPTER XV. Nurse’s Stories</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap16">CHAPTER XVI. Arcadian London</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap17">CHAPTER XVII. The Italian Prisoner</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap18">CHAPTER XVIII. The Calais Night Mail</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap19">CHAPTER XIX. Some Recollections of Mortality</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap20">CHAPTER XX. Birthday Celebrations</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap21">CHAPTER XXI. The Short-Timers</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap22">CHAPTER XXII. Bound for the Great Salt Lake</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap23">CHAPTER XXIII. The City of the Absent</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap24">CHAPTER XXIV. An Old Stage-coaching House</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap25">CHAPTER XXV. The Boiled Beef of New England</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap26">CHAPTER XXVI. Chatham Dockyard</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap27">CHAPTER XXVII. In the French-Flemish Country</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap28">CHAPTER XXVIII. Medicine Men of Civilisation</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap29">CHAPTER XXIX. Titbull’s Alms-Houses</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap30">CHAPTER XXX. The Ruffian</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap31">CHAPTER XXXI. Aboard Ship</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap32">CHAPTER XXXII. A Small Star in the East</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap33">CHAPTER XXXIII. A Little Dinner in an Hour</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap34">CHAPTER XXXIV. Mr. Barlow</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap35">CHAPTER XXXV. On an Amateur Beat</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap36">CHAPTER XXXVI. A Fly-Leaf in a Life</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap37">CHAPTER XXXVII. A Plea for Total Abstinence</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#fp"><i>Time and his Wife</i></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#image24"><i>A Cheap Theatre</i></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#image72"><i>The City Personage</i></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#image242"><i>Titbull&rsquo;s Alms-Houses</i></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>I<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">HIS GENERAL LINE OF BUSINESS</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Allow</span> me to introduce
+myself&mdash;first negatively.</p>
+<p>No landlord is my friend and brother, no chambermaid loves me,
+no waiter worships me, no boots admires and envies me. No
+round of beef or tongue or ham is expressly cooked for me, no
+pigeon-pie is especially made for me, no hotel-advertisement is
+personally addressed to me, no hotel-room tapestried with
+great-coats and railway wrappers is set apart for me, no house of
+public entertainment in the United Kingdom greatly cares for my
+opinion of its brandy or sherry. When I go upon my
+journeys, I am not usually rated at a low figure in the bill;
+when I come home from my journeys, I never get any
+commission. I know nothing about prices, and should have no
+idea, if I were put to it, how to wheedle a man into ordering
+something he doesn&rsquo;t want. As a town traveller, I am
+never to be seen driving a vehicle externally like a young and
+volatile pianoforte van, and internally like an oven in which a
+number of flat boxes are baking in layers. As a country
+traveller, I am rarely to be found in a gig, and am never to be
+encountered by a pleasure train, waiting on the platform of a
+branch station, quite a Druid in the midst of a light Stonehenge
+of samples.</p>
+<p>And yet&mdash;proceeding now, to introduce myself
+positively&mdash;I am both a town traveller and a country
+traveller, and am always on the road. Figuratively
+speaking, I travel for the great house of Human Interest
+Brothers, and have rather a large connection in the fancy goods
+way. Literally speaking, I am always wandering here and
+there from my rooms in Covent-garden, London&mdash;now about the
+city streets: now, about the country by-roads&mdash;seeing many
+little things, and some great things, which, because they
+interest me, I think may interest others.</p>
+<p>These are my chief credentials as the Uncommercial
+Traveller.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>II<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE SHIPWRECK</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Never</span> had I seen a year going out,
+or going on, under quieter circumstances. Eighteen hundred
+and fifty-nine had but another day to live, and truly its end was
+Peace on that sea-shore that morning.</p>
+<p>So settled and orderly was everything seaward, in the bright
+light of the sun and under the transparent shadows of the clouds,
+that it was hard to imagine the bay otherwise, for years past or
+to come, than it was that very day. The Tug-steamer lying a
+little off the shore, the Lighter lying still nearer to the
+shore, the boat alongside the Lighter, the regularly-turning
+windlass aboard the Lighter, the methodical figures at work, all
+slowly and regularly heaving up and down with the breathing of
+the sea, all seemed as much a part of the nature of the place as
+the tide itself. The tide was on the flow, and had been for
+some two hours and a half; there was a slight obstruction in the
+sea within a few yards of my feet: as if the stump of a tree,
+with earth enough about it to keep it from lying horizontally on
+the water, had slipped a little from the land&mdash;and as I
+stood upon the beach and observed it dimpling the light swell
+that was coming in, I cast a stone over it.</p>
+<p>So orderly, so quiet, so regular&mdash;the rising and falling
+of the Tug-steamer, the Lighter, and the boat&mdash;the turning
+of the windlass&mdash;the coming in of the tide&mdash;that I
+myself seemed, to my own thinking, anything but new to the
+spot. Yet, I had never seen it in my life, a minute before,
+and had traversed two hundred miles to get at it. That very
+morning I had come bowling down, and struggling up, hill-country
+roads; looking back at snowy summits; meeting courteous peasants
+well to do, driving fat pigs and cattle to market: noting the
+neat and thrifty dwellings, with their unusual quantity of clean
+white linen, drying on the bushes; having windy weather suggested
+by every cotter&rsquo;s little rick, with its thatch straw-ridged
+and extra straw-ridged into overlapping compartments like the
+back of a rhinoceros. Had I not given a lift of fourteen
+miles to the Coast-guardsman (kit and all), who was coming to his
+spell of duty there, and had we not just now parted
+company? So it was; but the journey seemed to glide down
+into the placid sea, with other chafe and trouble, and for the
+moment nothing was so calmly and monotonously real under the
+sunlight as the gentle rising and falling of the water with its
+freight, the regular turning of the windlass aboard the Lighter,
+and the slight obstruction so very near my feet.</p>
+<p>O reader, haply turning this page by the fireside at Home, and
+hearing the night wind rumble in the chimney, that slight
+obstruction was the uppermost fragment of the Wreck of the Royal
+Charter, Australian trader and passenger ship, Homeward bound,
+that struck here on the terrible morning of the twenty-sixth of
+this October, broke into three parts, went down with her treasure
+of at least five hundred human lives, and has never stirred
+since!</p>
+<p>From which point, or from which, she drove ashore, stern
+foremost; on which side, or on which, she passed the little
+Island in the bay, for ages henceforth to be aground certain
+yards outside her; these are rendered bootless questions by the
+darkness of that night and the darkness of death. Here she
+went down.</p>
+<p>Even as I stood on the beach with the words &lsquo;Here she
+went down!&rsquo; in my ears, a diver in his grotesque dress,
+dipped heavily over the side of the boat alongside the Lighter,
+and dropped to the bottom. On the shore by the
+water&rsquo;s edge, was a rough tent, made of fragments of wreck,
+where other divers and workmen sheltered themselves, and where
+they had kept Christmas-day with rum and roast beef, to the
+destruction of their frail chimney. Cast up among the
+stones and boulders of the beach, were great spars of the lost
+vessel, and masses of iron twisted by the fury of the sea into
+the strangest forms. The timber was already bleached and
+iron rusted, and even these objects did no violence to the
+prevailing air the whole scene wore, of having been exactly the
+same for years and years.</p>
+<p>Yet, only two short months had gone, since a man, living on
+the nearest hill-top overlooking the sea, being blown out of bed
+at about daybreak by the wind that had begun to strip his roof
+off, and getting upon a ladder with his nearest neighbour to
+construct some temporary device for keeping his house over his
+head, saw from the ladder&rsquo;s elevation as he looked down by
+chance towards the shore, some dark troubled object close in with
+the land. And he and the other, descending to the beach,
+and finding the sea mercilessly beating over a great broken ship,
+had clambered up the stony ways, like staircases without stairs,
+on which the wild village hangs in little clusters, as fruit
+hangs on boughs, and had given the alarm. And so, over the
+hill-slopes, and past the waterfall, and down the gullies where
+the land drains off into the ocean, the scattered quarrymen and
+fishermen inhabiting that part of Wales had come running to the
+dismal sight&mdash;their clergyman among them. And as they
+stood in the leaden morning, stricken with pity, leaning hard
+against the wind, their breath and vision often failing as the
+sleet and spray rushed at them from the ever forming and
+dissolving mountains of sea, and as the wool which was a part of
+the vessel&rsquo;s cargo blew in with the salt foam and remained
+upon the land when the foam melted, they saw the ship&rsquo;s
+life-boat put off from one of the heaps of wreck; and first,
+there were three men in her, and in a moment she capsized, and
+there were but two; and again, she was struck by a vast mass of
+water, and there was but one; and again, she was thrown bottom
+upward, and that one, with his arm struck through the broken
+planks and waving as if for the help that could never reach him,
+went down into the deep.</p>
+<p>It was the clergyman himself from whom I heard this, while I
+stood on the shore, looking in his kind wholesome face as it
+turned to the spot where the boat had been. The divers were
+down then, and busy. They were &lsquo;lifting&rsquo; to-day
+the gold found yesterday&mdash;some five-and-twenty thousand
+pounds. Of three hundred and fifty thousand pounds&rsquo;
+worth of gold, three hundred thousand pounds&rsquo; worth, in
+round numbers, was at that time recovered. The great bulk
+of the remainder was surely and steadily coming up. Some
+loss of sovereigns there would be, of course; indeed, at first
+sovereigns had drifted in with the sand, and been scattered far
+and wide over the beach, like sea-shells; but most other golden
+treasure would be found. As it was brought up, it went
+aboard the Tug-steamer, where good account was taken of it.
+So tremendous had the force of the sea been when it broke the
+ship, that it had beaten one great ingot of gold, deep into a
+strong and heavy piece of her solid iron-work: in which, also,
+several loose sovereigns that the ingot had swept in before it,
+had been found, as firmly embedded as though the iron had been
+liquid when they were forced there. It had been remarked of
+such bodies come ashore, too, as had been seen by scientific men,
+that they had been stunned to death, and not suffocated.
+Observation, both of the internal change that had been wrought in
+them, and of their external expression, showed death to have been
+thus merciful and easy. The report was brought, while I was
+holding such discourse on the beach, that no more bodies had come
+ashore since last night. It began to be very doubtful
+whether many more would be thrown up, until the north-east winds
+of the early spring set in. Moreover, a great number of the
+passengers, and particularly the second-class women-passengers,
+were known to have been in the middle of the ship when she
+parted, and thus the collapsing wreck would have fallen upon them
+after yawning open, and would keep them down. A diver made
+known, even then, that he had come upon the body of a man, and
+had sought to release it from a great superincumbent weight; but
+that, finding he could not do so without mutilating the remains,
+he had left it where it was.</p>
+<p>It was the kind and wholesome face I have made mention of as
+being then beside me, that I had purposed to myself to see, when
+I left home for Wales. I had heard of that clergyman, as
+having buried many scores of the shipwrecked people; of his
+having opened his house and heart to their agonised friends; of
+his having used a most sweet and patient diligence for weeks and
+weeks, in the performance of the forlornest offices that Man can
+render to his kind; of his having most tenderly and thoroughly
+devoted himself to the dead, and to those who were sorrowing for
+the dead. I had said to myself, &lsquo;In the Christmas
+season of the year, I should like to see that man!&rsquo;
+And he had swung the gate of his little garden in coming out to
+meet me, not half an hour ago.</p>
+<p>So cheerful of spirit and guiltless of affectation, as true
+practical Christianity ever is! I read more of the New
+Testament in the fresh frank face going up the village beside me,
+in five minutes, than I have read in anathematising discourses
+(albeit put to press with enormous flourishing of trumpets), in
+all my life. I heard more of the Sacred Book in the cordial
+voice that had nothing to say about its owner, than in all the
+would-be celestial pairs of bellows that have ever blown conceit
+at me.</p>
+<p>We climbed towards the little church, at a cheery pace, among
+the loose stones, the deep mud, the wet coarse grass, the
+outlying water, and other obstructions from which frost and snow
+had lately thawed. It was a mistake (my friend was glad to
+tell me, on the way) to suppose that the peasantry had shown any
+superstitious avoidance of the drowned; on the whole, they had
+done very well, and had assisted readily. Ten shillings had
+been paid for the bringing of each body up to the church, but the
+way was steep, and a horse and cart (in which it was wrapped in a
+sheet) were necessary, and three or four men, and, all things
+considered, it was not a great price. The people were none
+the richer for the wreck, for it was the season of the
+herring-shoal&mdash;and who could cast nets for fish, and find
+dead men and women in the draught?</p>
+<p>He had the church keys in his hand, and opened the churchyard
+gate, and opened the church door; and we went in.</p>
+<p>It is a little church of great antiquity; there is reason to
+believe that some church has occupied the spot, these thousand
+years or more. The pulpit was gone, and other things
+usually belonging to the church were gone, owing to its living
+congregation having deserted it for the neighbouring school-room,
+and yielded it up to the dead. The very Commandments had
+been shouldered out of their places, in the bringing in of the
+dead; the black wooden tables on which they were painted, were
+askew, and on the stone pavement below them, and on the stone
+pavement all over the church, were the marks and stains where the
+drowned had been laid down. The eye, with little or no aid
+from the imagination, could yet see how the bodies had been
+turned, and where the head had been and where the feet.
+Some faded traces of the wreck of the Australian ship may be
+discernible on the stone pavement of this little church, hundreds
+of years hence, when the digging for gold in Australia shall have
+long and long ceased out of the land.</p>
+<p>Forty-four shipwrecked men and women lay here at one time,
+awaiting burial. Here, with weeping and wailing in every
+room of his house, my companion worked alone for hours, solemnly
+surrounded by eyes that could not see him, and by lips that could
+not speak to him, patiently examining the tattered clothing,
+cutting off buttons, hair, marks from linen, anything that might
+lead to subsequent identification, studying faces, looking for a
+scar, a bent finger, a crooked toe, comparing letters sent to him
+with the ruin about him. &lsquo;My dearest brother had
+bright grey eyes and a pleasant smile,&rsquo; one sister
+wrote. O poor sister! well for you to be far from here, and
+keep that as your last remembrance of him!</p>
+<p>The ladies of the clergyman&rsquo;s family, his wife and two
+sisters-in-law, came in among the bodies often. It grew to
+be the business of their lives to do so. Any new arrival of
+a bereaved woman would stimulate their pity to compare the
+description brought, with the dread realities. Sometimes,
+they would go back able to say, &lsquo;I have found him,&rsquo;
+or, &lsquo;I think she lies there.&rsquo; Perhaps, the
+mourner, unable to bear the sight of all that lay in the church,
+would be led in blindfold. Conducted to the spot with many
+compassionate words, and encouraged to look, she would say, with
+a piercing cry, &lsquo;This is my boy!&rsquo; and drop insensible
+on the insensible figure.</p>
+<p>He soon observed that in some cases of women, the
+identification of persons, though complete, was quite at variance
+with the marks upon the linen; this led him to notice that even
+the marks upon the linen were sometimes inconsistent with one
+another; and thus he came to understand that they had dressed in
+great haste and agitation, and that their clothes had become
+mixed together. The identification of men by their dress,
+was rendered extremely difficult, in consequence of a large
+proportion of them being dressed alike&mdash;in clothes of one
+kind, that is to say, supplied by slopsellers and outfitters, and
+not made by single garments but by hundreds. Many of the
+men were bringing over parrots, and had receipts upon them for
+the price of the birds; others had bills of exchange in their
+pockets, or in belts. Some of these documents, carefully
+unwrinkled and dried, were little less fresh in appearance that
+day, than the present page will be under ordinary circumstances,
+after having been opened three or four times.</p>
+<p>In that lonely place, it had not been easy to obtain even such
+common commodities in towns, as ordinary disinfectants.
+Pitch had been burnt in the church, as the readiest thing at
+hand, and the frying-pan in which it had bubbled over a brazier
+of coals was still there, with its ashes. Hard by the
+Communion-Table, were some boots that had been taken off the
+drowned and preserved&mdash;a gold-digger&rsquo;s boot, cut down
+the leg for its removal&mdash;a trodden-down man&rsquo;s
+ankle-boot with a buff cloth top&mdash;and others&mdash;soaked
+and sandy, weedy and salt.</p>
+<p>From the church, we passed out into the churchyard.
+Here, there lay, at that time, one hundred and forty-five bodies,
+that had come ashore from the wreck. He had buried them,
+when not identified, in graves containing four each. He had
+numbered each body in a register describing it, and had placed a
+corresponding number on each coffin, and over each grave.
+Identified bodies he had buried singly, in private graves, in
+another part of the church-yard. Several bodies had been
+exhumed from the graves of four, as relatives had come from a
+distance and seen his register; and, when recognised, these have
+been reburied in private graves, so that the mourners might erect
+separate headstones over the remains. In all such cases he
+had performed the funeral service a second time, and the ladies
+of his house had attended. There had been no offence in the
+poor ashes when they were brought again to the light of day; the
+beneficent Earth had already absorbed it. The drowned were
+buried in their clothes. To supply the great sudden demand
+for coffins, he had got all the neighbouring people handy at
+tools, to work the livelong day, and Sunday likewise. The
+coffins were neatly formed;&mdash;I had seen two, waiting for
+occupants, under the lee of the ruined walls of a stone hut on
+the beach, within call of the tent where the Christmas Feast was
+held. Similarly, one of the graves for four was lying open
+and ready, here, in the churchyard. So much of the scanty
+space was already devoted to the wrecked people, that the
+villagers had begun to express uneasy doubts whether they
+themselves could lie in their own ground, with their forefathers
+and descendants, by-and-by. The churchyard being but a step
+from the clergyman&rsquo;s dwelling-house, we crossed to the
+latter; the white surplice was hanging up near the door ready to
+be put on at any time, for a funeral service.</p>
+<p>The cheerful earnestness of this good Christian minister was
+as consolatory, as the circumstances out of which it shone were
+sad. I never have seen anything more delightfully genuine
+than the calm dismissal by himself and his household of all they
+had undergone, as a simple duty that was quietly done and
+ended. In speaking of it, they spoke of it with great
+compassion for the bereaved; but laid no stress upon their own
+hard share in those weary weeks, except as it had attached many
+people to them as friends, and elicited many touching expressions
+of gratitude. This clergyman&rsquo;s brother&mdash;himself
+the clergyman of two adjoining parishes, who had buried
+thirty-four of the bodies in his own churchyard, and who had done
+to them all that his brother had done as to the larger
+number&mdash;must be understood as included in the family.
+He was there, with his neatly arranged papers, and made no more
+account of his trouble than anybody else did. Down to
+yesterday&rsquo;s post outward, my clergyman alone had written
+one thousand and seventy-five letters to relatives and friends of
+the lost people. In the absence of self-assertion, it was
+only through my now and then delicately putting a question as the
+occasion arose, that I became informed of these things. It
+was only when I had remarked again and again, in the church, on
+the awful nature of the scene of death he had been required so
+closely to familiarise himself with for the soothing of the
+living, that he had casually said, without the least abatement of
+his cheerfulness, &lsquo;indeed, it had rendered him unable for a
+time to eat or drink more than a little coffee now and then, and
+a piece of bread.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>In this noble modesty, in this beautiful simplicity, in this
+serene avoidance of the least attempt to &lsquo;improve&rsquo; an
+occasion which might be supposed to have sunk of its own weight
+into my heart, I seemed to have happily come, in a few steps,
+from the churchyard with its open grave, which was the type of
+Death, to the Christian dwelling side by side with it, which was
+the type of Resurrection. I never shall think of the
+former, without the latter. The two will always rest side
+by side in my memory. If I had lost any one dear to me in
+this unfortunate ship, if I had made a voyage from Australia to
+look at the grave in the churchyard, I should go away, thankful
+to <span class="smcap">God</span> that that house was so close to
+it, and that its shadow by day and its domestic lights by night
+fell upon the earth in which its Master had so tenderly laid my
+dear one&rsquo;s head.</p>
+<p>The references that naturally arose out of our conversation,
+to the descriptions sent down of shipwrecked persons, and to the
+gratitude of relations and friends, made me very anxious to see
+some of those letters. I was presently seated before a
+shipwreck of papers, all bordered with black, and from them I
+made the following few extracts.</p>
+<p>A mother writes:</p>
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Reverend Sir</span>.
+Amongst the many who perished on your shore was numbered my
+beloved son. I was only just recovering from a severe
+illness, and this fearful affliction has caused a relapse, so
+that I am unable at present to go to identify the remains of the
+loved and lost. My darling son would have been sixteen on
+Christmas-day next. He was a most amiable and obedient
+child, early taught the way of salvation. We fondly hoped
+that as a British seaman he might be an ornament to his
+profession, but, &lsquo;it is well;&rsquo; I feel assured my dear
+boy is now with the redeemed. Oh, he did not wish to go
+this last voyage! On the fifteenth of October, I received a
+letter from him from Melbourne, date August twelfth; he wrote in
+high spirits, and in conclusion he says: &lsquo;Pray for a fair
+breeze, dear mamma, and I&rsquo;ll not forget to whistle for it!
+and, God permitting, I shall see you and all my little pets
+again. Good-bye, dear mother&mdash;good-bye, dearest
+parents. Good-bye, dear brother.&rsquo; Oh, it was
+indeed an eternal farewell. I do not apologise for thus
+writing you, for oh, my heart is so very sorrowful.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>A husband writes:</p>
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">My dear kind Sir</span>.
+Will you kindly inform me whether there are any initials upon the
+ring and guard you have in possession, found, as the Standard
+says, last Tuesday? Believe me, my dear sir, when I say
+that I cannot express my deep gratitude in words sufficiently for
+your kindness to me on that fearful and appalling day. Will
+you tell me what I can do for you, and will you write me a
+consoling letter to prevent my mind from going astray?</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>A widow writes:</p>
+<blockquote><p>Left in such a state as I am, my friends and I
+thought it best that my dear husband should be buried where he
+lies, and, much as I should have liked to have had it otherwise,
+I must submit. I feel, from all I have heard of you, that
+you will see it done decently and in order. Little does it
+signify to us, when the soul has departed, where this poor body
+lies, but we who are left behind would do all we can to show how
+we loved them. This is denied me, but it is God&rsquo;s
+hand that afflicts us, and I try to submit. Some day I may
+be able to visit the spot, and see where he lies, and erect a
+simple stone to his memory. Oh! it will be long, long
+before I forget that dreadful night! Is there such a thing
+in the vicinity, or any shop in Bangor, to which I could send for
+a small picture of Moelfra or Llanallgo church, a spot now sacred
+to me?</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Another widow writes:</p>
+<blockquote><p>I have received your letter this morning, and do
+thank you most kindly for the interest you have taken about my
+dear husband, as well for the sentiments yours contains, evincing
+the spirit of a Christian who can sympathise with those who, like
+myself, are broken down with grief.</p>
+<p>May God bless and sustain you, and all in connection with you,
+in this great trial. Time may roll on and bear all its sons
+away, but your name as a disinterested person will stand in
+history, and, as successive years pass, many a widow will think
+of your noble conduct, and the tears of gratitude flow down many
+a cheek, the tribute of a thankful heart, when other things are
+forgotten for ever.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>A father writes:</p>
+<blockquote><p>I am at a loss to find words to sufficiently
+express my gratitude to you for your kindness to my son Richard
+upon the melancholy occasion of his visit to his dear
+brother&rsquo;s body, and also for your ready attention in
+pronouncing our beautiful burial service over my poor unfortunate
+son&rsquo;s remains. God grant that your prayers over him
+may reach the Mercy Seat, and that his soul may be received
+(through Christ&rsquo;s intercession) into heaven!</p>
+<p>His dear mother begs me to convey to you her heartfelt
+thanks.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Those who were received at the clergyman&rsquo;s house, write
+thus, after leaving it:</p>
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Dear and never-to-be-forgotten
+Friends</span>. I arrived here yesterday morning without
+accident, and am about to proceed to my home by railway.</p>
+<p>I am overpowered when I think of you and your hospitable
+home. No words could speak language suited to my
+heart. I refrain. God reward you with the same
+measure you have meted with!</p>
+<p>I enumerate no names, but embrace you all.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">My beloved Friends</span>. This is
+the first day that I have been able to leave my bedroom since I
+returned, which will explain the reason of my not writing
+sooner.</p>
+<p>If I could only have had my last melancholy hope realised in
+recovering the body of my beloved and lamented son, I should have
+returned home somewhat comforted, and I think I could then have
+been comparatively resigned.</p>
+<p>I fear now there is but little prospect, and I mourn as one
+without hope.</p>
+<p>The only consolation to my distressed mind is in having been
+so feelingly allowed by you to leave the matter in your hands, by
+whom I well know that everything will be done that can be,
+according to arrangements made before I left the scene of the
+awful catastrophe, both as to the identification of my dear son,
+and also his interment.</p>
+<p>I feel most anxious to hear whether anything fresh has
+transpired since I left you; will you add another to the many
+deep obligations I am under to you by writing to me? And
+should the body of my dear and unfortunate son be identified, let
+me hear from you immediately, and I will come again.</p>
+<p>Words cannot express the gratitude I feel I owe to you all for
+your benevolent aid, your kindness, and your sympathy.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p><span class="smcap">My dearly beloved Friends</span>. I
+arrived in safety at my house yesterday, and a night&rsquo;s rest
+has restored and tranquillised me. I must again repeat,
+that language has no words by which I can express my sense of
+obligation to you. You are enshrined in my heart of
+hearts.</p>
+<p>I have seen him! and can now realise my misfortune more than I
+have hitherto been able to do. Oh, the bitterness of the
+cup I drink! But I bow submissive. God <i>must</i>
+have done right. I do not want to feel less, but to
+acquiesce more simply.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>There were some Jewish passengers on board the Royal Charter,
+and the gratitude of the Jewish people is feelingly expressed in
+the following letter bearing date from &lsquo;the office of the
+Chief Rabbi:&rsquo;</p>
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Reverend Sir</span>. I
+cannot refrain from expressing to you my heartfelt thanks on
+behalf of those of my flock whose relatives have unfortunately
+been among those who perished at the late wreck of the Royal
+Charter. You have, indeed, like Boaz, &lsquo;not left off
+your kindness to the living and the dead.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>You have not alone acted kindly towards the living by
+receiving them hospitably at your house, and energetically
+assisting them in their mournful duty, but also towards the dead,
+by exerting yourself to have our co-religionists buried in our
+ground, and according to our rites. May our heavenly Father
+reward you for your acts of humanity and true philanthropy!</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The &lsquo;Old Hebrew congregation of Liverpool&rsquo; thus
+express themselves through their secretary:</p>
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Reverend Sir</span>. The
+wardens of this congregation have learned with great pleasure
+that, in addition to those indefatigable exertions, at the scene
+of the late disaster to the Royal Charter, which have received
+universal recognition, you have very benevolently employed your
+valuable efforts to assist such members of our faith as have
+sought the bodies of lost friends to give them burial in our
+consecrated grounds, with the observances and rites prescribed by
+the ordinances of our religion.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The wardens desire me to take the earliest available
+opportunity to offer to you, on behalf of our community, the
+expression of their warm acknowledgments and grateful thanks, and
+their sincere wishes for your continued welfare and
+prosperity.</p>
+<p>A Jewish gentleman writes:</p>
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Reverend and dear
+Sir</span>. I take the opportunity of thanking you right
+earnestly for the promptness you displayed in answering my note
+with full particulars concerning my much lamented brother, and I
+also herein beg to express my sincere regard for the willingness
+you displayed and for the facility you afforded for getting the
+remains of my poor brother exhumed. It has been to us a
+most sorrowful and painful event, but when we meet with such
+friends as yourself, it in a measure, somehow or other, abates
+that mental anguish, and makes the suffering so much easier to be
+borne. Considering the circumstances connected with my poor
+brother&rsquo;s fate, it does, indeed, appear a hard one.
+He had been away in all seven years; he returned four years ago
+to see his family. He was then engaged to a very amiable
+young lady. He had been very successful abroad, and was now
+returning to fulfil his sacred vow; he brought all his property
+with him in gold uninsured. We heard from him when the ship
+stopped at Queenstown, when he was in the highest of hope, and in
+a few short hours afterwards all was washed away.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Mournful in the deepest degree, but too sacred for quotation
+here, were the numerous references to those miniatures of women
+worn round the necks of rough men (and found there after death),
+those locks of hair, those scraps of letters, those many many
+slight memorials of hidden tenderness. One man cast up by
+the sea bore about him, printed on a perforated lace card, the
+following singular (and unavailing) charm:</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">A BLESSING.</p>
+<p>May the blessing of God await thee. May the sun of glory
+shine around thy bed; and may the gates of plenty, honour, and
+happiness be ever open to thee. May no sorrow distress thy
+days; may no grief disturb thy nights. May the pillow of
+peace kiss thy cheek, and the pleasures of imagination attend thy
+dreams; and when length of years makes thee tired of earthly
+joys, and the curtain of death gently closes around thy last
+sleep of human existence, may the Angel of God attend thy bed,
+and take care that the expiring lamp of life shall not receive
+one rude blast to hasten on its extinction.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>A sailor had these devices on his right arm. &lsquo;Our
+Saviour on the Cross, the forehead of the Crucifix and the
+vesture stained red; on the lower part of the arm, a man and
+woman; on one side of the Cross, the appearance of a half moon,
+with a face; on the other side, the sun; on the top of the Cross,
+the letters I.H.S.; on the left arm, a man and woman dancing,
+with an effort to delineate the female&rsquo;s dress; under
+which, initials.&rsquo; Another seaman &lsquo;had, on the
+lower part of the right arm, the device of a sailor and a female;
+the man holding the Union Jack with a streamer, the folds of
+which waved over her head, and the end of it was held in her
+hand. On the upper part of the arm, a device of Our Lord on
+the Cross, with stars surrounding the head of the Cross, and one
+large star on the side in Indian Ink. On the left arm, a
+flag, a true lover&rsquo;s knot, a face, and
+initials.&rsquo; This tattooing was found still plain,
+below the discoloured outer surface of a mutilated arm, when such
+surface was carefully scraped away with a knife. It is not
+improbable that the perpetuation of this marking custom among
+seamen, may be referred back to their desire to be identified, if
+drowned and flung ashore.</p>
+<p>It was some time before I could sever myself from the many
+interesting papers on the table, and then I broke bread and drank
+wine with the kind family before I left them. As I brought
+the Coast-guard down, so I took the Postman back, with his
+leathern wallet, walking-stick, bugle, and terrier dog.
+Many a heart-broken letter had he brought to the Rectory House
+within two months many; a benignantly painstaking answer had he
+carried back.</p>
+<p>As I rode along, I thought of the many people, inhabitants of
+this mother country, who would make pilgrimages to the little
+churchyard in the years to come; I thought of the many people in
+Australia, who would have an interest in such a shipwreck, and
+would find their way here when they visit the Old World; I
+thought of the writers of all the wreck of letters I had left
+upon the table; and I resolved to place this little record where
+it stands. Convocations, Conferences, Diocesan Epistles,
+and the like, will do a great deal for Religion, I dare say, and
+Heaven send they may! but I doubt if they will ever do their
+Master&rsquo;s service half so well, in all the time they last,
+as the Heavens have seen it done in this bleak spot upon the
+rugged coast of Wales.</p>
+<p>Had I lost the friend of my life, in the wreck of the Royal
+Charter; had I lost my betrothed, the more than friend of my
+life; had I lost my maiden daughter, had I lost my hopeful boy,
+had I lost my little child; I would kiss the hands that worked so
+busily and gently in the church, and say, &lsquo;None better
+could have touched the form, though it had lain at
+home.&rsquo; I could be sure of it, I could be thankful for
+it: I could be content to leave the grave near the house the good
+family pass in and out of every day, undisturbed, in the little
+churchyard where so many are so strangely brought together.</p>
+<p>Without the name of the clergyman to whom&mdash;I hope, not
+without carrying comfort to some heart at some time&mdash;I have
+referred, my reference would be as nothing. He is the
+Reverend Stephen Roose Hughes, of Llanallgo, near Moelfra,
+Anglesey. His brother is the Reverend Hugh Robert Hughes,
+of Penrhos, Alligwy.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>III<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">WAPPING WORKHOUSE</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">My</span> day&rsquo;s no-business
+beckoning me to the East-end of London, I had turned my face to
+that point of the metropolitan compass on leaving Covent-garden,
+and had got past the India House, thinking in my idle manner of
+Tippoo-Sahib and Charles Lamb, and had got past my little wooden
+midshipman, after affectionately patting him on one leg of his
+knee-shorts for old acquaintance&rsquo; sake, and had got past
+Aldgate Pump, and had got past the Saracen&rsquo;s Head (with an
+ignominious rash of posting bills disfiguring his swarthy
+countenance), and had strolled up the empty yard of his ancient
+neighbour the Black or Blue Boar, or Bull, who departed this life
+I don&rsquo;t know when, and whose coaches are all gone I
+don&rsquo;t know where; and I had come out again into the age of
+railways, and I had got past Whitechapel Church, and
+was&mdash;rather inappropriately for an Uncommercial
+Traveller&mdash;in the Commercial Road. Pleasantly
+wallowing in the abundant mud of that thoroughfare, and greatly
+enjoying the huge piles of building belonging to the sugar
+refiners, the little masts and vanes in small back gardens in
+back streets, the neighbouring canals and docks, the India vans
+lumbering along their stone tramway, and the pawnbrokers&rsquo;
+shops where hard-up Mates had pawned so many sextants and
+quadrants, that I should have bought a few cheap if I had the
+least notion how to use them, I at last began to file off to the
+right, towards Wapping.</p>
+<p>Not that I intended to take boat at Wapping Old Stairs, or
+that I was going to look at the locality, because I believe (for
+I don&rsquo;t) in the constancy of the young woman who told her
+sea-going lover, to such a beautiful old tune, that she had ever
+continued the same, since she gave him the &rsquo;baccer-box
+marked with his name; I am afraid he usually got the worst of
+those transactions, and was frightfully taken in. No, I was
+going to Wapping, because an Eastern police magistrate had said,
+through the morning papers, that there was no classification at
+the Wapping workhouse for women, and that it was a disgrace and a
+shame, and divers other hard names, and because I wished to see
+how the fact really stood. For, that Eastern police
+magistrates are not always the wisest men of the East, may be
+inferred from their course of procedure respecting the
+fancy-dressing and pantomime-posturing at St. George&rsquo;s in
+that quarter: which is usually, to discuss the matter at issue,
+in a state of mind betokening the weakest perplexity, with all
+parties concerned and unconcerned, and, for a final expedient, to
+consult the complainant as to what he thinks ought to be done
+with the defendant, and take the defendant&rsquo;s opinion as to
+what he would recommend to be done with himself.</p>
+<p>Long before I reached Wapping, I gave myself up as having lost
+my way, and, abandoning myself to the narrow streets in a Turkish
+frame of mind, relied on predestination to bring me somehow or
+other to the place I wanted if I were ever to get there.
+When I had ceased for an hour or so to take any trouble about the
+matter, I found myself on a swing-bridge looking down at some
+dark locks in some dirty water. Over against me, stood a
+creature remotely in the likeness of a young man, with a puffed
+sallow face, and a figure all dirty and shiny and slimy, who may
+have been the youngest son of his filthy old father, Thames, or
+the drowned man about whom there was a placard on the granite
+post like a large thimble, that stood between us.</p>
+<p>I asked this apparition what it called the place? Unto
+which, it replied, with a ghastly grin and a sound like gurgling
+water in its throat:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mr. Baker&rsquo;s trap.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>As it is a point of great sensitiveness with me on such
+occasions to be equal to the intellectual pressure of the
+conversation, I deeply considered the meaning of this speech,
+while I eyed the apparition&mdash;then engaged in hugging and
+sucking a horizontal iron bar at the top of the locks.
+Inspiration suggested to me that Mr. Baker was the acting coroner
+of that neighbourhood.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A common place for suicide,&rsquo; said I, looking down
+at the locks.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sue?&rsquo; returned the ghost, with a stare.
+&lsquo;Yes! And Poll. Likewise Emily. And
+Nancy. And Jane;&rsquo; he sucked the iron between each
+name; &lsquo;and all the bileing. Ketches off their bonnets
+or shorls, takes a run, and headers down here, they doos.
+Always a headerin&rsquo; down here, they is. Like one
+o&rsquo;clock.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And at about that hour of the morning, I
+suppose?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; said the apparition.
+&lsquo;<i>They</i> an&rsquo;t partickler. Two &rsquo;ull do
+for <i>them</i>. Three. All times o&rsquo;
+night. On&rsquo;y mind you!&rsquo; Here the
+apparition rested his profile on the bar, and gurgled in a
+sarcastic manner. &lsquo;There must be somebody
+comin&rsquo;. They don&rsquo;t go a headerin&rsquo; down
+here, wen there an&rsquo;t no Bobby nor gen&rsquo;ral Cove, fur
+to hear the splash.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>According to my interpretation of these words, I was myself a
+General Cove, or member of the miscellaneous public. In
+which modest character I remarked:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;They are often taken out, are they, and
+restored?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I dunno about restored,&rsquo; said the apparition,
+who, for some occult reason, very much objected to that word;
+&lsquo;they&rsquo;re carried into the werkiss and put into a
+&rsquo;ot bath, and brought round. But I dunno about
+restored,&rsquo; said the apparition; &lsquo;blow
+<i>that</i>!&rsquo;&mdash;and vanished.</p>
+<p>As it had shown a desire to become offensive, I was not sorry
+to find myself alone, especially as the &lsquo;werkiss&rsquo; it
+had indicated with a twist of its matted head, was close at
+hand. So I left Mr. Baker&rsquo;s terrible trap (baited
+with a scum that was like the soapy rinsing of sooty chimneys),
+and made bold to ring at the workhouse gate, where I was wholly
+unexpected and quite unknown.</p>
+<p>A very bright and nimble little matron, with a bunch of keys
+in her hand, responded to my request to see the House. I
+began to doubt whether the police magistrate was quite right in
+his facts, when I noticed her quick, active little figure and her
+intelligent eyes.</p>
+<p>The Traveller (the matron intimated) should see the worst
+first. He was welcome to see everything. Such as it
+was, there it all was.</p>
+<p>This was the only preparation for our entering &lsquo;the Foul
+wards.&rsquo; They were in an old building squeezed away in
+a corner of a paved yard, quite detached from the more modern and
+spacious main body of the workhouse. They were in a
+building most monstrously behind the time&mdash;a mere series of
+garrets or lofts, with every inconvenient and objectionable
+circumstance in their construction, and only accessible by steep
+and narrow staircases, infamously ill-adapted for the passage
+up-stairs of the sick or down-stairs of the dead.</p>
+<p>A-bed in these miserable rooms, here on bedsteads, there (for
+a change, as I understood it) on the floor, were women in every
+stage of distress and disease. None but those who have
+attentively observed such scenes, can conceive the extraordinary
+variety of expression still latent under the general monotony and
+uniformity of colour, attitude, and condition. The form a
+little coiled up and turned away, as though it had turned its
+back on this world for ever; the uninterested face at once
+lead-coloured and yellow, looking passively upward from the
+pillow; the haggard mouth a little dropped, the hand outside the
+coverlet, so dull and indifferent, so light, and yet so heavy;
+these were on every pallet; but when I stopped beside a bed, and
+said ever so slight a word to the figure lying there, the ghost
+of the old character came into the face, and made the Foul ward
+as various as the fair world. No one appeared to care to
+live, but no one complained; all who could speak, said that as
+much was done for them as could be done there, that the
+attendance was kind and patient, that their suffering was very
+heavy, but they had nothing to ask for. The wretched rooms
+were as clean and sweet as it is possible for such rooms to be;
+they would become a pest-house in a single week, if they were
+ill-kept.</p>
+<p>I accompanied the brisk matron up another barbarous staircase,
+into a better kind of loft devoted to the idiotic and
+imbecile. There was at least Light in it, whereas the
+windows in the former wards had been like sides of
+school-boys&rsquo; bird-cages. There was a strong grating
+over the fire here, and, holding a kind of state on either side
+of the hearth, separated by the breadth of this grating, were two
+old ladies in a condition of feeble dignity, which was surely the
+very last and lowest reduction of self-complacency to be found in
+this wonderful humanity of ours. They were evidently
+jealous of each other, and passed their whole time (as some
+people do, whose fires are not grated) in mentally disparaging
+each other, and contemptuously watching their neighbours.
+One of these parodies on provincial gentlewomen was extremely
+talkative, and expressed a strong desire to attend the service on
+Sundays, from which she represented herself to have derived the
+greatest interest and consolation when allowed that
+privilege. She gossiped so well, and looked altogether so
+cheery and harmless, that I began to think this a case for the
+Eastern magistrate, until I found that on the last occasion of
+her attending chapel she had secreted a small stick, and had
+caused some confusion in the responses by suddenly producing it
+and belabouring the congregation.</p>
+<p>So, these two old ladies, separated by the breadth of the
+grating&mdash;otherwise they would fly at one another&rsquo;s
+caps&mdash;sat all day long, suspecting one another, and
+contemplating a world of fits. For everybody else in the
+room had fits, except the wards-woman; an elderly, able-bodied
+pauperess, with a large upper lip, and an air of repressing and
+saving her strength, as she stood with her hands folded before
+her, and her eyes slowly rolling, biding her time for catching or
+holding somebody. This civil personage (in whom I regretted
+to identify a reduced member of my honourable friend Mrs.
+Gamp&rsquo;s family) said, &lsquo;They has &rsquo;em continiwal,
+sir. They drops without no more notice than if they was
+coach-horses dropped from the moon, sir. And when one
+drops, another drops, and sometimes there&rsquo;ll be as many as
+four or five on &rsquo;em at once, dear me, a rolling and a
+tearin&rsquo;, bless you!&mdash;this young woman, now, has
+&rsquo;em dreadful bad.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She turned up this young woman&rsquo;s face with her hand as
+she said it. This young woman was seated on the floor,
+pondering in the foreground of the afflicted. There was
+nothing repellent either in her face or head. Many,
+apparently worse, varieties of epilepsy and hysteria were about
+her, but she was said to be the worst here. When I had
+spoken to her a little, she still sat with her face turned up,
+pondering, and a gleam of the mid-day sun shone in upon her.</p>
+<p>&mdash;Whether this young woman, and the rest of these so
+sorely troubled, as they sit or lie pondering in their confused
+dull way, ever get mental glimpses among the motes in the
+sunlight, of healthy people and healthy things? Whether
+this young woman, brooding like this in the summer season, ever
+thinks that somewhere there are trees and flowers, even mountains
+and the great sea? Whether, not to go so far, this young
+woman ever has any dim revelation of that young woman&mdash;that
+young woman who is not here and never will come here; who is
+courted, and caressed, and loved, and has a husband, and bears
+children, and lives in a home, and who never knows what it is to
+have this lashing and tearing coming upon her? And whether
+this young woman, God help her, gives herself up then and drops
+like a coach-horse from the moon?</p>
+<p>I hardly knew whether the voices of infant children,
+penetrating into so hopeless a place, made a sound that was
+pleasant or painful to me. It was something to be reminded
+that the weary world was not all aweary, and was ever renewing
+itself; but, this young woman was a child not long ago, and a
+child not long hence might be such as she. Howbeit, the
+active step and eye of the vigilant matron conducted me past the
+two provincial gentlewomen (whose dignity was ruffled by the
+children), and into the adjacent nursery.</p>
+<p>There were many babies here, and more than one handsome young
+mother. There were ugly young mothers also, and sullen
+young mothers, and callous young mothers. But, the babies
+had not appropriated to themselves any bad expression yet, and
+might have been, for anything that appeared to the contrary in
+their soft faces, Princes Imperial, and Princesses Royal. I
+had the pleasure of giving a poetical commission to the
+baker&rsquo;s man to make a cake with all despatch and toss it
+into the oven for one red-headed young pauper and myself, and
+felt much the better for it. Without that refreshment, I
+doubt if I should have been in a condition for &lsquo;the
+Refractories,&rsquo; towards whom my quick little
+matron&mdash;for whose adaptation to her office I had by this
+time conceived a genuine respect&mdash;drew me next, and
+marshalled me the way that I was going.</p>
+<p>The Refractories were picking oakum, in a small room giving on
+a yard. They sat in line on a form, with their backs to a
+window; before them, a table, and their work. The oldest
+Refractory was, say twenty; youngest Refractory, say
+sixteen. I have never yet ascertained in the course of my
+uncommercial travels, why a Refractory habit should affect the
+tonsils and uvula; but, I have always observed that Refractories
+of both sexes and every grade, between a Ragged School and the
+Old Bailey, have one voice, in which the tonsils and uvula gain a
+diseased ascendency.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Five pound indeed! I hain&rsquo;t a going fur to
+pick five pound,&rsquo; said the Chief of the Refractories,
+keeping time to herself with her head and chin. &lsquo;More
+than enough to pick what we picks now, in sich a place as this,
+and on wot we gets here!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>(This was in acknowledgment of a delicate intimation that the
+amount of work was likely to be increased. It certainly was
+not heavy then, for one Refractory had already done her
+day&rsquo;s task&mdash;it was barely two o&rsquo;clock&mdash;and
+was sitting behind it, with a head exactly matching it.)</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A pretty Ouse this is, matron, ain&rsquo;t it?&rsquo;
+said Refractory Two, &lsquo;where a pleeseman&rsquo;s called in,
+if a gal says a word!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And wen you&rsquo;re sent to prison for nothink or
+less!&rsquo; said the Chief, tugging at her oakum as if it were
+the matron&rsquo;s hair. &lsquo;But any place is better
+than this; that&rsquo;s one thing, and be thankful!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A laugh of Refractories led by Oakum Head with folded
+arms&mdash;who originated nothing, but who was in command of the
+skirmishers outside the conversation.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If any place is better than this,&rsquo; said my brisk
+guide, in the calmest manner, &lsquo;it is a pity you left a good
+place when you had one.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ho, no, I didn&rsquo;t, matron,&rsquo; returned the
+Chief, with another pull at her oakum, and a very expressive look
+at the enemy&rsquo;s forehead. &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t say that,
+matron, cos it&rsquo;s lies!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Oakum Head brought up the skirmishers again, skirmished, and
+retired.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And <i>I</i> warn&rsquo;t a going,&rsquo; exclaimed
+Refractory Two, &lsquo;though I was in one place for as long as
+four year&mdash;<i>I</i> warn&rsquo;t a going fur to stop in a
+place that warn&rsquo;t fit for me&mdash;there! And where
+the family warn&rsquo;t &rsquo;spectable
+characters&mdash;there! And where I fortunately or
+hunfort&rsquo;nately, found that the people warn&rsquo;t what
+they pretended to make theirselves out to be&mdash;there!
+And where it wasn&rsquo;t their faults, by chalks, if I
+warn&rsquo;t made bad and ruinated&mdash;Hah!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>During this speech, Oakum Head had again made a diversion with
+the skirmishers, and had again withdrawn.</p>
+<p>The Uncommercial Traveller ventured to remark that he supposed
+Chief Refractory and Number One, to be the two young women who
+had been taken before the magistrate?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes!&rsquo; said the Chief, &lsquo;we har! and the
+wonder is, that a pleeseman an&rsquo;t &rsquo;ad in now, and we
+took off agen. You can&rsquo;t open your lips here, without
+a pleeseman.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Number Two laughed (very uvularly), and the skirmishers
+followed suit.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I&rsquo;m sure I&rsquo;d be thankful,&rsquo; protested
+the Chief, looking sideways at the Uncommercial, &lsquo;if I
+could be got into a place, or got abroad. I&rsquo;m sick
+and tired of this precious Ouse, I am, with reason.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>So would be, and so was, Number Two. So would be, and so
+was, Oakum Head. So would be, and so were, Skirmishers.</p>
+<p>The Uncommercial took the liberty of hinting that he hardly
+thought it probable that any lady or gentleman in want of a
+likely young domestic of retiring manners, would be tempted into
+the engagement of either of the two leading Refractories, on her
+own presentation of herself as per sample.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It ain&rsquo;t no good being nothink else here,&rsquo;
+said the Chief.</p>
+<p>The Uncommercial thought it might be worth trying.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh no it ain&rsquo;t,&rsquo; said the Chief.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not a bit of good,&rsquo; said Number Two.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And I&rsquo;m sure I&rsquo;d be very thankful to be got
+into a place, or got abroad,&rsquo; said the Chief.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And so should I,&rsquo; said Number Two.
+&lsquo;Truly thankful, I should.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Oakum Head then rose, and announced as an entirely new idea,
+the mention of which profound novelty might be naturally expected
+to startle her unprepared hearers, that she would be very
+thankful to be got into a place, or got abroad. And, as if
+she had then said, &lsquo;Chorus, ladies!&rsquo; all the
+Skirmishers struck up to the same purpose. We left them,
+thereupon, and began a long walk among the women who were simply
+old and infirm; but whenever, in the course of this same walk, I
+looked out of any high window that commanded the yard, I saw
+Oakum Head and all the other Refractories looking out at their
+low window for me, and never failing to catch me, the moment I
+showed my head.</p>
+<p>In ten minutes I had ceased to believe in such fables of a
+golden time as youth, the prime of life, or a hale old age.
+In ten minutes, all the lights of womankind seemed to have been
+blown out, and nothing in that way to be left this vault to brag
+of, but the flickering and expiring snuffs.</p>
+<p>And what was very curious, was, that these dim old women had
+one company notion which was the fashion of the place.
+Every old woman who became aware of a visitor and was not in bed
+hobbled over a form into her accustomed seat, and became one of a
+line of dim old women confronting another line of dim old women
+across a narrow table. There was no obligation whatever
+upon them to range themselves in this way; it was their manner of
+&lsquo;receiving.&rsquo; As a rule, they made no attempt to
+talk to one another, or to look at the visitor, or to look at
+anything, but sat silently working their mouths, like a sort of
+poor old Cows. In some of these wards, it was good to see a
+few green plants; in others, an isolated Refractory acting as
+nurse, who did well enough in that capacity, when separated from
+her compeers; every one of these wards, day room, night room, or
+both combined, was scrupulously clean and fresh. I have
+seen as many such places as most travellers in my line, and I
+never saw one such, better kept.</p>
+<p>Among the bedridden there was great patience, great reliance
+on the books under the pillow, great faith in <span
+class="smcap">God</span>. All cared for sympathy, but none
+much cared to be encouraged with hope of recovery; on the whole,
+I should say, it was considered rather a distinction to have a
+complication of disorders, and to be in a worse way than the
+rest. From some of the windows, the river could be seen
+with all its life and movement; the day was bright, but I came
+upon no one who was looking out.</p>
+<p>In one large ward, sitting by the fire in arm-chairs of
+distinction, like the President and Vice of the good company,
+were two old women, upwards of ninety years of age. The
+younger of the two, just turned ninety, was deaf, but not very,
+and could easily be made to hear. In her early time she had
+nursed a child, who was now another old woman, more infirm than
+herself, inhabiting the very same chamber. She perfectly
+understood this when the matron told it, and, with sundry nods
+and motions of her forefinger, pointed out the woman in
+question. The elder of this pair, ninety-three, seated
+before an illustrated newspaper (but not reading it), was a
+bright-eyed old soul, really not deaf, wonderfully preserved, and
+amazingly conversational. She had not long lost her
+husband, and had been in that place little more than a
+year. At Boston, in the State of Massachusetts, this poor
+creature would have been individually addressed, would have been
+tended in her own room, and would have had her life gently
+assimilated to a comfortable life out of doors. Would that
+be much to do in England for a woman who has kept herself out of
+a workhouse more than ninety rough long years? When Britain
+first, at Heaven&rsquo;s command, arose, with a great deal of
+allegorical confusion, from out the azure main, did her guardian
+angels positively forbid it in the Charter which has been so much
+besung?</p>
+<p>The object of my journey was accomplished when the nimble
+matron had no more to show me. As I shook hands with her at
+the gate, I told her that I thought justice had not used her very
+well, and that the wise men of the East were not infallible.</p>
+<p>Now, I reasoned with myself, as I made my journey home again,
+concerning those Foul wards. They ought not to exist; no
+person of common decency and humanity can see them and doubt
+it. But what is this Union to do? The necessary
+alteration would cost several thousands of pounds; it has already
+to support three workhouses; its inhabitants work hard for their
+bare lives, and are already rated for the relief of the Poor to
+the utmost extent of reasonable endurance. One poor parish
+in this very Union is rated to the amount of <span
+class="smcap">Five and Sixpence</span> in the pound, at the very
+same time when the rich parish of Saint George&rsquo;s,
+Hanover-square, is rated at about <span
+class="smcap">Sevenpence</span> in the pound, Paddington at about
+<span class="smcap">Fourpence</span>, Saint James&rsquo;s,
+Westminster, at about <span class="smcap">Tenpence</span>!
+It is only through the equalisation of Poor Rates that what is
+left undone in this wise, can be done. Much more is left
+undone, or is ill-done, than I have space to suggest in these
+notes of a single uncommercial journey; but, the wise men of the
+East, before they can reasonably hold forth about it, must look
+to the North and South and West; let them also, any morning
+before taking the seat of Solomon, look into the shops and
+dwellings all around the Temple, and first ask themselves
+&lsquo;how much more can these poor people&mdash;many of whom
+keep themselves with difficulty enough out of the
+workhouse&mdash;bear?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I had yet other matter for reflection as I journeyed home,
+inasmuch as, before I altogether departed from the neighbourhood
+of Mr. Baker&rsquo;s trap, I had knocked at the gate of the
+workhouse of St. George&rsquo;s-in-the-East, and had found it to
+be an establishment highly creditable to those parts, and
+thoroughly well administered by a most intelligent master.
+I remarked in it, an instance of the collateral harm that
+obstinate vanity and folly can do. &lsquo;This was the Hall
+where those old paupers, male and female, whom I had just seen,
+met for the Church service, was
+it?&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Yes.&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Did they sing
+the Psalms to any instrument?&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;They would like
+to, very much; they would have an extraordinary interest in doing
+so.&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;And could none be
+got?&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Well, a piano could even have been got
+for nothing, but these unfortunate
+dissensions&mdash;&rsquo; Ah! better, far better, my
+Christian friend in the beautiful garment, to have let the
+singing boys alone, and left the multitude to sing for
+themselves! You should know better than I, but I think I
+have read that they did so, once upon a time, and that
+&lsquo;when they had sung an hymn,&rsquo; Some one (not in a
+beautiful garment) went up into the Mount of Olives.</p>
+<p>It made my heart ache to think of this miserable trifling, in
+the streets of a city where every stone seemed to call to me, as
+I walked along, &lsquo;Turn this way, man, and see what waits to
+be done!&rsquo; So I decoyed myself into another train of
+thought to ease my heart. But, I don&rsquo;t know that I
+did it, for I was so full of paupers, that it was, after all,
+only a change to a single pauper, who took possession of my
+remembrance instead of a thousand.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I beg your pardon, sir,&rsquo; he had said, in a
+confidential manner, on another occasion, taking me aside;
+&lsquo;but I have seen better days.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am very sorry to hear it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir, I have a complaint to make against the
+master.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have no power here, I assure you. And if I
+had&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But, allow me, sir, to mention it, as between yourself
+and a man who has seen better days, sir. The master and
+myself are both masons, sir, and I make him the sign continually;
+but, because I am in this unfortunate position, sir, he
+won&rsquo;t give me the counter-sign!&rsquo;</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>IV<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">TWO VIEWS OF A CHEAP THEATRE</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">As</span> I shut the door of my lodging
+behind me, and came out into the streets at six on a drizzling
+Saturday evening in the last past month of January, all that
+neighbourhood of Covent-garden looked very desolate. It is
+so essentially a neighbourhood which has seen better days, that
+bad weather affects it sooner than another place which has not
+come down in the World. In its present reduced condition it
+bears a thaw almost worse than any place I know. It gets so
+dreadfully low-spirited when damp breaks forth. Those
+wonderful houses about Drury-lane Theatre, which in the palmy
+days of theatres were prosperous and long-settled places of
+business, and which now change hands every week, but never change
+their character of being divided and sub-divided on the ground
+floor into mouldy dens of shops where an orange and half-a-dozen
+nuts, or a pomatum-pot, one cake of fancy soap, and a cigar box,
+are offered for sale and never sold, were most ruefully
+contemplated that evening, by the statue of Shakespeare, with the
+rain-drops coursing one another down its innocent nose.
+Those inscrutable pigeon-hole offices, with nothing in them (not
+so much as an inkstand) but a model of a theatre before the
+curtain, where, in the Italian Opera season, tickets at reduced
+prices are kept on sale by nomadic gentlemen in smeary hats too
+tall for them, whom one occasionally seems to have seen on
+race-courses, not wholly unconnected with strips of cloth of
+various colours and a rolling ball&mdash;those Bedouin
+establishments, deserted by the tribe, and tenantless, except
+when sheltering in one corner an irregular row of ginger-beer
+bottles, which would have made one shudder on such a night, but
+for its being plain that they had nothing in them, shrunk from
+the shrill cries of the news-boys at their Exchange in the kennel
+of Catherine-street, like guilty things upon a fearful
+summons. At the pipe-shop in Great Russell-street, the
+Death&rsquo;s-head pipes were like theatrical memento mori,
+admonishing beholders of the decline of the playhouse as an
+Institution. I walked up Bow-street, disposed to be angry
+with the shops there, that were letting out theatrical secrets by
+exhibiting to work-a-day humanity the stuff of which diadems and
+robes of kings are made. I noticed that some shops which
+had once been in the dramatic line, and had struggled out of it,
+were not getting on prosperously&mdash;like some actors I have
+known, who took to business and failed to make it answer.
+In a word, those streets looked so dull, and, considered as
+theatrical streets, so broken and bankrupt, that the <span
+class="smcap">Found Dead</span> on the black board at the police
+station might have announced the decease of the Drama, and the
+pools of water outside the fire-engine maker&rsquo;s at the
+corner of Long-acre might have been occasioned by his having
+brought out the whole of his stock to play upon its last
+smouldering ashes.</p>
+<p>And yet, on such a night in so degenerate a time, the object
+of my journey was theatrical. And yet within half an hour I
+was in an immense theatre, capable of holding nearly five
+thousand people.</p>
+<p>What Theatre? Her Majesty&rsquo;s? Far
+better. Royal Italian Opera? Far better.
+Infinitely superior to the latter for hearing in; infinitely
+superior to both, for seeing in. To every part of this
+Theatre, spacious fire-proof ways of ingress and egress.
+For every part of it, convenient places of refreshment and
+retiring rooms. Everything to eat and drink carefully
+supervised as to quality, and sold at an appointed price;
+respectable female attendants ready for the commonest women in
+the audience; a general air of consideration, decorum, and
+supervision, most commendable; an unquestionably humanising
+influence in all the social arrangements of the place.</p>
+<p>Surely a dear Theatre, then? Because there were in
+London (not very long ago) Theatres with entrance-prices up to
+half-a-guinea a head, whose arrangements were not half so
+civilised. Surely, therefore, a dear Theatre? Not
+very dear. A gallery at three-pence, another gallery at
+fourpence, a pit at sixpence, boxes and pit-stalls at a shilling,
+and a few private boxes at half-a-crown.</p>
+<p>My uncommercial curiosity induced me to go into every nook of
+this great place, and among every class of the audience assembled
+in it&mdash;amounting that evening, as I calculated, to about two
+thousand and odd hundreds. Magnificently lighted by a
+firmament of sparkling chandeliers, the building was ventilated
+to perfection. My sense of smell, without being
+particularly delicate, has been so offended in some of the
+commoner places of public resort, that I have often been obliged
+to leave them when I have made an uncommercial journey expressly
+to look on. The air of this Theatre was fresh, cool, and
+wholesome. To help towards this end, very sensible
+precautions had been used, ingeniously combining the experience
+of hospitals and railway stations. Asphalt pavements
+substituted for wooden floors, honest bare walls of glazed brick
+and tile&mdash;even at the back of the boxes&mdash;for plaster
+and paper, no benches stuffed, and no carpeting or baize used; a
+cool material with a light glazed surface, being the covering of
+the seats.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image24" href="images/p24b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"A Cheap Theatre"
+title=
+"A Cheap Theatre"
+ src="images/p24s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>These various contrivances are as well considered in the place
+in question as if it were a Fever Hospital; the result is, that
+it is sweet and healthful. It has been constructed from the
+ground to the roof, with a careful reference to sight and sound
+in every corner; the result is, that its form is beautiful, and
+that the appearance of the audience, as seen from the
+proscenium&mdash;with every face in it commanding the stage, and
+the whole so admirably raked and turned to that centre, that a
+hand can scarcely move in the great assemblage without the
+movement being seen from thence&mdash;is highly remarkable in its
+union of vastness with compactness. The stage itself, and
+all its appurtenances of machinery, cellarage, height and
+breadth, are on a scale more like the Scala at Milan, or the San
+Carlo at Naples, or the Grand Opera at Paris, than any notion a
+stranger would be likely to form of the Britannia Theatre at
+Hoxton, a mile north of St. Luke&rsquo;s Hospital in the
+Old-street-road, London. The Forty Thieves might be played
+here, and every thief ride his real horse, and the disguised
+captain bring in his oil jars on a train of real camels, and
+nobody be put out of the way. This really extraordinary
+place is the achievement of one man&rsquo;s enterprise, and was
+erected on the ruins of an inconvenient old building in less than
+five months, at a round cost of five-and-twenty thousand
+pounds. To dismiss this part of my subject, and still to
+render to the proprietor the credit that is strictly his due, I
+must add that his sense of the responsibility upon him to make
+the best of his audience, and to do his best for them, is a
+highly agreeable sign of these times.</p>
+<p>As the spectators at this theatre, for a reason I will
+presently show, were the object of my journey, I entered on the
+play of the night as one of the two thousand and odd hundreds, by
+looking about me at my neighbours. We were a motley
+assemblage of people, and we had a good many boys and young men
+among us; we had also many girls and young women. To
+represent, however, that we did not include a very great number,
+and a very fair proportion of family groups, would be to make a
+gross mis-statement. Such groups were to be seen in all
+parts of the house; in the boxes and stalls particularly, they
+were composed of persons of very decent appearance, who had many
+children with them. Among our dresses there were most kinds
+of shabby and greasy wear, and much fustian and corduroy that was
+neither sound nor fragrant. The caps of our young men were
+mostly of a limp character, and we who wore them, slouched,
+high-shouldered, into our places with our hands in our pockets,
+and occasionally twisted our cravats about our necks like eels,
+and occasionally tied them down our breasts like links of
+sausages, and occasionally had a screw in our hair over each
+cheek-bone with a slight Thief-flavour in it. Besides
+prowlers and idlers, we were mechanics, dock-labourers,
+costermongers, petty tradesmen, small clerks, milliners,
+stay-makers, shoe-binders, slop-workers, poor workers in a
+hundred highways and byways. Many of us&mdash;on the whole,
+the majority&mdash;were not at all clean, and not at all choice
+in our lives or conversation. But we had all come together
+in a place where our convenience was well consulted, and where we
+were well looked after, to enjoy an evening&rsquo;s entertainment
+in common. We were not going to lose any part of what we
+had paid for through anybody&rsquo;s caprice, and as a community
+we had a character to lose. So, we were closely attentive,
+and kept excellent order; and let the man or boy who did
+otherwise instantly get out from this place, or we would put him
+out with the greatest expedition.</p>
+<p>We began at half-past six with a pantomime&mdash;with a
+pantomime so long, that before it was over I felt as if I had
+been travelling for six weeks&mdash;going to India, say, by the
+Overland Mail. The Spirit of Liberty was the principal
+personage in the Introduction, and the Four Quarters of the World
+came out of the globe, glittering, and discoursed with the
+Spirit, who sang charmingly. We were delighted to
+understand that there was no liberty anywhere but among
+ourselves, and we highly applauded the agreeable fact. In
+an allegorical way, which did as well as any other way, we and
+the Spirit of Liberty got into a kingdom of Needles and Pins, and
+found them at war with a potentate who called in to his aid their
+old arch enemy Rust, and who would have got the better of them if
+the Spirit of Liberty had not in the nick of time transformed the
+leaders into Clown, Pantaloon, Harlequin, Columbine, Harlequina,
+and a whole family of Sprites, consisting of a remarkably stout
+father and three spineless sons. We all knew what was
+coming when the Spirit of Liberty addressed the king with a big
+face, and His Majesty backed to the side-scenes and began untying
+himself behind, with his big face all on one side. Our
+excitement at that crisis was great, and our delight
+unbounded. After this era in our existence, we went through
+all the incidents of a pantomime; it was not by any means a
+savage pantomime, in the way of burning or boiling people, or
+throwing them out of window, or cutting them up; was often very
+droll; was always liberally got up, and cleverly presented.
+I noticed that the people who kept the shops, and who represented
+the passengers in the thoroughfares, and so forth, had no
+conventionality in them, but were unusually like the real
+thing&mdash;from which I infer that you may take that audience in
+(if you wish to) concerning Knights and Ladies, Fairies, Angels,
+or such like, but they are not to be done as to anything in the
+streets. I noticed, also, that when two young men, dressed
+in exact imitation of the eel-and-sausage-cravated portion of the
+audience, were chased by policemen, and, finding themselves in
+danger of being caught, dropped so suddenly as to oblige the
+policemen to tumble over them, there was great rejoicing among
+the caps&mdash;as though it were a delicate reference to
+something they had heard of before.</p>
+<p>The Pantomime was succeeded by a Melo-Drama. Throughout
+the evening I was pleased to observe Virtue quite as triumphant
+as she usually is out of doors, and indeed I thought rather more
+so. We all agreed (for the time) that honesty was the best
+policy, and we were as hard as iron upon Vice, and we
+wouldn&rsquo;t hear of Villainy getting on in the world&mdash;no,
+not on any consideration whatever.</p>
+<p>Between the pieces, we almost all of us went out and
+refreshed. Many of us went the length of drinking beer at
+the bar of the neighbouring public-house, some of us drank
+spirits, crowds of us had sandwiches and ginger-beer at the
+refreshment-bars established for us in the Theatre. The
+sandwich&mdash;as substantial as was consistent with portability,
+and as cheap as possible&mdash;we hailed as one of our greatest
+institutions. It forced its way among us at all stages of
+the entertainment, and we were always delighted to see it; its
+adaptability to the varying moods of our nature was surprising;
+we could never weep so comfortably as when our tears fell on our
+sandwich; we could never laugh so heartily as when we choked with
+sandwich; Virtue never looked so beautiful or Vice so deformed as
+when we paused, sandwich in hand, to consider what would come of
+that resolution of Wickedness in boots, to sever Innocence in
+flowered chintz from Honest Industry in striped stockings.
+When the curtain fell for the night, we still fell back upon
+sandwich, to help us through the rain and mire, and home to
+bed.</p>
+<p>This, as I have mentioned, was Saturday night. Being
+Saturday night, I had accomplished but the half of my
+uncommercial journey; for, its object was to compare the play on
+Saturday evening with the preaching in the same Theatre on Sunday
+evening.</p>
+<p>Therefore, at the same hour of half-past six on the similarly
+damp and muddy Sunday evening, I returned to this Theatre.
+I drove up to the entrance (fearful of being late, or I should
+have come on foot), and found myself in a large crowd of people
+who, I am happy to state, were put into excellent spirits by my
+arrival. Having nothing to look at but the mud and the
+closed doors, they looked at me, and highly enjoyed the comic
+spectacle. My modesty inducing me to draw off, some
+hundreds of yards, into a dark corner, they at once forgot me,
+and applied themselves to their former occupation of looking at
+the mud and looking in at the closed doors: which, being of
+grated ironwork, allowed the lighted passage within to be
+seen. They were chiefly people of respectable appearance,
+odd and impulsive as most crowds are, and making a joke of being
+there as most crowds do.</p>
+<p>In the dark corner I might have sat a long while, but that a
+very obliging passer-by informed me that the Theatre was already
+full, and that the people whom I saw in the street were all shut
+out for want of room. After that, I lost no time in worming
+myself into the building, and creeping to a place in a Proscenium
+box that had been kept for me.</p>
+<p>There must have been full four thousand people present.
+Carefully estimating the pit alone, I could bring it out as
+holding little less than fourteen hundred. Every part of
+the house was well filled, and I had not found it easy to make my
+way along the back of the boxes to where I sat. The
+chandeliers in the ceiling were lighted; there was no light on
+the stage; the orchestra was empty. The green curtain was
+down, and, packed pretty closely on chairs on the small space of
+stage before it, were some thirty gentlemen, and two or three
+ladies. In the centre of these, in a desk or pulpit covered
+with red baize, was the presiding minister. The kind of
+rostrum he occupied will be very well understood, if I liken it
+to a boarded-up fireplace turned towards the audience, with a
+gentleman in a black surtout standing in the stove and leaning
+forward over the mantelpiece.</p>
+<p>A portion of Scripture was being read when I went in. It
+was followed by a discourse, to which the congregation listened
+with most exemplary attention and uninterrupted silence and
+decorum. My own attention comprehended both the auditory
+and the speaker, and shall turn to both in this recalling of the
+scene, exactly as it did at the time.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A very difficult thing,&rsquo; I thought, when the
+discourse began, &lsquo;to speak appropriately to so large an
+audience, and to speak with tact. Without it, better not to
+speak at all. Infinitely better, to read the New Testament
+well, and to let <i>that</i> speak. In this congregation
+there is indubitably one pulse; but I doubt if any power short of
+genius can touch it as one, and make it answer as one.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I could not possibly say to myself as the discourse proceeded,
+that the minister was a good speaker. I could not possibly
+say to myself that he expressed an understanding of the general
+mind and character of his audience. There was a
+supposititious working-man introduced into the homily, to make
+supposititious objections to our Christian religion and be
+reasoned down, who was not only a very disagreeable person, but
+remarkably unlike life&mdash;very much more unlike it than
+anything I had seen in the pantomime. The native
+independence of character this artisan was supposed to possess,
+was represented by a suggestion of a dialect that I certainly
+never heard in my uncommercial travels, and with a coarse swing
+of voice and manner anything but agreeable to his feelings, I
+should conceive, considered in the light of a portrait, and as
+far away from the fact as a Chinese Tartar. There was a
+model pauper introduced in like manner, who appeared to me to be
+the most intolerably arrogant pauper ever relieved, and to show
+himself in absolute want and dire necessity of a course of Stone
+Yard. For, how did this pauper testify to his having
+received the gospel of humility? A gentleman met him in the
+workhouse, and said (which I myself really thought good-natured
+of him), &lsquo;Ah, John? I am sorry to see you here.
+I am sorry to see you so poor.&rsquo; &lsquo;Poor,
+sir!&rsquo; replied that man, drawing himself up, &lsquo;I am the
+son of a Prince! <i>My</i> father is the King of
+Kings. <i>My</i> father is the Lord of Lords.
+<i>My</i> father is the ruler of all the Princes of the
+Earth!&rsquo; &amp;c. And this was what all the
+preacher&rsquo;s fellow-sinners might come to, if they would
+embrace this blessed book&mdash;which I must say it did some
+violence to my own feelings of reverence, to see held out at
+arm&rsquo;s length at frequent intervals and soundingly slapped,
+like a slow lot at a sale. Now, could I help asking myself
+the question, whether the mechanic before me, who must detect the
+preacher as being wrong about the visible manner of himself and
+the like of himself, and about such a noisy lip-server as that
+pauper, might not, most unhappily for the usefulness of the
+occasion, doubt that preacher&rsquo;s being right about things
+not visible to human senses?</p>
+<p>Again. Is it necessary or advisable to address such an
+audience continually as &lsquo;fellow-sinners&rsquo;? Is it
+not enough to be fellow-creatures, born yesterday, suffering and
+striving to-day, dying to-morrow? By our common humanity,
+my brothers and sisters, by our common capacities for pain and
+pleasure, by our common laughter and our common tears, by our
+common aspiration to reach something better than ourselves, by
+our common tendency to believe in something good, and to invest
+whatever we love or whatever we lose with some qualities that are
+superior to our own failings and weaknesses as we know them in
+our own poor hearts&mdash;by these, Hear me!&mdash;Surely, it is
+enough to be fellow-creatures. Surely, it includes the
+other designation, and some touching meanings over and above.</p>
+<p>Again. There was a personage introduced into the
+discourse (not an absolute novelty, to the best of my remembrance
+of my reading), who had been personally known to the preacher,
+and had been quite a Crichton in all the ways of philosophy, but
+had been an infidel. Many a time had the preacher talked
+with him on that subject, and many a time had he failed to
+convince that intelligent man. But he fell ill, and died,
+and before he died he recorded his conversion&mdash;in words
+which the preacher had taken down, my fellow-sinners, and would
+read to you from this piece of paper. I must confess that
+to me, as one of an uninstructed audience, they did not appear
+particularly edifying. I thought their tone extremely
+selfish, and I thought they had a spiritual vanity in them which
+was of the before-mentioned refractory pauper&rsquo;s family.</p>
+<p>All slangs and twangs are objectionable everywhere, but the
+slang and twang of the conventicle&mdash;as bad in its way as
+that of the House of Commons, and nothing worse can be said of
+it&mdash;should be studiously avoided under such circumstances as
+I describe. The avoidance was not complete on this
+occasion. Nor was it quite agreeable to see the preacher
+addressing his pet &lsquo;points&rsquo; to his backers on the
+stage, as if appealing to those disciples to show him up, and
+testify to the multitude that each of those points was a
+clincher.</p>
+<p>But, in respect of the large Christianity of his general tone;
+of his renunciation of all priestly authority; of his earnest and
+reiterated assurance to the people that the commonest among them
+could work out their own salvation if they would, by simply,
+lovingly, and dutifully following Our Saviour, and that they
+needed the mediation of no erring man; in these particulars, this
+gentleman deserved all praise. Nothing could be better than
+the spirit, or the plain emphatic words of his discourse in these
+respects. And it was a most significant and encouraging
+circumstance that whenever he struck that chord, or whenever he
+described anything which Christ himself had done, the array of
+faces before him was very much more earnest, and very much more
+expressive of emotion, than at any other time.</p>
+<p>And now, I am brought to the fact, that the lowest part of the
+audience of the previous night, <i>was not there</i>. There
+is no doubt about it. There was no such thing in that
+building, that Sunday evening. I have been told since, that
+the lowest part of the audience of the Victoria Theatre has been
+attracted to its Sunday services. I have been very glad to
+hear it, but on this occasion of which I write, the lowest part
+of the usual audience of the Britannia Theatre, decidedly and
+unquestionably stayed away. When I first took my seat and
+looked at the house, my surprise at the change in its occupants
+was as great as my disappointment. To the most respectable
+class of the previous evening, was added a great number of
+respectable strangers attracted by curiosity, and drafts from the
+regular congregations of various chapels. It was impossible
+to fail in identifying the character of these last, and they were
+very numerous. I came out in a strong, slow tide of them
+setting from the boxes. Indeed, while the discourse was in
+progress, the respectable character of the auditory was so
+manifest in their appearance, that when the minister addressed a
+supposititious &lsquo;outcast,&rsquo; one really felt a little
+impatient of it, as a figure of speech not justified by anything
+the eye could discover.</p>
+<p>The time appointed for the conclusion of the proceedings was
+eight o&rsquo;clock. The address having lasted until full
+that time, and it being the custom to conclude with a hymn, the
+preacher intimated in a few sensible words that the clock had
+struck the hour, and that those who desired to go before the hymn
+was sung, could go now, without giving offence. No one
+stirred. The hymn was then sung, in good time and tune and
+unison, and its effect was very striking. A comprehensive
+benevolent prayer dismissed the throng, and in seven or eight
+minutes there was nothing left in the Theatre but a light cloud
+of dust.</p>
+<p>That these Sunday meetings in Theatres are good things, I do
+not doubt. Nor do I doubt that they will work lower and
+lower down in the social scale, if those who preside over them
+will be very careful on two heads: firstly, not to disparage the
+places in which they speak, or the intelligence of their hearers;
+secondly, not to set themselves in antagonism to the natural
+inborn desire of the mass of mankind to recreate themselves and
+to be amused.</p>
+<p>There is a third head, taking precedence of all others, to
+which my remarks on the discourse I heard, have tended. In
+the New Testament there is the most beautiful and affecting
+history conceivable by man, and there are the terse models for
+all prayer and for all preaching. As to the models, imitate
+them, Sunday preachers&mdash;else why are they there,
+consider? As to the history, tell it. Some people
+cannot read, some people will not read, many people (this
+especially holds among the young and ignorant) find it hard to
+pursue the verse-form in which the book is presented to them, and
+imagine that those breaks imply gaps and want of
+continuity. Help them over that first stumbling-block, by
+setting forth the history in narrative, with no fear of
+exhausting it. You will never preach so well, you will
+never move them so profoundly, you will never send them away with
+half so much to think of. Which is the better interest:
+Christ&rsquo;s choice of twelve poor men to help in those
+merciful wonders among the poor and rejected; or the pious
+bullying of a whole Union-full of paupers? What is your
+changed philosopher to wretched me, peeping in at the door out of
+the mud of the streets and of my life, when you have the
+widow&rsquo;s son to tell me about, the ruler&rsquo;s daughter,
+the other figure at the door when the brother of the two sisters
+was dead, and one of the two ran to the mourner, crying,
+&lsquo;The Master is come and calleth for thee&rsquo;?&mdash;Let
+the preacher who will thoroughly forget himself and remember no
+individuality but one, and no eloquence but one, stand up before
+four thousand men and women at the Britannia Theatre any Sunday
+night, recounting that narrative to them as fellow creatures, and
+he shall see a sight!</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>V<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">POOR MERCANTILE JACK</span></h2>
+<p>Is the sweet little cherub who sits smiling aloft and keeps
+watch on the life of poor Jack, commissioned to take charge of
+Mercantile Jack, as well as Jack of the national navy? If
+not, who is? What is the cherub about, and what are we all
+about, when poor Mercantile Jack is having his brains slowly
+knocked out by penny-weights, aboard the brig Beelzebub, or the
+barque Bowie-knife&mdash;when he looks his last at that infernal
+craft, with the first officer&rsquo;s iron boot-heel in his
+remaining eye, or with his dying body towed overboard in the
+ship&rsquo;s wake, while the cruel wounds in it do &lsquo;the
+multitudinous seas incarnadine&rsquo;?</p>
+<p>Is it unreasonable to entertain a belief that if, aboard the
+brig Beelzebub or the barque Bowie-knife, the first officer did
+half the damage to cotton that he does to men, there would
+presently arise from both sides of the Atlantic so vociferous an
+invocation of the sweet little cherub who sits calculating aloft,
+keeping watch on the markets that pay, that such vigilant cherub
+would, with a winged sword, have that gallant officer&rsquo;s
+organ of destructiveness out of his head in the space of a flash
+of lightning?</p>
+<p>If it be unreasonable, then am I the most unreasonable of men,
+for I believe it with all my soul.</p>
+<p>This was my thought as I walked the dock-quays at Liverpool,
+keeping watch on poor Mercantile Jack. Alas for me! I
+have long outgrown the state of sweet little cherub; but there I
+was, and there Mercantile Jack was, and very busy he was, and
+very cold he was: the snow yet lying in the frozen furrows of the
+land, and the north-east winds snipping off the tops of the
+little waves in the Mersey, and rolling them into hailstones to
+pelt him with. Mercantile Jack was hard at it, in the hard
+weather: as he mostly is in all weathers, poor Jack. He was
+girded to ships&rsquo; masts and funnels of steamers, like a
+forester to a great oak, scraping and painting; he was lying out
+on yards, furling sails that tried to beat him off; he was dimly
+discernible up in a world of giant cobwebs, reefing and splicing;
+he was faintly audible down in holds, stowing and unshipping
+cargo; he was winding round and round at capstans melodious,
+monotonous, and drunk; he was of a diabolical aspect, with
+coaling for the Antipodes; he was washing decks barefoot, with
+the breast of his red shirt open to the blast, though it was
+sharper than the knife in his leathern girdle; he was looking
+over bulwarks, all eyes and hair; he was standing by at the shoot
+of the Cunard steamer, off to-morrow, as the stocks in trade of
+several butchers, poulterers, and fishmongers, poured down into
+the ice-house; he was coming aboard of other vessels, with his
+kit in a tarpaulin bag, attended by plunderers to the very last
+moment of his shore-going existence. As though his senses,
+when released from the uproar of the elements, were under
+obligation to be confused by other turmoil, there was a rattling
+of wheels, a clattering of hoofs, a clashing of iron, a jolting
+of cotton and hides and casks and timber, an incessant deafening
+disturbance on the quays, that was the very madness of
+sound. And as, in the midst of it, he stood swaying about,
+with his hair blown all manner of wild ways, rather crazedly
+taking leave of his plunderers, all the rigging in the docks was
+shrill in the wind, and every little steamer coming and going
+across the Mersey was sharp in its blowing off, and every buoy in
+the river bobbed spitefully up and down, as if there were a
+general taunting chorus of &lsquo;Come along, Mercantile
+Jack! Ill-lodged, ill-fed, ill-used, hocussed, entrapped,
+anticipated, cleaned out. Come along, Poor Mercantile Jack,
+and be tempest-tossed till you are drowned!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The uncommercial transaction which had brought me and Jack
+together, was this:&mdash;I had entered the Liverpool police
+force, that I might have a look at the various unlawful traps
+which are every night set for Jack. As my term of service
+in that distinguished corps was short, and as my personal bias in
+the capacity of one of its members has ceased, no suspicion will
+attach to my evidence that it is an admirable force.
+Besides that it is composed, without favour, of the best men that
+can be picked, it is directed by an unusual intelligence.
+Its organisation against Fires, I take to be much better than the
+metropolitan system, and in all respects it tempers its
+remarkable vigilance with a still more remarkable discretion.</p>
+<p>Jack had knocked off work in the docks some hours, and I had
+taken, for purposes of identification, a photograph-likeness of a
+thief, in the portrait-room at our head police office (on the
+whole, he seemed rather complimented by the proceeding), and I
+had been on police parade, and the small hand of the clock was
+moving on to ten, when I took up my lantern to follow Mr.
+Superintendent to the traps that were set for Jack. In Mr.
+Superintendent I saw, as anybody might, a tall, well-looking,
+well-set-up man of a soldierly bearing, with a cavalry air, a
+good chest, and a resolute but not by any means ungentle
+face. He carried in his hand a plain black walking-stick of
+hard wood; and whenever and wherever, at any after-time of the
+night, he struck it on the pavement with a ringing sound, it
+instantly produced a whistle out of the darkness, and a
+policeman. To this remarkable stick, I refer an air of
+mystery and magic which pervaded the whole of my perquisition
+among the traps that were set for Jack.</p>
+<p>We began by diving into the obscurest streets and lanes of the
+port. Suddenly pausing in a flow of cheerful discourse,
+before a dead wall, apparently some ten miles long, Mr.
+Superintendent struck upon the ground, and the wall opened and
+shot out, with military salute of hand to temple, two
+policemen&mdash;not in the least surprised themselves, not in the
+least surprising Mr. Superintendent.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;All right, Sharpeye?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;All right, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;All right, Trampfoot?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;All right, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is Quickear there?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Here am I, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Come with us.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>So, Sharpeye went before, and Mr. Superintendent and I went
+next, and Trampfoot and Quickear marched as rear-guard.
+Sharp-eye, I soon had occasion to remark, had a skilful and quite
+professional way of opening doors&mdash;touched latches
+delicately, as if they were keys of musical
+instruments&mdash;opened every door he touched, as if he were
+perfectly confident that there was stolen property behind
+it&mdash;instantly insinuated himself, to prevent its being
+shut.</p>
+<p>Sharpeye opened several doors of traps that were set for Jack,
+but Jack did not happen to be in any of them. They were all
+such miserable places that really, Jack, if I were you, I would
+give them a wider berth. In every trap, somebody was
+sitting over a fire, waiting for Jack. Now, it was a
+crouching old woman, like the picture of the Norwood Gipsy in the
+old sixpenny dream-books; now, it was a crimp of the male sex, in
+a checked shirt and without a coat, reading a newspaper; now, it
+was a man crimp and a woman crimp, who always introduced
+themselves as united in holy matrimony; now, it was Jack&rsquo;s
+delight, his (un)lovely Nan; but they were all waiting for Jack,
+and were all frightfully disappointed to see us.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Who have you got up-stairs here?&rsquo; says Sharpeye,
+generally. (In the Move-on tone.)</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Nobody, surr; sure not a blessed sowl!&rsquo;
+(Irish feminine reply.)</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What do you mean by nobody? Didn&rsquo;t I hear a
+woman&rsquo;s step go up-stairs when my hand was on the
+latch?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah! sure thin you&rsquo;re right, surr, I forgot
+her! &rsquo;Tis on&rsquo;y Betsy White, surr. Ah! you
+know Betsy, surr. Come down, Betsy darlin&rsquo;, and say
+the gintlemin.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Generally, Betsy looks over the banisters (the steep staircase
+is in the room) with a forcible expression in her protesting
+face, of an intention to compensate herself for the present trial
+by grinding Jack finer than usual when he does come.
+Generally, Sharpeye turns to Mr. Superintendent, and says, as if
+the subjects of his remarks were wax-work:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;One of the worst, sir, this house is. This woman
+has been indicted three times. This man&rsquo;s a regular
+bad one likewise. His real name is Pegg. Gives
+himself out as Waterhouse.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Never had sitch a name as Pegg near me back, thin,
+since I was in this house, bee the good Lard!&rsquo; says the
+woman.</p>
+<p>Generally, the man says nothing at all, but becomes
+exceedingly round-shouldered, and pretends to read his paper with
+rapt attention. Generally, Sharpeye directs our observation
+with a look, to the prints and pictures that are invariably
+numerous on the walls. Always, Trampfoot and Quickear are
+taking notice on the doorstep. In default of Sharpeye being
+acquainted with the exact individuality of any gentleman
+encountered, one of these two is sure to proclaim from the outer
+air, like a gruff spectre, that Jackson is not Jackson, but knows
+himself to be Fogle; or that Canlon is Walker&rsquo;s brother,
+against whom there was not sufficient evidence; or that the man
+who says he never was at sea since he was a boy, came ashore from
+a voyage last Thursday, or sails to-morrow morning.
+&lsquo;And that is a bad class of man, you see,&rsquo; says Mr.
+Superintendent, when he got out into the dark again, &lsquo;and
+very difficult to deal with, who, when he has made this place too
+hot to hold him, enters himself for a voyage as steward or cook,
+and is out of knowledge for months, and then turns up again worse
+than ever.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>When we had gone into many such houses, and had come out
+(always leaving everybody relapsing into waiting for Jack), we
+started off to a singing-house where Jack was expected to muster
+strong.</p>
+<p>The vocalisation was taking place in a long low room
+up-stairs; at one end, an orchestra of two performers, and a
+small platform; across the room, a series of open pews for Jack,
+with an aisle down the middle; at the other end a larger pew than
+the rest, entitled <span class="smcap">Snug</span>, and reserved
+for mates and similar good company. About the room, some
+amazing coffee-coloured pictures varnished an inch deep, and some
+stuffed creatures in cases; dotted among the audience, in Snug
+and out of Snug, the &lsquo;Professionals;&rsquo; among them, the
+celebrated comic favourite Mr. Banjo Bones, looking very hideous
+with his blackened face and limp sugar-loaf hat; beside him,
+sipping rum-and-water, Mrs. Banjo Bones, in her natural
+colours&mdash;a little heightened.</p>
+<p>It was a Friday night, and Friday night was considered not a
+good night for Jack. At any rate, Jack did not show in very
+great force even here, though the house was one to which he much
+resorts, and where a good deal of money is taken. There was
+British Jack, a little maudlin and sleepy, lolling over his empty
+glass, as if he were trying to read his fortune at the bottom;
+there was Loafing Jack of the Stars and Stripes, rather an
+unpromising customer, with his long nose, lank cheek, high
+cheek-bones, and nothing soft about him but his cabbage-leaf hat;
+there was Spanish Jack, with curls of black hair, rings in his
+ears, and a knife not far from his hand, if you got into trouble
+with him; there were Maltese Jack, and Jack of Sweden, and Jack
+the Finn, looming through the smoke of their pipes, and turning
+faces that looked as if they were carved out of dark wood,
+towards the young lady dancing the hornpipe: who found the
+platform so exceedingly small for it, that I had a nervous
+expectation of seeing her, in the backward steps, disappear
+through the window. Still, if all hands had been got
+together, they would not have more than half-filled the
+room. Observe, however, said Mr. Licensed Victualler, the
+host, that it was Friday night, and, besides, it was getting on
+for twelve, and Jack had gone aboard. A sharp and watchful
+man, Mr. Licensed Victualler, the host, with tight lips and a
+complete edition of Cocker&rsquo;s arithmetic in each eye.
+Attended to his business himself, he said. Always on the
+spot. When he heard of talent, trusted nobody&rsquo;s
+account of it, but went off by rail to see it. If true
+talent, engaged it. Pounds a week for talent&mdash;four
+pound&mdash;five pound. Banjo Bones was undoubted
+talent. Hear this instrument that was going to
+play&mdash;it was real talent! In truth it was very good; a
+kind of piano-accordion, played by a young girl of a delicate
+prettiness of face, figure, and dress, that made the audience
+look coarser. She sang to the instrument, too; first, a
+song about village bells, and how they chimed; then a song about
+how I went to sea; winding up with an imitation of the bagpipes,
+which Mercantile Jack seemed to understand much the best. A
+good girl, said Mr. Licensed Victualler. Kept herself
+select. Sat in Snug, not listening to the blandishments of
+Mates. Lived with mother. Father dead. Once a
+merchant well to do, but over-speculated himself. On
+delicate inquiry as to salary paid for item of talent under
+consideration, Mr. Victualler&rsquo;s pounds dropped suddenly to
+shillings&mdash;still it was a very comfortable thing for a young
+person like that, you know; she only went on six times a night,
+and was only required to be there from six at night to
+twelve. What was more conclusive was, Mr.
+Victualler&rsquo;s assurance that he &lsquo;never allowed any
+language, and never suffered any disturbance.&rsquo;
+Sharpeye confirmed the statement, and the order that prevailed
+was the best proof of it that could have been cited. So, I
+came to the conclusion that poor Mercantile Jack might do (as I
+am afraid he does) much worse than trust himself to Mr.
+Victualler, and pass his evenings here.</p>
+<p>But we had not yet looked, Mr. Superintendent&mdash;said
+Trampfoot, receiving us in the street again with military
+salute&mdash;for Dark Jack. True, Trampfoot. Ring the
+wonderful stick, rub the wonderful lantern, and cause the spirits
+of the stick and lantern to convey us to the Darkies.</p>
+<p>There was no disappointment in the matter of Dark Jack;
+<i>he</i> was producible. The Genii set us down in the
+little first floor of a little public-house, and there, in a
+stiflingly close atmosphere, were Dark Jack, and Dark
+Jack&rsquo;s delight, his <i>white</i> unlovely Nan, sitting
+against the wall all round the room. More than that: Dark
+Jack&rsquo;s delight was the least unlovely Nan, both morally and
+physically, that I saw that night.</p>
+<p>As a fiddle and tambourine band were sitting among the
+company, Quickear suggested why not strike up? &lsquo;Ah,
+la&rsquo;ads!&rsquo; said a negro sitting by the door, &lsquo;gib
+the jebblem a darnse. Tak&rsquo; yah pardlers, jebblem, for
+&rsquo;um <span class="smcap">Quad</span>-rill.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>This was the landlord, in a Greek cap, and a dress half Greek
+and half English. As master of the ceremonies, he called
+all the figures, and occasionally addressed himself
+parenthetically&mdash;after this manner. When he was very
+loud, I use capitals.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Now den! Hoy! <span
+class="smcap">One</span>. Right and left. (Put a
+steam on, gib &rsquo;um powder.) <span
+class="smcap">La</span>-dies&rsquo; chail. <span
+class="smcap">Bal</span>-loon say. Lemonade! <span
+class="smcap">Two</span>. <span
+class="smcap">Ad</span>-warnse and go back (gib &rsquo;ell a
+breakdown, shake it out o&rsquo; yerselbs, keep a movil).
+<span class="smcap">Swing</span>-corners, <span
+class="smcap">Bal</span>-loon say, and Lemonade!
+(Hoy!) <span class="smcap">Three</span>. <span
+class="smcap">Gent</span> come for&rsquo;ard with a lady and go
+back, hoppersite come for&rsquo;ard and do what yer can.
+(Aeiohoy!) <span class="smcap">Bal</span>-loon say, and
+leetle lemonade. (Dat hair nigger by &rsquo;um fireplace
+&rsquo;hind a&rsquo; time, shake it out o&rsquo; yerselbs, gib
+&rsquo;ell a breakdown.) Now den! Hoy! <span
+class="smcap">Four</span>! Lemonade. <span
+class="smcap">Bal</span>-loon say, and swing. <span
+class="smcap">Four</span> ladies meet in &rsquo;um middle, <span
+class="smcap">Four</span> gents goes round &rsquo;um ladies,
+<span class="smcap">Four</span> gents passes out under &rsquo;um
+ladies&rsquo; arms, <span class="smcap">swing</span>&mdash;and
+Lemonade till &rsquo;a moosic can&rsquo;t play no more!
+(Hoy, Hoy!)&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The male dancers were all blacks, and one was an unusually
+powerful man of six feet three or four. The sound of their
+flat feet on the floor was as unlike the sound of white feet as
+their faces were unlike white faces. They toed and heeled,
+shuffled, double-shuffled, double-double-shuffled, covered the
+buckle, and beat the time out, rarely, dancing with a great show
+of teeth, and with a childish good-humoured enjoyment that was
+very prepossessing. They generally kept together, these
+poor fellows, said Mr. Superintendent, because they were at a
+disadvantage singly, and liable to slights in the neighbouring
+streets. But, if I were Light Jack, I should be very slow
+to interfere oppressively with Dark Jack, for, whenever I have
+had to do with him I have found him a simple and a gentle
+fellow. Bearing this in mind, I asked his friendly
+permission to leave him restoration of beer, in wishing him good
+night, and thus it fell out that the last words I heard him say
+as I blundered down the worn stairs, were, &lsquo;Jebblem&rsquo;s
+elth! Ladies drinks fust!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The night was now well on into the morning, but, for miles and
+hours we explored a strange world, where nobody ever goes to bed,
+but everybody is eternally sitting up, waiting for Jack.
+This exploration was among a labyrinth of dismal courts and blind
+alleys, called Entries, kept in wonderful order by the police,
+and in much better order than by the corporation: the want of
+gaslight in the most dangerous and infamous of these places being
+quite unworthy of so spirited a town. I need describe but
+two or three of the houses in which Jack was waited for as
+specimens of the rest. Many we attained by noisome passages
+so profoundly dark that we felt our way with our hands. Not
+one of the whole number we visited, was without its show of
+prints and ornamental crockery; the quantity of the latter set
+forth on little shelves and in little cases, in otherwise
+wretched rooms, indicating that Mercantile Jack must have an
+extraordinary fondness for crockery, to necessitate so much of
+that bait in his traps.</p>
+<p>Among such garniture, in one front parlour in the dead of the
+night, four women were sitting by a fire. One of them had a
+male child in her arms. On a stool among them was a swarthy
+youth with a guitar, who had evidently stopped playing when our
+footsteps were heard.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well! how do <i>you</i> do?&rsquo; says Mr.
+Superintendent, looking about him.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Pretty well, sir, and hope you gentlemen are going to
+treat us ladies, now you have come to see us.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Order there!&rsquo; says Sharpeye.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;None of that!&rsquo; says Quickear.</p>
+<p>Trampfoot, outside, is heard to confide to himself,
+&lsquo;Meggisson&rsquo;s lot this is. And a bad
+&rsquo;un!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well!&rsquo; says Mr. Superintendent, laying his hand
+on the shoulder of the swarthy youth, &lsquo;and who&rsquo;s
+this?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Antonio, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And what does <i>he</i> do here?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Come to give us a bit of music. No harm in that,
+I suppose?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A young foreign sailor?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes. He&rsquo;s a Spaniard. You&rsquo;re a
+Spaniard, ain&rsquo;t you, Antonio?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Me Spanish.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And he don&rsquo;t know a word you say, not he; not if
+you was to talk to him till doomsday.&rsquo; (Triumphantly,
+as if it redounded to the credit of the house.)</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Will he play something?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, yes, if you like. Play something,
+Antonio. <i>You</i> ain&rsquo;t ashamed to play something;
+are you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The cracked guitar raises the feeblest ghost of a tune, and
+three of the women keep time to it with their heads, and the
+fourth with the child. If Antonio has brought any money in
+with him, I am afraid he will never take it out, and it even
+strikes me that his jacket and guitar may be in a bad way.
+But, the look of the young man and the tinkling of the instrument
+so change the place in a moment to a leaf out of Don Quixote,
+that I wonder where his mule is stabled, until he leaves off.</p>
+<p>I am bound to acknowledge (as it tends rather to my
+uncommercial confusion), that I occasioned a difficulty in this
+establishment, by having taken the child in my arms. For,
+on my offering to restore it to a ferocious joker not
+unstimulated by rum, who claimed to be its mother, that unnatural
+parent put her hands behind her, and declined to accept it;
+backing into the fireplace, and very shrilly declaring,
+regardless of remonstrance from her friends, that she knowed it
+to be Law, that whoever took a child from its mother of his own
+will, was bound to stick to it. The uncommercial sense of
+being in a rather ridiculous position with the poor little child
+beginning to be frightened, was relieved by my worthy friend and
+fellow-constable, Trampfoot; who, laying hands on the article as
+if it were a Bottle, passed it on to the nearest woman, and bade
+her &lsquo;take hold of that.&rsquo; As we came out the
+Bottle was passed to the ferocious joker, and they all sat down
+as before, including Antonio and the guitar. It was clear
+that there was no such thing as a nightcap to this baby&rsquo;s
+head, and that even he never went to bed, but was always kept
+up&mdash;and would grow up, kept up&mdash;waiting for Jack.</p>
+<p>Later still in the night, we came (by the court &lsquo;where
+the man was murdered,&rsquo; and by the other court across the
+street, into which his body was dragged) to another parlour in
+another Entry, where several people were sitting round a fire in
+just the same way. It was a dirty and offensive place, with
+some ragged clothes drying in it; but there was a high shelf over
+the entrance-door (to be out of the reach of marauding hands,
+possibly) with two large white loaves on it, and a great piece of
+Cheshire cheese.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well!&rsquo; says Mr. Superintendent, with a
+comprehensive look all round. &lsquo;How do <i>you</i>
+do?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not much to boast of, sir.&rsquo; From the
+curtseying woman of the house. &lsquo;This is my good man,
+sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You are not registered as a common Lodging
+House?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Sharpeye (in the Move-on tone) puts in the pertinent inquiry,
+&lsquo;Then why ain&rsquo;t you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ain&rsquo;t got no one here, Mr. Sharpeye,&rsquo;
+rejoin the woman and my good man together, &lsquo;but our own
+family.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How many are you in family?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The woman takes time to count, under pretence of coughing, and
+adds, as one scant of breath, &lsquo;Seven, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>But she has missed one, so Sharpeye, who knows all about it,
+says:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Here&rsquo;s a young man here makes eight, who
+ain&rsquo;t of your family?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, Mr. Sharpeye, he&rsquo;s a weekly
+lodger.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What does he do for a living?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The young man here, takes the reply upon himself, and shortly
+answers, &lsquo;Ain&rsquo;t got nothing to do.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The young man here, is modestly brooding behind a damp apron
+pendent from a clothes-line. As I glance at him I
+become&mdash;but I don&rsquo;t know why&mdash;vaguely reminded of
+Woolwich, Chatham, Portsmouth, and Dover. When we get out,
+my respected fellow-constable Sharpeye, addressing Mr.
+Superintendent, says:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You noticed that young man, sir, in at
+Darby&rsquo;s?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes. What is he?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Deserter, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Sharpeye further intimates that when we have done with his
+services, he will step back and take that young man. Which
+in course of time he does: feeling at perfect ease about finding
+him, and knowing for a moral certainty that nobody in that region
+will be gone to bed.</p>
+<p>Later still in the night, we came to another parlour up a step
+or two from the street, which was very cleanly, neatly, even
+tastefully, kept, and in which, set forth on a draped chest of
+drawers masking the staircase, was such a profusion of ornamental
+crockery, that it would have furnished forth a handsome
+sale-booth at a fair. It backed up a stout old
+lady&mdash;<span class="smcap">Hogarth</span> drew her exact
+likeness more than once&mdash;and a boy who was carefully writing
+a copy in a copy-book.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, ma&rsquo;am, how do <i>you</i> do?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Sweetly, she can assure the dear gentlemen, sweetly.
+Charmingly, charmingly. And overjoyed to see us!</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Why, this is a strange time for this boy to be writing
+his copy. In the middle of the night!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;So it is, dear gentlemen, Heaven bless your welcome
+faces and send ye prosperous, but he has been to the Play with a
+young friend for his diversion, and he combinates his improvement
+with entertainment, by doing his school-writing afterwards, God
+be good to ye!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The copy admonished human nature to subjugate the fire of
+every fierce desire. One might have thought it recommended
+stirring the fire, the old lady so approved it. There she
+sat, rosily beaming at the copy-book and the boy, and invoking
+showers of blessings on our heads, when we left her in the middle
+of the night, waiting for Jack.</p>
+<p>Later still in the night, we came to a nauseous room with an
+earth floor, into which the refuse scum of an alley
+trickled. The stench of this habitation was abominable; the
+seeming poverty of it, diseased and dire. Yet, here again,
+was visitor or lodger&mdash;a man sitting before the fire, like
+the rest of them elsewhere, and apparently not distasteful to the
+mistress&rsquo;s niece, who was also before the fire. The
+mistress herself had the misfortune of being in jail.</p>
+<p>Three weird old women of transcendent ghastliness, were at
+needlework at a table in this room. Says Trampfoot to First
+Witch, &lsquo;What are you making?&rsquo; Says she,
+&lsquo;Money-bags.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;<i>What</i> are you making?&rsquo; retorts Trampfoot, a
+little off his balance.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Bags to hold your money,&rsquo; says the witch, shaking
+her head, and setting her teeth; &lsquo;you as has got
+it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She holds up a common cash-bag, and on the table is a heap of
+such bags. Witch Two laughs at us. Witch Three scowls
+at us. Witch sisterhood all, stitch, stitch. First
+Witch has a circle round each eye. I fancy it like the
+beginning of the development of a perverted diabolical halo, and
+that when it spreads all round her head, she will die in the
+odour of devilry.</p>
+<p>Trampfoot wishes to be informed what First Witch has got
+behind the table, down by the side of her, there? Witches
+Two and Three croak angrily, &lsquo;Show him the
+child!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She drags out a skinny little arm from a brown dustheap on the
+ground. Adjured not to disturb the child, she lets it drop
+again. Thus we find at last that there is one child in the
+world of Entries who goes to bed&mdash;if this be bed.</p>
+<p>Mr. Superintendent asks how long are they going to work at
+those bags?</p>
+<p>How long? First Witch repeats. Going to have
+supper presently. See the cups and saucers, and the
+plates.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Late? Ay! But we has to &rsquo;arn our
+supper afore we eats it!&rsquo; Both the other witches
+repeat this after First Witch, and take the Uncommercial
+measurement with their eyes, as for a charmed
+winding-sheet. Some grim discourse ensues, referring to the
+mistress of the cave, who will be released from jail
+to-morrow. Witches pronounce Trampfoot &lsquo;right
+there,&rsquo; when he deems it a trying distance for the old lady
+to walk; she shall be fetched by niece in a spring-cart.</p>
+<p>As I took a parting look at First Witch in turning away, the
+red marks round her eyes seemed to have already grown larger, and
+she hungrily and thirstily looked out beyond me into the dark
+doorway, to see if Jack was there. For, Jack came even
+here, and the mistress had got into jail through deluding
+Jack.</p>
+<p>When I at last ended this night of travel and got to bed, I
+failed to keep my mind on comfortable thoughts of Seaman&rsquo;s
+Homes (not overdone with strictness), and improved dock
+regulations giving Jack greater benefit of fire and candle aboard
+ship, through my mind&rsquo;s wandering among the vermin I had
+seen. Afterwards the same vermin ran all over my
+sleep. Evermore, when on a breezy day I see Poor Mercantile
+Jack running into port with a fair wind under all sail, I shall
+think of the unsleeping host of devourers who never go to bed,
+and are always in their set traps waiting for him.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a>VI<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">REFRESHMENTS FOR TRAVELLERS</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the late high winds I was blown
+to a great many places&mdash;and indeed, wind or no wind, I
+generally have extensive transactions on hand in the article of
+Air&mdash;but I have not been blown to any English place lately,
+and I very seldom have blown to any English place in my life,
+where I could get anything good to eat and drink in five minutes,
+or where, if I sought it, I was received with a welcome.</p>
+<p>This is a curious thing to consider. But before
+(stimulated by my own experiences and the representations of many
+fellow-travellers of every uncommercial and commercial degree) I
+consider it further, I must utter a passing word of wonder
+concerning high winds.</p>
+<p>I wonder why metropolitan gales always blow so hard at
+Walworth. I cannot imagine what Walworth has done, to bring
+such windy punishment upon itself, as I never fail to find
+recorded in the newspapers when the wind has blown at all
+hard. Brixton seems to have something on its conscience;
+Peckham suffers more than a virtuous Peckham might be supposed to
+deserve; the howling neighbourhood of Deptford figures largely in
+the accounts of the ingenious gentlemen who are out in every wind
+that blows, and to whom it is an ill high wind that blows no
+good; but, there can hardly be any Walworth left by this
+time. It must surely be blown away. I have read of
+more chimney-stacks and house-copings coming down with terrific
+smashes at Walworth, and of more sacred edifices being nearly
+(not quite) blown out to sea from the same accursed locality,
+than I have read of practised thieves with the appearance and
+manners of gentlemen&mdash;a popular phenomenon which never
+existed on earth out of fiction and a police report. Again:
+I wonder why people are always blown into the Surrey Canal, and
+into no other piece of water! Why do people get up early
+and go out in groups, to be blown into the Surrey Canal? Do
+they say to one another, &lsquo;Welcome death, so that we get
+into the newspapers&rsquo;? Even that would be an
+insufficient explanation, because even then they might sometimes
+put themselves in the way of being blown into the Regent&rsquo;s
+Canal, instead of always saddling Surrey for the field.
+Some nameless policeman, too, is constantly, on the slightest
+provocation, getting himself blown into this same Surrey
+Canal. Will <span class="smcap">Sir Richard Mayne</span>
+see to it, and restrain that weak-minded and feeble-bodied
+constable?</p>
+<p>To resume the consideration of the curious question of
+Refreshment. I am a Briton, and, as such, I am aware that I
+never will be a slave&mdash;and yet I have latent suspicion that
+there must be some slavery of wrong custom in this matter.</p>
+<p>I travel by railroad. I start from home at seven or
+eight in the morning, after breakfasting hurriedly. What
+with skimming over the open landscape, what with mining in the
+damp bowels of the earth, what with banging, booming and
+shrieking the scores of miles away, I am hungry when I arrive at
+the &lsquo;Refreshment&rsquo; station where I am expected.
+Please to observe, expected. I have said, I am hungry;
+perhaps I might say, with greater point and force, that I am to
+some extent exhausted, and that I need&mdash;in the expressive
+French sense of the word&mdash;to be restored. What is
+provided for my restoration? The apartment that is to
+restore me is a wind-trap, cunningly set to inveigle all the
+draughts in that country-side, and to communicate a special
+intensity and velocity to them as they rotate in two hurricanes:
+one, about my wretched head: one, about my wretched legs.
+The training of the young ladies behind the counter who are to
+restore me, has been from their infancy directed to the
+assumption of a defiant dramatic show that I am <i>not</i>
+expected. It is in vain for me to represent to them by my
+humble and conciliatory manners, that I wish to be liberal.
+It is in vain for me to represent to myself, for the
+encouragement of my sinking soul, that the young ladies have a
+pecuniary interest in my arrival. Neither my reason nor my
+feelings can make head against the cold glazed glare of eye with
+which I am assured that I am not expected, and not wanted.
+The solitary man among the bottles would sometimes take pity on
+me, if he dared, but he is powerless against the rights and
+mights of Woman. (Of the page I make no account, for, he is
+a boy, and therefore the natural enemy of Creation.)
+Chilling fast, in the deadly tornadoes to which my upper and
+lower extremities are exposed, and subdued by the moral
+disadvantage at which I stand, I turn my disconsolate eyes on the
+refreshments that are to restore me. I find that I must
+either scald my throat by insanely ladling into it, against time
+and for no wager, brown hot water stiffened with flour; or I must
+make myself flaky and sick with Banbury cake; or, I must stuff
+into my delicate organisation, a currant pincushion which I know
+will swell into immeasurable dimensions when it has got there;
+or, I must extort from an iron-bound quarry, with a fork, as if I
+were farming an inhospitable soil, some glutinous lumps of
+gristle and grease, called pork-pie. While thus forlornly
+occupied, I find that the depressing banquet on the table is, in
+every phase of its profoundly unsatisfactory character, so like
+the banquet at the meanest and shabbiest of evening parties, that
+I begin to think I must have &lsquo;brought down&rsquo; to
+supper, the old lady unknown, blue with cold, who is setting her
+teeth on edge with a cool orange at my elbow&mdash;that the
+pastrycook who has compounded for the company on the lowest terms
+per head, is a fraudulent bankrupt, redeeming his contract with
+the stale stock from his window&mdash;that, for some unexplained
+reason, the family giving the party have become my mortal foes,
+and have given it on purpose to affront me. Or, I fancy
+that I am &lsquo;breaking up&rsquo; again, at the evening
+conversazione at school, charged two-and-sixpence in the
+half-year&rsquo;s bill; or breaking down again at that celebrated
+evening party given at Mrs. Bogles&rsquo;s boarding-house when I
+was a boarder there, on which occasion Mrs. Bogles was taken in
+execution by a branch of the legal profession who got in as the
+harp, and was removed (with the keys and subscribed capital) to a
+place of durance, half an hour prior to the commencement of the
+festivities.</p>
+<p>Take another case.</p>
+<p>Mr. Grazinglands, of the Midland Counties, came to London by
+railroad one morning last week, accompanied by the amiable and
+fascinating Mrs. Grazinglands. Mr. G. is a gentleman of a
+comfortable property, and had a little business to transact at
+the Bank of England, which required the concurrence and signature
+of Mrs. G. Their business disposed of, Mr. and Mrs.
+Grazinglands viewed the Royal Exchange, and the exterior of St.
+Paul&rsquo;s Cathedral. The spirits of Mrs. Grazinglands
+then gradually beginning to flag, Mr. Grazinglands (who is the
+tenderest of husbands) remarked with sympathy,
+&lsquo;Arabella&rsquo;, my dear, &lsquo;fear you are
+faint.&rsquo; Mrs. Grazing-lands replied, &lsquo;Alexander,
+I am rather faint; but don&rsquo;t mind me, I shall be better
+presently.&rsquo; Touched by the feminine meekness of this
+answer, Mr. Grazinglands looked in at a pastrycook&rsquo;s
+window, hesitating as to the expediency of lunching at that
+establishment. He beheld nothing to eat, but butter in
+various forms, slightly charged with jam, and languidly frizzling
+over tepid water. Two ancient turtle-shells, on which was
+inscribed the legend, &lsquo;<span
+class="smcap">Soups</span>,&rsquo; decorated a glass partition
+within, enclosing a stuffy alcove, from which a ghastly mockery
+of a marriage-breakfast spread on a rickety table, warned the
+terrified traveller. An oblong box of stale and broken
+pastry at reduced prices, mounted on a stool, ornamented the
+doorway; and two high chairs that looked as if they were
+performing on stilts, embellished the counter. Over the
+whole, a young lady presided, whose gloomy haughtiness as she
+surveyed the street, announced a deep-seated grievance against
+society, and an implacable determination to be avenged.
+From a beetle-haunted kitchen below this institution, fumes
+arose, suggestive of a class of soup which Mr. Grazinglands knew,
+from painful experience, enfeebles the mind, distends the
+stomach, forces itself into the complexion, and tries to ooze out
+at the eyes. As he decided against entering, and turned
+away, Mrs. Grazinglands becoming perceptibly weaker, repeated,
+&lsquo;I am rather faint, Alexander, but don&rsquo;t mind
+me.&rsquo; Urged to new efforts by these words of
+resignation, Mr. Grazinglands looked in at a cold and floury
+baker&rsquo;s shop, where utilitarian buns unrelieved by a
+currant, consorted with hard biscuits, a stone filter of cold
+water, a hard pale clock, and a hard little old woman with flaxen
+hair, of an undeveloped-farinaceous aspect, as if she had been
+fed upon seeds. He might have entered even here, but for
+the timely remembrance coming upon him that Jairing&rsquo;s was
+but round the corner.</p>
+<p>Now, Jairing&rsquo;s being an hotel for families and
+gentlemen, in high repute among the midland counties, Mr.
+Grazinglands plucked up a great spirit when he told Mrs.
+Grazinglands she should have a chop there. That lady,
+likewise felt that she was going to see Life. Arriving on
+that gay and festive scene, they found the second waiter, in a
+flabby undress, cleaning the windows of the empty coffee-room;
+and the first waiter, denuded of his white tie, making up his
+cruets behind the Post-Office Directory. The latter (who
+took them in hand) was greatly put out by their patronage, and
+showed his mind to be troubled by a sense of the pressing
+necessity of instantly smuggling Mrs. Grazinglands into the
+obscurest corner of the building. This slighted lady (who
+is the pride of her division of the county) was immediately
+conveyed, by several dark passages, and up and down several
+steps, into a penitential apartment at the back of the house,
+where five invalided old plate-warmers leaned up against one
+another under a discarded old melancholy sideboard, and where the
+wintry leaves of all the dining-tables in the house lay
+thick. Also, a sofa, of incomprehensible form regarded from
+any sofane point of view, murmured &lsquo;Bed;&rsquo; while an
+air of mingled fluffiness and heeltaps, added, &lsquo;Second
+Waiter&rsquo;s.&rsquo; Secreted in this dismal hold,
+objects of a mysterious distrust and suspicion, Mr. Grazinglands
+and his charming partner waited twenty minutes for the smoke (for
+it never came to a fire), twenty-five minutes for the sherry,
+half an hour for the tablecloth, forty minutes for the knives and
+forks, three-quarters of an hour for the chops, and an hour for
+the potatoes. On settling the little bill&mdash;which was
+not much more than the day&rsquo;s pay of a Lieutenant in the
+navy&mdash;Mr. Grazinglands took heart to remonstrate against the
+general quality and cost of his reception. To whom the
+waiter replied, substantially, that Jairing&rsquo;s made it a
+merit to have accepted him on any terms: &lsquo;for,&rsquo; added
+the waiter (unmistakably coughing at Mrs. Grazinglands, the pride
+of her division of the county), &lsquo;when indiwiduals is not
+staying in the &rsquo;Ouse, their favours is not as a rule looked
+upon as making it worth Mr. Jairing&rsquo;s while; nor is it,
+indeed, a style of business Mr. Jairing wishes.&rsquo;
+Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Grazinglands passed out of Jairing&rsquo;s
+hotel for Families and Gentlemen, in a state of the greatest
+depression, scorned by the bar; and did not recover their
+self-respect for several days.</p>
+<p>Or take another case. Take your own case.</p>
+<p>You are going off by railway, from any Terminus. You
+have twenty minutes for dinner, before you go. You want
+your dinner, and like Dr. Johnson, Sir, you like to dine.
+You present to your mind, a picture of the refreshment-table at
+that terminus. The conventional shabby evening-party
+supper&mdash;accepted as the model for all termini and all
+refreshment stations, because it is the last repast known to this
+state of existence of which any human creature would partake, but
+in the direst extremity&mdash;sickens your contemplation, and
+your words are these: &lsquo;I cannot dine on stale sponge-cakes
+that turn to sand in the mouth. I cannot dine on shining
+brown patties, composed of unknown animals within, and offering
+to my view the device of an indigestible star-fish in leaden
+pie-crust without. I cannot dine on a sandwich that has
+long been pining under an exhausted receiver. I cannot dine
+on barley-sugar. I cannot dine on Toffee.&rsquo; You
+repair to the nearest hotel, and arrive, agitated, in the
+coffee-room.</p>
+<p>It is a most astonishing fact that the waiter is very cold to
+you. Account for it how you may, smooth it over how you
+will, you cannot deny that he is cold to you. He is not
+glad to see you, he does not want you, he would much rather you
+hadn&rsquo;t come. He opposes to your flushed condition, an
+immovable composure. As if this were not enough, another
+waiter, born, as it would seem, expressly to look at you in this
+passage of your life, stands at a little distance, with his
+napkin under his arm and his hands folded, looking at you with
+all his might. You impress on your waiter that you have ten
+minutes for dinner, and he proposes that you shall begin with a
+bit of fish which will be ready in twenty. That proposal
+declined, he suggests&mdash;as a neat originality&mdash;&lsquo;a
+weal or mutton cutlet.&rsquo; You close with either cutlet,
+any cutlet, anything. He goes, leisurely, behind a door and
+calls down some unseen shaft. A ventriloquial dialogue
+ensues, tending finally to the effect that weal only, is
+available on the spur of the moment. You anxiously call
+out, &lsquo;Veal, then!&rsquo; Your waiter having settled
+that point, returns to array your tablecloth, with a table napkin
+folded cocked-hat-wise (slowly, for something out of window
+engages his eye), a white wine-glass, a green wine-glass, a blue
+finger-glass, a tumbler, and a powerful field battery of fourteen
+casters with nothing in them; or at all events&mdash;which is
+enough for your purpose&mdash;with nothing in them that will come
+out. All this time, the other waiter looks at
+you&mdash;with an air of mental comparison and curiosity, now, as
+if it had occurred to him that you are rather like his
+brother. Half your time gone, and nothing come but the jug
+of ale and the bread, you implore your waiter to &lsquo;see after
+that cutlet, waiter; pray do!&rsquo; He cannot go at once,
+for he is carrying in seventeen pounds of American cheese for you
+to finish with, and a small Landed Estate of celery and
+water-cresses. The other waiter changes his leg, and takes
+a new view of you, doubtfully, now, as if he had rejected the
+resemblance to his brother, and had begun to think you more like
+his aunt or his grandmother. Again you beseech your waiter
+with pathetic indignation, to &lsquo;see after that
+cutlet!&rsquo; He steps out to see after it, and by-and-by,
+when you are going away without it, comes back with it.
+Even then, he will not take the sham silver cover off, without a
+pause for a flourish, and a look at the musty cutlet as if he
+were surprised to see it&mdash;which cannot possibly be the case,
+he must have seen it so often before. A sort of fur has
+been produced upon its surface by the cook&rsquo;s art, and in a
+sham silver vessel staggering on two feet instead of three, is a
+cutaneous kind of sauce of brown pimples and pickled
+cucumber. You order the bill, but your waiter cannot bring
+your bill yet, because he is bringing, instead, three
+flinty-hearted potatoes and two grim head of broccoli, like the
+occasional ornaments on area railings, badly boiled. You
+know that you will never come to this pass, any more than to the
+cheese and celery, and you imperatively demand your bill; but, it
+takes time to get, even when gone for, because your waiter has to
+communicate with a lady who lives behind a sash-window in a
+corner, and who appears to have to refer to several Ledgers
+before she can make it out&mdash;as if you had been staying there
+a year. You become distracted to get away, and the other
+waiter, once more changing his leg, still looks at you&mdash;but
+suspiciously, now, as if you had begun to remind him of the party
+who took the great-coats last winter. Your bill at last
+brought and paid, at the rate of sixpence a mouthful, your waiter
+reproachfully reminds you that &lsquo;attendance is not charged
+for a single meal,&rsquo; and you have to search in all your
+pockets for sixpence more. He has a worse opinion of you
+than ever, when you have given it to him, and lets you out into
+the street with the air of one saying to himself, as you cannot
+again doubt he is, &lsquo;I hope we shall never see <i>you</i>
+here again!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Or, take any other of the numerous travelling instances in
+which, with more time at your disposal, you are, have been, or
+may be, equally ill served. Take the old-established
+Bull&rsquo;s Head with its old-established knife-boxes on its
+old-established sideboards, its old-established flue under its
+old-established four-post bedsteads in its old-established
+airless rooms, its old-established frouziness up-stairs and
+down-stairs, its old-established cookery, and its old-established
+principles of plunder. Count up your injuries, in its
+side-dishes of ailing sweetbreads in white poultices, of
+apothecaries&rsquo; powders in rice for curry, of pale stewed
+bits of calf ineffectually relying for an adventitious interest
+on forcemeat balls. You have had experience of the
+old-established Bull&rsquo;s Head stringy fowls, with lower
+extremities like wooden legs, sticking up out of the dish; of its
+cannibalic boiled mutton, gushing horribly among its capers, when
+carved; of its little dishes of pastry&mdash;roofs of spermaceti
+ointment, erected over half an apple or four gooseberries.
+Well for you if you have yet forgotten the old-established
+Bull&rsquo;s Head fruity port: whose reputation was gained solely
+by the old-established price the Bull&rsquo;s Head put upon it,
+and by the old-established air with which the Bull&rsquo;s Head
+set the glasses and D&rsquo;Oyleys on, and held that Liquid Gout
+to the three-and-sixpenny wax-candle, as if its old-established
+colour hadn&rsquo;t come from the dyer&rsquo;s.</p>
+<p>Or lastly, take to finish with, two cases that we all know,
+every day.</p>
+<p>We all know the new hotel near the station, where it is always
+gusty, going up the lane which is always muddy, where we are sure
+to arrive at night, and where we make the gas start awfully when
+we open the front door. We all know the flooring of the
+passages and staircases that is too new, and the walls that are
+too new, and the house that is haunted by the ghost of
+mortar. We all know the doors that have cracked, and the
+cracked shutters through which we get a glimpse of the
+disconsolate moon. We all know the new people, who have
+come to keep the new hotel, and who wish they had never come, and
+who (inevitable result) wish <i>we</i> had never come. We
+all know how much too scant and smooth and bright the new
+furniture is, and how it has never settled down, and cannot fit
+itself into right places, and will get into wrong places.
+We all know how the gas, being lighted, shows maps of Damp upon
+the walls. We all know how the ghost of mortar passes into
+our sandwich, stirs our negus, goes up to bed with us, ascends
+the pale bedroom chimney, and prevents the smoke from
+following. We all know how a leg of our chair comes off at
+breakfast in the morning, and how the dejected waiter attributes
+the accident to a general greenness pervading the establishment,
+and informs us, in reply to a local inquiry, that he is thankful
+to say he is an entire stranger in that part of the country and
+is going back to his own connexion on Saturday.</p>
+<p>We all know, on the other hand, the great station hotel
+belonging to the company of proprietors, which has suddenly
+sprung up in the back outskirts of any place we like to name, and
+where we look out of our palatial windows at little back yards
+and gardens, old summer-houses, fowl-houses, pigeon-traps, and
+pigsties. We all know this hotel in which we can get
+anything we want, after its kind, for money; but where nobody is
+glad to see us, or sorry to see us, or minds (our bill paid)
+whether we come or go, or how, or when, or why, or cares about
+us. We all know this hotel, where we have no individuality,
+but put ourselves into the general post, as it were, and are
+sorted and disposed of according to our division. We all
+know that we can get on very well indeed at such a place, but
+still not perfectly well; and this may be, because the place is
+largely wholesale, and there is a lingering personal retail
+interest within us that asks to be satisfied.</p>
+<p>To sum up. My uncommercial travelling has not yet
+brought me to the conclusion that we are close to perfection in
+these matters. And just as I do not believe that the end of
+the world will ever be near at hand, so long as any of the very
+tiresome and arrogant people who constantly predict that
+catastrophe are left in it, so, I shall have small faith in the
+Hotel Millennium, while any of the uncomfortable superstitions I
+have glanced at remain in existence.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a>VII<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">TRAVELLING ABROAD</span></h2>
+<p>I <span class="smcap">got</span> into the travelling
+chariot&mdash;it was of German make, roomy, heavy, and
+unvarnished&mdash;I got into the travelling chariot, pulled up
+the steps after me, shut myself in with a smart bang of the door,
+and gave the word, &lsquo;Go on!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Immediately, all that W. and S.W. division of London began to
+slide away at a pace so lively, that I was over the river, and
+past the Old Kent Road, and out on Blackheath, and even ascending
+Shooter&rsquo;s Hill, before I had had time to look about me in
+the carriage, like a collected traveller.</p>
+<p>I had two ample Imperials on the roof, other fitted storage
+for luggage in front, and other up behind; I had a net for books
+overhead, great pockets to all the windows, a leathern pouch or
+two hung up for odds and ends, and a reading lamp fixed in the
+back of the chariot, in case I should be benighted. I was
+amply provided in all respects, and had no idea where I was going
+(which was delightful), except that I was going abroad.</p>
+<p>So smooth was the old high road, and so fresh were the horses,
+and so fast went I, that it was midway between Gravesend and
+Rochester, and the widening river was bearing the ships, white
+sailed or black-smoked, out to sea, when I noticed by the wayside
+a very queer small boy.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Holloa!&rsquo; said I, to the very queer small boy,
+&lsquo;where do you live?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;At Chatham,&rsquo; says he.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What do you do there?&rsquo; says I.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I go to school,&rsquo; says he.</p>
+<p>I took him up in a moment, and we went on. Presently,
+the very queer small boy says, &lsquo;This is Gads-hill we are
+coming to, where Falstaff went out to rob those travellers, and
+ran away.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You know something about Falstaff, eh?&rsquo; said
+I.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;All about him,&rsquo; said the very queer small
+boy. &lsquo;I am old (I am nine), and I read all sorts of
+books. But <i>do</i> let us stop at the top of the hill,
+and look at the house there, if you please!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You admire that house?&rsquo; said I.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Bless you, sir,&rsquo; said the very queer small boy,
+&lsquo;when I was not more than half as old as nine, it used to
+be a treat for me to be brought to look at it. And now, I
+am nine, I come by myself to look at it. And ever since I
+can recollect, my father, seeing me so fond of it, has often said
+to me, &ldquo;If you were to be very persevering and were to work
+hard, you might some day come to live in it.&rdquo; Though
+that&rsquo;s impossible!&rsquo; said the very queer small boy,
+drawing a low breath, and now staring at the house out of window
+with all his might.</p>
+<p>I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer small
+boy; for that house happens to be <i>my</i> house, and I have
+reason to believe that what he said was true.</p>
+<p>Well! I made no halt there, and I soon dropped the very
+queer small boy and went on. Over the road where the old
+Romans used to march, over the road where the old Canterbury
+pilgrims used to go, over the road where the travelling trains of
+the old imperious priests and princes used to jingle on horseback
+between the continent and this Island through the mud and water,
+over the road where Shakespeare hummed to himself, &lsquo;Blow,
+blow, thou winter wind,&rsquo; as he sat in the saddle at the
+gate of the inn yard noticing the carriers; all among the cherry
+orchards, apple orchards, corn-fields, and hop-gardens; so went
+I, by Canterbury to Dover. There, the sea was tumbling in,
+with deep sounds, after dark, and the revolving French light on
+Cape Grinez was seen regularly bursting out and becoming
+obscured, as if the head of a gigantic light-keeper in an anxious
+state of mind were interposed every half-minute, to look how it
+was burning.</p>
+<p>Early in the morning I was on the deck of the steam-packet,
+and we were aiming at the bar in the usual intolerable manner,
+and the bar was aiming at us in the usual intolerable manner, and
+the bar got by far the best of it, and we got by far the
+worst&mdash;all in the usual intolerable manner.</p>
+<p>But, when I was clear of the Custom House on the other side,
+and when I began to make the dust fly on the thirsty French
+roads, and when the twigsome trees by the wayside (which, I
+suppose, never will grow leafy, for they never did) guarded here
+and there a dusty soldier, or field labourer, baking on a heap of
+broken stones, sound asleep in a fiction of shade, I began to
+recover my travelling spirits. Coming upon the breaker of
+the broken stones, in a hard, hot, shining hat, on which the sun
+played at a distance as on a burning-glass, I felt that now,
+indeed, I was in the dear old France of my affections. I
+should have known it, without the well-remembered bottle of rough
+ordinary wine, the cold roast fowl, the loaf, and the pinch of
+salt, on which I lunched with unspeakable satisfaction, from one
+of the stuffed pockets of the chariot.</p>
+<p>I must have fallen asleep after lunch, for when a bright face
+looked in at the window, I started, and said:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Good God, Louis, I dreamed you were dead!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>My cheerful servant laughed, and answered:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Me? Not at all, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How glad I am to wake! What are we doing
+Louis?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;We go to take relay of horses. Will you walk up
+the hill?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Certainly.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Welcome the old French hill, with the old French lunatic (not
+in the most distant degree related to Sterne&rsquo;s Maria)
+living in a thatched dog-kennel half-way up, and flying out with
+his crutch and his big head and extended nightcap, to be
+beforehand with the old men and women exhibiting crippled
+children, and with the children exhibiting old men and women,
+ugly and blind, who always seemed by resurrectionary process to
+be recalled out of the elements for the sudden peopling of the
+solitude!</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is well,&rsquo; said I, scattering among them what
+small coin I had; &lsquo;here comes Louis, and I am quite roused
+from my nap.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>We journeyed on again, and I welcomed every new assurance that
+France stood where I had left it. There were the
+posting-houses, with their archways, dirty stable-yards, and
+clean post-masters&rsquo; wives, bright women of business,
+looking on at the putting-to of the horses; there were the
+postilions counting what money they got, into their hats, and
+never making enough of it; there were the standard population of
+grey horses of Flanders descent, invariably biting one another
+when they got a chance; there were the fleecy sheepskins, looped
+on over their uniforms by the postilions, like bibbed aprons when
+it blew and rained; there were their Jack-boots, and their
+cracking whips; there were the cathedrals that I got out to see,
+as under some cruel bondage, in no wise desiring to see them;
+there were the little towns that appeared to have no reason for
+being towns, since most of their houses were to let and nobody
+could be induced to look at them, except the people who
+couldn&rsquo;t let them and had nothing else to do but look at
+them all day. I lay a night upon the road and enjoyed
+delectable cookery of potatoes, and some other sensible things,
+adoption of which at home would inevitably be shown to be fraught
+with ruin, somehow or other, to that rickety national blessing,
+the British farmer; and at last I was rattled, like a single pill
+in a box, over leagues of stones, until&mdash;madly cracking,
+plunging, and flourishing two grey tails about&mdash;I made my
+triumphal entry into Paris.</p>
+<p>At Paris, I took an upper apartment for a few days in one of
+the hotels of the Rue de Rivoli; my front windows looking into
+the garden of the Tuileries (where the principal difference
+between the nursemaids and the flowers seemed to be that the
+former were locomotive and the latter not): my back windows
+looking at all the other back windows in the hotel, and deep down
+into a paved yard, where my German chariot had retired under a
+tight-fitting archway, to all appearance for life, and where
+bells rang all day without anybody&rsquo;s minding them but
+certain chamberlains with feather brooms and green baize caps,
+who here and there leaned out of some high window placidly
+looking down, and where neat waiters with trays on their left
+shoulders passed and repassed from morning to night.</p>
+<p>Whenever I am at Paris, I am dragged by invisible force into
+the Morgue. I never want to go there, but am always pulled
+there. One Christmas Day, when I would rather have been
+anywhere else, I was attracted in, to see an old grey man lying
+all alone on his cold bed, with a tap of water turned on over his
+grey hair, and running, drip, drip, drip, down his wretched face
+until it got to the corner of his mouth, where it took a turn,
+and made him look sly. One New Year&rsquo;s Morning (by the
+same token, the sun was shining outside, and there was a
+mountebank balancing a feather on his nose, within a yard of the
+gate), I was pulled in again to look at a flaxen-haired boy of
+eighteen, with a heart hanging on his breast&mdash;&lsquo;from
+his mother,&rsquo; was engraven on it&mdash;who had come into the
+net across the river, with a bullet wound in his fair forehead
+and his hands cut with a knife, but whence or how was a blank
+mystery. This time, I was forced into the same dread place,
+to see a large dark man whose disfigurement by water was in a
+frightful manner comic, and whose expression was that of a
+prize-fighter who had closed his eyelids under a heavy blow, but
+was going immediately to open them, shake his head, and
+&lsquo;come up smiling.&rsquo; Oh what this large dark man
+cost me in that bright city!</p>
+<p>It was very hot weather, and he was none the better for that,
+and I was much the worse. Indeed, a very neat and pleasant
+little woman with the key of her lodging on her forefinger, who
+had been showing him to her little girl while she and the child
+ate sweetmeats, observed monsieur looking poorly as we came out
+together, and asked monsieur, with her wondering little eyebrows
+prettily raised, if there were anything the matter? Faintly
+replying in the negative, monsieur crossed the road to a
+wine-shop, got some brandy, and resolved to freshen himself with
+a dip in the great floating bath on the river.</p>
+<p>The bath was crowded in the usual airy manner, by a male
+population in striped drawers of various gay colours, who walked
+up and down arm in arm, drank coffee, smoked cigars, sat at
+little tables, conversed politely with the damsels who dispensed
+the towels, and every now and then pitched themselves into the
+river head foremost, and came out again to repeat this social
+routine. I made haste to participate in the water part of
+the entertainments, and was in the full enjoyment of a delightful
+bath, when all in a moment I was seized with an unreasonable idea
+that the large dark body was floating straight at me.</p>
+<p>I was out of the river, and dressing instantly. In the
+shock I had taken some water into my mouth, and it turned me
+sick, for I fancied that the contamination of the creature was in
+it. I had got back to my cool darkened room in the hotel,
+and was lying on a sofa there, before I began to reason with
+myself.</p>
+<p>Of course, I knew perfectly well that the large dark creature
+was stone dead, and that I should no more come upon him out of
+the place where I had seen him dead, than I should come upon the
+cathedral of Notre-Dame in an entirely new situation. What
+troubled me was the picture of the creature; and that had so
+curiously and strongly painted itself upon my brain, that I could
+not get rid of it until it was worn out.</p>
+<p>I noticed the peculiarities of this possession, while it was a
+real discomfort to me. That very day, at dinner, some
+morsel on my plate looked like a piece of him, and I was glad to
+get up and go out. Later in the evening, I was walking
+along the Rue St. Honor&eacute;, when I saw a bill at a public
+room there, announcing small-sword exercise, broad-sword
+exercise, wrestling, and other such feats. I went in, and
+some of the sword-play being very skilful, remained. A
+specimen of our own national sport, The British Boaxe, was
+announced to be given at the close of the evening. In an
+evil hour, I determined to wait for this Boaxe, as became a
+Briton. It was a clumsy specimen (executed by two English
+grooms out of place), but one of the combatants, receiving a
+straight right-hander with the glove between his eyes, did
+exactly what the large dark creature in the Morgue had seemed
+going to do&mdash;and finished me for that night.</p>
+<p>There was rather a sickly smell (not at all an unusual
+fragrance in Paris) in the little ante-room of my apartment at
+the hotel. The large dark creature in the Morgue was by no
+direct experience associated with my sense of smell, because,
+when I came to the knowledge of him, he lay behind a wall of
+thick plate-glass as good as a wall of steel or marble for that
+matter. Yet the whiff of the room never failed to reproduce
+him. What was more curious, was the capriciousness with
+which his portrait seemed to light itself up in my mind,
+elsewhere. I might be walking in the Palais Royal, lazily
+enjoying the shop windows, and might be regaling myself with one
+of the ready-made clothes shops that are set out there. My
+eyes, wandering over impossible-waisted dressing-gowns and
+luminous waistcoats, would fall upon the master, or the shopman,
+or even the very dummy at the door, and would suggest to me,
+&lsquo;Something like him!&rsquo;&mdash;and instantly I was
+sickened again.</p>
+<p>This would happen at the theatre, in the same manner.
+Often it would happen in the street, when I certainly was not
+looking for the likeness, and when probably there was no likeness
+there. It was not because the creature was dead that I was
+so haunted, because I know that I might have been (and I know it
+because I have been) equally attended by the image of a living
+aversion. This lasted about a week. The picture did
+not fade by degrees, in the sense that it became a whit less
+forcible and distinct, but in the sense that it obtruded itself
+less and less frequently. The experience may be worth
+considering by some who have the care of children. It would
+be difficult to overstate the intensity and accuracy of an
+intelligent child&rsquo;s observation. At that impressible
+time of life, it must sometimes produce a fixed impression.
+If the fixed impression be of an object terrible to the child, it
+will be (for want of reasoning upon) inseparable from great
+fear. Force the child at such a time, be Spartan with it,
+send it into the dark against its will, leave it in a lonely
+bedroom against its will, and you had better murder it.</p>
+<p>On a bright morning I rattled away from Paris, in the German
+chariot, and left the large dark creature behind me for
+good. I ought to confess, though, that I had been drawn
+back to the Morgue, after he was put underground, to look at his
+clothes, and that I found them frightfully like
+him&mdash;particularly his boots. However, I rattled away
+for Switzerland, looking forward and not backward, and so we
+parted company.</p>
+<p>Welcome again, the long, long spell of France, with the queer
+country inns, full of vases of flowers and clocks, in the dull
+little town, and with the little population not at all dull on
+the little Boulevard in the evening, under the little
+trees! Welcome Monsieur the Cur&eacute;, walking alone in
+the early morning a short way out of the town, reading that
+eternal Breviary of yours, which surely might be almost read,
+without book, by this time! Welcome Monsieur the
+Cur&eacute;, later in the day, jolting through the highway dust
+(as if you had already ascended to the cloudy region), in a very
+big-headed cabriolet, with the dried mud of a dozen winters on
+it. Welcome again Monsieur the Cur&eacute;, as we exchange
+salutations; you, straightening your back to look at the German
+chariot, while picking in your little village garden a vegetable
+or two for the day&rsquo;s soup: I, looking out of the German
+chariot window in that delicious traveller&rsquo;s trance which
+knows no cares, no yesterdays, no to-morrows, nothing but the
+passing objects and the passing scents and sounds! And so I
+came, in due course of delight, to Strasbourg, where I passed a
+wet Sunday evening at a window, while an idle trifle of a
+vaudeville was played for me at the opposite house.</p>
+<p>How such a large house came to have only three people living
+in it, was its own affair. There were at least a score of
+windows in its high roof alone; how many in its grotesque front,
+I soon gave up counting. The owner was a shopkeeper, by
+name Straudenheim; by trade&mdash;I couldn&rsquo;t make out what
+by trade, for he had forborne to write that up, and his shop was
+shut.</p>
+<p>At first, as I looked at Straudenheim&rsquo;s, through the
+steadily falling rain, I set him up in business in the
+goose-liver line. But, inspection of Straudenheim, who
+became visible at a window on the second floor, convinced me that
+there was something more precious than liver in the case.
+He wore a black velvet skull-cap, and looked usurious and
+rich. A large-lipped, pear-nosed old man, with white hair,
+and keen eyes, though near-sighted. He was writing at a
+desk, was Straudenheim, and ever and again left off writing, put
+his pen in his mouth, and went through actions with his right
+hand, like a man steadying piles of cash. Five-franc
+pieces, Straudenheim, or golden Napoleons? A jeweller,
+Straudenheim, a dealer in money, a diamond merchant, or what?</p>
+<p>Below Straudenheim, at a window on the first floor, sat his
+housekeeper&mdash;far from young, but of a comely presence,
+suggestive of a well-matured foot and ankle. She was
+cheerily dressed, had a fan in her hand, and wore large gold
+earrings and a large gold cross. She would have been out
+holiday-making (as I settled it) but for the pestilent
+rain. Strasbourg had given up holiday-making for that once,
+as a bad job, because the rain was jerking in gushes out of the
+old roof-spouts, and running in a brook down the middle of the
+street. The housekeeper, her arms folded on her bosom and
+her fan tapping her chin, was bright and smiling at her open
+window, but otherwise Straudenheim&rsquo;s house front was very
+dreary. The housekeeper&rsquo;s was the only open window in
+it; Straudenheim kept himself close, though it was a sultry
+evening when air is pleasant, and though the rain had brought
+into the town that vague refreshing smell of grass which rain
+does bring in the summer-time.</p>
+<p>The dim appearance of a man at Straudenheim&rsquo;s shoulder,
+inspired me with a misgiving that somebody had come to murder
+that flourishing merchant for the wealth with which I had
+handsomely endowed him: the rather, as it was an excited man,
+lean and long of figure, and evidently stealthy of foot.
+But, he conferred with Straudenheim instead of doing him a mortal
+injury, and then they both softly opened the other window of that
+room&mdash;which was immediately over the
+housekeeper&rsquo;s&mdash;and tried to see her by looking
+down. And my opinion of Straudenheim was much lowered when
+I saw that eminent citizen spit out of window, clearly with the
+hope of spitting on the housekeeper.</p>
+<p>The unconscious housekeeper fanned herself, tossed her head,
+and laughed. Though unconscious of Straudenheim, she was
+conscious of somebody else&mdash;of me?&mdash;there was nobody
+else.</p>
+<p>After leaning so far out of the window, that I confidently
+expected to see their heels tilt up, Straudenheim and the lean
+man drew their heads in and shut the window. Presently, the
+house door secretly opened, and they slowly and spitefully crept
+forth into the pouring rain. They were coming over to me (I
+thought) to demand satisfaction for my looking at the
+housekeeper, when they plunged into a recess in the architecture
+under my window and dragged out the puniest of little soldiers,
+begirt with the most innocent of little swords. The tall
+glazed head-dress of this warrior, Straudenheim instantly knocked
+off, and out of it fell two sugar-sticks, and three or four large
+lumps of sugar.</p>
+<p>The warrior made no effort to recover his property or to pick
+up his shako, but looked with an expression of attention at
+Straudenheim when he kicked him five times, and also at the lean
+man when <i>he</i> kicked him five times, and again at
+Straudenheim when he tore the breast of his (the warrior&rsquo;s)
+little coat open, and shook all his ten fingers in his face, as
+if they were ten thousand. When these outrages had been
+committed, Straudenheim and his man went into the house again and
+barred the door. A wonderful circumstance was, that the
+housekeeper who saw it all (and who could have taken six such
+warriors to her buxom bosom at once), only fanned herself and
+laughed as she had laughed before, and seemed to have no opinion
+about it, one way or other.</p>
+<p>But, the chief effect of the drama was the remarkable
+vengeance taken by the little warrior. Left alone in the
+rain, he picked up his shako; put it on, all wet and dirty as it
+was; retired into a court, of which Straudenheim&rsquo;s house
+formed the corner; wheeled about; and bringing his two
+forefingers close to the top of his nose, rubbed them over one
+another, cross-wise, in derision, defiance, and contempt of
+Straudenheim. Although Straudenheim could not possibly be
+supposed to be conscious of this strange proceeding, it so
+inflated and comforted the little warrior&rsquo;s soul, that
+twice he went away, and twice came back into the court to repeat
+it, as though it must goad his enemy to madness. Not only
+that, but he afterwards came back with two other small warriors,
+and they all three did it together. Not only that&mdash;as
+I live to tell the tale!&mdash;but just as it was falling quite
+dark, the three came back, bringing with them a huge bearded
+Sapper, whom they moved, by recital of the original wrong, to go
+through the same performance, with the same complete absence of
+all possible knowledge of it on the part of Straudenheim.
+And then they all went away, arm in arm, singing.</p>
+<p>I went away too, in the German chariot at sunrise, and rattled
+on, day after day, like one in a sweet dream; with so many clear
+little bells on the harness of the horses, that the nursery rhyme
+about Banbury Cross and the venerable lady who rode in state
+there, was always in my ears. And now I came to the land of
+wooden houses, innocent cakes, thin butter soup, and spotless
+little inn bedrooms with a family likeness to Dairies. And
+now the Swiss marksmen were for ever rifle-shooting at marks
+across gorges, so exceedingly near my ear, that I felt like a new
+Gesler in a Canton of Tells, and went in highly-deserved danger
+of my tyrannical life. The prizes at these shootings, were
+watches, smart handkerchiefs, hats, spoons, and (above all)
+tea-trays; and at these contests I came upon a more than usually
+accomplished and amiable countryman of my own, who had shot
+himself deaf in whole years of competition, and had won so many
+tea-trays that he went about the country with his carriage full
+of them, like a glorified Cheap-Jack.</p>
+<p>In the mountain-country into which I had now travelled, a yoke
+of oxen were sometimes hooked on before the post-horses, and I
+went lumbering up, up, up, through mist and rain, with the roar
+of falling water for change of music. Of a sudden, mist and
+rain would clear away, and I would come down into picturesque
+little towns with gleaming spires and odd towers; and would
+stroll afoot into market-places in steep winding streets, where a
+hundred women in bodices, sold eggs and honey, butter and fruit,
+and suckled their children as they sat by their clean baskets,
+and had such enormous go&icirc;tres (or glandular swellings in
+the throat) that it became a science to know where the nurse
+ended and the child began. About this time, I deserted my
+German chariot for the back of a mule (in colour and consistency
+so very like a dusty old hair trunk I once had at school, that I
+half expected to see my initials in brass-headed nails on his
+backbone), and went up a thousand rugged ways, and looked down at
+a thousand woods of fir and pine, and would on the whole have
+preferred my mule&rsquo;s keeping a little nearer to the inside,
+and not usually travelling with a hoof or two over the
+precipice&mdash;though much consoled by explanation that this was
+to be attributed to his great sagacity, by reason of his carrying
+broad loads of wood at other times, and not being clear but that
+I myself belonged to that station of life, and required as much
+room as they. He brought me safely, in his own wise way,
+among the passes of the Alps, and here I enjoyed a dozen climates
+a day; being now (like Don Quixote on the back of the wooden
+horse) in the region of wind, now in the region of fire, now in
+the region of unmelting ice and snow. Here, I passed over
+trembling domes of ice, beneath which the cataract was roaring;
+and here was received under arches of icicles, of unspeakable
+beauty; and here the sweet air was so bracing and so light, that
+at halting-times I rolled in the snow when I saw my mule do it,
+thinking that he must know best. At this part of the
+journey we would come, at mid-day, into half an hour&rsquo;s
+thaw: when the rough mountain inn would be found on an island of
+deep mud in a sea of snow, while the baiting strings of mules,
+and the carts full of casks and bales, which had been in an
+Arctic condition a mile off, would steam again. By such
+ways and means, I would come to the cluster of ch&acirc;lets
+where I had to turn out of the track to see the waterfall; and
+then, uttering a howl like a young giant, on espying a
+traveller&mdash;in other words, something to eat&mdash;coming up
+the steep, the idiot lying on the wood-pile who sunned himself
+and nursed his go&icirc;tre, would rouse the woman-guide within
+the hut, who would stream out hastily, throwing her child over
+one of her shoulders and her go&icirc;tre over the other, as she
+came along. I slept at religious houses, and bleak refuges
+of many kinds, on this journey, and by the stove at night heard
+stories of travellers who had perished within call, in wreaths
+and drifts of snow. One night the stove within, and the
+cold outside, awakened childish associations long forgotten, and
+I dreamed I was in Russia&mdash;the identical serf out of a
+picture-book I had, before I could read it for myself&mdash;and
+that I was going to be knouted by a noble personage in a fur cap,
+boots, and earrings, who, I think, must have come out of some
+melodrama.</p>
+<p>Commend me to the beautiful waters among these
+mountains! Though I was not of their mind: they, being
+inveterately bent on getting down into the level country, and I
+ardently desiring to linger where I was. What desperate
+leaps they took, what dark abysses they plunged into, what rocks
+they wore away, what echoes they invoked! In one part where
+I went, they were pressed into the service of carrying wood down,
+to be burnt next winter, as costly fuel, in Italy. But,
+their fierce savage nature was not to be easily constrained, and
+they fought with every limb of the wood; whirling it round and
+round, stripping its bark away, dashing it against pointed
+corners, driving it out of the course, and roaring and flying at
+the peasants who steered it back again from the bank with long
+stout poles. Alas! concurrent streams of time and water
+carried <i>me</i> down fast, and I came, on an exquisitely clear
+day, to the Lausanne shore of the Lake of Geneva, where I stood
+looking at the bright blue water, the flushed white mountains
+opposite, and the boats at my feet with their furled
+Mediterranean sails, showing like enormous magnifications of this
+goose-quill pen that is now in my hand.</p>
+<p>&mdash;The sky became overcast without any notice; a wind very
+like the March east wind of England, blew across me; and a voice
+said, &lsquo;How do you like it? Will it do?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I had merely shut myself, for half a minute, in a German
+travelling chariot that stood for sale in the Carriage Department
+of the London Pantechnicon. I had a commission to buy it,
+for a friend who was going abroad; and the look and manner of the
+chariot, as I tried the cushions and the springs, brought all
+these hints of travelling remembrance before me.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It will do very well,&rsquo; said I, rather
+sorrowfully, as I got out at the other door, and shut the
+carriage up.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap08"></a>VIII<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE GREAT TASMANIA&rsquo;S
+CARGO</span></h2>
+<p>I <span class="smcap">travel</span> constantly, up and down a
+certain line of railway that has a terminus in London. It
+is the railway for a large military dep&ocirc;t, and for other
+large barracks. To the best of my serious belief, I have
+never been on that railway by daylight, without seeing some
+handcuffed deserters in the train.</p>
+<p>It is in the nature of things that such an institution as our
+English army should have many bad and troublesome characters in
+it. But, this is a reason for, and not against, its being
+made as acceptable as possible to well-disposed men of decent
+behaviour. Such men are assuredly not tempted into the
+ranks, by the beastly inversion of natural laws, and the
+compulsion to live in worse than swinish foulness.
+Accordingly, when any such Circumlocutional embellishments of the
+soldier&rsquo;s condition have of late been brought to notice, we
+civilians, seated in outer darkness cheerfully meditating on an
+Income Tax, have considered the matter as being our business, and
+have shown a tendency to declare that we would rather not have it
+misregulated, if such declaration may, without violence to the
+Church Catechism, be hinted to those who are put in authority
+over us.</p>
+<p>Any animated description of a modern battle, any private
+soldier&rsquo;s letter published in the newspapers, any page of
+the records of the Victoria Cross, will show that in the ranks of
+the army, there exists under all disadvantages as fine a sense of
+duty as is to be found in any station on earth. Who doubts
+that if we all did our duty as faithfully as the soldier does
+his, this world would be a better place? There may be
+greater difficulties in our way than in the
+soldier&rsquo;s. Not disputed. But, let us at least
+do our duty towards <i>him</i>.</p>
+<p>I had got back again to that rich and beautiful port where I
+had looked after Mercantile Jack, and I was walking up a hill
+there, on a wild March morning. My conversation with my
+official friend Pangloss, by whom I was accidentally accompanied,
+took this direction as we took the up-hill direction, because the
+object of my uncommercial journey was to see some discharged
+soldiers who had recently come home from India. There were
+men of <span class="smcap">Havelock&rsquo;s</span> among them;
+there were men who had been in many of the great battles of the
+great Indian campaign, among them; and I was curious to note what
+our discharged soldiers looked like, when they were done
+with.</p>
+<p>I was not the less interested (as I mentioned to my official
+friend Pangloss) because these men had claimed to be discharged,
+when their right to be discharged was not admitted. They
+had behaved with unblemished fidelity and bravery; but, a change
+of circumstances had arisen, which, as they considered, put an
+end to their compact and entitled them to enter on a new
+one. Their demand had been blunderingly resisted by the
+authorities in India: but, it is to be presumed that the men were
+not far wrong, inasmuch as the bungle had ended in their being
+sent home discharged, in pursuance of orders from home.
+(There was an immense waste of money, of course.)</p>
+<p>Under these circumstances&mdash;thought I, as I walked up the
+hill, on which I accidentally encountered my official
+friend&mdash;under these circumstances of the men having
+successfully opposed themselves to the Pagoda Department of that
+great Circumlocution Office on which the sun never sets and the
+light of reason never rises, the Pagoda Department will have been
+particularly careful of the national honour. It will have
+shown these men, in the scrupulous good faith, not to say the
+generosity, of its dealing with them, that great national
+authorities can have no small retaliations and revenges. It
+will have made every provision for their health on the passage
+home, and will have landed them, restored from their campaigning
+fatigues by a sea-voyage, pure air, sound food, and good
+medicines. And I pleased myself with dwelling beforehand,
+on the great accounts of their personal treatment which these men
+would carry into their various towns and villages, and on the
+increasing popularity of the service that would insensibly
+follow. I almost began to hope that the
+hitherto-never-failing deserters on my railroad would by-and-by
+become a phenomenon.</p>
+<p>In this agreeable frame of mind I entered the workhouse of
+Liverpool.&mdash;For, the cultivation of laurels in a sandy soil,
+had brought the soldiers in question to <i>that</i> abode of
+Glory.</p>
+<p>Before going into their wards to visit them, I inquired how
+they had made their triumphant entry there? They had been
+brought through the rain in carts it seemed, from the
+landing-place to the gate, and had then been carried up-stairs on
+the backs of paupers. Their groans and pains during the
+performance of this glorious pageant, had been so distressing, as
+to bring tears into the eyes of spectators but too well
+accustomed to scenes of suffering. The men were so
+dreadfully cold, that those who could get near the fires were
+hard to be restrained from thrusting their feet in among the
+blazing coals. They were so horribly reduced, that they
+were awful to look upon. Racked with dysentery and
+blackened with scurvy, one hundred and forty wretched soldiers
+had been revived with brandy and laid in bed.</p>
+<p>My official friend Pangloss is lineally descended from a
+learned doctor of that name, who was once tutor to Candide, an
+ingenious young gentleman of some celebrity. In his
+personal character, he is as humane and worthy a gentleman as any
+I know; in his official capacity, he unfortunately preaches the
+doctrines of his renowned ancestor, by demonstrating on all
+occasions that we live in the best of all possible official
+worlds.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;In the name of Humanity,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;how did
+the men fall into this deplorable state? Was the ship well
+found in stores?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am not here to asseverate that I know the fact, of my
+own knowledge,&rsquo; answered Pangloss, &lsquo;but I have
+grounds for asserting that the stores were the best of all
+possible stores.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A medical officer laid before us, a handful of rotten biscuit,
+and a handful of split peas. The biscuit was a honeycombed
+heap of maggots, and the excrement of maggots. The peas
+were even harder than this filth. A similar handful had
+been experimentally boiled six hours, and had shown no signs of
+softening. These were the stores on which the soldiers had
+been fed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The beef&mdash;&rsquo; I began, when Pangloss cut me
+short.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Was the best of all possible beef,&rsquo; said he.</p>
+<p>But, behold, there was laid before us certain evidence given
+at the Coroner&rsquo;s Inquest, holden on some of the men (who
+had obstinately died of their treatment), and from that evidence
+it appeared that the beef was the worst of possible beef!</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Then I lay my hand upon my heart, and take my
+stand,&rsquo; said Pangloss, &lsquo;by the pork, which was the
+best of all possible pork.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But look at this food before our eyes, if one may so
+misuse the word,&rsquo; said I. &lsquo;Would any Inspector
+who did his duty, pass such abomination?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It ought not to have been passed,&rsquo; Pangloss
+admitted.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Then the authorities out there&mdash;&rsquo; I began,
+when Pangloss cut me short again.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There would certainly seem to have been something wrong
+somewhere,&rsquo; said he; &lsquo;but I am prepared to prove that
+the authorities out there, are the best of all possible
+authorities.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I never heard of any impeached public authority in my life,
+who was not the best public authority in existence.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;We are told of these unfortunate men being laid low by
+scurvy,&rsquo; said I. &lsquo;Since lime-juice has been
+regularly stored and served out in our navy, surely that disease,
+which used to devastate it, has almost disappeared? Was
+there lime-juice aboard this transport?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>My official friend was beginning &lsquo;the best of all
+possible&mdash;&rsquo; when an inconvenient medical forefinger
+pointed out another passage in the evidence, from which it
+appeared that the lime-juice had been bad too. Not to
+mention that the vinegar had been bad too, the vegetables bad
+too, the cooking accommodation insufficient (if there had been
+anything worth mentioning to cook), the water supply exceedingly
+inadequate, and the beer sour.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Then the men,&rsquo; said Pangloss, a little irritated,
+&lsquo;Were the worst of all possible men.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;In what respect?&rsquo; I asked.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh! Habitual drunkards,&rsquo; said Pangloss.</p>
+<p>But, again the same incorrigible medical forefinger pointed
+out another passage in the evidence, showing that the dead men
+had been examined after death, and that they, at least, could not
+possibly have been habitual drunkards, because the organs within
+them which must have shown traces of that habit, were perfectly
+sound.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And besides,&rsquo; said the three doctors present,
+&lsquo;one and all, habitual drunkards brought as low as these
+men have been, could not recover under care and food, as the
+great majority of these men are recovering. They would not
+have strength of constitution to do it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Reckless and improvident dogs, then,&rsquo; said
+Pangloss. &lsquo;Always are&mdash;nine times out of
+ten.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I turned to the master of the workhouse, and asked him whether
+the men had any money?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Money?&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;I have in my iron
+safe, nearly four hundred pounds of theirs; the agents have
+nearly a hundred pounds more and many of them have left money in
+Indian banks besides.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Hah!&rsquo; said I to myself, as we went up-stairs,
+&lsquo;this is not the best of all possible stories, I
+doubt!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>We went into a large ward, containing some twenty or
+five-and-twenty beds. We went into several such wards, one
+after another. I find it very difficult to indicate what a
+shocking sight I saw in them, without frightening the reader from
+the perusal of these lines, and defeating my object of making it
+known.</p>
+<p>O the sunken eyes that turned to me as I walked between the
+rows of beds, or&mdash;worse still&mdash;that glazedly looked at
+the white ceiling, and saw nothing and cared for nothing!
+Here, lay the skeleton of a man, so lightly covered with a thin
+unwholesome skin, that not a bone in the anatomy was clothed, and
+I could clasp the arm above the elbow, in my finger and
+thumb. Here, lay a man with the black scurvy eating his
+legs away, his gums gone, and his teeth all gaunt and bare.
+This bed was empty, because gangrene had set in, and the patient
+had died but yesterday. That bed was a hopeless one,
+because its occupant was sinking fast, and could only be roused
+to turn the poor pinched mask of face upon the pillow, with a
+feeble moan. The awful thinness of the fallen cheeks, the
+awful brightness of the deep set eyes, the lips of lead, the
+hands of ivory, the recumbent human images lying in the shadow of
+death with a kind of solemn twilight on them, like the sixty who
+had died aboard the ship and were lying at the bottom of the sea,
+O Pangloss, <span class="smcap">God</span> forgive you!</p>
+<p>In one bed, lay a man whose life had been saved (as it was
+hoped) by deep incisions in the feet and legs. While I was
+speaking to him, a nurse came up to change the poultices which
+this operation had rendered necessary, and I had an instinctive
+feeling that it was not well to turn away, merely to spare
+myself. He was sorely wasted and keenly susceptible, but
+the efforts he made to subdue any expression of impatience or
+suffering, were quite heroic. It was easy to see, in the
+shrinking of the figure, and the drawing of the bed-clothes over
+the head, how acute the endurance was, and it made me shrink too,
+as if I were in pain; but, when the new bandages were on, and the
+poor feet were composed again, he made an apology for himself
+(though he had not uttered a word), and said plaintively,
+&lsquo;I am so tender and weak, you see, sir!&rsquo;
+Neither from him nor from any one sufferer of the whole ghastly
+number, did I hear a complaint. Of thankfulness for present
+solicitude and care, I heard much; of complaint, not a word.</p>
+<p>I think I could have recognised in the dismalest skeleton
+there, the ghost of a soldier. Something of the old air was
+still latent in the palest shadow of life I talked to. One
+emaciated creature, in the strictest literality worn to the bone,
+lay stretched on his back, looking so like death that I asked one
+of the doctors if he were not dying, or dead? A few kind
+words from the doctor, in his ear, and he opened his eyes, and
+smiled&mdash;looked, in a moment, as if he would have made a
+salute, if he could. &lsquo;We shall pull him through,
+please God,&rsquo; said the Doctor. &lsquo;Plase God, surr,
+and thankye,&rsquo; said the patient. &lsquo;You are much
+better to-day; are you not?&rsquo; said the Doctor.
+&lsquo;Plase God, surr; &rsquo;tis the slape I want, surr;
+&rsquo;tis my breathin&rsquo; makes the nights so
+long.&rsquo; &lsquo;He is a careful fellow this, you must
+know,&rsquo; said the Doctor, cheerfully; &lsquo;it was raining
+hard when they put him in the open cart to bring him here, and he
+had the presence of mind to ask to have a sovereign taken out of
+his pocket that he had there, and a cab engaged. Probably
+it saved his life.&rsquo; The patient rattled out the
+skeleton of a laugh, and said, proud of the story,
+&lsquo;&rsquo;Deed, surr, an open cairt was a comical means
+o&rsquo; bringin&rsquo; a dyin&rsquo; man here, and a clever way
+to kill him.&rsquo; You might have sworn to him for a
+soldier when he said it.</p>
+<p>One thing had perplexed me very much in going from bed to
+bed. A very significant and cruel thing. I could find
+no young man but one. He had attracted my notice, by having
+got up and dressed himself in his soldier&rsquo;s jacket and
+trousers, with the intention of sitting by the fire; but he had
+found himself too weak, and had crept back to his bed and laid
+himself down on the outside of it. I could have pronounced
+him, alone, to be a young man aged by famine and sickness.
+As we were standing by the Irish soldier&rsquo;s bed, I mentioned
+my perplexity to the Doctor. He took a board with an
+inscription on it from the head of the Irishman&rsquo;s bed, and
+asked me what age I supposed that man to be? I had observed
+him with attention while talking to him, and answered,
+confidently, &lsquo;Fifty.&rsquo; The Doctor, with a
+pitying glance at the patient, who had dropped into a stupor
+again, put the board back, and said,
+&lsquo;Twenty-four.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>All the arrangements of the wards were excellent. They
+could not have been more humane, sympathising, gentle, attentive,
+or wholesome. The owners of the ship, too, had done all
+they could, liberally. There were bright fires in every
+room, and the convalescent men were sitting round them, reading
+various papers and periodicals. I took the liberty of
+inviting my official friend Pangloss to look at those
+convalescent men, and to tell me whether their faces and bearing
+were or were not, generally, the faces and bearing of steady
+respectable soldiers? The master of the workhouse,
+overhearing me, said he had had a pretty large experience of
+troops, and that better conducted men than these, he had never
+had to do with. They were always (he added) as we saw
+them. And of us visitors (I add) they knew nothing
+whatever, except that we were there.</p>
+<p>It was audacious in me, but I took another liberty with
+Pangloss. Prefacing it with the observation that, of
+course, I knew beforehand that there was not the faintest desire,
+anywhere, to hush up any part of this dreadful business, and that
+the Inquest was the fairest of all possible Inquests, I besought
+four things of Pangloss. Firstly, to observe that the
+Inquest <i>was not held in that place</i>, but at some distance
+off. Secondly, to look round upon those helpless spectres
+in their beds. Thirdly, to remember that the witnesses
+produced from among them before that Inquest, could not have been
+selected because they were the men who had the most to tell it,
+but because they happened to be in a state admitting of their
+safe removal. Fourthly, to say whether the coroner and jury
+could have come there, to those pillows, and taken a little
+evidence? My official friend declined to commit himself to
+a reply.</p>
+<p>There was a sergeant, reading, in one of the fireside
+groups. As he was a man of very intelligent countenance,
+and as I have a great respect for non-commissioned officers as a
+class, I sat down on the nearest bed, to have some talk with
+him. (It was the bed of one of the grisliest of the poor
+skeletons, and he died soon afterwards.)</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I was glad to see, in the evidence of an officer at the
+Inquest, sergeant, that he never saw men behave better on board
+ship than these men.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;They did behave very well, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I was glad to see, too, that every man had a
+hammock.&rsquo; The sergeant gravely shook his head.
+&lsquo;There must be some mistake, sir. The men of my own
+mess had no hammocks. There were not hammocks enough on
+board, and the men of the two next messes laid hold of hammocks
+for themselves as soon as they got on board, and squeezed my men
+out, as I may say.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Had the squeezed-out men none then?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;None, sir. As men died, their hammocks were used
+by other men, who wanted hammocks; but many men had none at
+all.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Then you don&rsquo;t agree with the evidence on that
+point?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Certainly not, sir. A man can&rsquo;t, when he
+knows to the contrary.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Did any of the men sell their bedding for
+drink?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There is some mistake on that point too, sir. Men
+were under the impression&mdash;I knew it for a fact at the
+time&mdash;that it was not allowed to take blankets or bedding on
+board, and so men who had things of that sort came to sell them
+purposely.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Did any of the men sell their clothes for
+drink?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;They did, sir.&rsquo; (I believe there never was
+a more truthful witness than the sergeant. He had no
+inclination to make out a case.)</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Many?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Some, sir&rsquo; (considering the question).
+&lsquo;Soldier-like. They had been long marching in the
+rainy season, by bad roads&mdash;no roads at all, in
+short&mdash;and when they got to Calcutta, men turned to and
+drank, before taking a last look at it.
+Soldier-like.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do you see any men in this ward, for example, who sold
+clothes for drink at that time?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The sergeant&rsquo;s wan eye, happily just beginning to
+rekindle with health, travelled round the place and came back to
+me. &lsquo;Certainly, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The marching to Calcutta in the rainy season must have
+been severe?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It was very severe, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yet what with the rest and the sea air, I should have
+thought that the men (even the men who got drunk) would have soon
+begun to recover on board ship?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;So they might; but the bad food told upon them, and
+when we got into a cold latitude, it began to tell more, and the
+men dropped.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The sick had a general disinclination for food, I am
+told, sergeant?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Have you seen the food, sir?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Some of it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Have you seen the state of their mouths,
+sir?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>If the sergeant, who was a man of a few orderly words, had
+spoken the amount of this volume, he could not have settled that
+question better. I believe the sick could as soon have
+eaten the ship, as the ship&rsquo;s provisions.</p>
+<p>I took the additional liberty with my friend Pangloss, when I
+had left the sergeant with good wishes, of asking Pangloss
+whether he had ever heard of biscuit getting drunk and bartering
+its nutritious qualities for putrefaction and vermin; of peas
+becoming hardened in liquor; of hammocks drinking themselves off
+the face of the earth; of lime-juice, vegetables, vinegar,
+cooking accommodation, water supply, and beer, all taking to
+drinking together and going to ruin? &lsquo;If not (I asked
+him), what did he say in defence of the officers condemned by the
+Coroner&rsquo;s jury, who, by signing the General Inspection
+report relative to the ship Great Tasmania, chartered for these
+troops, had deliberately asserted all that bad and poisonous
+dunghill refuse, to be good and wholesome food?&rsquo; My
+official friend replied that it was a remarkable fact, that
+whereas some officers were only positively good, and other
+officers only comparatively better, those particular officers
+were superlatively the very best of all possible officers.</p>
+<p>My hand and my heart fail me, in writing my record of this
+journey. The spectacle of the soldiers in the hospital-beds
+of that Liverpool workhouse (a very good workhouse, indeed, be it
+understood), was so shocking and so shameful, that as an
+Englishman I blush to remember it. It would have been
+simply unbearable at the time, but for the consideration and pity
+with which they were soothed in their sufferings.</p>
+<p>No punishment that our inefficient laws provide, is worthy of
+the name when set against the guilt of this transaction.
+But, if the memory of it die out unavenged, and if it do not
+result in the inexorable dismissal and disgrace of those who are
+responsible for it, their escape will be infamous to the
+Government (no matter of what party) that so neglects its duty,
+and infamous to the nation that tamely suffers such intolerable
+wrong to be done in its name.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap09"></a>IX<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">If</span> the confession that I have often
+travelled from this Covent Garden lodging of mine on Sundays,
+should give offence to those who never travel on Sundays, they
+will be satisfied (I hope) by my adding that the journeys in
+question were made to churches.</p>
+<p>Not that I have any curiosity to hear powerful
+preachers. Time was, when I was dragged by the hair of my
+head, as one may say, to hear too many. On summer evenings,
+when every flower, and tree, and bird, might have better
+addressed my soft young heart, I have in my day been caught in
+the palm of a female hand by the crown, have been violently
+scrubbed from the neck to the roots of the hair as a purification
+for the Temple, and have then been carried off highly charged
+with saponaceous electricity, to be steamed like a potato in the
+unventilated breath of the powerful Boanerges Boiler and his
+congregation, until what small mind I had, was quite steamed out
+of me. In which pitiable plight I have been haled out of
+the place of meeting, at the conclusion of the exercises, and
+catechised respecting Boanerges Boiler, his fifthly, his sixthly,
+and his seventhly, until I have regarded that reverend person in
+the light of a most dismal and oppressive Charade. Time
+was, when I was carried off to platform assemblages at which no
+human child, whether of wrath or grace, could possibly keep its
+eyes open, and when I felt the fatal sleep stealing, stealing
+over me, and when I gradually heard the orator in possession,
+spinning and humming like a great top, until he rolled,
+collapsed, and tumbled over, and I discovered to my burning shame
+and fear, that as to that last stage it was not he, but I.
+I have sat under Boanerges when he has specifically addressed
+himself to us&mdash;us, the infants&mdash;and at this present
+writing I hear his lumbering jocularity (which never amused us,
+though we basely pretended that it did), and I behold his big
+round face, and I look up the inside of his outstretched
+coat-sleeve as if it were a telescope with the stopper on, and I
+hate him with an unwholesome hatred for two hours. Through
+such means did it come to pass that I knew the powerful preacher
+from beginning to end, all over and all through, while I was very
+young, and that I left him behind at an early period of
+life. Peace be with him! More peace than he brought
+to me!</p>
+<p>Now, I have heard many preachers since that time&mdash;not
+powerful; merely Christian, unaffected, and reverential&mdash;and
+I have had many such preachers on my roll of friends. But,
+it was not to hear these, any more than the powerful class, that
+I made my Sunday journeys. They were journeys of curiosity
+to the numerous churches in the City of London. It came
+into my head one day, here had I been cultivating a familiarity
+with all the churches of Rome, and I knew nothing of the insides
+of the old churches of London! This befell on a Sunday
+morning. I began my expeditions that very same day, and
+they lasted me a year.</p>
+<p>I never wanted to know the names of the churches to which I
+went, and to this hour I am profoundly ignorant in that
+particular of at least nine-tenths of them. Indeed, saying
+that I know the church of old <span
+class="smcap">Gower&rsquo;s</span> tomb (he lies in effigy with
+his head upon his books) to be the church of Saint
+Saviour&rsquo;s, Southwark; and the church of <span
+class="smcap">Milton&rsquo;s</span> tomb to be the church of
+Cripplegate; and the church on Cornhill with the great golden
+keys to be the church of Saint Peter; I doubt if I could pass a
+competitive examination in any of the names. No question
+did I ever ask of living creature concerning these churches, and
+no answer to any antiquarian question on the subject that I ever
+put to books, shall harass the reader&rsquo;s soul. A full
+half of my pleasure in them arose out of their mystery;
+mysterious I found them; mysterious they shall remain for me.</p>
+<p>Where shall I begin my round of hidden and forgotten old
+churches in the City of London?</p>
+<p>It is twenty minutes short of eleven on a Sunday morning, when
+I stroll down one of the many narrow hilly streets in the City
+that tend due south to the Thames. It is my first
+experiment, and I have come to the region of Whittington in an
+omnibus, and we have put down a fierce-eyed, spare old woman,
+whose slate-coloured gown smells of herbs, and who walked up
+Aldersgate-street to some chapel where she comforts herself with
+brimstone doctrine, I warrant. We have also put down a
+stouter and sweeter old lady, with a pretty large prayer-book in
+an unfolded pocket-handkerchief, who got out at a corner of a
+court near Stationers&rsquo; Hall, and who I think must go to
+church there, because she is the widow of some deceased old
+Company&rsquo;s Beadle. The rest of our freight were mere
+chance pleasure-seekers and rural walkers, and went on to the
+Blackwall railway. So many bells are ringing, when I stand
+undecided at a street corner, that every sheep in the
+ecclesiastical fold might be a bell-wether. The discordance
+is fearful. My state of indecision is referable to, and
+about equally divisible among, four great churches, which are all
+within sight and sound, all within the space of a few square
+yards.</p>
+<p>As I stand at the street corner, I don&rsquo;t see as many as
+four people at once going to church, though I see as many as four
+churches with their steeples clamouring for people. I
+choose my church, and go up the flight of steps to the great
+entrance in the tower. A mouldy tower within, and like a
+neglected washhouse. A rope comes through the beamed roof,
+and a man in the corner pulls it and clashes the bell&mdash;a
+whity-brown man, whose clothes were once black&mdash;a man with
+flue on him, and cobweb. He stares at me, wondering how I
+come there, and I stare at him, wondering how he comes
+there. Through a screen of wood and glass, I peep into the
+dim church. About twenty people are discernible, waiting to
+begin. Christening would seem to have faded out of this
+church long ago, for the font has the dust of desuetude thick
+upon it, and its wooden cover (shaped like an old-fashioned
+tureen-cover) looks as if it wouldn&rsquo;t come off, upon
+requirement. I perceive the altar to be rickety and the
+Commandments damp. Entering after this survey, I jostle the
+clergyman in his canonicals, who is entering too from a dark lane
+behind a pew of state with curtains, where nobody sits. The
+pew is ornamented with four blue wands, once carried by four
+somebodys, I suppose, before somebody else, but which there is
+nobody now to hold or receive honour from. I open the door
+of a family pew, and shut myself in; if I could occupy twenty
+family pews at once I might have them. The clerk, a brisk
+young man (how does <i>he</i> come here?), glances at me
+knowingly, as who should say, &lsquo;You have done it now; you
+must stop.&rsquo; Organ plays. Organ-loft is in a
+small gallery across the church; gallery congregation, two
+girls. I wonder within myself what will happen when we are
+required to sing.</p>
+<p>There is a pale heap of books in the corner of my pew, and
+while the organ, which is hoarse and sleepy, plays in such
+fashion that I can hear more of the rusty working of the stops
+than of any music, I look at the books, which are mostly bound in
+faded baize and stuff. They belonged in 1754, to the
+Dowgate family; and who were they? Jane Comport must have
+married Young Dowgate, and come into the family that way; Young
+Dowgate was courting Jane Comport when he gave her her
+prayer-book, and recorded the presentation in the fly-leaf; if
+Jane were fond of Young Dowgate, why did she die and leave the
+book here? Perhaps at the rickety altar, and before the
+damp Commandments, she, Comport, had taken him, Dowgate, in a
+flush of youthful hope and joy, and perhaps it had not turned out
+in the long run as great a success as was expected?</p>
+<p>The opening of the service recalls my wandering
+thoughts. I then find, to my astonishment, that I have
+been, and still am, taking a strong kind of invisible snuff, up
+my nose, into my eyes, and down my throat. I wink, sneeze,
+and cough. The clerk sneezes; the clergyman winks; the
+unseen organist sneezes and coughs (and probably winks); all our
+little party wink, sneeze, and cough. The snuff seems to be
+made of the decay of matting, wood, cloth, stone, iron, earth,
+and something else. Is the something else, the decay of
+dead citizens in the vaults below? As sure as Death it
+is! Not only in the cold, damp February day, do we cough
+and sneeze dead citizens, all through the service, but dead
+citizens have got into the very bellows of the organ, and half
+choked the same. We stamp our feet to warm them, and dead
+citizens arise in heavy clouds. Dead citizens stick upon
+the walls, and lie pulverised on the sounding-board over the
+clergyman&rsquo;s head, and, when a gust of air comes, tumble
+down upon him.</p>
+<p>In this first experience I was so nauseated by too much snuff,
+made of the Dowgate family, the Comport branch, and other
+families and branches, that I gave but little heed to our dull
+manner of ambling through the service; to the brisk clerk&rsquo;s
+manner of encouraging us to try a note or two at psalm time; to
+the gallery-congregation&rsquo;s manner of enjoying a shrill
+duet, without a notion of time or tune; to the whity-brown
+man&rsquo;s manner of shutting the minister into the pulpit, and
+being very particular with the lock of the door, as if he were a
+dangerous animal. But, I tried again next Sunday, and soon
+accustomed myself to the dead citizens when I found that I could
+not possibly get on without them among the City churches.</p>
+<p>Another Sunday.</p>
+<p>After being again rung for by conflicting bells, like a leg of
+mutton or a laced hat a hundred years ago, I make selection of a
+church oddly put away in a corner among a number of lanes&mdash;a
+smaller church than the last, and an ugly: of about the date of
+Queen Anne. As a congregation, we are fourteen strong: not
+counting an exhausted charity school in a gallery, which has
+dwindled away to four boys, and two girls. In the porch, is
+a benefaction of loaves of bread, which there would seem to be
+nobody left in the exhausted congregation to claim, and which I
+saw an exhausted beadle, long faded out of uniform, eating with
+his eyes for self and family when I passed in. There is
+also an exhausted clerk in a brown wig, and two or three
+exhausted doors and windows have been bricked up, and the service
+books are musty, and the pulpit cushions are threadbare, and the
+whole of the church furniture is in a very advanced stage of
+exhaustion. We are three old women (habitual), two young
+lovers (accidental), two tradesmen, one with a wife and one
+alone, an aunt and nephew, again two girls (these two girls
+dressed out for church with everything about them limp that
+should be stiff, and <i>vice vers&acirc;</i>, are an invariable
+experience), and three sniggering boys. The clergyman is,
+perhaps, the chaplain of a civic company; he has the moist and
+vinous look, and eke the bulbous boots, of one acquainted with
+&rsquo;Twenty port, and comet vintages.</p>
+<p>We are so quiet in our dulness that the three sniggering boys,
+who have got away into a corner by the altar-railing, give us a
+start, like crackers, whenever they laugh. And this reminds
+me of my own village church where, during sermon-time on bright
+Sundays when the birds are very musical indeed, farmers&rsquo;
+boys patter out over the stone pavement, and the clerk steps out
+from his desk after them, and is distinctly heard in the summer
+repose to pursue and punch them in the churchyard, and is seen to
+return with a meditative countenance, making believe that nothing
+of the sort has happened. The aunt and nephew in this City
+church are much disturbed by the sniggering boys. The
+nephew is himself a boy, and the sniggerers tempt him to secular
+thoughts of marbles and string, by secretly offering such
+commodities to his distant contemplation. This young Saint
+Anthony for a while resists, but presently becomes a backslider,
+and in dumb show defies the sniggerers to &lsquo;heave&rsquo; a
+marble or two in his direction. Here in he is detected by
+the aunt (a rigorous reduced gentlewoman who has the charge of
+offices), and I perceive that worthy relative to poke him in the
+side, with the corrugated hooked handle of an ancient
+umbrella. The nephew revenges himself for this, by holding
+his breath and terrifying his kinswoman with the dread belief
+that he has made up his mind to burst. Regardless of
+whispers and shakes, he swells and becomes discoloured, and yet
+again swells and becomes discoloured, until the aunt can bear it
+no longer, but leads him out, with no visible neck, and with his
+eyes going before him like a prawn&rsquo;s. This causes the
+sniggerers to regard flight as an eligible move, and I know which
+of them will go out first, because of the over-devout attention
+that he suddenly concentrates on the clergyman. In a little
+while, this hypocrite, with an elaborate demonstration of hushing
+his footsteps, and with a face generally expressive of having
+until now forgotten a religious appointment elsewhere, is
+gone. Number two gets out in the same way, but rather
+quicker. Number three getting safely to the door, there
+turns reckless, and banging it open, flies forth with a Whoop!
+that vibrates to the top of the tower above us.</p>
+<p>The clergyman, who is of a prandial presence and a muffled
+voice, may be scant of hearing as well as of breath, but he only
+glances up, as having an idea that somebody has said Amen in a
+wrong place, and continues his steady jog-trot, like a
+farmer&rsquo;s wife going to market. He does all he has to
+do, in the same easy way, and gives us a concise sermon, still
+like the jog-trot of the farmer&rsquo;s wife on a level
+road. Its drowsy cadence soon lulls the three old women
+asleep, and the unmarried tradesman sits looking out at window,
+and the married tradesman sits looking at his wife&rsquo;s
+bonnet, and the lovers sit looking at one another, so
+superlatively happy, that I mind when I, turned of eighteen, went
+with my Angelica to a City church on account of a shower (by this
+special coincidence that it was in Huggin-lane), and when I said
+to my Angelica, &lsquo;Let the blessed event, Angelica, occur at
+no altar but this!&rsquo; and when my Angelica consented that it
+should occur at no other&mdash;which it certainly never did, for
+it never occurred anywhere. And O, Angelica, what has
+become of you, this present Sunday morning when I can&rsquo;t
+attend to the sermon; and, more difficult question than that,
+what has become of Me as I was when I sat by your side!</p>
+<p>But, we receive the signal to make that unanimous dive which
+surely is a little conventional&mdash;like the strange rustlings
+and settlings and clearings of throats and noses, which are never
+dispensed with, at certain points of the Church service, and are
+never held to be necessary under any other circumstances.
+In a minute more it is all over, and the organ expresses itself
+to be as glad of it as it can be of anything in its rheumatic
+state, and in another minute we are all of us out of the church,
+and Whity-brown has locked it up. Another minute or little
+more, and, in the neighbouring churchyard&mdash;not the yard of
+that church, but of another&mdash;a churchyard like a great
+shabby old mignonette box, with two trees in it and one
+tomb&mdash;I meet Whity-brown, in his private capacity, fetching
+a pint of beer for his dinner from the public-house in the
+corner, where the keys of the rotting fire-ladders are kept and
+were never asked for, and where there is a ragged, white-seamed,
+out-at-elbowed bagatelle board on the first floor.</p>
+<p>In one of these City churches, and only in one, I found an
+individual who might have been claimed as expressly a City
+personage. I remember the church, by the feature that the
+clergyman couldn&rsquo;t get to his own desk without going
+through the clerk&rsquo;s, or couldn&rsquo;t get to the pulpit
+without going through the reading-desk&mdash;I forget which, and
+it is no matter&mdash;and by the presence of this personage among
+the exceedingly sparse congregation. I doubt if we were a
+dozen, and we had no exhausted charity school to help us
+out. The personage was dressed in black of square cut, and
+was stricken in years, and wore a black velvet cap, and cloth
+shoes. He was of a staid, wealthy, and dissatisfied
+aspect. In his hand, he conducted to church a mysterious
+child: a child of the feminine gender. The child had a
+beaver hat, with a stiff drab plume that surely never belonged to
+any bird of the air. The child was further attired in a
+nankeen frock and spencer, brown boxing-gloves, and a veil.
+It had a blemish, in the nature of currant jelly, on its chin;
+and was a thirsty child. Insomuch that the personage
+carried in his pocket a green bottle, from which, when the first
+psalm was given out, the child was openly refreshed. At all
+other times throughout the service it was motionless, and stood
+on the seat of the large pew, closely fitted into the corner,
+like a rain-water pipe.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image72" href="images/p72b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"The City Personage"
+title=
+"The City Personage"
+ src="images/p72s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>The personage never opened his book, and never looked at the
+clergyman. He never sat down either, but stood with his
+arms leaning on the top of the pew, and his forehead sometimes
+shaded with his right hand, always looking at the church
+door. It was a long church for a church of its size, and he
+was at the upper end, but he always looked at the door.
+That he was an old bookkeeper, or an old trader who had kept his
+own books, and that he might be seen at the Bank of England about
+Dividend times, no doubt. That he had lived in the City all
+his life and was disdainful of other localities, no doubt.
+Why he looked at the door, I never absolutely proved, but it is
+my belief that he lived in expectation of the time when the
+citizens would come back to live in the City, and its ancient
+glories would be renewed. He appeared to expect that this
+would occur on a Sunday, and that the wanderers would first
+appear, in the deserted churches, penitent and humbled.
+Hence, he looked at the door which they never darkened.
+Whose child the child was, whether the child of a disinherited
+daughter, or some parish orphan whom the personage had adopted,
+there was nothing to lead up to. It never played, or
+skipped, or smiled. Once, the idea occurred to me that it
+was an automaton, and that the personage had made it; but
+following the strange couple out one Sunday, I heard the
+personage say to it, &lsquo;Thirteen thousand pounds;&rsquo; to
+which it added in a weak human voice, &lsquo;Seventeen and
+fourpence.&rsquo; Four Sundays I followed them out, and
+this is all I ever heard or saw them say. One Sunday, I
+followed them home. They lived behind a pump, and the
+personage opened their abode with an exceeding large key.
+The one solitary inscription on their house related to a
+fire-plug. The house was partly undermined by a deserted
+and closed gateway; its windows were blind with dirt; and it
+stood with its face disconsolately turned to a wall. Five
+great churches and two small ones rang their Sunday bells between
+this house and the church the couple frequented, so they must
+have had some special reason for going a quarter of a mile to
+it. The last time I saw them, was on this wise. I had
+been to explore another church at a distance, and happened to
+pass the church they frequented, at about two of the afternoon
+when that edifice was closed. But, a little side-door,
+which I had never observed before, stood open, and disclosed
+certain cellarous steps. Methought &lsquo;They are airing
+the vaults to-day,&rsquo; when the personage and the child
+silently arrived at the steps, and silently descended. Of
+course, I came to the conclusion that the personage had at last
+despaired of the looked-for return of the penitent citizens, and
+that he and the child went down to get themselves buried.</p>
+<p>In the course of my pilgrimages I came upon one obscure church
+which had broken out in the melodramatic style, and was got up
+with various tawdry decorations, much after the manner of the
+extinct London may-poles. These attractions had induced
+several young priests or deacons in black bibs for waistcoats,
+and several young ladies interested in that holy order (the
+proportion being, as I estimated, seventeen young ladies to a
+deacon), to come into the City as a new and odd excitement.
+It was wonderful to see how these young people played out their
+little play in the heart of the City, all among themselves,
+without the deserted City&rsquo;s knowing anything about
+it. It was as if you should take an empty counting-house on
+a Sunday, and act one of the old Mysteries there. They had
+impressed a small school (from what neighbourhood I don&rsquo;t
+know) to assist in the performances, and it was pleasant to
+notice frantic garlands of inscription on the walls, especially
+addressing those poor innocents in characters impossible for them
+to decipher. There was a remarkably agreeable smell of
+pomatum in this congregation.</p>
+<p>But, in other cases, rot and mildew and dead citizens formed
+the uppermost scent, while, infused into it in a dreamy way not
+at all displeasing, was the staple character of the
+neighbourhood. In the churches about Mark-lane, for
+example, there was a dry whiff of wheat; and I accidentally
+struck an airy sample of barley out of an aged hassock in one of
+them. From Rood-lane to Tower-street, and thereabouts,
+there was often a subtle flavour of wine: sometimes, of
+tea. One church near Mincing-lane smelt like a
+druggist&rsquo;s drawer. Behind the Monument the service
+had a flavour of damaged oranges, which, a little further down
+towards the river, tempered into herrings, and gradually toned
+into a cosmopolitan blast of fish. In one church, the exact
+counterpart of the church in the Rake&rsquo;s Progress where the
+hero is being married to the horrible old lady, there was no
+speciality of atmosphere, until the organ shook a perfume of
+hides all over us from some adjacent warehouse.</p>
+<p>Be the scent what it would, however, there was no speciality
+in the people. There were never enough of them to represent
+any calling or neighbourhood. They had all gone elsewhere
+over-night, and the few stragglers in the many churches
+languished there inexpressively.</p>
+<p>Among the Uncommercial travels in which I have engaged, this
+year of Sunday travel occupies its own place, apart from all the
+rest. Whether I think of the church where the sails of the
+oyster-boats in the river almost flapped against the windows, or
+of the church where the railroad made the bells hum as the train
+rushed by above the roof, I recall a curious experience. On
+summer Sundays, in the gentle rain or the bright
+sunshine&mdash;either, deepening the idleness of the idle
+City&mdash;I have sat, in that singular silence which belongs to
+resting-places usually astir, in scores of buildings at the heart
+of the world&rsquo;s metropolis, unknown to far greater numbers
+of people speaking the English tongue, than the ancient edifices
+of the Eternal City, or the Pyramids of Egypt. The dark
+vestries and registries into which I have peeped, and the little
+hemmed-in churchyards that have echoed to my feet, have left
+impressions on my memory as distinct and quaint as any it has in
+that way received. In all those dusty registers that the
+worms are eating, there is not a line but made some hearts leap,
+or some tears flow, in their day. Still and dry now, still
+and dry! and the old tree at the window with no room for its
+branches, has seen them all out. So with the tomb of the
+old Master of the old Company, on which it drips. His son
+restored it and died, his daughter restored it and died, and then
+he had been remembered long enough, and the tree took possession
+of him, and his name cracked out.</p>
+<p>There are few more striking indications of the changes of
+manners and customs that two or three hundred years have brought
+about, than these deserted churches. Many of them are
+handsome and costly structures, several of them were designed by
+<span class="smcap">Wren</span>, many of them arose from the
+ashes of the great fire, others of them outlived the plague and
+the fire too, to die a slow death in these later days. No
+one can be sure of the coming time; but it is not too much to say
+of it that it has no sign in its outsetting tides, of the reflux
+to these churches of their congregations and uses. They
+remain like the tombs of the old citizens who lie beneath them
+and around them, Monuments of another age. They are worth a
+Sunday-exploration, now and then, for they yet echo, not
+unharmoniously, to the time when the City of London really was
+London; when the &rsquo;Prentices and Trained Bands were of mark
+in the state; when even the Lord Mayor himself was a
+Reality&mdash;not a Fiction conventionally be-puffed on one day
+in the year by illustrious friends, who no less conventionally
+laugh at him on the remaining three hundred and sixty-four
+days.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap10"></a>X<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">SHY NEIGHBOURHOODS</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">So</span> much of my travelling is done on
+foot, that if I cherished betting propensities, I should probably
+be found registered in sporting newspapers under some such title
+as the Elastic Novice, challenging all eleven stone mankind to
+competition in walking. My last special feat was turning
+out of bed at two, after a hard day, pedestrian and otherwise,
+and walking thirty miles into the country to breakfast. The
+road was so lonely in the night, that I fell asleep to the
+monotonous sound of my own feet, doing their regular four miles
+an hour. Mile after mile I walked, without the slightest
+sense of exertion, dozing heavily and dreaming constantly.
+It was only when I made a stumble like a drunken man, or struck
+out into the road to avoid a horseman close upon me on the
+path&mdash;who had no existence&mdash;that I came to myself and
+looked about. The day broke mistily (it was autumn time),
+and I could not disembarrass myself of the idea that I had to
+climb those heights and banks of cloud, and that there was an
+Alpine Convent somewhere behind the sun, where I was going to
+breakfast. This sleepy notion was so much stronger than
+such substantial objects as villages and haystacks, that, after
+the sun was up and bright, and when I was sufficiently awake to
+have a sense of pleasure in the prospect, I still occasionally
+caught myself looking about for wooden arms to point the right
+track up the mountain, and wondering there was no snow yet.
+It is a curiosity of broken sleep that I made immense quantities
+of verses on that pedestrian occasion (of course I never make any
+when I am in my right senses), and that I spoke a certain
+language once pretty familiar to me, but which I have nearly
+forgotten from disuse, with fluency. Of both these
+phenomena I have such frequent experience in the state between
+sleeping and waking, that I sometimes argue with myself that I
+know I cannot be awake, for, if I were, I should not be half so
+ready. The readiness is not imaginary, because I often
+recall long strings of the verses, and many turns of the fluent
+speech, after I am broad awake.</p>
+<p>My walking is of two kinds: one, straight on end to a definite
+goal at a round pace; one, objectless, loitering, and purely
+vagabond. In the latter state, no gipsy on earth is a
+greater vagabond than myself; it is so natural to me, and strong
+with me, that I think I must be the descendant, at no great
+distance, of some irreclaimable tramp.</p>
+<p>One of the pleasantest things I have lately met with, in a
+vagabond course of shy metropolitan neighbourhoods and small
+shops, is the fancy of a humble artist, as exemplified in two
+portraits representing Mr. Thomas Sayers, of Great Britain, and
+Mr. John Heenan, of the United States of America. These
+illustrious men are highly coloured in fighting trim, and
+fighting attitude. To suggest the pastoral and meditative
+nature of their peaceful calling, Mr. Heenan is represented on
+emerald sward, with primroses and other modest flowers springing
+up under the heels of his half-boots; while Mr. Sayers is
+impelled to the administration of his favourite blow, the
+Auctioneer, by the silent eloquence of a village church.
+The humble homes of England, with their domestic virtues and
+honeysuckle porches, urge both heroes to go in and win; and the
+lark and other singing birds are observable in the upper air,
+ecstatically carolling their thanks to Heaven for a fight.
+On the whole, the associations entwined with the pugilistic art
+by this artist are much in the manner of Izaak Walton.</p>
+<p>But, it is with the lower animals of back streets and by-ways
+that my present purpose rests. For human notes we may
+return to such neighbourhoods when leisure and opportunity
+serve.</p>
+<p>Nothing in shy neighbourhoods perplexes my mind more, than the
+bad company birds keep. Foreign birds often get into good
+society, but British birds are inseparable from low
+associates. There is a whole street of them in St.
+Giles&rsquo;s; and I always find them in poor and immoral
+neighbourhoods, convenient to the public-house and the
+pawnbroker&rsquo;s. They seem to lead people into drinking,
+and even the man who makes their cages usually gets into a
+chronic state of black eye. Why is this? Also, they
+will do things for people in short-skirted velveteen coats with
+bone buttons, or in sleeved waistcoats and fur caps, which they
+cannot be persuaded by the respectable orders of society to
+undertake. In a dirty court in Spitalfields, once, I found
+a goldfinch drawing his own water, and drawing as much of it as
+if he were in a consuming fever. That goldfinch lived at a
+bird-shop, and offered, in writing, to barter himself against old
+clothes, empty bottles, or even kitchen stuff. Surely a low
+thing and a depraved taste in any finch! I bought that
+goldfinch for money. He was sent home, and hung upon a nail
+over against my table. He lived outside a counterfeit
+dwelling-house, supposed (as I argued) to be a dyer&rsquo;s;
+otherwise it would have been impossible to account for his perch
+sticking out of the garret window. From the time of his
+appearance in my room, either he left off being
+thirsty&mdash;which was not in the bond&mdash;or he could not
+make up his mind to hear his little bucket drop back into his
+well when he let it go: a shock which in the best of times had
+made him tremble. He drew no water but by stealth and under
+the cloak of night. After an interval of futile and at
+length hopeless expectation, the merchant who had educated him
+was appealed to. The merchant was a bow-legged character,
+with a flat and cushiony nose, like the last new
+strawberry. He wore a fur cap, and shorts, and was of the
+velveteen race, velveteeny. He sent word that he would
+&lsquo;look round.&rsquo; He looked round, appeared in the
+doorway of the room, and slightly cocked up his evil eye at the
+goldfinch. Instantly a raging thirst beset that bird; when
+it was appeased, he still drew several unnecessary buckets of
+water; and finally, leaped about his perch and sharpened his
+bill, as if he had been to the nearest wine vaults and got
+drunk.</p>
+<p>Donkeys again. I know shy neighbourhoods where the
+Donkey goes in at the street door, and appears to live up-stairs,
+for I have examined the back-yard from over the palings, and have
+been unable to make him out. Gentility, nobility, Royalty,
+would appeal to that donkey in vain to do what he does for a
+costermonger. Feed him with oats at the highest price, put
+an infant prince and princess in a pair of panniers on his back,
+adjust his delicate trappings to a nicety, take him to the
+softest slopes at Windsor, and try what pace you can get out of
+him. Then, starve him, harness him anyhow to a truck with a
+flat tray on it, and see him bowl from Whitechapel to
+Bayswater. There appears to be no particular private
+understanding between birds and donkeys, in a state of nature;
+but in the shy neighbourhood state, you shall see them always in
+the same hands and always developing their very best energies for
+the very worst company. I have known a donkey&mdash;by
+sight; we were not on speaking terms&mdash;who lived over on the
+Surrey side of London-bridge, among the fastnesses of
+Jacob&rsquo;s Island and Dockhead. It was the habit of that
+animal, when his services were not in immediate requisition, to
+go out alone, idling. I have met him a mile from his place
+of residence, loitering about the streets; and the expression of
+his countenance at such times was most degraded. He was
+attached to the establishment of an elderly lady who sold
+periwinkles, and he used to stand on Saturday nights with a
+cartful of those delicacies outside a gin-shop, pricking up his
+ears when a customer came to the cart, and too evidently deriving
+satisfaction from the knowledge that they got bad measure.
+His mistress was sometimes overtaken by inebriety. The last
+time I ever saw him (about five years ago) he was in
+circumstances of difficulty, caused by this failing. Having
+been left alone with the cart of periwinkles, and forgotten, he
+went off idling. He prowled among his usual low haunts for
+some time, gratifying his depraved tastes, until, not taking the
+cart into his calculations, he endeavoured to turn up a narrow
+alley, and became greatly involved. He was taken into
+custody by the police, and, the Green Yard of the district being
+near at hand, was backed into that place of durance. At
+that crisis, I encountered him; the stubborn sense he evinced of
+being&mdash;not to compromise the expression&mdash;a blackguard,
+I never saw exceeded in the human subject. A flaring candle
+in a paper shade, stuck in among his periwinkles, showed him,
+with his ragged harness broken and his cart extensively
+shattered, twitching his mouth and shaking his hanging head, a
+picture of disgrace and obduracy. I have seen boys being
+taken to station-houses, who were as like him as his own
+brother.</p>
+<p>The dogs of shy neighbourhoods, I observe to avoid play, and
+to be conscious of poverty. They avoid work, too, if they
+can, of course; that is in the nature of all animals. I
+have the pleasure to know a dog in a back street in the
+neighbourhood of Walworth, who has greatly distinguished himself
+in the minor drama, and who takes his portrait with him when he
+makes an engagement, for the illustration of the play-bill.
+His portrait (which is not at all like him) represents him in the
+act of dragging to the earth a recreant Indian, who is supposed
+to have tomahawked, or essayed to tomahawk, a British
+officer. The design is pure poetry, for there is no such
+Indian in the piece, and no such incident. He is a dog of
+the Newfoundland breed, for whose honesty I would be bail to any
+amount; but whose intellectual qualities in association with
+dramatic fiction, I cannot rate high. Indeed, he is too
+honest for the profession he has entered. Being at a town
+in Yorkshire last summer, and seeing him posted in the bill of
+the night, I attended the performance. His first scene was
+eminently successful; but, as it occupied a second in its
+representation (and five lines in the bill), it scarcely afforded
+ground for a cool and deliberate judgment of his powers. He
+had merely to bark, run on, and jump through an inn window, after
+a comic fugitive. The next scene of importance to the fable
+was a little marred in its interest by his over-anxiety;
+forasmuch as while his master (a belated soldier in a den of
+robbers on a tempestuous night) was feelingly lamenting the
+absence of his faithful dog, and laying great stress on the fact
+that he was thirty leagues away, the faithful dog was barking
+furiously in the prompter&rsquo;s box, and clearly choking
+himself against his collar. But it was in his greatest
+scene of all, that his honesty got the better of him. He
+had to enter a dense and trackless forest, on the trail of the
+murderer, and there to fly at the murderer when he found him
+resting at the foot of a tree, with his victim bound ready for
+slaughter. It was a hot night, and he came into the forest
+from an altogether unexpected direction, in the sweetest temper,
+at a very deliberate trot, not in the least excited; trotted to
+the foot-lights with his tongue out; and there sat down, panting,
+and amiably surveying the audience, with his tail beating on the
+boards, like a Dutch clock. Meanwhile the murderer,
+impatient to receive his doom, was audibly calling to him
+&lsquo;<span class="smcap">Co-o-ome</span> here!&rsquo; while the
+victim, struggling with his bonds, assailed him with the most
+injurious expressions. It happened through these means,
+that when he was in course of time persuaded to trot up and rend
+the murderer limb from limb, he made it (for dramatic purposes) a
+little too obvious that he worked out that awful retribution by
+licking butter off his blood-stained hands.</p>
+<p>In a shy street, behind Long-acre, two honest dogs live, who
+perform in Punch&rsquo;s shows. I may venture to say that I
+am on terms of intimacy with both, and that I never saw either
+guilty of the falsehood of failing to look down at the man inside
+the show, during the whole performance. The difficulty
+other dogs have in satisfying their minds about these dogs,
+appears to be never overcome by time. The same dogs must
+encounter them over and over again, as they trudge along in their
+off-minutes behind the legs of the show and beside the drum; but
+all dogs seem to suspect their frills and jackets, and to sniff
+at them as if they thought those articles of personal adornment,
+an eruption&mdash;a something in the nature of mange,
+perhaps. From this Covent-garden window of mine I noticed a
+country dog, only the other day, who had come up to Covent-garden
+Market under a cart, and had broken his cord, an end of which he
+still trailed along with him. He loitered about the corners
+of the four streets commanded by my window; and bad London dogs
+came up, and told him lies that he didn&rsquo;t believe; and
+worse London dogs came up, and made proposals to him to go and
+steal in the market, which his principles rejected; and the ways
+of the town confused him, and he crept aside and lay down in a
+doorway. He had scarcely got a wink of sleep, when up comes
+Punch with Toby. He was darting to Toby for consolation and
+advice, when he saw the frill, and stopped, in the middle of the
+street, appalled. The show was pitched, Toby retired behind
+the drapery, the audience formed, the drum and pipes struck
+up. My country dog remained immovable, intently staring at
+these strange appearances, until Toby opened the drama by
+appearing on his ledge, and to him entered Punch, who put a
+tobacco-pipe into Toby&rsquo;s mouth. At this spectacle,
+the country dog threw up his head, gave one terrible howl, and
+fled due west.</p>
+<p>We talk of men keeping dogs, but we might often talk more
+expressively of dogs keeping men. I know a bull-dog in a
+shy corner of Hammersmith who keeps a man. He keeps him up
+a yard, and makes him go to public-houses and lay wagers on him,
+and obliges him to lean against posts and look at him, and forces
+him to neglect work for him, and keeps him under rigid
+coercion. I once knew a fancy terrier who kept a
+gentleman&mdash;a gentleman who had been brought up at Oxford,
+too. The dog kept the gentleman entirely for his
+glorification, and the gentleman never talked about anything but
+the terrier. This, however, was not in a shy neighbourhood,
+and is a digression consequently.</p>
+<p>There are a great many dogs in shy neighbourhoods, who keep
+boys. I have my eye on a mongrel in Somerstown who keeps
+three boys. He feigns that he can bring down sparrows, and
+unburrow rats (he can do neither), and he takes the boys out on
+sporting pretences into all sorts of suburban fields. He
+has likewise made them believe that he possesses some mysterious
+knowledge of the art of fishing, and they consider themselves
+incompletely equipped for the Hampstead ponds, with a pickle-jar
+and wide-mouthed bottle, unless he is with them and barking
+tremendously. There is a dog residing in the Borough of
+Southwark who keeps a blind man. He may be seen, most days,
+in Oxford-street, haling the blind man away on expeditions wholly
+uncontemplated by, and unintelligible to, the man: wholly of the
+dog&rsquo;s conception and execution. Contrariwise, when
+the man has projects, the dog will sit down in a crowded
+thoroughfare and meditate. I saw him yesterday, wearing the
+money-tray like an easy collar, instead of offering it to the
+public, taking the man against his will, on the invitation of a
+disreputable cur, apparently to visit a dog at Harrow&mdash;he
+was so intent on that direction. The north wall of
+Burlington House Gardens, between the Arcade and the Albany,
+offers a shy spot for appointments among blind men at about two
+or three o&rsquo;clock in the afternoon. They sit (very
+uncomfortably) on a sloping stone there, and compare notes.
+Their dogs may always be observed at the same time, openly
+disparaging the men they keep, to one another, and settling where
+they shall respectively take their men when they begin to move
+again. At a small butcher&rsquo;s, in a shy neighbourhood
+(there is no reason for suppressing the name; it is by
+Notting-hill, and gives upon the district called the Potteries),
+I know a shaggy black and white dog who keeps a drover. He
+is a dog of an easy disposition, and too frequently allows this
+drover to get drunk. On these occasions, it is the
+dog&rsquo;s custom to sit outside the public-house, keeping his
+eye on a few sheep, and thinking. I have seen him with six
+sheep, plainly casting up in his mind how many he began with when
+he left the market, and at what places he has left the
+rest. I have seen him perplexed by not being able to
+account to himself for certain particular sheep. A light
+has gradually broken on him, he has remembered at what
+butcher&rsquo;s he left them, and in a burst of grave
+satisfaction has caught a fly off his nose, and shown himself
+much relieved. If I could at any time have doubted the fact
+that it was he who kept the drover, and not the drover who kept
+him, it would have been abundantly proved by his way of taking
+undivided charge of the six sheep, when the drover came out
+besmeared with red ochre and beer, and gave him wrong directions,
+which he calmly disregarded. He has taken the sheep
+entirely into his own hands, has merely remarked with respectful
+firmness, &lsquo;That instruction would place them under an
+omnibus; you had better confine your attention to
+yourself&mdash;you will want it all;&rsquo; and has driven his
+charge away, with an intelligence of ears and tail, and a
+knowledge of business, that has left his lout of a man very, very
+far behind.</p>
+<p>As the dogs of shy neighbourhoods usually betray a slinking
+consciousness of being in poor circumstances&mdash;for the most
+part manifested in an aspect of anxiety, an awkwardness in their
+play, and a misgiving that somebody is going to harness them to
+something, to pick up a living&mdash;so the cats of shy
+neighbourhoods exhibit a strong tendency to relapse into
+barbarism. Not only are they made selfishly ferocious by
+ruminating on the surplus population around them, and on the
+densely crowded state of all the avenues to cat&rsquo;s meat; not
+only is there a moral and politico-economical haggardness in
+them, traceable to these reflections; but they evince a physical
+deterioration. Their linen is not clean, and is wretchedly
+got up; their black turns rusty, like old mourning; they wear
+very indifferent fur; and take to the shabbiest cotton velvet,
+instead of silk velvet. I am on terms of recognition with
+several small streets of cats, about the Obelisk in Saint
+George&rsquo;s Fields, and also in the vicinity of
+Clerkenwell-green, and also in the back settlements of
+Drury-lane. In appearance, they are very like the women
+among whom they live. They seem to turn out of their
+unwholesome beds into the street, without any preparation.
+They leave their young families to stagger about the gutters,
+unassisted, while they frouzily quarrel and swear and scratch and
+spit, at street corners. In particular, I remark that when
+they are about to increase their families (an event of frequent
+recurrence) the resemblance is strongly expressed in a certain
+dusty dowdiness, down-at-heel self-neglect, and general giving up
+of things. I cannot honestly report that I have ever seen a
+feline matron of this class washing her face when in an
+interesting condition.</p>
+<p>Not to prolong these notes of uncommercial travel among the
+lower animals of shy neighbourhoods, by dwelling at length upon
+the exasperated moodiness of the tom-cats, and their resemblance
+in many respects to a man and a brother, I will come to a close
+with a word on the fowls of the same localities.</p>
+<p>That anything born of an egg and invested with wings, should
+have got to the pass that it hops contentedly down a ladder into
+a cellar, and calls <i>that</i> going home, is a circumstance so
+amazing as to leave one nothing more in this connexion to wonder
+at. Otherwise I might wonder at the completeness with which
+these fowls have become separated from all the birds of the
+air&mdash;have taken to grovelling in bricks and mortar and
+mud&mdash;have forgotten all about live trees, and make
+roosting-places of shop-boards, barrows, oyster-tubs, bulk-heads,
+and door-scrapers. I wonder at nothing concerning them, and
+take them as they are. I accept as products of Nature and
+things of course, a reduced Bantam family of my acquaintance in
+the Hackney-road, who are incessantly at the
+pawnbroker&rsquo;s. I cannot say that they enjoy
+themselves, for they are of a melancholy temperament; but what
+enjoyment they are capable of, they derive from crowding together
+in the pawnbroker&rsquo;s side-entry. Here, they are always
+to be found in a feeble flutter, as if they were newly come down
+in the world, and were afraid of being identified. I know a
+low fellow, originally of a good family from Dorking, who takes
+his whole establishment of wives, in single file, in at the door
+of the jug Department of a disorderly tavern near the Haymarket,
+man&oelig;uvres them among the company&rsquo;s legs, emerges with
+them at the Bottle Entrance, and so passes his life: seldom, in
+the season, going to bed before two in the morning. Over
+Waterloo-bridge, there is a shabby old speckled couple (they
+belong to the wooden French-bedstead, washing-stand, and
+towel-horse-making trade), who are always trying to get in at the
+door of a chapel. Whether the old lady, under a delusion
+reminding one of Mrs. Southcott, has an idea of entrusting an egg
+to that particular denomination, or merely understands that she
+has no business in the building and is consequently frantic to
+enter it, I cannot determine; but she is constantly endeavouring
+to undermine the principal door: while her partner, who is infirm
+upon his legs, walks up and down, encouraging her and defying the
+Universe. But, the family I have been best acquainted with,
+since the removal from this trying sphere of a Chinese circle at
+Brentford, reside in the densest part of Bethnal-green.
+Their abstraction from the objects among which they live, or
+rather their conviction that those objects have all come into
+existence in express subservience to fowls, has so enchanted me,
+that I have made them the subject of many journeys at divers
+hours. After careful observation of the two lords and the
+ten ladies of whom this family consists, I have come to the
+conclusion that their opinions are represented by the leading
+lord and leading lady: the latter, as I judge, an aged personage,
+afflicted with a paucity of feather and visibility of quill, that
+gives her the appearance of a bundle of office pens. When a
+railway goods van that would crush an elephant comes round the
+corner, tearing over these fowls, they emerge unharmed from under
+the horses, perfectly satisfied that the whole rush was a passing
+property in the air, which may have left something to eat behind
+it. They look upon old shoes, wrecks of kettles and
+saucepans, and fragments of bonnets, as a kind of meteoric
+discharge, for fowls to peck at. Peg-tops and hoops they
+account, I think, as a sort of hail; shuttlecocks, as rain, or
+dew. Gaslight comes quite as natural to them as any other
+light; and I have more than a suspicion that, in the minds of the
+two lords, the early public-house at the corner has superseded
+the sun. I have established it as a certain fact, that they
+always begin to crow when the public-house shutters begin to be
+taken down, and that they salute the potboy, the instant he
+appears to perform that duty, as if he were Phoebus in
+person.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap11"></a>XI<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">TRAMPS</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> chance use of the word
+&lsquo;Tramp&rsquo; in my last paper, brought that numerous
+fraternity so vividly before my mind&rsquo;s eye, that I had no
+sooner laid down my pen than a compulsion was upon me to take it
+up again, and make notes of the Tramps whom I perceived on all
+the summer roads in all directions.</p>
+<p>Whenever a tramp sits down to rest by the wayside, he sits
+with his legs in a dry ditch; and whenever he goes to sleep
+(which is very often indeed), he goes to sleep on his back.
+Yonder, by the high road, glaring white in the bright sunshine,
+lies, on the dusty bit of turf under the bramble-bush that fences
+the coppice from the highway, the tramp of the order savage, fast
+asleep. He lies on the broad of his back, with his face
+turned up to the sky, and one of his ragged arms loosely thrown
+across his face. His bundle (what can be the contents of
+that mysterious bundle, to make it worth his while to carry it
+about?) is thrown down beside him, and the waking woman with him
+sits with her legs in the ditch, and her back to the road.
+She wears her bonnet rakishly perched on the front of her head,
+to shade her face from the sun in walking, and she ties her
+skirts round her in conventionally tight tramp-fashion with a
+sort of apron. You can seldom catch sight of her, resting
+thus, without seeing her in a despondently defiant manner doing
+something to her hair or her bonnet, and glancing at you between
+her fingers. She does not often go to sleep herself in the
+daytime, but will sit for any length of time beside the
+man. And his slumberous propensities would not seem to be
+referable to the fatigue of carrying the bundle, for she carries
+it much oftener and further than he. When they are afoot,
+you will mostly find him slouching on ahead, in a gruff temper,
+while she lags heavily behind with the burden. He is given
+to personally correcting her, too&mdash;which phase of his
+character develops itself oftenest, on benches outside alehouse
+doors&mdash;and she appears to become strongly attached to him
+for these reasons; it may usually be noticed that when the poor
+creature has a bruised face, she is the most affectionate.
+He has no occupation whatever, this order of tramp, and has no
+object whatever in going anywhere. He will sometimes call
+himself a brickmaker, or a sawyer, but only when he takes an
+imaginary flight. He generally represents himself, in a
+vague way, as looking out for a job of work; but he never did
+work, he never does, and he never will. It is a favourite
+fiction with him, however (as if he were the most industrious
+character on earth), that <i>you</i> never work; and as he goes
+past your garden and sees you looking at your flowers, you will
+overhear him growl with a strong sense of contrast,
+&lsquo;<i>You</i> are a lucky hidle devil, <i>you</i>
+are!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The slinking tramp is of the same hopeless order, and has the
+same injured conviction on him that you were born to whatever you
+possess, and never did anything to get it: but he is of a less
+audacious disposition. He will stop before your gate, and
+say to his female companion with an air of constitutional
+humility and propitiation&mdash;to edify any one who may be
+within hearing behind a blind or a bush&mdash;&lsquo;This is a
+sweet spot, ain&rsquo;t it? A lovelly spot! And I
+wonder if they&rsquo;d give two poor footsore travellers like me
+and you, a drop of fresh water out of such a pretty gen-teel
+crib? We&rsquo;d take it wery koind on &rsquo;em,
+wouldn&rsquo;t us? Wery koind, upon my word, us
+would?&rsquo; He has a quick sense of a dog in the
+vicinity, and will extend his modestly-injured propitiation to
+the dog chained up in your yard; remarking, as he slinks at the
+yard gate, &lsquo;Ah! You are a foine breed o&rsquo; dog,
+too, and <i>you</i> ain&rsquo;t kep for nothink! I&rsquo;d
+take it wery koind o&rsquo; your master if he&rsquo;d elp a
+traveller and his woife as envies no gentlefolk their good
+fortun, wi&rsquo; a bit o&rsquo; your broken wittles.
+He&rsquo;d never know the want of it, nor more would you.
+Don&rsquo;t bark like that, at poor persons as never done you no
+arm; the poor is down-trodden and broke enough without that; O
+<span class="GutSmall">DON&rsquo;T</span>!&rsquo; He
+generally heaves a prodigious sigh in moving away, and always
+looks up the lane and down the lane, and up the road and down the
+road, before going on.</p>
+<p>Both of these orders of tramp are of a very robust habit; let
+the hard-working labourer at whose cottage-door they prowl and
+beg, have the ague never so badly, these tramps are sure to be in
+good health.</p>
+<p>There is another kind of tramp, whom you encounter this bright
+summer day&mdash;say, on a road with the sea-breeze making its
+dust lively, and sails of ships in the blue distance beyond the
+slope of Down. As you walk enjoyingly on, you descry in the
+perspective at the bottom of a steep hill up which your way lies,
+a figure that appears to be sitting airily on a gate, whistling
+in a cheerful and disengaged manner. As you approach nearer
+to it, you observe the figure to slide down from the gate, to
+desist from whistling, to uncock its hat, to become tender of
+foot, to depress its head and elevate its shoulders, and to
+present all the characteristics of profound despondency.
+Arriving at the bottom of the hill and coming close to the
+figure, you observe it to be the figure of a shabby young
+man. He is moving painfully forward, in the direction in
+which you are going, and his mind is so preoccupied with his
+misfortunes that he is not aware of your approach until you are
+close upon him at the hill-foot. When he is aware of you,
+you discover him to be a remarkably well-behaved young man, and a
+remarkably well-spoken young man. You know him to be
+well-behaved, by his respectful manner of touching his hat: you
+know him to be well-spoken, by his smooth manner of expressing
+himself. He says in a flowing confidential voice, and
+without punctuation, &lsquo;I ask your pardon sir but if you
+would excuse the liberty of being so addressed upon the public
+Iway by one who is almost reduced to rags though it as not always
+been so and by no fault of his own but through ill elth in his
+family and many unmerited sufferings it would be a great
+obligation sir to know the time.&rsquo; You give the
+well-spoken young man the time. The well-spoken young man,
+keeping well up with you, resumes: &lsquo;I am aware sir that it
+is a liberty to intrude a further question on a gentleman walking
+for his entertainment but might I make so bold as ask the favour
+of the way to Dover sir and about the distance?&rsquo; You
+inform the well-spoken young man that the way to Dover is
+straight on, and the distance some eighteen miles. The
+well-spoken young man becomes greatly agitated. &lsquo;In
+the condition to which I am reduced,&rsquo; says he, &lsquo;I
+could not ope to reach Dover before dark even if my shoes were in
+a state to take me there or my feet were in a state to old out
+over the flinty road and were not on the bare ground of which any
+gentleman has the means to satisfy himself by looking Sir may I
+take the liberty of speaking to you?&rsquo; As the
+well-spoken young man keeps so well up with you that you
+can&rsquo;t prevent his taking the liberty of speaking to you, he
+goes on, with fluency: &lsquo;Sir it is not begging that is my
+intention for I was brought up by the best of mothers and begging
+is not my trade I should not know sir how to follow it as a trade
+if such were my shameful wishes for the best of mothers long
+taught otherwise and in the best of omes though now reduced to
+take the present liberty on the Iway Sir my business was the
+law-stationering and I was favourably known to the
+Solicitor-General the Attorney-General the majority of the judges
+and the ole of the legal profession but through ill elth in my
+family and the treachery of a friend for whom I became security
+and he no other than my own wife&rsquo;s brother the brother of
+my own wife I was cast forth with my tender partner and three
+young children not to beg for I will sooner die of deprivation
+but to make my way to the sea-port town of Dover where I have a
+relative i in respect not only that will assist me but that would
+trust me with untold gold Sir in appier times and hare this
+calamity fell upon me I made for my amusement when I little
+thought that I should ever need it excepting for my air
+this&rsquo;&mdash;here the well-spoken young man put his hand
+into his breast&mdash;&lsquo;this comb! Sir I implore you
+in the name of charity to purchase a tortoiseshell comb which is
+a genuine article at any price that your humanity may put upon it
+and may the blessings of a ouseless family awaiting with beating
+arts the return of a husband and a father from Dover upon the
+cold stone seats of London-bridge ever attend you Sir may I take
+the liberty of speaking to you I implore you to buy this
+comb!&rsquo; By this time, being a reasonably good walker,
+you will have been too much for the well-spoken young man, who
+will stop short and express his disgust and his want of breath,
+in a long expectoration, as you leave him behind.</p>
+<p>Towards the end of the same walk, on the same bright summer
+day, at the corner of the next little town or village, you may
+find another kind of tramp, embodied in the persons of a most
+exemplary couple whose only improvidence appears to have been,
+that they spent the last of their little All on soap. They
+are a man and woman, spotless to behold&mdash;John Anderson, with
+the frost on his short smock-frock instead of his
+&lsquo;pow,&rsquo; attended by Mrs. Anderson. John is
+over-ostentatious of the frost upon his raiment, and wears a
+curious and, you would say, an almost unnecessary demonstration
+of girdle of white linen wound about his waist&mdash;a girdle,
+snowy as Mrs. Anderson&rsquo;s apron. This cleanliness was
+the expiring effort of the respectable couple, and nothing then
+remained to Mr. Anderson but to get chalked upon his spade in
+snow-white copy-book characters, <span
+class="GutSmall">HUNGRY</span>! and to sit down here. Yes;
+one thing more remained to Mr. Anderson&mdash;his character;
+Monarchs could not deprive him of his hard-earned
+character. Accordingly, as you come up with this spectacle
+of virtue in distress, Mrs. Anderson rises, and with a decent
+curtsey presents for your consideration a certificate from a
+Doctor of Divinity, the reverend the Vicar of Upper Dodgington,
+who informs his Christian friends and all whom it may concern
+that the bearers, John Anderson and lawful wife, are persons to
+whom you cannot be too liberal. This benevolent pastor
+omitted no work of his hands to fit the good couple out, for with
+half an eye you can recognise his autograph on the spade.</p>
+<p>Another class of tramp is a man, the most valuable part of
+whose stock-in-trade is a highly perplexed demeanour. He is
+got up like a countryman, and you will often come upon the poor
+fellow, while he is endeavouring to decipher the inscription on a
+milestone&mdash;quite a fruitless endeavour, for he cannot
+read. He asks your pardon, he truly does (he is very slow
+of speech, this tramp, and he looks in a bewildered way all round
+the prospect while he talks to you), but all of us shold do as we
+wold be done by, and he&rsquo;ll take it kind, if you&rsquo;ll
+put a power man in the right road fur to jine his eldest son as
+has broke his leg bad in the masoning, and is in this heere
+Orspit&rsquo;l as is wrote down by Squire Pouncerby&rsquo;s own
+hand as wold not tell a lie fur no man. He then produces
+from under his dark frock (being always very slow and perplexed)
+a neat but worn old leathern purse, from which he takes a scrap
+of paper. On this scrap of paper is written, by Squire
+Pouncerby, of The Grove, &lsquo;Please to direct the Bearer, a
+poor but very worthy man, to the Sussex County Hospital, near
+Brighton&rsquo;&mdash;a matter of some difficulty at the moment,
+seeing that the request comes suddenly upon you in the depths of
+Hertfordshire. The more you endeavour to indicate where
+Brighton is&mdash;when you have with the greatest difficulty
+remembered&mdash;the less the devoted father can be made to
+comprehend, and the more obtusely he stares at the prospect;
+whereby, being reduced to extremity, you recommend the faithful
+parent to begin by going to St. Albans, and present him with
+half-a-crown. It does him good, no doubt, but scarcely
+helps him forward, since you find him lying drunk that same
+evening in the wheelwright&rsquo;s sawpit under the shed where
+the felled trees are, opposite the sign of the Three Jolly
+Hedgers.</p>
+<p>But, the most vicious, by far, of all the idle tramps, is the
+tramp who pretends to have been a gentleman.
+&lsquo;Educated,&rsquo; he writes, from the village beer-shop in
+pale ink of a ferruginous complexion; &lsquo;educated at Trin.
+Coll. Cam.&mdash;nursed in the lap of affluence&mdash;once in my
+small way the pattron of the Muses,&rsquo; &amp;c. &amp;c.
+&amp;c.&mdash;surely a sympathetic mind will not withhold a
+trifle, to help him on to the market-town where he thinks of
+giving a Lecture to the <i>fruges consumere nati</i>, on things
+in general? This shameful creature lolling about hedge
+tap-rooms in his ragged clothes, now so far from being black that
+they look as if they never can have been black, is more selfish
+and insolent than even the savage tramp. He would sponge on
+the poorest boy for a farthing, and spurn him when he had got it;
+he would interpose (if he could get anything by it) between the
+baby and the mother&rsquo;s breast. So much lower than the
+company he keeps, for his maudlin assumption of being higher,
+this pitiless rascal blights the summer road as he maunders on
+between the luxuriant hedges; where (to my thinking) even the
+wild convolvulus and rose and sweet-briar, are the worse for his
+going by, and need time to recover from the taint of him in the
+air.</p>
+<p>The young fellows who trudge along barefoot, five or six
+together, their boots slung over their shoulders, their shabby
+bundles under their arms, their sticks newly cut from some
+roadside wood, are not eminently prepossessing, but are much less
+objectionable. There is a tramp-fellowship among
+them. They pick one another up at resting stations, and go
+on in companies. They always go at a fast
+swing&mdash;though they generally limp too&mdash;and there is
+invariably one of the company who has much ado to keep up with
+the rest. They generally talk about horses, and any other
+means of locomotion than walking: or, one of the company relates
+some recent experiences of the road&mdash;which are always
+disputes and difficulties. As for example. &lsquo;So
+as I&rsquo;m a standing at the pump in the market, blest if there
+don&rsquo;t come up a Beadle, and he ses, &ldquo;Mustn&rsquo;t
+stand here,&rdquo; he ses. &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; I
+ses. &ldquo;No beggars allowed in this town,&rdquo; he
+ses. &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s a beggar?&rdquo; I ses.
+&ldquo;You are,&rdquo; he ses. &ldquo;Who ever see
+<i>me</i> beg? Did <i>you</i>?&rdquo; I ses.
+&ldquo;Then you&rsquo;re a tramp,&rdquo; he ses.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather be that than a Beadle,&rdquo; I
+ses.&rsquo; (The company express great approval.)
+&lsquo;&ldquo;Would you?&rdquo; he ses to me. &ldquo;Yes, I
+would,&rdquo; I ses to him. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he ses,
+&ldquo;anyhow, get out of this town.&rdquo; &ldquo;Why,
+blow your little town!&rdquo; I ses, &ldquo;who wants to be in
+it? Wot does your dirty little town mean by comin&rsquo;
+and stickin&rsquo; itself in the road to anywhere? Why
+don&rsquo;t you get a shovel and a barrer, and clear your town
+out o&rsquo; people&rsquo;s way?&rdquo;&rsquo; (The company
+expressing the highest approval and laughing aloud, they all go
+down the hill.)</p>
+<p>Then, there are the tramp handicraft men. Are they not
+all over England, in this Midsummer time? Where does the
+lark sing, the corn grow, the mill turn, the river run, and they
+are not among the lights and shadows, tinkering, chair-mending,
+umbrella-mending, clock-mending, knife-grinding? Surely, a
+pleasant thing, if we were in that condition of life, to grind
+our way through Kent, Sussex, and Surrey. For the worst six
+weeks or so, we should see the sparks we ground off, fiery bright
+against a background of green wheat and green leaves. A
+little later, and the ripe harvest would pale our sparks from red
+to yellow, until we got the dark newly-turned land for a
+background again, and they were red once more. By that
+time, we should have ground our way to the sea cliffs, and the
+whirr of our wheel would be lost in the breaking of the
+waves. Our next variety in sparks would be derived from
+contrast with the gorgeous medley of colours in the autumn woods,
+and, by the time we had ground our way round to the heathy lands
+between Reigate and Croydon, doing a prosperous stroke of
+business all along, we should show like a little firework in the
+light frosty air, and be the next best thing to the
+blacksmith&rsquo;s forge. Very agreeable, too, to go on a
+chair-mending tour. What judges we should be of rushes, and
+how knowingly (with a sheaf and a bottomless chair at our back)
+we should lounge on bridges, looking over at osier-beds!
+Among all the innumerable occupations that cannot possibly be
+transacted without the assistance of lookers-on, chair-mending
+may take a station in the first rank. When we sat down with
+our backs against the barn or the public-house, and began to
+mend, what a sense of popularity would grow upon us! When
+all the children came to look at us, and the tailor, and the
+general dealer, and the farmer who had been giving a small order
+at the little saddler&rsquo;s, and the groom from the great
+house, and the publican, and even the two skittle-players (and
+here note that, howsoever busy all the rest of village human-kind
+may be, there will always be two people with leisure to play at
+skittles, wherever village skittles are), what encouragement
+would be on us to plait and weave! No one looks at us while
+we plait and weave these words. Clock-mending again.
+Except for the slight inconvenience of carrying a clock under our
+arm, and the monotony of making the bell go, whenever we came to
+a human habitation, what a pleasant privilege to give a voice to
+the dumb cottage-clock, and set it talking to the cottage family
+again! Likewise we foresee great interest in going round by
+the park plantations, under the overhanging boughs (hares,
+rabbits, partridges, and pheasants, scudding like mad across and
+across the chequered ground before us), and so over the park
+ladder, and through the wood, until we came to the Keeper&rsquo;s
+lodge. Then, would the Keeper be discoverable at his door,
+in a deep nest of leaves, smoking his pipe. Then, on our
+accosting him in the way of our trade, would he call to Mrs.
+Keeper, respecting &lsquo;t&rsquo;ould clock&rsquo; in the
+kitchen. Then, would Mrs. Keeper ask us into the lodge, and
+on due examination we should offer to make a good job of it for
+eighteenpence; which offer, being accepted, would set us tinkling
+and clinking among the chubby, awe-struck little Keepers for an
+hour and more. So completely to the family&rsquo;s
+satisfaction would we achieve our work, that the Keeper would
+mention how that there was something wrong with the bell of the
+turret stable-clock up at the Hall, and that if we thought good
+of going up to the housekeeper on the chance of that job too, why
+he would take us. Then, should we go, among the branching
+oaks and the deep fern, by silent ways of mystery known to the
+Keeper, seeing the herd glancing here and there as we went along,
+until we came to the old Hall, solemn and grand. Under the
+Terrace Flower Garden, and round by the stables, would the Keeper
+take us in, and as we passed we should observe how spacious and
+stately the stables, and how fine the painting of the
+horses&rsquo; names over their stalls, and how solitary all: the
+family being in London. Then, should we find ourselves
+presented to the housekeeper, sitting, in hushed state, at
+needlework, in a bay-window looking out upon a mighty grim
+red-brick quadrangle, guarded by stone lions disrespectfully
+throwing somersaults over the escutcheons of the noble
+family. Then, our services accepted and we insinuated with
+a candle into the stable-turret, we should find it to be a mere
+question of pendulum, but one that would hold us until
+dark. Then, should we fall to work, with a general
+impression of Ghosts being about, and of pictures indoors that of
+a certainty came out of their frames and &lsquo;walked,&rsquo; if
+the family would only own it. Then, should we work and
+work, until the day gradually turned to dusk, and even until the
+dusk gradually turned to dark. Our task at length
+accomplished, we should be taken into an enormous servants&rsquo;
+hall, and there regaled with beef and bread, and powerful
+ale. Then, paid freely, we should be at liberty to go, and
+should be told by a pointing helper to keep round over yinder by
+the blasted ash, and so straight through the woods, till we
+should see the town-lights right afore us. Then, feeling
+lonesome, should we desire upon the whole, that the ash had not
+been blasted, or that the helper had had the manners not to
+mention it. However, we should keep on, all right, till
+suddenly the stable bell would strike ten in the dolefullest way,
+quite chilling our blood, though we had so lately taught him how
+to acquit himself. Then, as we went on, should we recall
+old stories, and dimly consider what it would be most advisable
+to do, in the event of a tall figure, all in white, with saucer
+eyes, coming up and saying, &lsquo;I want you to come to a
+churchyard and mend a church clock. Follow me!&rsquo;
+Then, should we make a burst to get clear of the trees, and
+should soon find ourselves in the open, with the town-lights
+bright ahead of us. So should we lie that night at the
+ancient sign of the Crispin and Crispanus, and rise early next
+morning to be betimes on tramp again.</p>
+<p>Bricklayers often tramp, in twos and threes, lying by night at
+their &lsquo;lodges,&rsquo; which are scattered all over the
+country. Bricklaying is another of the occupations that can
+by no means be transacted in rural parts, without the assistance
+of spectators&mdash;of as many as can be convened. In
+thinly-peopled spots, I have known brick-layers on tramp, coming
+up with bricklayers at work, to be so sensible of the
+indispensability of lookers-on, that they themselves have sat up
+in that capacity, and have been unable to subside into the
+acceptance of a proffered share in the job, for two or three days
+together. Sometimes, the &lsquo;navvy,&rsquo; on tramp,
+with an extra pair of half-boots over his shoulder, a bag, a
+bottle, and a can, will take a similar part in a job of
+excavation, and will look at it without engaging in it, until all
+his money is gone. The current of my uncommercial pursuits
+caused me only last summer to want a little body of workmen for a
+certain spell of work in a pleasant part of the country; and I
+was at one time honoured with the attendance of as many as
+seven-and-twenty, who were looking at six.</p>
+<p>Who can be familiar with any rustic highway in summer-time,
+without storing up knowledge of the many tramps who go from one
+oasis of town or village to another, to sell a stock in trade,
+apparently not worth a shilling when sold? Shrimps are a
+favourite commodity for this kind of speculation, and so are
+cakes of a soft and spongy character, coupled with Spanish nuts
+and brandy balls. The stock is carried on the head in a
+basket, and, between the head and the basket, are the trestles on
+which the stock is displayed at trading times. Fleet of
+foot, but a careworn class of tramp this, mostly; with a certain
+stiffness of neck, occasioned by much anxious balancing of
+baskets; and also with a long, Chinese sort of eye, which an
+overweighted forehead would seem to have squeezed into that
+form.</p>
+<p>On the hot dusty roads near seaport towns and great rivers,
+behold the tramping Soldier. And if you should happen never
+to have asked yourself whether his uniform is suited to his work,
+perhaps the poor fellow&rsquo;s appearance as he comes
+distressfully towards you, with his absurdly tight jacket
+unbuttoned, his neck-gear in his hand, and his legs well chafed
+by his trousers of baize, may suggest the personal inquiry, how
+you think <i>you</i> would like it. Much better the
+tramping Sailor, although his cloth is somewhat too thick for
+land service. But, why the tramping merchant-mate should
+put on a black velvet waistcoat, for a chalky country in the
+dog-days, is one of the great secrets of nature that will never
+be discovered.</p>
+<p>I have my eye upon a piece of Kentish road, bordered on either
+side by a wood, and having on one hand, between the road-dust and
+the trees, a skirting patch of grass. Wild flowers grow in
+abundance on this spot, and it lies high and airy, with a distant
+river stealing steadily away to the ocean, like a man&rsquo;s
+life. To gain the milestone here, which the moss,
+primroses, violets, blue-bells, and wild roses, would soon render
+illegible but for peering travellers pushing them aside with
+their sticks, you must come up a steep hill, come which way you
+may. So, all the tramps with carts or caravans&mdash;the
+Gipsy-tramp, the Show-tramp, the Cheap Jack&mdash;find it
+impossible to resist the temptations of the place, and all turn
+the horse loose when they come to it, and boil the pot.
+Bless the place, I love the ashes of the vagabond fires that have
+scorched its grass! What tramp children do I see here,
+attired in a handful of rags, making a gymnasium of the shafts of
+the cart, making a feather-bed of the flints and brambles, making
+a toy of the hobbled old horse who is not much more like a horse
+than any cheap toy would be! Here, do I encounter the cart
+of mats and brooms and baskets&mdash;with all thoughts of
+business given to the evening wind&mdash;with the stew made and
+being served out&mdash;with Cheap Jack and Dear Jill striking
+soft music out of the plates that are rattled like warlike
+cymbals when put up for auction at fairs and markets&mdash;their
+minds so influenced (no doubt) by the melody of the nightingales
+as they begin to sing in the woods behind them, that if I were to
+propose to deal, they would sell me anything at cost price.
+On this hallowed ground has it been my happy privilege (let me
+whisper it), to behold the White-haired Lady with the pink eyes,
+eating meat-pie with the Giant: while, by the hedge-side, on the
+box of blankets which I knew contained the snakes, were set forth
+the cups and saucers and the teapot. It was on an evening
+in August, that I chanced upon this ravishing spectacle, and I
+noticed that, whereas the Giant reclined half concealed beneath
+the overhanging boughs and seemed indifferent to Nature, the
+white hair of the gracious Lady streamed free in the breath of
+evening, and her pink eyes found pleasure in the landscape.
+I heard only a single sentence of her uttering, yet it bespoke a
+talent for modest repartee. The ill-mannered
+Giant&mdash;accursed be his evil race!&mdash;had interrupted the
+Lady in some remark, and, as I passed that enchanted corner of
+the wood, she gently reproved him, with the words, &lsquo;Now,
+Cobby;&rsquo;&mdash;Cobby! so short a
+name!&mdash;&lsquo;ain&rsquo;t one fool enough to talk at a
+time?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Within appropriate distance of this magic ground, though not
+so near it as that the song trolled from tap or bench at door,
+can invade its woodland silence, is a little hostelry which no
+man possessed of a penny was ever known to pass in warm
+weather. Before its entrance, are certain pleasant, trimmed
+limes; likewise, a cool well, with so musical a bucket-handle
+that its fall upon the bucket rim will make a horse prick up his
+ears and neigh, upon the droughty road half a mile off.
+This is a house of great resort for haymaking tramps and harvest
+tramps, insomuch that as they sit within, drinking their mugs of
+beer, their relinquished scythes and reaping-hooks glare out of
+the open windows, as if the whole establishment were a family
+war-coach of Ancient Britons. Later in the season, the
+whole country-side, for miles and miles, will swarm with hopping
+tramps. They come in families, men, women, and children,
+every family provided with a bundle of bedding, an iron pot, a
+number of babies, and too often with some poor sick creature
+quite unfit for the rough life, for whom they suppose the smell
+of the fresh hop to be a sovereign remedy. Many of these
+hoppers are Irish, but many come from London. They crowd
+all the roads, and camp under all the hedges and on all the
+scraps of common-land, and live among and upon the hops until
+they are all picked, and the hop-gardens, so beautiful through
+the summer, look as if they had been laid waste by an invading
+army. Then, there is a vast exodus of tramps out of the
+country; and if you ride or drive round any turn of any road, at
+more than a foot pace, you will be bewildered to find that you
+have charged into the bosom of fifty families, and that there are
+splashing up all around you, in the utmost prodigality of
+confusion, bundles of bedding, babies, iron pots, and a
+good-humoured multitude of both sexes and all ages, equally
+divided between perspiration and intoxication.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap12"></a>XII<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">DULLBOROUGH TOWN</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> lately happened that I found
+myself rambling about the scenes among which my earliest days
+were passed; scenes from which I departed when I was a child, and
+which I did not revisit until I was a man. This is no
+uncommon chance, but one that befalls some of us any day; perhaps
+it may not be quite uninteresting to compare notes with the
+reader respecting an experience so familiar and a journey so
+uncommercial.</p>
+<p>I call my boyhood&rsquo;s home (and I feel like a Tenor in an
+English Opera when I mention it) Dullborough. Most of us
+come from Dullborough who come from a country town.</p>
+<p>As I left Dullborough in the days when there were no railroads
+in the land, I left it in a stage-coach. Through all the
+years that have since passed, have I ever lost the smell of the
+damp straw in which I was packed&mdash;like game&mdash;and
+forwarded, carriage paid, to the Cross Keys, Wood-street,
+Cheapside, London? There was no other inside passenger, and
+I consumed my sandwiches in solitude and dreariness, and it
+rained hard all the way, and I thought life sloppier than I had
+expected to find it.</p>
+<p>With this tender remembrance upon me, I was cavalierly shunted
+back into Dullborough the other day, by train. My ticket
+had been previously collected, like my taxes, and my shining new
+portmanteau had had a great plaster stuck upon it, and I had been
+defied by Act of Parliament to offer an objection to anything
+that was done to it, or me, under a penalty of not less than
+forty shillings or more than five pounds, compoundable for a term
+of imprisonment. When I had sent my disfigured property on
+to the hotel, I began to look about me; and the first discovery I
+made, was, that the Station had swallowed up the
+playing-field.</p>
+<p>It was gone. The two beautiful hawthorn-trees, the
+hedge, the turf, and all those buttercups and daisies, had given
+place to the stoniest of jolting roads: while, beyond the
+Station, an ugly dark monster of a tunnel kept its jaws open, as
+if it had swallowed them and were ravenous for more
+destruction. The coach that had carried me away, was
+melodiously called Timpson&rsquo;s Blue-Eyed Maid, and belonged
+to Timpson, at the coach-office up-street; the locomotive engine
+that had brought me back, was called severely No. 97, and
+belonged to S.E.R., and was spitting ashes and hot water over the
+blighted ground.</p>
+<p>When I had been let out at the platform-door, like a prisoner
+whom his turnkey grudgingly released, I looked in again over the
+low wall, at the scene of departed glories. Here, in the
+haymaking time, had I been delivered from the dungeons of
+Seringapatam, an immense pile (of haycock), by my own countrymen,
+the victorious British (boy next door and his two cousins), and
+had been recognised with ecstasy by my affianced one (Miss
+Green), who had come all the way from England (second house in
+the terrace) to ransom me, and marry me. Here, had I first
+heard in confidence, from one whose father was greatly connected,
+being under Government, of the existence of a terrible banditti,
+called &lsquo;The Radicals,&rsquo; whose principles were, that
+the Prince Regent wore stays, and that nobody had a right to any
+salary, and that the army and navy ought to be put
+down&mdash;horrors at which I trembled in my bed, after
+supplicating that the Radicals might be speedily taken and
+hanged. Here, too, had we, the small boys of Boles&rsquo;s,
+had that cricket match against the small boys of Coles&rsquo;s,
+when Boles and Coles had actually met upon the ground, and when,
+instead of instantly hitting out at one another with the utmost
+fury, as we had all hoped and expected, those sneaks had said
+respectively, &lsquo;I hope Mrs. Boles is well,&rsquo; and
+&lsquo;I hope Mrs. Coles and the baby are doing
+charmingly.&rsquo; Could it be that, after all this, and
+much more, the Playing-field was a Station, and No. 97
+expectorated boiling water and redhot cinders on it, and the
+whole belonged by Act of Parliament to S.E.R.?</p>
+<p>As it could be, and was, I left the place with a heavy heart
+for a walk all over the town. And first of Timpson&rsquo;s
+up-street. When I departed from Dullborough in the strawy
+arms of Timpson&rsquo;s Blue-Eyed Maid, Timpson&rsquo;s was a
+moderate-sized coach-office (in fact, a little coach-office),
+with an oval transparency in the window, which looked beautiful
+by night, representing one of Timpson&rsquo;s coaches in the act
+of passing a milestone on the London road with great velocity,
+completely full inside and out, and all the passengers dressed in
+the first style of fashion, and enjoying themselves
+tremendously. I found no such place as Timpson&rsquo;s
+now&mdash;no such bricks and rafters, not to mention the
+name&mdash;no such edifice on the teeming earth. Pickford
+had come and knocked Timpson&rsquo;s down. Pickford had not
+only knocked Timpson&rsquo;s down, but had knocked two or three
+houses down on each side of Timpson&rsquo;s, and then had knocked
+the whole into one great establishment with a pair of big gates,
+in and out of which, his (Pickford&rsquo;s) waggons are, in these
+days, always rattling, with their drivers sitting up so high,
+that they look in at the second-floor windows of the
+old-fashioned houses in the High-street as they shake the
+town. I have not the honour of Pickford&rsquo;s
+acquaintance, but I felt that he had done me an injury, not to
+say committed an act of boyslaughter, in running over my
+Childhood in this rough manner; and if ever I meet Pickford
+driving one of his own monsters, and smoking a pipe the while
+(which is the custom of his men), he shall know by the expression
+of my eye, if it catches his, that there is something wrong
+between us.</p>
+<p>Moreover, I felt that Pickford had no right to come rushing
+into Dullborough and deprive the town of a public picture.
+He is not Napoleon Bonaparte. When he took down the
+transparent stage-coach, he ought to have given the town a
+transparent van. With a gloomy conviction that Pickford is
+wholly utilitarian and unimaginative, I proceeded on my way.</p>
+<p>It is a mercy I have not a red and green lamp and a night-bell
+at my door, for in my very young days I was taken to so many
+lyings-in that I wonder I escaped becoming a professional martyr
+to them in after-life. I suppose I had a very sympathetic
+nurse, with a large circle of married acquaintance. However
+that was, as I continued my walk through Dullborough, I found
+many houses to be solely associated in my mind with this
+particular interest. At one little greengrocer&rsquo;s
+shop, down certain steps from the street, I remember to have
+waited on a lady who had had four children (I am afraid to write
+five, though I fully believe it was five) at a birth. This
+meritorious woman held quite a reception in her room on the
+morning when I was introduced there, and the sight of the house
+brought vividly to my mind how the four (five) deceased young
+people lay, side by side, on a clean cloth on a chest of drawers;
+reminding me by a homely association, which I suspect their
+complexion to have assisted, of pigs&rsquo; feet as they are
+usually displayed at a neat tripe-shop. Hot candle was
+handed round on the occasion, and I further remembered as I stood
+contemplating the greengrocer&rsquo;s, that a subscription was
+entered into among the company, which became extremely alarming
+to my consciousness of having pocket-money on my person.
+This fact being known to my conductress, whoever she was, I was
+earnestly exhorted to contribute, but resolutely declined:
+therein disgusting the company, who gave me to understand that I
+must dismiss all expectations of going to Heaven.</p>
+<p>How does it happen that when all else is change wherever one
+goes, there yet seem, in every place, to be some few people who
+never alter? As the sight of the greengrocer&rsquo;s house
+recalled these trivial incidents of long ago, the identical
+greengrocer appeared on the steps, with his hands in his pockets,
+and leaning his shoulder against the door-post, as my childish
+eyes had seen him many a time; indeed, there was his old mark on
+the door-post yet, as if his shadow had become a fixture
+there. It was he himself; he might formerly have been an
+old-looking young man, or he might now be a young-looking old
+man, but there he was. In walking along the street, I had
+as yet looked in vain for a familiar face, or even a transmitted
+face; here was the very greengrocer who had been weighing and
+handling baskets on the morning of the reception. As he
+brought with him a dawning remembrance that he had had no
+proprietary interest in those babies, I crossed the road, and
+accosted him on the subject. He was not in the least
+excited or gratified, or in any way roused, by the accuracy of my
+recollection, but said, Yes, summut out of the common&mdash;he
+didn&rsquo;t remember how many it was (as if half-a-dozen babes
+either way made no difference)&mdash;had happened to a Mrs.
+What&rsquo;s-her-name, as once lodged there&mdash;but he
+didn&rsquo;t call it to mind, particular. Nettled by this
+phlegmatic conduct, I informed him that I had left the town when
+I was a child. He slowly returned, quite unsoftened, and
+not without a sarcastic kind of complacency, <i>Had</i> I?
+Ah! And did I find it had got on tolerably well without
+me? Such is the difference (I thought, when I had left him
+a few hundred yards behind, and was by so much in a better
+temper) between going away from a place and remaining in
+it. I had no right, I reflected, to be angry with the
+greengrocer for his want of interest, I was nothing to him:
+whereas he was the town, the cathedral, the bridge, the river, my
+childhood, and a large slice of my life, to me.</p>
+<p>Of course the town had shrunk fearfully, since I was a child
+there. I had entertained the impression that the
+High-street was at least as wide as Regent-street, London, or the
+Italian Boulevard at Paris. I found it little better than a
+lane. There was a public clock in it, which I had supposed
+to be the finest clock in the world: whereas it now turned out to
+be as inexpressive, moon-faced, and weak a clock as ever I
+saw. It belonged to a Town Hall, where I had seen an Indian
+(who I now suppose wasn&rsquo;t an Indian) swallow a sword (which
+I now suppose he didn&rsquo;t). The edifice had appeared to
+me in those days so glorious a structure, that I had set it up in
+my mind as the model on which the Genie of the Lamp built the
+palace for Aladdin. A mean little brick heap, like a
+demented chapel, with a few yawning persons in leather gaiters,
+and in the last extremity for something to do, lounging at the
+door with their hands in their pockets, and calling themselves a
+Corn Exchange!</p>
+<p>The Theatre was in existence, I found, on asking the
+fishmonger, who had a compact show of stock in his window,
+consisting of a sole and a quart of shrimps&mdash;and I resolved
+to comfort my mind by going to look at it. Richard the
+Third, in a very uncomfortable cloak, had first appeared to me
+there, and had made my heart leap with terror by backing up
+against the stage-box in which I was posted, while struggling for
+life against the virtuous Richmond. It was within those
+walls that I had learnt as from a page of English history, how
+that wicked King slept in war-time on a sofa much too short for
+him, and how fearfully his conscience troubled his boots.
+There, too, had I first seen the funny countryman, but countryman
+of noble principles, in a flowered waistcoat, crunch up his
+little hat and throw it on the ground, and pull off his coat,
+saying, &lsquo;Dom thee, squire, coom on with thy fistes
+then!&rsquo; At which the lovely young woman who kept
+company with him (and who went out gleaning, in a narrow white
+muslin apron with five beautiful bars of five different-coloured
+ribbons across it) was so frightened for his sake, that she
+fainted away. Many wondrous secrets of Nature had I come to
+the knowledge of in that sanctuary: of which not the least
+terrific were, that the witches in Macbeth bore an awful
+resemblance to the Thanes and other proper inhabitants of
+Scotland; and that the good King Duncan couldn&rsquo;t rest in
+his grave, but was constantly coming out of it and calling
+himself somebody else. To the Theatre, therefore, I
+repaired for consolation. But I found very little, for it
+was in a bad and declining way. A dealer in wine and
+bottled beer had already squeezed his trade into the box-office,
+and the theatrical money was taken&mdash;when it came&mdash;in a
+kind of meat-safe in the passage. The dealer in wine and
+bottled beer must have insinuated himself under the stage too;
+for he announced that he had various descriptions of alcoholic
+drinks &lsquo;in the wood,&rsquo; and there was no possible
+stowage for the wood anywhere else. Evidently, he was by
+degrees eating the establishment away to the core, and would soon
+have sole possession of it. It was To Let, and hopelessly
+so, for its old purposes; and there had been no entertainment
+within its walls for a long time except a Panorama; and even that
+had been announced as &lsquo;pleasingly instructive,&rsquo; and I
+know too well the fatal meaning and the leaden import of those
+terrible expressions. No, there was no comfort in the
+Theatre. It was mysteriously gone, like my own youth.
+Unlike my own youth, it might be coming back some day; but there
+was little promise of it.</p>
+<p>As the town was placarded with references to the Dullborough
+Mechanics&rsquo; Institution, I thought I would go and look at
+that establishment next. There had been no such thing in
+the town, in my young day, and it occurred to me that its extreme
+prosperity might have brought adversity upon the Drama. I
+found the Institution with some difficulty, and should scarcely
+have known that I had found it if I had judged from its external
+appearance only; but this was attributable to its never having
+been finished, and having no front: consequently, it led a modest
+and retired existence up a stable-yard. It was (as I
+learnt, on inquiry) a most flourishing Institution, and of the
+highest benefit to the town: two triumphs which I was glad to
+understand were not at all impaired by the seeming drawbacks that
+no mechanics belonged to it, and that it was steeped in debt to
+the chimney-pots. It had a large room, which was approached
+by an infirm step-ladder: the builder having declined to
+construct the intended staircase, without a present payment in
+cash, which Dullborough (though profoundly appreciative of the
+Institution) seemed unaccountably bashful about
+subscribing. The large room had cost&mdash;or would, when
+paid for&mdash;five hundred pounds; and it had more mortar in it
+and more echoes, than one might have expected to get for the
+money. It was fitted up with a platform, and the usual
+lecturing tools, including a large black board of a menacing
+appearance. On referring to lists of the courses of
+lectures that had been given in this thriving Hall, I fancied I
+detected a shyness in admitting that human nature when at leisure
+has any desire whatever to be relieved and diverted; and a
+furtive sliding in of any poor make-weight piece of amusement,
+shame-facedly and edgewise. Thus, I observed that it was
+necessary for the members to be knocked on the head with Gas,
+Air, Water, Food, the Solar System, the Geological periods,
+Criticism on Milton, the Steam-engine, John Bunyan, and
+Arrow-Headed Inscriptions, before they might be tickled by those
+unaccountable choristers, the negro singers in the court costume
+of the reign of George the Second. Likewise, that they must
+be stunned by a weighty inquiry whether there was internal
+evidence in Shakespeare&rsquo;s works, to prove that his uncle by
+the mother&rsquo;s side lived for some years at Stoke Newington,
+before they were brought-to by a Miscellaneous Concert.
+But, indeed, the masking of entertainment, and pretending it was
+something else&mdash;as people mask bedsteads when they are
+obliged to have them in sitting-rooms, and make believe that they
+are book-cases, sofas, chests of drawers, anything rather than
+bedsteads&mdash;was manifest even in the pretence of dreariness
+that the unfortunate entertainers themselves felt obliged in
+decency to put forth when they came here. One very
+agreeable professional singer, who travelled with two
+professional ladies, knew better than to introduce either of
+those ladies to sing the ballad &lsquo;Comin&rsquo; through the
+Rye&rsquo; without prefacing it himself, with some general
+remarks on wheat and clover; and even then, he dared not for his
+life call the song, a song, but disguised it in the bill as an
+&lsquo;Illustration.&rsquo; In the library,
+also&mdash;fitted with shelves for three thousand books, and
+containing upwards of one hundred and seventy (presented copies
+mostly), seething their edges in damp plaster&mdash;there was
+such a painfully apologetic return of 62 offenders who had read
+Travels, Popular Biography, and mere Fiction descriptive of the
+aspirations of the hearts and souls of mere human creatures like
+themselves; and such an elaborate parade of 2 bright examples who
+had had down Euclid after the day&rsquo;s occupation and
+confinement; and 3 who had had down Metaphysics after ditto; and
+I who had had down Theology after ditto; and 4 who had worried
+Grammar, Political Economy, Botany, and Logarithms all at once
+after ditto; that I suspected the boasted class to be one man,
+who had been hired to do it.</p>
+<p>Emerging from the Mechanics&rsquo; Institution and continuing
+my walk about the town, I still noticed everywhere the
+prevalence, to an extraordinary degree, of this custom of putting
+the natural demand for amusement out of sight, as some untidy
+housekeepers put dust, and pretending that it was swept
+away. And yet it was ministered to, in a dull and abortive
+manner, by all who made this feint. Looking in at what is
+called in Dullborough &lsquo;the serious
+bookseller&rsquo;s,&rsquo; where, in my childhood, I had studied
+the faces of numbers of gentlemen depicted in rostrums with a
+gaslight on each side of them, and casting my eyes over the open
+pages of certain printed discourses there, I found a vast deal of
+aiming at jocosity and dramatic effect, even in them&mdash;yes,
+verily, even on the part of one very wrathful expounder who
+bitterly anathematised a poor little Circus. Similarly, in
+the reading provided for the young people enrolled in the Lasso
+of Love, and other excellent unions, I found the writers
+generally under a distressing sense that they must start (at all
+events) like story-tellers, and delude the young persons into the
+belief that they were going to be interesting. As I looked
+in at this window for twenty minutes by the clock, I am in a
+position to offer a friendly remonstrance&mdash;not bearing on
+this particular point&mdash;to the designers and engravers of the
+pictures in those publications. Have they considered the
+awful consequences likely to flow from their representations of
+Virtue? Have they asked themselves the question, whether
+the terrific prospect of acquiring that fearful chubbiness of
+head, unwieldiness of arm, feeble dislocation of leg, crispiness
+of hair, and enormity of shirt-collar, which they represent as
+inseparable from Goodness, may not tend to confirm sensitive
+waverers, in Evil? A most impressive example (if I had
+believed it) of what a Dustman and a Sailor may come to, when
+they mend their ways, was presented to me in this same
+shop-window. When they were leaning (they were intimate
+friends) against a post, drunk and reckless, with surpassingly
+bad hats on, and their hair over their foreheads, they were
+rather picturesque, and looked as if they might be agreeable men,
+if they would not be beasts. But, when they had got over
+their bad propensities, and when, as a consequence, their heads
+had swelled alarmingly, their hair had got so curly that it
+lifted their blown-out cheeks up, their coat-cuffs were so long
+that they never could do any work, and their eyes were so wide
+open that they never could do any sleep, they presented a
+spectacle calculated to plunge a timid nature into the depths of
+Infamy.</p>
+<p>But, the clock that had so degenerated since I saw it last,
+admonished me that I had stayed here long enough; and I resumed
+my walk.</p>
+<p>I had not gone fifty paces along the street when I was
+suddenly brought up by the sight of a man who got out of a little
+phaeton at the doctor&rsquo;s door, and went into the
+doctor&rsquo;s house. Immediately, the air was filled with
+the scent of trodden grass, and the perspective of years opened,
+and at the end of it was a little likeness of this man keeping a
+wicket, and I said, &lsquo;God bless my soul! Joe
+Specks!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Through many changes and much work, I had preserved a
+tenderness for the memory of Joe, forasmuch as we had made the
+acquaintance of Roderick Random together, and had believed him to
+be no ruffian, but an ingenuous and engaging hero. Scorning
+to ask the boy left in the phaeton whether it was really Joe, and
+scorning even to read the brass plate on the door&mdash;so sure
+was I&mdash;I rang the bell and informed the servant maid that a
+stranger sought audience of Mr. Specks. Into a room, half
+surgery, half study, I was shown to await his coming, and I found
+it, by a series of elaborate accidents, bestrewn with testimonies
+to Joe. Portrait of Mr. Specks, bust of Mr. Specks, silver
+cup from grateful patient to Mr. Specks, presentation sermon from
+local clergyman, dedication poem from local poet, dinner-card
+from local nobleman, tract on balance of power from local
+refugee, inscribed <i>Hommage de l&rsquo;auteur &agrave;
+Specks</i>.</p>
+<p>When my old schoolfellow came in, and I informed him with a
+smile that I was not a patient, he seemed rather at a loss to
+perceive any reason for smiling in connexion with that fact, and
+inquired to what was he to attribute the honour? I asked
+him with another smile, could he remember me at all? He had
+not (he said) that pleasure. I was beginning to have but a
+poor opinion of Mr. Specks, when he said reflectively, &lsquo;And
+yet there&rsquo;s a something too.&rsquo; Upon that, I saw
+a boyish light in his eyes that looked well, and I asked him if
+he could inform me, as a stranger who desired to know and had not
+the means of reference at hand, what the name of the young lady
+was, who married Mr. Random? Upon that, he said
+&lsquo;Narcissa,&rsquo; and, after staring for a moment, called
+me by my name, shook me by the hand, and melted into a roar of
+laughter. &lsquo;Why, of course, you&rsquo;ll remember Lucy
+Green,&rsquo; he said, after we had talked a little.
+&lsquo;Of course,&rsquo; said I. &lsquo;Whom do you think
+she married?&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;You?&rsquo; I
+hazarded. &lsquo;Me,&rsquo; said Specks, &lsquo;and you
+shall see her.&rsquo; So I saw her, and she was fat, and if
+all the hay in the world had been heaped upon her, it could
+scarcely have altered her face more than Time had altered it from
+my remembrance of the face that had once looked down upon me into
+the fragrant dungeons of Seringapatam. But when her
+youngest child came in after dinner (for I dined with them, and
+we had no other company than Specks, Junior, Barrister-at-law,
+who went away as soon as the cloth was removed, to look after the
+young lady to whom he was going to be married next week), I saw
+again, in that little daughter, the little face of the hayfield,
+unchanged, and it quite touched my foolish heart. We talked
+immensely, Specks and Mrs. Specks, and I, and we spoke of our old
+selves as though our old selves were dead and gone, and indeed,
+indeed they were&mdash;dead and gone as the playing-field that
+had become a wilderness of rusty iron, and the property of
+S.E.R.</p>
+<p>Specks, however, illuminated Dullborough with the rays of
+interest that I wanted and should otherwise have missed in it,
+and linked its present to its past, with a highly agreeable
+chain. And in Specks&rsquo;s society I had new occasion to
+observe what I had before noticed in similar communications among
+other men. All the schoolfellows and others of old, whom I
+inquired about, had either done superlatively well or
+superlatively ill&mdash;had either become uncertificated
+bankrupts, or been felonious and got themselves transported; or
+had made great hits in life, and done wonders. And this is
+so commonly the case, that I never can imagine what becomes of
+all the mediocre people of people&rsquo;s youth&mdash;especially
+considering that we find no lack of the species in our
+maturity. But, I did not propound this difficulty to
+Specks, for no pause in the conversation gave me an
+occasion. Nor, could I discover one single flaw in the good
+doctor&mdash;when he reads this, he will receive in a friendly
+spirit the pleasantly meant record&mdash;except that he had
+forgotten his Roderick Random, and that he confounded Strap with
+Lieutenant Hatchway; who never knew Random, howsoever intimate
+with Pickle.</p>
+<p>When I went alone to the Railway to catch my train at night
+(Specks had meant to go with me, but was inopportunely called
+out), I was in a more charitable mood with Dullborough than I had
+been all day; and yet in my heart I had loved it all day
+too. Ah! who was I that I should quarrel with the town for
+being changed to me, when I myself had come back, so changed, to
+it! All my early readings and early imaginations dated from
+this place, and I took them away so full of innocent construction
+and guileless belief, and I brought them back so worn and torn,
+so much the wiser and so much the worse!</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap13"></a>XIII<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">NIGHT WALKS</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Some</span> years ago, a temporary
+inability to sleep, referable to a distressing impression, caused
+me to walk about the streets all night, for a series of several
+nights. The disorder might have taken a long time to
+conquer, if it had been faintly experimented on in bed; but, it
+was soon defeated by the brisk treatment of getting up directly
+after lying down, and going out, and coming home tired at
+sunrise.</p>
+<p>In the course of those nights, I finished my education in a
+fair amateur experience of houselessness. My principal
+object being to get through the night, the pursuit of it brought
+me into sympathetic relations with people who have no other
+object every night in the year.</p>
+<p>The month was March, and the weather damp, cloudy, and
+cold. The sun not rising before half-past five, the night
+perspective looked sufficiently long at half-past twelve: which
+was about my time for confronting it.</p>
+<p>The restlessness of a great city, and the way in which it
+tumbles and tosses before it can get to sleep, formed one of the
+first entertainments offered to the contemplation of us houseless
+people. It lasted about two hours. We lost a great
+deal of companionship when the late public-houses turned their
+lamps out, and when the potmen thrust the last brawling drunkards
+into the street; but stray vehicles and stray people were left
+us, after that. If we were very lucky, a policeman&rsquo;s
+rattle sprang and a fray turned up; but, in general, surprisingly
+little of this diversion was provided. Except in the
+Haymarket, which is the worst kept part of London, and about
+Kent-street in the Borough, and along a portion of the line of
+the Old Kent-road, the peace was seldom violently broken.
+But, it was always the case that London, as if in imitation of
+individual citizens belonging to it, had expiring fits and starts
+of restlessness. After all seemed quiet, if one cab rattled
+by, half-a-dozen would surely follow; and Houselessness even
+observed that intoxicated people appeared to be magnetically
+attracted towards each other; so that we knew when we saw one
+drunken object staggering against the shutters of a shop, that
+another drunken object would stagger up before five minutes were
+out, to fraternise or fight with it. When we made a
+divergence from the regular species of drunkard, the thin-armed,
+puff-faced, leaden-lipped gin-drinker, and encountered a rarer
+specimen of a more decent appearance, fifty to one but that
+specimen was dressed in soiled mourning. As the street
+experience in the night, so the street experience in the day; the
+common folk who come unexpectedly into a little property, come
+unexpectedly into a deal of liquor.</p>
+<p>At length these flickering sparks would die away, worn
+out&mdash;the last veritable sparks of waking life trailed from
+some late pieman or hot-potato man&mdash;and London would sink to
+rest. And then the yearning of the houseless mind would be
+for any sign of company, any lighted place, any movement,
+anything suggestive of any one being up&mdash;nay, even so much
+as awake, for the houseless eye looked out for lights in
+windows.</p>
+<p>Walking the streets under the pattering rain, Houselessness
+would walk and walk and walk, seeing nothing but the interminable
+tangle of streets, save at a corner, here and there, two
+policemen in conversation, or the sergeant or inspector looking
+after his men. Now and then in the night&mdash;but
+rarely&mdash;Houselessness would become aware of a furtive head
+peering out of a doorway a few yards before him, and, coming up
+with the head, would find a man standing bolt upright to keep
+within the doorway&rsquo;s shadow, and evidently intent upon no
+particular service to society. Under a kind of fascination,
+and in a ghostly silence suitable to the time, Houselessness and
+this gentleman would eye one another from head to foot, and so,
+without exchange of speech, part, mutually suspicious.
+Drip, drip, drip, from ledge and coping, splash from pipes and
+water-spouts, and by-and-by the houseless shadow would fall upon
+the stones that pave the way to Waterloo-bridge; it being in the
+houseless mind to have a halfpenny worth of excuse for saying
+&lsquo;Good-night&rsquo; to the toll-keeper, and catching a
+glimpse of his fire. A good fire and a good great-coat and
+a good woollen neck-shawl, were comfortable things to see in
+conjunction with the toll-keeper; also his brisk wakefulness was
+excellent company when he rattled the change of halfpence down
+upon that metal table of his, like a man who defied the night,
+with all its sorrowful thoughts, and didn&rsquo;t care for the
+coming of dawn. There was need of encouragement on the
+threshold of the bridge, for the bridge was dreary. The
+chopped-up murdered man, had not been lowered with a rope over
+the parapet when those nights were; he was alive, and slept then
+quietly enough most likely, and undisturbed by any dream of where
+he was to come. But the river had an awful look, the
+buildings on the banks were muffled in black shrouds, and the
+reflected lights seemed to originate deep in the water, as if the
+spectres of suicides were holding them to show where they went
+down. The wild moon and clouds were as restless as an evil
+conscience in a tumbled bed, and the very shadow of the immensity
+of London seemed to lie oppressively upon the river.</p>
+<p>Between the bridge and the two great theatres, there was but
+the distance of a few hundred paces, so the theatres came
+next. Grim and black within, at night, those great dry
+Wells, and lonesome to imagine, with the rows of faces faded out,
+the lights extinguished, and the seats all empty. One would
+think that nothing in them knew itself at such a time but
+Yorick&rsquo;s skull. In one of my night walks, as the
+church steeples were shaking the March winds and rain with the
+strokes of Four, I passed the outer boundary of one of these
+great deserts, and entered it. With a dim lantern in my
+hand, I groped my well-known way to the stage and looked over the
+orchestra&mdash;which was like a great grave dug for a time of
+pestilence&mdash;into the void beyond. A dismal cavern of
+an immense aspect, with the chandelier gone dead like everything
+else, and nothing visible through mist and fog and space, but
+tiers of winding-sheets. The ground at my feet where, when
+last there, I had seen the peasantry of Naples dancing among the
+vines, reckless of the burning mountain which threatened to
+overwhelm them, was now in possession of a strong serpent of
+engine-hose, watchfully lying in wait for the serpent Fire, and
+ready to fly at it if it showed its forked tongue. A ghost
+of a watchman, carrying a faint corpse candle, haunted the
+distant upper gallery and flitted away. Retiring within the
+proscenium, and holding my light above my head towards the
+rolled-up curtain&mdash;green no more, but black as
+ebony&mdash;my sight lost itself in a gloomy vault, showing faint
+indications in it of a shipwreck of canvas and cordage.
+Methought I felt much as a diver might, at the bottom of the
+sea.</p>
+<p>In those small hours when there was no movement in the
+streets, it afforded matter for reflection to take Newgate in the
+way, and, touching its rough stone, to think of the prisoners in
+their sleep, and then to glance in at the lodge over the spiked
+wicket, and see the fire and light of the watching turnkeys, on
+the white wall. Not an inappropriate time either, to linger
+by that wicked little Debtors&rsquo; Door&mdash;shutting tighter
+than any other door one ever saw&mdash;which has been
+Death&rsquo;s Door to so many. In the days of the uttering
+of forged one-pound notes by people tempted up from the country,
+how many hundreds of wretched creatures of both sexes&mdash;many
+quite innocent&mdash;swung out of a pitiless and inconsistent
+world, with the tower of yonder Christian church of Saint
+Sepulchre monstrously before their eyes! Is there any
+haunting of the Bank Parlour, by the remorseful souls of old
+directors, in the nights of these later days, I wonder, or is it
+as quiet as this degenerate Aceldama of an Old Bailey?</p>
+<p>To walk on to the Bank, lamenting the good old times and
+bemoaning the present evil period, would be an easy next step, so
+I would take it, and would make my houseless circuit of the Bank,
+and give a thought to the treasure within; likewise to the guard
+of soldiers passing the night there, and nodding over the
+fire. Next, I went to Billingsgate, in some hope of
+market-people, but it proving as yet too early, crossed
+London-bridge and got down by the water-side on the Surrey shore
+among the buildings of the great brewery. There was plenty
+going on at the brewery; and the reek, and the smell of grains,
+and the rattling of the plump dray horses at their mangers, were
+capital company. Quite refreshed by having mingled with
+this good society, I made a new start with a new heart, setting
+the old King&rsquo;s Bench prison before me for my next object,
+and resolving, when I should come to the wall, to think of poor
+Horace Kinch, and the Dry Rot in men.</p>
+<p>A very curious disease the Dry Rot in men, and difficult to
+detect the beginning of. It had carried Horace Kinch inside
+the wall of the old King&rsquo;s Bench prison, and it had carried
+him out with his feet foremost. He was a likely man to look
+at, in the prime of life, well to do, as clever as he needed to
+be, and popular among many friends. He was suitably
+married, and had healthy and pretty children. But, like
+some fair-looking houses or fair-looking ships, he took the Dry
+Rot. The first strong external revelation of the Dry Rot in
+men, is a tendency to lurk and lounge; to be at street-corners
+without intelligible reason; to be going anywhere when met; to be
+about many places rather than at any; to do nothing tangible, but
+to have an intention of performing a variety of intangible duties
+to-morrow or the day after. When this manifestation of the
+disease is observed, the observer will usually connect it with a
+vague impression once formed or received, that the patient was
+living a little too hard. He will scarcely have had leisure
+to turn it over in his mind and form the terrible suspicion
+&lsquo;Dry Rot,&rsquo; when he will notice a change for the worse
+in the patient&rsquo;s appearance: a certain slovenliness and
+deterioration, which is not poverty, nor dirt, nor intoxication,
+nor ill-health, but simply Dry Rot. To this, succeeds a
+smell as of strong waters, in the morning; to that, a looseness
+respecting money; to that, a stronger smell as of strong waters,
+at all times; to that, a looseness respecting everything; to
+that, a trembling of the limbs, somnolency, misery, and crumbling
+to pieces. As it is in wood, so it is in men. Dry Rot
+advances at a compound usury quite incalculable. A plank is
+found infected with it, and the whole structure is devoted.
+Thus it had been with the unhappy Horace Kinch, lately buried by
+a small subscription. Those who knew him had not nigh done
+saying, &lsquo;So well off, so comfortably established, with such
+hope before him&mdash;and yet, it is feared, with a slight touch
+of Dry Rot!&rsquo; when lo! the man was all Dry Rot and dust.</p>
+<p>From the dead wall associated on those houseless nights with
+this too common story, I chose next to wander by Bethlehem
+Hospital; partly, because it lay on my road round to Westminster;
+partly, because I had a night fancy in my head which could be
+best pursued within sight of its walls and dome. And the
+fancy was this: Are not the sane and the insane equal at night as
+the sane lie a dreaming? Are not all of us outside this
+hospital, who dream, more or less in the condition of those
+inside it, every night of our lives? Are we not nightly
+persuaded, as they daily are, that we associate preposterously
+with kings and queens, emperors and empresses, and notabilities
+of all sorts? Do we not nightly jumble events and
+personages and times and places, as these do daily? Are we
+not sometimes troubled by our own sleeping inconsistencies, and
+do we not vexedly try to account for them or excuse them, just as
+these do sometimes in respect of their waking delusions?
+Said an afflicted man to me, when I was last in a hospital like
+this, &lsquo;Sir, I can frequently fly.&rsquo; I was half
+ashamed to reflect that so could I&mdash;by night. Said a
+woman to me on the same occasion, &lsquo;Queen Victoria
+frequently comes to dine with me, and her Majesty and I dine off
+peaches and maccaroni in our night-gowns, and his Royal Highness
+the Prince Consort does us the honour to make a third on
+horseback in a Field-Marshal&rsquo;s uniform.&rsquo; Could
+I refrain from reddening with consciousness when I remembered the
+amazing royal parties I myself had given (at night), the
+unaccountable viands I had put on table, and my extraordinary
+manner of conducting myself on those distinguished
+occasions? I wonder that the great master who knew
+everything, when he called Sleep the death of each day&rsquo;s
+life, did not call Dreams the insanity of each day&rsquo;s
+sanity.</p>
+<p>By this time I had left the Hospital behind me, and was again
+setting towards the river; and in a short breathing space I was
+on Westminster-bridge, regaling my houseless eyes with the
+external walls of the British Parliament&mdash;the perfection of
+a stupendous institution, I know, and the admiration of all
+surrounding nations and succeeding ages, I do not doubt, but
+perhaps a little the better now and then for being pricked up to
+its work. Turning off into Old Palace-yard, the Courts of
+Law kept me company for a quarter of an hour; hinting in low
+whispers what numbers of people they were keeping awake, and how
+intensely wretched and horrible they were rendering the small
+hours to unfortunate suitors. Westminster Abbey was fine
+gloomy society for another quarter of an hour; suggesting a
+wonderful procession of its dead among the dark arches and
+pillars, each century more amazed by the century following it
+than by all the centuries going before. And indeed in those
+houseless night walks&mdash;which even included cemeteries where
+watchmen went round among the graves at stated times, and moved
+the tell-tale handle of an index which recorded that they had
+touched it at such an hour&mdash;it was a solemn consideration
+what enormous hosts of dead belong to one old great city, and
+how, if they were raised while the living slept, there would not
+be the space of a pin&rsquo;s point in all the streets and ways
+for the living to come out into. Not only that, but the
+vast armies of dead would overflow the hills and valleys beyond
+the city, and would stretch away all round it, God knows how
+far.</p>
+<p>When a church clock strikes, on houseless ears in the dead of
+the night, it may be at first mistaken for company and hailed as
+such. But, as the spreading circles of vibration, which you
+may perceive at such a time with great clearness, go opening out,
+for ever and ever afterwards widening perhaps (as the philosopher
+has suggested) in eternal space, the mistake is rectified and the
+sense of loneliness is profounder. Once&mdash;it was after
+leaving the Abbey and turning my face north&mdash;I came to the
+great steps of St. Martin&rsquo;s church as the clock was
+striking Three. Suddenly, a thing that in a moment more I
+should have trodden upon without seeing, rose up at my feet with
+a cry of loneliness and houselessness, struck out of it by the
+bell, the like of which I never heard. We then stood face
+to face looking at one another, frightened by one another.
+The creature was like a beetle-browed hair-lipped youth of
+twenty, and it had a loose bundle of rags on, which it held
+together with one of its hands. It shivered from head to
+foot, and its teeth chattered, and as it stared at
+me&mdash;persecutor, devil, ghost, whatever it thought
+me&mdash;it made with its whining mouth as if it were snapping at
+me, like a worried dog. Intending to give this ugly object
+money, I put out my hand to stay it&mdash;for it recoiled as it
+whined and snapped&mdash;and laid my hand upon its
+shoulder. Instantly, it twisted out of its garment, like
+the young man in the New Testament, and left me standing alone
+with its rags in my hands.</p>
+<p>Covent-garden Market, when it was market morning, was
+wonderful company. The great waggons of cabbages, with
+growers&rsquo; men and boys lying asleep under them, and with
+sharp dogs from market-garden neighbourhoods looking after the
+whole, were as good as a party. But one of the worst night sights
+I know in London, is to be found in the children who prowl about
+this place; who sleep in the baskets, fight for the offal, dart
+at any object they think they can lay their thieving hands on,
+dive under the carts and barrows, dodge the constables, and are
+perpetually making a blunt pattering on the pavement of the
+Piazza with the rain of their naked feet. A painful and unnatural
+result comes of the comparison one is forced to institute between
+the growth of corruption as displayed in the so much improved and
+cared for fruits of the earth, and the growth of corruption as
+displayed in these all uncared for (except inasmuch as
+ever-hunted) savages.</p>
+<p>There was early coffee to be got about Covent-garden Market,
+and that was more company&mdash;warm company, too, which was
+better. Toast of a very substantial quality, was likewise
+procurable: though the towzled-headed man who made it, in an
+inner chamber within the coffee-room, hadn&rsquo;t got his coat
+on yet, and was so heavy with sleep that in every interval of
+toast and coffee he went off anew behind the partition into
+complicated cross-roads of choke and snore, and lost his way
+directly. Into one of these establishments (among the
+earliest) near Bow-street, there came one morning as I sat over
+my houseless cup, pondering where to go next, a man in a high and
+long snuff-coloured coat, and shoes, and, to the best of my
+belief, nothing else but a hat, who took out of his hat a large
+cold meat pudding; a meat pudding so large that it was a very
+tight fit, and brought the lining of the hat out with it.
+This mysterious man was known by his pudding, for on his
+entering, the man of sleep brought him a pint of hot tea, a small
+loaf, and a large knife and fork and plate. Left to himself
+in his box, he stood the pudding on the bare table, and, instead
+of cutting it, stabbed it, overhand, with the knife, like a
+mortal enemy; then took the knife out, wiped it on his sleeve,
+tore the pudding asunder with his fingers, and ate it all
+up. The remembrance of this man with the pudding remains
+with me as the remembrance of the most spectral person my
+houselessness encountered. Twice only was I in that
+establishment, and twice I saw him stalk in (as I should say,
+just out of bed, and presently going back to bed), take out his
+pudding, stab his pudding, wipe the dagger, and eat his pudding
+all up. He was a man whose figure promised cadaverousness,
+but who had an excessively red face, though shaped like a
+horse&rsquo;s. On the second occasion of my seeing him, he
+said huskily to the man of sleep, &lsquo;Am I red
+to-night?&rsquo; &lsquo;You are,&rsquo; he uncompromisingly
+answered. &lsquo;My mother,&rsquo; said the spectre,
+&lsquo;was a red-faced woman that liked drink, and I looked at
+her hard when she laid in her coffin, and I took the
+complexion.&rsquo; Somehow, the pudding seemed an
+unwholesome pudding after that, and I put myself in its way no
+more.</p>
+<p>When there was no market, or when I wanted variety, a railway
+terminus with the morning mails coming in, was remunerative
+company. But like most of the company to be had in this
+world, it lasted only a very short time. The station lamps
+would burst out ablaze, the porters would emerge from places of
+concealment, the cabs and trucks would rattle to their places
+(the post-office carts were already in theirs), and, finally, the
+bell would strike up, and the train would come banging in.
+But there were few passengers and little luggage, and everything
+scuttled away with the greatest expedition. The locomotive
+post-offices, with their great nets&mdash;as if they had been
+dragging the country for bodies&mdash;would fly open as to their
+doors, and would disgorge a smell of lamp, an exhausted clerk, a
+guard in a red coat, and their bags of letters; the engine would
+blow and heave and perspire, like an engine wiping its forehead
+and saying what a run it had had; and within ten minutes the
+lamps were out, and I was houseless and alone again.</p>
+<p>But now, there were driven cattle on the high road near,
+wanting (as cattle always do) to turn into the midst of stone
+walls, and squeeze themselves through six inches&rsquo; width of
+iron railing, and getting their heads down (also as cattle always
+do) for tossing-purchase at quite imaginary dogs, and giving
+themselves and every devoted creature associated with them a most
+extraordinary amount of unnecessary trouble. Now, too, the
+conscious gas began to grow pale with the knowledge that daylight
+was coming, and straggling workpeople were already in the
+streets, and, as waking life had become extinguished with the
+last pieman&rsquo;s sparks, so it began to be rekindled with the
+fires of the first street-corner breakfast-sellers. And so
+by faster and faster degrees, until the last degrees were very
+fast, the day came, and I was tired and could sleep. And it
+is not, as I used to think, going home at such times, the least
+wonderful thing in London, that in the real desert region of the
+night, the houseless wanderer is alone there. I knew well
+enough where to find Vice and Misfortune of all kinds, if I had
+chosen; but they were put out of sight, and my houselessness had
+many miles upon miles of streets in which it could, and did, have
+its own solitary way.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap14"></a>XIV<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">CHAMBERS</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Having</span> occasion to transact some
+business with a solicitor who occupies a highly suicidal set of
+chambers in Gray&rsquo;s Inn, I afterwards took a turn in the
+large square of that stronghold of Melancholy, reviewing, with
+congenial surroundings, my experiences of Chambers.</p>
+<p>I began, as was natural, with the Chambers I had just
+left. They were an upper set on a rotten staircase, with a
+mysterious bunk or bulkhead on the landing outside them, of a
+rather nautical and Screw Collier-like appearance than otherwise,
+and painted an intense black. Many dusty years have passed
+since the appropriation of this Davy Jones&rsquo;s locker to any
+purpose, and during the whole period within the memory of living
+man, it has been hasped and padlocked. I cannot quite
+satisfy my mind whether it was originally meant for the reception
+of coals, or bodies, or as a place of temporary security for the
+plunder &lsquo;looted&rsquo; by laundresses; but I incline to the
+last opinion. It is about breast high, and usually serves
+as a bulk for defendants in reduced circumstances to lean against
+and ponder at, when they come on the hopeful errand of trying to
+make an arrangement without money&mdash;under which auspicious
+circumstances it mostly happens that the legal gentleman they
+want to see, is much engaged, and they pervade the staircase for
+a considerable period. Against this opposing bulk, in the
+absurdest manner, the tomb-like outer door of the
+solicitor&rsquo;s chambers (which is also of an intense black)
+stands in dark ambush, half open, and half shut, all day.
+The solicitor&rsquo;s apartments are three in number; consisting
+of a slice, a cell, and a wedge. The slice is assigned to
+the two clerks, the cell is occupied by the principal, and the
+wedge is devoted to stray papers, old game baskets from the
+country, a washing-stand, and a model of a patent Ship&rsquo;s
+Caboose which was exhibited in Chancery at the commencement of
+the present century on an application for an injunction to
+restrain infringement. At about half-past nine on every
+week-day morning, the younger of the two clerks (who, I have
+reason to believe, leads the fashion at Pentonville in the
+articles of pipes and shirts) may be found knocking the dust out
+of his official door-key on the bunk or locker before mentioned;
+and so exceedingly subject to dust is his key, and so very
+retentive of that superfluity, that in exceptional summer weather
+when a ray of sunlight has fallen on the locker in my presence, I
+have noticed its inexpressive countenance to be deeply marked by
+a kind of Bramah erysipelas or small-pox.</p>
+<p>This set of chambers (as I have gradually discovered, when I
+have had restless occasion to make inquiries or leave messages,
+after office hours) is under the charge of a lady named Sweeney,
+in figure extremely like an old family-umbrella: whose dwelling
+confronts a dead wall in a court off Gray&rsquo;s Inn-lane, and
+who is usually fetched into the passage of that bower, when
+wanted, from some neighbouring home of industry, which has the
+curious property of imparting an inflammatory appearance to her
+visage. Mrs. Sweeney is one of the race of professed
+laundresses, and is the compiler of a remarkable manuscript
+volume entitled &lsquo;Mrs. Sweeney&rsquo;s Book,&rsquo; from
+which much curious statistical information may be gathered
+respecting the high prices and small uses of soda, soap, sand,
+firewood, and other such articles. I have created a legend
+in my mind&mdash;and consequently I believe it with the utmost
+pertinacity&mdash;that the late Mr. Sweeney was a ticket-porter
+under the Honourable Society of Gray&rsquo;s Inn, and that, in
+consideration of his long and valuable services, Mrs. Sweeney was
+appointed to her present post. For, though devoid of
+personal charms, I have observed this lady to exercise a
+fascination over the elderly ticker-porter mind (particularly
+under the gateway, and in corners and entries), which I can only
+refer to her being one of the fraternity, yet not competing with
+it. All that need be said concerning this set of chambers,
+is said, when I have added that it is in a large double house in
+Gray&rsquo;s Inn-square, very much out of repair, and that the
+outer portal is ornamented in a hideous manner with certain stone
+remains, which have the appearance of the dismembered bust,
+torso, and limbs of a petrified bencher.</p>
+<p>Indeed, I look upon Gray&rsquo;s Inn generally as one of the
+most depressing institutions in brick and mortar, known to the
+children of men. Can anything be more dreary than its arid
+Square, Sahara Desert of the law, with the ugly old tiled-topped
+tenements, the dirty windows, the bills To Let, To Let, the
+door-posts inscribed like gravestones, the crazy gateway giving
+upon the filthy Lane, the scowling, iron-barred prison-like
+passage into Verulam-buildings, the mouldy red-nosed
+ticket-porters with little coffin plates, and why with aprons,
+the dry, hard, atomy-like appearance of the whole
+dust-heap? When my uncommercial travels tend to this dismal
+spot, my comfort is its rickety state. Imagination gloats
+over the fulness of time when the staircases shall have quite
+tumbled down&mdash;they are daily wearing into an ill-savoured
+powder, but have not quite tumbled down yet&mdash;when the last
+old prolix bencher all of the olden time, shall have been got out
+of an upper window by means of a Fire Ladder, and carried off to
+the Holborn Union; when the last clerk shall have engrossed the
+last parchment behind the last splash on the last of the
+mud-stained windows, which, all through the miry year, are
+pilloried out of recognition in Gray&rsquo;s Inn-lane.
+Then, shall a squalid little trench, with rank grass and a pump
+in it, lying between the coffee-house and South-square, be wholly
+given up to cats and rats, and not, as now, have its empire
+divided between those animals and a few briefless
+bipeds&mdash;surely called to the Bar by voices of deceiving
+spirits, seeing that they are wanted there by no mortal&mdash;who
+glance down, with eyes better glazed than their casements, from
+their dreary and lacklustre rooms. Then shall the way
+Nor&rsquo; Westward, now lying under a short grim colonnade where
+in summer-time pounce flies from law-stationering windows into
+the eyes of laymen, be choked with rubbish and happily become
+impassable. Then shall the gardens where turf, trees, and
+gravel wear a legal livery of black, run rank, and pilgrims go to
+Gorhambury to see Bacon&rsquo;s effigy as he sat, and not come
+here (which in truth they seldom do) to see where he
+walked. Then, in a word, shall the old-established vendor
+of periodicals sit alone in his little crib of a shop behind the
+Holborn Gate, like that lumbering Marius among the ruins of
+Carthage, who has sat heavy on a thousand million of similes.</p>
+<p>At one period of my uncommercial career I much frequented
+another set of chambers in Gray&rsquo;s Inn-square. They
+were what is familiarly called &lsquo;a top set,&rsquo; and all
+the eatables and drinkables introduced into them acquired a
+flavour of Cockloft. I have known an unopened Strasbourg
+p&acirc;t&eacute; fresh from Fortnum and Mason&rsquo;s, to draw
+in this cockloft tone through its crockery dish, and become
+penetrated with cockloft to the core of its inmost truffle in
+three-quarters of an hour. This, however, was not the most
+curious feature of those chambers; that, consisted in the
+profound conviction entertained by my esteemed friend Parkle
+(their tenant) that they were clean. Whether it was an
+inborn hallucination, or whether it was imparted to him by Mrs.
+Miggot the laundress, I never could ascertain. But, I
+believe he would have gone to the stake upon the question.
+Now, they were so dirty that I could take off the distinctest
+impression of my figure on any article of furniture by merely
+lounging upon it for a few moments; and it used to be a private
+amusement of mine to print myself off&mdash;if I may use the
+expression&mdash;all over the rooms. It was the first large
+circulation I had. At other times I have accidentally
+shaken a window curtain while in animated conversation with
+Parkle, and struggling insects which were certainly red, and were
+certainly not ladybirds, have dropped on the back of my
+hand. Yet Parkle lived in that top set years, bound body
+and soul to the superstition that they were clean. He used
+to say, when congratulated upon them, &lsquo;Well, they are not
+like chambers in one respect, you know; they are
+clean.&rsquo; Concurrently, he had an idea which he could
+never explain, that Mrs. Miggot was in some way connected with
+the Church. When he was in particularly good spirits, he
+used to believe that a deceased uncle of hers had been a Dean;
+when he was poorly and low, he believed that her brother had been
+a Curate. I and Mrs. Miggot (she was a genteel woman) were
+on confidential terms, but I never knew her to commit herself to
+any distinct assertion on the subject; she merely claimed a
+proprietorship in the Church, by looking when it was mentioned,
+as if the reference awakened the slumbering Past, and were
+personal. It may have been his amiable confidence in Mrs.
+Miggot&rsquo;s better days that inspired my friend with his
+delusion respecting the chambers, but he never wavered in his
+fidelity to it for a moment, though he wallowed in dirt seven
+years.</p>
+<p>Two of the windows of these chambers looked down into the
+garden; and we have sat up there together many a summer evening,
+saying how pleasant it was, and talking of many things. To
+my intimacy with that top set, I am indebted for three of my
+liveliest personal impressions of the loneliness of life in
+chambers. They shall follow here, in order; first, second,
+and third.</p>
+<p>First. My Gray&rsquo;s Inn friend, on a time, hurt one
+of his legs, and it became seriously inflamed. Not knowing
+of his indisposition, I was on my way to visit him as usual, one
+summer evening, when I was much surprised by meeting a lively
+leech in Field-court, Gray&rsquo;s Inn, seemingly on his way to
+the West End of London. As the leech was alone, and was of
+course unable to explain his position, even if he had been
+inclined to do so (which he had not the appearance of being), I
+passed him and went on. Turning the corner of Gray&rsquo;s
+Inn-square, I was beyond expression amazed by meeting another
+leech&mdash;also entirely alone, and also proceeding in a
+westerly direction, though with less decision of purpose.
+Ruminating on this extraordinary circumstance, and endeavouring
+to remember whether I had ever read, in the Philosophical
+Transactions or any work on Natural History, of a migration of
+Leeches, I ascended to the top set, past the dreary series of
+closed outer doors of offices and an empty set or two, which
+intervened between that lofty region and the surface.
+Entering my friend&rsquo;s rooms, I found him stretched upon his
+back, like Prometheus Bound, with a perfectly demented
+ticket-porter in attendance on him instead of the Vulture: which
+helpless individual, who was feeble and frightened, and had (my
+friend explained to me, in great choler) been endeavouring for
+some hours to apply leeches to his leg, and as yet had only got
+on two out of twenty. To this Unfortunate&rsquo;s
+distraction between a damp cloth on which he had placed the
+leeches to freshen them, and the wrathful adjurations of my
+friend to &lsquo;Stick &rsquo;em on, sir!&rsquo; I referred the
+phenomenon I had encountered: the rather as two fine specimens
+were at that moment going out at the door, while a general
+insurrection of the rest was in progress on the table.
+After a while our united efforts prevailed, and, when the leeches
+came off and had recovered their spirits, we carefully tied them
+up in a decanter. But I never heard more of them than that
+they were all gone next morning, and that the Out-of-door young
+man of Bickle, Bush and Bodger, on the ground floor, had been
+bitten and blooded by some creature not identified. They
+never &lsquo;took&rsquo; on Mrs. Miggot, the laundress; but, I
+have always preserved fresh, the belief that she unconsciously
+carried several about her, until they gradually found openings in
+life.</p>
+<p>Second. On the same staircase with my friend Parkle, and
+on the same floor, there lived a man of law who pursued his
+business elsewhere, and used those chambers as his place of
+residence. For three or four years, Parkle rather knew of
+him than knew him, but after that&mdash;for
+Englishmen&mdash;short pause of consideration, they began to
+speak. Parkle exchanged words with him in his private
+character only, and knew nothing of his business ways, or
+means. He was a man a good deal about town, but always
+alone. We used to remark to one another, that although we
+often encountered him in theatres, concert-rooms, and similar
+public places, he was always alone. Yet he was not a gloomy
+man, and was of a decidedly conversational turn; insomuch that he
+would sometimes of an evening lounge with a cigar in his mouth,
+half in and half out of Parkle&rsquo;s rooms, and discuss the
+topics of the day by the hour. He used to hint on these
+occasions that he had four faults to find with life; firstly,
+that it obliged a man to be always winding up his watch;
+secondly, that London was too small; thirdly, that it therefore
+wanted variety; fourthly, that there was too much dust in
+it. There was so much dust in his own faded chambers,
+certainly, that they reminded me of a sepulchre, furnished in
+prophetic anticipation of the present time, which had newly been
+brought to light, after having remained buried a few thousand
+years. One dry, hot autumn evening at twilight, this man,
+being then five years turned of fifty, looked in upon Parkle in
+his usual lounging way, with his cigar in his mouth as usual, and
+said, &lsquo;I am going out of town.&rsquo; As he never
+went out of town, Parkle said, &lsquo;Oh indeed! At
+last?&rsquo; &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; says he, &lsquo;at
+last. For what is a man to do? London is so
+small! If you go West, you come to Hounslow. If you
+go East, you come to Bow. If you go South, there&rsquo;s
+Brixton or Norwood. If you go North, you can&rsquo;t get
+rid of Barnet. Then, the monotony of all the streets,
+streets, streets&mdash;and of all the roads, roads,
+roads&mdash;and the dust, dust, dust!&rsquo; When he had
+said this, he wished Parkle a good evening, but came back again
+and said, with his watch in his hand, &lsquo;Oh, I really cannot
+go on winding up this watch over and over again; I wish you would
+take care of it.&rsquo; So, Parkle laughed and consented,
+and the man went out of town. The man remained out of town
+so long, that his letter-box became choked, and no more letters
+could be got into it, and they began to be left at the lodge and
+to accumulate there. At last the head-porter decided, on
+conference with the steward, to use his master-key and look into
+the chambers, and give them the benefit of a whiff of air.
+Then, it was found that he had hanged himself to his bedstead,
+and had left this written memorandum: &lsquo;I should prefer to
+be cut down by my neighbour and friend (if he will allow me to
+call him so), H. Parkle, Esq.&rsquo; This was an end of
+Parkle&rsquo;s occupancy of chambers. He went into lodgings
+immediately.</p>
+<p>Third. While Parkle lived in Gray&rsquo;s Inn, and I
+myself was uncommercially preparing for the Bar&mdash;which is
+done, as everybody knows, by having a frayed old gown put on in a
+pantry by an old woman in a chronic state of Saint
+Anthony&rsquo;s fire and dropsy, and, so decorated, bolting a bad
+dinner in a party of four, whereof each individual mistrusts the
+other three&mdash;I say, while these things were, there was a
+certain elderly gentleman who lived in a court of the Temple, and
+was a great judge and lover of port wine. Every day he
+dined at his club and drank his bottle or two of port wine, and
+every night came home to the Temple and went to bed in his lonely
+chambers. This had gone on many years without variation,
+when one night he had a fit on coming home, and fell and cut his
+head deep, but partly recovered and groped about in the dark to
+find the door. When he was afterwards discovered, dead, it
+was clearly established by the marks of his hands about the room
+that he must have done so. Now, this chanced on the night
+of Christmas Eve, and over him lived a young fellow who had
+sisters and young country friends, and who gave them a little
+party that night, in the course of which they played at
+Blindman&rsquo;s Buff. They played that game, for their
+greater sport, by the light of the fire only; and once, when they
+were all quietly rustling and stealing about, and the blindman
+was trying to pick out the prettiest sister (for which I am far
+from blaming him), somebody cried, Hark! The man below must
+be playing Blindman&rsquo;s Buff by himself to-night! They
+listened, and they heard sounds of some one falling about and
+stumbling against furniture, and they all laughed at the conceit,
+and went on with their play, more light-hearted and merry than
+ever. Thus, those two so different games of life and death
+were played out together, blindfolded, in the two sets of
+chambers.</p>
+<p>Such are the occurrences, which, coming to my knowledge,
+imbued me long ago with a strong sense of the loneliness of
+chambers. There was a fantastic illustration to much the
+same purpose implicitly believed by a strange sort of man now
+dead, whom I knew when I had not quite arrived at legal years of
+discretion, though I was already in the uncommercial line.</p>
+<p>This was a man who, though not more than thirty, had seen the
+world in divers irreconcilable capacities&mdash;had been an
+officer in a South American regiment among other odd
+things&mdash;but had not achieved much in any way of life, and
+was in debt, and in hiding. He occupied chambers of the
+dreariest nature in Lyons Inn; his name, however, was not up on
+the door, or door-post, but in lieu of it stood the name of a
+friend who had died in the chambers, and had given him the
+furniture. The story arose out of the furniture, and was to
+this effect:&mdash;Let the former holder of the chambers, whose
+name was still upon the door and door-post, be Mr. Testator.</p>
+<p>Mr. Testator took a set of chambers in Lyons Inn when he had
+but very scanty furniture for his bedroom, and none for his
+sitting-room. He had lived some wintry months in this
+condition, and had found it very bare and cold. One night,
+past midnight, when he sat writing and still had writing to do
+that must be done before he went to bed, he found himself out of
+coals. He had coals down-stairs, but had never been to his
+cellar; however the cellar-key was on his mantelshelf, and if he
+went down and opened the cellar it fitted, he might fairly assume
+the coals in that cellar to be his. As to his laundress,
+she lived among the coal-waggons and Thames watermen&mdash;for
+there were Thames watermen at that time&mdash;in some unknown
+rat-hole by the river, down lanes and alleys on the other side of
+the Strand. As to any other person to meet him or obstruct
+him, Lyons Inn was dreaming, drunk, maudlin, moody, betting,
+brooding over bill-discounting or renewing&mdash;asleep or awake,
+minding its own affairs. Mr. Testator took his coal-scuttle
+in one hand, his candle and key in the other, and descended to
+the dismallest underground dens of Lyons Inn, where the late
+vehicles in the streets became thunderous, and all the
+water-pipes in the neighbourhood seemed to have Macbeth&rsquo;s
+Amen sticking in their throats, and to be trying to get it
+out. After groping here and there among low doors to no
+purpose, Mr. Testator at length came to a door with a rusty
+padlock which his key fitted. Getting the door open with
+much trouble, and looking in, he found, no coals, but a confused
+pile of furniture. Alarmed by this intrusion on another
+man&rsquo;s property, he locked the door again, found his own
+cellar, filled his scuttle, and returned up-stairs.</p>
+<p>But the furniture he had seen, ran on castors across and
+across Mr. Testator&rsquo;s mind incessantly, when, in the chill
+hour of five in the morning, he got to bed. He particularly
+wanted a table to write at, and a table expressly made to be
+written at, had been the piece of furniture in the foreground of
+the heap. When his laundress emerged from her burrow in the
+morning to make his kettle boil, he artfully led up to the
+subject of cellars and furniture; but the two ideas had evidently
+no connexion in her mind. When she left him, and he sat at
+his breakfast, thinking about the furniture, he recalled the
+rusty state of the padlock, and inferred that the furniture must
+have been stored in the cellars for a long time&mdash;was perhaps
+forgotten&mdash;owner dead, perhaps? After thinking it
+over, a few days, in the course of which he could pump nothing
+out of Lyons Inn about the furniture, he became desperate, and
+resolved to borrow that table. He did so, that night.
+He had not had the table long, when he determined to borrow an
+easy-chair; he had not had that long, when he made up his mind to
+borrow a bookcase; then, a couch; then, a carpet and rug.
+By that time, he felt he was &lsquo;in furniture stepped in so
+far,&rsquo; as that it could be no worse to borrow it all.
+Consequently, he borrowed it all, and locked up the cellar for
+good. He had always locked it, after every visit. He
+had carried up every separate article in the dead of the night,
+and, at the best, had felt as wicked as a Resurrection Man.
+Every article was blue and furry when brought into his rooms, and
+he had had, in a murderous and guilty sort of way, to polish it
+up while London slept.</p>
+<p>Mr. Testator lived in his furnished chambers two or three
+years, or more, and gradually lulled himself into the opinion
+that the furniture was his own. This was his convenient
+state of mind when, late one night, a step came up the stairs,
+and a hand passed over his door feeling for his knocker, and then
+one deep and solemn rap was rapped that might have been a spring
+in Mr. Testator&rsquo;s easy-chair to shoot him out of it; so
+promptly was it attended with that effect.</p>
+<p>With a candle in his hand, Mr. Testator went to the door, and
+found there, a very pale and very tall man; a man who stooped; a
+man with very high shoulders, a very narrow chest, and a very red
+nose; a shabby-genteel man. He was wrapped in a long
+thread-bare black coat, fastened up the front with more pins than
+buttons, and under his arm he squeezed an umbrella without a
+handle, as if he were playing bagpipes. He said, &lsquo;I
+ask your pardon, but can you tell me&mdash;&rsquo; and stopped;
+his eyes resting on some object within the chambers.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Can I tell you what?&rsquo; asked Mr. Testator, noting
+his stoppage with quick alarm.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I ask your pardon,&rsquo; said the stranger,
+&lsquo;but&mdash;this is not the inquiry I was going to
+make&mdash;<i>do</i> I see in there, any small article of
+property belonging to <i>me</i>?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Testator was beginning to stammer that he was not
+aware&mdash;when the visitor slipped past him, into the
+chambers. There, in a goblin way which froze Mr. Testator
+to the marrow, he examined, first, the writing-table, and said,
+&lsquo;Mine;&rsquo; then, the easy-chair, and said,
+&lsquo;Mine;&rsquo; then, the bookcase, and said,
+&lsquo;Mine;&rsquo; then, turned up a corner of the carpet, and
+said, &lsquo;Mine!&rsquo; in a word, inspected every item of
+furniture from the cellar, in succession, and said,
+&lsquo;Mine!&rsquo; Towards the end of this investigation,
+Mr. Testator perceived that he was sodden with liquor, and that
+the liquor was gin. He was not unsteady with gin, either in
+his speech or carriage; but he was stiff with gin in both
+particulars.</p>
+<p>Mr. Testator was in a dreadful state, for (according to his
+making out of the story) the possible consequences of what he had
+done in recklessness and hardihood, flashed upon him in their
+fulness for the first time. When they had stood gazing at
+one another for a little while, he tremulously began:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir, I am conscious that the fullest explanation,
+compensation, and restitution, are your due. They shall be
+yours. Allow me to entreat that, without temper, without
+even natural irritation on your part, we may have a
+little&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Drop of something to drink,&rsquo; interposed the
+stranger. &lsquo;I am agreeable.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Testator had intended to say, &lsquo;a little quiet
+conversation,&rsquo; but with great relief of mind adopted the
+amendment. He produced a decanter of gin, and was bustling
+about for hot water and sugar, when he found that his visitor had
+already drunk half of the decanter&rsquo;s contents. With
+hot water and sugar the visitor drank the remainder before he had
+been an hour in the chambers by the chimes of the church of St.
+Mary in the Strand; and during the process he frequently
+whispered to himself, &lsquo;Mine!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The gin gone, and Mr. Testator wondering what was to follow
+it, the visitor rose and said, with increased stiffness,
+&lsquo;At what hour of the morning, sir, will it be
+convenient?&rsquo; Mr. Testator hazarded, &lsquo;At
+ten?&rsquo; &lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; said the visitor, &lsquo;at
+ten, to the moment, I shall be here.&rsquo; He then
+contemplated Mr. Testator somewhat at leisure, and said,
+&lsquo;God bless you! How is your wife?&rsquo; Mr.
+Testator (who never had a wife) replied with much feeling,
+&lsquo;Deeply anxious, poor soul, but otherwise
+well.&rsquo; The visitor thereupon turned and went away,
+and fell twice in going down-stairs. From that hour he was
+never heard of. Whether he was a ghost, or a spectral
+illusion of conscience, or a drunken man who had no business
+there, or the drunken rightful owner of the furniture, with a
+transitory gleam of memory; whether he got safe home, or had no
+time to get to; whether he died of liquor on the way, or lived in
+liquor ever afterwards; he never was heard of more. This
+was the story, received with the furniture and held to be as
+substantial, by its second possessor in an upper set of chambers
+in grim Lyons Inn.</p>
+<p>It is to be remarked of chambers in general, that they must
+have been built for chambers, to have the right kind of
+loneliness. You may make a great dwelling-house very
+lonely, by isolating suites of rooms and calling them chambers,
+but you cannot make the true kind of loneliness. In
+dwelling-houses, there have been family festivals; children have
+grown in them, girls have bloomed into women in them, courtships
+and marriages have taken place in them. True chambers never
+were young, childish, maidenly; never had dolls in them, or
+rocking-horses, or christenings, or betrothals, or little
+coffins. Let Gray&rsquo;s Inn identify the child who first
+touched hands and hearts with Robinson Crusoe, in any one of its
+many &lsquo;sets,&rsquo; and that child&rsquo;s little statue, in
+white marble with a golden inscription, shall be at its service,
+at my cost and charge, as a drinking fountain for the spirit, to
+freshen its thirsty square. Let Lincoln&rsquo;s produce
+from all its houses, a twentieth of the procession derivable from
+any dwelling-house one-twentieth of its age, of fair young brides
+who married for love and hope, not settlements, and all the
+Vice-Chancellors shall thenceforward be kept in nosegays for
+nothing, on application to the writer hereof. It is not
+denied that on the terrace of the Adelphi, or in any of the
+streets of that subterranean-stable-haunted spot, or about
+Bedford-row, or James-street of that ilk (a grewsome place), or
+anywhere among the neighbourhoods that have done flowering and
+have run to seed, you may find Chambers replete with the
+accommodations of Solitude, Closeness, and Darkness, where you
+may be as low-spirited as in the genuine article, and might be as
+easily murdered, with the placid reputation of having merely gone
+down to the sea-side. But, the many waters of life did run
+musical in those dry channels once;&mdash;among the Inns,
+never. The only popular legend known in relation to any one
+of the dull family of Inns, is a dark Old Bailey whisper
+concerning Clement&rsquo;s, and importing how the black creature
+who holds the sun-dial there, was a negro who slew his master and
+built the dismal pile out of the contents of his strong
+box&mdash;for which architectural offence alone he ought to have
+been condemned to live in it. But, what populace would
+waste fancy upon such a place, or on New Inn, Staple Inn,
+Barnard&rsquo;s Inn, or any of the shabby crew?</p>
+<p>The genuine laundress, too, is an institution not to be had in
+its entirety out of and away from the genuine Chambers.
+Again, it is not denied that you may be robbed elsewhere.
+Elsewhere you may have&mdash;for money&mdash;dishonesty,
+drunkenness, dirt, laziness, and profound incapacity. But
+the veritable shining-red-faced shameless laundress; the true
+Mrs. Sweeney&mdash;in figure, colour, texture, and smell, like
+the old damp family umbrella; the tip-top complicated abomination
+of stockings, spirits, bonnet, limpness, looseness, and larceny;
+is only to be drawn at the fountain-head. Mrs. Sweeney is
+beyond the reach of individual art. It requires the united
+efforts of several men to ensure that great result, and it is
+only developed in perfection under an Honourable Society and in
+an Inn of Court.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap15"></a>XV<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">NURSE&rsquo;S STORIES</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">There</span> are not many places that I
+find it more agreeable to revisit when I am in an idle mood, than
+some places to which I have never been. For, my
+acquaintance with those spots is of such long standing, and has
+ripened into an intimacy of so affectionate a nature, that I take
+a particular interest in assuring myself that they are
+unchanged.</p>
+<p>I never was in Robinson Crusoe&rsquo;s Island, yet I
+frequently return there. The colony he established on it
+soon faded away, and it is uninhabited by any descendants of the
+grave and courteous Spaniards, or of Will Atkins and the other
+mutineers, and has relapsed into its original condition.
+Not a twig of its wicker houses remains, its goats have long run
+wild again, its screaming parrots would darken the sun with a
+cloud of many flaming colours if a gun were fired there, no face
+is ever reflected in the waters of the little creek which Friday
+swam across when pursued by his two brother cannibals with
+sharpened stomachs. After comparing notes with other
+travellers who have similarly revisited the Island and
+conscientiously inspected it, I have satisfied myself that it
+contains no vestige of Mr. Atkins&rsquo;s domesticity or
+theology, though his track on the memorable evening of his
+landing to set his captain ashore, when he was decoyed about and
+round about until it was dark, and his boat was stove, and his
+strength and spirits failed him, is yet plainly to be
+traced. So is the hill-top on which Robinson was struck
+dumb with joy when the reinstated captain pointed to the ship,
+riding within half a mile of the shore, that was to bear him
+away, in the nine-and-twentieth year of his seclusion in that
+lonely place. So is the sandy beach on which the memorable
+footstep was impressed, and where the savages hauled up their
+canoes when they came ashore for those dreadful public dinners,
+which led to a dancing worse than speech-making. So is the
+cave where the flaring eyes of the old goat made such a goblin
+appearance in the dark. So is the site of the hut where
+Robinson lived with the dog and the parrot and the cat, and where
+he endured those first agonies of solitude, which&mdash;strange
+to say&mdash;never involved any ghostly fancies; a circumstance
+so very remarkable, that perhaps he left out something in writing
+his record? Round hundreds of such objects, hidden in the
+dense tropical foliage, the tropical sea breaks evermore; and
+over them the tropical sky, saving in the short rainy season,
+shines bright and cloudless.</p>
+<p>Neither, was I ever belated among wolves, on the borders of
+France and Spain; nor, did I ever, when night was closing in and
+the ground was covered with snow, draw up my little company among
+some felled trees which served as a breastwork, and there fire a
+train of gunpowder so dexterously that suddenly we had three or
+four score blazing wolves illuminating the darkness around
+us. Nevertheless, I occasionally go back to that dismal
+region and perform the feat again; when indeed to smell the
+singeing and the frying of the wolves afire, and to see them
+setting one another alight as they rush and tumble, and to behold
+them rolling in the snow vainly attempting to put themselves out,
+and to hear their howlings taken up by all the echoes as well as
+by all the unseen wolves within the woods, makes me tremble.</p>
+<p>I was never in the robbers&rsquo; cave, where Gil Blas lived,
+but I often go back there and find the trap-door just as heavy to
+raise as it used to be, while that wicked old disabled Black lies
+everlastingly cursing in bed. I was never in Don
+Quixote&rsquo;s study, where he read his books of chivalry until
+he rose and hacked at imaginary giants, and then refreshed
+himself with great draughts of water, yet you couldn&rsquo;t move
+a book in it without my knowledge, or with my consent. I
+was never (thank Heaven) in company with the little old woman who
+hobbled out of the chest and told the merchant Abudah to go in
+search of the Talisman of Oromanes, yet I make it my business to
+know that she is well preserved and as intolerable as ever.
+I was never at the school where the boy Horatio Nelson got out of
+bed to steal the pears: not because he wanted any, but because
+every other boy was afraid: yet I have several times been back to
+this Academy, to see him let down out of window with a
+sheet. So with Damascus, and Bagdad, and Brobingnag (which
+has the curious fate of being usually misspelt when written), and
+Lilliput, and Laputa, and the Nile, and Abyssinia, and the
+Ganges, and the North Pole, and many hundreds of places&mdash;I
+was never at them, yet it is an affair of my life to keep them
+intact, and I am always going back to them.</p>
+<p>But, when I was in Dullborough one day, revisiting the
+associations of my childhood as recorded in previous pages of
+these notes, my experience in this wise was made quite
+inconsiderable and of no account, by the quantity of places and
+people&mdash;utterly impossible places and people, but none the
+less alarmingly real&mdash;that I found I had been introduced to
+by my nurse before I was six years old, and used to be forced to
+go back to at night without at all wanting to go. If we all
+knew our own minds (in a more enlarged sense than the popular
+acceptation of that phrase), I suspect we should find our nurses
+responsible for most of the dark corners we are forced to go back
+to, against our wills.</p>
+<p>The first diabolical character who intruded himself on my
+peaceful youth (as I called to mind that day at Dullborough), was
+a certain Captain Murderer. This wretch must have been an
+off-shoot of the Blue Beard family, but I had no suspicion of the
+consanguinity in those times. His warning name would seem
+to have awakened no general prejudice against him, for he was
+admitted into the best society and possessed immense
+wealth. Captain Murderer&rsquo;s mission was matrimony, and
+the gratification of a cannibal appetite with tender
+brides. On his marriage morning, he always caused both
+sides of the way to church to be planted with curious flowers;
+and when his bride said, &lsquo;Dear Captain Murderer, I ever saw
+flowers like these before: what are they called?&rsquo; he
+answered, &lsquo;They are called Garnish for house-lamb,&rsquo;
+and laughed at his ferocious practical joke in a horrid manner,
+disquieting the minds of the noble bridal company, with a very
+sharp show of teeth, then displayed for the first time. He
+made love in a coach and six, and married in a coach and twelve,
+and all his horses were milk-white horses with one red spot on
+the back which he caused to be hidden by the harness. For,
+the spot <i>would</i> come there, though every horse was
+milk-white when Captain Murderer bought him. And the spot
+was young bride&rsquo;s blood. (To this terrific point I am
+indebted for my first personal experience of a shudder and cold
+beads on the forehead.) When Captain Murderer had made an
+end of feasting and revelry, and had dismissed the noble guests,
+and was alone with his wife on the day month after their
+marriage, it was his whimsical custom to produce a golden
+rolling-pin and a silver pie-board. Now, there was this
+special feature in the Captain&rsquo;s courtships, that he always
+asked if the young lady could make pie-crust; and if she
+couldn&rsquo;t by nature or education, she was taught.
+Well. When the bride saw Captain Murderer produce the
+golden rolling-pin and silver pie-board, she remembered this, and
+turned up her laced-silk sleeves to make a pie. The Captain
+brought out a silver pie-dish of immense capacity, and the
+Captain brought out flour and butter and eggs and all things
+needful, except the inside of the pie; of materials for the
+staple of the pie itself, the Captain brought out none.
+Then said the lovely bride, &lsquo;Dear Captain Murderer, what
+pie is this to be?&rsquo; He replied, &lsquo;A meat
+pie.&rsquo; Then said the lovely bride, &lsquo;Dear Captain
+Murderer, I see no meat.&rsquo; The Captain humorously
+retorted, &lsquo;Look in the glass.&rsquo; She looked in
+the glass, but still she saw no meat, and then the Captain roared
+with laughter, and suddenly frowning and drawing his sword, bade
+her roll out the crust. So she rolled out the crust,
+dropping large tears upon it all the time because he was so
+cross, and when she had lined the dish with crust and had cut the
+crust all ready to fit the top, the Captain called out, &lsquo;I
+see the meat in the glass!&rsquo; And the bride looked up
+at the glass, just in time to see the Captain cutting her head
+off; and he chopped her in pieces, and peppered her, and salted
+her, and put her in the pie, and sent it to the baker&rsquo;s,
+and ate it all, and picked the bones.</p>
+<p>Captain Murderer went on in this way, prospering exceedingly,
+until he came to choose a bride from two twin sisters, and at
+first didn&rsquo;t know which to choose. For, though one
+was fair and the other dark, they were both equally
+beautiful. But the fair twin loved him, and the dark twin
+hated him, so he chose the fair one. The dark twin would
+have prevented the marriage if she could, but she couldn&rsquo;t;
+however, on the night before it, much suspecting Captain
+Murderer, she stole out and climbed his garden wall, and looked
+in at his window through a chink in the shutter, and saw him
+having his teeth filed sharp. Next day she listened all
+day, and heard him make his joke about the house-lamb. And
+that day month, he had the paste rolled out, and cut the fair
+twin&rsquo;s head off, and chopped her in pieces, and peppered
+her, and salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent it to the
+baker&rsquo;s, and ate it all, and picked the bones.</p>
+<p>Now, the dark twin had had her suspicions much increased by
+the filing of the Captain&rsquo;s teeth, and again by the
+house-lamb joke. Putting all things together when he gave
+out that her sister was dead, she divined the truth, and
+determined to be revenged. So, she went up to Captain
+Murderer&rsquo;s house, and knocked at the knocker and pulled at
+the bell, and when the Captain came to the door, said:
+&lsquo;Dear Captain Murderer, marry me next, for I always loved
+you and was jealous of my sister.&rsquo; The Captain took
+it as a compliment, and made a polite answer, and the marriage
+was quickly arranged. On the night before it, the bride
+again climbed to his window, and again saw him having his teeth
+filed sharp. At this sight she laughed such a terrible
+laugh at the chink in the shutter, that the Captain&rsquo;s blood
+curdled, and he said: &lsquo;I hope nothing has disagreed with
+me!&rsquo; At that, she laughed again, a still more
+terrible laugh, and the shutter was opened and search made, but
+she was nimbly gone, and there was no one. Next day they
+went to church in a coach and twelve, and were married. And
+that day month, she rolled the pie-crust out, and Captain
+Murderer cut her head off, and chopped her in pieces, and
+peppered her, and salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent it
+to the baker&rsquo;s, and ate it all, and picked the bones.</p>
+<p>But before she began to roll out the paste she had taken a
+deadly poison of a most awful character, distilled from
+toads&rsquo; eyes and spiders&rsquo; knees; and Captain Murderer
+had hardly picked her last bone, when he began to swell, and to
+turn blue, and to be all over spots, and to scream. And he
+went on swelling and turning bluer, and being more all over spots
+and screaming, until he reached from floor to ceiling and from
+wall to wall; and then, at one o&rsquo;clock in the morning, he
+blew up with a loud explosion. At the sound of it, all the
+milk-white horses in the stables broke their halters and went
+mad, and then they galloped over everybody in Captain
+Murderer&rsquo;s house (beginning with the family blacksmith who
+had filed his teeth) until the whole were dead, and then they
+galloped away.</p>
+<p>Hundreds of times did I hear this legend of Captain Murderer,
+in my early youth, and added hundreds of times was there a mental
+compulsion upon me in bed, to peep in at his window as the dark
+twin peeped, and to revisit his horrible house, and look at him
+in his blue and spotty and screaming stage, as he reached from
+floor to ceiling and from wall to wall. The young woman who
+brought me acquainted with Captain Murderer had a fiendish
+enjoyment of my terrors, and used to begin, I remember&mdash;as a
+sort of introductory overture&mdash;by clawing the air with both
+hands, and uttering a long low hollow groan. So acutely did
+I suffer from this ceremony in combination with this infernal
+Captain, that I sometimes used to plead I thought I was hardly
+strong enough and old enough to hear the story again just
+yet. But, she never spared me one word of it, and indeed
+commanded the awful chalice to my lips as the only preservative
+known to science against &lsquo;The Black Cat&rsquo;&mdash;a
+weird and glaring-eyed supernatural Tom, who was reputed to prowl
+about the world by night, sucking the breath of infancy, and who
+was endowed with a special thirst (as I was given to understand)
+for mine.</p>
+<p>This female bard&mdash;may she have been repaid my debt of
+obligation to her in the matter of nightmares and
+perspirations!&mdash;reappears in my memory as the daughter of a
+shipwright. Her name was Mercy, though she had none on
+me. There was something of a shipbuilding flavour in the
+following story. As it always recurs to me in a vague
+association with calomel pills, I believe it to have been
+reserved for dull nights when I was low with medicine.</p>
+<p>There was once a shipwright, and he wrought in a Government
+Yard, and his name was Chips. And his father&rsquo;s name
+before him was Chips, and <i>his</i> father&rsquo;s name before
+<i>him</i> was Chips, and they were all Chipses. And Chips
+the father had sold himself to the Devil for an iron pot and a
+bushel of tenpenny nails and half a ton of copper and a rat that
+could speak; and Chips the grandfather had sold himself to the
+Devil for an iron pot and a bushel of tenpenny nails and half a
+ton of copper and a rat that could speak; and Chips the
+great-grandfather had disposed of himself in the same direction
+on the same terms; and the bargain had run in the family for a
+long, long time. So, one day, when young Chips was at work
+in the Dock Slip all alone, down in the dark hold of an old
+Seventy-four that was haled up for repairs, the Devil presented
+himself, and remarked:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&lsquo;A Lemon has pips,<br />
+And a Yard has ships,<br />
+And <i>I</i>&rsquo;ll have Chips!&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>(I don&rsquo;t know why, but this fact of the Devil&rsquo;s
+expressing himself in rhyme was peculiarly trying to me.)
+Chips looked up when he heard the words, and there he saw the
+Devil with saucer eyes that squinted on a terrible great scale,
+and that struck out sparks of blue fire continually. And
+whenever he winked his eyes, showers of blue sparks came out, and
+his eyelashes made a clattering like flints and steels striking
+lights. And hanging over one of his arms by the handle was
+an iron pot, and under that arm was a bushel of tenpenny nails,
+and under his other arm was half a ton of copper, and sitting on
+one of his shoulders was a rat that could speak. So, the
+Devil said again:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&lsquo;A Lemon has pips,<br />
+And a Yard has ships,<br />
+And <i>I</i>&rsquo;ll have Chips!&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>(The invariable effect of this alarming tautology on the part
+of the Evil Spirit was to deprive me of my senses for some
+moments.) So, Chips answered never a word, but went on with
+his work. &lsquo;What are you doing, Chips?&rsquo; said the
+rat that could speak. &lsquo;I am putting in new planks
+where you and your gang have eaten old away,&rsquo; said
+Chips. &lsquo;But we&rsquo;ll eat them too,&rsquo; said the
+rat that could speak; &lsquo;and we&rsquo;ll let in the water and
+drown the crew, and we&rsquo;ll eat them too.&rsquo; Chips,
+being only a shipwright, and not a Man-of-war&rsquo;s man, said,
+&lsquo;You are welcome to it.&rsquo; But he couldn&rsquo;t
+keep his eyes off the half a ton of copper or the bushel of
+tenpenny nails; for nails and copper are a shipwright&rsquo;s
+sweethearts, and shipwrights will run away with them whenever
+they can. So, the Devil said, &lsquo;I see what you are
+looking at, Chips. You had better strike the bargain.
+You know the terms. Your father before you was well
+acquainted with them, and so were your grandfather and
+great-grandfather before him.&rsquo; Says Chips, &lsquo;I
+like the copper, and I like the nails, and I don&rsquo;t mind the
+pot, but I don&rsquo;t like the rat.&rsquo; Says the Devil,
+fiercely, &lsquo;You can&rsquo;t have the metal without
+him&mdash;and <i>he&rsquo;s</i> a curiosity. I&rsquo;m
+going.&rsquo; Chips, afraid of losing the half a ton of
+copper and the bushel of nails, then said, &lsquo;Give us
+hold!&rsquo; So, he got the copper and the nails and the
+pot and the rat that could speak, and the Devil vanished.
+Chips sold the copper, and he sold the nails, and he would have
+sold the pot; but whenever he offered it for sale, the rat was in
+it, and the dealers dropped it, and would have nothing to say to
+the bargain. So, Chips resolved to kill the rat, and, being
+at work in the Yard one day with a great kettle of hot pitch on
+one side of him and the iron pot with the rat in it on the other,
+he turned the scalding pitch into the pot, and filled it
+full. Then, he kept his eye upon it till it cooled and
+hardened, and then he let it stand for twenty days, and then he
+heated the pitch again and turned it back into the kettle, and
+then he sank the pot in water for twenty days more, and then he
+got the smelters to put it in the furnace for twenty days more,
+and then they gave it him out, red hot, and looking like red-hot
+glass instead of iron-yet there was the rat in it, just the same
+as ever! And the moment it caught his eye, it said with a
+jeer:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&lsquo;A Lemon has pips,<br />
+And a Yard has ships,<br />
+And <i>I</i>&rsquo;ll have Chips!&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>(For this Refrain I had waited since its last appearance, with
+inexpressible horror, which now culminated.) Chips now felt
+certain in his own mind that the rat would stick to him; the rat,
+answering his thought, said, &lsquo;I will&mdash;like
+pitch!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Now, as the rat leaped out of the pot when it had spoken, and
+made off, Chips began to hope that it wouldn&rsquo;t keep its
+word. But, a terrible thing happened next day. For,
+when dinner-time came, and the Dock-bell rang to strike work, he
+put his rule into the long pocket at the side of his trousers,
+and there he found a rat&mdash;not that rat, but another
+rat. And in his hat, he found another; and in his
+pocket-handkerchief, another; and in the sleeves of his coat,
+when he pulled it on to go to dinner, two more. And from
+that time he found himself so frightfully intimate with all the
+rats in the Yard, that they climbed up his legs when he was at
+work, and sat on his tools while he used them. And they
+could all speak to one another, and he understood what they
+said. And they got into his lodging, and into his bed, and
+into his teapot, and into his beer, and into his boots. And
+he was going to be married to a corn-chandler&rsquo;s daughter;
+and when he gave her a workbox he had himself made for her, a rat
+jumped out of it; and when he put his arm round her waist, a rat
+clung about her; so the marriage was broken off, though the banns
+were already twice put up&mdash;which the parish clerk well
+remembers, for, as he handed the book to the clergyman for the
+second time of asking, a large fat rat ran over the leaf.
+(By this time a special cascade of rats was rolling down my back,
+and the whole of my small listening person was overrun with
+them. At intervals ever since, I have been morbidly afraid
+of my own pocket, lest my exploring hand should find a specimen
+or two of those vermin in it.)</p>
+<p>You may believe that all this was very terrible to Chips; but
+even all this was not the worst. He knew besides, what the
+rats were doing, wherever they were. So, sometimes he would
+cry aloud, when he was at his club at night, &lsquo;Oh!
+Keep the rats out of the convicts&rsquo; burying-ground!
+Don&rsquo;t let them do that!&rsquo; Or,
+&lsquo;There&rsquo;s one of them at the cheese
+down-stairs!&rsquo; Or, &lsquo;There&rsquo;s two of them
+smelling at the baby in the garret!&rsquo; Or, other things
+of that sort. At last, he was voted mad, and lost his work
+in the Yard, and could get no other work. But, King George
+wanted men, so before very long he got pressed for a
+sailor. And so he was taken off in a boat one evening to
+his ship, lying at Spithead, ready to sail. And so the
+first thing he made out in her as he got near her, was the
+figure-head of the old Seventy-four, where he had seen the
+Devil. She was called the Argonaut, and they rowed right
+under the bowsprit where the figure-head of the Argonaut, with a
+sheepskin in his hand and a blue gown on, was looking out to sea;
+and sitting staring on his forehead was the rat who could speak,
+and his exact words were these: &lsquo;Chips ahoy! Old
+boy! We&rsquo;ve pretty well eat them too, and we&rsquo;ll
+drown the crew, and will eat them too!&rsquo; (Here I
+always became exceedingly faint, and would have asked for water,
+but that I was speechless.)</p>
+<p>The ship was bound for the Indies; and if you don&rsquo;t know
+where that is, you ought to it, and angels will never love
+you. (Here I felt myself an outcast from a future
+state.) The ship set sail that very night, and she sailed,
+and sailed, and sailed. Chips&rsquo;s feelings were
+dreadful. Nothing ever equalled his terrors. No
+wonder. At last, one day he asked leave to speak to the
+Admiral. The Admiral giv&rsquo; leave. Chips went
+down on his knees in the Great State Cabin. &lsquo;Your
+Honour, unless your Honour, without a moment&rsquo;s loss of
+time, makes sail for the nearest shore, this is a doomed ship,
+and her name is the Coffin!&rsquo; &lsquo;Young man, your
+words are a madman&rsquo;s words.&rsquo; &lsquo;Your Honour
+no; they are nibbling us away.&rsquo;
+&lsquo;They?&rsquo; &lsquo;Your Honour, them dreadful
+rats. Dust and hollowness where solid oak ought to
+be! Rats nibbling a grave for every man on board!
+Oh! Does your Honour love your Lady and your pretty
+children?&rsquo; &lsquo;Yes, my man, to be
+sure.&rsquo; &lsquo;Then, for God&rsquo;s sake, make for
+the nearest shore, for at this present moment the rats are all
+stopping in their work, and are all looking straight towards you
+with bare teeth, and are all saying to one another that you shall
+never, never, never, never, see your Lady and your children
+more.&rsquo; &lsquo;My poor fellow, you are a case for the
+doctor. Sentry, take care of this man!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>So, he was bled and he was blistered, and he was this and
+that, for six whole days and nights. So, then he again
+asked leave to speak to the Admiral. The Admiral giv&rsquo;
+leave. He went down on his knees in the Great State
+Cabin. &lsquo;Now, Admiral, you must die! You took no
+warning; you must die! The rats are never wrong in their
+calculations, and they make out that they&rsquo;ll be through, at
+twelve to-night. So, you must die!&mdash;With me and all
+the rest!&rsquo; And so at twelve o&rsquo;clock there was a
+great leak reported in the ship, and a torrent of water rushed in
+and nothing could stop it, and they all went down, every living
+soul. And what the rats&mdash;being water-rats&mdash;left
+of Chips, at last floated to shore, and sitting on him was an
+immense overgrown rat, laughing, that dived when the corpse
+touched the beach and never came up. And there was a deal
+of seaweed on the remains. And if you get thirteen bits of
+seaweed, and dry them and burn them in the fire, they will go off
+like in these thirteen words as plain as plain can be:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&lsquo;A Lemon has pips,<br />
+And a Yard has ships,<br />
+And <i>I</i>&rsquo;ve got Chips!&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The same female bard&mdash;descended, possibly, from those
+terrible old Scalds who seem to have existed for the express
+purpose of addling the brains of mankind when they begin to
+investigate languages&mdash;made a standing pretence which
+greatly assisted in forcing me back to a number of hideous places
+that I would by all means have avoided. This pretence was,
+that all her ghost stories had occurred to her own
+relations. Politeness towards a meritorious family,
+therefore, forbade my doubting them, and they acquired an air of
+authentication that impaired my digestive powers for life.
+There was a narrative concerning an unearthly animal foreboding
+death, which appeared in the open street to a parlour-maid who
+&lsquo;went to fetch the beer&rsquo; for supper: first (as I now
+recall it) assuming the likeness of a black dog, and gradually
+rising on its hind-legs and swelling into the semblance of some
+quadruped greatly surpassing a hippopotamus: which
+apparition&mdash;not because I deemed it in the least improbable,
+but because I felt it to be really too large to bear&mdash;I
+feebly endeavoured to explain away. But, on Mercy&rsquo;s
+retorting with wounded dignity that the parlour-maid was her own
+sister-in-law, I perceived there was no hope, and resigned myself
+to this zoological phenomenon as one of my many pursuers.
+There was another narrative describing the apparition of a young
+woman who came out of a glass-case and haunted another young
+woman until the other young woman questioned it and elicited that
+its bones (Lord! To think of its being so particular about
+its bones!) were buried under the glass-case, whereas she
+required them to be interred, with every Undertaking solemnity up
+to twenty-four pound ten, in another particular place. This
+narrative I considered&mdash;I had a personal interest in
+disproving, because we had glass-cases at home, and how,
+otherwise, was I to be guaranteed from the intrusion of young
+women requiring <i>me</i> to bury them up to twenty-four pound
+ten, when I had only twopence a week? But my remorseless
+nurse cut the ground from under my tender feet, by informing me
+that She was the other young woman; and I couldn&rsquo;t say
+&lsquo;I don&rsquo;t believe you;&rsquo; it was not possible.</p>
+<p>Such are a few of the uncommercial journeys that I was forced
+to make, against my will, when I was very young and
+unreasoning. And really, as to the latter part of them, it
+is not so very long ago&mdash;now I come to think of
+it&mdash;that I was asked to undertake them once again, with a
+steady countenance.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap16"></a>XVI<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">ARCADIAN LONDON</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Being</span> in a humour for complete
+solitude and uninterrupted meditation this autumn, I have taken a
+lodging for six weeks in the most unfrequented part of
+England&mdash;in a word, in London.</p>
+<p>The retreat into which I have withdrawn myself, is
+Bond-street. From this lonely spot I make pilgrimages into
+the surrounding wilderness, and traverse extensive tracts of the
+Great Desert. The first solemn feeling of isolation
+overcome, the first oppressive consciousness of profound
+retirement conquered, I enjoy that sense of freedom, and feel
+reviving within me that latent wildness of the original savage,
+which has been (upon the whole somewhat frequently) noticed by
+Travellers.</p>
+<p>My lodgings are at a hatter&rsquo;s&mdash;my own
+hatter&rsquo;s. After exhibiting no articles in his window
+for some weeks, but sea-side wide-awakes, shooting-caps, and a
+choice of rough waterproof head-gear for the moors and mountains,
+he has put upon the heads of his family as much of this stock as
+they could carry, and has taken them off to the Isle of
+Thanet. His young man alone remains&mdash;and remains alone
+in the shop. The young man has let out the fire at which
+the irons are heated, and, saving his strong sense of duty, I see
+no reason why he should take the shutters down.</p>
+<p>Happily for himself and for his country the young man is a
+Volunteer; most happily for himself, or I think he would become
+the prey of a settled melancholy. For, to live surrounded
+by human hats, and alienated from human heads to fit them on, is
+surely a great endurance. But, the young man, sustained by
+practising his exercise, and by constantly furbishing up his
+regulation plume (it is unnecessary to observe that, as a hatter,
+he is in a cock&rsquo;s-feather corps), is resigned, and
+uncomplaining. On a Saturday, when he closes early and gets
+his Knickerbockers on, he is even cheerful. I am gratefully
+particular in this reference to him, because he is my companion
+through many peaceful hours.</p>
+<p>My hatter has a desk up certain steps behind his counter,
+enclosed like the clerk&rsquo;s desk at Church. I shut
+myself into this place of seclusion, after breakfast, and
+meditate. At such times, I observe the young man loading an
+imaginary rifle with the greatest precision, and maintaining a
+most galling and destructive fire upon the national enemy.
+I thank him publicly for his companionship and his
+patriotism.</p>
+<p>The simple character of my life, and the calm nature of the
+scenes by which I am surrounded, occasion me to rise early.
+I go forth in my slippers, and promenade the pavement. It
+is pastoral to feel the freshness of the air in the uninhabited
+town, and to appreciate the shepherdess character of the few
+milkwomen who purvey so little milk that it would be worth
+nobody&rsquo;s while to adulterate it, if anybody were left to
+undertake the task. On the crowded sea-shore, the great
+demand for milk, combined with the strong local temptation of
+chalk, would betray itself in the lowered quality of the
+article. In Arcadian London I derive it from the cow.</p>
+<p>The Arcadian simplicity of the metropolis altogether, and the
+primitive ways into which it has fallen in this autumnal Golden
+Age, make it entirely new to me. Within a few hundred yards
+of my retreat, is the house of a friend who maintains a most
+sumptuous butler. I never, until yesterday, saw that butler
+out of superfine black broadcloth. Until yesterday, I never
+saw him off duty, never saw him (he is the best of butlers) with
+the appearance of having any mind for anything but the glory of
+his master and his master&rsquo;s friends. Yesterday
+morning, walking in my slippers near the house of which he is the
+prop and ornament&mdash;a house now a waste of shutters&mdash;I
+encountered that butler, also in his slippers, and in a shooting
+suit of one colour, and in a low-crowned straw-hat, smoking an
+early cigar. He felt that we had formerly met in another
+state of existence, and that we were translated into a new
+sphere. Wisely and well, he passed me without
+recognition. Under his arm he carried the morning paper,
+and shortly afterwards I saw him sitting on a rail in the
+pleasant open landscape of Regent-street, perusing it at his ease
+under the ripening sun.</p>
+<p>My landlord having taken his whole establishment to be salted
+down, I am waited on by an elderly woman labouring under a
+chronic sniff, who, at the shadowy hour of half-past nine
+o&rsquo;clock of every evening, gives admittance at the street
+door to a meagre and mouldy old man whom I have never yet seen
+detached from a flat pint of beer in a pewter pot. The
+meagre and mouldy old man is her husband, and the pair have a
+dejected consciousness that they are not justified in appearing
+on the surface of the earth. They come out of some hole
+when London empties itself, and go in again when it fills.
+I saw them arrive on the evening when I myself took possession,
+and they arrived with the flat pint of beer, and their bed in a
+bundle. The old man is a weak old man, and appeared to me
+to get the bed down the kitchen stairs by tumbling down with and
+upon it. They make their bed in the lowest and remotest
+corner of the basement, and they smell of bed, and have no
+possession but bed: unless it be (which I rather infer from an
+under-current of flavour in them) cheese. I know their
+name, through the chance of having called the wife&rsquo;s
+attention, at half-past nine on the second evening of our
+acquaintance, to the circumstance of there being some one at the
+house door; when she apologetically explained, &lsquo;It&rsquo;s
+only Mr. Klem.&rsquo; What becomes of Mr. Klem all day, or
+when he goes out, or why, is a mystery I cannot penetrate; but at
+half-past nine he never fails to turn up on the door-step with
+the flat pint of beer. And the pint of beer, flat as it is,
+is so much more important than himself, that it always seems to
+my fancy as if it had found him drivelling in the street and had
+humanely brought him home. In making his way below, Mr.
+Klem never goes down the middle of the passage, like another
+Christian, but shuffles against the wall as if entreating me to
+take notice that he is occupying as little space as possible in
+the house; and whenever I come upon him face to face, he backs
+from me in fascinated confusion. The most extraordinary
+circumstance I have traced in connexion with this aged couple,
+is, that there is a Miss Klem, their daughter, apparently ten
+years older than either of them, who has also a bed and smells of
+it, and carries it about the earth at dusk and hides it in
+deserted houses. I came into this piece of knowledge
+through Mrs. Klem&rsquo;s beseeching me to sanction the
+sheltering of Miss Klem under that roof for a single night,
+&lsquo;between her takin&rsquo; care of the upper part in Pall
+Mall which the family of his back, and a &rsquo;ouse in
+Serjameses-street, which the family of leaves towng
+ter-morrer.&rsquo; I gave my gracious consent (having
+nothing that I know of to do with it), and in the shadowy hours
+Miss Klem became perceptible on the door-step, wrestling with a
+bed in a bundle. Where she made it up for the night I
+cannot positively state, but, I think, in a sink. I know
+that with the instinct of a reptile or an insect, she stowed it
+and herself away in deep obscurity. In the Klem family, I
+have noticed another remarkable gift of nature, and that is a
+power they possess of converting everything into flue. Such
+broken victuals as they take by stealth, appear (whatever the
+nature of the viands) invariably to generate flue; and even the
+nightly pint of beer, instead of assimilating naturally, strikes
+me as breaking out in that form, equally on the shabby gown of
+Mrs. Klem, and the threadbare coat of her husband.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Klem has no idea of my name&mdash;as to Mr. Klem he has
+no idea of anything&mdash;and only knows me as her good
+gentleman. Thus, if doubtful whether I am in my room or no,
+Mrs. Klem taps at the door and says, &lsquo;Is my good gentleman
+here?&rsquo; Or, if a messenger desiring to see me were
+consistent with my solitude, she would show him in with
+&lsquo;Here is my good gentleman.&rsquo; I find this to be
+a generic custom. For, I meant to have observed before now,
+that in its Arcadian time all my part of London is indistinctly
+pervaded by the Klem species. They creep about with beds,
+and go to bed in miles of deserted houses. They hold no
+companionship except that sometimes, after dark, two of them will
+emerge from opposite houses, and meet in the middle of the road
+as on neutral ground, or will peep from adjoining houses over an
+interposing barrier of area railings, and compare a few reserved
+mistrustful notes respecting their good ladies or good
+gentlemen. This I have discovered in the course of various
+solitary rambles I have taken Northward from my retirement, along
+the awful perspectives of Wimpole-street, Harley-street, and
+similar frowning regions. Their effect would be scarcely
+distinguishable from that of the primeval forests, but for the
+Klem stragglers; these may be dimly observed, when the heavy
+shadows fall, flitting to and fro, putting up the door-chain,
+taking in the pint of beer, lowering like phantoms at the dark
+parlour windows, or secretly consorting underground with the
+dust-bin and the water-cistern.</p>
+<p>In the Burlington Arcade, I observe, with peculiar pleasure, a
+primitive state of manners to have superseded the baneful
+influences of ultra civilisation. Nothing can surpass the
+innocence of the ladies&rsquo; shoe-shops, the artificial-flower
+repositories, and the head-dress depots. They are in
+strange hands at this time of year&mdash;hands of unaccustomed
+persons, who are imperfectly acquainted with the prices of the
+goods, and contemplate them with unsophisticated delight and
+wonder. The children of these virtuous people exchange
+familiarities in the Arcade, and temper the asperity of the two
+tall beadles. Their youthful prattle blends in an unwonted
+manner with the harmonious shade of the scene, and the general
+effect is, as of the voices of birds in a grove. In this
+happy restoration of the golden time, it has been my privilege
+even to see the bigger beadle&rsquo;s wife. She brought him
+his dinner in a basin, and he ate it in his arm-chair, and
+afterwards fell asleep like a satiated child. At Mr.
+Truefitt&rsquo;s, the excellent hairdresser&rsquo;s, they are
+learning French to beguile the time; and even the few solitaries
+left on guard at Mr. Atkinson&rsquo;s, the perfumer&rsquo;s round
+the corner (generally the most inexorable gentleman in London,
+and the most scornful of three-and-sixpence), condescend a
+little, as they drowsily bide or recall their turn for chasing
+the ebbing Neptune on the ribbed sea-sand. From Messrs.
+Hunt and Roskell&rsquo;s, the jewellers, all things are absent
+but the precious stones, and the gold and silver, and the
+soldierly pensioner at the door with his decorated breast.
+I might stand night and day for a month to come, in Saville-row,
+with my tongue out, yet not find a doctor to look at it for love
+or money. The dentists&rsquo; instruments are rusting in
+their drawers, and their horrible cool parlours, where people
+pretend to read the Every-Day Book and not to be afraid, are
+doing penance for their grimness in white sheets. The
+light-weight of shrewd appearance, with one eye always shut up,
+as if he were eating a sharp gooseberry in all seasons, who
+usually stands at the gateway of the livery-stables on very
+little legs under a very large waistcoat, has gone to
+Doncaster. Of such undesigning aspect is his guileless yard
+now, with its gravel and scarlet beans, and the yellow Break
+housed under a glass roof in a corner, that I almost believe I
+could not be taken in there, if I tried. In the places of
+business of the great tailors, the cheval-glasses are dim and
+dusty for lack of being looked into. Ranges of brown paper
+coat and waistcoat bodies look as funereal as if they were the
+hatchments of the customers with whose names they are inscribed;
+the measuring tapes hang idle on the wall; the order-taker, left
+on the hopeless chance of some one looking in, yawns in the last
+extremity over the book of patterns, as if he were trying to read
+that entertaining library. The hotels in Brook-street have
+no one in them, and the staffs of servants stare disconsolately
+for next season out of all the windows. The very man who
+goes about like an erect Turtle, between two boards
+recommendatory of the Sixteen Shilling Trousers, is aware of
+himself as a hollow mockery, and eats filberts while he leans his
+hinder shell against a wall.</p>
+<p>Among these tranquillising objects, it is my delight to walk
+and meditate. Soothed by the repose around me, I wander
+insensibly to considerable distances, and guide myself back by
+the stars. Thus, I enjoy the contrast of a few still
+partially inhabited and busy spots where all the lights are not
+fled, where all the garlands are not dead, whence all but I have
+not departed. Then, does it appear to me that in this age
+three things are clamorously required of Man in the miscellaneous
+thoroughfares of the metropolis. Firstly, that he have his
+boots cleaned. Secondly, that he eat a penny ice.
+Thirdly, that he get himself photographed. Then do I
+speculate, What have those seam-worn artists been who stand at
+the photograph doors in Greek caps, sample in hand, and
+mysteriously salute the public&mdash;the female public with a
+pressing tenderness&mdash;to come in and be
+&lsquo;took&rsquo;? What did they do with their greasy
+blandishments, before the era of cheap photography? Of what
+class were their previous victims, and how victimised? And
+how did they get, and how did they pay for, that large collection
+of likenesses, all purporting to have been taken inside, with the
+taking of none of which had that establishment any more to do
+than with the taking of Delhi?</p>
+<p>But, these are small oases, and I am soon back again in
+metropolitan Arcadia. It is my impression that much of its
+serene and peaceful character is attributable to the absence of
+customary Talk. How do I know but there may be subtle
+influences in Talk, to vex the souls of men who don&rsquo;t hear
+it? How do I know but that Talk, five, ten, twenty miles
+off, may get into the air and disagree with me? If I rise
+from my bed, vaguely troubled and wearied and sick of my life, in
+the session of Parliament, who shall say that my noble friend, my
+right reverend friend, my right honourable friend, my honourable
+friend, my honourable and learned friend, or my honourable and
+gallant friend, may not be responsible for that effect upon my
+nervous system? Too much Ozone in the air, I am informed
+and fully believe (though I have no idea what it is), would
+affect me in a marvellously disagreeable way; why may not too
+much Talk? I don&rsquo;t see or hear the Ozone; I
+don&rsquo;t see or hear the Talk. And there is so much
+Talk; so much too much; such loud cry, and such scant supply of
+wool; such a deal of fleecing, and so little fleece! Hence,
+in the Arcadian season, I find it a delicious triumph to walk
+down to deserted Westminster, and see the Courts shut up; to walk
+a little further and see the Two Houses shut up; to stand in the
+Abbey Yard, like the New Zealander of the grand English History
+(concerning which unfortunate man, a whole rookery of
+mares&rsquo; nests is generally being discovered), and gloat upon
+the ruins of Talk. Returning to my primitive solitude and
+lying down to sleep, my grateful heart expands with the
+consciousness that there is no adjourned Debate, no ministerial
+explanation, nobody to give notice of intention to ask the noble
+Lord at the head of her Majesty&rsquo;s Government
+five-and-twenty bootless questions in one, no term time with
+legal argument, no Nisi Prius with eloquent appeal to British
+Jury; that the air will to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
+remain untroubled by this superabundant generating of Talk.
+In a minor degree it is a delicious triumph to me to go into the
+club, and see the carpets up, and the Bores and the other dust
+dispersed to the four winds. Again, New Zealander-like, I
+stand on the cold hearth, and say in the solitude, &lsquo;Here I
+watched Bore A 1, with voice always mysteriously low and head
+always mysteriously drooped, whispering political secrets into
+the ears of Adam&rsquo;s confiding children. Accursed be
+his memory for ever and a day!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>But, I have all this time been coming to the point, that the
+happy nature of my retirement is most sweetly expressed in its
+being the abode of Love. It is, as it were, an inexpensive
+Agapemone: nobody&rsquo;s speculation: everybody&rsquo;s
+profit. The one great result of the resumption of primitive
+habits, and (convertible terms) the not having much to do, is,
+the abounding of Love.</p>
+<p>The Klem species are incapable of the softer emotions;
+probably, in that low nomadic race, the softer emotions have all
+degenerated into flue. But, with this exception, all the
+sharers of my retreat make love.</p>
+<p>I have mentioned Saville-row. We all know the
+Doctor&rsquo;s servant. We all know what a respectable man
+he is, what a hard dry man, what a firm man, what a confidential
+man: how he lets us into the waiting-room, like a man who knows
+minutely what is the matter with us, but from whom the rack
+should not wring the secret. In the prosaic
+&ldquo;season,&rdquo; he has distinctly the appearance of a man
+conscious of money in the savings bank, and taking his stand on
+his respectability with both feet. At that time it is as
+impossible to associate him with relaxation, or any human
+weakness, as it is to meet his eye without feeling guilty of
+indisposition. In the blest Arcadian time, how
+changed! I have seen him, in a pepper-and-salt
+jacket&mdash;jacket&mdash;and drab trousers, with his arm round
+the waist of a bootmaker&rsquo;s housemaid, smiling in open
+day. I have seen him at the pump by the Albany,
+unsolicitedly pumping for two fair young creatures, whose figures
+as they bent over their cans, were&mdash;if I may be allowed an
+original expression&mdash;a model for the sculptor. I have
+seen him trying the piano in the Doctor&rsquo;s drawing-room with
+his forefinger, and have heard him humming tunes in praise of
+lovely woman. I have seen him seated on a fire-engine, and
+going (obviously in search of excitement) to a fire. I saw
+him, one moonlight evening when the peace and purity of our
+Arcadian west were at their height, polk with the lovely daughter
+of a cleaner of gloves, from the door-steps of his own residence,
+across Saville-row, round by Clifford-street and Old
+Burlington-street, back to Burlington-gardens. Is this the
+Golden Age revived, or Iron London?</p>
+<p>The Dentist&rsquo;s servant. Is that man no mystery to
+us, no type of invisible power? The tremendous individual
+knows (who else does?) what is done with the extracted teeth; he
+knows what goes on in the little room where something is always
+being washed or filed; he knows what warm spicy infusion is put
+into the comfortable tumbler from which we rinse our wounded
+mouth, with a gap in it that feels a foot wide; he knows whether
+the thing we spit into is a fixture communicating with the
+Thames, or could be cleared away for a dance; he sees the
+horrible parlour where there are no patients in it, and he could
+reveal, if he would, what becomes of the Every-Day Book
+then. The conviction of my coward conscience when I see
+that man in a professional light, is, that he knows all the
+statistics of my teeth and gums, my double teeth, my single
+teeth, my stopped teeth, and my sound. In this Arcadian
+rest, I am fearless of him as of a harmless, powerless creature
+in a Scotch cap, who adores a young lady in a voluminous
+crinoline, at a neighbouring billiard-room, and whose passion
+would be uninfluenced if every one of her teeth were false.
+They may be. He takes them all on trust.</p>
+<p>In secluded corners of the place of my seclusion, there are
+little shops withdrawn from public curiosity, and never two
+together, where servants&rsquo; perquisites are bought. The
+cook may dispose of grease at these modest and convenient marts;
+the butler, of bottles; the valet and lady&rsquo;s maid, of
+clothes; most servants, indeed, of most things they may happen to
+lay hold of. I have been told that in sterner times loving
+correspondence, otherwise interdicted, may be maintained by
+letter through the agency of some of these useful
+establishments. In the Arcadian autumn, no such device is
+necessary. Everybody loves, and openly and blamelessly
+loves. My landlord&rsquo;s young man loves the whole of one
+side of the way of Old Bond-street, and is beloved several doors
+up New Bond-street besides. I never look out of window but
+I see kissing of hands going on all around me. It is the
+morning custom to glide from shop to shop and exchange tender
+sentiments; it is the evening custom for couples to stand hand in
+hand at house doors, or roam, linked in that flowery manner,
+through the unpeopled streets. There is nothing else to do
+but love; and what there is to do, is done.</p>
+<p>In unison with this pursuit, a chaste simplicity obtains in
+the domestic habits of Arcadia. Its few scattered people
+dine early, live moderately, sup socially, and sleep
+soundly. It is rumoured that the Beadles of the Arcade,
+from being the mortal enemies of boys, have signed with tears an
+address to Lord Shaftesbury, and subscribed to a ragged
+school. No wonder! For, they might turn their heavy
+maces into crooks and tend sheep in the Arcade, to the purling of
+the water-carts as they give the thirsty streets much more to
+drink than they can carry.</p>
+<p>A happy Golden Age, and a serene tranquillity. Charming
+picture, but it will fade. The iron age will return, London
+will come back to town, if I show my tongue then in Saville-row
+for half a minute I shall be prescribed for, the Doctor&rsquo;s
+man and the Dentist&rsquo;s man will then pretend that these days
+of unprofessional innocence never existed. Where Mr. and
+Mrs. Klem and their bed will be at that time, passes human
+knowledge; but my hatter hermitage will then know them no more,
+nor will it then know me. The desk at which I have written
+these meditations will retributively assist at the making out of
+my account, and the wheels of gorgeous carriages and the hoofs of
+high-stepping horses will crush the silence out of
+Bond-street&mdash;will grind Arcadia away, and give it to the
+elements in granite powder.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap17"></a>XVII<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE ITALIAN PRISONER</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> rising of the Italian people
+from under their unutterable wrongs, and the tardy burst of day
+upon them after the long long night of oppression that has
+darkened their beautiful country, have naturally caused my mind
+to dwell often of late on my own small wanderings in Italy.
+Connected with them, is a curious little drama, in which the
+character I myself sustained was so very subordinate that I may
+relate its story without any fear of being suspected of
+self-display. It is strictly a true story.</p>
+<p>I am newly arrived one summer evening, in a certain small town
+on the Mediterranean. I have had my dinner at the inn, and
+I and the mosquitoes are coming out into the streets
+together. It is far from Naples; but a bright, brown, plump
+little woman-servant at the inn, is a Neapolitan, and is so
+vivaciously expert in panto-mimic action, that in the single
+moment of answering my request to have a pair of shoes cleaned
+which I have left up-stairs, she plies imaginary brushes, and
+goes completely through the motions of polishing the shoes up,
+and laying them at my feet. I smile at the brisk little
+woman in perfect satisfaction with her briskness; and the brisk
+little woman, amiably pleased with me because I am pleased with
+her, claps her hands and laughs delightfully. We are in the
+inn yard. As the little woman&rsquo;s bright eyes sparkle
+on the cigarette I am smoking, I make bold to offer her one; she
+accepts it none the less merrily, because I touch a most charming
+little dimple in her fat cheek, with its light paper end.
+Glancing up at the many green lattices to assure herself that the
+mistress is not looking on, the little woman then puts her two
+little dimple arms a-kimbo, and stands on tiptoe to light her
+cigarette at mine. &lsquo;And now, dear little sir,&rsquo;
+says she, puffing out smoke in a most innocent and cherubic
+manner, &lsquo;keep quite straight on, take the first to the
+right and probably you will see him standing at his
+door.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I gave a commission to &lsquo;him,&rsquo; and I have been
+inquiring about him. I have carried the commission about
+Italy several months. Before I left England, there came to
+me one night a certain generous and gentle English nobleman (he
+is dead in these days when I relate the story, and exiles have
+lost their best British friend), with this request:
+&lsquo;Whenever you come to such a town, will you seek out one
+Giovanni Carlavero, who keeps a little wine-shop there, mention
+my name to him suddenly, and observe how it affects
+him?&rsquo; I accepted the trust, and am on my way to
+discharge it.</p>
+<p>The sirocco has been blowing all day, and it is a hot
+unwholesome evening with no cool sea-breeze. Mosquitoes and
+fire-flies are lively enough, but most other creatures are
+faint. The coquettish airs of pretty young women in the
+tiniest and wickedest of dolls&rsquo; straw hats, who lean out at
+opened lattice blinds, are almost the only airs stirring.
+Very ugly and haggard old women with distaffs, and with a grey
+tow upon them that looks as if they were spinning out their own
+hair (I suppose they were once pretty, too, but it is very
+difficult to believe so), sit on the footway leaning against
+house walls. Everybody who has come for water to the
+fountain, stays there, and seems incapable of any such energetic
+idea as going home. Vespers are over, though not so long
+but that I can smell the heavy resinous incense as I pass the
+church. No man seems to be at work, save the
+coppersmith. In an Italian town he is always at work, and
+always thumping in the deadliest manner.</p>
+<p>I keep straight on, and come in due time to the first on the
+right: a narrow dull street, where I see a well-favoured man of
+good stature and military bearing, in a great cloak, standing at
+a door. Drawing nearer to this threshold, I see it is the
+threshold of a small wine-shop; and I can just make out, in the
+dim light, the inscription that it is kept by Giovanni
+Carlavero.</p>
+<p>I touch my hat to the figure in the cloak, and pass in, and
+draw a stool to a little table. The lamp (just such another
+as they dig out of Pompeii) is lighted, but the place is
+empty. The figure in the cloak has followed me in, and
+stands before me.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The master?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;At your service, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Please to give me a glass of the wine of the
+country.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He turns to a little counter, to get it. As his striking
+face is pale, and his action is evidently that of an enfeebled
+man, I remark that I fear he has been ill. It is not much,
+he courteously and gravely answers, though bad while it lasts:
+the fever.</p>
+<p>As he sets the wine on the little table, to his manifest
+surprise I lay my hand on the back of his, look him in the face,
+and say in a low voice: &lsquo;I am an Englishman, and you are
+acquainted with a friend of mine. Do you
+recollect&mdash;?&rsquo; and I mentioned the name of my generous
+countryman.</p>
+<p>Instantly, he utters a loud cry, bursts into tears, and falls
+on his knees at my feet, clasping my legs in both his arms and
+bowing his head to the ground.</p>
+<p>Some years ago, this man at my feet, whose over-fraught heart
+is heaving as if it would burst from his breast, and whose tears
+are wet upon the dress I wear, was a galley-slave in the North of
+Italy. He was a political offender, having been concerned
+in the then last rising, and was sentenced to imprisonment for
+life. That he would have died in his chains, is certain,
+but for the circumstance that the Englishman happened to visit
+his prison.</p>
+<p>It was one of the vile old prisons of Italy, and a part of it
+was below the waters of the harbour. The place of his
+confinement was an arched under-ground and under-water gallery,
+with a grill-gate at the entrance, through which it received such
+light and air as it got. Its condition was insufferably
+foul, and a stranger could hardly breathe in it, or see in it
+with the aid of a torch. At the upper end of this dungeon,
+and consequently in the worst position, as being the furthest
+removed from light and air, the Englishman first beheld him,
+sitting on an iron bedstead to which he was chained by a heavy
+chain. His countenance impressed the Englishmen as having
+nothing in common with the faces of the malefactors with whom he
+was associated, and he talked with him, and learnt how he came to
+be there.</p>
+<p>When the Englishman emerged from the dreadful den into the
+light of day, he asked his conductor, the governor of the jail,
+why Giovanni Carlavero was put into the worst place?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Because he is particularly recommended,&rsquo; was the
+stringent answer.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Recommended, that is to say, for death?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Excuse me; particularly recommended,&rsquo; was again
+the answer.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He has a bad tumour in his neck, no doubt occasioned by
+the hardship of his miserable life. If he continues to be
+neglected, and he remains where he is, it will kill
+him.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Excuse me, I can do nothing. He is particularly
+recommended.&rsquo; The Englishman was staying in that
+town, and he went to his home there; but the figure of this man
+chained to the bedstead made it no home, and destroyed his rest
+and peace. He was an Englishman of an extraordinarily
+tender heart, and he could not bear the picture. He went
+back to the prison grate; went back again and again, and talked
+to the man and cheered him. He used his utmost influence to
+get the man unchained from the bedstead, were it only for ever so
+short a time in the day, and permitted to come to the
+grate. It look a long time, but the Englishman&rsquo;s
+station, personal character, and steadiness of purpose, wore out
+opposition so far, and that grace was at last accorded.
+Through the bars, when he could thus get light upon the tumour,
+the Englishman lanced it, and it did well, and healed. His
+strong interest in the prisoner had greatly increased by this
+time, and he formed the desperate resolution that he would exert
+his utmost self-devotion and use his utmost efforts, to get
+Carlavero pardoned.</p>
+<p>If the prisoner had been a brigand and a murderer, if he had
+committed every non-political crime in the Newgate Calendar and
+out of it, nothing would have been easier than for a man of any
+court or priestly influence to obtain his release. As it
+was, nothing could have been more difficult. Italian
+authorities, and English authorities who had interest with them,
+alike assured the Englishman that his object was hopeless.
+He met with nothing but evasion, refusal, and ridicule. His
+political prisoner became a joke in the place. It was
+especially observable that English Circumlocution, and English
+Society on its travels, were as humorous on the subject as
+Circumlocution and Society may be on any subject without loss of
+caste. But, the Englishman possessed (and proved it well in
+his life) a courage very uncommon among us: he had not the least
+fear of being considered a bore, in a good humane cause. So
+he went on persistently trying, and trying, and trying, to get
+Giovanni Carlavero out. That prisoner had been rigorously
+re-chained, after the tumour operation, and it was not likely
+that his miserable life could last very long.</p>
+<p>One day, when all the town knew about the Englishman and his
+political prisoner, there came to the Englishman, a certain
+sprightly Italian Advocate of whom he had some knowledge; and he
+made this strange proposal. &lsquo;Give me a hundred pounds
+to obtain Carlavero&rsquo;s release. I think I can get him
+a pardon, with that money. But I cannot tell you what I am
+going to do with the money, nor must you ever ask me the question
+if I succeed, nor must you ever ask me for an account of the
+money if I fail.&rsquo; The Englishman decided to hazard
+the hundred pounds. He did so, and heard not another word
+of the matter. For half a year and more, the Advocate made
+no sign, and never once &lsquo;took on&rsquo; in any way, to have
+the subject on his mind. The Englishman was then obliged to
+change his residence to another and more famous town in the North
+of Italy. He parted from the poor prisoner with a sorrowful
+heart, as from a doomed man for whom there was no release but
+Death.</p>
+<p>The Englishman lived in his new place of abode another
+half-year and more, and had no tidings of the wretched
+prisoner. At length, one day, he received from the Advocate
+a cool, concise, mysterious note, to this effect. &lsquo;If
+you still wish to bestow that benefit upon the man in whom you
+were once interested, send me fifty pounds more, and I think it
+can be ensured.&rsquo; Now, the Englishman had long settled
+in his mind that the Advocate was a heartless sharper, who had
+preyed upon his credulity and his interest in an unfortunate
+sufferer. So, he sat down and wrote a dry answer, giving
+the Advocate to understand that he was wiser now than he had been
+formerly, and that no more money was extractable from his
+pocket.</p>
+<p>He lived outside the city gates, some mile or two from the
+post-office, and was accustomed to walk into the city with his
+letters and post them himself. On a lovely spring day, when
+the sky was exquisitely blue, and the sea Divinely beautiful, he
+took his usual walk, carrying this letter to the Advocate in his
+pocket. As he went along, his gentle heart was much moved
+by the loveliness of the prospect, and by the thought of the
+slowly dying prisoner chained to the bedstead, for whom the
+universe had no delights. As he drew nearer and nearer to
+the city where he was to post the letter, he became very uneasy
+in his mind. He debated with himself, was it remotely
+possible, after all, that this sum of fifty pounds could restore
+the fellow-creature whom he pitied so much, and for whom he had
+striven so hard, to liberty? He was not a conventionally
+rich Englishman&mdash;very far from that&mdash;but, he had a
+spare fifty pounds at the banker&rsquo;s. He resolved to
+risk it. Without doubt, <span class="smcap">God</span> has
+recompensed him for the resolution.</p>
+<p>He went to the banker&rsquo;s, and got a bill for the amount,
+and enclosed it in a letter to the Advocate that I wish I could
+have seen. He simply told the Advocate that he was quite a
+poor man, and that he was sensible it might be a great weakness
+in him to part with so much money on the faith of so vague a
+communication; but, that there it was, and that he prayed the
+Advocate to make a good use of it. If he did otherwise no
+good could ever come of it, and it would lie heavy on his soul
+one day.</p>
+<p>Within a week, the Englishman was sitting at his breakfast,
+when he heard some suppressed sounds of agitation on the
+staircase, and Giovanni Carlavero leaped into the room and fell
+upon his breast, a free man!</p>
+<p>Conscious of having wronged the Advocate in his own thoughts,
+the Englishman wrote him an earnest and grateful letter, avowing
+the fact, and entreating him to confide by what means and through
+what agency he had succeeded so well. The Advocate returned
+for answer through the post, &lsquo;There are many things, as you
+know, in this Italy of ours, that are safest and best not even
+spoken of&mdash;far less written of. We may meet some day,
+and then I may tell you what you want to know; not here, and
+now.&rsquo; But, the two never did meet again. The
+Advocate was dead when the Englishman gave me my trust; and how
+the man had been set free, remained as great a mystery to the
+Englishman, and to the man himself, as it was to me.</p>
+<p>But, I knew this:&mdash;here was the man, this sultry night,
+on his knees at my feet, because I was the Englishman&rsquo;s
+friend; here were his tears upon my dress; here were his sobs
+choking his utterance; here were his kisses on my hands, because
+they had touched the hands that had worked out his release.
+He had no need to tell me it would be happiness to him to die for
+his benefactor; I doubt if I ever saw real, sterling, fervent
+gratitude of soul, before or since.</p>
+<p>He was much watched and suspected, he said, and had had enough
+to do to keep himself out of trouble. This, and his not
+having prospered in his worldly affairs, had led to his having
+failed in his usual communications to the Englishman for&mdash;as
+I now remember the period&mdash;some two or three years.
+But, his prospects were brighter, and his wife who had been very
+ill had recovered, and his fever had left him, and he had bought
+a little vineyard, and would I carry to his benefactor the first
+of its wine? Ay, that I would (I told him with enthusiasm),
+and not a drop of it should be spilled or lost!</p>
+<p>He had cautiously closed the door before speaking of himself,
+and had talked with such excess of emotion, and in a provincial
+Italian so difficult to understand, that I had more than once
+been obliged to stop him, and beg him to have compassion on me
+and be slower and calmer. By degrees he became so, and
+tranquilly walked back with me to the hotel. There, I sat
+down before I went to bed and wrote a faithful account of him to
+the Englishman: which I concluded by saying that I would bring
+the wine home, against any difficulties, every drop.</p>
+<p>Early next morning, when I came out at the hotel door to
+pursue my journey, I found my friend waiting with one of those
+immense bottles in which the Italian peasants store their
+wine&mdash;a bottle holding some half-dozen gallons&mdash;bound
+round with basket-work for greater safety on the journey. I
+see him now, in the bright sunshine, tears of gratitude in his
+eyes, proudly inviting my attention to this corpulent
+bottle. (At the street-comer hard by, two high-flavoured,
+able-bodied monks&mdash;pretending to talk together, but keeping
+their four evil eyes upon us.)</p>
+<p>How the bottle had been got there, did not appear; but the
+difficulty of getting it into the ramshackle vetturino carriage
+in which I was departing, was so great, and it took up so much
+room when it was got in, that I elected to sit outside. The
+last I saw of Giovanni Carlavero was his running through the town
+by the side of the jingling wheels, clasping my hand as I
+stretched it down from the box, charging me with a thousand last
+loving and dutiful messages to his dear patron, and finally
+looking in at the bottle as it reposed inside, with an admiration
+of its honourable way of travelling that was beyond measure
+delightful.</p>
+<p>And now, what disquiet of mind this dearly-beloved and
+highly-treasured Bottle began to cost me, no man knows. It
+was my precious charge through a long tour, and, for hundreds of
+miles, I never had it off my mind by day or by night. Over
+bad roads&mdash;and they were many&mdash;I clung to it with
+affectionate desperation. Up mountains, I looked in at it
+and saw it helplessly tilting over on its back, with
+terror. At innumerable inn doors when the weather was bad,
+I was obliged to be put into my vehicle before the Bottle could
+be got in, and was obliged to have the Bottle lifted out before
+human aid could come near me. The Imp of the same name,
+except that his associations were all evil and these associations
+were all good, would have been a less troublesome travelling
+companion. I might have served Mr. Cruikshank as a subject
+for a new illustration of the miseries of the Bottle. The
+National Temperance Society might have made a powerful Tract of
+me.</p>
+<p>The suspicions that attached to this innocent Bottle, greatly
+aggravated my difficulties. It was like the apple-pie in
+the child&rsquo;s book. Parma pouted at it, Modena mocked
+it, Tuscany tackled it, Naples nibbled it, Rome refused it,
+Austria accused it, Soldiers suspected it, Jesuits jobbed
+it. I composed a neat Oration, developing my inoffensive
+intentions in connexion with this Bottle, and delivered it in an
+infinity of guard-houses, at a multitude of town gates, and on
+every drawbridge, angle, and rampart, of a complete system of
+fortifications. Fifty times a day, I got down to harangue
+an infuriated soldiery about the Bottle. Through the filthy
+degradation of the abject and vile Roman States, I had as much
+difficulty in working my way with the Bottle, as if it had
+bottled up a complete system of heretical theology. In the
+Neapolitan country, where everybody was a spy, a soldier, a
+priest, or a lazzarone, the shameless beggars of all four
+denominations incessantly pounced on the Bottle and made it a
+pretext for extorting money from me. Quires&mdash;quires do
+I say? Reams&mdash;of forms illegibly printed on
+whity-brown paper were filled up about the Bottle, and it was the
+subject of more stamping and sanding than I had ever seen
+before. In consequence of which haze of sand, perhaps, it
+was always irregular, and always latent with dismal penalties of
+going back or not going forward, which were only to be abated by
+the silver crossing of a base hand, poked shirtless out of a
+ragged uniform sleeve. Under all discouragements, however,
+I stuck to my Bottle, and held firm to my resolution that every
+drop of its contents should reach the Bottle&rsquo;s
+destination.</p>
+<p>The latter refinement cost me a separate heap of troubles on
+its own separate account. What corkscrews did I see the
+military power bring out against that Bottle; what gimlets,
+spikes, divining rods, gauges, and unknown tests and
+instruments! At some places, they persisted in declaring
+that the wine must not be passed, without being opened and
+tasted; I, pleading to the contrary, used then to argue the
+question seated on the Bottle lest they should open it in spite
+of me. In the southern parts of Italy more violent
+shrieking, face-making, and gesticulating, greater vehemence of
+speech and countenance and action, went on about that Bottle than
+would attend fifty murders in a northern latitude. It
+raised important functionaries out of their beds, in the dead of
+night. I have known half-a-dozen military lanterns to
+disperse themselves at all points of a great sleeping Piazza,
+each lantern summoning some official creature to get up, put on
+his cocked-hat instantly, and come and stop the Bottle. It
+was characteristic that while this innocent Bottle had such
+immense difficulty in getting from little town to town, Signor
+Mazzini and the fiery cross were traversing Italy from end to
+end.</p>
+<p>Still, I stuck to my Bottle, like any fine old English
+gentleman all of the olden time. The more the Bottle was
+interfered with, the stauncher I became (if possible) in my first
+determination that my countryman should have it delivered to him
+intact, as the man whom he had so nobly restored to life and
+liberty had delivered it to me. If ever I had been
+obstinate in my days&mdash;and I may have been, say, once or
+twice&mdash;I was obstinate about the Bottle. But, I made
+it a rule always to keep a pocket full of small coin at its
+service, and never to be out of temper in its cause. Thus,
+I and the Bottle made our way. Once we had a break-down;
+rather a bad break-down, on a steep high place with the sea below
+us, on a tempestuous evening when it blew great guns. We
+were driving four wild horses abreast, Southern fashion, and
+there was some little difficulty in stopping them. I was
+outside, and not thrown off; but no words can describe my
+feelings when I saw the Bottle&mdash;travelling inside, as
+usual&mdash;burst the door open, and roll obesely out into the
+road. A blessed Bottle with a charmed existence, he took no
+hurt, and we repaired damage, and went on triumphant.</p>
+<p>A thousand representations were made to me that the Bottle
+must be left at this place, or that, and called for again.
+I never yielded to one of them, and never parted from the Bottle,
+on any pretence, consideration, threat, or entreaty. I had
+no faith in any official receipt for the Bottle, and nothing
+would induce me to accept one. These unmanageable politics
+at last brought me and the Bottle, still triumphant, to
+Genoa. There, I took a tender and reluctant leave of him
+for a few weeks, and consigned him to a trusty English captain,
+to be conveyed to the Port of London by sea.</p>
+<p>While the Bottle was on his voyage to England, I read the
+Shipping Intelligence as anxiously as if I had been an
+underwriter. There was some stormy weather after I myself
+had got to England by way of Switzerland and France, and my mind
+greatly misgave me that the Bottle might be wrecked. At
+last to my great joy, I received notice of his safe arrival, and
+immediately went down to Saint Katharine&rsquo;s Docks, and found
+him in a state of honourable captivity in the Custom House.</p>
+<p>The wine was mere vinegar when I set it down before the
+generous Englishman&mdash;probably it had been something like
+vinegar when I took it up from Giovanni Carlavero&mdash;but not a
+drop of it was spilled or gone. And the Englishman told me,
+with much emotion in his face and voice, that he had never tasted
+wine that seemed to him so sweet and sound. And long
+afterwards, the Bottle graced his table. And the last time
+I saw him in this world that misses him, he took me aside in a
+crowd, to say, with his amiable smile: &lsquo;We were talking of
+you only to-day at dinner, and I wished you had been there, for I
+had some Claret up in Carlavero&rsquo;s Bottle.&rsquo;</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap18"></a>XVIII<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE CALAIS NIGHT MAIL</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> is an unsettled question with me
+whether I shall leave Calais something handsome in my will, or
+whether I shall leave it my malediction. I hate it so much,
+and yet I am always so very glad to see it, that I am in a state
+of constant indecision on this subject. When I first made
+acquaintance with Calais, it was as a maundering young wretch in
+a clammy perspiration and dripping saline particles, who was
+conscious of no extremities but the one great extremity,
+sea-sickness&mdash;who was a mere bilious torso, with a mislaid
+headache somewhere in its stomach&mdash;who had been put into a
+horrible swing in Dover Harbour, and had tumbled giddily out of
+it on the French coast, or the Isle of Man, or anywhere.
+Times have changed, and now I enter Calais self-reliant and
+rational. I know where it is beforehand, I keep a look out
+for it, I recognise its landmarks when I see any of them, I am
+acquainted with its ways, and I know&mdash;and I can
+bear&mdash;its worst behaviour.</p>
+<p>Malignant Calais! Low-lying alligator, evading the
+eyesight and discouraging hope! Dodging flat streak, now on
+this bow, now on that, now anywhere, now everywhere, now
+nowhere! In vain Cape Grinez, coming frankly forth into the
+sea, exhorts the failing to be stout of heart and stomach:
+sneaking Calais, prone behind its bar, invites emetically to
+despair. Even when it can no longer quite conceal itself in
+its muddy dock, it has an evil way of falling off, has Calais,
+which is more hopeless than its invisibility. The pier is
+all but on the bowsprit, and you think you are there&mdash;roll,
+roar, wash!&mdash;Calais has retired miles inland, and Dover has
+burst out to look for it. It has a last dip and slide in
+its character, has Calais, to be especially commanded to the
+infernal gods. Thrice accursed be that garrison-town, when
+it dives under the boat&rsquo;s keel, and comes up a league or
+two to the right, with the packet shivering and spluttering and
+staring about for it!</p>
+<p>Not but what I have my animosities towards Dover. I
+particularly detest Dover for the self-complacency with which it
+goes to bed. It always goes to bed (when I am going to
+Calais) with a more brilliant display of lamp and candle than any
+other town. Mr. and Mrs. Birmingham, host and hostess of
+the Lord Warden Hotel, are my much esteemed friends, but they are
+too conceited about the comforts of that establishment when the
+Night Mail is starting. I know it is a good house to stay
+at, and I don&rsquo;t want the fact insisted upon in all its warm
+bright windows at such an hour. I know the Warden is a
+stationary edifice that never rolls or pitches, and I object to
+its big outline seeming to insist upon that circumstance, and, as
+it were, to come over me with it, when I am reeling on the deck
+of the boat. Beshrew the Warden likewise, for obstructing
+that corner, and making the wind so angry as it rushes
+round. Shall I not know that it blows quite soon enough,
+without the officious Warden&rsquo;s interference?</p>
+<p>As I wait here on board the night packet, for the
+South-Eastern Train to come down with the Mail, Dover appears to
+me to be illuminated for some intensely aggravating festivity in
+my personal dishonour. All its noises smack of taunting
+praises of the land, and dispraises of the gloomy sea, and of me
+for going on it. The drums upon the heights have gone to
+bed, or I know they would rattle taunts against me for having my
+unsteady footing on this slippery deck. The many gas eyes
+of the Marine Parade twinkle in an offensive manner, as if with
+derision. The distant dogs of Dover bark at me in my
+misshapen wrappers, as if I were Richard the Third.</p>
+<p>A screech, a bell, and two red eyes come gliding down the
+Admiralty Pier with a smoothness of motion rendered more smooth
+by the heaving of the boat. The sea makes noises against
+the pier, as if several hippopotami were lapping at it, and were
+prevented by circumstances over which they had no control from
+drinking peaceably. We, the boat, become violently
+agitated&mdash;rumble, hum, scream, roar, and establish an
+immense family washing-day at each paddle-box. Bright
+patches break out in the train as the doors of the post-office
+vans are opened, and instantly stooping figures with sacks upon
+their backs begin to be beheld among the piles, descending as it
+would seem in ghostly procession to Davy Jones&rsquo;s
+Locker. The passengers come on board; a few shadowy
+Frenchmen, with hatboxes shaped like the stoppers of gigantic
+case-bottles; a few shadowy Germans in immense fur coats and
+boots; a few shadowy Englishmen prepared for the worst and
+pretending not to expect it. I cannot disguise from my
+uncommercial mind the miserable fact that we are a body of
+outcasts; that the attendants on us are as scant in number as may
+serve to get rid of us with the least possible delay; that there
+are no night-loungers interested in us; that the unwilling lamps
+shiver and shudder at us; that the sole object is to commit us to
+the deep and abandon us. Lo, the two red eyes glaring in
+increasing distance, and then the very train itself has gone to
+bed before we are off!</p>
+<p>What is the moral support derived by some sea-going amateurs
+from an umbrella? Why do certain voyagers across the
+Channel always put up that article, and hold it up with a grim
+and fierce tenacity? A fellow-creature near me&mdash;whom I
+only know to <i>be</i> a fellow-creature, because of his
+umbrella: without which he might be a dark bit of cliff, pier, or
+bulkbead&mdash;clutches that instrument with a desperate grasp,
+that will not relax until he lands at Calais. Is there any
+analogy, in certain constitutions, between keeping an umbrella
+up, and keeping the spirits up? A hawser thrown on board
+with a flop replies &lsquo;Stand by!&rsquo; &lsquo;Stand
+by, below!&rsquo; &lsquo;Half a turn a head!&rsquo;
+&lsquo;Half a turn a head!&rsquo; &lsquo;Half
+speed!&rsquo; &lsquo;Half speed!&rsquo;
+&lsquo;Port!&rsquo; &lsquo;Port!&rsquo;
+&lsquo;Steady!&rsquo; &lsquo;Steady!&rsquo; &lsquo;Go
+on!&rsquo; &lsquo;Go on!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A stout wooden wedge driven in at my right temple and out at
+my left, a floating deposit of lukewarm oil in my throat, and a
+compression of the bridge of my nose in a blunt pair of
+pincers,&mdash;these are the personal sensations by which I know
+we are off, and by which I shall continue to know it until I am
+on the soil of France. My symptoms have scarcely
+established themselves comfortably, when two or three skating
+shadows that have been trying to walk or stand, get flung
+together, and other two or three shadows in tarpaulin slide with
+them into corners and cover them up. Then the South
+Foreland lights begin to hiccup at us in a way that bodes no
+good.</p>
+<p>It is at about this period that my detestation of Calais knows
+no bounds. Inwardly I resolve afresh that I never will
+forgive that hated town. I have done so before, many times,
+but that is past. Let me register a vow. Implacable
+animosity to Calais everm&mdash; that was an awkward sea, and the
+funnel seems of my opinion, for it gives a complaining roar.</p>
+<p>The wind blows stiffly from the Nor-East, the sea runs high,
+we ship a deal of water, the night is dark and cold, and the
+shapeless passengers lie about in melancholy bundles, as if they
+were sorted out for the laundress; but for my own uncommercial
+part I cannot pretend that I am much inconvenienced by any of
+these things. A general howling, whistling, flopping,
+gurgling, and scooping, I am aware of, and a general knocking
+about of Nature; but the impressions I receive are very
+vague. In a sweet faint temper, something like the smell of
+damaged oranges, I think I should feel languidly benevolent if I
+had time. I have not time, because I am under a curious
+compulsion to occupy myself with the Irish melodies.
+&lsquo;Rich and rare were the gems she wore,&rsquo; is the
+particular melody to which I find myself devoted. I sing it
+to myself in the most charming manner and with the greatest
+expression. Now and then, I raise my head (I am sitting on
+the hardest of wet seats, in the most uncomfortable of wet
+attitudes, but I don&rsquo;t mind it,) and notice that I am a
+whirling shuttlecock between a fiery battledore of a lighthouse
+on the French coast and a fiery battledore of a lighthouse on the
+English coast; but I don&rsquo;t notice it particularly, except
+to feel envenomed in my hatred of Calais. Then I go on
+again, &lsquo;Rich and rare were the ge-ems she-e-e-e wore, And a
+bright gold ring on her wa-and she bo-ore, But O her beauty was
+fa-a-a-a-r beyond&rsquo;&mdash;I am particularly proud of my
+execution here, when I become aware of another awkward shock from
+the sea, and another protest from the funnel, and a
+fellow-creature at the paddle-box more audibly indisposed than I
+think he need be&mdash;&lsquo;Her sparkling gems, or snow-white
+wand, But O her beauty was fa-a-a-a-a-r
+beyond&rsquo;&mdash;another awkward one here, and the
+fellow-creature with the umbrella down and picked
+up&mdash;&lsquo;Her spa-a-rkling ge-ems, or her Port! port!
+steady! steady! snow-white fellow-creature at the paddle-box very
+selfishly audible, bump, roar, wash, white wand.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>As my execution of the Irish melodies partakes of my imperfect
+perceptions of what is going on around me, so what is going on
+around me becomes something else than what it is. The
+stokers open the furnace doors below, to feed the fires, and I am
+again on the box of the old Exeter Telegraph fast coach, and that
+is the light of the for ever extinguished coach-lamps, and the
+gleam on the hatches and paddle-boxes is <i>their</i> gleam on
+cottages and haystacks, and the monotonous noise of the engines
+is the steady jingle of the splendid team. Anon, the
+intermittent funnel roar of protest at every violent roll,
+becomes the regular blast of a high pressure engine, and I
+recognise the exceedingly explosive steamer in which I ascended
+the Mississippi when the American civil war was not, and when
+only its causes were. A fragment of mast on which the light
+of a lantern falls, an end of rope, and a jerking block or so,
+become suggestive of Franconi&rsquo;s Circus at Paris where I
+shall be this very night mayhap (for it must be morning now), and
+they dance to the self-same time and tune as the trained steed,
+Black Raven. What may be the speciality of these waves as
+they come rushing on, I cannot desert the pressing demands made
+upon me by the gems she wore, to inquire, but they are charged
+with something about Robinson Crusoe, and I think it was in
+Yarmouth Roads that he first went a seafaring and was near
+foundering (what a terrific sound that word had for me when I was
+a boy!) in his first gale of wind. Still, through all this,
+I must ask her (who <i>was</i> she I wonder!) for the fiftieth
+time, and without ever stopping, Does she not fear to stray, So
+lone and lovely through this bleak way, And are Erin&rsquo;s sons
+so good or so cold, As not to be tempted by more fellow-creatures
+at the paddle-box or gold? Sir Knight I feel not the least
+alarm, No son of Erin will offer me harm, For though they love
+fellow-creature with umbrella down again and golden store, Sir
+Knight they what a tremendous one love honour and virtue more:
+For though they love Stewards with a bull&rsquo;s eye bright,
+they&rsquo;ll trouble you for your ticket, sir-rough passage
+to-night!</p>
+<p>I freely admit it to be a miserable piece of human weakness
+and inconsistency, but I no sooner become conscious of those last
+words from the steward than I begin to soften towards
+Calais. Whereas I have been vindictively wishing that those
+Calais burghers who came out of their town by a short cut into
+the History of England, with those fatal ropes round their necks
+by which they have since been towed into so many cartoons, had
+all been hanged on the spot, I now begin to regard them as highly
+respectable and virtuous tradesmen. Looking about me, I see
+the light of Cape Grinez well astern of the boat on the davits to
+leeward, and the light of Calais Harbour undeniably at its old
+tricks, but still ahead and shining. Sentiments of
+forgiveness of Calais, not to say of attachment to Calais, begin
+to expand my bosom. I have weak notions that I will stay
+there a day or two on my way back. A faded and recumbent
+stranger pausing in a profound reverie over the rim of a basin,
+asks me what kind of place Calais is? I tell him (Heaven
+forgive me!) a very agreeable place indeed&mdash;rather hilly
+than otherwise.</p>
+<p>So strangely goes the time, and on the whole so
+quickly&mdash;though still I seem to have been on board a
+week&mdash;that I am bumped, rolled, gurgled, washed and pitched
+into Calais Harbour before her maiden smile has finally lighted
+her through the Green Isle, When blest for ever is she who
+relied, On entering Calais at the top of the tide. For we
+have not to land to-night down among those slimy
+timbers&mdash;covered with green hair as if it were the
+mermaids&rsquo; favourite combing-place&mdash;where one crawls to
+the surface of the jetty, like a stranded shrimp, but we go
+steaming up the harbour to the Railway Station Quay. And as
+we go, the sea washes in and out among piles and planks, with
+dead heavy beats and in quite a furious manner (whereof we are
+proud), and the lamps shake in the wind, and the bells of Calais
+striking One seem to send their vibrations struggling against
+troubled air, as we have come struggling against troubled
+water. And now, in the sudden relief and wiping of faces,
+everybody on board seems to have had a prodigious double-tooth
+out, and to be this very instant free of the Dentist&rsquo;s
+hands. And now we all know for the first time how wet and
+cold we are, and how salt we are; and now I love Calais with my
+heart of hearts!</p>
+<p>&lsquo;H&ocirc;tel Dessin!&rsquo; (but in this one case it is
+not a vocal cry; it is but a bright lustre in the eyes of the
+cheery representative of that best of inns).
+&lsquo;H&ocirc;tel Meurice!&rsquo; &lsquo;H&ocirc;tel de
+France!&rsquo; &lsquo;H&ocirc;tel de Calais!&rsquo;
+&lsquo;The Royal Hotel, Sir, Angaishe ouse!&rsquo;
+&lsquo;You going to Parry, Sir?&rsquo; &lsquo;Your baggage,
+registair froo, Sir?&rsquo; Bless ye, my Touters, bless ye,
+my commissionaires, bless ye, my hungry-eyed mysteries in caps of
+a military form, who are always here, day or night, fair weather
+or foul, seeking inscrutable jobs which I never see you
+get! Bless ye, my Custom House officers in green and grey;
+permit me to grasp the welcome hands that descend into my
+travelling-bag, one on each side, and meet at the bottom to give
+my change of linen a peculiar shake up, as if it were a measure
+of chaff or grain! I have nothing to declare, Monsieur le
+Douanier, except that when I cease to breathe, Calais will be
+found written on my heart. No article liable to local duty
+have I with me, Monsieur l&rsquo;Officier de l&rsquo;Octroi,
+unless the overflowing of a breast devoted to your charming town
+should be in that wise chargeable. Ah! see at the gangway
+by the twinkling lantern, my dearest brother and friend, he once
+of the Passport Office, he who collects the names! May he
+be for ever changeless in his buttoned black surtout, with his
+note-book in his hand, and his tall black hat, surmounting his
+round, smiling, patient face! Let us embrace, my dearest
+brother. I am yours &agrave; tout jamais&mdash;for the
+whole of ever.</p>
+<p>Calais up and doing at the railway station, and Calais down
+and dreaming in its bed; Calais with something of &lsquo;an
+ancient and fish-like smell&rsquo; about it, and Calais blown and
+sea-washed pure; Calais represented at the Buffet by savoury
+roast fowls, hot coffee, cognac, and Bordeaux; and Calais
+represented everywhere by flitting persons with a monomania for
+changing money&mdash;though I never shall be able to understand
+in my present state of existence how they live by it, but I
+suppose I should, if I understood the currency
+question&mdash;Calais <i>en gros</i>, and Calais <i>en
+d&eacute;tail</i>, forgive one who has deeply wronged
+you.&mdash;I was not fully aware of it on the other side, but I
+meant Dover.</p>
+<p>Ding, ding! To the carriages, gentlemen the
+travellers. Ascend then, gentlemen the travellers, for
+Hazebroucke, Lille, Douai, Bruxelles, Arras, Amiens, and
+Paris! I, humble representative of the uncommercial
+interest, ascend with the rest. The train is light
+to-night, and I share my compartment with but two
+fellow-travellers; one, a compatriot in an obsolete cravat, who
+thinks it a quite unaccountable thing that they don&rsquo;t keep
+&lsquo;London time&rsquo; on a French railway, and who is made
+angry by my modestly suggesting the possibility of Paris time
+being more in their way; the other, a young priest, with a very
+small bird in a very small cage, who feeds the small bird with a
+quill, and then puts him up in the network above his head, where
+he advances twittering, to his front wires, and seems to address
+me in an electioneering manner. The compatriot (who crossed
+in the boat, and whom I judge to be some person of distinction,
+as he was shut up, like a stately species of rabbit, in a private
+hutch on deck) and the young priest (who joined us at Calais) are
+soon asleep, and then the bird and I have it all to
+ourselves.</p>
+<p>A stormy night still; a night that sweeps the wires of the
+electric telegraph with a wild and fitful hand; a night so very
+stormy, with the added storm of the train-progress through it,
+that when the Guard comes clambering round to mark the tickets
+while we are at full speed (a really horrible performance in an
+express train, though he holds on to the open window by his
+elbows in the most deliberate manner), he stands in such a
+whirlwind that I grip him fast by the collar, and feel it next to
+manslaughter to let him go. Still, when he is gone, the
+small, small bird remains at his front wires feebly twittering to
+me&mdash;twittering and twittering, until, leaning back in my
+place and looking at him in drowsy fascination, I find that he
+seems to jog my memory as we rush along.</p>
+<p>Uncommercial travels (thus the small, small bird) have lain in
+their idle thriftless way through all this range of swamp and
+dyke, as through many other odd places; and about here, as you
+very well know, are the queer old stone farm-houses, approached
+by drawbridges, and the windmills that you get at by boats.
+Here, are the lands where the women hoe and dig, paddling
+canoe-wise from field to field, and here are the cabarets and
+other peasant-houses where the stone dove-cotes in the littered
+yards are as strong as warders&rsquo; towers in old
+castles. Here, are the long monotonous miles of canal, with
+the great Dutch-built barges garishly painted, and the towing
+girls, sometimes harnessed by the forehead, sometimes by the
+girdle and the shoulders, not a pleasant sight to see.
+Scattered through this country are mighty works of <span
+class="smcap">Vauban</span>, whom you know about, and regiments
+of such corporals as you heard of once upon a time, and many a
+blue-eyed Bebelle. Through these flat districts, in the
+shining summer days, walk those long, grotesque files of young
+novices in enormous shovel-hats, whom you remember blackening the
+ground checkered by the avenues of leafy trees. And now
+that Hazebroucke slumbers certain kilometres ahead, recall the
+summer evening when your dusty feet strolling up from the station
+tended hap-hazard to a Fair there, where the oldest inhabitants
+were circling round and round a barrel-organ on hobby-horses,
+with the greatest gravity, and where the principal show in the
+Fair was a Religious Richardson&rsquo;s&mdash;literally, on its
+own announcement in great letters, <span class="smcap">Theatre
+Religieux</span>. In which improving Temple, the dramatic
+representation was of &lsquo;all the interesting events in the
+life of our Lord, from the Manger to the Tomb;&rsquo; the
+principal female character, without any reservation or exception,
+being at the moment of your arrival, engaged in trimming the
+external Moderators (as it was growing dusk), while the next
+principal female character took the money, and the Young Saint
+John disported himself upside down on the platform.</p>
+<p>Looking up at this point to confirm the small, small bird in
+every particular he has mentioned, I find he has ceased to
+twitter, and has put his head under his wing. Therefore, in
+my different way I follow the good example.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap19"></a>XIX<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF
+MORTALITY</span></h2>
+<p>I <span class="smcap">had</span> parted from the small bird at
+somewhere about four o&rsquo;clock in the morning, when he had
+got out at Arras, and had been received by two shovel-hats in
+waiting at the station, who presented an appropriately
+ornithological and crow-like appearance. My compatriot and
+I had gone on to Paris; my compatriot enlightening me
+occasionally with a long list of the enormous grievances of
+French railway travelling: every one of which, as I am a sinner,
+was perfectly new to me, though I have as much experience of
+French railways as most uncommercials. I had left him at
+the terminus (through his conviction, against all explanation and
+remonstrance, that his baggage-ticket was his passenger-ticket),
+insisting in a very high temper to the functionary on duty, that
+in his own personal identity he was four packages weighing so
+many kilogrammes&mdash;as if he had been Cassim Baba! I had
+bathed and breakfasted, and was strolling on the bright
+quays. The subject of my meditations was the question
+whether it is positively in the essence and nature of things, as
+a certain school of Britons would seem to think it, that a
+Capital must be ensnared and enslaved before it can be made
+beautiful: when I lifted up my eyes and found that my feet,
+straying like my mind, had brought me to Notre-Dame.</p>
+<p>That is to say, Notre-Dame was before me, but there was a
+large open space between us. A very little while gone, I
+had left that space covered with buildings densely crowded; and
+now it was cleared for some new wonder in the way of public
+Street, Place, Garden, Fountain, or all four. Only the
+obscene little Morgue, slinking on the brink of the river and
+soon to come down, was left there, looking mortally ashamed of
+itself, and supremely wicked. I had but glanced at this old
+acquaintance, when I beheld an airy procession coming round in
+front of Notre-Dame, past the great hospital. It had
+something of a Masaniello look, with fluttering striped curtains
+in the midst of it, and it came dancing round the cathedral in
+the liveliest manner.</p>
+<p>I was speculating on a marriage in Blouse-life, or a
+Christening, or some other domestic festivity which I would see
+out, when I found, from the talk of a quick rush of Blouses past
+me, that it was a Body coming to the Morgue. Having never
+before chanced upon this initiation, I constituted myself a
+Blouse likewise, and ran into the Morgue with the rest. It
+was a very muddy day, and we took in a quantity of mire with us,
+and the procession coming in upon our heels brought a quantity
+more. The procession was in the highest spirits, and
+consisted of idlers who had come with the curtained litter from
+its starting-place, and of all the reinforcements it had picked
+up by the way. It set the litter down in the midst of the
+Morgue, and then two Custodians proclaimed aloud that we were all
+&lsquo;invited&rsquo; to go out. This invitation was
+rendered the more pressing, if not the more flattering, by our
+being shoved out, and the folding-gates being barred upon us.</p>
+<p>Those who have never seen the Morgue, may see it perfectly, by
+presenting to themselves on indifferently paved coach-house
+accessible from the street by a pair of folding-gates; on the
+left of the coach-house, occupying its width, any large London
+tailor&rsquo;s or linendraper&rsquo;s plate-glass window reaching
+to the ground; within the window, on two rows of inclined plane,
+what the coach-house has to show; hanging above, like irregular
+stalactites from the roof of a cave, a quantity of
+clothes&mdash;the clothes of the dead and buried shows of the
+coach-house.</p>
+<p>We had been excited in the highest degree by seeing the
+Custodians pull off their coats and tuck up their shirt-sleeves,
+as the procession came along. It looked so interestingly
+like business. Shut out in the muddy street, we now became
+quite ravenous to know all about it. Was it river, pistol,
+knife, love, gambling, robbery, hatred, how many stabs, how many
+bullets, fresh or decomposed, suicide or murder? All wedged
+together, and all staring at one another with our heads thrust
+forward, we propounded these inquiries and a hundred more
+such. Imperceptibly, it came to be known that Monsieur the
+tall and sallow mason yonder, was acquainted with the
+facts. Would Monsieur the tall and sallow mason, surged at
+by a new wave of us, have the goodness to impart? It was
+but a poor old man, passing along the street under one of the new
+buildings, on whom a stone had fallen, and who had tumbled
+dead. His age? Another wave surged up against the
+tall and sallow mason, and our wave swept on and broke, and he
+was any age from sixty-five to ninety.</p>
+<p>An old man was not much: moreover, we could have wished he had
+been killed by human agency&mdash;his own, or somebody
+else&rsquo;s: the latter, preferable&mdash;but our comfort was,
+that he had nothing about him to lead to his identification, and
+that his people must seek him here. Perhaps they were
+waiting dinner for him even now? We liked that. Such
+of us as had pocket-handkerchiefs took a slow, intense,
+protracted wipe at our noses, and then crammed our handkerchiefs
+into the breast of our blouses. Others of us who had no
+handkerchiefs administered a similar relief to our overwrought
+minds, by means of prolonged smears or wipes of our mouths on our
+sleeves. One man with a gloomy malformation of brow&mdash;a
+homicidal worker in white-lead, to judge from his blue tone of
+colour, and a certain flavour of paralysis pervading
+him&mdash;got his coat-collar between his teeth, and bit at it
+with an appetite. Several decent women arrived upon the
+outskirts of the crowd, and prepared to launch themselves into
+the dismal coach-house when opportunity should come; among them,
+a pretty young mother, pretending to bite the forefinger of her
+baby-boy, kept it between her rosy lips that it might be handy
+for guiding to point at the show. Meantime, all faces were
+turned towards the building, and we men waited with a fixed and
+stern resolution:&mdash;for the most part with folded arms.
+Surely, it was the only public French sight these uncommercial
+eyes had seen, at which the expectant people did not form <i>en
+queue</i>. But there was no such order of arrangement here;
+nothing but a general determination to make a rush for it, and a
+disposition to object to some boys who had mounted on the two
+stone posts by the hinges of the gates, with the design of
+swooping in when the hinges should turn.</p>
+<p>Now, they turned, and we rushed! Great pressure, and a
+scream or two from the front. Then a laugh or two, some
+expressions of disappointment, and a slackening of the pressure
+and subsidence of the struggle.&mdash;Old man not there.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But what would you have?&rsquo; the Custodian
+reasonably argues, as he looks out at his little door.
+&lsquo;Patience, patience! We make his toilette,
+gentlemen. He will be exposed presently. It is
+necessary to proceed according to rule. His toilette is not
+made all at a blow. He will be exposed in good time,
+gentlemen, in good time.&rsquo; And so retires, smoking,
+with a wave of his sleeveless arm towards the window, importing,
+&lsquo;Entertain yourselves in the meanwhile with the other
+curiosities. Fortunately the Museum is not empty
+to-day.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Who would have thought of public fickleness even at the
+Morgue? But there it was, on that occasion. Three
+lately popular articles that had been attracting greatly when the
+litter was first descried coming dancing round the corner by the
+great cathedral, were so completely deposed now, that nobody save
+two little girls (one showing them to a doll) would look at
+them. Yet the chief of the three, the article in the front
+row, had received jagged injury of the left temple; and the other
+two in the back row, the drowned two lying side by side with
+their heads very slightly turned towards each other, seemed to be
+comparing notes about it. Indeed, those two of the back row
+were so furtive of appearance, and so (in their puffed way)
+assassinatingly knowing as to the one of the front, that it was
+hard to think the three had never come together in their lives,
+and were only chance companions after death. Whether or no
+this was the general, as it was the uncommercial, fancy, it is
+not to be disputed that the group had drawn exceedingly within
+ten minutes. Yet now, the inconstant public turned its back
+upon them, and even leaned its elbows carelessly against the bar
+outside the window and shook off the mud from its shoes, and also
+lent and borrowed fire for pipes.</p>
+<p>Custodian re-enters from his door. &lsquo;Again once,
+gentlemen, you are invited&mdash;&rsquo; No further
+invitation necessary. Ready dash into the street.
+Toilette finished. Old man coming out.</p>
+<p>This time, the interest was grown too hot to admit of
+toleration of the boys on the stone posts. The homicidal
+white-lead worker made a pounce upon one boy who was hoisting
+himself up, and brought him to earth amidst general
+commendation. Closely stowed as we were, we yet formed into
+groups&mdash;groups of conversation, without separation from the
+mass&mdash;to discuss the old man. Rivals of the tall and
+sallow mason sprang into being, and here again was popular
+inconstancy. These rivals attracted audiences, and were
+greedily listened to; and whereas they had derived their
+information solely from the tall and sallow one, officious
+members of the crowd now sought to enlighten <i>him</i> on their
+authority. Changed by this social experience into an
+iron-visaged and inveterate misanthrope, the mason glared at
+mankind, and evidently cherished in his breast the wish that the
+whole of the present company could change places with the
+deceased old man. And now listeners became inattentive, and
+people made a start forward at a slight sound, and an unholy fire
+kindled in the public eye, and those next the gates beat at them
+impatiently, as if they were of the cannibal species and
+hungry.</p>
+<p>Again the hinges creaked, and we rushed. Disorderly
+pressure for some time ensued before the uncommercial unit got
+figured into the front row of the sum. It was strange to
+see so much heat and uproar seething about one poor spare,
+white-haired old man, quiet for evermore. He was calm of
+feature and undisfigured, as he lay on his back&mdash;having been
+struck upon the hinder part of his head, and thrown
+forward&mdash;and something like a tear or two had started from
+the closed eyes, and lay wet upon the face. The
+uncommercial interest, sated at a glance, directed itself upon
+the striving crowd on either side and behind: wondering whether
+one might have guessed, from the expression of those faces
+merely, what kind of sight they were looking at. The
+differences of expression were not many. There was a little
+pity, but not much, and that mostly with a selfish touch in
+it&mdash;as who would say, &lsquo;Shall I, poor I, look like
+that, when the time comes!&rsquo; There was more of a
+secretly brooding contemplation and curiosity, as &lsquo;That man
+I don&rsquo;t like, and have the grudge against; would such be
+his appearance, if some one&mdash;not to mention names&mdash;by
+any chance gave him an knock?&rsquo; There was a wolfish
+stare at the object, in which homicidal white-lead worker shone
+conspicuous. And there was a much more general,
+purposeless, vacant staring at it&mdash;like looking at waxwork,
+without a catalogue, and not knowing what to make of it.
+But all these expressions concurred in possessing the one
+underlying expression of <i>looking at something that could not
+return a look</i>. The uncommercial notice had established
+this as very remarkable, when a new pressure all at once coming
+up from the street pinioned him ignominiously, and hurried him
+into the arms (now sleeved again) of the Custodian smoking at his
+door, and answering questions, between puffs, with a certain
+placid meritorious air of not being proud, though high in
+office. And mentioning pride, it may be observed, by the
+way, that one could not well help investing the original sole
+occupant of the front row with an air depreciatory of the
+legitimate attraction of the poor old man: while the two in the
+second row seemed to exult at this superseded popularity.</p>
+<p>Pacing presently round the garden of the Tower of St. Jacques
+de la Boucherie, and presently again in front of the H&ocirc;tel
+de Ville, I called to mind a certain desolate open-air Morgue
+that I happened to light upon in London, one day in the hard
+winter of 1861, and which seemed as strange to me, at the time of
+seeing it, as if I had found it in China. Towards that hour
+of a winter&rsquo;s afternoon when the lamp-lighters are
+beginning to light the lamps in the streets a little before they
+are wanted, because the darkness thickens fast and soon, I was
+walking in from the country on the northern side of the
+Regent&rsquo;s Park&mdash;hard frozen and deserted&mdash;when I
+saw an empty Hansom cab drive up to the lodge at Gloucester-gate,
+and the driver with great agitation call to the man there: who
+quickly reached a long pole from a tree, and, deftly collared by
+the driver, jumped to the step of his little seat, and so the
+Hansom rattled out at the gate, galloping over the iron-bound
+road. I followed running, though not so fast but that when
+I came to the right-hand Canal Bridge, near the cross-path to
+Chalk Farm, the Hansom was stationary, the horse was smoking hot,
+the long pole was idle on the ground, and the driver and the
+park-keeper were looking over the bridge parapet. Looking
+over too, I saw, lying on the towing-path with her face turned up
+towards us, a woman, dead a day or two, and under thirty, as I
+guessed, poorly dressed in black. The feet were lightly
+crossed at the ankles, and the dark hair, all pushed back from
+the face, as though that had been the last action of her
+desperate hands, streamed over the ground. Dabbled all
+about her, was the water and the broken ice that had dropped from
+her dress, and had splashed as she was got out. The
+policeman who had just got her out, and the passing costermonger
+who had helped him, were standing near the body; the latter with
+that stare at it which I have likened to being at a waxwork
+exhibition without a catalogue; the former, looking over his
+stock, with professional stiffness and coolness, in the direction
+in which the bearers he had sent for were expected. So
+dreadfully forlorn, so dreadfully sad, so dreadfully mysterious,
+this spectacle of our dear sister here departed! A barge
+came up, breaking the floating ice and the silence, and a woman
+steered it. The man with the horse that towed it, cared so
+little for the body, that the stumbling hoofs had been among the
+hair, and the tow-rope had caught and turned the head, before our
+cry of horror took him to the bridle. At which sound the
+steering woman looked up at us on the bridge, with contempt
+unutterable, and then looking down at the body with a similar
+expression&mdash;as if it were made in another likeness from
+herself, had been informed with other passions, had been lost by
+other chances, had had another nature dragged down to
+perdition&mdash;steered a spurning streak of mud at it, and
+passed on.</p>
+<p>A better experience, but also of the Morgue kind, in which
+chance happily made me useful in a slight degree, arose to my
+remembrance as I took my way by the Boulevard de
+S&eacute;bastopol to the brighter scenes of Paris.</p>
+<p>The thing happened, say five-and-twenty years ago. I was
+a modest young uncommercial then, and timid and
+inexperienced. Many suns and winds have browned me in the
+line, but those were my pale days. Having newly taken the
+lease of a house in a certain distinguished metropolitan
+parish&mdash;a house which then appeared to me to be a
+frightfully first-class Family Mansion, involving awful
+responsibilities&mdash;I became the prey of a Beadle. I
+think the Beadle must have seen me going in or coming out, and
+must have observed that I tottered under the weight of my
+grandeur. Or he may have been in hiding under straw when I
+bought my first horse (in the desirable stable-yard attached to
+the first-class Family Mansion), and when the vendor remarked to
+me, in an original manner, on bringing him for approval, taking
+his cloth off and smacking him, &lsquo;There, Sir!
+<i>There&rsquo;s</i> a Orse!&rsquo; And when I said
+gallantly, &lsquo;How much do you want for him?&rsquo; and when
+the vendor said, &lsquo;No more than sixty guineas, from
+you,&rsquo; and when I said smartly, &lsquo;Why not more than
+sixty from <i>me</i>?&rsquo; And when he said crushingly,
+&lsquo;Because upon my soul and body he&rsquo;d be considered
+cheap at seventy, by one who understood the subject&mdash;but you
+don&rsquo;t.&rsquo;&mdash;I say, the Beadle may have been in
+hiding under straw, when this disgrace befell me, or he may have
+noted that I was too raw and young an Atlas to carry the
+first-class Family Mansion in a knowing manner. Be this as
+it may, the Beadle did what Melancholy did to the youth in
+Gray&rsquo;s Elegy&mdash;he marked me for his own. And the
+way in which the Beadle did it, was this: he summoned me as a
+Juryman on his Coroner&rsquo;s Inquests.</p>
+<p>In my first feverish alarm I repaired &lsquo;for safety and
+for succour&rsquo;&mdash;like those sagacious Northern shepherds
+who, having had no previous reason whatever to believe in young
+Norval, very prudently did not originate the hazardous idea of
+believing in him&mdash;to a deep householder. This profound
+man informed me that the Beadle counted on my buying him off; on
+my bribing him not to summon me; and that if I would attend an
+Inquest with a cheerful countenance, and profess alacrity in that
+branch of my country&rsquo;s service, the Beadle would be
+disheartened, and would give up the game.</p>
+<p>I roused my energies, and the next time the wily Beadle
+summoned me, I went. The Beadle was the blankest Beadle I
+have ever looked on when I answered to my name; and his
+discomfiture gave me courage to go through with it.</p>
+<p>We were impanelled to inquire concerning the death of a very
+little mite of a child. It was the old miserable
+story. Whether the mother had committed the minor offence
+of concealing the birth, or whether she had committed the major
+offence of killing the child, was the question on which we were
+wanted. We must commit her on one of the two issues.</p>
+<p>The Inquest came off in the parish workhouse, and I have yet a
+lively impression that I was unanimously received by my brother
+Jurymen as a brother of the utmost conceivable
+insignificance. Also, that before we began, a broker who
+had lately cheated me fearfully in the matter of a pair of
+card-tables, was for the utmost rigour of the law. I
+remember that we sat in a sort of board-room, on such very large
+square horse-hair chairs that I wondered what race of Patagonians
+they were made for; and further, that an undertaker gave me his
+card when we were in the full moral freshness of having just been
+sworn, as &lsquo;an inhabitant that was newly come into the
+parish, and was likely to have a young family.&rsquo; The
+case was then stated to us by the Coroner, and then we went
+down-stairs&mdash;led by the plotting Beadle&mdash;to view the
+body. From that day to this, the poor little figure, on
+which that sounding legal appellation was bestowed, has lain in
+the same place and with the same surroundings, to my
+thinking. In a kind of crypt devoted to the warehousing of
+the parochial coffins, and in the midst of a perfect Panorama of
+coffins of all sizes, it was stretched on a box; the mother had
+put it in her box&mdash;this box&mdash;almost as soon as it was
+born, and it had been presently found there. It had been
+opened, and neatly sewn up, and regarded from that point of view,
+it looked like a stuffed creature. It rested on a clean
+white cloth, with a surgical instrument or so at hand, and
+regarded from that point of view, it looked as if the cloth were
+&lsquo;laid,&rsquo; and the Giant were coming to dinner.
+There was nothing repellent about the poor piece of innocence,
+and it demanded a mere form of looking at. So, we looked at
+an old pauper who was going about among the coffins with a foot
+rule, as if he were a case of Self-Measurement; and we looked at
+one another; and we said the place was well whitewashed anyhow;
+and then our conversational powers as a British Jury flagged, and
+the foreman said, &lsquo;All right, gentlemen? Back again,
+Mr. Beadle!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The miserable young creature who had given birth to this child
+within a very few days, and who had cleaned the cold wet
+door-steps immediately afterwards, was brought before us when we
+resumed our horse-hair chairs, and was present during the
+proceedings. She had a horse-hair chair herself, being very
+weak and ill; and I remember how she turned to the unsympathetic
+nurse who attended her, and who might have been the figure-head
+of a pauper-ship, and how she hid her face and sobs and tears
+upon that wooden shoulder. I remember, too, how hard her
+mistress was upon her (she was a servant-of-all-work), and with
+what a cruel pertinacity that piece of Virtue spun her thread of
+evidence double, by intertwisting it with the sternest thread of
+construction. Smitten hard by the terrible low wail from
+the utterly friendless orphan girl, which never ceased during the
+whole inquiry, I took heart to ask this witness a question or
+two, which hopefully admitted of an answer that might give a
+favourable turn to the case. She made the turn as little
+favourable as it could be, but it did some good, and the Coroner,
+who was nobly patient and humane (he was the late Mr. Wakley),
+cast a look of strong encouragement in my direction. Then,
+we had the doctor who had made the examination, and the usual
+tests as to whether the child was born alive; but he was a timid,
+muddle-headed doctor, and got confused and contradictory, and
+wouldn&rsquo;t say this, and couldn&rsquo;t answer for that, and
+the immaculate broker was too much for him, and our side slid
+back again. However, I tried again, and the Coroner backed
+me again, for which I ever afterwards felt grateful to him as I
+do now to his memory; and we got another favourable turn, out of
+some other witness, some member of the family with a strong
+prepossession against the sinner; and I think we had the doctor
+back again; and I know that the Coroner summed up for our side,
+and that I and my British brothers turned round to discuss our
+verdict, and get ourselves into great difficulties with our large
+chairs and the broker. At that stage of the case I tried
+hard again, being convinced that I had cause for it; and at last
+we found for the minor offence of only concealing the birth; and
+the poor desolate creature, who had been taken out during our
+deliberation, being brought in again to be told of the verdict,
+then dropped upon her knees before us, with protestations that we
+were right&mdash;protestations among the most affecting that I
+have ever heard in my life&mdash;and was carried away
+insensible.</p>
+<p>(In private conversation after this was all over, the Coroner
+showed me his reasons as a trained surgeon, for perceiving it to
+be impossible that the child could, under the most favourable
+circumstances, have drawn many breaths, in the very doubtful case
+of its having ever breathed at all; this, owing to the discovery
+of some foreign matter in the windpipe, quite irreconcilable with
+many moments of life.)</p>
+<p>When the agonised girl had made those final protestations, I
+had seen her face, and it was in unison with her distracted
+heartbroken voice, and it was very moving. It certainly did
+not impress me by any beauty that it had, and if I ever see it
+again in another world I shall only know it by the help of some
+new sense or intelligence. But it came to me in my sleep
+that night, and I selfishly dismissed it in the most efficient
+way I could think of. I caused some extra care to be taken
+of her in the prison, and counsel to be retained for her defence
+when she was tried at the Old Bailey; and her sentence was
+lenient, and her history and conduct proved that it was
+right. In doing the little I did for her, I remember to
+have had the kind help of some gentle-hearted functionary to whom
+I addressed myself&mdash;but what functionary I have long
+forgotten&mdash;who I suppose was officially present at the
+Inquest.</p>
+<p>I regard this as a very notable uncommercial experience,
+because this good came of a Beadle. And to the best of my
+knowledge, information, and belief, it is the only good that ever
+did come of a Beadle since the first Beadle put on his
+cocked-hat.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap20"></a>XX<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> came into my mind that I would
+recall in these notes a few of the many hostelries I have rested
+at in the course of my journeys; and, indeed, I had taken up my
+pen for the purpose, when I was baffled by an accidental
+circumstance. It was the having to leave off, to wish the
+owner of a certain bright face that looked in at my door,
+&lsquo;many happy returns of the day.&rsquo; Thereupon a
+new thought came into my mind, driving its predecessor out, and I
+began to recall&mdash;instead of Inns&mdash;the birthdays that I
+have put up at, on my way to this present sheet of paper.</p>
+<p>I can very well remember being taken out to visit some
+peach-faced creature in a blue sash, and shoes to correspond,
+whose life I supposed to consist entirely of birthdays.
+Upon seed-cake, sweet wine, and shining presents, that glorified
+young person seemed to me to be exclusively reared. At so
+early a stage of my travels did I assist at the anniversary of
+her nativity (and become enamoured of her), that I had not yet
+acquired the recondite knowledge that a birthday is the common
+property of all who are born, but supposed it to be a special
+gift bestowed by the favouring Heavens on that one distinguished
+infant. There was no other company, and we sat in a shady
+bower&mdash;under a table, as my better (or worse) knowledge
+leads me to believe&mdash;and were regaled with saccharine
+substances and liquids, until it was time to part. A bitter
+powder was administered to me next morning, and I was
+wretched. On the whole, a pretty accurate foreshadowing of
+my more mature experiences in such wise!</p>
+<p>Then came the time when, inseparable from one&rsquo;s own
+birthday, was a certain sense of merit, a consciousness of
+well-earned distinction. When I regarded my birthday as a
+graceful achievement of my own, a monument of my perseverance,
+independence, and good sense, redounding greatly to my
+honour. This was at about the period when Olympia Squires
+became involved in the anniversary. Olympia was most
+beautiful (of course), and I loved her to that degree, that I
+used to be obliged to get out of my little bed in the night,
+expressly to exclaim to Solitude, &lsquo;O, Olympia
+Squires!&rsquo; Visions of Olympia, clothed entirely in
+sage-green, from which I infer a defectively educated taste on
+the part of her respected parents, who were necessarily
+unacquainted with the South Kensington Museum, still arise before
+me. Truth is sacred, and the visions are crowned by a
+shining white beaver bonnet, impossibly suggestive of a little
+feminine postboy. My memory presents a birthday when
+Olympia and I were taken by an unfeeling relative&mdash;some
+cruel uncle, or the like&mdash;to a slow torture called an
+Orrery. The terrible instrument was set up at the local
+Theatre, and I had expressed a profane wish in the morning that
+it was a Play: for which a serious aunt had probed my conscience
+deep, and my pocket deeper, by reclaiming a bestowed
+half-crown. It was a venerable and a shabby Orrery, at
+least one thousand stars and twenty-five comets behind the
+age. Nevertheless, it was awful. When the
+low-spirited gentleman with a wand said, &lsquo;Ladies and
+gentlemen&rsquo; (meaning particularly Olympia and me),
+&lsquo;the lights are about to be put out, but there is not the
+slightest cause for alarm,&rsquo; it was very alarming.
+Then the planets and stars began. Sometimes they
+wouldn&rsquo;t come on, sometimes they wouldn&rsquo;t go off,
+sometimes they had holes in them, and mostly they didn&rsquo;t
+seem to be good likenesses. All this time the gentleman
+with the wand was going on in the dark (tapping away at the
+heavenly bodies between whiles, like a wearisome woodpecker),
+about a sphere revolving on its own axis eight hundred and
+ninety-seven thousand millions of times&mdash;or miles&mdash;in
+two hundred and sixty-three thousand five hundred and twenty-four
+millions of something elses, until I thought if this was a
+birthday it were better never to have been born. Olympia,
+also, became much depressed, and we both slumbered and woke
+cross, and still the gentleman was going on in the
+dark&mdash;whether up in the stars, or down on the stage, it
+would have been hard to make out, if it had been worth
+trying&mdash;cyphering away about planes of orbits, to such an
+infamous extent that Olympia, stung to madness, actually kicked
+me. A pretty birthday spectacle, when the lights were
+turned up again, and all the schools in the town (including the
+National, who had come in for nothing, and serve them right, for
+they were always throwing stones) were discovered with exhausted
+countenances, screwing their knuckles into their eyes, or
+clutching their heads of hair. A pretty birthday speech
+when Dr. Sleek of the City-Free bobbed up his powdered head in
+the stage-box, and said that before this assembly dispersed he
+really must beg to express his entire approval of a lecture as
+improving, as informing, as devoid of anything that could call a
+blush into the cheek of youth, as any it had ever been his lot to
+hear delivered. A pretty birthday altogether, when
+Astronomy couldn&rsquo;t leave poor Small Olympia Squires and me
+alone, but must put an end to our loves! For, we never got
+over it; the threadbare Orrery outwore our mutual tenderness; the
+man with the wand was too much for the boy with the bow.</p>
+<p>When shall I disconnect the combined smells of oranges, brown
+paper, and straw, from those other birthdays at school, when the
+coming hamper casts its shadow before, and when a week of social
+harmony&mdash;shall I add of admiring and affectionate
+popularity&mdash;led up to that Institution? What noble
+sentiments were expressed to me in the days before the hamper,
+what vows of friendship were sworn to me, what exceedingly old
+knives were given me, what generous avowals of having been in the
+wrong emanated from else obstinate spirits once enrolled among my
+enemies! The birthday of the potted game and guava jelly,
+is still made special to me by the noble conduct of Bully
+Globson. Letters from home had mysteriously inquired
+whether I should be much surprised and disappointed if among the
+treasures in the coming hamper I discovered potted game, and
+guava jelly from the Western Indies. I had mentioned those
+hints in confidence to a few friends, and had promised to give
+away, as I now see reason to believe, a handsome covey of
+partridges potted, and about a hundredweight of guava
+jelly. It was now that Globson, Bully no more, sought me
+out in the playground. He was a big fat boy, with a big fat
+head and a big fat fist, and at the beginning of that Half had
+raised such a bump on my forehead that I couldn&rsquo;t get my
+hat of state on, to go to church. He said that after an
+interval of cool reflection (four months) he now felt this blow
+to have been an error of judgment, and that he wished to
+apologise for the same. Not only that, but holding down his
+big head between his two big hands in order that I might reach it
+conveniently, he requested me, as an act of justice which would
+appease his awakened conscience, to raise a retributive bump upon
+it, in the presence of witnesses. This handsome proposal I
+modestly declined, and he then embraced me, and we walked away
+conversing. We conversed respecting the West India Islands,
+and, in the pursuit of knowledge he asked me with much interest
+whether in the course of my reading I had met with any reliable
+description of the mode of manufacturing guava jelly; or whether
+I had ever happened to taste that conserve, which he had been
+given to understand was of rare excellence.</p>
+<p>Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty; and then with the
+waning months came an ever augmenting sense of the dignity of
+twenty-one. Heaven knows I had nothing to &lsquo;come
+into,&rsquo; save the bare birthday, and yet I esteemed it as a
+great possession. I now and then paved the way to my state
+of dignity, by beginning a proposition with the casual words,
+&lsquo;say that a man of twenty-one,&rsquo; or by the incidental
+assumption of a fact that could not sanely be disputed, as,
+&lsquo;for when a fellow comes to be a man of
+twenty-one.&rsquo; I gave a party on the occasion.
+She was there. It is unnecessary to name Her, more
+particularly; She was older than I, and had pervaded every chink
+and crevice of my mind for three or four years. I had held
+volumes of Imaginary Conversations with her mother on the subject
+of our union, and I had written letters more in number than
+Horace Walpole&rsquo;s, to that discreet woman, soliciting her
+daughter&rsquo;s hand in marriage. I had never had the
+remotest intention of sending any of those letters; but to write
+them, and after a few days tear them up, had been a sublime
+occupation. Sometimes, I had begun &lsquo;Honoured
+Madam. I think that a lady gifted with those powers of
+observation which I know you to possess, and endowed with those
+womanly sympathies with the young and ardent which it were more
+than heresy to doubt, can scarcely have failed to discover that I
+love your adorable daughter, deeply, devotedly.&rsquo; In
+less buoyant states of mind I had begun, &lsquo;Bear with me,
+Dear Madam, bear with a daring wretch who is about to make a
+surprising confession to you, wholly unanticipated by yourself,
+and which he beseeches you to commit to the flames as soon as you
+have become aware to what a towering height his mad ambition
+soars.&rsquo; At other times&mdash;periods of profound
+mental depression, when She had gone out to balls where I was
+not&mdash;the draft took the affecting form of a paper to be left
+on my table after my departure to the confines of the
+globe. As thus: &lsquo;For Mrs. Onowenever, these lines
+when the hand that traces them shall be far away. I could
+not bear the daily torture of hopelessly loving the dear one whom
+I will not name. Broiling on the coast of Africa, or
+congealing on the shores of Greenland, I am far far better there
+than here.&rsquo; (In this sentiment my cooler judgment
+perceives that the family of the beloved object would have most
+completely concurred.) &lsquo;If I ever emerge from
+obscurity, and my name is ever heralded by Fame, it will be for
+her dear sake. If I ever amass Gold, it will be to pour it
+at her feet. Should I on the other hand become the prey of
+Ravens&mdash;&rsquo; I doubt if I ever quite made up my
+mind what was to be done in that affecting case; I tried
+&lsquo;then it is better so;&rsquo; but not feeling convinced
+that it would be better so, I vacillated between leaving all else
+blank, which looked expressive and bleak, or winding up with
+&lsquo;Farewell!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>This fictitious correspondence of mine is to blame for the
+foregoing digression. I was about to pursue the statement
+that on my twenty-first birthday I gave a party, and She was
+there. It was a beautiful party. There was not a
+single animate or inanimate object connected with it (except the
+company and myself) that I had ever seen before. Everything
+was hired, and the mercenaries in attendance were profound
+strangers to me. Behind a door, in the crumby part of the
+night when wine-glasses were to be found in unexpected spots, I
+spoke to Her&mdash;spoke out to Her. What passed, I cannot
+as a man of honour reveal. She was all angelical
+gentleness, but a word was mentioned&mdash;a short and dreadful
+word of three letters, beginning with a B&mdash; which, as I
+remarked at the moment, &lsquo;scorched my brain.&rsquo;
+She went away soon afterwards, and when the hollow throng (though
+to be sure it was no fault of theirs) dispersed, I issued forth,
+with a dissipated scorner, and, as I mentioned expressly to him,
+&lsquo;sought oblivion.&rsquo; It was found, with a
+dreadful headache in it, but it didn&rsquo;t last; for, in the
+shaming light of next day&rsquo;s noon, I raised my heavy head in
+bed, looking back to the birthdays behind me, and tracking the
+circle by which I had got round, after all, to the bitter powder
+and the wretchedness again.</p>
+<p>This reactionary powder (taken so largely by the human race I
+am inclined to regard it as the Universal Medicine once sought
+for in Laboratories) is capable of being made up in another form
+for birthday use. Anybody&rsquo;s long-lost brother will do
+ill to turn up on a birthday. If I had a long-lost brother
+I should know beforehand that he would prove a tremendous
+fraternal failure if he appointed to rush into my arms on my
+birthday. The first Magic Lantern I ever saw, was secretly
+and elaborately planned to be the great effect of a very juvenile
+birthday; but it wouldn&rsquo;t act, and its images were
+dim. My experience of adult birthday Magic Lanterns may
+possibly have been unfortunate, but has certainly been
+similar. I have an illustrative birthday in my eye: a
+birthday of my friend Flipfield, whose birthdays had long been
+remarkable as social successes. There had been nothing set
+or formal about them; Flipfield having been accustomed merely to
+say, two or three days before, &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t forget to come
+and dine, old boy, according to custom;&rsquo;&mdash;I
+don&rsquo;t know what he said to the ladies he invited, but I may
+safely assume it <i>not</i> to have been &lsquo;old
+girl.&rsquo; Those were delightful gatherings, and were
+enjoyed by all participators. In an evil hour, a long-lost
+brother of Flipfield&rsquo;s came to light in foreign
+parts. Where he had been hidden, or what he had been doing,
+I don&rsquo;t know, for Flipfield vaguely informed me that he had
+turned up &lsquo;on the banks of the Ganges&rsquo;&mdash;speaking
+of him as if he had been washed ashore. The Long-lost was
+coming home, and Flipfield made an unfortunate calculation, based
+on the well-known regularity of the P. and O. Steamers, that
+matters might be so contrived as that the Long-lost should appear
+in the nick of time on his (Flipfield&rsquo;s) birthday.
+Delicacy commanded that I should repress the gloomy anticipations
+with which my soul became fraught when I heard of this
+plan. The fatal day arrived, and we assembled in
+force. Mrs. Flipfield senior formed an interesting feature
+in the group, with a blue-veined miniature of the late Mr.
+Flipfield round her neck, in an oval, resembling a tart from the
+pastrycook&rsquo;s: his hair powdered, and the bright buttons on
+his coat, evidently very like. She was accompanied by Miss
+Flipfield, the eldest of her numerous family, who held her
+pocket-handkerchief to her bosom in a majestic manner, and spoke
+to all of us (none of us had ever seen her before), in pious and
+condoning tones, of all the quarrels that had taken place in the
+family, from her infancy&mdash;which must have been a long time
+ago&mdash;down to that hour. The Long-lost did not
+appear. Dinner, half an hour later than usual, was
+announced, and still no Long-lost. We sat down to
+table. The knife and fork of the Long-lost made a vacuum in
+Nature, and when the champagne came round for the first time,
+Flipfield gave him up for the day, and had them removed. It
+was then that the Long-lost gained the height of his popularity
+with the company; for my own part, I felt convinced that I loved
+him dearly. Flipfield&rsquo;s dinners are perfect, and he
+is the easiest and best of entertainers. Dinner went on
+brilliantly, and the more the Long-lost didn&rsquo;t come, the
+more comfortable we grew, and the more highly we thought of
+him. Flipfield&rsquo;s own man (who has a regard for me)
+was in the act of struggling with an ignorant stipendiary, to
+wrest from him the wooden leg of a Guinea-fowl which he was
+pressing on my acceptance, and to substitute a slice of the
+breast, when a ringing at the door-bell suspended the
+strife. I looked round me, and perceived the sudden pallor
+which I knew my own visage revealed, reflected in the faces of
+the company. Flipfield hurriedly excused himself, went out,
+was absent for about a minute or two, and then re-entered with
+the Long-lost.</p>
+<p>I beg to say distinctly that if the stranger had brought Mont
+Blanc with him, or had come attended by a retinue of eternal
+snows, he could not have chilled the circle to the marrow in a
+more efficient manner. Embodied Failure sat enthroned upon
+the Long-lost&rsquo;s brow, and pervaded him to his Long-lost
+boots. In vain Mrs. Flipfield senior, opening her arms,
+exclaimed, &lsquo;My Tom!&rsquo; and pressed his nose against the
+counterfeit presentment of his other parent. In vain Miss
+Flipfield, in the first transports of this re-union, showed him a
+dint upon her maidenly cheek, and asked him if he remembered when
+he did that with the bellows? We, the bystanders, were
+overcome, but overcome by the palpable, undisguisable, utter, and
+total break-down of the Long-lost. Nothing he could have
+done would have set him right with us but his instant return to
+the Ganges. In the very same moments it became established
+that the feeling was reciprocal, and that the Long-lost detested
+us. When a friend of the family (not myself, upon my
+honour), wishing to set things going again, asked him, while he
+partook of soup&mdash;asked him with an amiability of intention
+beyond all praise, but with a weakness of execution open to
+defeat&mdash;what kind of river he considered the Ganges, the
+Long-lost, scowling at the friend of the family over his spoon,
+as one of an abhorrent race, replied, &lsquo;Why, a river of
+water, I suppose,&rsquo; and spooned his soup into himself with a
+malignancy of hand and eye that blighted the amiable
+questioner. Not an opinion could be elicited from the
+Long-lost, in unison with the sentiments of any individual
+present. He contradicted Flipfield dead, before he had
+eaten his salmon. He had no idea&mdash;or affected to have
+no idea&mdash;that it was his brother&rsquo;s birthday, and on
+the communication of that interesting fact to him, merely wanted
+to make him out four years older than he was. He was an
+antipathetical being, with a peculiar power and gift of treading
+on everybody&rsquo;s tenderest place. They talk in America
+of a man&rsquo;s &lsquo;Platform.&rsquo; I should describe
+the Platform of the Long-lost as a Platform composed of other
+people&rsquo;s corns, on which he had stumped his way, with all
+his might and main, to his present position. It is needless
+to add that Flipfield&rsquo;s great birthday went by the board,
+and that he was a wreck when I pretended at parting to wish him
+many happy returns of it.</p>
+<p>There is another class of birthdays at which I have so
+frequently assisted, that I may assume such birthdays to be
+pretty well known to the human race. My friend
+Mayday&rsquo;s birthday is an example. The guests have no
+knowledge of one another except on that one day in the year, and
+are annually terrified for a week by the prospect of meeting one
+another again. There is a fiction among us that we have
+uncommon reasons for being particularly lively and spirited on
+the occasion, whereas deep despondency is no phrase for the
+expression of our feelings. But the wonderful feature of
+the case is, that we are in tacit accordance to avoid the
+subject&mdash;to keep it as far off as possible, as long as
+possible&mdash;and to talk about anything else, rather than the
+joyful event. I may even go so far as to assert that there
+is a dumb compact among us that we will pretend that it is <span
+class="GutSmall">NOT</span> Mayday&rsquo;s birthday. A
+mysterious and gloomy Being, who is said to have gone to school
+with Mayday, and who is so lank and lean that he seriously
+impugns the Dietary of the establishment at which they were
+jointly educated, always leads us, as I may say, to the block, by
+laying his grisly hand on a decanter and begging us to fill our
+glasses. The devices and pretences that I have seen put in
+practice to defer the fatal moment, and to interpose between this
+man and his purpose, are innumerable. I have known
+desperate guests, when they saw the grisly hand approaching the
+decanter, wildly to begin, without any antecedent whatsoever,
+&lsquo;That reminds me&mdash;&rsquo; and to plunge into long
+stories. When at last the hand and the decanter come
+together, a shudder, a palpable perceptible shudder, goes round
+the table. We receive the reminder that it is
+Mayday&rsquo;s birthday, as if it were the anniversary of some
+profound disgrace he had undergone, and we sought to comfort
+him. And when we have drunk Mayday&rsquo;s health, and
+wished him many happy returns, we are seized for some moments
+with a ghastly blitheness, an unnatural levity, as if we were in
+the first flushed reaction of having undergone a surgical
+operation.</p>
+<p>Birthdays of this species have a public as well as a private
+phase. My &lsquo;boyhood&rsquo;s home,&rsquo; Dullborough,
+presents a case in point. An Immortal Somebody was wanted
+in Dullborough, to dimple for a day the stagnant face of the
+waters; he was rather wanted by Dullborough generally, and much
+wanted by the principal hotel-keeper. The County history
+was looked up for a locally Immortal Somebody, but the registered
+Dullborough worthies were all Nobodies. In this state of
+things, it is hardly necessary to record that Dullborough did
+what every man does when he wants to write a book or deliver a
+lecture, and is provided with all the materials except a
+subject. It fell back upon Shakespeare.</p>
+<p>No sooner was it resolved to celebrate Shakespeare&rsquo;s
+birthday in Dullborough, than the popularity of the immortal bard
+became surprising. You might have supposed the first
+edition of his works to have been published last week, and
+enthusiastic Dullborough to have got half through them. (I
+doubt, by the way, whether it had ever done half that, but that
+is a private opinion.) A young gentleman with a sonnet, the
+retention of which for two years had enfeebled his mind and
+undermined his knees, got the sonnet into the Dullborough Warden,
+and gained flesh. Portraits of Shakespeare broke out in the
+bookshop windows, and our principal artist painted a large
+original portrait in oils for the decoration of the
+dining-room. It was not in the least like any of the other
+Portraits, and was exceedingly admired, the head being much
+swollen. At the Institution, the Debating Society discussed
+the new question, Was there sufficient ground for supposing that
+the Immortal Shakespeare ever stole deer? This was
+indignantly decided by an overwhelming majority in the negative;
+indeed, there was but one vote on the Poaching side, and that was
+the vote of the orator who had undertaken to advocate it, and who
+became quite an obnoxious character&mdash;particularly to the
+Dullborough &lsquo;roughs,&rsquo; who were about as well informed
+on the matter as most other people. Distinguished speakers
+were invited down, and very nearly came (but not quite).
+Subscriptions were opened, and committees sat, and it would have
+been far from a popular measure in the height of the excitement,
+to have told Dullborough that it wasn&rsquo;t
+Stratford-upon-Avon. Yet, after all these preparations,
+when the great festivity took place, and the portrait, elevated
+aloft, surveyed the company as if it were in danger of springing
+a mine of intellect and blowing itself up, it did undoubtedly
+happen, according to the inscrutable mysteries of things, that
+nobody could be induced, not to say to touch upon Shakespeare,
+but to come within a mile of him, until the crack speaker of
+Dullborough rose to propose the immortal memory. Which he
+did with the perplexing and astonishing result that before he had
+repeated the great name half-a-dozen times, or had been upon his
+legs as many minutes, he was assailed with a general shout of
+&lsquo;Question.&rsquo;</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap21"></a>XXI<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE SHORT-TIMERS</span></h2>
+<p>&lsquo;<span class="smcap">Within</span> so many yards of this
+Covent-garden lodging of mine, as within so many yards of
+Westminster Abbey, Saint Paul&rsquo;s Cathedral, the Houses of
+Parliament, the Prisons, the Courts of Justice, all the
+Institutions that govern the land, I can find&mdash;<i>must</i>
+find, whether I will or no&mdash;in the open streets, shameful
+instances of neglect of children, intolerable toleration of the
+engenderment of paupers, idlers, thieves, races of wretched and
+destructive cripples both in body and mind, a misery to
+themselves, a misery to the community, a disgrace to
+civilisation, and an outrage on Christianity.&mdash;I know it to
+be a fact as easy of demonstration as any sum in any of the
+elementary rules of arithmetic, that if the State would begin its
+work and duty at the beginning, and would with the strong hand
+take those children out of the streets, while they are yet
+children, and wisely train them, it would make them a part of
+England&rsquo;s glory, not its shame&mdash;of England&rsquo;s
+strength, not its weakness&mdash;would raise good soldiers and
+sailors, and good citizens, and many great men, out of the seeds
+of its criminal population. Yet I go on bearing with the
+enormity as if it were nothing, and I go on reading the
+Parliamentary Debates as if they were something, and I concern
+myself far more about one railway-bridge across a public
+thoroughfare, than about a dozen generations of scrofula,
+ignorance, wickedness, prostitution, poverty, and felony. I
+can slip out at my door, in the small hours after any midnight,
+and, in one circuit of the purlieus of Covent-garden Market, can
+behold a state of infancy and youth, as vile as if a Bourbon sat
+upon the English throne; a great police force looking on with
+authority to do no more than worry and hunt the dreadful vermin
+into corners, and there leave them. Within the length of a
+few streets I can find a workhouse, mismanaged with that dull
+short-sighted obstinacy that its greatest opportunities as to the
+children it receives are lost, and yet not a farthing saved to
+any one. But the wheel goes round, and round, and round;
+and because it goes round&mdash;so I am told by the politest
+authorities&mdash;it goes well.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Thus I reflected, one day in the Whitsun week last past, as I
+floated down the Thames among the bridges, looking&mdash;not
+inappropriately&mdash;at the drags that were hanging up at
+certain dirty stairs to hook the drowned out, and at the numerous
+conveniences provided to facilitate their tumbling in. My
+object in that uncommercial journey called up another train of
+thought, and it ran as follows:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;When I was at school, one of seventy boys, I wonder by
+what secret understanding our attention began to wander when we
+had pored over our books for some hours. I wonder by what
+ingenuity we brought on that confused state of mind when sense
+became nonsense, when figures wouldn&rsquo;t work, when dead
+languages wouldn&rsquo;t construe, when live languages
+wouldn&rsquo;t be spoken, when memory wouldn&rsquo;t come, when
+dulness and vacancy wouldn&rsquo;t go. I cannot remember
+that we ever conspired to be sleepy after dinner, or that we ever
+particularly wanted to be stupid, and to have flushed faces and
+hot beating heads, or to find blank hopelessness and obscurity
+this afternoon in what would become perfectly clear and bright in
+the freshness of to-morrow morning. We suffered for these
+things, and they made us miserable enough. Neither do I
+remember that we ever bound ourselves by any secret oath or other
+solemn obligation, to find the seats getting too hard to be sat
+upon after a certain time; or to have intolerable twitches in our
+legs, rendering us aggressive and malicious with those members;
+or to be troubled with a similar uneasiness in our elbows,
+attended with fistic consequences to our neighbours; or to carry
+two pounds of lead in the chest, four pounds in the head, and
+several active blue-bottles in each ear. Yet, for certain,
+we suffered under those distresses, and were always charged at
+for labouring under them, as if we had brought them on, of our
+own deliberate act and deed. As to the mental portion of
+them being my own fault in my own case&mdash;I should like to ask
+any well-trained and experienced teacher, not to say
+psychologist. And as to the physical portion&mdash;I should
+like to ask <span class="smcap">Professor Owen</span>.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>It happened that I had a small bundle of papers with me, on
+what is called &lsquo;The Half-Time System&rsquo; in
+schools. Referring to one of those papers I found that the
+indefatigable <span class="smcap">Mr. Chadwick</span> had been
+beforehand with me, and had already asked Professor Owen: who had
+handsomely replied that I was not to blame, but that, being
+troubled with a skeleton, and having been constituted according
+to certain natural laws, I and my skeleton were unfortunately
+bound by those laws even in school&mdash;and had comported
+ourselves accordingly. Much comforted by the good
+Professor&rsquo;s being on my side, I read on to discover whether
+the indefatigable Mr. Chadwick had taken up the mental part of my
+afflictions. I found that he had, and that he had gained on
+my behalf, <span class="smcap">Sir Benjamin Brodie</span>, <span
+class="smcap">Sir David Wilkie</span>, <span class="smcap">Sir
+Walter Scott</span>, and the common sense of mankind. For
+which I beg Mr. Chadwick, if this should meet his eye, to accept
+my warm acknowledgments.</p>
+<p>Up to that time I had retained a misgiving that the seventy
+unfortunates of whom I was one, must have been, without knowing
+it, leagued together by the spirit of evil in a sort of perpetual
+Guy Fawkes Plot, to grope about in vaults with dark lanterns
+after a certain period of continuous study. But now the
+misgiving vanished, and I floated on with a quieted mind to see
+the Half-Time System in action. For that was the purpose of
+my journey, both by steamboat on the Thames, and by very dirty
+railway on the shore. To which last institution, I beg to
+recommend the legal use of coke as engine-fuel, rather than the
+illegal use of coal; the recommendation is quite disinterested,
+for I was most liberally supplied with small coal on the journey,
+for which no charge was made. I had not only my eyes, nose,
+and ears filled, but my hat, and all my pockets, and my
+pocket-book, and my watch.</p>
+<p>The V.D.S.C.R.C. (or Very Dirty and Small Coal Railway
+Company) delivered me close to my destination, and I soon found
+the Half-Time System established in spacious premises, and freely
+placed at my convenience and disposal.</p>
+<p>What would I see first of the Half-Time System? I chose
+Military Drill. &lsquo;Atten-tion!&rsquo; Instantly a
+hundred boys stood forth in the paved yard as one boy; bright,
+quick, eager, steady, watchful for the look of command, instant
+and ready for the word. Not only was there complete
+precision&mdash;complete accord to the eye and to the
+ear&mdash;but an alertness in the doing of the thing which
+deprived it, curiously, of its monotonous or mechanical
+character. There was perfect uniformity, and yet an
+individual spirit and emulation. No spectator could doubt
+that the boys liked it. With non-commissioned officers
+varying from a yard to a yard and a half high, the result could
+not possibly have been attained otherwise. They marched,
+and counter-marched, and formed in line and square, and company,
+and single file and double file, and performed a variety of
+evolutions; all most admirably. In respect of an air of
+enjoyable understanding of what they were about, which seems to
+be forbidden to English soldiers, the boys might have been small
+French troops. When they were dismissed and the broadsword
+exercise, limited to a much smaller number, succeeded, the boys
+who had no part in that new drill, either looked on attentively,
+or disported themselves in a gymnasium hard by. The
+steadiness of the broadsword boys on their short legs, and the
+firmness with which they sustained the different positions, was
+truly remarkable.</p>
+<p>The broadsword exercise over, suddenly there was great
+excitement and a rush. Naval Drill!</p>
+<p>In the corner of the ground stood a decked mimic ship, with
+real masts, yards, and sails&mdash;mainmast seventy feet
+high. At the word of command from the Skipper of this
+ship&mdash;a mahogany-faced Old Salt, with the indispensable quid
+in his cheek, the true nautical roll, and all wonderfully
+complete&mdash;the rigging was covered with a swarm of boys: one,
+the first to spring into the shrouds, outstripping all the
+others, and resting on the truck of the main-topmast in no
+time.</p>
+<p>And now we stood out to sea, in a most amazing manner; the
+Skipper himself, the whole crew, the Uncommercial, and all hands
+present, implicitly believing that there was not a moment to
+lose, that the wind had that instant chopped round and sprung up
+fair, and that we were away on a voyage round the world.
+Get all sail upon her! With a will, my lads! Lay out
+upon the main-yard there! Look alive at the weather
+earring! Cheery, my boys! Let go the sheet,
+now! Stand by at the braces, you! With a will, aloft
+there! Belay, starboard watch! Fifer! Come aft,
+fifer, and give &rsquo;em a tune! Forthwith, springs up
+fifer, fife in hand&mdash;smallest boy ever seen&mdash;big lump
+on temple, having lately fallen down on a
+paving-stone&mdash;gives &rsquo;em a tune with all his might and
+main. Hoo-roar, fifer! With a will, my lads!
+Tip &rsquo;em a livelier one, fifer! Fifer tips &rsquo;em a
+livelier one, and excitement increases. Shake &rsquo;em
+out, my lads! Well done! There you have her!
+Pretty, pretty! Every rag upon her she can carry, wind
+right astarn, and ship cutting through the water fifteen knots an
+hour!</p>
+<p>At this favourable moment of her voyage, I gave the alarm
+&lsquo;A man overboard!&rsquo; (on the gravel), but he was
+immediately recovered, none the worse. Presently, I
+observed the Skipper overboard, but forbore to mention it, as he
+seemed in no wise disconcerted by the accident. Indeed, I
+soon came to regard the Skipper as an amphibious creature, for he
+was so perpetually plunging overboard to look up at the hands
+aloft, that he was oftener in the bosom of the ocean than on
+deck. His pride in his crew on those occasions was
+delightful, and the conventional unintelligibility of his orders
+in the ears of uncommercial landlubbers and loblolly boys, though
+they were always intelligible to the crew, was hardly less
+pleasant. But we couldn&rsquo;t expect to go on in this way
+for ever; dirty weather came on, and then worse weather, and when
+we least expected it we got into tremendous difficulties.
+Screw loose in the chart perhaps&mdash;something certainly wrong
+somewhere&mdash;but here we were with breakers ahead, my lads,
+driving head on, slap on a lee shore! The Skipper broached
+this terrific announcement in such great agitation, that the
+small fifer, not fifeing now, but standing looking on near the
+wheel with his fife under his arm, seemed for the moment quite
+unboyed, though he speedily recovered his presence of mind.
+In the trying circumstances that ensued, the Skipper and the crew
+proved worthy of one another. The Skipper got dreadfully
+hoarse, but otherwise was master of the situation. The man
+at the wheel did wonders; all hands (except the fifer) were
+turned up to wear ship; and I observed the fifer, when we were at
+our greatest extremity, to refer to some document in his
+waistcoat-pocket, which I conceived to be his will. I think
+she struck. I was not myself conscious of any collision,
+but I saw the Skipper so very often washed overboard and back
+again, that I could only impute it to the beating of the
+ship. I am not enough of a seaman to describe the
+man&oelig;uvres by which we were saved, but they made the Skipper
+very hot (French polishing his mahogany face) and the crew very
+nimble, and succeeded to a marvel; for, within a few minutes of
+the first alarm, we had wore ship and got her off, and were all
+a-tauto&mdash;which I felt very grateful for: not that I knew
+what it was, but that I perceived that we had not been all
+a-tauto lately. Land now appeared on our weather-bow, and
+we shaped our course for it, having the wind abeam, and
+frequently changing the man at the helm, in order that every man
+might have his spell. We worked into harbour under
+prosperous circumstances, and furled our sails, and squared our
+yards, and made all ship-shape and handsome, and so our voyage
+ended. When I complimented the Skipper at parting on his
+exertions and those of his gallant crew, he informed me that the
+latter were provided for the worst, all hands being taught to
+swim and dive; and he added that the able seaman at the
+main-topmast truck especially, could dive as deep as he could go
+high.</p>
+<p>The next adventure that befell me in my visit to the
+Short-Timers, was the sudden apparition of a military band.
+I had been inspecting the hammocks of the crew of the good ship,
+when I saw with astonishment that several musical instruments,
+brazen and of great size, appeared to have suddenly developed two
+legs each, and to be trotting about a yard. And my
+astonishment was heightened when I observed a large drum, that
+had previously been leaning helpless against a wall, taking up a
+stout position on four legs. Approaching this drum and
+looking over it, I found two boys behind it (it was too much for
+one), and then I found that each of the brazen instruments had
+brought out a boy, and was going to discourse sweet sounds.
+The boys&mdash;not omitting the fifer, now playing a new
+instrument&mdash;were dressed in neat uniform, and stood up in a
+circle at their music-stands, like any other Military Band.
+They played a march or two, and then we had Cheer boys, Cheer,
+and then we had Yankee Doodle, and we finished, as in loyal duty
+bound, with God save the Queen. The band&rsquo;s
+proficiency was perfectly wonderful, and it was not at all
+wonderful that the whole body corporate of Short-Timers listened
+with faces of the liveliest interest and pleasure.</p>
+<p>What happened next among the Short-Timers? As if the
+band had blown me into a great class-room out of their brazen
+tubes, <i>in</i> a great class-room I found myself now, with the
+whole choral force of Short-Timers singing the praises of a
+summer&rsquo;s day to the harmonium, and my small but highly
+respected friend the fifer blazing away vocally, as if he had
+been saving up his wind for the last twelvemonth; also the whole
+crew of the good ship Nameless swarming up and down the scale as
+if they had never swarmed up and down the rigging. This
+done, we threw our whole power into God bless the Prince of
+Wales, and blessed his Royal Highness to such an extent that, for
+my own Uncommercial part, I gasped again when it was over.
+The moment this was done, we formed, with surpassing freshness,
+into hollow squares, and fell to work at oral lessons as if we
+never did, and had never thought of doing, anything else.</p>
+<p>Let a veil be drawn over the self-committals into which the
+Uncommercial Traveller would have been betrayed but for a
+discreet reticence, coupled with an air of absolute wisdom on the
+part of that artful personage. Take the square of five,
+multiply it by fifteen, divide it by three, deduct eight from it,
+add four dozen to it, give me the result in pence, and tell me
+how many eggs I could get for it at three farthings apiece.
+The problem is hardly stated, when a dozen small boys pour out
+answers. Some wide, some very nearly right, some worked as
+far as they go with such accuracy, as at once to show what link
+of the chain has been dropped in the hurry. For the moment,
+none are quite right; but behold a labouring spirit beating the
+buttons on its corporeal waistcoat, in a process of internal
+calculation, and knitting an accidental bump on its corporeal
+forehead in a concentration of mental arithmetic! It is my
+honourable friend (if he will allow me to call him so) the
+fifer. With right arm eagerly extended in token of being
+inspired with an answer, and with right leg foremost, the fifer
+solves the mystery: then recalls both arm and leg, and with bump
+in ambush awaits the next poser. Take the square of three,
+multiply it by seven, divide it by four, add fifty to it, take
+thirteen from it, multiply it by two, double it, give me the
+result in pence, and say how many halfpence. Wise as the
+serpent is the four feet of performer on the nearest approach to
+that instrument, whose right arm instantly appears, and quenches
+this arithmetical fire. Tell me something about Great
+Britain, tell me something about its principal productions, tell
+me something about its ports, tell me something about its seas
+and rivers, tell me something about coal, iron, cotton, timber,
+tin, and turpentine. The hollow square bristles with
+extended right arms; but ever faithful to fact is the fifer, ever
+wise as the serpent is the performer on that instrument, ever
+prominently buoyant and brilliant are all members of the
+band. I observe the player of the cymbals to dash at a
+sounding answer now and then rather than not cut in at all; but I
+take that to be in the way of his instrument. All these
+questions, and many such, are put on the spur of the moment, and
+by one who has never examined these boys. The Uncommercial,
+invited to add another, falteringly demands how many birthdays a
+man born on the twenty-ninth of February will have had on
+completing his fiftieth year? A general perception of trap
+and pitfall instantly arises, and the fifer is seen to retire
+behind the corduroys of his next neighbours, as perceiving
+special necessity for collecting himself and communing with his
+mind. Meanwhile, the wisdom of the serpent suggests that
+the man will have had only one birthday in all that time, for how
+can any man have more than one, seeing that he is born once and
+dies once? The blushing Uncommercial stands corrected, and
+amends the formula. Pondering ensues, two or three wrong
+answers are offered, and Cymbals strikes up &lsquo;Six!&rsquo;
+but doesn&rsquo;t know why. Then modestly emerging from his
+Academic Grove of corduroys appears the fifer, right arm
+extended, right leg foremost, bump irradiated.
+&lsquo;Twelve, and two over!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The feminine Short-Timers passed a similar examination, and
+very creditably too. Would have done better perhaps, with a
+little more geniality on the part of their pupil-teacher; for a
+cold eye, my young friend, and a hard, abrupt manner, are not by
+any means the powerful engines that your innocence supposes them
+to be. Both girls and boys wrote excellently, from copy and
+dictation; both could cook; both could mend their own clothes;
+both could clean up everything about them in an orderly and
+skilful way, the girls having womanly household knowledge
+superadded. Order and method began in the songs of the
+Infant School which I visited likewise, and they were even in
+their dwarf degree to be found in the Nursery, where the
+Uncommercial walking-stick was carried off with acclamations, and
+where &lsquo;the Doctor&rsquo;&mdash;a medical gentleman of two,
+who took his degree on the night when he was found at an
+apothecary&rsquo;s door&mdash;did the honours of the
+establishment with great urbanity and gaiety.</p>
+<p>These have long been excellent schools; long before the days
+of the Short-Time. I first saw them, twelve or fifteen
+years ago. But since the introduction of the Short-Time
+system it has been proved here that eighteen hours a week of
+book-learning are more profitable than thirty-six, and that the
+pupils are far quicker and brighter than of yore. The good
+influences of music on the whole body of children have likewise
+been surprisingly proved. Obviously another of the immense
+advantages of the Short-Time system to the cause of good
+education is the great diminution of its cost, and of the period
+of time over which it extends. The last is a most important
+consideration, as poor parents are always impatient to profit by
+their children&rsquo;s labour.</p>
+<p>It will be objected: Firstly, that this is all very well, but
+special local advantages and special selection of children must
+be necessary to such success. Secondly, that this is all
+very well, but must be very expensive. Thirdly, that this
+is all very well, but we have no proof of the results, sir, no
+proof.</p>
+<p>On the first head of local advantages and special
+selection. Would Limehouse Hole be picked out for the site
+of a Children&rsquo;s Paradise? Or would the legitimate and
+illegitimate pauper children of the long-shore population of such
+a riverside district, be regarded as unusually favourable
+specimens to work with? Yet these schools are at Limehouse,
+and are the Pauper Schools of the Stepney Pauper Union.</p>
+<p>On the second head of expense. Would sixpence a week be
+considered a very large cost for the education of each pupil,
+including all salaries of teachers and rations of teachers?
+But supposing the cost were not sixpence a week, not fivepence?
+it is <span class="GutSmall">FOURPENCE-HALFPENNY</span>.</p>
+<p>On the third head of no proof, sir, no proof. Is there
+any proof in the facts that Pupil Teachers more in number, and
+more highly qualified, have been produced here under the
+Short-Time system than under the Long-Time system? That the
+Short-Timers, in a writing competition, beat the Long-Timers of a
+first-class National School? That the sailor-boys are in
+such demand for merchant ships, that whereas, before they were
+trained, 10<i>l.</i> premium used to be given with each
+boy&mdash;too often to some greedy brute of a drunken skipper,
+who disappeared before the term of apprenticeship was out, if the
+ill-used boy didn&rsquo;t&mdash;captains of the best character
+now take these boys more than willingly, with no premium at
+all? That they are also much esteemed in the Royal Navy,
+which they prefer, &lsquo;because everything is so neat and clean
+and orderly&rsquo;? Or, is there any proof in Naval
+captains writing &lsquo;Your little fellows are all that I can
+desire&rsquo;? Or, is there any proof in such testimony as
+this: &lsquo;The owner of a vessel called at the school, and said
+that as his ship was going down Channel on her last voyage, with
+one of the boys from the school on board, the pilot said,
+&ldquo;It would be as well if the royal were lowered; I wish it
+were down.&rdquo; Without waiting for any orders, and
+unobserved by the pilot, the lad, whom they had taken on board
+from the school, instantly mounted the mast and lowered the
+royal, and at the next glance of the pilot to the masthead, he
+perceived that the sail had been let down. He exclaimed,
+&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s done that job?&rdquo; The owner, who was
+on board, said, &ldquo;That was the little fellow whom I put on
+board two days ago.&rdquo; The pilot immediately said,
+&ldquo;Why, where could he have been brought up?&rdquo; The
+boy had never seen the sea or been on a real ship
+before&rsquo;? Or, is there any proof in these boys being
+in greater demand for Regimental Bands than the Union can
+meet? Or, in ninety-eight of them having gone into
+Regimental Bands in three years? Or, in twelve of them
+being in the band of one regiment? Or, in the colonel of
+that regiment writing, &lsquo;We want six more boys; they are
+excellent lads&rsquo;? Or, in one of the boys having risen
+to be band-corporal in the same regiment? Or, in employers
+of all kinds chorusing, &lsquo;Give us drilled boys, for they are
+prompt, obedient, and punctual&rsquo;? Other proofs I have
+myself beheld with these Uncommercial eyes, though I do not
+regard myself as having a right to relate in what social
+positions they have seen respected men and women who were once
+pauper children of the Stepney Union.</p>
+<p>Into what admirable soldiers others of these boys have the
+capabilities for being turned, I need not point out. Many
+of them are always ambitious of military service; and once upon a
+time when an old boy came back to see the old place, a cavalry
+soldier all complete, <i>with his spurs on</i>, such a yearning
+broke out to get into cavalry regiments and wear those sublime
+appendages, that it was one of the greatest excitements ever
+known in the school. The girls make excellent domestic
+servants, and at certain periods come back, a score or two at a
+time, to see the old building, and to take tea with the old
+teachers, and to hear the old band, and to see the old ship with
+her masts towering up above the neighbouring roofs and
+chimneys. As to the physical health of these schools, it is
+so exceptionally remarkable (simply because the sanitary
+regulations are as good as the other educational arrangements),
+that when Mr. <span class="smcap">Tufnell</span>, the Inspector,
+first stated it in a report, he was supposed, in spite of his
+high character, to have been betrayed into some extraordinary
+mistake or exaggeration. In the moral health of these
+schools&mdash;where corporal punishment is
+unknown&mdash;Truthfulness stands high. When the ship was
+first erected, the boys were forbidden to go aloft, until the
+nets, which are now always there, were stretched as a precaution
+against accidents. Certain boys, in their eagerness,
+disobeyed the injunction, got out of window in the early
+daylight, and climbed to the masthead. One boy
+unfortunately fell, and was killed. There was no clue to
+the others; but all the boys were assembled, and the chairman of
+the Board addressed them. &lsquo;I promise nothing; you see
+what a dreadful thing has happened; you know what a grave offence
+it is that has led to such a consequence; I cannot say what will
+be done with the offenders; but, boys, you have been trained
+here, above all things, to respect the truth. I want the
+truth. Who are the delinquents?&rsquo; Instantly, the
+whole number of boys concerned, separated from the rest, and
+stood out.</p>
+<p>Now, the head and heart of that gentleman (it is needless to
+say, a good head and a good heart) have been deeply interested in
+these schools for many years, and are so still; and the
+establishment is very fortunate in a most admirable master, and
+moreover the schools of the Stepney Union cannot have got to be
+what they are, without the Stepney Board of Guardians having been
+earnest and humane men strongly imbued with a sense of their
+responsibility. But what one set of men can do in this
+wise, another set of men can do; and this is a noble example to
+all other Bodies and Unions, and a noble example to the
+State. Followed, and enlarged upon by its enforcement on
+bad parents, it would clear London streets of the most terrible
+objects they smite the sight with&mdash;myriads of little
+children who awfully reverse Our Saviour&rsquo;s words, and are
+not of the Kingdom of Heaven, but of the Kingdom of Hell.</p>
+<p>Clear the public streets of such shame, and the public
+conscience of such reproach? Ah! Almost prophetic,
+surely, the child&rsquo;s jingle:</p>
+<blockquote><p>When will that be,<br />
+Say the bells of Step-ney!</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap22"></a>XXII<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">BOUND FOR THE GREAT SALT LAKE</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Behold</span> me on my way to an Emigrant
+Ship, on a hot morning early in June. My road lies through
+that part of London generally known to the initiated as
+&lsquo;Down by the Docks.&rsquo; Down by the Docks, is home
+to a good many people&mdash;to too many, if I may judge from the
+overflow of local population in the streets&mdash;but my nose
+insinuates that the number to whom it is Sweet Home might be
+easily counted. Down by the Docks, is a region I would
+choose as my point of embarkation aboard ship if I were an
+emigrant. It would present my intention to me in such a
+sensible light; it would show me so many things to be run away
+from.</p>
+<p>Down by the Docks, they eat the largest oysters and scatter
+the roughest oyster-shells, known to the descendants of Saint
+George and the Dragon. Down by the Docks, they consume the
+slimiest of shell-fish, which seem to have been scraped off the
+copper bottoms of ships. Down by the Docks, the vegetables
+at green-grocers&rsquo; doors acquire a saline and a scaly look,
+as if they had been crossed with fish and seaweed. Down by
+the Docks, they &lsquo;board seamen&rsquo; at the eating-houses,
+the public-houses, the slop-shops, the coffee-shops, the
+tally-shops, all kinds of shops mentionable and
+unmentionable&mdash;board them, as it were, in the piratical
+sense, making them bleed terribly, and giving no quarter.
+Down by the Docks, the seamen roam in mid-street and mid-day,
+their pockets inside out, and their heads no better. Down
+by the Docks, the daughters of wave-ruling Britannia also rove,
+clad in silken attire, with uncovered tresses streaming in the
+breeze, bandanna kerchiefs floating from their shoulders, and
+crinoline not wanting. Down by the Docks, you may hear the
+Incomparable Joe Jackson sing the Standard of England, with a
+hornpipe, any night; or any day may see at the waxwork, for a
+penny and no waiting, him as killed the policeman at Acton and
+suffered for it. Down by the Docks, you may buy polonies,
+saveloys, and sausage preparations various, if you are not
+particular what they are made of besides seasoning. Down by
+the Docks, the children of Israel creep into any gloomy cribs and
+entries they can hire, and hang slops there&mdash;pewter watches,
+sou&rsquo;-wester hats, waterproof overalls&mdash;&lsquo;firtht
+rate articleth, Thjack.&rsquo; Down by the Docks, such
+dealers exhibiting on a frame a complete nautical suit without
+the refinement of a waxen visage in the hat, present the
+imaginary wearer as drooping at the yard-arm, with his seafaring
+and earthfaring troubles over. Down by the Docks, the
+placards in the shops apostrophise the customer, knowing him
+familiarly beforehand, as, &lsquo;Look here, Jack!&rsquo;
+&lsquo;Here&rsquo;s your sort, my lad!&rsquo; &lsquo;Try
+our sea-going mixed, at two and nine!&rsquo; &lsquo;The
+right kit for the British tar!&rsquo; &lsquo;Ship
+ahoy!&rsquo; &lsquo;Splice the main-brace,
+brother!&rsquo; &lsquo;Come, cheer up, my lads.
+We&rsquo;ve the best liquors here, And you&rsquo;ll find
+something new In our wonderful Beer!&rsquo; Down by the
+Docks, the pawnbroker lends money on Union-Jack
+pocket-handkerchiefs, on watches with little ships pitching fore
+and aft on the dial, on telescopes, nautical instruments in
+cases, and such-like. Down by the Docks, the apothecary
+sets up in business on the wretchedest scale&mdash;chiefly on
+lint and plaster for the strapping of wounds&mdash;and with no
+bright bottles, and with no little drawers. Down by the
+Docks, the shabby undertaker&rsquo;s shop will bury you for next
+to nothing, after the Malay or Chinaman has stabbed you for
+nothing at all: so you can hardly hope to make a cheaper
+end. Down by the Docks, anybody drunk will quarrel with
+anybody drunk or sober, and everybody else will have a hand in
+it, and on the shortest notice you may revolve in a whirlpool of
+red shirts, shaggy beards, wild heads of hair, bare tattooed
+arms, Britannia&rsquo;s daughters, malice, mud, maundering, and
+madness. Down by the Docks, scraping fiddles go in the
+public-houses all day long, and, shrill above their din and all
+the din, rises the screeching of innumerable parrots brought from
+foreign parts, who appear to be very much astonished by what they
+find on these native shores of ours. Possibly the parrots
+don&rsquo;t know, possibly they do, that Down by the Docks is the
+road to the Pacific Ocean, with its lovely islands, where the
+savage girls plait flowers, and the savage boys carve cocoa-nut
+shells, and the grim blind idols muse in their shady groves to
+exactly the same purpose as the priests and chiefs. And
+possibly the parrots don&rsquo;t know, possibly they do, that the
+noble savage is a wearisome impostor wherever he is, and has five
+hundred thousand volumes of indifferent rhyme, and no reason, to
+answer for.</p>
+<p>Shadwell church! Pleasant whispers of there being a
+fresher air down the river than down by the Docks, go pursuing
+one another, playfully, in and out of the openings in its
+spire. Gigantic in the basin just beyond the church, looms
+my Emigrant Ship: her name, the Amazon. Her figure-head is
+not disfigured as those beauteous founders of the race of
+strong-minded women are fabled to have been, for the convenience
+of drawing the bow; but I sympathise with the carver:</p>
+<blockquote><p>A flattering carver who made it his care<br />
+To carve busts as they ought to be&mdash;not as they were.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>My Emigrant Ship lies broadside-on to the wharf. Two
+great gangways made of spars and planks connect her with the
+wharf; and up and down these gangways, perpetually crowding to
+and fro and in and out, like ants, are the Emigrants who are
+going to sail in my Emigrant Ship. Some with cabbages, some
+with loaves of bread, some with cheese and butter, some with milk
+and beer, some with boxes, beds, and bundles, some with
+babies&mdash;nearly all with children&mdash;nearly all with
+bran-new tin cans for their daily allowance of water,
+uncomfortably suggestive of a tin flavour in the drink. To
+and fro, up and down, aboard and ashore, swarming here and there
+and everywhere, my Emigrants. And still as the Dock-Gate
+swings upon its hinges, cabs appear, and carts appear, and vans
+appear, bringing more of my Emigrants, with more cabbages, more
+loaves, more cheese and butter, more milk and beer, more boxes,
+beds, and bundles, more tin cans, and on those shipping
+investments accumulated compound interest of children.</p>
+<p>I go aboard my Emigrant Ship. I go first to the great
+cabin, and find it in the usual condition of a Cabin at that
+pass. Perspiring landsmen, with loose papers, and with pens
+and inkstands, pervade it; and the general appearance of things
+is as if the late Mr. Amazon&rsquo;s funeral had just come home
+from the cemetery, and the disconsolate Mrs. Amazon&rsquo;s
+trustees found the affairs in great disorder, and were looking
+high and low for the will. I go out on the poop-deck, for
+air, and surveying the emigrants on the deck below (indeed they
+are crowded all about me, up there too), find more pens and
+inkstands in action, and more papers, and interminable
+complication respecting accounts with individuals for tin cans
+and what not. But nobody is in an ill-temper, nobody is the
+worse for drink, nobody swears an oath or uses a coarse word,
+nobody appears depressed, nobody is weeping, and down upon the
+deck in every corner where it is possible to find a few square
+feet to kneel, crouch, or lie in, people, in every unsuitable
+attitude for writing, are writing letters.</p>
+<p>Now, I have seen emigrant ships before this day in June.
+And these people are so strikingly different from all other
+people in like circumstances whom I have ever seen, that I wonder
+aloud, &lsquo;What <i>would</i> a stranger suppose these
+emigrants to be!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The vigilant, bright face of the weather-browned captain of
+the Amazon is at my shoulder, and he says, &lsquo;What,
+indeed! The most of these came aboard yesterday
+evening. They came from various parts of England in small
+parties that had never seen one another before. Yet they
+had not been a couple of hours on board, when they established
+their own police, made their own regulations, and set their own
+watches at all the hatchways. Before nine o&rsquo;clock,
+the ship was as orderly and as quiet as a man-of-war.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I looked about me again, and saw the letter-writing going on
+with the most curious composure. Perfectly abstracted in
+the midst of the crowd; while great casks were swinging aloft,
+and being lowered into the hold; while hot agents were hurrying
+up and down, adjusting the interminable accounts; while two
+hundred strangers were searching everywhere for two hundred other
+strangers, and were asking questions about them of two hundred
+more; while the children played up and down all the steps, and in
+and out among all the people&rsquo;s legs, and were beheld, to
+the general dismay, toppling over all the dangerous places; the
+letter-writers wrote on calmly. On the starboard side of
+the ship, a grizzled man dictated a long letter to another
+grizzled man in an immense fur cap: which letter was of so
+profound a quality, that it became necessary for the amanuensis
+at intervals to take off his fur cap in both his hands, for the
+ventilation of his brain, and stare at him who dictated, as a man
+of many mysteries who was worth looking at. On the
+lar-board side, a woman had covered a belaying-pin with a white
+cloth to make a neat desk of it, and was sitting on a little box,
+writing with the deliberation of a bookkeeper. Down, upon
+her breast on the planks of the deck at this woman&rsquo;s feet,
+with her head diving in under a beam of the bulwarks on that
+side, as an eligible place of refuge for her sheet of paper, a
+neat and pretty girl wrote for a good hour (she fainted at last),
+only rising to the surface occasionally for a dip of ink.
+Alongside the boat, close to me on the poop-deck, another girl, a
+fresh, well-grown country girl, was writing another letter on the
+bare deck. Later in the day, when this self-same boat was
+filled with a choir who sang glees and catches for a long time,
+one of the singers, a girl, sang her part mechanically all the
+while, and wrote a letter in the bottom of the boat while doing
+so.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A stranger would be puzzled to guess the right name for
+these people, Mr. Uncommercial,&rsquo; says the captain.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Indeed he would.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If you hadn&rsquo;t known, could you ever have
+supposed&mdash;?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How could I! I should have said they were in
+their degree, the pick and flower of England.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;So should I,&rsquo; says the captain.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How many are they?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Eight hundred in round numbers.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I went between-decks, where the families with children swarmed
+in the dark, where unavoidable confusion had been caused by the
+last arrivals, and where the confusion was increased by the
+little preparations for dinner that were going on in each
+group. A few women here and there, had got lost, and were
+laughing at it, and asking their way to their own people, or out
+on deck again. A few of the poor children were crying; but
+otherwise the universal cheerfulness was amazing. &lsquo;We
+shall shake down by to-morrow.&rsquo; &lsquo;We shall come
+all right in a day or so.&rsquo; &lsquo;We shall have more
+light at sea.&rsquo; Such phrases I heard everywhere, as I
+groped my way among chests and barrels and beams and unstowed
+cargo and ring-bolts and Emigrants, down to the lower-deck, and
+thence up to the light of day again, and to my former
+station.</p>
+<p>Surely, an extraordinary people in their power of
+self-abstraction! All the former letter-writers were still
+writing calmly, and many more letter-writers had broken out in my
+absence. A boy with a bag of books in his hand and a slate
+under his arm, emerged from below, concentrated himself in my
+neighbourhood (espying a convenient skylight for his purpose),
+and went to work at a sum as if he were stone deaf. A
+father and mother and several young children, on the main deck
+below me, had formed a family circle close to the foot of the
+crowded restless gangway, where the children made a nest for
+themselves in a coil of rope, and the father and mother, she
+suckling the youngest, discussed family affairs as peaceably as
+if they were in perfect retirement. I think the most
+noticeable characteristic in the eight hundred as a mass, was
+their exemption from hurry.</p>
+<p>Eight hundred what? &lsquo;Geese, villain?&rsquo;
+<span class="smcap">Eight hundred Mormons</span>. I,
+Uncommercial Traveller for the firm of Human Interest Brothers,
+had come aboard this Emigrant Ship to see what Eight hundred
+Latter-day Saints were like, and I found them (to the rout and
+overthrow of all my expectations) like what I now describe with
+scrupulous exactness.</p>
+<p>The Mormon Agent who had been active in getting them together,
+and in making the contract with my friends the owners of the ship
+to take them as far as New York on their way to the Great Salt
+Lake, was pointed out to me. A compactly-made handsome man
+in black, rather short, with rich brown hair and beard, and clear
+bright eyes. From his speech, I should set him down as
+American. Probably, a man who had &lsquo;knocked about the
+world&rsquo; pretty much. A man with a frank open manner,
+and unshrinking look; withal a man of great quickness. I
+believe he was wholly ignorant of my Uncommercial individuality,
+and consequently of my immense Uncommercial importance.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Uncommercial</span>. These are a
+very fine set of people you have brought together here.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Mormon Agent</span>. Yes, sir, they
+are a <i>very</i> fine set of people.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Uncommercial</span> (looking about).
+Indeed, I think it would be difficult to find Eight hundred
+people together anywhere else, and find so much beauty and so
+much strength and capacity for work among them.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Mormon Agent</span> (not looking about,
+but looking steadily at Uncommercial). I think so.&mdash;We
+sent out about a thousand more, yes&rsquo;day, from
+Liverpool.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Uncommercial</span>. You are not
+going with these emigrants?</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Mormon Agent</span>. No, sir.
+I remain.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Uncommercial</span>. But you have
+been in the Mormon Territory?</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Mormon Agent</span>. Yes; I left
+Utah about three years ago.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Uncommercial</span>. It is
+surprising to me that these people are all so cheery, and make so
+little of the immense distance before them.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Mormon Agent</span>. Well, you see;
+many of &rsquo;em have friends out at Utah, and many of &rsquo;em
+look forward to meeting friends on the way.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Uncommercial</span>. On the way?</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Mormon Agent</span>. This way
+&rsquo;tis. This ship lands &rsquo;em in New York
+City. Then they go on by rail right away beyond St. Louis,
+to that part of the Banks of the Missouri where they strike the
+Plains. There, waggons from the settlement meet &rsquo;em
+to bear &rsquo;em company on their journey &rsquo;cross-twelve
+hundred miles about. Industrious people who come out to the
+settlement soon get waggons of their own, and so the friends of
+some of these will come down in their own waggons to meet
+&rsquo;em. They look forward to that, greatly.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Uncommercial</span>. On their long
+journey across the Desert, do you arm them?</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Mormon Agent</span>. Mostly you
+would find they have arms of some kind or another already with
+them. Such as had not arms we should arm across the Plains,
+for the general protection and defence.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Uncommercial</span>. Will these
+waggons bring down any produce to the Missouri?</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Mormon Agent</span>. Well, since the
+war broke out, we&rsquo;ve taken to growing cotton, and
+they&rsquo;ll likely bring down cotton to be exchanged for
+machinery. We want machinery. Also we have taken to
+growing indigo, which is a fine commodity for profit. It
+has been found that the climate on the further side of the Great
+Salt Lake suits well for raising indigo.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Uncommercial</span>. I am told that
+these people now on board are principally from the South of
+England?</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Mormon Agent</span>. And from
+Wales. That&rsquo;s true.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Uncommercial</span>. Do you get many
+Scotch?</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Mormon Agent</span>. Not many.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Uncommercial</span>. Highlanders,
+for instance?</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Mormon Agent</span>. No, not
+Highlanders. They ain&rsquo;t interested enough in
+universal brotherhood and peace and good will.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Uncommercial</span>. The old
+fighting blood is strong in them?</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Mormon Agent</span>. Well,
+yes. And besides; they&rsquo;ve no faith.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Uncommercial</span> (who has been burning
+to get at the Prophet Joe Smith, and seems to discover an
+opening). Faith in&mdash;!</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Mormon Agent</span> (far too many for
+Uncommercial). Well.&mdash;In anything!</p>
+<p>Similarly on this same head, the Uncommercial underwent
+discomfiture from a Wiltshire labourer: a simple, fresh-coloured
+farm-labourer, of eight-and-thirty, who at one time stood beside
+him looking on at new arrivals, and with whom he held this
+dialogue:</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Uncommercial</span>. Would you mind
+my asking you what part of the country you come from?</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Wiltshire</span>. Not a bit.
+Theer! (exultingly) I&rsquo;ve worked all my life o&rsquo;
+Salisbury Plain, right under the shadder o&rsquo;
+Stonehenge. You mightn&rsquo;t think it, but I haive.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Uncommercial</span>. And a pleasant
+country too.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Wiltshire</span>. Ah!
+&rsquo;Tis a pleasant country.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Uncommercial</span>. Have you any
+family on board?</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Wiltshire</span>. Two children, boy
+and gal. I am a widderer, <i>I</i> am, and I&rsquo;m going
+out alonger my boy and gal. That&rsquo;s my gal, and
+she&rsquo;s a fine gal o&rsquo; sixteen (pointing out the girl
+who is writing by the boat). I&rsquo;ll go and fetch my
+boy. I&rsquo;d like to show you my boy. (Here
+Wiltshire disappears, and presently comes back with a big, shy
+boy of twelve, in a superabundance of boots, who is not at all
+glad to be presented.) He is a fine boy too, and a boy fur
+to work! (Boy having undutifully bolted, Wiltshire drops
+him.)</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Uncommercial</span>. It must cost
+you a great deal of money to go so far, three strong.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Wiltshire</span>. A power of
+money. Theer! Eight shillen a week, eight shillen a
+week, eight shillen a week, put by out of the week&rsquo;s wages
+for ever so long.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Uncommercial</span>. I wonder how
+you did it.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Wiltshire</span> (recognising in this a
+kindred spirit). See theer now! I wonder how I done
+it! But what with a bit o&rsquo; subscription heer, and
+what with a bit o&rsquo; help theer, it were done at last, though
+I don&rsquo;t hardly know how. Then it were
+unfort&rsquo;net for us, you see, as we got kep&rsquo; in Bristol
+so long&mdash;nigh a fortnight, it were&mdash;on accounts of a
+mistake wi&rsquo; Brother Halliday. Swaller&rsquo;d up
+money, it did, when we might have come straight on.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Uncommercial</span> (delicately
+approaching Joe Smith). You are of the Mormon religion, of
+course?</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Wiltshire</span> (confidently). O
+yes, I&rsquo;m a Mormon. (Then reflectively.)
+I&rsquo;m a Mormon. (Then, looking round the ship, feigns
+to descry a particular friend in an empty spot, and evades the
+Uncommercial for evermore.)</p>
+<p>After a noontide pause for dinner, during which my Emigrants
+were nearly all between-decks, and the Amazon looked deserted, a
+general muster took place. The muster was for the ceremony
+of passing the Government Inspector and the Doctor. Those
+authorities held their temporary state amidships, by a cask or
+two; and, knowing that the whole Eight hundred emigrants must
+come face to face with them, I took my station behind the
+two. They knew nothing whatever of me, I believe, and my
+testimony to the unpretending gentleness and good nature with
+which they discharged their duty, may be of the greater
+worth. There was not the slightest flavour of the
+Circumlocution Office about their proceedings.</p>
+<p>The emigrants were now all on deck. They were densely
+crowded aft, and swarmed upon the poop-deck like bees. Two
+or three Mormon agents stood ready to hand them on to the
+Inspector, and to hand them forward when they had passed.
+By what successful means, a special aptitude for organisation had
+been infused into these people, I am, of course, unable to
+report. But I know that, even now, there was no disorder,
+hurry, or difficulty.</p>
+<p>All being ready, the first group are handed on. That
+member of the party who is entrusted with the passenger-ticket
+for the whole, has been warned by one of the agents to have it
+ready, and here it is in his hand. In every instance
+through the whole eight hundred, without an exception, this paper
+is always ready.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Inspector</span> (reading the
+ticket). Jessie Jobson, Sophronia Jobson, Jessie Jobson
+again, Matilda Jobson, William Jobson, Jane Jobson, Matilda
+Jobson again, Brigham Jobson, Leonardo Jobson, and Orson
+Jobson. Are you all here? (glancing at the party, over his
+spectacles).</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Jessie Jobson Number Two</span>. All
+here, sir.</p>
+<p>This group is composed of an old grandfather and grandmother,
+their married son and his wife, and <i>their</i> family of
+children. Orson Jobson is a little child asleep in his
+mother&rsquo;s arms. The Doctor, with a kind word or so,
+lifts up the corner of the mother&rsquo;s shawl, looks at the
+child&rsquo;s face, and touches the little clenched hand.
+If we were all as well as Orson Jobson, doctoring would be a poor
+profession.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Inspector</span>. Quite right,
+Jessie Jobson. Take your ticket, Jessie, and pass on.</p>
+<p>And away they go. Mormon agent, skilful and quiet, hands
+them on. Mormon agent, skilful and quiet, hands next party
+up.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Inspector</span> (reading ticket
+again). Susannah Cleverly and William Cleverly.
+Brother and sister, eh?</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Sister</span> (young woman of business,
+hustling slow brother). Yes, sir.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Inspector</span>. Very good,
+Susannah Cleverly. Take your ticket, Susannah, and take
+care of it.</p>
+<p>And away they go.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Inspector</span> (taking ticket
+again). Sampson Dibble and Dorothy Dibble (surveying a very
+old couple over his spectacles, with some surprise). Your
+husband quite blind, Mrs. Dibble?</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Mrs. Dibble</span>. Yes, sir, he be
+stone-blind.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Mr. Dibble</span> (addressing the
+mast). Yes, sir, I be stone-blind.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Inspector</span>. That&rsquo;s a bad
+job. Take your ticket, Mrs. Dibble, and don&rsquo;t lose
+it, and pass on.</p>
+<p>Doctor taps Mr. Dibble on the eyebrow with his forefinger, and
+away they go.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Inspector</span> (taking ticket
+again). Anastatia Weedle.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Anastatia</span> (a pretty girl, in a
+bright Garibaldi, this morning elected by universal suffrage the
+Beauty of the Ship). That is me, sir.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Inspector</span>. Going alone,
+Anastatia?</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Anastatia</span> (shaking her
+curls). I am with Mrs. Jobson, sir, but I&rsquo;ve got
+separated for the moment.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Inspector</span>. Oh! You are
+with the Jobsons? Quite right. That&rsquo;ll do, Miss
+Weedle. Don&rsquo;t lose your ticket.</p>
+<p>Away she goes, and joins the Jobsons who are waiting for her,
+and stoops and kisses Brigham Jobson&mdash;who appears to be
+considered too young for the purpose, by several Mormons rising
+twenty, who are looking on. Before her extensive skirts
+have departed from the casks, a decent widow stands there with
+four children, and so the roll goes.</p>
+<p>The faces of some of the Welsh people, among whom there were
+many old persons, were certainly the least intelligent.
+Some of these emigrants would have bungled sorely, but for the
+directing hand that was always ready. The intelligence here
+was unquestionably of a low order, and the heads were of a poor
+type. Generally the case was the reverse. There were
+many worn faces bearing traces of patient poverty and hard work,
+and there was great steadiness of purpose and much
+undemonstrative self-respect among this class. A few young
+men were going singly. Several girls were going, two or
+three together. These latter I found it very difficult to
+refer back, in my mind, to their relinquished homes and
+pursuits. Perhaps they were more like country milliners,
+and pupil teachers rather tawdrily dressed, than any other
+classes of young women. I noticed, among many little
+ornaments worn, more than one photograph-brooch of the Princess
+of Wales, and also of the late Prince Consort. Some single
+women of from thirty to forty, whom one might suppose to be
+embroiderers, or straw-bonnet-makers, were obviously going out in
+quest of husbands, as finer ladies go to India. That they
+had any distinct notions of a plurality of husbands or wives, I
+do not believe. To suppose the family groups of whom the
+majority of emigrants were composed, polygamically possessed,
+would be to suppose an absurdity, manifest to any one who saw the
+fathers and mothers.</p>
+<p>I should say (I had no means of ascertaining the fact) that
+most familiar kinds of handicraft trades were represented
+here. Farm-labourers, shepherds, and the like, had their
+full share of representation, but I doubt if they
+preponderated. It was interesting to see how the leading
+spirit in the family circle never failed to show itself, even in
+the simple process of answering to the names as they were called,
+and checking off the owners of the names. Sometimes it was
+the father, much oftener the mother, sometimes a quick little
+girl second or third in order of seniority. It seemed to
+occur for the first time to some heavy fathers, what large
+families they had; and their eyes rolled about, during the
+calling of the list, as if they half misdoubted some other family
+to have been smuggled into their own. Among all the fine
+handsome children, I observed but two with marks upon their necks
+that were probably scrofulous. Out of the whole number of
+emigrants, but one old woman was temporarily set aside by the
+doctor, on suspicion of fever; but even she afterwards obtained a
+clean bill of health.</p>
+<p>When all had &lsquo;passed,&rsquo; and the afternoon began to
+wear on, a black box became visible on deck, which box was in
+charge of certain personages also in black, of whom only one had
+the conventional air of an itinerant preacher. This box
+contained a supply of hymn-books, neatly printed and got up,
+published at Liverpool, and also in London at the
+&lsquo;Latter-Day Saints&rsquo; Book Dep&ocirc;t, 30,
+Florence-street.&rsquo; Some copies were handsomely bound;
+the plainer were the more in request, and many were bought.
+The title ran: &lsquo;Sacred Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the
+Church of Jesus Church of Latter-Day Saints.&rsquo; The
+Preface, dated Manchester, 1840, ran thus:&mdash;&lsquo;The
+Saints in this country have been very desirous for a Hymn Book
+adapted to their faith and worship, that they might sing the
+truth with an understanding heart, and express their praise, joy,
+and gratitude in songs adapted to the New and Everlasting
+Covenant. In accordance with their wishes, we have selected
+the following volume, which we hope will prove acceptable until a
+greater variety can be added. With sentiments of high
+consideration and esteem, we subscribe ourselves your brethren in
+the New and Everlasting Covenant, <span class="smcap">Brigham
+Young</span>, <span class="smcap">Parley</span> P. <span
+class="smcap">Pratt</span>, <span class="smcap">John
+Taylor</span>.&rsquo; From this book&mdash;by no means
+explanatory to myself of the New and Everlasting Covenant, and
+not at all making my heart an understanding one on the subject of
+that mystery&mdash;a hymn was sung, which did not attract any
+great amount of attention, and was supported by a rather select
+circle. But the choir in the boat was very popular and
+pleasant; and there was to have been a Band, only the Cornet was
+late in coming on board. In the course of the afternoon, a
+mother appeared from shore, in search of her daughter, &lsquo;who
+had run away with the Mormons.&rsquo; She received every
+assistance from the Inspector, but her daughter was not found to
+be on board. The saints did not seem to me, particularly
+interested in finding her.</p>
+<p>Towards five o&rsquo;clock, the galley became full of
+tea-kettles, and an agreeable fragrance of tea pervaded the
+ship. There was no scrambling or jostling for the hot
+water, no ill humour, no quarrelling. As the Amazon was to
+sail with the next tide, and as it would not be high water before
+two o&rsquo;clock in the morning, I left her with her tea in full
+action, and her idle Steam Tug lying by, deputing steam and smoke
+for the time being to the Tea-kettles.</p>
+<p>I afterwards learned that a Despatch was sent home by the
+captain before he struck out into the wide Atlantic, highly
+extolling the behaviour of these Emigrants, and the perfect order
+and propriety of all their social arrangements. What is in
+store for the poor people on the shores of the Great Salt Lake,
+what happy delusions they are labouring under now, on what
+miserable blindness their eyes may be opened then, I do not
+pretend to say. But I went on board their ship to bear
+testimony against them if they deserved it, as I fully believed
+they would; to my great astonishment they did not deserve it; and
+my predispositions and tendencies must not affect me as an honest
+witness. I went over the Amazon&rsquo;s side, feeling it
+impossible to deny that, so far, some remarkable influence had
+produced a remarkable result, which better known influences have
+often missed. <a name="citation188"></a><a href="#footnote188"
+class="citation">[188]</a></p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap23"></a>XXIII<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE CITY OF THE ABSENT</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">When</span> I think I deserve particularly
+well of myself, and have earned the right to enjoy a little
+treat, I stroll from Covent-garden into the City of London, after
+business-hours there, on a Saturday, or&mdash;better yet&mdash;on
+a Sunday, and roam about its deserted nooks and corners. It
+is necessary to the full enjoyment of these journeys that they
+should be made in summer-time, for then the retired spots that I
+love to haunt, are at their idlest and dullest. A gentle
+fall of rain is not objectionable, and a warm mist sets off my
+favourite retreats to decided advantage.</p>
+<p>Among these, City Churchyards hold a high place. Such
+strange churchyards hide in the City of London; churchyards
+sometimes so entirely detached from churches, always so pressed
+upon by houses; so small, so rank, so silent, so forgotten,
+except by the few people who ever look down into them from their
+smoky windows. As I stand peeping in through the iron gates
+and rails, I can peel the rusty metal off, like bark from an old
+tree. The illegible tombstones are all lop-sided, the
+grave-mounds lost their shape in the rains of a hundred years
+ago, the Lombardy Poplar or Plane-Tree that was once a
+drysalter&rsquo;s daughter and several common-councilmen, has
+withered like those worthies, and its departed leaves are dust
+beneath it. Contagion of slow ruin overhangs the
+place. The discoloured tiled roofs of the environing
+buildings stand so awry, that they can hardly be proof against
+any stress of weather. Old crazy stacks of chimneys seem to
+look down as they overhang, dubiously calculating how far they
+will have to fall. In an angle of the walls, what was once
+the tool-house of the grave-digger rots away, encrusted with
+toadstools. Pipes and spouts for carrying off the rain from
+the encompassing gables, broken or feloniously cut for old lead
+long ago, now let the rain drip and splash as it list, upon the
+weedy earth. Sometimes there is a rusty pump somewhere
+near, and, as I look in at the rails and meditate, I hear it
+working under an unknown hand with a creaking protest: as though
+the departed in the churchyard urged, &lsquo;Let us lie here in
+peace; don&rsquo;t suck us up and drink us!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>One of my best beloved churchyards, I call the churchyard of
+Saint Ghastly Grim; touching what men in general call it, I have
+no information. It lies at the heart of the City, and the
+Blackwall Railway shrieks at it daily. It is a small small
+churchyard, with a ferocious, strong, spiked iron gate, like a
+jail. This gate is ornamented with skulls and cross-bones,
+larger than the life, wrought in stone; but it likewise came into
+the mind of Saint Ghastly Grim, that to stick iron spikes a-top
+of the stone skulls, as though they were impaled, would be a
+pleasant device. Therefore the skulls grin aloft horribly,
+thrust through and through with iron spears. Hence, there
+is attraction of repulsion for me in Saint Ghastly Grim, and,
+having often contemplated it in the daylight and the dark, I once
+felt drawn towards it in a thunderstorm at midnight.
+&lsquo;Why not?&rsquo; I said, in self-excuse. &lsquo;I
+have been to see the Colosseum by the light of the moon; is it
+worse to go to see Saint Ghastly Grim by the light of the
+lightning?&rsquo; I repaired to the Saint in a hackney cab,
+and found the skulls most effective, having the air of a public
+execution, and seeming, as the lightning flashed, to wink and
+grin with the pain of the spikes. Having no other person to
+whom to impart my satisfaction, I communicated it to the
+driver. So far from being responsive, he surveyed
+me&mdash;he was naturally a bottled-nosed, red-faced
+man&mdash;with a blanched countenance. And as he drove me
+back, he ever and again glanced in over his shoulder through the
+little front window of his carriage, as mistrusting that I was a
+fare originally from a grave in the churchyard of Saint Ghastly
+Grim, who might have flitted home again without paying.</p>
+<p>Sometimes, the queer Hall of some queer Company gives upon a
+churchyard such as this, and, when the Livery dine, you may hear
+them (if you are looking in through the iron rails, which you
+never are when I am) toasting their own Worshipful
+prosperity. Sometimes, a wholesale house of business,
+requiring much room for stowage, will occupy one or two or even
+all three sides of the enclosing space, and the backs of bales of
+goods will lumber up the windows, as if they were holding some
+crowded trade-meeting of themselves within. Sometimes, the
+commanding windows are all blank, and show no more sign of life
+than the graves below&mdash;not so much, for <i>they</i> tell of
+what once upon a time was life undoubtedly. Such was the
+surrounding of one City churchyard that I saw last summer, on a
+Volunteering Saturday evening towards eight of the clock, when
+with astonishment I beheld an old old man and an old old woman in
+it, making hay. Yes, of all occupations in this world,
+making hay! It was a very confined patch of churchyard
+lying between Gracechurch-street and the Tower, capable of
+yielding, say an apronful of hay. By what means the old old
+man and woman had got into it, with an almost toothless
+hay-making rake, I could not fathom. No open window was
+within view; no window at all was within view, sufficiently near
+the ground to have enabled their old legs to descend from it; the
+rusty churchyard-gate was locked, the mouldy church was
+locked. Gravely among the graves, they made hay, all alone
+by themselves. They looked like Time and his wife.
+There was but the one rake between them, and they both had hold
+of it in a pastorally-loving manner, and there was hay on the old
+woman&rsquo;s black bonnet, as if the old man had recently been
+playful. The old man was quite an obsolete old man, in
+knee-breeches and coarse grey stockings, and the old woman wore
+mittens like unto his stockings in texture and in colour.
+They took no heed of me as I looked on, unable to account for
+them. The old woman was much too bright for a pew-opener,
+the old man much too meek for a beadle. On an old tombstone
+in the foreground between me and them, were two cherubim; but for
+those celestial embellishments being represented as having no
+possible use for knee-breeches, stockings, or mittens, I should
+have compared them with the hay-makers, and sought a
+likeness. I coughed and awoke the echoes, but the
+hay-makers never looked at me. They used the rake with a
+measured action, drawing the scanty crop towards them; and so I
+was fain to leave them under three yards and a half of darkening
+sky, gravely making hay among the graves, all alone by
+themselves. Perhaps they were Spectres, and I wanted a
+Medium.</p>
+<p>In another City churchyard of similar cramped dimensions, I
+saw, that selfsame summer, two comfortable charity
+children. They were making love&mdash;tremendous proof of
+the vigour of that immortal article, for they were in the
+graceful uniform under which English Charity delights to hide
+herself&mdash;and they were overgrown, and their legs (his legs
+at least, for I am modestly incompetent to speak of hers) were as
+much in the wrong as mere passive weakness of character can
+render legs. O it was a leaden churchyard, but no doubt a
+golden ground to those young persons! I first saw them on a
+Saturday evening, and, perceiving from their occupation that
+Saturday evening was their trysting-time, I returned that evening
+se&rsquo;nnight, and renewed the contemplation of them.
+They came there to shake the bits of matting which were spread in
+the church aisles, and they afterwards rolled them up, he rolling
+his end, she rolling hers, until they met, and over the two once
+divided now united rolls&mdash;sweet emblem!&mdash;gave and
+received a chaste salute. It was so refreshing to find one
+of my faded churchyards blooming into flower thus, that I
+returned a second time, and a third, and ultimately this
+befell:&mdash;They had left the church door open, in their
+dusting and arranging. Walking in to look at the church, I
+became aware, by the dim light, of him in the pulpit, of her in
+the reading-desk, of him looking down, of her looking up,
+exchanging tender discourse. Immediately both dived, and
+became as it were non-existent on this sphere. With an
+assumption of innocence I turned to leave the sacred edifice,
+when an obese form stood in the portal, puffily demanding Joseph,
+or in default of Joseph, Celia. Taking this monster by the
+sleeve, and luring him forth on pretence of showing him whom he
+sought, I gave time for the emergence of Joseph and Celia, who
+presently came towards us in the churchyard, bending under dusty
+matting, a picture of thriving and unconscious industry. It
+would be superfluous to hint that I have ever since deemed this
+the proudest passage in my life.</p>
+<p>But such instances, or any tokens of vitality, are rare indeed
+in my City churchyards. A few sparrows occasionally try to
+raise a lively chirrup in their solitary tree&mdash;perhaps, as
+taking a different view of worms from that entertained by
+humanity&mdash;but they are flat and hoarse of voice, like the
+clerk, the organ, the bell, the clergyman, and all the rest of
+the Church-works when they are wound up for Sunday. Caged
+larks, thrushes, or blackbirds, hanging in neighbouring courts,
+pour forth their strains passionately, as scenting the tree,
+trying to break out, and see leaves again before they die, but
+their song is Willow, Willow&mdash;of a churchyard cast. So
+little light lives inside the churches of my churchyards, when
+the two are co-existent, that it is often only by an accident and
+after long acquaintance that I discover their having stained
+glass in some odd window. The westering sun slants into the
+churchyard by some unwonted entry, a few prismatic tears drop on
+an old tombstone, and a window that I thought was only dirty, is
+for the moment all bejewelled. Then the light passes and
+the colours die. Though even then, if there be room enough
+for me to fall back so far as that I can gaze up to the top of
+the Church Tower, I see the rusty vane new burnished, and seeming
+to look out with a joyful flash over the sea of smoke at the
+distant shore of country.</p>
+<p>Blinking old men who are let out of workhouses by the hour,
+have a tendency to sit on bits of coping stone in these
+churchyards, leaning with both hands on their sticks and
+asthmatically gasping. The more depressed class of beggars
+too, bring hither broken meats, and munch. I am on nodding
+terms with a meditative turncock who lingers in one of them, and
+whom I suspect of a turn for poetry; the rather, as he looks out
+of temper when he gives the fire-plug a disparaging wrench with
+that large tuning-fork of his which would wear out the shoulder
+of his coat, but for a precautionary piece of inlaid
+leather. Fire-ladders, which I am satisfied nobody knows
+anything about, and the keys of which were lost in ancient times,
+moulder away in the larger churchyards, under eaves like wooden
+eyebrows; and so removed are those corners from the haunts of men
+and boys, that once on a fifth of November I found a
+&lsquo;Guy&rsquo; trusted to take care of himself there, while
+his proprietors had gone to dinner. Of the expression of
+his face I cannot report, because it was turned to the wall; but
+his shrugged shoulders and his ten extended fingers, appeared to
+denote that he had moralised in his little straw chair on the
+mystery of mortality until he gave it up as a bad job.</p>
+<p>You do not come upon these churchyards violently; there are
+shapes of transition in the neighbourhood. An antiquated
+news shop, or barber&rsquo;s shop, apparently bereft of customers
+in the earlier days of George the Third, would warn me to look
+out for one, if any discoveries in this respect were left for me
+to make. A very quiet court, in combination with an
+unaccountable dyer&rsquo;s and scourer&rsquo;s, would prepare me
+for a churchyard. An exceedingly retiring public-house,
+with a bagatelle-board shadily visible in a sawdusty parlour
+shaped like an omnibus, and with a shelf of punch-bowls in the
+bar, would apprise me that I stood near consecrated ground.
+A &lsquo;Dairy,&rsquo; exhibiting in its modest window one very
+little milk-can and three eggs, would suggest to me the certainty
+of finding the poultry hard by, pecking at my forefathers.
+I first inferred the vicinity of Saint Ghastly Grim, from a
+certain air of extra repose and gloom pervading a vast stack of
+warehouses.</p>
+<p>From the hush of these places, it is congenial to pass into
+the hushed resorts of business. Down the lanes I like to
+see the carts and waggons huddled together in repose, the cranes
+idle, and the warehouses shut. Pausing in the alleys behind
+the closed Banks of mighty Lombard-street, it gives one as good
+as a rich feeling to think of the broad counters with a rim along
+the edge, made for telling money out on, the scales for weighing
+precious metals, the ponderous ledgers, and, above all, the
+bright copper shovels for shovelling gold. When I draw
+money, it never seems so much money as when it is shovelled at me
+out of a bright copper shovel. I like to say, &lsquo;In
+gold,&rsquo; and to see seven pounds musically pouring out of the
+shovel, like seventy; the Bank appearing to remark to me&mdash;I
+italicise <i>appearing</i>&mdash;&lsquo;if you want more of this
+yellow earth, we keep it in barrows at your service.&rsquo;
+To think of the banker&rsquo;s clerk with his deft finger turning
+the crisp edges of the Hundred-Pound Notes he has taken in a fat
+roll out of a drawer, is again to hear the rustling of that
+delicious south-cash wind. &lsquo;How will you have
+it?&rsquo; I once heard this usual question asked at a Bank
+Counter of an elderly female, habited in mourning and steeped in
+simplicity, who answered, open-eyed, crook-fingered, laughing
+with expectation, &lsquo;Anyhow!&rsquo; Calling these
+things to mind as I stroll among the Banks, I wonder whether the
+other solitary Sunday man I pass, has designs upon the
+Banks. For the interest and mystery of the matter, I almost
+hope he may have, and that his confederate may be at this moment
+taking impressions of the keys of the iron closets in wax, and
+that a delightful robbery may be in course of transaction.
+About College-hill, Mark-lane, and so on towards the Tower, and
+Dockward, the deserted wine-merchants&rsquo; cellars are fine
+subjects for consideration; but the deserted money-cellars of the
+Bankers, and their plate-cellars, and their jewel-cellars, what
+subterranean regions of the Wonderful Lamp are these! And
+again: possibly some shoeless boy in rags, passed through this
+street yesterday, for whom it is reserved to be a Banker in the
+fulness of time, and to be surpassing rich. Such reverses
+have been, since the days of Whittington; and were, long
+before. I want to know whether the boy has any
+foreglittering of that glittering fortune now, when he treads
+these stones, hungry. Much as I also want to know whether
+the next man to be hanged at Newgate yonder, had any suspicion
+upon him that he was moving steadily towards that fate, when he
+talked so much about the last man who paid the same great debt at
+the same small Debtors&rsquo; Door.</p>
+<p>Where are all the people who on busy working-days pervade
+these scenes? The locomotive banker&rsquo;s clerk, who
+carries a black portfolio chained to him by a chain of steel,
+where is he? Does he go to bed with his chain on&mdash;to
+church with his chain on&mdash;or does he lay it by? And if
+he lays it by, what becomes of his portfolio when he is unchained
+for a holiday? The wastepaper baskets of these closed
+counting-houses would let me into many hints of business matters
+if I had the exploration of them; and what secrets of the heart
+should I discover on the &lsquo;pads&rsquo; of the young
+clerks&mdash;the sheets of cartridge-paper and blotting-paper
+interposed between their writing and their desks! Pads are
+taken into confidence on the tenderest occasions, and oftentimes
+when I have made a business visit, and have sent in my name from
+the outer office, have I had it forced on my discursive notice
+that the officiating young gentleman has over and over again
+inscribed <span class="smcap">Amelia</span>, in ink of various
+dates, on corners of his pad. Indeed, the pad may be
+regarded as the legitimate modern successor of the old
+forest-tree: whereon these young knights (having no attainable
+forest nearer than Epping) engrave the names of their
+mistresses. After all, it is a more satisfactory process
+than carving, and can be oftener repeated. So these courts
+in their Sunday rest are courts of Love Omnipotent (I rejoice to
+bethink myself), dry as they look. And here is
+Garraway&rsquo;s, bolted and shuttered hard and fast! It is
+possible to imagine the man who cuts the sandwiches, on his back
+in a hayfield; it is possible to imagine his desk, like the desk
+of a clerk at church, without him; but imagination is unable to
+pursue the men who wait at Garraway&rsquo;s all the week for the
+men who never come. When they are forcibly put out of
+Garraway&rsquo;s on Saturday night&mdash;which they must be, for
+they never would go out of their own accord&mdash;where do they
+vanish until Monday morning? On the first Sunday that I
+ever strayed here, I expected to find them hovering about these
+lanes, like restless ghosts, and trying to peep into
+Garraway&rsquo;s through chinks in the shutters, if not
+endeavouring to turn the lock of the door with false keys, picks,
+and screw-drivers. But the wonder is, that they go clean
+away! And now I think of it, the wonder is, that every
+working-day pervader of these scenes goes clean away. The
+man who sells the dogs&rsquo; collars and the little toy
+coal-scuttles, feels under as great an obligation to go afar off,
+as Glyn and Co., or Smith, Payne, and Smith. There is an
+old monastery-crypt under Garraway&rsquo;s (I have been in it
+among the port wine), and perhaps Garraway&rsquo;s, taking pity
+on the mouldy men who wait in its public-room all their lives,
+gives them cool house-room down there over Sundays; but the
+catacombs of Paris would not be large enough to hold the rest of
+the missing. This characteristic of London City greatly
+helps its being the quaint place it is in the weekly pause of
+business, and greatly helps my Sunday sensation in it of being
+the Last Man. In my solitude, the ticket-porters being all
+gone with the rest, I venture to breathe to the quiet bricks and
+stones my confidential wonderment why a ticket-porter, who never
+does any work with his hands, is bound to wear a white apron, and
+why a great Ecclesiastical Dignitary, who never does any work
+with his hands either, is equally bound to wear a black one.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap24"></a>XXIV<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">AN OLD STAGE-COACHING HOUSE</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Before</span> the waitress had shut the
+door, I had forgotten how many stage-coaches she said used to
+change horses in the town every day. But it was of little
+moment; any high number would do as well as another. It had
+been a great stage-coaching town in the great stage-coaching
+times, and the ruthless railways had killed and buried it.</p>
+<p>The sign of the house was the Dolphin&rsquo;s Head. Why
+only head, I don&rsquo;t know; for the Dolphin&rsquo;s effigy at
+full length, and upside down&mdash;as a Dolphin is always bound
+to be when artistically treated, though I suppose he is sometimes
+right side upward in his natural condition&mdash;graced the
+sign-board. The sign-board chafed its rusty hooks outside
+the bow-window of my room, and was a shabby work. No
+visitor could have denied that the Dolphin was dying by inches,
+but he showed no bright colours. He had once served another
+master; there was a newer streak of paint below him, displaying
+with inconsistent freshness the legend, By J. <span
+class="smcap">Mellows</span>.</p>
+<p>My door opened again, and J. Mellows&rsquo;s representative
+came back. I had asked her what I could have for dinner,
+and she now returned with the counter question, what would I
+like? As the Dolphin stood possessed of nothing that I do
+like, I was fain to yield to the suggestion of a duck, which I
+don&rsquo;t like. J. Mellows&rsquo;s representative was a
+mournful young woman with eye susceptible of guidance, and one
+uncontrollable eye; which latter, seeming to wander in quest of
+stage-coaches, deepened the melancholy in which the Dolphin was
+steeped.</p>
+<p>This young woman had but shut the door on retiring again when
+I bethought me of adding to my order, the words, &lsquo;with nice
+vegetables.&rsquo; Looking out at the door to give them
+emphatic utterance, I found her already in a state of pensive
+catalepsy in the deserted gallery, picking her teeth with a
+pin.</p>
+<p>At the Railway Station seven miles off, I had been the subject
+of wonder when I ordered a fly in which to come here. And
+when I gave the direction &lsquo;To the Dolphin&rsquo;s
+Head,&rsquo; I had observed an ominous stare on the countenance
+of the strong young man in velveteen, who was the platform
+servant of the Company. He had also called to my driver at
+parting, &lsquo;All ri-ight! Don&rsquo;t hang yourself when
+you get there, Geo-o-rge!&rsquo; in a sarcastic tone, for which I
+had entertained some transitory thoughts of reporting him to the
+General Manager.</p>
+<p>I had no business in the town&mdash;I never have any business
+in any town&mdash;but I had been caught by the fancy that I would
+come and look at it in its degeneracy. My purpose was fitly
+inaugurated by the Dolphin&rsquo;s Head, which everywhere
+expressed past coachfulness and present coachlessness.
+Coloured prints of coaches, starting, arriving, changing horses,
+coaches in the sunshine, coaches in the snow, coaches in the
+wind, coaches in the mist and rain, coaches on the King&rsquo;s
+birthday, coaches in all circumstances compatible with their
+triumph and victory, but never in the act of breaking down or
+overturning, pervaded the house. Of these works of art,
+some, framed and not glazed, had holes in them; the varnish of
+others had become so brown and cracked, that they looked like
+overdone pie-crust; the designs of others were almost obliterated
+by the flies of many summers. Broken glasses, damaged
+frames, lop-sided hanging, and consignment of incurable cripples
+to places of refuge in dark corners, attested the desolation of
+the rest. The old room on the ground floor where the
+passengers of the Highflyer used to dine, had nothing in it but a
+wretched show of twigs and flower-pots in the broad window to
+hide the nakedness of the land, and in a corner little
+Mellows&rsquo;s perambulator, with even its parasol-head turned
+despondently to the wall. The other room, where post-horse
+company used to wait while relays were getting ready down the
+yard, still held its ground, but was as airless as I conceive a
+hearse to be: insomuch that Mr. Pitt, hanging high against the
+partition (with spots on him like port wine, though it is
+mysterious how port wine ever got squirted up there), had good
+reason for perking his nose and sniffing. The stopperless
+cruets on the spindle-shanked sideboard were in a miserably
+dejected state: the anchovy sauce having turned blue some years
+ago, and the cayenne pepper (with a scoop in it like a small
+model of a wooden leg) having turned solid. The old
+fraudulent candles which were always being paid for and never
+used, were burnt out at last; but their tall stilts of
+candlesticks still lingered, and still outraged the human
+intellect by pretending to be silver. The mouldy old
+unreformed Borough Member, with his right hand buttoned up in the
+breast of his coat, and his back characteristically turned on
+bales of petitions from his constituents, was there too; and the
+poker which never had been among the fire-irons, lest post-horse
+company should overstir the fire, was <i>not</i> there, as of
+old.</p>
+<p>Pursuing my researches in the Dolphin&rsquo;s Head, I found it
+sorely shrunken. When J. Mellows came into possession, he
+had walled off half the bar, which was now a tobacco-shop with
+its own entrance in the yard&mdash;the once glorious yard where
+the postboys, whip in hand and always buttoning their waistcoats
+at the last moment, used to come running forth to mount and
+away. A &lsquo;Scientific Shoeing&mdash;Smith and
+Veterinary Surgeon,&rsquo; had further encroached upon the yard;
+and a grimly satirical jobber, who announced himself as having to
+Let &lsquo;A neat one-horse fly, and a one-horse cart,&rsquo; had
+established his business, himself, and his family, in a part of
+the extensive stables. Another part was lopped clean off
+from the Dolphin&rsquo;s Head, and now comprised a chapel, a
+wheelwright&rsquo;s, and a Young Men&rsquo;s Mutual Improvement
+and Discussion Society (in a loft): the whole forming a back
+lane. No audacious hand had plucked down the vane from the
+central cupola of the stables, but it had grown rusty and stuck
+at N-Nil: while the score or two of pigeons that remained true to
+their ancestral traditions and the place, had collected in a row
+on the roof-ridge of the only outhouse retained by the Dolphin,
+where all the inside pigeons tried to push the outside pigeon
+off. This I accepted as emblematical of the struggle for
+post and place in railway times.</p>
+<p>Sauntering forth into the town, by way of the covered and
+pillared entrance to the Dolphin&rsquo;s Yard, once redolent of
+soup and stable-litter, now redolent of musty disuse, I paced the
+street. It was a hot day, and the little sun-blinds of the
+shops were all drawn down, and the more enterprising tradesmen
+had caused their &rsquo;Prentices to trickle water on the
+pavement appertaining to their frontage. It looked as if
+they had been shedding tears for the stage-coaches, and drying
+their ineffectual pocket-handkerchiefs. Such weakness would
+have been excusable; for business was&mdash;as one dejected
+porkman who kept a shop which refused to reciprocate the
+compliment by keeping him, informed me&mdash;&lsquo;bitter
+bad.&rsquo; Most of the harness-makers and corn-dealers
+were gone the way of the coaches, but it was a pleasant
+recognition of the eternal procession of Children down that old
+original steep Incline, the Valley of the Shadow, that those
+tradesmen were mostly succeeded by vendors of sweetmeats and
+cheap toys. The opposition house to the Dolphin, once
+famous as the New White Hart, had long collapsed. In a fit
+of abject depression, it had cast whitewash on its windows, and
+boarded up its front door, and reduced itself to a side entrance;
+but even that had proved a world too wide for the Literary
+Institution which had been its last phase; for the Institution
+had collapsed too, and of the ambitious letters of its
+inscription on the White Hart&rsquo;s front, all had fallen off
+but these:</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align:
+center">L&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Y&nbsp;
+INS&nbsp;&nbsp; T</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>&mdash;suggestive of Lamentably Insolvent. As to the
+neighbouring market-place, it seemed to have wholly relinquished
+marketing, to the dealer in crockery whose pots and pans
+straggled half across it, and to the Cheap Jack who sat with
+folded arms on the shafts of his cart, superciliously gazing
+around; his velveteen waistcoat, evidently harbouring grave
+doubts whether it was worth his while to stay a night in such a
+place.</p>
+<p>The church bells began to ring as I left this spot, but they
+by no means improved the case, for they said, in a petulant way,
+and speaking with some difficulty in their irritation, <span
+class="smcap">What&rsquo;s</span>-be-come-of-<span
+class="GutSmall">THE</span>-coach-<span
+class="GutSmall">ES</span>!&rsquo; Nor would they (I found
+on listening) ever vary their emphasis, save in respect of
+growing more sharp and vexed, but invariably went on,
+&lsquo;<span class="smcap">What&rsquo;s</span>-be-come-of-<span
+class="GutSmall">THE</span>-coach-<span
+class="GutSmall">ES</span>!&rsquo;&mdash;always beginning the
+inquiry with an unpolite abruptness. Perhaps from their
+elevation they saw the railway, and it aggravated them.</p>
+<p>Coming upon a coachmaker&rsquo;s workshop, I began to look
+about me with a revived spirit, thinking that perchance I might
+behold there some remains of the old times of the town&rsquo;s
+greatness. There was only one man at work&mdash;a dry man,
+grizzled, and far advanced in years, but tall and upright, who,
+becoming aware of me looking on, straightened his back, pushed up
+his spectacles against his brown-paper cap, and appeared inclined
+to defy me. To whom I pacifically said:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Good day, sir!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What?&rsquo; said he.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Good day, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He seemed to consider about that, and not to agree with
+me.&mdash;&lsquo;Was you a looking for anything?&rsquo; he then
+asked, in a pointed manner.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I was wondering whether there happened to be any
+fragment of an old stage-coach here.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is that all?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That&rsquo;s all.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, there ain&rsquo;t.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>It was now my turn to say &lsquo;Oh!&rsquo; and I said
+it. Not another word did the dry and grizzled man say, but
+bent to his work again. In the coach-making days, the
+coach-painters had tried their brushes on a post beside him; and
+quite a Calendar of departed glories was to be read upon it, in
+blue and yellow and red and green, some inches thick.
+Presently he looked up again.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You seem to have a deal of time on your hands,&rsquo;
+was his querulous remark.</p>
+<p>I admitted the fact.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I think it&rsquo;s a pity you was not brought up to
+something,&rsquo; said he.</p>
+<p>I said I thought so too.</p>
+<p>Appearing to be informed with an idea, he laid down his plane
+(for it was a plane he was at work with), pushed up his
+spectacles again, and came to the door.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Would a po-shay do for you?&rsquo; he asked.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am not sure that I understand what you
+mean.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Would a po-shay,&rsquo; said the coachmaker, standing
+close before me, and folding his arms in the manner of a
+cross-examining counsel&mdash;&lsquo;would a po-shay meet the
+views you have expressed? Yes, or no?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Then you keep straight along down there till you see
+one. <i>You&rsquo;ll</i> see one if you go fur
+enough.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>With that, he turned me by the shoulder in the direction I was
+to take, and went in and resumed his work against a background of
+leaves and grapes. For, although he was a soured man and a
+discontented, his workshop was that agreeable mixture of town and
+country, street and garden, which is often to be seen in a small
+English town.</p>
+<p>I went the way he had turned me, and I came to the Beer-shop
+with the sign of The First and Last, and was out of the town on
+the old London road. I came to the Turnpike, and I found
+it, in its silent way, eloquent respecting the change that had
+fallen on the road. The Turnpike-house was all overgrown
+with ivy; and the Turnpike-keeper, unable to get a living out of
+the tolls, plied the trade of a cobbler. Not only that, but
+his wife sold ginger-beer, and, in the very window of espial
+through which the Toll-takers of old times used with awe to
+behold the grand London coaches coming on at a gallop, exhibited
+for sale little barber&rsquo;s-poles of sweetstuff in a sticky
+lantern.</p>
+<p>The political economy of the master of the turnpike thus
+expressed itself.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How goes turnpike business, master?&rsquo; said I to
+him, as he sat in his little porch, repairing a shoe.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It don&rsquo;t go at all, master,&rsquo; said he to
+me. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s stopped.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That&rsquo;s bad,&rsquo; said I.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Bad?&rsquo; he repeated. And he pointed to one of
+his sunburnt dusty children who was climbing the turnpike-gate,
+and said, extending his open right hand in remonstrance with
+Universal Nature. &lsquo;Five on &rsquo;em!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But how to improve Turnpike business?&rsquo; said
+I.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There&rsquo;s a way, master,&rsquo; said he, with the
+air of one who had thought deeply on the subject.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I should like to know it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Lay a toll on everything as comes through; lay a toll
+on walkers. Lay another toll on everything as don&rsquo;t
+come through; lay a toll on them as stops at home.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Would the last remedy be fair?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Fair? Them as stops at home, could come through
+if they liked; couldn&rsquo;t they?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Say they could.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Toll &rsquo;em. If they don&rsquo;t come through,
+it&rsquo;s <i>their</i> look out. Anyways,&mdash;Toll
+&rsquo;em!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Finding it was as impossible to argue with this financial
+genius as if he had been Chancellor of the Exchequer, and
+consequently the right man in the right place, I passed on
+meekly.</p>
+<p>My mind now began to misgive me that the disappointed
+coach-maker had sent me on a wild-goose errand, and that there
+was no post-chaise in those parts. But coming within view
+of certain allotment-gardens by the roadside, I retracted the
+suspicion, and confessed that I had done him an injustice.
+For, there I saw, surely, the poorest superannuated post-chaise
+left on earth.</p>
+<p>It was a post-chaise taken off its axletree and wheels, and
+plumped down on the clayey soil among a ragged growth of
+vegetables. It was a post-chaise not even set straight upon
+the ground, but tilted over, as if it had fallen out of a
+balloon. It was a post-chaise that had been a long time in
+those decayed circumstances, and against which scarlet beans were
+trained. It was a post-chaise patched and mended with old
+tea-trays, or with scraps of iron that looked like them, and
+boarded up as to the windows, but having A <span
+class="GutSmall">KNOCKER</span> on the off-side door.
+Whether it was a post-chaise used as tool-house, summer-house, or
+dwelling-house, I could not discover, for there was nobody at
+home at the post-chaise when I knocked, but it was certainly used
+for something, and locked up. In the wonder of this
+discovery, I walked round and round the post-chaise many times,
+and sat down by the post-chaise, waiting for further
+elucidation. None came. At last, I made my way back
+to the old London road by the further end of the
+allotment-gardens, and consequently at a point beyond that from
+which I had diverged. I had to scramble through a hedge and
+down a steep bank, and I nearly came down a-top of a little spare
+man who sat breaking stones by the roadside.</p>
+<p>He stayed his hammer, and said, regarding me mysteriously
+through his dark goggles of wire:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Are you aware, sir, that you&rsquo;ve been
+trespassing?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I turned out of the way,&rsquo; said I, in explanation,
+&lsquo;to look at that odd post-chaise. Do you happen to
+know anything about it?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I know it was many a year upon the road,&rsquo; said
+he.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;So I supposed. Do you know to whom it
+belongs?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The stone-breaker bent his brows and goggles over his heap of
+stones, as if he were considering whether he should answer the
+question or not. Then, raising his barred eyes to my
+features as before, he said:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;To me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Being quite unprepared for the reply, I received it with a
+sufficiently awkward &lsquo;Indeed! Dear me!&rsquo;
+Presently I added, &lsquo;Do you&mdash;&rsquo; I was going to say
+&lsquo;live there,&rsquo; but it seemed so absurd a question,
+that I substituted &lsquo;live near here?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The stone-breaker, who had not broken a fragment since we
+began to converse, then did as follows. He raised himself
+by poising his finger on his hammer, and took his coat, on which
+he had been seated, over his arm. He then backed to an
+easier part of the bank than that by which I had come down,
+keeping his dark goggles silently upon me all the time, and then
+shouldered his hammer, suddenly turned, ascended, and was
+gone. His face was so small, and his goggles were so large,
+that he left me wholly uninformed as to his countenance; but he
+left me a profound impression that the curved legs I had seen
+from behind as he vanished, were the legs of an old
+postboy. It was not until then that I noticed he had been
+working by a grass-grown milestone, which looked like a tombstone
+erected over the grave of the London road.</p>
+<p>My dinner-hour being close at hand, I had no leisure to pursue
+the goggles or the subject then, but made my way back to the
+Dolphin&rsquo;s Head. In the gateway I found J. Mellows,
+looking at nothing, and apparently experiencing that it failed to
+raise his spirits.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;<i>I</i> don&rsquo;t care for the town,&rsquo; said J.
+Mellows, when I complimented him on the sanitary advantages it
+may or may not possess; &lsquo;I wish I had never seen the
+town!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You don&rsquo;t belong to it, Mr. Mellows?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Belong to it!&rsquo; repeated Mellows. &lsquo;If
+I didn&rsquo;t belong to a better style of town than this,
+I&rsquo;d take and drown myself in a pail.&rsquo; It then
+occurred to me that Mellows, having so little to do, was
+habitually thrown back on his internal resources&mdash;by which I
+mean the Dolphin&rsquo;s cellar.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What we want,&rsquo; said Mellows, pulling off his hat,
+and making as if he emptied it of the last load of Disgust that
+had exuded from his brain, before he put it on again for another
+load; &lsquo;what we want, is a Branch. The Petition for
+the Branch Bill is in the coffee-room. Would you put your
+name to it? Every little helps.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I found the document in question stretched out flat on the
+coffee-room table by the aid of certain weights from the kitchen,
+and I gave it the additional weight of my uncommercial
+signature. To the best of my belief, I bound myself to the
+modest statement that universal traffic, happiness, prosperity,
+and civilisation, together with unbounded national triumph in
+competition with the foreigner, would infallibly flow from the
+Branch.</p>
+<p>Having achieved this constitutional feat, I asked Mr. Mellows
+if he could grace my dinner with a pint of good wine? Mr.
+Mellows thus replied.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If I couldn&rsquo;t give you a pint of good wine,
+I&rsquo;d&mdash;there!&mdash;I&rsquo;d take and drown myself in a
+pail. But I was deceived when I bought this business, and
+the stock was higgledy-piggledy, and I haven&rsquo;t yet tasted
+my way quite through it with a view to sorting it.
+Therefore, if you order one kind and get another, change till it
+comes right. For what,&rsquo; said Mellows, unloading his
+hat as before, &lsquo;what would you or any gentleman do, if you
+ordered one kind of wine and was required to drink another?
+Why, you&rsquo;d (and naturally and properly, having the feelings
+of a gentleman), you&rsquo;d take and drown yourself in a
+pail!&rsquo;</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap25"></a>XXV<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE BOILED BEEF OF NEW ENGLAND</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> shabbiness of our English
+capital, as compared with Paris, Bordeaux, Frankfort, Milan,
+Geneva&mdash;almost any important town on the continent of
+Europe&mdash;I find very striking after an absence of any
+duration in foreign parts. London is shabby in contrast
+with Edinburgh, with Aberdeen, with Exeter, with Liverpool, with
+a bright little town like Bury St. Edmunds. London is
+shabby in contrast with New York, with Boston, with
+Philadelphia. In detail, one would say it can rarely fail
+to be a disappointing piece of shabbiness, to a stranger from any
+of those places. There is nothing shabbier than Drury-lane,
+in Rome itself. The meanness of Regent-street, set against
+the great line of Boulevards in Paris, is as striking as the
+abortive ugliness of Trafalgar-square, set against the gallant
+beauty of the Place de la Concorde. London is shabby by
+daylight, and shabbier by gaslight. No Englishman knows
+what gaslight is, until he sees the Rue de Rivoli and the Palais
+Royal after dark.</p>
+<p>The mass of London people are shabby. The absence of
+distinctive dress has, no doubt, something to do with it.
+The porters of the Vintners&rsquo; Company, the draymen, and the
+butchers, are about the only people who wear distinctive dresses;
+and even these do not wear them on holidays. We have
+nothing which for cheapness, cleanliness, convenience, or
+picturesqueness, can compare with the belted blouse. As to
+our women;&mdash;next Easter or Whitsuntide, look at the bonnets
+at the British Museum or the National Gallery, and think of the
+pretty white French cap, the Spanish mantilla, or the Genoese
+mezzero.</p>
+<p>Probably there are not more second-hand clothes sold in London
+than in Paris, and yet the mass of the London population have a
+second-hand look which is not to be detected on the mass of the
+Parisian population. I think this is mainly because a
+Parisian workman does not in the least trouble himself about what
+is worn by a Parisian idler, but dresses in the way of his own
+class, and for his own comfort. In London, on the contrary,
+the fashions descend; and you never fully know how inconvenient
+or ridiculous a fashion is, until you see it in its last
+descent. It was but the other day, on a race-course, that I
+observed four people in a barouche deriving great entertainment
+from the contemplation of four people on foot. The four
+people on foot were two young men and two young women; the four
+people in the barouche were two young men and two young
+women. The four young women were dressed in exactly the
+same style; the four young men were dressed in exactly the same
+style. Yet the two couples on wheels were as much amused by
+the two couples on foot, as if they were quite unconscious of
+having themselves set those fashions, or of being at that very
+moment engaged in the display of them.</p>
+<p>Is it only in the matter of clothes that fashion descends here
+in London&mdash;and consequently in England&mdash;and thence
+shabbiness arises? Let us think a little, and be
+just. The &lsquo;Black Country&rsquo; round about
+Birmingham, is a very black country; but is it quite as black as
+it has been lately painted? An appalling accident happened
+at the People&rsquo;s Park near Birmingham, this last July, when
+it was crowded with people from the Black Country&mdash;an
+appalling accident consequent on a shamefully dangerous
+exhibition. Did the shamefully dangerous exhibition
+originate in the moral blackness of the Black Country, and in the
+Black People&rsquo;s peculiar love of the excitement attendant on
+great personal hazard, which they looked on at, but in which they
+did not participate? Light is much wanted in the Black
+Country. O we are all agreed on that. But, we must
+not quite forget the crowds of gentlefolks who set the shamefully
+dangerous fashion, either. We must not quite forget the
+enterprising Directors of an Institution vaunting mighty
+educational pretences, who made the low sensation as strong as
+they possibly could make it, by hanging the Blondin rope as high
+as they possibly could hang it. All this must not be
+eclipsed in the Blackness of the Black Country. The
+reserved seats high up by the rope, the cleared space below it,
+so that no one should be smashed but the performer, the pretence
+of slipping and falling off, the baskets for the feet and the
+sack for the head, the photographs everywhere, and the virtuous
+indignation nowhere&mdash;all this must not be wholly swallowed
+up in the blackness of the jet-black country.</p>
+<p>Whatsoever fashion is set in England, is certain to
+descend. This is a text for a perpetual sermon on care in
+setting fashions. When you find a fashion low down, look
+back for the time (it will never be far off) when it was the
+fashion high up. This is the text for a perpetual sermon on
+social justice. From imitations of Ethiopian Serenaders, to
+imitations of Prince&rsquo;s coats and waistcoats, you will find
+the original model in St. James&rsquo;s Parish. When the
+Serenaders become tiresome, trace them beyond the Black Country;
+when the coats and waistcoats become insupportable, refer them to
+their source in the Upper Toady Regions.</p>
+<p>Gentlemen&rsquo;s clubs were once maintained for purposes of
+savage party warfare; working men&rsquo;s clubs of the same day
+assumed the same character. Gentlemen&rsquo;s clubs became
+places of quiet inoffensive recreation; working men&rsquo;s clubs
+began to follow suit. If working men have seemed rather
+slow to appreciate advantages of combination which have saved the
+pockets of gentlemen, and enhanced their comforts, it is because
+working men could scarcely, for want of capital, originate such
+combinations without help; and because help has not been
+separable from that great impertinence, Patronage. The
+instinctive revolt of his spirit against patronage, is a quality
+much to be respected in the English working man. It is the
+base of the base of his best qualities. Nor is it
+surprising that he should be unduly suspicious of patronage, and
+sometimes resentful of it even where it is not, seeing what a
+flood of washy talk has been let loose on his devoted head, or
+with what complacent condescension the same devoted head has been
+smoothed and patted. It is a proof to me of his
+self-control that he never strikes out pugilistically, right and
+left, when addressed as one of &lsquo;My friends,&rsquo; or
+&lsquo;My assembled friends;&rsquo; that he does not become
+inappeasable, and run amuck like a Malay, whenever he sees a
+biped in broadcloth getting on a platform to talk to him; that
+any pretence of improving his mind, does not instantly drive him
+out of his mind, and cause him to toss his obliging patron like a
+mad bull.</p>
+<p>For, how often have I heard the unfortunate working man
+lectured, as if he were a little charity-child, humid as to his
+nasal development, strictly literal as to his Catechism, and
+called by Providence to walk all his days in a station in life
+represented on festive occasions by a mug of warm milk-and-water
+and a bun! What popguns of jokes have these ears tingled to
+hear let off at him, what asinine sentiments, what impotent
+conclusions, what spelling-book moralities, what adaptations of
+the orator&rsquo;s insufferable tediousness to the assumed level
+of his understanding! If his sledge-hammers, his spades and
+pick-axes, his saws and chisels, his paint-pots and brushes, his
+forges, furnaces, and engines, the horses that he drove at his
+work, and the machines that drove him at his work, were all toys
+in one little paper box, and he the baby who played with them, he
+could not have been discoursed to, more impertinently and
+absurdly than I have heard him discoursed to times
+innumerable. Consequently, not being a fool or a fawner, he
+has come to acknowledge his patronage by virtually saying:
+&lsquo;Let me alone. If you understand me no better than
+<i>that</i>, sir and madam, let me alone. You mean very
+well, I dare say, but I don&rsquo;t like it, and I won&rsquo;t
+come here again to have any more of it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Whatever is done for the comfort and advancement of the
+working man must be so far done by himself as that it is
+maintained by himself. And there must be in it no touch of
+condescension, no shadow of patronage. In the great working
+districts, this truth is studied and understood. When the
+American civil war rendered it necessary, first in Glasgow, and
+afterwards in Manchester, that the working people should be shown
+how to avail themselves of the advantages derivable from system,
+and from the combination of numbers, in the purchase and the
+cooking of their food, this truth was above all things borne in
+mind. The quick consequence was, that suspicion and
+reluctance were vanquished, and that the effort resulted in an
+astonishing and a complete success.</p>
+<p>Such thoughts passed through my mind on a July morning of this
+summer, as I walked towards Commercial Street (not Uncommercial
+Street), Whitechapel. The Glasgow and Manchester system had
+been lately set a-going there, by certain gentlemen who felt an
+interest in its diffusion, and I had been attracted by the
+following hand-bill printed on rose-coloured paper:</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span
+class="GutSmall">SELF-SUPPORTING</span><br />
+COOKING DEP&Ocirc;T<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">FOR THE WORKING CLASSES</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">Commercial-street, Whitechapel,</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">Where Accommodation is provided for
+Dining comfortably<br />
+300 Persons at a time.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">Open from 7 <span
+class="GutSmall">A.M.</span> till 7 <span
+class="GutSmall">P.M.</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">PRICES.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">All Articles of the <span
+class="smcap">Best Quality</span>.</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Cup of Tea or Coffee</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>One Penny</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Bread and Butter</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>One Penny</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Bread and Cheese</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>One Penny</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Slice of bread&nbsp; One half-penny or</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>One Penny</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Boiled Egg</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>One Penny</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Ginger Beer</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>One Penny</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center">The above Articles
+always ready.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><p>Besides the above may be had, from 12 to 3
+o&rsquo;clock,</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Bowl of Scotch Broth</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>One Penny</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Bowl of Soup</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>One Penny</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Plate of Potatoes</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>One Penny</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Plate of Minced Beef</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Twopence</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Plate of Cold Beef</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Twopence</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Plate of Cold Ham</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Twopence</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Plate of Plum Pudding or Rice</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>One Penny</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>As the Economy of Cooking depends greatly upon the simplicity
+of the arrangements with which a great number of persons can be
+served at one time, the Upper Room of this Establishment will be
+especially set apart for a</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">Public</span>
+DINNER <span class="smcap">every Day</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">From 12 till 3 o&rsquo;clock,</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Consisting of the following
+Dishes</i>:</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">Bowl of Broth, or Soup,<br />
+Plate of Cold Beef or Ham,<br />
+Plate of Potatoes,<br />
+Plum Pudding, or Rice.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">FIXED CHARGE 4&frac12;<i>d.</i></p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">THE DAILY
+PAPERS PROVIDED.</span></p>
+<p>N.B.&mdash;This Establishment is conducted on the strictest
+business principles, with the full intention of making it
+self-supporting, so that every one may frequent it with a feeling
+of perfect independence.</p>
+<p>The assistance of all frequenting the Dep&ocirc;t is
+confidently expected in checking anything interfering with the
+comfort, quiet, and regularity of the establishment.</p>
+<p>Please do not destroy this Hand Bill, but hand it to some
+other person whom it may interest.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>The Self-Supporting Cooking Dep&ocirc;t (not a very good name,
+and one would rather give it an English one) had hired a
+newly-built warehouse that it found to let; therefore it was not
+established in premises specially designed for the purpose.
+But, at a small cost they were exceedingly well adapted to the
+purpose: being light, well ventilated, clean, and cheerful.
+They consisted of three large rooms. That on the basement
+story was the kitchen; that on the ground floor was the general
+dining-room; that on the floor above was the Upper Room referred
+to in the hand-bill, where the Public Dinner at
+fourpence-halfpenny a head was provided every day. The
+cooking was done, with much economy of space and fuel, by
+American cooking-stoves, and by young women not previously,
+brought up as cooks; the walls and pillars of the two
+dining-rooms were agreeably brightened with ornamental colours;
+the tables were capable of accommodating six or eight persons
+each; the attendants were all young women, becomingly and neatly
+dressed, and dressed alike. I think the whole staff was
+female, with the exception of the steward or manager.</p>
+<p>My first inquiries were directed to the wages of this staff;
+because, if any establishment claiming to be self-supporting,
+live upon the spoliation of anybody or anything, or eke out a
+feeble existence by poor mouths and beggarly resources (as too
+many so-called Mechanics&rsquo; Institutions do), I make bold to
+express my Uncommercial opinion that it has no business to live,
+and had better die. It was made clear to me by the account
+books, that every person employed was properly paid. My
+next inquiries were directed to the quality of the provisions
+purchased, and to the terms on which they were bought. It
+was made equally clear to me that the quality was the very best,
+and that all bills were paid weekly. My next inquiries were
+directed to the balance-sheet for the last two weeks&mdash;only
+the third and fourth of the establishment&rsquo;s career.
+It was made equally clear to me, that after everything bought was
+paid for, and after each week was charged with its full share of
+wages, rent and taxes, depreciation of plant in use, and interest
+on capital at the rate of four per cent. per annum, the last week
+had yielded a profit of (in round numbers) one pound ten; and the
+previous week a profit of six pounds ten. By this time I
+felt that I had a healthy appetite for the dinners.</p>
+<p>It had just struck twelve, and a quick succession of faces had
+already begun to appear at a little window in the wall of the
+partitioned space where I sat looking over the books.
+Within this little window, like a pay-box at a theatre, a neat
+and brisk young woman presided to take money and issue
+tickets. Every one coming in must take a ticket.
+Either the fourpence-halfpenny ticket for the upper room (the
+most popular ticket, I think), or a penny ticket for a bowl of
+soup, or as many penny tickets as he or she choose to buy.
+For three penny tickets one had quite a wide range of
+choice. A plate of cold boiled beef and potatoes; or a
+plate of cold ham and potatoes; or a plate of hot minced beef and
+potatoes; or a bowl of soup, bread and cheese, and a plate of
+plum-pudding. Touching what they should have, some
+customers on taking their seats fell into a reverie&mdash;became
+mildly distracted&mdash;postponed decision, and said in
+bewilderment, they would think of it. One old man I noticed
+when I sat among the tables in the lower room, who was startled
+by the bill of fare, and sat contemplating it as if it were
+something of a ghostly nature. The decision of the boys was
+as rapid as their execution, and always included pudding.</p>
+<p>There were several women among the diners, and several clerks
+and shopmen. There were carpenters and painters from the
+neighbouring buildings under repair, and there were nautical men,
+and there were, as one diner observed to me, &lsquo;some of most
+sorts.&rsquo; Some were solitary, some came two together,
+some dined in parties of three or four, or six. The latter
+talked together, but assuredly no one was louder than at my club
+in Pall-Mall. One young fellow whistled in rather a shrill
+manner while he waited for his dinner, but I was gratified to
+observe that he did so in evident defiance of my Uncommercial
+individuality. Quite agreeing with him, on consideration,
+that I had no business to be there, unless I dined like the rest,
+&lsquo;I went in,&rsquo; as the phrase is, for
+fourpence-halfpenny.</p>
+<p>The room of the fourpence-halfpenny banquet had, like the
+lower room, a counter in it, on which were ranged a great number
+of cold portions ready for distribution. Behind this
+counter, the fragrant soup was steaming in deep cans, and the
+best-cooked of potatoes were fished out of similar
+receptacles. Nothing to eat was touched with his
+hand. Every waitress had her own tables to attend to.
+As soon as she saw a new customer seat himself at one of her
+tables, she took from the counter all his dinner&mdash;his soup,
+potatoes, meat, and pudding&mdash;piled it up dexterously in her
+two hands, set it before him, and took his ticket. This
+serving of the whole dinner at once, had been found greatly to
+simplify the business of attendance, and was also popular with
+the customers: who were thus enabled to vary the meal by varying
+the routine of dishes: beginning with soup-to-day, putting soup
+in the middle to-morrow, putting soup at the end the day after
+to-morrow, and ringing similar changes on meat and pudding.
+The rapidity with which every new-comer got served, was
+remarkable; and the dexterity with which the waitresses (quite
+new to the art a month before) discharged their duty, was as
+agreeable to see, as the neat smartness with which they wore
+their dress and had dressed their hair.</p>
+<p>If I seldom saw better waiting, so I certainly never ate
+better meat, potatoes, or pudding. And the soup was an
+honest and stout soup, with rice and barley in it, and
+&lsquo;little matters for the teeth to touch,&rsquo; as had been
+observed to me by my friend below stairs already quoted.
+The dinner-service, too, was neither conspicuously hideous for
+High Art nor for Low Art, but was of a pleasant and pure
+appearance. Concerning the viands and their cookery, one
+last remark. I dined at my club in Pall-Mall aforesaid, a
+few days afterwards, for exactly twelve times the money, and not
+half as well.</p>
+<p>The company thickened after one o&rsquo;clock struck, and
+changed pretty quickly. Although experience of the place
+had been so recently attainable, and although there was still
+considerable curiosity out in the street and about the entrance,
+the general tone was as good as could be, and the customers fell
+easily into the ways of the place. It was clear to me,
+however, that they were there to have what they paid for, and to
+be on an independent footing. To the best of my judgment,
+they might be patronised out of the building in a month.
+With judicious visiting, and by dint of being questioned, read
+to, and talked at, they might even be got rid of (for the next
+quarter of a century) in half the time.</p>
+<p>This disinterested and wise movement is fraught with so many
+wholesome changes in the lives of the working people, and with so
+much good in the way of overcoming that suspicion which our own
+unconscious impertinence has engendered, that it is scarcely
+gracious to criticise details as yet; the rather, because it is
+indisputable that the managers of the Whitechapel establishment
+most thoroughly feel that they are upon their honour with the
+customers, as to the minutest points of administration.
+But, although the American stoves cannot roast, they can surely
+boil one kind of meat as well as another, and need not always
+circumscribe their boiling talents within the limits of ham and
+beef. The most enthusiastic admirer of those substantials,
+would probably not object to occasional inconstancy in respect of
+pork and mutton: or, especially in cold weather, to a little
+innocent trifling with Irish stews, meat pies, and toads in
+holes. Another drawback on the Whitechapel establishment,
+is the absence of beer. Regarded merely as a question of
+policy, it is very impolitic, as having a tendency to send the
+working men to the public-house, where gin is reported to be
+sold. But, there is a much higher ground on which this
+absence of beer is objectionable. It expresses distrust of
+the working man. It is a fragment of that old mantle of
+patronage in which so many estimable Thugs, so darkly wandering
+up and down the moral world, are sworn to muffle him. Good
+beer is a good thing for him, he says, and he likes it; the
+Dep&ocirc;t could give it him good, and he now gets it bad.
+Why does the Dep&ocirc;t not give it him good? Because he
+would get drunk. Why does the Dep&ocirc;t not let him have
+a pint with his dinner, which would not make him drunk?
+Because he might have had another pint, or another two pints,
+before he came. Now, this distrust is an affront, is
+exceedingly inconsistent with the confidence the managers express
+in their hand-bills, and is a timid stopping-short upon the
+straight highway. It is unjust and unreasonable,
+also. It is unjust, because it punishes the sober man for
+the vice of the drunken man. It is unreasonable, because
+any one at all experienced in such things knows that the drunken
+workman does not get drunk where he goes to eat and drink, but
+where he goes to drink&mdash;expressly to drink. To suppose
+that the working man cannot state this question to himself quite
+as plainly as I state it here, is to suppose that he is a baby,
+and is again to tell him in the old wearisome, condescending,
+patronising way that he must be goody-poody, and do as he is
+toldy-poldy, and not be a manny-panny or a voter-poter, but fold
+his handy-pandys, and be a childy-pildy.</p>
+<p>I found from the accounts of the Whitechapel Self-Supporting
+Cooking Dep&ocirc;t, that every article sold in it, even at the
+prices I have quoted, yields a certain small profit!
+Individual speculators are of course already in the field, and
+are of course already appropriating the name. The classes
+for whose benefit the real dep&ocirc;ts are designed, will
+distinguish between the two kinds of enterprise.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap26"></a>XXVI<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">CHATHAM DOCKYARD</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">There</span> are some small out-of-the-way
+landing places on the Thames and the Medway, where I do much of
+my summer idling. Running water is favourable to
+day-dreams, and a strong tidal river is the best of running water
+for mine. I like to watch the great ships standing out to
+sea or coming home richly laden, the active little steam-tugs
+confidently puffing with them to and from the sea-horizon, the
+fleet of barges that seem to have plucked their brown and russet
+sails from the ripe trees in the landscape, the heavy old
+colliers, light in ballast, floundering down before the tide, the
+light screw barks and schooners imperiously holding a straight
+course while the others patiently tack and go about, the yachts
+with their tiny hulls and great white sheets of canvas, the
+little sailing-boats bobbing to and fro on their errands of
+pleasure or business, and&mdash;as it is the nature of little
+people to do&mdash;making a prodigious fuss about their small
+affairs. Watching these objects, I still am under no
+obligation to think about them, or even so much as to see them,
+unless it perfectly suits my humour. As little am I obliged
+to hear the plash and flop of the tide, the ripple at my feet,
+the clinking windlass afar off, or the humming steam-ship paddles
+further away yet. These, with the creaking little jetty on
+which I sit, and the gaunt high-water marks and low-water marks
+in the mud, and the broken causeway, and the broken bank, and the
+broken stakes and piles leaning forward as if they were vain of
+their personal appearance and looking for their reflection in the
+water, will melt into any train of fancy. Equally adaptable
+to any purpose or to none, are the posturing sheep and kine upon
+the marshes, the gulls that wheel and dip around me, the crows
+(well out of gunshot) going home from the rich harvest-fields,
+the heron that has been out a-fishing and looks as melancholy, up
+there in the sky, as if it hadn&rsquo;t agreed with him.
+Everything within the range of the senses will, by the aid of the
+running water, lend itself to everything beyond that range, and
+work into a drowsy whole, not unlike a kind of tune, but for
+which there is no exact definition.</p>
+<p>One of these landing-places is near an old fort (I can see the
+Nore Light from it with my pocket-glass), from which fort
+mysteriously emerges a boy, to whom I am much indebted for
+additions to my scanty stock of knowledge. He is a young
+boy, with an intelligent face burnt to a dust colour by the
+summer sun, and with crisp hair of the same hue. He is a
+boy in whom I have perceived nothing incompatible with habits of
+studious inquiry and meditation, unless an evanescent black eye
+(I was delicate of inquiring how occasioned) should be so
+considered. To him am I indebted for ability to identify a
+Custom-house boat at any distance, and for acquaintance with all
+the forms and ceremonies observed by a homeward-bound Indiaman
+coming up the river, when the Custom-house officers go aboard
+her. But for him, I might never have heard of &lsquo;the
+dumb-ague,&rsquo; respecting which malady I am now learned.
+Had I never sat at his feet, I might have finished my mortal
+career and never known that when I see a white horse on a
+barge&rsquo;s sail, that barge is a lime barge. For
+precious secrets in reference to beer, am I likewise beholden to
+him, involving warning against the beer of a certain
+establishment, by reason of its having turned sour through
+failure in point of demand: though my young sage is not of
+opinion that similar deterioration has befallen the ale. He
+has also enlightened me touching the mushrooms of the marshes,
+and has gently reproved my ignorance in having supposed them to
+be impregnated with salt. His manner of imparting
+information, is thoughtful, and appropriate to the scene.
+As he reclines beside me, he pitches into the river, a little
+stone or piece of grit, and then delivers himself oracularly, as
+though he spoke out of the centre of the spreading circle that it
+makes in the water. He never improves my mind without
+observing this formula.</p>
+<p>With the wise boy&mdash;whom I know by no other name than the
+Spirit of the Fort&mdash;I recently consorted on a breezy day
+when the river leaped about us and was full of life. I had
+seen the sheaved corn carrying in the golden fields as I came
+down to the river; and the rosy farmer, watching his
+labouring-men in the saddle on his cob, had told me how he had
+reaped his two hundred and sixty acres of long-strawed corn last
+week, and how a better week&rsquo;s work he had never done in all
+his days. Peace and abundance were on the country-side in
+beautiful forms and beautiful colours, and the harvest seemed
+even to be sailing out to grace the never-reaped sea in the
+yellow-laden barges that mellowed the distance.</p>
+<p>It was on this occasion that the Spirit of the Fort, directing
+his remarks to a certain floating iron battery lately lying in
+that reach of the river, enriched my mind with his opinions on
+naval architecture, and informed me that he would like to be an
+engineer. I found him up to everything that is done in the
+contracting line by Messrs. Peto and Brassey&mdash;cunning in the
+article of concrete&mdash;mellow in the matter of
+iron&mdash;great on the subject of gunnery. When he spoke
+of pile-driving and sluice-making, he left me not a leg to stand
+on, and I can never sufficiently acknowledge his forbearance with
+me in my disabled state. While he thus discoursed, he
+several times directed his eyes to one distant quarter of the
+landscape, and spoke with vague mysterious awe of &lsquo;the
+Yard.&rsquo; Pondering his lessons after we had parted, I
+bethought me that the Yard was one of our large public Dockyards,
+and that it lay hidden among the crops down in the dip behind the
+windmills, as if it modestly kept itself out of view in peaceful
+times, and sought to trouble no man. Taken with this
+modesty on the part of the Yard, I resolved to improve the
+Yard&rsquo;s acquaintance.</p>
+<p>My good opinion of the Yard&rsquo;s retiring character was not
+dashed by nearer approach. It resounded with the noise of
+hammers beating upon iron; and the great sheds or slips under
+which the mighty men-of-war are built, loomed business-like when
+contemplated from the opposite side of the river. For all
+that, however, the Yard made no display, but kept itself snug
+under hill-sides of corn-fields, hop-gardens, and orchards; its
+great chimneys smoking with a quiet&mdash;almost a
+lazy&mdash;air, like giants smoking tobacco; and the great Shears
+moored off it, looking meekly and inoffensively out of
+proportion, like the Giraffe of the machinery creation. The
+store of cannon on the neighbouring gun-wharf, had an innocent
+toy-like appearance, and the one red-coated sentry on duty over
+them was a mere toy figure, with a clock-work movement. As
+the hot sunlight sparkled on him he might have passed for the
+identical little man who had the little gun, and whose bullets
+they were made of lead, lead, lead.</p>
+<p>Crossing the river and landing at the Stairs, where a drift of
+chips and weed had been trying to land before me and had not
+succeeded, but had got into a corner instead, I found the very
+street posts to be cannon, and the architectural ornaments to be
+shells. And so I came to the Yard, which was shut up tight
+and strong with great folded gates, like an enormous patent
+safe. These gates devouring me, I became digested into the
+Yard; and it had, at first, a clean-swept holiday air, as if it
+had given over work until next war-time. Though indeed a
+quantity of hemp for rope was tumbling out of store-houses, even
+there, which would hardly be lying like so much hay on the white
+stones if the Yard were as placid as it pretended.</p>
+<p>Ding, Clash, Dong, <span class="smcap">Bang</span>, Boom,
+Rattle, Clash, <span class="smcap">Bang</span>, Clink, <span
+class="smcap">Bang</span>, Dong, <span class="smcap">Bang</span>,
+Clatter, <span class="GutSmall">BANG BANG</span> BANG! What
+on earth is this! This is, or soon will be, the Achilles,
+iron armour-plated ship. Twelve hundred men are working at
+her now; twelve hundred men working on stages over her sides,
+over her bows, over her stern, under her keel, between her decks,
+down in her hold, within her and without, crawling and creeping
+into the finest curves of her lines wherever it is possible for
+men to twist. Twelve hundred hammerers, measurers,
+caulkers, armourers, forgers, smiths, shipwrights; twelve hundred
+dingers, clashers, dongers, rattlers, clinkers, bangers bangers
+bangers! Yet all this stupendous uproar around the rising
+Achilles is as nothing to the reverberations with which the
+perfected Achilles shall resound upon the dreadful day when the
+full work is in hand for which this is but note of
+preparation&mdash;the day when the scuppers that are now fitting
+like great, dry, thirsty conduit-pipes, shall run red. All
+these busy figures between decks, dimly seen bending at their
+work in smoke and fire, are as nothing to the figures that shall
+do work here of another kind in smoke and fire, that day.
+These steam-worked engines alongside, helping the ship by
+travelling to and fro, and wafting tons of iron plates about, as
+though they were so many leaves of trees, would be rent limb from
+limb if they stood by her for a minute then. To think that
+this Achilles, monstrous compound of iron tank and oaken chest,
+can ever swim or roll! To think that any force of wind and
+wave could ever break her! To think that wherever I see a
+glowing red-hot iron point thrust out of her side from
+within&mdash;as I do now, there, and there, and there!&mdash;and
+two watching men on a stage without, with bared arms and
+sledge-hammers, strike at it fiercely, and repeat their blows
+until it is black and flat, I see a rivet being driven home, of
+which there are many in every iron plate, and thousands upon
+thousands in the ship! To think that the difficulty I
+experience in appreciating the ship&rsquo;s size when I am on
+board, arises from her being a series of iron tanks and oaken
+chests, so that internally she is ever finishing and ever
+beginning, and half of her might be smashed, and yet the
+remaining half suffice and be sound. Then, to go over the
+side again and down among the ooze and wet to the bottom of the
+dock, in the depths of the subterranean forest of dog-shores and
+stays that hold her up, and to see the immense mass bulging out
+against the upper light, and tapering down towards me, is, with
+great pains and much clambering, to arrive at an impossibility of
+realising that this is a ship at all, and to become possessed by
+the fancy that it is an enormous immovable edifice set up in an
+ancient amphitheatre (say, that at Verona), and almost filling
+it! Yet what would even these things be, without the tributary
+workshops and the mechanical powers for piercing the iron
+plates&mdash;four inches and a half thick&mdash;for rivets,
+shaping them under hydraulic pressure to the finest tapering
+turns of the ship&rsquo;s lines, and paring them away, with
+knives shaped like the beaks of strong and cruel birds, to the
+nicest requirements of the design! These machines of
+tremendous force, so easily directed by one attentive face and
+presiding hand, seem to me to have in them something of the
+retiring character of the Yard. &lsquo;Obedient monster,
+please to bite this mass of iron through and through, at equal
+distances, where these regular chalk-marks are, all
+round.&rsquo; Monster looks at its work, and lifting its
+ponderous head, replies, &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t particularly want
+to do it; but if it must be done&mdash;!&rsquo; The solid
+metal wriggles out, hot from the monster&rsquo;s crunching tooth,
+and it <i>is</i> done. &lsquo;Dutiful monster, observe this
+other mass of iron. It is required to be pared away,
+according to this delicately lessening and arbitrary line, which
+please to look at.&rsquo; Monster (who has been in a
+reverie) brings down its blunt head, and, much in the manner of
+Doctor Johnson, closely looks along the line&mdash;very closely,
+being somewhat near-sighted. &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t
+particularly want to do it; but if it must be
+done&mdash;!&rsquo; Monster takes another near-sighted
+look, takes aim, and the tortured piece writhes off, and falls, a
+hot, tight-twisted snake, among the ashes. The making of
+the rivets is merely a pretty round game, played by a man and a
+boy, who put red-hot barley sugar in a Pope Joan board, and
+immediately rivets fall out of window; but the tone of the great
+machines is the tone of the great Yard and the great country:
+&lsquo;We don&rsquo;t particularly want to do it; but if it must
+be done&mdash;!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>How such a prodigious mass as the Achilles can ever be held by
+such comparatively little anchors as those intended for her and
+lying near her here, is a mystery of seamanship which I will
+refer to the wise boy. For my own part, I should as soon
+have thought of tethering an elephant to a tent-peg, or the
+larger hippopotamus in the Zoological Gardens to my
+shirt-pin. Yonder in the river, alongside a hulk, lie two
+of this ship&rsquo;s hollow iron masts. <i>They</i> are
+large enough for the eye, I find, and so are all her other
+appliances. I wonder why only her anchors look small.</p>
+<p>I have no present time to think about it, for I am going to
+see the workshops where they make all the oars used in the
+British Navy. A pretty large pile of building, I opine, and
+a pretty long job! As to the building, I am soon
+disappointed, because the work is all done in one loft. And
+as to a long job&mdash;what is this? Two rather large
+mangles with a swarm of butterflies hovering over them?
+What can there be in the mangles that attracts butterflies?</p>
+<p>Drawing nearer, I discern that these are not mangles, but
+intricate machines, set with knives and saws and planes, which
+cut smooth and straight here, and slantwise there, and now cut
+such a depth, and now miss cutting altogether, according to the
+predestined requirements of the pieces of wood that are pushed on
+below them: each of which pieces is to be an oar, and is roughly
+adapted to that purpose before it takes its final leave of
+far-off forests, and sails for England. Likewise I discern
+that the butterflies are not true butterflies, but wooden
+shavings, which, being spirted up from the wood by the violence
+of the machinery, and kept in rapid and not equal movement by the
+impulse of its rotation on the air, flutter and play, and rise
+and fall, and conduct themselves as like butterflies as heart
+could wish. Suddenly the noise and motion cease, and the
+butterflies drop dead. An oar has been made since I came
+in, wanting the shaped handle. As quickly as I can follow
+it with my eye and thought, the same oar is carried to a turning
+lathe. A whirl and a Nick! Handle made. Oar
+finished.</p>
+<p>The exquisite beauty and efficiency of this machinery need no
+illustration, but happen to have a pointed illustration
+to-day. A pair of oars of unusual size chance to be wanted
+for a special purpose, and they have to be made by hand.
+Side by side with the subtle and facile machine, and side by side
+with the fast-growing pile of oars on the floor, a man shapes out
+these special oars with an axe. Attended by no butterflies,
+and chipping and dinting, by comparison as leisurely as if he
+were a labouring Pagan getting them ready against his decease at
+threescore and ten, to take with him as a present to Charon for
+his boat, the man (aged about thirty) plies his task. The
+machine would make a regulation oar while the man wipes his
+forehead. The man might be buried in a mound made of the
+strips of thin, broad, wooden ribbon torn from the wood whirled
+into oars as the minutes fall from the clock, before he had done
+a forenoon&rsquo;s work with his axe.</p>
+<p>Passing from this wonderful sight to the Ships again&mdash;for
+my heart, as to the Yard, is where the ships are&mdash;I notice
+certain unfinished wooden walls left seasoning on the stocks,
+pending the solution of the merits of the wood and iron question,
+and having an air of biding their time with surly
+confidence. The names of these worthies are set up beside
+them, together with their capacity in guns&mdash;a custom highly
+conducive to ease and satisfaction in social intercourse, if it
+could be adapted to mankind. By a plank more gracefully
+pendulous than substantial, I make bold to go aboard a transport
+ship (iron screw) just sent in from the contractor&rsquo;s yard
+to be inspected and passed. She is a very gratifying
+experience, in the simplicity and humanity of her arrangements
+for troops, in her provision for light and air and cleanliness,
+and in her care for women and children. It occurs to me, as
+I explore her, that I would require a handsome sum of money to go
+aboard her, at midnight by the Dockyard bell, and stay aboard
+alone till morning; for surely she must be haunted by a crowd of
+ghosts of obstinate old martinets, mournfully flapping their
+cherubic epaulettes over the changed times. Though still we
+may learn from the astounding ways and means in our Yards now,
+more highly than ever to respect the forefathers who got to sea,
+and fought the sea, and held the sea, without them. This
+remembrance putting me in the best of tempers with an old hulk,
+very green as to her copper, and generally dim and patched, I
+pull off my hat to her. Which salutation a callow and
+downy-faced young officer of Engineers, going by at the moment,
+perceiving, appropriates&mdash;and to which he is most heartily
+welcome, I am sure.</p>
+<p>Having been torn to pieces (in imagination) by the steam
+circular saws, perpendicular saws, horizontal saws, and saws of
+eccentric action, I come to the sauntering part of my expedition,
+and consequently to the core of my Uncommercial pursuits.</p>
+<p>Everywhere, as I saunter up and down the Yard, I meet with
+tokens of its quiet and retiring character. There is a
+gravity upon its red brick offices and houses, a staid pretence
+of having nothing worth mentioning to do, an avoidance of
+display, which I never saw out of England. The white stones
+of the pavement present no other trace of Achilles and his twelve
+hundred banging men (not one of whom strikes an attitude) than a
+few occasional echoes. But for a whisper in the air
+suggestive of sawdust and shavings, the oar-making and the saws
+of many movements might be miles away. Down below here, is
+the great reservoir of water where timber is steeped in various
+temperatures, as a part of its seasoning process. Above it,
+on a tramroad supported by pillars, is a Chinese
+Enchanter&rsquo;s Car, which fishes the logs up, when
+sufficiently steeped, and rolls smoothly away with them to stack
+them. When I was a child (the Yard being then familiar to
+me) I used to think that I should like to play at Chinese
+Enchanter, and to have that apparatus placed at my disposal for
+the purpose by a beneficent country. I still think that I
+should rather like to try the effect of writing a book in
+it. Its retirement is complete, and to go gliding to and
+fro among the stacks of timber would be a convenient kind of
+travelling in foreign countries&mdash;among the forests of North
+America, the sodden Honduras swamps, the dark pine woods, the
+Norwegian frosts, and the tropical heats, rainy seasons, and
+thunderstorms. The costly store of timber is stacked and
+stowed away in sequestered places, with the pervading avoidance
+of flourish or effect. It makes as little of itself as
+possible, and calls to no one &lsquo;Come and look at
+me!&rsquo; And yet it is picked out from the trees of the
+world; picked out for length, picked out for breadth, picked out
+for straightness, picked out for crookedness, chosen with an eye
+to every need of ship and boat. Strangely twisted pieces
+lie about, precious in the sight of shipwrights. Sauntering
+through these groves, I come upon an open glade where workmen are
+examining some timber recently delivered. Quite a pastoral
+scene, with a background of river and windmill! and no more like
+War than the American States are at present like an Union.</p>
+<p>Sauntering among the ropemaking, I am spun into a state of
+blissful indolence, wherein my rope of life seems to be so
+untwisted by the process as that I can see back to very early
+days indeed, when my bad dreams&mdash;they were frightful, though
+my more mature understanding has never made out why&mdash;were of
+an interminable sort of ropemaking, with long minute filaments
+for strands, which, when they were spun home together close to my
+eyes, occasioned screaming. Next, I walk among the quiet
+lofts of stores&mdash;of sails, spars, rigging, ships&rsquo;
+boats&mdash;determined to believe that somebody in authority
+wears a girdle and bends beneath the weight of a massive bunch of
+keys, and that, when such a thing is wanted, he comes telling his
+keys like Blue Beard, and opens such a door. Impassive as
+the long lofts look, let the electric battery send down the word,
+and the shutters and doors shall fly open, and such a fleet of
+armed ships, under steam and under sail, shall burst forth as
+will charge the old Medway&mdash;where the merry Stuart let the
+Dutch come, while his not so merry sailors starved in the
+streets&mdash;with something worth looking at to carry to the
+sea. Thus I idle round to the Medway again, where it is now
+flood tide; and I find the river evincing a strong solicitude to
+force a way into the dry dock where Achilles is waited on by the
+twelve hundred bangers, with intent to bear the whole away before
+they are ready.</p>
+<p>To the last, the Yard puts a quiet face upon it; for I make my
+way to the gates through a little quiet grove of trees, shading
+the quaintest of Dutch landing-places, where the leaf-speckled
+shadow of a shipwright just passing away at the further end might
+be the shadow of Russian Peter himself. So, the doors of
+the great patent safe at last close upon me, and I take boat
+again: somehow, thinking as the oars dip, of braggart Pistol and
+his brood, and of the quiet monsters of the Yard, with their
+&lsquo;We don&rsquo;t particularly want to do it; but if it must
+be done&mdash;!&rsquo; Scrunch.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap27"></a>XXVII<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">IN THE FRENCH-FLEMISH COUNTRY</span></h2>
+<p>&lsquo;<span class="smcap">It</span> is neither a bold nor a
+diversified country,&rsquo; said I to myself, &lsquo;this country
+which is three-quarters Flemish, and a quarter French; yet it has
+its attractions too. Though great lines of railway traverse
+it, the trains leave it behind, and go puffing off to Paris and
+the South, to Belgium and Germany, to the Northern Sea-Coast of
+France, and to England, and merely smoke it a little in
+passing. Then I don&rsquo;t know it, and that is a good
+reason for being here; and I can&rsquo;t pronounce half the long
+queer names I see inscribed over the shops, and that is another
+good reason for being here, since I surely ought to learn
+how.&rsquo; In short, I was &lsquo;here,&rsquo; and I
+wanted an excuse for not going away from here, and I made it to
+my satisfaction, and stayed here.</p>
+<p>What part in my decision was borne by Monsieur P. Salcy, is of
+no moment, though I own to encountering that gentleman&rsquo;s
+name on a red bill on the wall, before I made up my mind.
+Monsieur P. Salcy, &lsquo;par permission de M. le Maire,&rsquo;
+had established his theatre in the whitewashed H&ocirc;tel de
+Ville, on the steps of which illustrious edifice I stood.
+And Monsieur P. Salcy, privileged director of such theatre,
+situate in &lsquo;the first theatrical arrondissement of the
+department of the North,&rsquo; invited French-Flemish mankind to
+come and partake of the intellectual banquet provided by his
+family of dramatic artists, fifteen subjects in number.
+&lsquo;La Famille P. <span class="smcap">Salcy</span>,
+compos&eacute;e d&rsquo;artistes dramatiques, au nombre de 15
+sujets.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Neither a bold nor a diversified country, I say again, and
+withal an untidy country, but pleasant enough to ride in, when
+the paved roads over the flats and through the hollows, are not
+too deep in black mud. A country so sparely inhabited, that
+I wonder where the peasants who till and sow and reap the ground,
+can possibly dwell, and also by what invisible balloons they are
+conveyed from their distant homes into the fields at sunrise and
+back again at sunset. The occasional few poor cottages and
+farms in this region, surely cannot afford shelter to the numbers
+necessary to the cultivation, albeit the work is done so very
+deliberately, that on one long harvest day I have seen, in twelve
+miles, about twice as many men and women (all told) reaping and
+binding. Yet have I seen more cattle, more sheep, more
+pigs, and all in better case, than where there is purer French
+spoken, and also better ricks&mdash;round swelling peg-top ricks,
+well thatched; not a shapeless brown heap, like the toast of a
+Giant&rsquo;s toast-and-water, pinned to the earth with one of
+the skewers out of his kitchen. A good custom they have
+about here, likewise, of prolonging the sloping tiled roof of
+farm or cottage, so that it overhangs three or four feet,
+carrying off the wet, and making a good drying-place wherein to
+hang up herbs, or implements, or what not. A better custom
+than the popular one of keeping the refuse-heap and puddle close
+before the house door: which, although I paint my dwelling never
+so brightly blue (and it cannot be too blue for me, hereabouts),
+will bring fever inside my door. Wonderful poultry of the
+French-Flemish country, why take the trouble to <i>be</i>
+poultry? Why not stop short at eggs in the rising
+generation, and die out and have done with it? Parents of
+chickens have I seen this day, followed by their wretched young
+families, scratching nothing out of the mud with an
+air&mdash;tottering about on legs so scraggy and weak, that the
+valiant word drumsticks becomes a mockery when applied to them,
+and the crow of the lord and master has been a mere dejected case
+of croup. Carts have I seen, and other agricultural
+instruments, unwieldy, dislocated, monstrous. Poplar-trees
+by the thousand fringe the fields and fringe the end of the flat
+landscape, so that I feel, looking straight on before me, as if,
+when I pass the extremest fringe on the low horizon, I shall
+tumble over into space. Little whitewashed black holes of
+chapels, with barred doors and Flemish inscriptions, abound at
+roadside corners, and often they are garnished with a sheaf of
+wooden crosses, like children&rsquo;s swords; or, in their
+default, some hollow old tree with a saint roosting in it, is
+similarly decorated, or a pole with a very diminutive saint
+enshrined aloft in a sort of sacred pigeon-house. Not that
+we are deficient in such decoration in the town here, for, over
+at the church yonder, outside the building, is a scenic
+representation of the Crucifixion, built up with old bricks and
+stones, and made out with painted canvas and wooden figures: the
+whole surmounting the dusty skull of some holy personage
+(perhaps), shut up behind a little ashy iron grate, as if it were
+originally put there to be cooked, and the fire had long gone
+out. A windmilly country this, though the windmills are so
+damp and rickety, that they nearly knock themselves off their
+legs at every turn of their sails, and creak in loud
+complaint. A weaving country, too, for in the wayside
+cottages the loom goes wearily&mdash;rattle and click, rattle and
+click&mdash;and, looking in, I see the poor weaving peasant, man
+or woman, bending at the work, while the child, working too,
+turns a little hand-wheel put upon the ground to suit its
+height. An unconscionable monster, the loom in a small
+dwelling, asserting himself ungenerously as the bread-winner,
+straddling over the children&rsquo;s straw beds, cramping the
+family in space and air, and making himself generally
+objectionable and tyrannical. He is tributary, too, to ugly
+mills and factories and bleaching-grounds, rising out of the
+sluiced fields in an abrupt bare way, disdaining, like himself,
+to be ornamental or accommodating. Surrounded by these
+things, here I stood on the steps of the H&ocirc;tel de Ville,
+persuaded to remain by the P. Salcy family, fifteen dramatic
+subjects strong.</p>
+<p>There was a Fair besides. The double persuasion being
+irresistible, and my sponge being left behind at the last Hotel,
+I made the tour of the little town to buy another. In the
+small sunny shops&mdash;mercers, opticians, and druggist-grocers,
+with here and there an emporium of religious images&mdash;the
+gravest of old spectacled Flemish husbands and wives sat
+contemplating one another across bare counters, while the wasps,
+who seemed to have taken military possession of the town, and to
+have placed it under wasp-martial law, executed warlike
+man&oelig;uvres in the windows. Other shops the wasps had
+entirely to themselves, and nobody cared and nobody came when I
+beat with a five-franc piece upon the board of custom. What
+I sought was no more to be found than if I had sought a nugget of
+Californian gold: so I went, spongeless, to pass the evening with
+the Family P. Salcy.</p>
+<p>The members of the Family P. Salcy were so fat and so like one
+another&mdash;fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, uncles, and
+aunts&mdash;that I think the local audience were much confused
+about the plot of the piece under representation, and to the last
+expected that everybody must turn out to be the long-lost
+relative of everybody else. The Theatre was established on
+the top story of the H&ocirc;tel de Ville, and was approached by
+a long bare staircase, whereon, in an airy situation, one of the
+P. Salcy Family&mdash;a stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by
+a belt&mdash;took the money. This occasioned the greatest
+excitement of the evening; for, no sooner did the curtain rise on
+the introductory Vaudeville, and reveal in the person of the
+young lover (singing a very short song with his eyebrows)
+apparently the very same identical stout gentleman imperfectly
+repressed by a belt, than everybody rushed out to the
+paying-place, to ascertain whether he could possibly have put on
+that dress-coat, that clear complexion, and those arched black
+vocal eyebrows, in so short a space of time. It then became
+manifest that this was another stout gentleman imperfectly
+repressed by a belt: to whom, before the spectators had recovered
+their presence of mind, entered a third stout gentleman
+imperfectly repressed by a belt, exactly like him. These
+two &lsquo;subjects,&rsquo; making with the money-taker three of
+the announced fifteen, fell into conversation touching a charming
+young widow: who, presently appearing, proved to be a stout lady
+altogether irrepressible by any means&mdash;quite a parallel case
+to the American Negro&mdash;fourth of the fifteen subjects, and
+sister of the fifth who presided over the check-department.
+In good time the whole of the fifteen subjects were dramatically
+presented, and we had the inevitable Ma M&egrave;re, Ma
+M&egrave;re! and also the inevitable mal&eacute;diction
+d&rsquo;un p&egrave;re, and likewise the inevitable Marquis, and
+also the inevitable provincial young man, weak-minded but
+faithful, who followed Julie to Paris, and cried and laughed and
+choked all at once. The story was wrought out with the help
+of a virtuous spinning-wheel in the beginning, a vicious set of
+diamonds in the middle, and a rheumatic blessing (which arrived
+by post) from Ma M&egrave;re towards the end; the whole resulting
+in a small sword in the body of one of the stout gentlemen
+imperfectly repressed by a belt, fifty thousand francs per annum
+and a decoration to the other stout gentleman imperfectly
+repressed by a belt, and an assurance from everybody to the
+provincial young man that if he were not supremely
+happy&mdash;which he seemed to have no reason whatever for
+being&mdash;he ought to be. This afforded him a final
+opportunity of crying and laughing and choking all at once, and
+sent the audience home sentimentally delighted. Audience
+more attentive or better behaved there could not possibly be,
+though the places of second rank in the Theatre of the Family P.
+Salcy were sixpence each in English money, and the places of
+first rank a shilling. How the fifteen subjects ever got so
+fat upon it, the kind Heavens know.</p>
+<p>What gorgeous china figures of knights and ladies, gilded till
+they gleamed again, I might have bought at the Fair for the
+garniture of my home, if I had been a French-Flemish peasant, and
+had had the money! What shining coffee-cups and saucers I
+might have won at the turntables, if I had had the luck!
+Ravishing perfumery also, and sweetmeats, I might have speculated
+in, or I might have fired for prizes at a multitude of little
+dolls in niches, and might have hit the doll of dolls, and won
+francs and fame. Or, being a French-Flemish youth, I might
+have been drawn in a hand-cart by my compeers, to tilt for
+municipal rewards at the water-quintain; which, unless I sent my
+lance clean through the ring, emptied a full bucket over me; to
+fend off which, the competitors wore grotesque old scarecrow
+hats. Or, being French-Flemish man or woman, boy or girl, I
+might have circled all night on my hobby-horse in a stately
+cavalcade of hobby-horses four abreast, interspersed with
+triumphal cars, going round and round and round and round, we the
+goodly company singing a ceaseless chorus to the music of the
+barrel-organ, drum, and cymbals. On the whole, not more
+monotonous than the Ring in Hyde Park, London, and much merrier;
+for when do the circling company sing chorus, <i>there</i>, to
+the barrel-organ, when do the ladies embrace their horses round
+the neck with both arms, when do the gentlemen fan the ladies
+with the tails of their gallant steeds? On all these
+revolving delights, and on their own especial lamps and Chinese
+lanterns revolving with them, the thoughtful weaver-face
+brightens, and the H&ocirc;tel de Ville sheds an illuminated line
+of gaslight: while above it, the Eagle of France, gas-outlined
+and apparently afflicted with the prevailing infirmities that
+have lighted on the poultry, is in a very undecided state of
+policy, and as a bird moulting. Flags flutter all
+around. Such is the prevailing gaiety that the keeper of
+the prison sits on the stone steps outside the prison-door, to
+have a look at the world that is not locked up; while that
+agreeable retreat, the wine-shop opposite to the prison in the
+prison-alley (its sign La Tranquillit&eacute;, because of its
+charming situation), resounds with the voices of the shepherds
+and shepherdesses who resort there this festive night. And
+it reminds me that only this afternoon, I saw a shepherd in
+trouble, tending this way, over the jagged stones of a
+neighbouring street. A magnificent sight it was, to behold
+him in his blouse, a feeble little jog-trot rustic, swept along
+by the wind of two immense gendarmes, in cocked-hats for which
+the street was hardly wide enough, each carrying a bundle of
+stolen property that would not have held his shoulder-knot, and
+clanking a sabre that dwarfed the prisoner.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you at this Fair,
+as a mark of my confidence in the people of this so-renowned
+town, and as an act of homage to their good sense and fine taste,
+the Ventriloquist, the Ventriloquist! Further, Messieurs et
+Mesdames, I present to you the Face-Maker, the Physiognomist, the
+great Changer of Countenances, who transforms the features that
+Heaven has bestowed upon him into an endless succession of
+surprising and extraordinary visages, comprehending, Messieurs et
+Mesdames, all the contortions, energetic and expressive, of which
+the human face is capable, and all the passions of the human
+heart, as Love, Jealousy, Revenge, Hatred, Avarice,
+Despair! Hi hi! Ho ho! Lu lu! Come
+in!&rsquo; To this effect, with an occasional smite upon a
+sonorous kind of tambourine&mdash;bestowed with a will, as if it
+represented the people who won&rsquo;t come in&mdash;holds forth
+a man of lofty and severe demeanour; a man in stately uniform,
+gloomy with the knowledge he possesses of the inner secrets of
+the booth. &lsquo;Come in, come in! Your opportunity
+presents itself to-night; to-morrow it will be gone for
+ever. To-morrow morning by the Express Train the railroad
+will reclaim the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker! Algeria
+will reclaim the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker!
+Yes! For the honour of their country they have accepted
+propositions of a magnitude incredible, to appear in
+Algeria. See them for the last time before their
+departure! We go to commence on the instant. Hi
+hi! Ho ho! Lu lu! Come in! Take the money
+that now ascends, Madame; but after that, no more, for we
+commence! Come in!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Nevertheless, the eyes both of the gloomy Speaker and of
+Madame receiving sous in a muslin bower, survey the crowd pretty
+sharply after the ascending money has ascended, to detect any
+lingering sous at the turning-point. &lsquo;Come in, come
+in! Is there any more money, Madame, on the point of
+ascending? If so, we wait for it. If not, we
+commence!&rsquo; The orator looks back over his shoulder to
+say it, lashing the spectators with the conviction that he
+beholds through the folds of the drapery into which he is about
+to plunge, the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker. Several
+sous burst out of pockets, and ascend. &lsquo;Come up,
+then, Messieurs!&rsquo; exclaims Madame in a shrill voice, and
+beckoning with a bejewelled finger. &lsquo;Come up!
+This presses. Monsieur has commanded that they
+commence!&rsquo; Monsieur dives into his Interior, and the
+last half-dozen of us follow. His Interior is comparatively
+severe; his Exterior also. A true Temple of Art needs
+nothing but seats, drapery, a small table with two moderator
+lamps hanging over it, and an ornamental looking-glass let into
+the wall. Monsieur in uniform gets behind the table and
+surveys us with disdain, his forehead becoming diabolically
+intellectual under the moderators. &lsquo;Messieurs et
+Mesdames, I present to you the Ventriloquist. He will
+commence with the celebrated Experience of the bee in the
+window. The bee, apparently the veritable bee of Nature,
+will hover in the window, and about the room. He will be
+with difficulty caught in the hand of Monsieur the
+Ventriloquist&mdash;he will escape&mdash;he will again
+hover&mdash;at length he will be recaptured by Monsieur the
+Ventriloquist, and will be with difficulty put into a
+bottle. Achieve then, Monsieur!&rsquo; Here the
+proprietor is replaced behind the table by the Ventriloquist, who
+is thin and sallow, and of a weakly aspect. While the bee
+is in progress, Monsieur the Proprietor sits apart on a stool,
+immersed in dark and remote thought. The moment the bee is
+bottled, he stalks forward, eyes us gloomily as we applaud, and
+then announces, sternly waving his hand: &lsquo;The magnificent
+Experience of the child with the whooping-cough!&rsquo; The
+child disposed of, he starts up as before. &lsquo;The
+superb and extraordinary Experience of the dialogue between
+Monsieur Tatambour in his dining-room, and his domestic, Jerome,
+in the cellar; concluding with the songsters of the grove, and
+the Concert of domestic Farm-yard animals.&rsquo; All this
+done, and well done, Monsieur the Ventriloquist withdraws, and
+Monsieur the Face-Maker bursts in, as if his retiring-room were a
+mile long instead of a yard. A corpulent little man in a
+large white waistcoat, with a comic countenance, and with a wig
+in his hand. Irreverent disposition to laugh, instantly
+checked by the tremendous gravity of the Face-Maker, who
+intimates in his bow that if we expect that sort of thing we are
+mistaken. A very little shaving-glass with a leg behind it
+is handed in, and placed on the table before the
+Face-Maker. &lsquo;Messieurs et Mesdames, with no other
+assistance than this mirror and this wig, I shall have the honour
+of showing you a thousand characters.&rsquo; As a
+preparation, the Face-Maker with both hands gouges himself, and
+turns his mouth inside out. He then becomes frightfully
+grave again, and says to the Proprietor, &lsquo;I am
+ready!&rsquo; Proprietor stalks forth from baleful reverie,
+and announces &lsquo;The Young Conscript!&rsquo; Face-Maker
+claps his wig on, hind side before, looks in the glass, and
+appears above it as a conscript so very imbecile, and squinting
+so extremely hard, that I should think the State would never get
+any good of him. Thunders of applause. Face-Maker
+dips behind the looking-glass, brings his own hair forward, is
+himself again, is awfully grave. &lsquo;A distinguished
+inhabitant of the Faubourg St. Germain.&rsquo; Face-Maker
+dips, rises, is supposed to be aged, blear-eyed, toothless,
+slightly palsied, supernaturally polite, evidently of noble
+birth. &lsquo;The oldest member of the Corps of Invalides
+on the f&ecirc;te-day of his master.&rsquo; Face-Maker
+dips, rises, wears the wig on one side, has become the feeblest
+military bore in existence, and (it is clear) would lie
+frightfully about his past achievements, if he were not confined
+to pantomime. &lsquo;The Miser!&rsquo; Face-Maker
+dips, rises, clutches a bag, and every hair of the wig is on end
+to express that he lives in continual dread of thieves.
+&lsquo;The Genius of France!&rsquo; Face-Maker dips, rises,
+wig pushed back and smoothed flat, little cocked-hat (artfully
+concealed till now) put a-top of it, Face-Maker&rsquo;s white
+waistcoat much advanced, Face-Maker&rsquo;s left hand in bosom of
+white waistcoat, Face-Maker&rsquo;s right hand behind his
+back. Thunders. This is the first of three positions
+of the Genius of France. In the second position, the
+Face-Maker takes snuff; in the third, rolls up his fight hand,
+and surveys illimitable armies through that pocket-glass.
+The Face-Maker then, by putting out his tongue, and wearing the
+wig nohow in particular, becomes the Village Idiot. The
+most remarkable feature in the whole of his ingenious
+performance, is, that whatever he does to disguise himself, has
+the effect of rendering him rather more like himself than he was
+at first.</p>
+<p>There were peep-shows in this Fair, and I had the pleasure of
+recognising several fields of glory with which I became well
+acquainted a year or two ago as Crimean battles, now doing duty
+as Mexican victories. The change was neatly effected by
+some extra smoking of the Russians, and by permitting the camp
+followers free range in the foreground to despoil the enemy of
+their uniforms. As no British troops had ever happened to
+be within sight when the artist took his original sketches, it
+followed fortunately that none were in the way now.</p>
+<p>The Fair wound up with a ball. Respecting the particular
+night of the week on which the ball took place, I decline to
+commit myself; merely mentioning that it was held in a
+stable-yard so very close to the railway, that it was a mercy the
+locomotive did not set fire to it. (In Scotland, I suppose,
+it would have done so.) There, in a tent prettily decorated
+with looking-glasses and a myriad of toy flags, the people danced
+all night. It was not an expensive recreation, the price of a
+double ticket for a cavalier and lady being one and threepence in
+English money, and even of that small sum fivepence was
+reclaimable for &lsquo;consommation:&rsquo; which word I venture
+to translate into refreshments of no greater strength, at the
+strongest, than ordinary wine made hot, with sugar and lemon in
+it. It was a ball of great good humour and of great
+enjoyment, though very many of the dancers must have been as poor
+as the fifteen subjects of the P. Salcy Family.</p>
+<p>In short, not having taken my own pet national pint pot with
+me to this Fair, I was very well satisfied with the measure of
+simple enjoyment that it poured into the dull French-Flemish
+country life. How dull that is, I had an opportunity of
+considering&mdash;when the Fair was over&mdash;when the
+tri-coloured flags were withdrawn from the windows of the houses
+on the Place where the Fair was held&mdash;when the windows were
+close shut, apparently until next Fair-time&mdash;when the
+H&ocirc;tel de Ville had cut off its gas and put away its
+eagle&mdash;when the two paviours, whom I take to form the entire
+paving population of the town, were ramming down the stones which
+had been pulled up for the erection of decorative
+poles&mdash;when the jailer had slammed his gate, and sulkily
+locked himself in with his charges. But then, as I paced
+the ring which marked the track of the departed hobby-horses on
+the market-place, pondering in my mind how long some hobby-horses
+do leave their tracks in public ways, and how difficult they are
+to erase, my eyes were greeted with a goodly sight. I
+beheld four male personages thoughtfully pacing the Place
+together, in the sunlight, evidently not belonging to the town,
+and having upon them a certain loose cosmopolitan air of not
+belonging to any town. One was clad in a suit of white
+canvas, another in a cap and blouse, the third in an old military
+frock, the fourth in a shapeless dress that looked as if it had
+been made out of old umbrellas. All wore dust-coloured
+shoes. My heart beat high; for, in those four male
+personages, although complexionless and eyebrowless, I beheld
+four subjects of the Family P. Salcy. Blue-bearded though
+they were, and bereft of the youthful smoothness of cheek which
+is imparted by what is termed in Albion a &lsquo;Whitechapel
+shave&rsquo; (and which is, in fact, whitening, judiciously
+applied to the jaws with the palm of the hand), I recognised
+them. As I stood admiring, there emerged from the yard of a
+lowly Cabaret, the excellent Ma M&egrave;re, Ma M&egrave;re, with
+the words, &lsquo;The soup is served;&rsquo; words which so
+elated the subject in the canvas suit, that when they all ran in
+to partake, he went last, dancing with his hands stuck angularly
+into the pockets of his canvas trousers, after the Pierrot
+manner. Glancing down the Yard, the last I saw of him was,
+that he looked in through a window (at the soup, no doubt) on one
+leg.</p>
+<p>Full of this pleasure, I shortly afterwards departed from the
+town, little dreaming of an addition to my good fortune.
+But more was in reserve. I went by a train which was heavy
+with third-class carriages, full of young fellows (well guarded)
+who had drawn unlucky numbers in the last conscription, and were
+on their way to a famous French garrison town where much of the
+raw military material is worked up into soldiery. At the
+station they had been sitting about, in their threadbare homespun
+blue garments, with their poor little bundles under their arms,
+covered with dust and clay, and the various soils of France; sad
+enough at heart, most of them, but putting a good face upon it,
+and slapping their breasts and singing choruses on the smallest
+provocation; the gayest spirits shouldering half loaves of black
+bread speared upon their walking-sticks. As we went along,
+they were audible at every station, chorusing wildly out of tune,
+and feigning the highest hilarity. After a while, however,
+they began to leave off singing, and to laugh naturally, while at
+intervals there mingled with their laughter the barking of a
+dog. Now, I had to alight short of their destination, and,
+as that stoppage of the train was attended with a quantity of
+horn blowing, bell ringing, and proclamation of what Messieurs
+les Voyageurs were to do, and were not to do, in order to reach
+their respective destinations, I had ample leisure to go forward
+on the platform to take a parting look at my recruits, whose
+heads were all out at window, and who were laughing like
+delighted children. Then I perceived that a large poodle
+with a pink nose, who had been their travelling companion and the
+cause of their mirth, stood on his hind-legs presenting arms on
+the extreme verge of the platform, ready to salute them as the
+train went off. This poodle wore a military shako (it is
+unnecessary to add, very much on one side over one eye), a little
+military coat, and the regulation white gaiters. He was
+armed with a little musket and a little sword-bayonet, and he
+stood presenting arms in perfect attitude, with his unobscured
+eye on his master or superior officer, who stood by him. So
+admirable was his discipline, that, when the train moved, and he
+was greeted with the parting cheers of the recruits, and also
+with a shower of centimes, several of which struck his shako, and
+had a tendency to discompose him, he remained staunch on his
+post, until the train was gone. He then resigned his arms
+to his officer, took off his shako by rubbing his paw over it,
+dropped on four legs, bringing his uniform coat into the
+absurdest relations with the overarching skies, and ran about the
+platform in his white gaiters, waging his tail to an exceeding
+great extent. It struck me that there was more waggery than
+this in the poodle, and that he knew that the recruits would
+neither get through their exercises, nor get rid of their
+uniforms, as easily as he; revolving which in my thoughts, and
+seeking in my pockets some small money to bestow upon him, I
+casually directed my eyes to the face of his superior officer,
+and in him beheld the Face-Maker! Though it was not the way
+to Algeria, but quite the reverse, the military poodle&rsquo;s
+Colonel was the Face-Maker in a dark blouse, with a small bundle
+dangling over his shoulder at the end of an umbrella, and taking
+a pipe from his breast to smoke as he and the poodle went their
+mysterious way.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap28"></a>XXVIII<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">MEDICINE MEN OF CIVILISATION</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">My</span> voyages (in paper boats) among
+savages often yield me matter for reflection at home. It is
+curious to trace the savage in the civilised man, and to detect
+the hold of some savage customs on conditions of society rather
+boastful of being high above them.</p>
+<p>I wonder, is the Medicine Man of the North American Indians
+never to be got rid of, out of the North American country?
+He comes into my Wigwam on all manner of occasions, and with the
+absurdest &lsquo;Medicine.&rsquo; I always find it
+extremely difficult, and I often find it simply impossible, to
+keep him out of my Wigwam. For his legal
+&lsquo;Medicine&rsquo; he sticks upon his head the hair of
+quadrupeds, and plasters the same with fat, and dirty white
+powder, and talks a gibberish quite unknown to the men and squaws
+of his tribe. For his religious &lsquo;Medicine&rsquo; he
+puts on puffy white sleeves, little black aprons, large black
+waistcoats of a peculiar cut, collarless coats with Medicine
+button-holes, Medicine stockings and gaiters and shoes, and tops
+the whole with a highly grotesque Medicinal hat. In one
+respect, to be sure, I am quite free from him. On occasions
+when the Medicine Men in general, together with a large number of
+the miscellaneous inhabitants of his village, both male and
+female, are presented to the principal Chief, his native
+&lsquo;Medicine&rsquo; is a comical mixture of old odds and ends
+(hired of traders) and new things in antiquated shapes, and
+pieces of red cloth (of which he is particularly fond), and white
+and red and blue paint for the face. The irrationality of
+this particular Medicine culminates in a mock battle-rush, from
+which many of the squaws are borne out, much dilapidated. I
+need not observe how unlike this is to a Drawing Room at St.
+James&rsquo;s Palace.</p>
+<p>The African magician I find it very difficult to exclude from
+my Wigwam too. This creature takes cases of death and
+mourning under his supervision, and will frequently impoverish a
+whole family by his preposterous enchantments. He is a
+great eater and drinker, and always conceals a rejoicing stomach
+under a grieving exterior. His charms consist of an
+infinite quantity of worthless scraps, for which he charges very
+high. He impresses on the poor bereaved natives, that the
+more of his followers they pay to exhibit such scraps on their
+persons for an hour or two (though they never saw the deceased in
+their lives, and are put in high spirits by his decease), the
+more honourably and piously they grieve for the dead. The
+poor people submitting themselves to this conjurer, an expensive
+procession is formed, in which bits of stick, feathers of birds,
+and a quantity of other unmeaning objects besmeared with black
+paint, are carried in a certain ghastly order of which no one
+understands the meaning, if it ever had any, to the brink of the
+grave, and are then brought back again.</p>
+<p>In the Tonga Islands everything is supposed to have a soul, so
+that when a hatchet is irreparably broken, they say, &lsquo;His
+immortal part has departed; he is gone to the happy
+hunting-plains.&rsquo; This belief leads to the logical
+sequence that when a man is buried, some of his eating and
+drinking vessels, and some of his warlike implements, must be
+broken and buried with him. Superstitious and wrong, but
+surely a more respectable superstition than the hire of antic
+scraps for a show that has no meaning based on any sincere
+belief.</p>
+<p>Let me halt on my Uncommercial road, to throw a passing glance
+on some funeral solemnities that I have seen where North American
+Indians, African Magicians, and Tonga Islanders, are supposed not
+to be.</p>
+<p>Once, I dwelt in an Italian city, where there dwelt with me
+for a while, an Englishman of an amiable nature, great
+enthusiasm, and no discretion. This friend discovered a
+desolate stranger, mourning over the unexpected death of one very
+dear to him, in a solitary cottage among the vineyards of an
+outlying village. The circumstances of the bereavement were
+unusually distressing; and the survivor, new to the peasants and
+the country, sorely needed help, being alone with the
+remains. With some difficulty, but with the strong
+influence of a purpose at once gentle, disinterested, and
+determined, my friend&mdash;Mr. Kindheart&mdash;obtained access
+to the mourner, and undertook to arrange the burial.</p>
+<p>There was a small Protestant cemetery near the city walls, and
+as Mr. Kindheart came back to me, he turned into it and chose the
+spot. He was always highly flushed when rendering a service
+unaided, and I knew that to make him happy I must keep aloof from
+his ministration. But when at dinner he warmed with the
+good action of the day, and conceived the brilliant idea of
+comforting the mourner with &lsquo;an English funeral,&rsquo; I
+ventured to intimate that I thought that institution, which was
+not absolutely sublime at home, might prove a failure in Italian
+hands. However, Mr. Kindheart was so enraptured with his
+conception, that he presently wrote down into the town requesting
+the attendance with to-morrow&rsquo;s earliest light of a certain
+little upholsterer. This upholsterer was famous for
+speaking the unintelligible local dialect (his own) in a far more
+unintelligible manner than any other man alive.</p>
+<p>When from my bath next morning I overheard Mr. Kindheart and
+the upholsterer in conference on the top of an echoing staircase;
+and when I overheard Mr. Kindheart rendering English Undertaking
+phrases into very choice Italian, and the upholsterer replying in
+the unknown Tongues; and when I furthermore remembered that the
+local funerals had no resemblance to English funerals; I became
+in my secret bosom apprehensive. But Mr. Kindheart informed
+me at breakfast that measures had been taken to ensure a signal
+success.</p>
+<p>As the funeral was to take place at sunset, and as I knew to
+which of the city gates it must tend, I went out at that gate as
+the sun descended, and walked along the dusty, dusty road.
+I had not walked far, when I encountered this procession:</p>
+<p>1. Mr. Kindheart, much abashed, on an immense grey
+horse.</p>
+<p>2. A bright yellow coach and pair, driven by a coachman
+in bright red velvet knee-breeches and waistcoat. (This was
+the established local idea of State.) Both coach doors kept
+open by the coffin, which was on its side within, and sticking
+out at each.</p>
+<p>3. Behind the coach, the mourner, for whom the coach was
+intended, walking in the dust.</p>
+<p>4. Concealed behind a roadside well for the irrigation of a
+garden, the unintelligible Upholsterer, admiring.</p>
+<p>It matters little now. Coaches of all colours are alike
+to poor Kindheart, and he rests far North of the little cemetery
+with the cypress-trees, by the city walls where the Mediterranean
+is so beautiful.</p>
+<p>My first funeral, a fair representative funeral after its
+kind, was that of the husband of a married servant, once my
+nurse. She married for money. Sally Flanders, after a
+year or two of matrimony, became the relict of Flanders, a small
+master builder; and either she or Flanders had done me the honour
+to express a desire that I should &lsquo;follow.&rsquo; I
+may have been seven or eight years old;&mdash;young enough,
+certainly, to feel rather alarmed by the expression, as not
+knowing where the invitation was held to terminate, and how far I
+was expected to follow the deceased Flanders. Consent being
+given by the heads of houses, I was jobbed up into what was
+pronounced at home decent mourning (comprehending somebody
+else&rsquo;s shirt, unless my memory deceives me), and was
+admonished that if, when the funeral was in action, I put my
+hands in my pockets, or took my eyes out of my
+pocket-handkerchief, I was personally lost, and my family
+disgraced. On the eventful day, having tried to get myself
+into a disastrous frame of mind, and having formed a very poor
+opinion of myself because I couldn&rsquo;t cry, I repaired to
+Sally&rsquo;s. Sally was an excellent creature, and had
+been a good wife to old Flanders, but the moment I saw her I knew
+that she was not in her own real natural state. She formed
+a sort of Coat of Arms, grouped with a smelling-bottle, a
+handkerchief, an orange, a bottle of vinegar, Flanders&rsquo;s
+sister, her own sister, Flanders&rsquo;s brother&rsquo;s wife,
+and two neighbouring gossips&mdash;all in mourning, and all ready
+to hold her whenever she fainted. At sight of poor little
+me she became much agitated (agitating me much more), and having
+exclaimed, &lsquo;O here&rsquo;s dear Master Uncommercial!&rsquo;
+became hysterical, and swooned as if I had been the death of
+her. An affecting scene followed, during which I was handed
+about and poked at her by various people, as if I were the bottle
+of salts. Reviving a little, she embraced me, said,
+&lsquo;You knew him well, dear Master Uncommercial, and he knew
+you!&rsquo; and fainted again: which, as the rest of the Coat of
+Arms soothingly said, &lsquo;done her credit.&rsquo; Now, I
+knew that she needn&rsquo;t have fainted unless she liked, and
+that she wouldn&rsquo;t have fainted unless it had been expected
+of her, quite as well as I know it at this day. It made me
+feel uncomfortable and hypocritical besides. I was not sure
+but that it might be manners in <i>me</i> to faint next, and I
+resolved to keep my eye on Flanders&rsquo;s uncle, and if I saw
+any signs of his going in that direction, to go too,
+politely. But Flanders&rsquo;s uncle (who was a weak little
+old retail grocer) had only one idea, which was that we all
+wanted tea; and he handed us cups of tea all round, incessantly,
+whether we refused or not. There was a young nephew of
+Flanders&rsquo;s present, to whom Flanders, it was rumoured, had
+left nineteen guineas. He drank all the tea that was
+offered him, this nephew&mdash;amounting, I should say, to
+several quarts&mdash;and ate as much plum-cake as he could
+possibly come by; but he felt it to be decent mourning that he
+should now and then stop in the midst of a lump of cake, and
+appear to forget that his mouth was full, in the contemplation of
+his uncle&rsquo;s memory. I felt all this to be the fault
+of the undertaker, who was handing us gloves on a tea-tray as if
+they were muffins, and tying us into cloaks (mine had to be
+pinned up all round, it was so long for me), because I knew that
+he was making game. So, when we got out into the streets,
+and I constantly disarranged the procession by tumbling on the
+people before me because my handkerchief blinded my eyes, and
+tripping up the people behind me because my cloak was so long, I
+felt that we were all making game. I was truly sorry for
+Flanders, but I knew that it was no reason why we should be
+trying (the women with their heads in hoods like coal-scuttles
+with the black side outward) to keep step with a man in a scarf,
+carrying a thing like a mourning spy-glass, which he was going to
+open presently and sweep the horizon with. I knew that we
+should not all have been speaking in one particular key-note
+struck by the undertaker, if we had not been making game.
+Even in our faces we were every one of us as like the undertaker
+as if we had been his own family, and I perceived that this could
+not have happened unless we had been making game. When we
+returned to Sally&rsquo;s, it was all of a piece. The
+continued impossibility of getting on without plum-cake; the
+ceremonious apparition of a pair of decanters containing port and
+sherry and cork; Sally&rsquo;s sister at the tea-table, clinking
+the best crockery and shaking her head mournfully every time she
+looked down into the teapot, as if it were the tomb; the Coat of
+Arms again, and Sally as before; lastly, the words of consolation
+administered to Sally when it was considered right that she
+should &lsquo;come round nicely:&rsquo; which were, that the
+deceased had had &lsquo;as com-for-ta-ble a fu-ne-ral as
+comfortable could be!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Other funerals have I seen with grown-up eyes, since that day,
+of which the burden has been the same childish burden.
+Making game. Real affliction, real grief and solemnity,
+have been outraged, and the funeral has been
+&lsquo;performed.&rsquo; The waste for which the funeral
+customs of many tribes of savages are conspicuous, has attended
+these civilised obsequies; and once, and twice, have I wished in
+my soul that if the waste must be, they would let the undertaker
+bury the money, and let me bury the friend.</p>
+<p>In France, upon the whole, these ceremonies are more sensibly
+regulated, because they are upon the whole less expensively
+regulated. I cannot say that I have ever been much edified
+by the custom of tying a bib and apron on the front of the house
+of mourning, or that I would myself particularly care to be
+driven to my grave in a nodding and bobbing car, like an infirm
+four-post bedstead, by an inky fellow-creature in a
+cocked-hat. But it may be that I am constitutionally
+insensible to the virtues of a cocked-hat. In provincial
+France, the solemnities are sufficiently hideous, but are few and
+cheap. The friends and townsmen of the departed, in their
+own dresses and not masquerading under the auspices of the
+African Conjurer, surround the hand-bier, and often carry
+it. It is not considered indispensable to stifle the
+bearers, or even to elevate the burden on their shoulders;
+consequently it is easily taken up, and easily set down, and is
+carried through the streets without the distressing floundering
+and shuffling that we see at home. A dirty priest or two,
+and a dirtier acolyte or two, do not lend any especial grace to
+the proceedings; and I regard with personal animosity the
+bassoon, which is blown at intervals by the big-legged priest (it
+is always a big-legged priest who blows the bassoon), when his
+fellows combine in a lugubrious stalwart drawl. But there
+is far less of the Conjurer and the Medicine Man in the business
+than under like circumstances here. The grim coaches that
+we reserve expressly for such shows, are non-existent; if the
+cemetery be far out of the town, the coaches that are hired for
+other purposes of life are hired for this purpose; and although
+the honest vehicles make no pretence of being overcome, I have
+never noticed that the people in them were the worse for
+it. In Italy, the hooded Members of Confraternities who
+attend on funerals, are dismal and ugly to look upon; but the
+services they render are at least voluntarily rendered, and
+impoverish no one, and cost nothing. Why should high
+civilisation and low savagery ever come together on the point of
+making them a wantonly wasteful and contemptible set of
+forms?</p>
+<p>Once I lost a friend by death, who had been troubled in his
+time by the Medicine Man and the Conjurer, and upon whose limited
+resources there were abundant claims. The Conjurer assured
+me that I must positively &lsquo;follow,&rsquo; and both he and
+the Medicine Man entertained no doubt that I must go in a black
+carriage, and must wear &lsquo;fittings.&rsquo; I objected
+to fittings as having nothing to do with my friendship, and I
+objected to the black carriage as being in more senses than one a
+job. So, it came into my mind to try what would happen if I
+quietly walked, in my own way, from my own house to my
+friend&rsquo;s burial-place, and stood beside his open grave in
+my own dress and person, reverently listening to the best of
+Services. It satisfied my mind, I found, quite as well as
+if I had been disguised in a hired hatband and scarf both
+trailing to my very heels, and as if I had cost the orphan
+children, in their greatest need, ten guineas.</p>
+<p>Can any one who ever beheld the stupendous absurdities
+attendant on &lsquo;A message from the Lords&rsquo; in the House
+of Commons, turn upon the Medicine Man of the poor Indians?
+Has he any &lsquo;Medicine&rsquo; in that dried skin pouch of
+his, so supremely ludicrous as the two Masters in Chancery
+holding up their black petticoats and butting their ridiculous
+wigs at Mr. Speaker? Yet there are authorities innumerable
+to tell me&mdash;as there are authorities innumerable among the
+Indians to tell them&mdash;that the nonsense is indispensable,
+and that its abrogation would involve most awful
+consequences. What would any rational creature who had
+never heard of judicial and forensic &lsquo;fittings,&rsquo;
+think of the Court of Common Pleas on the first day of
+Term? Or with what an awakened sense of humour would <span
+class="smcap">Livingstone&rsquo;s</span> account of a similar
+scene be perused, if the fur and red cloth and goats&rsquo; hair
+and horse hair and powdered chalk and black patches on the top of
+the head, were all at Tala Mungongo instead of Westminster?
+That model missionary and good brave man found at least one tribe
+of blacks with a very strong sense of the ridiculous, insomuch
+that although an amiable and docile people, they never could see
+the Missionaries dispose of their legs in the attitude of
+kneeling, or hear them begin a hymn in chorus, without bursting
+into roars of irrepressible laughter. It is much to be
+hoped that no member of this facetious tribe may ever find his
+way to England and get committed for contempt of Court.</p>
+<p>In the Tonga Island already mentioned, there are a set of
+personages called Mataboos&mdash;or some such name&mdash;who are
+the masters of all the public ceremonies, and who know the exact
+place in which every chief must sit down when a solemn public
+meeting takes place: a meeting which bears a family resemblance
+to our own Public Dinner, in respect of its being a main part of
+the proceedings that every gentleman present is required to drink
+something nasty. These Mataboos are a privileged order, so
+important is their avocation, and they make the most of their
+high functions. A long way out of the Tonga Islands,
+indeed, rather near the British Islands, was there no calling in
+of the Mataboos the other day to settle an earth-convulsing
+question of precedence; and was there no weighty opinion
+delivered on the part of the Mataboos which, being interpreted to
+that unlucky tribe of blacks with the sense of the ridiculous,
+would infallibly set the whole population screaming with
+laughter?</p>
+<p>My sense of justice demands the admission, however, that this
+is not quite a one-sided question. If we submit ourselves
+meekly to the Medicine Man and the Conjurer, and are not exalted
+by it, the savages may retort upon us that we act more unwisely
+than they in other matters wherein we fail to imitate them.
+It is a widely diffused custom among savage tribes, when they
+meet to discuss any affair of public importance, to sit up all
+night making a horrible noise, dancing, blowing shells, and (in
+cases where they are familiar with fire-arms) flying out into
+open places and letting off guns. It is questionable
+whether our legislative assemblies might not take a hint from
+this. A shell is not a melodious wind-instrument, and it is
+monotonous; but it is as musical as, and not more monotonous
+than, my Honourable friend&rsquo;s own trumpet, or the trumpet
+that he blows so hard for the Minister. The uselessness of
+arguing with any supporter of a Government or of an Opposition,
+is well known. Try dancing. It is a better exercise,
+and has the unspeakable recommendation that it couldn&rsquo;t be
+reported. The honourable and savage member who has a loaded
+gun, and has grown impatient of debate, plunges out of doors,
+fires in the air, and returns calm and silent to the
+Palaver. Let the honourable and civilised member similarly
+charged with a speech, dart into the cloisters of Westminster
+Abbey in the silence of night, let his speech off, and come back
+harmless. It is not at first sight a very rational custom
+to paint a broad blue stripe across one&rsquo;s nose and both
+cheeks, and a broad red stripe from the forehead to the chin, to
+attach a few pounds of wood to one&rsquo;s under lip, to stick
+fish-bones in one&rsquo;s ears and a brass curtain-ring in
+one&rsquo;s nose, and to rub one&rsquo;s body all over with
+rancid oil, as a preliminary to entering on business. But
+this is a question of taste and ceremony, and so is the Windsor
+Uniform. The manner of entering on the business itself is
+another question. A council of six hundred savage gentlemen
+entirely independent of tailors, sitting on their hams in a ring,
+smoking, and occasionally grunting, seem to me, according to the
+experience I have gathered in my voyages and travels, somehow to
+do what they come together for; whereas that is not at all the
+general experience of a council of six hundred civilised
+gentlemen very dependent on tailors and sitting on mechanical
+contrivances. It is better that an Assembly should do its
+utmost to envelop itself in smoke, than that it should direct its
+endeavours to enveloping the public in smoke; and I would rather
+it buried half a hundred hatchets than buried one subject
+demanding attention.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap29"></a>XXIX<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">TITBULL&rsquo;S ALMS-HOUSES</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">By</span> the side of most railways out of
+London, one may see Alms-Houses and Retreats (generally with a
+Wing or a Centre wanting, and ambitious of being much bigger than
+they are), some of which are newly-founded Institutions, and some
+old establishments transplanted. There is a tendency in
+these pieces of architecture to shoot upward unexpectedly, like
+Jack&rsquo;s bean-stalk, and to be ornate in spires of Chapels
+and lanterns of Halls, which might lead to the embellishment of
+the air with many castles of questionable beauty but for the
+restraining consideration of expense. However, the manners,
+being always of a sanguine temperament, comfort themselves with
+plans and elevations of Loomings in the future, and are
+influenced in the present by philanthropy towards the railway
+passengers. For, the question how prosperous and promising
+the buildings can be made to look in their eyes, usually
+supersedes the lesser question how they can be turned to the best
+account for the inmates.</p>
+<p>Why none of the people who reside in these places ever look
+out of window, or take an airing in the piece of ground which is
+going to be a garden by-and-by, is one of the wonders I have
+added to my always-lengthening list of the wonders of the
+world. I have got it into my mind that they live in a state
+of chronic injury and resentment, and on that account refuse to
+decorate the building with a human interest. As I have
+known legatees deeply injured by a bequest of five hundred pounds
+because it was not five thousand, and as I was once acquainted
+with a pensioner on the Public to the extent of two hundred a
+year, who perpetually anathematised his Country because he was
+not in the receipt of four, having no claim whatever to sixpence:
+so perhaps it usually happens, within certain limits, that to get
+a little help is to get a notion of being defrauded of
+more. &lsquo;How do they pass their lives in this beautiful
+and peaceful place!&rsquo; was the subject of my speculation with
+a visitor who once accompanied me to a charming rustic retreat
+for old men and women: a quaint ancient foundation in a pleasant
+English country, behind a picturesque church and among rich old
+convent gardens. There were but some dozen or so of houses,
+and we agreed that we would talk with the inhabitants, as they
+sat in their groined rooms between the light of their fires and
+the light shining in at their latticed windows, and would find
+out. They passed their lives in considering themselves
+mulcted of certain ounces of tea by a deaf old steward who lived
+among them in the quadrangle. There was no reason to
+suppose that any such ounces of tea had ever been in existence,
+or that the old steward so much as knew what was the
+matter;&mdash;he passed <i>his</i> life in considering himself
+periodically defrauded of a birch-broom by the beadle.</p>
+<p>But it is neither to old Alms-Houses in the country, nor to
+new Alms-Houses by the railroad, that these present Uncommercial
+notes relate. They refer back to journeys made among those
+common-place, smoky-fronted London Alms-Houses, with a little
+paved court-yard in front enclosed by iron railings, which have
+got snowed up, as it were, by bricks and mortar; which were once
+in a suburb, but are now in the densely populated town; gaps in
+the busy life around them, parentheses in the close and blotted
+texts of the streets.</p>
+<p>Sometimes, these Alms-Houses belong to a Company or
+Society. Sometimes, they were established by individuals,
+and are maintained out of private funds bequeathed in perpetuity
+long ago. My favourite among them is Titbull&rsquo;s, which
+establishment is a picture of many. Of Titbull I know no
+more than that he deceased in 1723, that his Christian name was
+Sampson, and his social designation Esquire, and that he founded
+these Alms-Houses as Dwellings for Nine Poor Women and Six Poor
+Men by his Will and Testament. I should not know even this
+much, but for its being inscribed on a grim stone very difficult
+to read, let into the front of the centre house of
+Titbull&rsquo;s Alms-Houses, and which stone is ornamented a-top
+with a piece of sculptured drapery resembling the effigy of
+Titbull&rsquo;s bath-towel.</p>
+<p>Titbull&rsquo;s Alms-Houses are in the east of London, in a
+great highway, in a poor, busy, and thronged neighbourhood.
+Old iron and fried fish, cough drops and artificial flowers,
+boiled pigs&rsquo;-feet and household furniture that looks as if
+it were polished up with lip-salve, umbrellas full of vocal
+literature and saucers full of shell-fish in a green juice which
+I hope is natural to them when their health is good, garnish the
+paved sideways as you go to Titbull&rsquo;s. I take the
+ground to have risen in those parts since Titbull&rsquo;s time,
+and you drop into his domain by three stone steps. So did I
+first drop into it, very nearly striking my brows against
+Titbull&rsquo;s pump, which stands with its back to the
+thoroughfare just inside the gate, and has a conceited air of
+reviewing Titbull&rsquo;s pensioners.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And a worse one,&rsquo; said a virulent old man with a
+pitcher, &lsquo;there isn&rsquo;t nowhere. A harder one to
+work, nor a grudginer one to yield, there isn&rsquo;t
+nowhere!&rsquo; This old man wore a long coat, such as we
+see Hogarth&rsquo;s Chairmen represented with, and it was of that
+peculiar green-pea hue without the green, which seems to come of
+poverty. It had also that peculiar smell of cupboard which
+seems to come of poverty.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The pump is rusty, perhaps,&rsquo; said I.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not <i>it</i>,&rsquo; said the old man, regarding it
+with undiluted virulence in his watery eye. &lsquo;It never
+were fit to be termed a pump. That&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s the
+matter with <i>it</i>.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Whose fault is that?&rsquo; said I.</p>
+<p>The old man, who had a working mouth which seemed to be trying
+to masticate his anger and to find that it was too hard and there
+was too much of it, replied, &lsquo;Them gentlemen.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What gentlemen?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Maybe you&rsquo;re one of &rsquo;em?&rsquo; said the
+old man, suspiciously.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The trustees?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t trust &rsquo;em myself,&rsquo; said
+the virulent old man.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If you mean the gentlemen who administer this place,
+no, I am not one of them; nor have I ever so much as heard of
+them.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I wish <i>I</i> never heard of them,&rsquo; gasped the
+old man: &lsquo;at my time of life&mdash;with the
+rheumatics&mdash;drawing water-from that thing!&rsquo; Not
+to be deluded into calling it a Pump, the old man gave it another
+virulent look, took up his pitcher, and carried it into a corner
+dwelling-house, shutting the door after him.</p>
+<p>Looking around and seeing that each little house was a house
+of two little rooms; and seeing that the little oblong court-yard
+in front was like a graveyard for the inhabitants, saving that no
+word was engraven on its flat dry stones; and seeing that the
+currents of life and noise ran to and fro outside, having no more
+to do with the place than if it were a sort of low-water mark on
+a lively beach; I say, seeing this and nothing else, I was going
+out at the gate when one of the doors opened.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Was you looking for anything, sir?&rsquo; asked a tidy,
+well-favoured woman.</p>
+<p>Really, no; I couldn&rsquo;t say I was.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not wanting any one, sir?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No&mdash;at least I&mdash;pray what is the name of the
+elderly gentleman who lives in the corner there?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The tidy woman stepped out to be sure of the door I indicated,
+and she and the pump and I stood all three in a row with our
+backs to the thoroughfare.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh! <i>His</i> name is Mr. Battens,&rsquo; said
+the tidy woman, dropping her voice.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have just been talking with him.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Indeed?&rsquo; said the tidy woman.
+&lsquo;Ho! I wonder Mr. Battens talked!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is he usually so silent?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, Mr. Battens is the oldest here&mdash;that is to
+say, the oldest of the old gentlemen&mdash;in point of
+residence.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She had a way of passing her hands over and under one another
+as she spoke, that was not only tidy but propitiatory; so I asked
+her if I might look at her little sitting-room? She
+willingly replied Yes, and we went into it together: she leaving
+the door open, with an eye as I understood to the social
+proprieties. The door opening at once into the room without
+any intervening entry, even scandal must have been silenced by
+the precaution.</p>
+<p>It was a gloomy little chamber, but clean, and with a mug of
+wallflower in the window. On the chimney-piece were two
+peacock&rsquo;s feathers, a carved ship, a few shells, and a
+black profile with one eyelash; whether this portrait purported
+to be male or female passed my comprehension, until my hostess
+informed me that it was her only son, and &lsquo;quite a speaking
+one.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He is alive, I hope?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, sir,&rsquo; said the widow, &lsquo;he were cast
+away in China.&rsquo; This was said with a modest sense of
+its reflecting a certain geographical distinction on his
+mother.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If the old gentlemen here are not given to
+talking,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;I hope the old ladies
+are?&mdash;not that you are one.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She shook her head. &lsquo;You see they get so
+cross.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How is that?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, whether the gentlemen really do deprive us of any
+little matters which ought to be ours by rights, I cannot say for
+certain; but the opinion of the old ones is they do. And
+Mr. Battens he do even go so far as to doubt whether credit is
+due to the Founder. For Mr. Battens he do say, anyhow he
+got his name up by it and he done it cheap.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am afraid the pump has soured Mr. Battens.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It may be so,&rsquo; returned the tidy widow,
+&lsquo;but the handle does go very hard. Still, what I say
+to myself is, the gentlemen <i>may</i> not pocket the difference
+between a good pump and a bad one, and I would wish to think well
+of them. And the dwellings,&rsquo; said my hostess,
+glancing round her room; &lsquo;perhaps they were convenient
+dwellings in the Founder&rsquo;s time, considered <i>as</i> his
+time, and therefore he should not be blamed. But Mrs.
+Saggers is very hard upon them.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mrs. Saggers is the oldest here?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The oldest but one. Mrs. Quinch being the oldest,
+and have totally lost her head.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am the youngest in residence, and consequently am not
+looked up to. But when Mrs. Quinch makes a happy release,
+there will be one below me. Nor is it to be expected that
+Mrs. Saggers will prove herself immortal.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;True. Nor Mr. Battens.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Regarding the old gentlemen,&rsquo; said my widow
+slightingly, &lsquo;they count among themselves. They do
+not count among us. Mr. Battens is that exceptional that he
+have written to the gentlemen many times and have worked the case
+against them. Therefore he have took a higher ground.
+But we do not, as a rule, greatly reckon the old
+gentlemen.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Pursuing the subject, I found it to be traditionally settled
+among the poor ladies that the poor gentlemen, whatever their
+ages, were all very old indeed, and in a state of dotage. I
+also discovered that the juniors and newcomers preserved, for a
+time, a waning disposition to believe in Titbull and his
+trustees, but that as they gained social standing they lost this
+faith, and disparaged Titbull and all his works.</p>
+<p>Improving my acquaintance subsequently with this respected
+lady, whose name was Mrs. Mitts, and occasionally dropping in
+upon her with a little offering of sound Family Hyson in my
+pocket, I gradually became familiar with the inner politics and
+ways of Titbull&rsquo;s Alms-Houses. But I never could find
+out who the trustees were, or where they were: it being one of
+the fixed ideas of the place that those authorities must be
+vaguely and mysteriously mentioned as &lsquo;the gentlemen&rsquo;
+only. The secretary of &lsquo;the gentlemen&rsquo; was once
+pointed out to me, evidently engaged in championing the obnoxious
+pump against the attacks of the discontented Mr. Battens; but I
+am not in a condition to report further of him than that he had
+the sprightly bearing of a lawyer&rsquo;s clerk. I had it
+from Mrs. Mitts&rsquo;s lips in a very confidential moment, that
+Mr. Battens was once &lsquo;had up before the gentlemen&rsquo; to
+stand or fall by his accusations, and that an old shoe was thrown
+after him on his departure from the building on this dread
+errand;&mdash;not ineffectually, for, the interview resulting in
+a plumber, was considered to have encircled the temples of Mr.
+Battens with the wreath of victory.</p>
+<p>In Titbull&rsquo;s Alms-Houses, the local society is not
+regarded as good society. A gentleman or lady receiving
+visitors from without, or going out to tea, counts, as it were,
+accordingly; but visitings or tea-drinkings interchanged among
+Titbullians do not score. Such interchanges, however, are
+rare, in consequence of internal dissensions occasioned by Mrs.
+Saggers&rsquo;s pail: which household article has split
+Titbull&rsquo;s into almost as many parties as there are
+dwellings in that precinct. The extremely complicated
+nature of the conflicting articles of belief on the subject
+prevents my stating them here with my usual perspicuity, but I
+think they have all branched off from the root-and-trunk
+question, Has Mrs. Saggers any right to stand her pail outside
+her dwelling? The question has been much refined upon, but
+roughly stated may be stated in those terms.</p>
+<p>There are two old men in Titbull&rsquo;s Alms-Houses who, I
+have been given to understand, knew each other in the world
+beyond its pump and iron railings, when they were both &lsquo;in
+trade.&rsquo; They make the best of their reverses, and are
+looked upon with great contempt. They are little, stooping,
+blear-eyed old men of cheerful countenance, and they hobble up
+and down the court-yard wagging their chins and talking together
+quite gaily. This has given offence, and has, moreover,
+raised the question whether they are justified in passing any
+other windows than their own. Mr. Battens, however,
+permitting them to pass <i>his</i> windows, on the disdainful
+ground that their imbecility almost amounts to irresponsibility,
+they are allowed to take their walk in peace. They live
+next door to one another, and take it by turns to read the
+newspaper aloud (that is to say, the newest newspaper they can
+get), and they play cribbage at night. On warm and sunny
+days they have been known to go so far as to bring out two chairs
+and sit by the iron railings, looking forth; but this low
+conduct, being much remarked upon throughout Titbull&rsquo;s,
+they were deterred by an outraged public opinion from repeating
+it. There is a rumour&mdash;but it may be
+malicious&mdash;that they hold the memory of Titbull in some weak
+sort of veneration, and that they once set off together on a
+pilgrimage to the parish churchyard to find his tomb. To
+this, perhaps, might be traced a general suspicion that they are
+spies of &lsquo;the gentlemen:&rsquo; to which they were supposed
+to have given colour in my own presence on the occasion of the
+weak attempt at justification of the pump by the
+gentlemen&rsquo;s clerk; when they emerged bare-headed from the
+doors of their dwellings, as if their dwellings and themselves
+constituted an old-fashioned weather-glass of double action with
+two figures of old ladies inside, and deferentially bowed to him
+at intervals until he took his departure. They are
+understood to be perfectly friendless and relationless.
+Unquestionably the two poor fellows make the very best of their
+lives in Titbull&rsquo;s Alms-Houses, and unquestionably they are
+(as before mentioned) the subjects of unmitigated contempt
+there.</p>
+<p>On Saturday nights, when there is a greater stir than usual
+outside, and when itinerant vendors of miscellaneous wares even
+take their stations and light up their smoky lamps before the
+iron railings, Titbull&rsquo;s becomes flurried. Mrs.
+Saggers has her celebrated palpitations of the heart, for the
+most part, on Saturday nights. But Titbull&rsquo;s is unfit
+to strive with the uproar of the streets in any of its
+phases. It is religiously believed at Titbull&rsquo;s that
+people push more than they used, and likewise that the foremost
+object of the population of England and Wales is to get you down
+and trample on you. Even of railroads they know, at
+Titbull&rsquo;s, little more than the shriek (which Mrs. Saggers
+says goes through her, and ought to be taken up by Government);
+and the penny postage may even yet be unknown there, for I have
+never seen a letter delivered to any inhabitant. But there
+is a tall, straight, sallow lady resident in Number Seven,
+Titbull&rsquo;s, who never speaks to anybody, who is surrounded
+by a superstitious halo of lost wealth, who does her household
+work in housemaid&rsquo;s gloves, and who is secretly much
+deferred to, though openly cavilled at; and it has obscurely
+leaked out that this old lady has a son, grandson, nephew, or
+other relative, who is &lsquo;a Contractor,&rsquo; and who would
+think it nothing of a job to knock down Titbull&rsquo;s, pack it
+off into Cornwall, and knock it together again. An immense
+sensation was made by a gipsy-party calling in a spring-van, to
+take this old lady up to go for a day&rsquo;s pleasure into
+Epping Forest, and notes were compared as to which of the company
+was the son, grandson, nephew, or other relative, the
+Contractor. A thick-set personage with a white hat and a
+cigar in his mouth, was the favourite: though as Titbull&rsquo;s
+had no other reason to believe that the Contractor was there at
+all, than that this man was supposed to eye the chimney stacks as
+if he would like to knock them down and cart them off, the
+general mind was much unsettled in arriving at a
+conclusion. As a way out of this difficulty, it
+concentrated itself on the acknowledged Beauty of the party,
+every stitch in whose dress was verbally unripped by the old
+ladies then and there, and whose &lsquo;goings on&rsquo; with
+another and a thinner personage in a white hat might have
+suffused the pump (where they were principally discussed) with
+blushes, for months afterwards. Herein Titbull&rsquo;s was
+to Titbull&rsquo;s true, for it has a constitutional dislike of
+all strangers. As concerning innovations and improvements,
+it is always of opinion that what it doesn&rsquo;t want itself,
+nobody ought to want. But I think I have met with this
+opinion outside Titbull&rsquo;s.</p>
+<p>Of the humble treasures of furniture brought into
+Titbull&rsquo;s by the inmates when they establish themselves in
+that place of contemplation for the rest of their days, by far
+the greater and more valuable part belongs to the ladies. I
+may claim the honour of having either crossed the threshold, or
+looked in at the door, of every one of the nine ladies, and I
+have noticed that they are all particular in the article of
+bedsteads, and maintain favourite and long-established bedsteads
+and bedding as a regular part of their rest. Generally an
+antiquated chest of drawers is among their cherished possessions;
+a tea-tray always is. I know of at least two rooms in which
+a little tea-kettle of genuine burnished copper, vies with the
+cat in winking at the fire; and one old lady has a tea-urn set
+forth in state on the top of her chest of drawers, which urn is
+used as her library, and contains four duodecimo volumes, and a
+black-bordered newspaper giving an account of the funeral of Her
+Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte. Among the poor old
+gentlemen there are no such niceties. Their furniture has
+the air of being contributed, like some obsolete Literary
+Miscellany, &lsquo;by several hands;&rsquo; their few chairs
+never match; old patchwork coverlets linger among them; and they
+have an untidy habit of keeping their wardrobes in
+hat-boxes. When I recall one old gentleman who is rather
+choice in his shoe-brushes and blacking-bottle, I have summed up
+the domestic elegances of that side of the building.</p>
+<p>On the occurrence of a death in Titbull&rsquo;s, it is
+invariably agreed among the survivors&mdash;and it is the only
+subject on which they do agree&mdash;that the departed did
+something &lsquo;to bring it on.&rsquo; Judging by
+Titbull&rsquo;s, I should say the human race need never die, if
+they took care. But they don&rsquo;t take care, and they do
+die, and when they die in Titbull&rsquo;s they are buried at the
+cost of the Foundation. Some provision has been made for
+the purpose, in virtue of which (I record this on the strength of
+having seen the funeral of Mrs. Quinch) a lively neighbouring
+undertaker dresses up four of the old men, and four of the old
+women, hustles them into a procession of four couples, and leads
+off with a large black bow at the back of his hat, looking over
+his shoulder at them airily from time to time to see that no
+member of the party has got lost, or has tumbled down; as if they
+were a company of dim old dolls.</p>
+<p>Resignation of a dwelling is of very rare occurrence in
+Titbull&rsquo;s. A story does obtain there, how an old
+lady&rsquo;s son once drew a prize of Thirty Thousand Pounds in
+the Lottery, and presently drove to the gate in his own carriage,
+with French Horns playing up behind, and whisked his mother away,
+and left ten guineas for a Feast. But I have been unable to
+substantiate it by any evidence, and regard it as an Alms-House
+Fairy Tale. It is curious that the only proved case of
+resignation happened within my knowledge.</p>
+<p>It happened on this wise. There is a sharp competition
+among the ladies respecting the gentility of their visitors, and
+I have so often observed visitors to be dressed as for a holiday
+occasion, that I suppose the ladies to have besought them to make
+all possible display when they come. In these circumstances
+much excitement was one day occasioned by Mrs. Mitts receiving a
+visit from a Greenwich Pensioner. He was a Pensioner of a
+bluff and warlike appearance, with an empty coat-sleeve, and he
+was got up with unusual care; his coat-buttons were extremely
+bright, he wore his empty coat-sleeve in a graceful festoon, and
+he had a walking-stick in his hand that must have cost
+money. When, with the head of his walking-stick, he knocked
+at Mrs. Mitts&rsquo;s door&mdash;there are no knockers in
+Titbull&rsquo;s&mdash;Mrs. Mitts was overheard by a next-door
+neighbour to utter a cry of surprise expressing much agitation;
+and the same neighbour did afterwards solemnly affirm that when
+he was admitted into Mrs. Mitts&rsquo;s room, she heard a
+smack. Heard a smack which was not a blow.</p>
+<p>There was an air about this Greenwich Pensioner when he took
+his departure, which imbued all Titbull&rsquo;s with the
+conviction that he was coming again. He was eagerly looked
+for, and Mrs. Mitts was closely watched. In the meantime,
+if anything could have placed the unfortunate six old gentlemen
+at a greater disadvantage than that at which they chronically
+stood, it would have been the apparition of this Greenwich
+Pensioner. They were well shrunken already, but they shrunk
+to nothing in comparison with the Pensioner. Even the poor
+old gentlemen themselves seemed conscious of their inferiority,
+and to know submissively that they could never hope to hold their
+own against the Pensioner with his warlike and maritime
+experience in the past, and his tobacco money in the present: his
+chequered career of blue water, black gunpowder, and red
+bloodshed for England, home, and beauty.</p>
+<p>Before three weeks were out, the Pensioner reappeared.
+Again he knocked at Mrs. Mitts&rsquo;s door with the handle of
+his stick, and again was he admitted. But not again did he
+depart alone; for Mrs. Mitts, in a bonnet identified as having
+been re-embellished, went out walking with him, and stayed out
+till the ten o&rsquo;clock beer, Greenwich time.</p>
+<p>There was now a truce, even as to the troubled waters of Mrs.
+Saggers&rsquo;s pail; nothing was spoken of among the ladies but
+the conduct of Mrs. Mitts and its blighting influence on the
+reputation of Titbull&rsquo;s. It was agreed that Mr.
+Battens &lsquo;ought to take it up,&rsquo; and Mr. Battens was
+communicated with on the subject. That unsatisfactory
+individual replied &lsquo;that he didn&rsquo;t see his way
+yet,&rsquo; and it was unanimously voted by the ladies that
+aggravation was in his nature.</p>
+<p>How it came to pass, with some appearance of inconsistency,
+that Mrs. Mitts was cut by all the ladies and the Pensioner
+admired by all the ladies, matters not. Before another week
+was out, Titbull&rsquo;s was startled by another
+phenomenon. At ten o&rsquo;clock in the forenoon appeared a
+cab, containing not only the Greenwich Pensioner with one arm,
+but, to boot, a Chelsea Pensioner with one leg. Both
+dismounting to assist Mrs. Mitts into the cab, the Greenwich
+Pensioner bore her company inside, and the Chelsea Pensioner
+mounted the box by the driver: his wooden leg sticking out after
+the manner of a bowsprit, as if in jocular homage to his
+friend&rsquo;s sea-going career. Thus the equipage drove
+away. No Mrs. Mitts returned that night.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image242" href="images/p242b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Titbull&rsquo;s Alms-Houses"
+title=
+"Titbull&rsquo;s Alms-Houses"
+ src="images/p242s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>What Mr. Battens might have done in the matter of taking it
+up, goaded by the infuriated state of public feeling next
+morning, was anticipated by another phenomenon. A Truck,
+propelled by the Greenwich Pensioner and the Chelsea Pensioner,
+each placidly smoking a pipe, and pushing his warrior breast
+against the handle.</p>
+<p>The display on the part of the Greenwich Pensioner of his
+&lsquo;marriage-lines,&rsquo; and his announcement that himself
+and friend had looked in for the furniture of Mrs. G. Pensioner,
+late Mitts, by no means reconciled the ladies to the conduct of
+their sister; on the contrary, it is said that they appeared more
+than ever exasperated. Nevertheless, my stray visits to
+Titbull&rsquo;s since the date of this occurrence, have confirmed
+me in an impression that it was a wholesome fillip. The
+nine ladies are smarter, both in mind and dress, than they used
+to be, though it must be admitted that they despise the six
+gentlemen to the last extent. They have a much greater
+interest in the external thoroughfare too, than they had when I
+first knew Titbull&rsquo;s. And whenever I chance to be
+leaning my back against the pump or the iron railings, and to be
+talking to one of the junior ladies, and to see that a flush has
+passed over her face, I immediately know without looking round
+that a Greenwich Pensioner has gone past.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap30"></a>XXX<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE RUFFIAN</span></h2>
+<p>I <span class="smcap">entertain</span> so strong an objection
+to the euphonious softening of Ruffian into Rough, which has
+lately become popular, that I restore the right word to the
+heading of this paper; the rather, as my object is to dwell upon
+the fact that the Ruffian is tolerated among us to an extent that
+goes beyond all unruffianly endurance. I take the liberty
+to believe that if the Ruffian besets my life, a professional
+Ruffian at large in the open streets of a great city, notoriously
+having no other calling than that of Ruffian, and of disquieting
+and despoiling me as I go peacefully about my lawful business,
+interfering with no one, then the Government under which I have
+the great constitutional privilege, supreme honour and happiness,
+and all the rest of it, to exist, breaks down in the discharge of
+any Government&rsquo;s most simple elementary duty.</p>
+<p>What did I read in the London daily papers, in the early days
+of this last September? That the Police had &lsquo;<span
+class="smcap">At length succeeded in capturing Two of the
+notorious gang that have so long invested the Waterloo
+Road</span>.&rsquo; Is it possible? What a wonderful
+Police! Here is a straight, broad, public thoroughfare of
+immense resort; half a mile long; gas-lighted by night; with a
+great gas-lighted railway station in it, extra the street lamps;
+full of shops; traversed by two popular cross thoroughfares of
+considerable traffic; itself the main road to the South of
+London; and the admirable Police have, after long infestment of
+this dark and lonely spot by a gang of Ruffians, actually got
+hold of two of them. Why, can it be doubted that any man of
+fair London knowledge and common resolution, armed with the
+powers of the Law, could have captured the whole confederacy in a
+week?</p>
+<p>It is to the saving up of the Ruffian class by the Magistracy
+and Police&mdash;to the conventional preserving of them, as if
+they were Partridges&mdash;that their number and audacity must be
+in great part referred. Why is a notorious Thief and
+Ruffian ever left at large? He never turns his liberty to
+any account but violence and plunder, he never did a day&rsquo;s
+work out of gaol, he never will do a day&rsquo;s work out of
+gaol. As a proved notorious Thief he is always consignable
+to prison for three months. When he comes out, he is surely
+as notorious a Thief as he was when he went in. Then send
+him back again. &lsquo;Just Heaven!&rsquo; cries the
+Society for the protection of remonstrant Ruffians.
+&lsquo;This is equivalent to a sentence of perpetual
+imprisonment!&rsquo; Precisely for that reason it has my
+advocacy. I demand to have the Ruffian kept out of my way,
+and out of the way of all decent people. I demand to have
+the Ruffian employed, perforce, in hewing wood and drawing water
+somewhere for the general service, instead of hewing at her
+Majesty&rsquo;s subjects and drawing their watches out of their
+pockets. If this be termed an unreasonable demand, then the
+tax-gatherer&rsquo;s demand on me must be far more unreasonable,
+and cannot be otherwise than extortionate and unjust.</p>
+<p>It will be seen that I treat of the Thief and Ruffian as
+one. I do so, because I know the two characters to be one,
+in the vast majority of cases, just as well as the Police know
+it. (As to the Magistracy, with a few exceptions, they know
+nothing about it but what the Police choose to tell them.)
+There are disorderly classes of men who are not thieves; as
+railway-navigators, brickmakers, wood-sawyers,
+costermongers. These classes are often disorderly and
+troublesome; but it is mostly among themselves, and at any rate
+they have their industrious avocations, they work early and late,
+and work hard. The generic Ruffian&mdash;honourable member
+for what is tenderly called the Rough Element&mdash;is either a
+Thief, or the companion of Thieves. When he infamously
+molests women coming out of chapel on Sunday evenings (for which
+I would have his back scarified often and deep) it is not only
+for the gratification of his pleasant instincts, but that there
+may be a confusion raised by which either he or his friends may
+profit, in the commission of highway robberies or in picking
+pockets. When he gets a police-constable down and kicks him
+helpless for life, it is because that constable once did his duty
+in bringing him to justice. When he rushes into the bar of
+a public-house and scoops an eye out of one of the company there,
+or bites his ear off, it is because the man he maims gave
+evidence against him. When he and a line of comrades
+extending across the footway&mdash;say of that solitary
+mountain-spur of the Abruzzi, the Waterloo Road&mdash;advance
+towards me &lsquo;skylarking&rsquo; among themselves, my purse or
+shirt-pin is in predestined peril from his playfulness.
+Always a Ruffian, always a Thief. Always a Thief, always a
+Ruffian.</p>
+<p>Now, when I, who am not paid to know these things, know them
+daily on the evidence of my senses and experience; when I know
+that the Ruffian never jostles a lady in the streets, or knocks a
+hat off, but in order that the Thief may profit, is it surprising
+that I should require from those who <i>are</i> paid to know
+these things, prevention of them?</p>
+<p>Look at this group at a street corner. Number one is a
+shirking fellow of five-and-twenty, in an ill-favoured and
+ill-savoured suit, his trousers of corduroy, his coat of some
+indiscernible groundwork for the deposition of grease, his
+neckerchief like an eel, his complexion like dirty dough, his
+mangy fur cap pulled low upon his beetle brows to hide the prison
+cut of his hair. His hands are in his pockets. He
+puts them there when they are idle, as naturally as in other
+people&rsquo;s pockets when they are busy, for he knows that they
+are not roughened by work, and that they tell a tale.
+Hence, whenever he takes one out to draw a sleeve across his
+nose&mdash;which is often, for he has weak eyes and a
+constitutional cold in his head&mdash;he restores it to its
+pocket immediately afterwards. Number two is a burly brute
+of five-and-thirty, in a tall stiff hat; is a composite as to his
+clothes of betting-man and fighting-man; is whiskered; has a
+staring pin in his breast, along with his right hand; has
+insolent and cruel eyes: large shoulders; strong legs booted and
+tipped for kicking. Number three is forty years of age; is
+short, thick-set, strong, and bow-legged; wears knee cords and
+white stockings, a very long-sleeved waistcoat, a very large
+neckerchief doubled or trebled round his throat, and a crumpled
+white hat crowns his ghastly parchment face. This fellow
+looks like an executed postboy of other days, cut down from the
+gallows too soon, and restored and preserved by express
+diabolical agency. Numbers five, six, and seven, are
+hulking, idle, slouching young men, patched and shabby, too short
+in the sleeves and too tight in the legs, slimily clothed,
+foul-spoken, repulsive wretches inside and out. In all the
+party there obtains a certain twitching character of mouth and
+furtiveness of eye, that hint how the coward is lurking under the
+bully. The hint is quite correct, for they are a slinking
+sneaking set, far more prone to lie down on their backs and kick
+out, when in difficulty, than to make a stand for it. (This
+may account for the street mud on the backs of Numbers five, six,
+and seven, being much fresher than the stale splashes on their
+legs.)</p>
+<p>These engaging gentry a Police-constable stands
+contemplating. His Station, with a Reserve of assistance,
+is very near at hand. They cannot pretend to any trade, not
+even to be porters or messengers. It would be idle if they
+did, for he knows them, and they know that he knows them, to be
+nothing but professed Thieves and Ruffians. He knows where
+they resort, knows by what slang names they call one another,
+knows how often they have been in prison, and how long, and for
+what. All this is known at his Station, too, and is (or
+ought to be) known at Scotland Yard, too. But does he know,
+or does his Station know, or does Scotland Yard know, or does
+anybody know, why these fellows should be here at liberty, when,
+as reputed Thieves to whom a whole Division of Police could
+swear, they might all be under lock and key at hard labour?
+Not he; truly he would be a wise man if he did! He only
+knows that these are members of the &lsquo;notorious gang,&rsquo;
+which, according to the newspaper Police-office reports of this
+last past September, &lsquo;have so long infested&rsquo; the
+awful solitudes of the Waterloo Road, and out of which almost
+impregnable fastnesses the Police have at length dragged Two, to
+the unspeakable admiration of all good civilians.</p>
+<p>The consequences of this contemplative habit on the part of
+the Executive&mdash;a habit to be looked for in a hermit, but not
+in a Police System&mdash;are familiar to us all. The
+Ruffian becomes one of the established orders of the body
+politic. Under the playful name of Rough (as if he were
+merely a practical joker) his movements and successes are
+recorded on public occasions. Whether he mustered in large
+numbers, or small; whether he was in good spirits, or depressed;
+whether he turned his generous exertions to very prosperous
+account, or Fortune was against him; whether he was in a
+sanguinary mood, or robbed with amiable horse-play and a gracious
+consideration for life and limb; all this is chronicled as if he
+were an Institution. Is there any city in Europe, out of
+England, in which these terms are held with the pests of
+Society? Or in which, at this day, such violent robberies
+from the person are constantly committed as in London?</p>
+<p>The Preparatory Schools of Ruffianism are similarly borne
+with. The young Ruffians of London&mdash;not Thieves yet,
+but training for scholarships and fellowships in the Criminal
+Court Universities&mdash;molest quiet people and their property,
+to an extent that is hardly credible. The throwing of
+stones in the streets has become a dangerous and destructive
+offence, which surely could have got to no greater height though
+we had had no Police but our own riding-whips and
+walking-sticks&mdash;the Police to which I myself appeal on these
+occasions. The throwing of stones at the windows of railway
+carriages in motion&mdash;an act of wanton wickedness with the
+very Arch-Fiend&rsquo;s hand in it&mdash;had become a crying
+evil, when the railway companies forced it on Police
+notice. Constabular contemplation had until then been the
+order of the day.</p>
+<p>Within these twelve months, there arose among the young
+gentlemen of London aspiring to Ruffianism, and cultivating that
+much-encouraged social art, a facetious cry of &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll
+have this!&rsquo; accompanied with a clutch at some article of a
+passing lady&rsquo;s dress. I have known a lady&rsquo;s
+veil to be thus humorously torn from her face and carried off in
+the open streets at noon; and I have had the honour of myself
+giving chase, on Westminster Bridge, to another young Ruffian,
+who, in full daylight early on a summer evening, had nearly
+thrown a modest young woman into a swoon of indignation and
+confusion, by his shameful manner of attacking her with this cry
+as she harmlessly passed along before me. Mr. <span
+class="smcap">Carlyle</span>, some time since, awakened a little
+pleasantry by writing of his own experience of the Ruffian of the
+streets. I have seen the Ruffian act in exact accordance
+with Mr. Carlyle&rsquo;s description, innumerable times, and I
+never saw him checked.</p>
+<p>The blaring use of the very worst language possible, in our
+public thoroughfares&mdash;especially in those set apart for
+recreation&mdash;is another disgrace to us, and another result of
+constabular contemplation, the like of which I have never heard
+in any other country to which my uncommercial travels have
+extended. Years ago, when I had a near interest in certain
+children who were sent with their nurses, for air and exercise,
+into the Regent&rsquo;s Park, I found this evil to be so
+abhorrent and horrible there, that I called public attention to
+it, and also to its contemplative reception by the Police.
+Looking afterwards into the newest Police Act, and finding that
+the offence was punishable under it, I resolved, when striking
+occasion should arise, to try my hand as prosecutor. The
+occasion arose soon enough, and I ran the following gauntlet.</p>
+<p>The utterer of the base coin in question was a girl of
+seventeen or eighteen, who, with a suitable attendance of
+blackguards, youths, and boys, was flaunting along the streets,
+returning from an Irish funeral, in a Progress interspersed with
+singing and dancing. She had turned round to me and
+expressed herself in the most audible manner, to the great
+delight of that select circle. I attended the party, on the
+opposite side of the way, for a mile further, and then
+encountered a Police-constable. The party had made
+themselves merry at my expense until now, but seeing me speak to
+the constable, its male members instantly took to their heels,
+leaving the girl alone. I asked the constable did he know
+my name? Yes, he did. &lsquo;Take that girl into
+custody, on my charge, for using bad language in the
+streets.&rsquo; He had never heard of such a charge.
+I had. Would he take my word that he should get into no
+trouble? Yes, sir, he would do that. So he took the
+girl, and I went home for my Police Act.</p>
+<p>With this potent instrument in my pocket, I literally as well
+as figuratively &lsquo;returned to the charge,&rsquo; and
+presented myself at the Police Station of the district.
+There, I found on duty a very intelligent Inspector (they are all
+intelligent men), who, likewise, had never heard of such a
+charge. I showed him my clause, and we went over it
+together twice or thrice. It was plain, and I engaged to
+wait upon the suburban Magistrate to-morrow morning at ten
+o&rsquo;clock.</p>
+<p>In the morning I put my Police Act in my pocket again, and
+waited on the suburban Magistrate. I was not quite so
+courteously received by him as I should have been by The Lord
+Chancellor or The Lord Chief Justice, but that was a question of
+good breeding on the suburban Magistrate&rsquo;s part, and I had
+my clause ready with its leaf turned down. Which was enough
+for <i>me</i>.</p>
+<p>Conference took place between the Magistrate and clerk
+respecting the charge. During conference I was evidently
+regarded as a much more objectionable person than the
+prisoner;&mdash;one giving trouble by coming there voluntarily,
+which the prisoner could not be accused of doing. The
+prisoner had been got up, since I last had the pleasure of seeing
+her, with a great effect of white apron and straw bonnet.
+She reminded me of an elder sister of Red Riding Hood, and I
+seemed to remind the sympathising Chimney Sweep by whom she was
+attended, of the Wolf.</p>
+<p>The Magistrate was doubtful, Mr. Uncommercial Traveller,
+whether this charge could be entertained. It was not
+known. Mr. Uncommercial Traveller replied that he wished it
+were better known, and that, if he could afford the leisure, he
+would use his endeavours to make it so. There was no
+question about it, however, he contended. Here was the
+clause.</p>
+<p>The clause was handed in, and more conference resulted.
+After which I was asked the extraordinary question: &lsquo;Mr.
+Uncommercial, do you really wish this girl to be sent to
+prison?&rsquo; To which I grimly answered, staring:
+&lsquo;If I didn&rsquo;t, why should I take the trouble to come
+here?&rsquo; Finally, I was sworn, and gave my agreeable
+evidence in detail, and White Riding Hood was fined ten
+shillings, under the clause, or sent to prison for so many
+days. &lsquo;Why, Lord bless you, sir,&rsquo; said the
+Police-officer, who showed me out, with a great enjoyment of the
+jest of her having been got up so effectively, and caused so much
+hesitation: &lsquo;if she goes to prison, that will be nothing
+new to <i>her</i>. She comes from Charles Street, Drury
+Lane!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The Police, all things considered, are an excellent force, and
+I have borne my small testimony to their merits.
+Constabular contemplation is the result of a bad system; a system
+which is administered, not invented, by the man in
+constable&rsquo;s uniform, employed at twenty shillings a
+week. He has his orders, and would be marked for
+discouragement if he overstepped them. That the system is
+bad, there needs no lengthened argument to prove, because the
+fact is self-evident. If it were anything else, the results
+that have attended it could not possibly have come to pass.
+Who will say that under a good system, our streets could have got
+into their present state?</p>
+<p>The objection to the whole Police system, as concerning the
+Ruffian, may be stated, and its failure exemplified, as
+follows. It is well known that on all great occasions, when
+they come together in numbers, the mass of the English people are
+their own trustworthy Police. It is well known that
+wheresoever there is collected together any fair general
+representation of the people, a respect for law and order, and a
+determination to discountenance lawlessness and disorder, may be
+relied upon. As to one another, the people are a very good
+Police, and yet are quite willing in their good-nature that the
+stipendiary Police should have the credit of the people&rsquo;s
+moderation. But we are all of us powerless against the
+Ruffian, because we submit to the law, and it is his only trade,
+by superior force and by violence, to defy it. Moreover, we
+are constantly admonished from high places (like so many
+Sunday-school children out for a holiday of buns and
+milk-and-water) that we are not to take the law into our own
+hands, but are to hand our defence over to it. It is clear
+that the common enemy to be punished and exterminated first of
+all is the Ruffian. It is clear that he is, of all others,
+<i>the</i> offender for whose repressal we maintain a costly
+system of Police. Him, therefore, we expressly present to
+the Police to deal with, conscious that, on the whole, we can,
+and do, deal reasonably well with one another. Him the
+Police deal with so inefficiently and absurdly that he
+flourishes, and multiplies, and, with all his evil deeds upon his
+head as notoriously as his hat is, pervades the streets with no
+more let or hindrance than ourselves.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap31"></a>XXXI<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">ABOARD SHIP</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">My</span> journeys as Uncommercial
+Traveller for the firm of Human-Interest Brothers have not
+slackened since I last reported of them, but have kept me
+continually on the move. I remain in the same idle
+employment. I never solicit an order, I never get any
+commission, I am the rolling stone that gathers no
+moss,&mdash;unless any should by chance be found among these
+samples.</p>
+<p>Some half a year ago, I found myself in my idlest, dreamiest,
+and least accountable condition altogether, on board ship, in the
+harbour of the city of New York, in the United States of
+America. Of all the good ships afloat, mine was the good
+steamship &lsquo;<span class="smcap">Russia</span>,&rsquo; <span
+class="smcap">Capt. Cook</span>, Cunard Line, bound for
+Liverpool. What more could I wish for?</p>
+<p>I had nothing to wish for but a prosperous passage. My
+salad-days, when I was green of visage and sea-sick, being gone
+with better things (and no worse), no coming event cast its
+shadow before.</p>
+<p>I might but a few moments previously have imitated Sterne, and
+said, &lsquo;&ldquo;And yet, methinks,
+Eugenius,&rdquo;&mdash;laying my forefinger wistfully on his
+coat-sleeve, thus,&mdash;&ldquo;and yet, methinks, Eugenius,
+&rsquo;tis but sorry work to part with thee, for what fresh
+fields, . . . my dear Eugenius, . . . can be fresher than thou
+art, and in what pastures new shall I find Eliza, or call her,
+Eugenius, if thou wilt, Annie?&rdquo;&rsquo;&mdash;I say I might
+have done this; but Eugenius was gone, and I hadn&rsquo;t done
+it.</p>
+<p>I was resting on a skylight on the hurricane-deck, watching
+the working of the ship very slowly about, that she might head
+for England. It was high noon on a most brilliant day in
+April, and the beautiful bay was glorious and glowing. Full
+many a time, on shore there, had I seen the snow come down, down,
+down (itself like down), until it lay deep in all the ways of
+men, and particularly, as it seemed, in my way, for I had not
+gone dry-shod many hours for months. Within two or three
+days last past had I watched the feathery fall setting in with
+the ardour of a new idea, instead of dragging at the skirts of a
+worn-out winter, and permitting glimpses of a fresh young
+spring. But a bright sun and a clear sky had melted the
+snow in the great crucible of nature; and it had been poured out
+again that morning over sea and land, transformed into myriads of
+gold and silver sparkles.</p>
+<p>The ship was fragrant with flowers. Something of the old
+Mexican passion for flowers may have gradually passed into North
+America, where flowers are luxuriously grown, and tastefully
+combined in the richest profusion; but, be that as it may, such
+gorgeous farewells in flowers had come on board, that the small
+officer&rsquo;s cabin on deck, which I tenanted, bloomed over
+into the adjacent scuppers, and banks of other flowers that it
+couldn&rsquo;t hold made a garden of the unoccupied tables in the
+passengers&rsquo; saloon. These delicious scents of the
+shore, mingling with the fresh airs of the sea, made the
+atmosphere a dreamy, an enchanting one. And so, with the
+watch aloft setting all the sails, and with the screw below
+revolving at a mighty rate, and occasionally giving the ship an
+angry shake for resisting, I fell into my idlest ways, and lost
+myself.</p>
+<p>As, for instance, whether it was I lying there, or some other
+entity even more mysterious, was a matter I was far too lazy to
+look into. What did it signify to me if it were I? or to
+the more mysterious entity, if it were he? Equally as to
+the remembrances that drowsily floated by me, or by him, why ask
+when or where the things happened? Was it not enough that
+they befell at some time, somewhere?</p>
+<p>There was that assisting at the church service on board
+another steamship, one Sunday, in a stiff breeze. Perhaps
+on the passage out. No matter. Pleasant to hear the
+ship&rsquo;s bells go as like church-bells as they could;
+pleasant to see the watch off duty mustered and come in: best
+hats, best Guernseys, washed hands and faces, smoothed
+heads. But then arose a set of circumstances so rampantly
+comical, that no check which the gravest intentions could put
+upon them would hold them in hand. Thus the scene.
+Some seventy passengers assembled at the saloon tables.
+Prayer-books on tables. Ship rolling heavily.
+Pause. No minister. Rumour has related that a modest
+young clergyman on board has responded to the captain&rsquo;s
+request that he will officiate. Pause again, and very heavy
+rolling.</p>
+<p>Closed double doors suddenly burst open, and two strong
+stewards skate in, supporting minister between them.
+General appearance as of somebody picked up drunk and incapable,
+and under conveyance to station-house. Stoppage, pause, and
+particularly heavy rolling. Stewards watch their
+opportunity, and balance themselves, but cannot balance minister;
+who, struggling with a drooping head and a backward tendency,
+seems determined to return below, while they are as determined
+that he shall be got to the reading-desk in mid-saloon.
+Desk portable, sliding away down a long table, and aiming itself
+at the breasts of various members of the congregation. Here
+the double doors, which have been carefully closed by other
+stewards, fly open again, and worldly passenger tumbles in,
+seemingly with pale-ale designs: who, seeking friend, says
+&lsquo;Joe!&rsquo; Perceiving incongruity, says,
+&lsquo;Hullo! Beg yer pardon!&rsquo; and tumbles out
+again. All this time the congregation have been breaking up
+into sects,&mdash;as the manner of congregations often is, each
+sect sliding away by itself, and all pounding the weakest sect
+which slid first into the corner. Utmost point of dissent
+soon attained in every corner, and violent rolling.
+Stewards at length make a dash; conduct minister to the mast in
+the centre of the saloon, which he embraces with both arms; skate
+out; and leave him in that condition to arrange affairs with
+flock.</p>
+<p>There was another Sunday, when an officer of the ship read the
+service. It was quiet and impressive, until we fell upon
+the dangerous and perfectly unnecessary experiment of striking up
+a hymn. After it was given out, we all rose, but everybody
+left it to somebody else to begin. Silence resulting, the
+officer (no singer himself) rather reproachfully gave us the
+first line again, upon which a rosy pippin of an old gentleman,
+remarkable throughout the passage for his cheerful politeness,
+gave a little stamp with his boot (as if he were leading off a
+country dance), and blithely warbled us into a show of
+joining. At the end of the first verse we became, through
+these tactics, so much refreshed and encouraged, that none of us,
+howsoever unmelodious, would submit to be left out of the second
+verse; while as to the third we lifted up our voices in a sacred
+howl that left it doubtful whether we were the more boastful of
+the sentiments we united in professing, or of professing them
+with a most discordant defiance of time and tune.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Lord bless us!&rsquo; thought I, when the fresh
+remembrance of these things made me laugh heartily alone in the
+dead water-gurgling waste of the night, what time I was wedged
+into my berth by a wooden bar, or I must have rolled out of it,
+&lsquo;what errand was I then upon, and to what Abyssinian point
+had public events then marched? No matter as to me.
+And as to them, if the wonderful popular rage for a plaything
+(utterly confounding in its inscrutable unreason) I had not then
+lighted on a poor young savage boy, and a poor old screw of a
+horse, and hauled the first off by the hair of his princely head
+to &ldquo;inspect&rdquo; the British volunteers, and hauled the
+second off by the hair of his equine tail to the Crystal Palace,
+why so much the better for all of us outside Bedlam!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>So, sticking to the ship, I was at the trouble of asking
+myself would I like to show the grog distribution in &lsquo;the
+fiddle&rsquo; at noon to the Grand United Amalgamated Total
+Abstinence Society? Yes, I think I should. I think it
+would do them good to smell the rum, under the
+circumstances. Over the grog, mixed in a bucket, presides
+the boatswain&rsquo;s mate, small tin can in hand. Enter
+the crew, the guilty consumers, the grown-up brood of Giant
+Despair, in contradistinction to the band of youthful angel
+Hope. Some in boots, some in leggings, some in tarpaulin
+overalls, some in frocks, some in pea-coats, a very few in
+jackets, most with sou&rsquo;wester hats, all with something
+rough and rugged round the throat; all, dripping salt water where
+they stand; all pelted by weather, besmeared with grease, and
+blackened by the sooty rigging.</p>
+<p>Each man&rsquo;s knife in its sheath in his girdle, loosened
+for dinner. As the first man, with a knowingly kindled eye,
+watches the filling of the poisoned chalice (truly but a very
+small tin mug, to be prosaic), and, tossing back his head, tosses
+the contents into himself, and passes the empty chalice and
+passes on, so the second man with an anticipatory wipe of his
+mouth on sleeve or handkerchief, bides his turn, and drinks and
+hands and passes on, in whom, and in each as his turn approaches,
+beams a knowingly kindled eye, a brighter temper, and a suddenly
+awakened tendency to be jocose with some shipmate. Nor do I
+even observe that the man in charge of the ship&rsquo;s lamps,
+who in right of his office has a double allowance of poisoned
+chalices, seems thereby vastly degraded, even though he empties
+the chalices into himself, one after the other, much as if he
+were delivering their contents at some absorbent establishment in
+which he had no personal interest. But vastly comforted, I
+note them all to be, on deck presently, even to the circulation
+of redder blood in their cold blue knuckles; and when I look up
+at them lying out on the yards, and holding on for life among the
+beating sails, I cannot for <i>my</i> life see the justice of
+visiting on them&mdash;or on me&mdash;the drunken crimes of any
+number of criminals arraigned at the heaviest of assizes.</p>
+<p>Abetting myself in my idle humour, I closed my eyes, and
+recalled life on board of one of those mail-packets, as I lay,
+part of that day, in the Bay of New York, O! The regular
+life began&mdash;mine always did, for I never got to sleep
+afterwards&mdash;with the rigging of the pump while it was yet
+dark, and washing down of decks. Any enormous giant at a
+prodigious hydropathic establishment, conscientiously undergoing
+the water-cure in all its departments, and extremely particular
+about cleaning his teeth, would make those noises. Swash,
+splash, scrub, rub, toothbrush, bubble, swash, splash, bubble,
+toothbrush, splash, splash, bubble, rub. Then the day would
+break, and, descending from my berth by a graceful ladder
+composed of half-opened drawers beneath it, I would reopen my
+outer dead-light and my inner sliding window (closed by a
+watchman during the water-cure), and would look out at the
+long-rolling, lead-coloured, white topped waves over which the
+dawn, on a cold winter morning, cast a level, lonely glance, and
+through which the ship fought her melancholy way at a terrific
+rate. And now, lying down again, awaiting the season for
+broiled ham and tea, I would be compelled to listen to the voice
+of conscience,&mdash;the screw.</p>
+<p>It might be, in some cases, no more than the voice of stomach;
+but I called it in my fancy by the higher name. Because it
+seemed to me that we were all of us, all day long, endeavouring
+to stifle the voice. Because it was under everybody&rsquo;s
+pillow, everybody&rsquo;s plate, everybody&rsquo;s camp-stool,
+everybody&rsquo;s book, everybody&rsquo;s occupation.
+Because we pretended not to hear it, especially at meal-times,
+evening whist, and morning conversation on deck; but it was
+always among us in an under monotone, not to be drowned in
+pea-soup, not to be shuffled with cards, not to be diverted by
+books, not to be knitted into any pattern, not to be walked away
+from. It was smoked in the weediest cigar, and drunk in the
+strongest cocktail; it was conveyed on deck at noon with limp
+ladies, who lay there in their wrappers until the stars shone; it
+waited at table with the stewards; nobody could put it out with
+the lights. It was considered (as on shore) ill-bred to
+acknowledge the voice of conscience. It was not polite to
+mention it. One squally day an amiable gentleman in love
+gave much offence to a surrounding circle, including the object
+of his attachment, by saying of it, after it had goaded him over
+two easy-chairs and a skylight, &lsquo;Screw!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Sometimes it would appear subdued. In fleeting moments,
+when bubbles of champagne pervaded the nose, or when there was
+&lsquo;hot pot&rsquo; in the bill of fare, or when an old dish we
+had had regularly every day was described in that official
+document by a new name,&mdash;under such excitements, one would
+almost believe it hushed. The ceremony of washing plates on
+deck, performed after every meal by a circle as of ringers of
+crockery triple-bob majors for a prize, would keep it down.
+Hauling the reel, taking the sun at noon, posting the twenty-four
+hours&rsquo; run, altering the ship&rsquo;s time by the meridian,
+casting the waste food overboard, and attracting the eager gulls
+that followed in our wake,&mdash;these events would suppress it
+for a while. But the instant any break or pause took place
+in any such diversion, the voice would be at it again,
+importuning us to the last extent. A newly married young
+pair, who walked the deck affectionately some twenty miles per
+day, would, in the full flush of their exercise, suddenly become
+stricken by it, and stand trembling, but otherwise immovable,
+under its reproaches.</p>
+<p>When this terrible monitor was most severe with us was when
+the time approached for our retiring to our dens for the night;
+when the lighted candles in the saloon grew fewer and fewer; when
+the deserted glasses with spoons in them grew more and more
+numerous; when waifs of toasted cheese and strays of sardines
+fried in batter slid languidly to and fro in the table-racks;
+when the man who always read had shut up his book, and blown out
+his candle; when the man who always talked had ceased from
+troubling; when the man who was always medically reported as
+going to have delirium tremens had put it off till to-morrow;
+when the man who every night devoted himself to a midnight smoke
+on deck two hours in length, and who every night was in bed
+within ten minutes afterwards, was buttoning himself up in his
+third coat for his hardy vigil: for then, as we fell off one by
+one, and, entering our several hutches, came into a peculiar
+atmosphere of bilge-water and Windsor soap, the voice would shake
+us to the centre. Woe to us when we sat down on our sofa,
+watching the swinging candle for ever trying and retrying to
+stand upon his head! or our coat upon its peg, imitating us as we
+appeared in our gymnastic days by sustaining itself horizontally
+from the wall, in emulation of the lighter and more facile
+towels! Then would the voice especially claim us for its
+prey, and rend us all to pieces.</p>
+<p>Lights out, we in our berths, and the wind rising, the voice
+grows angrier and deeper. Under the mattress and under the
+pillow, under the sofa and under the washing-stand, under the
+ship and under the sea, seeming to rise from the foundations
+under the earth with every scoop of the great Atlantic (and oh!
+why scoop so?), always the voice. Vain to deny its
+existence in the night season; impossible to be hard of hearing;
+screw, screw, screw! Sometimes it lifts out of the water,
+and revolves with a whirr, like a ferocious
+firework,&mdash;except that it never expends itself, but is
+always ready to go off again; sometimes it seems to be in
+anguish, and shivers; sometimes it seems to be terrified by its
+last plunge, and has a fit which causes it to struggle, quiver,
+and for an instant stop. And now the ship sets in rolling,
+as only ships so fiercely screwed through time and space, day and
+night, fair weather and foul, <i>can</i> roll.</p>
+<p>Did she ever take a roll before like that last? Did she
+ever take a roll before like this worse one that is coming
+now? Here is the partition at my ear down in the deep on
+the lee side. Are we ever coming up again together? I
+think not; the partition and I are so long about it that I really
+do believe we have overdone it this time. Heavens, what a
+scoop! What a deep scoop, what a hollow scoop, what a long
+scoop! Will it ever end, and can we bear the heavy mass of
+water we have taken on board, and which has let loose all the
+table furniture in the officers&rsquo; mess, and has beaten open
+the door of the little passage between the purser and me, and is
+swashing about, even there and even here? The purser snores
+reassuringly, and the ship&rsquo;s bells striking, I hear the
+cheerful &lsquo;All&rsquo;s well!&rsquo; of the watch musically
+given back the length of the deck, as the lately diving
+partition, now high in air, tries (unsoftened by what we have
+gone through together) to force me out of bed and berth.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;All&rsquo;s well!&rsquo; Comforting to know,
+though surely all might be better. Put aside the rolling
+and the rush of water, and think of darting through such darkness
+with such velocity. Think of any other similar object
+coming in the opposite direction!</p>
+<p>Whether there may be an attraction in two such moving bodies
+out at sea, which may help accident to bring them into
+collision? Thoughts, too, arise (the voice never silent all
+the while, but marvellously suggestive) of the gulf below; of the
+strange, unfruitful mountain ranges and deep valleys over which
+we are passing; of monstrous fish midway; of the ship&rsquo;s
+suddenly altering her course on her own account, and with a wild
+plunge settling down, and making <i>that</i> voyage with a crew
+of dead discoverers. Now, too, one recalls an almost
+universal tendency on the part of passengers to stumble, at some
+time or other in the day, on the topic of a certain large steamer
+making this same run, which was lost at sea, and never heard of
+more. Everybody has seemed under a spell, compelling
+approach to the threshold of the grim subject, stoppage,
+discomfiture, and pretence of never having been near it.
+The boatswain&rsquo;s whistle sounds! A change in the wind,
+hoarse orders issuing, and the watch very busy. Sails come
+crashing home overhead, ropes (that seem all knot) ditto; every
+man engaged appears to have twenty feet, with twenty times the
+average amount of stamping power in each. Gradually the
+noise slackens, the hoarse cries die away, the boatswain&rsquo;s
+whistle softens into the soothing and contented notes, which
+rather reluctantly admit that the job is done for the time, and
+the voice sets in again.</p>
+<p>Thus come unintelligible dreams of up hill and down, and
+swinging and swaying, until consciousness revives of
+atmospherical Windsor soap and bilge-water, and the voice
+announces that the giant has come for the water-cure again.</p>
+<p>Such were my fanciful reminiscences as I lay, part of that
+day, in the Bay of New York, O! Also as we passed clear of
+the Narrows, and got out to sea; also in many an idle hour at sea
+in sunny weather! At length the observations and
+computations showed that we should make the coast of Ireland
+to-night. So I stood watch on deck all night to-night, to
+see how we made the coast of Ireland.</p>
+<p>Very dark, and the sea most brilliantly phosphorescent.
+Great way on the ship, and double look-out kept. Vigilant
+captain on the bridge, vigilant first officer looking over the
+port side, vigilant second officer standing by the quarter-master
+at the compass, vigilant third officer posted at the stern rail
+with a lantern. No passengers on the quiet decks, but
+expectation everywhere nevertheless. The two men at the
+wheel very steady, very serious, and very prompt to answer
+orders. An order issued sharply now and then, and echoed
+back; otherwise the night drags slowly, silently, with no
+change.</p>
+<p>All of a sudden, at the blank hour of two in the morning, a
+vague movement of relief from a long strain expresses itself in
+all hands; the third officer&rsquo;s lantern tinkles, and he
+fires a rocket, and another rocket. A sullen solitary light
+is pointed out to me in the black sky yonder. A change is
+expected in the light, but none takes place. &lsquo;Give
+them two more rockets, Mr. Vigilant.&rsquo; Two more, and a
+blue-light burnt. All eyes watch the light again. At
+last a little toy sky-rocket is flashed up from it; and, even as
+that small streak in the darkness dies away, we are telegraphed
+to Queenstown, Liverpool, and London, and back again under the
+ocean to America.</p>
+<p>Then up come the half-dozen passengers who are going ashore at
+Queenstown and up comes the mail-agent in charge of the bags, and
+up come the men who are to carry the bags into the mail-tender
+that will come off for them out of the harbour. Lamps and
+lanterns gleam here and there about the decks, and impeding bulks
+are knocked away with handspikes; and the port-side bulwark,
+barren but a moment ago, bursts into a crop of heads of seamen,
+stewards, and engineers.</p>
+<p>The light begins to be gained upon, begins to be alongside,
+begins to be left astern. More rockets, and, between us and
+the land, steams beautifully the Inman steamship City of Paris,
+for New York, outward bound. We observe with complacency
+that the wind is dead against her (it being <i>with</i> us), and
+that she rolls and pitches. (The sickest passenger on board
+is the most delighted by this circumstance.) Time rushes by
+as we rush on; and now we see the light in Queenstown Harbour,
+and now the lights of the mail-tender coming out to us.
+What vagaries the mail-tender performs on the way, in every point
+of the compass, especially in those where she has no business,
+and why she performs them, Heaven only knows! At length she
+is seen plunging within a cable&rsquo;s length of our port
+broadside, and is being roared at through our speaking-trumpets
+to do this thing, and not to do that, and to stand by the other,
+as if she were a very demented tender indeed. Then, we
+slackening amidst a deafening roar of steam, this much-abused
+tender is made fast to us by hawsers, and the men in readiness
+carry the bags aboard, and return for more, bending under their
+burdens, and looking just like the pasteboard figures of the
+miller and his men in the theatre of our boyhood, and comporting
+themselves almost as unsteadily. All the while the
+unfortunate tender plunges high and low, and is roared at.
+Then the Queenstown passengers are put on board of her, with
+infinite plunging and roaring, and the tender gets heaved up on
+the sea to that surprising extent that she looks within an ace of
+washing aboard of us, high and dry. Roared at with
+contumely to the last, this wretched tender is at length let go,
+with a final plunge of great ignominy, and falls spinning into
+our wake.</p>
+<p>The voice of conscience resumed its dominion as the day
+climbed up the sky, and kept by all of us passengers into port;
+kept by us as we passed other lighthouses, and dangerous islands
+off the coast, where some of the officers, with whom I stood my
+watch, had gone ashore in sailing-ships in fogs (and of which by
+that token they seemed to have quite an affectionate
+remembrance), and past the Welsh coast, and past the Cheshire
+coast, and past everything and everywhere lying between our ship
+and her own special dock in the Mersey. Off which, at last,
+at nine of the clock, on a fair evening early in May, we stopped,
+and the voice ceased. A very curious sensation, not unlike
+having my own ears stopped, ensued upon that silence; and it was
+with a no less curious sensation that I went over the side of the
+good Cunard ship &lsquo;Russia&rsquo; (whom prosperity attend
+through all her voyages!) and surveyed the outer hull of the
+gracious monster that the voice had inhabited. So, perhaps,
+shall we all, in the spirit, one day survey the frame that held
+the busier voice from which my vagrant fancy derived this
+similitude.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap32"></a>XXXII<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST</span></h2>
+<p>I <span class="smcap">had</span> been looking, yesternight,
+through the famous &lsquo;Dance of Death,&rsquo; and to-day the
+grim old woodcuts arose in my mind with the new significance of a
+ghastly monotony not to be found in the original. The weird
+skeleton rattled along the streets before me, and struck
+fiercely; but it was never at the pains of assuming a
+disguise. It played on no dulcimer here, was crowned with
+no flowers, waved no plume, minced in no flowing robe or train,
+lifted no wine-cup, sat at no feast, cast no dice, counted no
+gold. It was simply a bare, gaunt, famished skeleton,
+slaying his way along.</p>
+<p>The borders of Ratcliff and Stepney, eastward of London, and
+giving on the impure river, were the scene of this uncompromising
+dance of death, upon a drizzling November day. A squalid
+maze of streets, courts, and alleys of miserable houses let out
+in single rooms. A wilderness of dirt, rags, and
+hunger. A mud-desert, chiefly inhabited by a tribe from
+whom employment has departed, or to whom it comes but fitfully
+and rarely. They are not skilled mechanics in any
+wise. They are but labourers,&mdash;dock-labourers,
+water-side labourers, coal-porters, ballast-heavers, such-like
+hewers of wood and drawers of water. But they have come
+into existence, and they propagate their wretched race.</p>
+<p>One grisly joke alone, methought, the skeleton seemed to play
+off here. It had stuck election-bills on the walls, which
+the wind and rain had deteriorated into suitable rags. It
+had even summed up the state of the poll, in chalk, on the
+shutters of one ruined house. It adjured the free and
+independent starvers to vote for Thisman and vote for Thatman;
+not to plump, as they valued the state of parties and the
+national prosperity (both of great importance to them, I think);
+but, by returning Thisman and Thatman, each naught without the
+other, to compound a glorious and immortal whole. Surely
+the skeleton is nowhere more cruelly ironical in the original
+monkish idea!</p>
+<p>Pondering in my mind the far-seeing schemes of Thisman and
+Thatman, and of the public blessing called Party, for staying the
+degeneracy, physical and moral, of many thousands (who shall say
+how many?) of the English race; for devising employment useful to
+the community for those who want but to work and live; for
+equalising rates, cultivating waste lands, facilitating
+emigration, and, above all things, saving and utilising the
+oncoming generations, and thereby changing ever-growing national
+weakness into strength: pondering in my mind, I say, these
+hopeful exertions, I turned down a narrow street to look into a
+house or two.</p>
+<p>It was a dark street with a dead wall on one side.
+Nearly all the outer doors of the houses stood open. I took
+the first entry, and knocked at a parlour-door. Might I
+come in? I might, if I plased, sur.</p>
+<p>The woman of the room (Irish) had picked up some long strips
+of wood, about some wharf or barge; and they had just now been
+thrust into the otherwise empty grate to make two iron pots
+boil. There was some fish in one, and there were some
+potatoes in the other. The flare of the burning wood
+enabled me to see a table, and a broken chair or so, and some old
+cheap crockery ornaments about the chimney-piece. It was
+not until I had spoken with the woman a few minutes, that I saw a
+horrible brown heap on the floor in a corner, which, but for
+previous experience in this dismal wise, I might not have
+suspected to be &lsquo;the bed.&rsquo; There was something
+thrown upon it; and I asked what that was.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&rsquo;Tis the poor craythur that stays here, sur; and
+&rsquo;tis very bad she is, and &rsquo;tis very bad she&rsquo;s
+been this long time, and &rsquo;tis better she&rsquo;ll never be,
+and &rsquo;tis slape she does all day, and &rsquo;tis wake she
+does all night, and &rsquo;tis the lead, sur.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The what?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The lead, sur. Sure &rsquo;tis the lead-mills,
+where the women gets took on at eighteen-pence a day, sur, when
+they makes application early enough, and is lucky and wanted; and
+&rsquo;tis lead-pisoned she is, sur, and some of them gets
+lead-pisoned soon, and some of them gets lead-pisoned later, and
+some, but not many, niver; and &rsquo;tis all according to the
+constitooshun, sur, and some constitooshuns is strong, and some
+is weak; and her constitooshun is lead-pisoned, bad as can be,
+sur; and her brain is coming out at her ear, and it hurts her
+dreadful; and that&rsquo;s what it is, and niver no more, and
+niver no less, sur.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The sick young woman moaning here, the speaker bent over her,
+took a bandage from her head, and threw open a back door to let
+in the daylight upon it, from the smallest and most miserable
+backyard I ever saw.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That&rsquo;s what cooms from her, sur, being
+lead-pisoned; and it cooms from her night and day, the poor, sick
+craythur; and the pain of it is dreadful; and God he knows that
+my husband has walked the sthreets these four days, being a
+labourer, and is walking them now, and is ready to work, and no
+work for him, and no fire and no food but the bit in the pot, and
+no more than ten shillings in a fortnight; God be good to us! and
+it is poor we are, and dark it is and could it is
+indeed.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Knowing that I could compensate myself thereafter for my
+self-denial, if I saw fit, I had resolved that I would give
+nothing in the course of these visits. I did this to try
+the people. I may state at once that my closest observation
+could not detect any indication whatever of an expectation that I
+would give money: they were grateful to be talked to about their
+miserable affairs, and sympathy was plainly a comfort to them;
+but they neither asked for money in any case, nor showed the
+least trace of surprise or disappointment or resentment at my
+giving none.</p>
+<p>The woman&rsquo;s married daughter had by this time come down
+from her room on the floor above, to join in the
+conversation. She herself had been to the lead-mills very
+early that morning to be &lsquo;took on,&rsquo; but had not
+succeeded. She had four children; and her husband, also a
+water-side labourer, and then out seeking work, seemed in no
+better case as to finding it than her father. She was
+English, and by nature, of a buxom figure and cheerful.
+Both in her poor dress and in her mother&rsquo;s there was an
+effort to keep up some appearance of neatness. She knew all
+about the sufferings of the unfortunate invalid, and all about
+the lead-poisoning, and how the symptoms came on, and how they
+grew,&mdash;having often seen them. The very smell when you
+stood inside the door of the works was enough to knock you down,
+she said: yet she was going back again to get &lsquo;took
+on.&rsquo; What could she do? Better be ulcerated and
+paralysed for eighteen-pence a day, while it lasted, than see the
+children starve.</p>
+<p>A dark and squalid cupboard in this room, touching the back
+door and all manner of offence, had been for some time the
+sleeping-place of the sick young woman. But the nights
+being now wintry, and the blankets and coverlets &lsquo;gone to
+the leaving shop,&rsquo; she lay all night where she lay all day,
+and was lying then. The woman of the room, her husband,
+this most miserable patient, and two others, lay on the one brown
+heap together for warmth.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;God bless you, sir, and thank you!&rsquo; were the
+parting words from these people,&mdash;gratefully spoken
+too,&mdash;with which I left this place.</p>
+<p>Some streets away, I tapped at another parlour-door on another
+ground-floor. Looking in, I found a man, his wife, and four
+children, sitting at a washing-stool by way of table, at their
+dinner of bread and infused tea-leaves. There was a very
+scanty cinderous fire in the grate by which they sat; and there
+was a tent bedstead in the room with a bed upon it and a
+coverlet. The man did not rise when I went in, nor during
+my stay, but civilly inclined his head on my pulling off my hat,
+and, in answer to my inquiry whether I might ask him a question
+or two, said, &lsquo;Certainly.&rsquo; There being a window
+at each end of this room, back and front, it might have been
+ventilated; but it was shut up tight, to keep the cold out, and
+was very sickening.</p>
+<p>The wife, an intelligent, quick woman, rose and stood at her
+husband&rsquo;s elbow; and he glanced up at her as if for
+help. It soon appeared that he was rather deaf. He
+was a slow, simple fellow of about thirty.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What was he by trade?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Gentleman asks what are you by trade, John?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am a boilermaker;&rsquo; looking about him with an
+exceedingly perplexed air, as if for a boiler that had
+unaccountably vanished.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He ain&rsquo;t a mechanic, you understand, sir,&rsquo;
+the wife put in: &lsquo;he&rsquo;s only a labourer.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Are you in work?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He looked up at his wife again. &lsquo;Gentleman says
+are you in work, John?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;In work!&rsquo; cried this forlorn boilermaker, staring
+aghast at his wife, and then working his vision&rsquo;s way very
+slowly round to me: &lsquo;Lord, no!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah, he ain&rsquo;t indeed!&rsquo; said the poor woman,
+shaking her head, as she looked at the four children in
+succession, and then at him.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Work!&rsquo; said the boilermaker, still seeking that
+evaporated boiler, first in my countenance, then in the air, and
+then in the features of his second son at his knee: &lsquo;I wish
+I <i>was</i> in work! I haven&rsquo;t had more than a
+day&rsquo;s work to do this three weeks.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How have you lived?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A faint gleam of admiration lighted up the face of the
+would-be boilermaker, as he stretched out the short sleeve of his
+thread-bare canvas jacket, and replied, pointing her out,
+&lsquo;On the work of the wife.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I forget where boilermaking had gone to, or where he supposed
+it had gone to; but he added some resigned information on that
+head, coupled with an expression of his belief that it was never
+coming back.</p>
+<p>The cheery helpfulness of the wife was very remarkable.
+She did slop-work; made pea-jackets. She produced the
+pea-jacket then in hand, and spread it out upon the
+bed,&mdash;the only piece of furniture in the room on which to
+spread it. She showed how much of it she made, and how much
+was afterwards finished off by the machine. According to
+her calculation at the moment, deducting what her trimming cost
+her, she got for making a pea-jacket tenpence half-penny, and she
+could make one in something less than two days.</p>
+<p>But, you see, it come to her through two hands, and of course
+it didn&rsquo;t come through the second hand for nothing.
+Why did it come through the second hand at all? Why, this
+way. The second hand took the risk of the given-out work,
+you see. If she had money enough to pay the security
+deposit,&mdash;call it two pound,&mdash;she could get the work
+from the first hand, and so the second would not have to be
+deducted for. But, having no money at all, the second hand
+come in and took its profit, and so the whole worked down to
+tenpence half-penny. Having explained all this with great
+intelligence, even with some little pride, and without a whine or
+murmur, she folded her work again, sat down by her
+husband&rsquo;s side at the washing-stool, and resumed her dinner
+of dry bread. Mean as the meal was, on the bare board, with
+its old gallipots for cups, and what not other sordid makeshifts;
+shabby as the woman was in dress, and toning done towards the
+Bosjesman colour, with want of nutriment and washing,&mdash;there
+was positively a dignity in her, as the family anchor just
+holding the poor ship-wrecked boilermaker&rsquo;s bark.
+When I left the room, the boiler-maker&rsquo;s eyes were slowly
+turned towards her, as if his last hope of ever again seeing that
+vanished boiler lay in her direction.</p>
+<p>These people had never applied for parish relief but once; and
+that was when the husband met with a disabling accident at his
+work.</p>
+<p>Not many doors from here, I went into a room on the first
+floor. The woman apologised for its being in &lsquo;an
+untidy mess.&rsquo; The day was Saturday, and she was
+boiling the children&rsquo;s clothes in a saucepan on the
+hearth. There was nothing else into which she could have
+put them. There was no crockery, or tinware, or tub, or
+bucket. There was an old gallipot or two, and there was a
+broken bottle or so, and there were some broken boxes for
+seats. The last small scraping of coals left was raked
+together in a corner of the floor. There were some rags in
+an open cupboard, also on the floor. In a corner of the
+room was a crazy old French bed-stead, with a man lying on his
+back upon it in a ragged pilot jacket, and rough oil-skin fantail
+hat. The room was perfectly black. It was difficult
+to believe, at first, that it was not purposely coloured black,
+the walls were so begrimed.</p>
+<p>As I stood opposite the woman boiling the children&rsquo;s
+clothes,&mdash;she had not even a piece of soap to wash them
+with,&mdash;and apologising for her occupation, I could take in
+all these things without appearing to notice them, and could even
+correct my inventory. I had missed, at the first glance,
+some half a pound of bread in the otherwise empty safe, an old
+red ragged crinoline hanging on the handle of the door by which I
+had entered, and certain fragments of rusty iron scattered on the
+floor, which looked like broken tools and a piece of
+stove-pipe. A child stood looking on. On the box
+nearest to the fire sat two younger children; one a delicate and
+pretty little creature, whom the other sometimes kissed.</p>
+<p>This woman, like the last, was wofully shabby, and was
+degenerating to the Bosjesman complexion. But her figure,
+and the ghost of a certain vivacity about her, and the spectre of
+a dimple in her cheek, carried my memory strangely back to the
+old days of the Adelphi Theatre, London, when Mrs. Fitzwilliam
+was the friend of Victorine.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;May I ask you what your husband is?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He&rsquo;s a coal-porter, sir,&rsquo;&mdash;with a
+glance and a sigh towards the bed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is he out of work?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, yes, sir! and work&rsquo;s at all times very, very
+scanty with him; and now he&rsquo;s laid up.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s my legs,&rsquo; said the man upon the
+bed. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll unroll &rsquo;em.&rsquo; And
+immediately began.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Have you any older children?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have a daughter that does the needle-work, and I have
+a son that does what he can. She&rsquo;s at her work now,
+and he&rsquo;s trying for work.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do they live here?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;They sleep here. They can&rsquo;t afford to pay
+more rent, and so they come here at night. The rent is very
+hard upon us. It&rsquo;s rose upon us too,
+now,&mdash;sixpence a week,&mdash;on account of these new changes
+in the law, about the rates. We are a week behind; the
+landlord&rsquo;s been shaking and rattling at that door
+frightfully; he says he&rsquo;ll turn us out. I don&rsquo;t
+know what&rsquo;s to come of it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The man upon the bed ruefully interposed, &lsquo;Here&rsquo;s
+my legs. The skin&rsquo;s broke, besides the
+swelling. I have had a many kicks, working, one way and
+another.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He looked at his legs (which were much discoloured and
+misshapen) for a while, and then appearing to remember that they
+were not popular with his family, rolled them up again, as if
+they were something in the nature of maps or plans that were not
+wanted to be referred to, lay hopelessly down on his back once
+more with his fantail hat over his face, and stirred not.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do your eldest son and daughter sleep in that
+cupboard?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; replied the woman.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;With the children?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes. We have to get together for warmth. We
+have little to cover us.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Have you nothing by you to eat but the piece of bread I
+see there?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Nothing. And we had the rest of the loaf for our
+breakfast, with water. I don&rsquo;t know what&rsquo;s to
+come of it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Have you no prospect of improvement?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If my eldest son earns anything to-day, he&rsquo;ll
+bring it home. Then we shall have something to eat
+to-night, and may be able to do something towards the rent.
+If not, I don&rsquo;t know what&rsquo;s to come of it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;This is a sad state of things.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, sir; it&rsquo;s a hard, hard life. Take care
+of the stairs as you go, sir,&mdash;they&rsquo;re
+broken,&mdash;and good day, sir!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>These people had a mortal dread of entering the workhouse, and
+received no out-of-door relief.</p>
+<p>In another room, in still another tenement, I found a very
+decent woman with five children,&mdash;the last a baby, and she
+herself a patient of the parish doctor,&mdash;to whom, her
+husband being in the hospital, the Union allowed for the support
+of herself and family, four shillings a week and five
+loaves. I suppose when Thisman, M.P., and Thatman, M.P.,
+and the Public-blessing Party, lay their heads together in course
+of time, and come to an equalization of rating, she may go down
+to the dance of death to the tune of sixpence more.</p>
+<p>I could enter no other houses for that one while, for I could
+not bear the contemplation of the children. Such heart as I
+had summoned to sustain me against the miseries of the adults
+failed me when I looked at the children. I saw how young
+they were, how hungry, how serious and still. I thought of
+them, sick and dying in those lairs. I think of them dead
+without anguish; but to think of them so suffering and so dying
+quite unmanned me.</p>
+<p>Down by the river&rsquo;s bank in Ratcliff, I was turning
+upward by a side-street, therefore, to regain the railway, when
+my eyes rested on the inscription across the road, &lsquo;East
+London Children&rsquo;s Hospital.&rsquo; I could scarcely
+have seen an inscription better suited to my frame of mind; and I
+went across and went straight in.</p>
+<p>I found the children&rsquo;s hospital established in an old
+sail-loft or storehouse, of the roughest nature, and on the
+simplest means. There were trap-doors in the floors, where
+goods had been hoisted up and down; heavy feet and heavy weights
+had started every knot in the well-trodden planking: inconvenient
+bulks and beams and awkward staircases perplexed my passage
+through the wards. But I found it airy, sweet, and
+clean. In its seven and thirty beds I saw but little
+beauty; for starvation in the second or third generation takes a
+pinched look: but I saw the sufferings both of infancy and
+childhood tenderly assuaged; I heard the little patients
+answering to pet playful names, the light touch of a delicate
+lady laid bare the wasted sticks of arms for me to pity; and the
+claw-like little hands, as she did so, twined themselves lovingly
+around her wedding-ring.</p>
+<p>One baby mite there was as pretty as any of Raphael&rsquo;s
+angels. The tiny head was bandaged for water on the brain;
+and it was suffering with acute bronchitis too, and made from
+time to time a plaintive, though not impatient or complaining,
+little sound. The smooth curve of the cheeks and of the
+chin was faultless in its condensation of infantine beauty, and
+the large bright eyes were most lovely. It happened as I
+stopped at the foot of the bed, that these eyes rested upon mine
+with that wistful expression of wondering thoughtfulness which we
+all know sometimes in very little children. They remained
+fixed on mine, and never turned from me while I stood
+there. When the utterance of that plaintive sound shook the
+little form, the gaze still remained unchanged. I felt as
+though the child implored me to tell the story of the little
+hospital in which it was sheltered to any gentle heart I could
+address. Laying my world-worn hand upon the little unmarked
+clasped hand at the chin, I gave it a silent promise that I would
+do so.</p>
+<p>A gentleman and lady, a young husband and wife, have bought
+and fitted up this building for its present noble use, and have
+quietly settled themselves in it as its medical officers and
+directors. Both have had considerable practical experience
+of medicine and surgery; he as house-surgeon of a great London
+hospital; she as a very earnest student, tested by severe
+examination, and also as a nurse of the sick poor during the
+prevalence of cholera.</p>
+<p>With every qualification to lure them away, with youth and
+accomplishments and tastes and habits that can have no response
+in any breast near them, close begirt by every repulsive
+circumstance inseparable from such a neighbourhood, there they
+dwell. They live in the hospital itself, and their rooms
+are on its first floor. Sitting at their dinner-table, they
+could hear the cry of one of the children in pain. The
+lady&rsquo;s piano, drawing-materials, books, and other such
+evidences of refinement are as much a part of the rough place as
+the iron bedsteads of the little patients. They are put to
+shifts for room, like passengers on board ship. The
+dispenser of medicines (attracted to them not by self-interest,
+but by their own magnetism and that of their cause) sleeps in a
+recess in the dining-room, and has his washing apparatus in the
+sideboard.</p>
+<p>Their contented manner of making the best of the things around
+them, I found so pleasantly inseparable from their
+usefulness! Their pride in this partition that we put up
+ourselves, or in that partition that we took down, or in that
+other partition that we moved, or in the stove that was given us
+for the waiting-room, or in our nightly conversion of the little
+consulting-room into a smoking-room! Their admiration of
+the situation, if we could only get rid of its one objectionable
+incident, the coal-yard at the back! &lsquo;Our hospital
+carriage, presented by a friend, and very useful.&rsquo;
+That was my presentation to a perambulator, for which a
+coach-house had been discovered in a corner down-stairs, just
+large enough to hold it. Coloured prints, in all stages of
+preparation for being added to those already decorating the
+wards, were plentiful; a charming wooden phenomenon of a bird,
+with an impossible top-knot, who ducked his head when you set a
+counter weight going, had been inaugurated as a public statue
+that very morning; and trotting about among the beds, on familiar
+terms with all the patients, was a comical mongrel dog, called
+Poodles. This comical dog (quite a tonic in himself) was
+found characteristically starving at the door of the institution,
+and was taken in and fed, and has lived here ever since. An
+admirer of his mental endowments has presented him with a collar
+bearing the legend, &lsquo;Judge not Poodles by external
+appearances.&rsquo; He was merrily wagging his tail on a
+boy&rsquo;s pillow when he made this modest appeal to me.</p>
+<p>When this hospital was first opened, in January of the present
+year, the people could not possibly conceive but that somebody
+paid for the services rendered there; and were disposed to claim
+them as a right, and to find fault if out of temper. They
+soon came to understand the case better, and have much increased
+in gratitude. The mothers of the patients avail themselves
+very freely of the visiting rules; the fathers often on
+Sundays. There is an unreasonable (but still, I think,
+touching and intelligible) tendency in the parents to take a
+child away to its wretched home, if on the point of death.
+One boy who had been thus carried off on a rainy night, when in a
+violent state of inflammation, and who had been afterwards
+brought back, had been recovered with exceeding difficulty; but
+he was a jolly boy, with a specially strong interest in his
+dinner, when I saw him.</p>
+<p>Insufficient food and unwholesome living are the main causes
+of disease among these small patients. So nourishment,
+cleanliness, and ventilation are the main remedies.
+Discharged patients are looked after, and invited to come and
+dine now and then; so are certain famishing creatures who were
+never patients. Both the lady and the gentleman are well
+acquainted, not only with the histories of the patients and their
+families, but with the characters and circumstances of great
+numbers of their neighbours&mdash;of these they keep a
+register. It is their common experience, that people,
+sinking down by inches into deeper and deeper poverty, will
+conceal it, even from them, if possible, unto the very last
+extremity.</p>
+<p>The nurses of this hospital are all young,&mdash;ranging, say,
+from nineteen to four and twenty. They have even within
+these narrow limits, what many well-endowed hospitals would not
+give them, a comfortable room of their own in which to take their
+meals. It is a beautiful truth, that interest in the
+children and sympathy with their sorrows bind these young women
+to their places far more strongly than any other consideration
+could. The best skilled of the nurses came originally from
+a kindred neighbourhood, almost as poor; and she knew how much
+the work was needed. She is a fair dressmaker. The
+hospital cannot pay her as many pounds in the year as there are
+months in it; and one day the lady regarded it as a duty to speak
+to her about her improving her prospects and following her
+trade. &lsquo;No,&rsquo; she said: she could never be so
+useful or so happy elsewhere any more; she must stay among the
+children.</p>
+<p>And she stays. One of the nurses, as I passed her, was
+washing a baby-boy. Liking her pleasant face, I stopped to
+speak to her charge,&mdash;a common, bullet-headed, frowning
+charge enough, laying hold of his own nose with a slippery grasp,
+and staring very solemnly out of a blanket. The melting of
+the pleasant face into delighted smiles, as this young gentleman
+gave an unexpected kick, and laughed at me, was almost worth my
+previous pain.</p>
+<p>An affecting play was acted in Paris years ago, called
+&lsquo;The Children&rsquo;s Doctor.&rsquo; As I parted from
+my children&rsquo;s doctor, now in question, I saw in his easy
+black necktie, in his loose buttoned black frock-coat, in his
+pensive face, in the flow of his dark hair, in his eyelashes, in
+the very turn of his moustache, the exact realisation of the
+Paris artist&rsquo;s ideal as it was presented on the
+stage. But no romancer that I know of has had the boldness
+to prefigure the life and home of this young husband and young
+wife in the Children&rsquo;s Hospital in the east of London.</p>
+<p>I came away from Ratcliff by the Stepney railway station to
+the terminus at Fenchurch Street. Any one who will reverse
+that route may retrace my steps.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap33"></a>XXXIII<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> fell out on a day in this last
+autumn, that I had to go down from London to a place of seaside
+resort, on an hour&rsquo;s business, accompanied by my esteemed
+friend Bullfinch. Let the place of seaside resort be, for
+the nonce, called Namelesston.</p>
+<p>I had been loitering about Paris in very hot weather,
+pleasantly breakfasting in the open air in the garden of the
+Palais Royal or the Tuileries, pleasantly dining in the open air
+in the Elysian Fields, pleasantly taking my cigar and lemonade in
+the open air on the Italian Boulevard towards the small hours
+after midnight. Bullfinch&mdash;an excellent man of
+business&mdash;has summoned me back across the Channel, to
+transact this said hour&rsquo;s business at Namelesston; and thus
+it fell out that Bullfinch and I were in a railway carriage
+together on our way to Namelesston, each with his return-ticket
+in his waistcoat-pocket.</p>
+<p>Says Bullfinch, &lsquo;I have a proposal to make. Let us
+dine at the Temeraire.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I asked Bullfinch, did he recommend the Temeraire? inasmuch as
+I had not been rated on the books of the Temeraire for many
+years.</p>
+<p>Bullfinch declined to accept the responsibility of
+recommending the Temeraire, but on the whole was rather sanguine
+about it. He &lsquo;seemed to remember,&rsquo; Bullfinch
+said, that he had dined well there. A plain dinner, but
+good. Certainly not like a Parisian dinner (here Bullfinch
+obviously became the prey of want of confidence), but of its kind
+very fair.</p>
+<p>I appeal to Bullfinch&rsquo;s intimate knowledge of my wants
+and ways to decide whether I was usually ready to be pleased with
+any dinner, or&mdash;for the matter of that&mdash;with anything
+that was fair of its kind and really what it claimed to be.
+Bullfinch doing me the honour to respond in the affirmative, I
+agreed to ship myself as an able trencherman on board the
+Temeraire.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Now, our plan shall be this,&rsquo; says Bullfinch,
+with his forefinger at his nose. &lsquo;As soon as we get
+to Namelesston, we&rsquo;ll drive straight to the Temeraire, and
+order a little dinner in an hour. And as we shall not have
+more than enough time in which to dispose of it comfortably, what
+do you say to giving the house the best opportunities of serving
+it hot and quickly by dining in the coffee-room?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>What I had to say was, Certainly. Bullfinch (who is by
+nature of a hopeful constitution) then began to babble of green
+geese. But I checked him in that Falstaffian vein, urging
+considerations of time and cookery.</p>
+<p>In due sequence of events we drove up to the Temeraire, and
+alighted. A youth in livery received us on the
+door-step. &lsquo;Looks well,&rsquo; said Bullfinch
+confidentially. And then aloud,
+&lsquo;Coffee-room!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The youth in livery (now perceived to be mouldy) conducted us
+to the desired haven, and was enjoined by Bullfinch to send the
+waiter at once, as we wished to order a little dinner in an
+hour. Then Bullfinch and I waited for the waiter, until,
+the waiter continuing to wait in some unknown and invisible
+sphere of action, we rang for the waiter; which ring produced the
+waiter, who announced himself as not the waiter who ought to wait
+upon us, and who didn&rsquo;t wait a moment longer.</p>
+<p>So Bullfinch approached the coffee-room door, and melodiously
+pitching his voice into a bar where two young ladies were keeping
+the books of the Temeraire, apologetically explained that we
+wished to order a little dinner in an hour, and that we were
+debarred from the execution of our inoffensive purpose by
+consignment to solitude.</p>
+<p>Hereupon one of the young ladies ran a bell, which
+reproduced&mdash;at the bar this time&mdash;the waiter who was
+not the waiter who ought to wait upon us; that extraordinary man,
+whose life seemed consumed in waiting upon people to say that he
+wouldn&rsquo;t wait upon them, repeated his former protest with
+great indignation, and retired.</p>
+<p>Bullfinch, with a fallen countenance, was about to say to me,
+&lsquo;This won&rsquo;t do,&rsquo; when the waiter who ought to
+wait upon us left off keeping us waiting at last.
+&lsquo;Waiter,&rsquo; said Bullfinch piteously, &lsquo;we have
+been a long time waiting.&rsquo; The waiter who ought to
+wait upon us laid the blame upon the waiter who ought not to wait
+upon us, and said it was all that waiter&rsquo;s fault.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;We wish,&rsquo; said Bullfinch, much depressed,
+&lsquo;to order a little dinner in an hour. What can we
+have?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What would you like to have, gentlemen?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Bullfinch, with extreme mournfulness of speech and action, and
+with a forlorn old fly-blown bill of fare in his hand which the
+waiter had given him, and which was a sort of general manuscript
+index to any cookery-book you please, moved the previous
+question.</p>
+<p>We could have mock-turtle soup, a sole, curry, and roast
+duck. Agreed. At this table by this window.
+Punctually in an hour.</p>
+<p>I had been feigning to look out of this window; but I had been
+taking note of the crumbs on all the tables, the dirty
+table-cloths, the stuffy, soupy, airless atmosphere, the stale
+leavings everywhere about, the deep gloom of the waiter who ought
+to wait upon us, and the stomach-ache with which a lonely
+traveller at a distant table in a corner was too evidently
+afflicted. I now pointed out to Bullfinch the alarming
+circumstance that this traveller had <i>dined</i>. We
+hurriedly debated whether, without infringement of good breeding,
+we could ask him to disclose if he had partaken of mock-turtle,
+sole, curry, or roast duck? We decided that the thing could
+not be politely done, and we had set our own stomachs on a cast,
+and they must stand the hazard of the die.</p>
+<p>I hold phrenology, within certain limits, to be true; I am
+much of the same mind as to the subtler expressions of the hand;
+I hold physiognomy to be infallible; though all these sciences
+demand rare qualities in the student. But I also hold that
+there is no more certain index to personal character than the
+condition of a set of casters is to the character of any
+hotel. Knowing, and having often tested this theory of
+mine, Bullfinch resigned himself to the worst, when, laying aside
+any remaining veil of disguise, I held up before him in
+succession the cloudy oil and furry vinegar, the clogged cayenne,
+the dirty salt, the obscene dregs of soy, and the anchovy sauce
+in a flannel waistcoat of decomposition.</p>
+<p>We went out to transact our business. So inspiriting was
+the relief of passing into the clean and windy streets of
+Namelesston from the heavy and vapid closeness of the coffee-room
+of the Temeraire, that hope began to revive within us. We
+began to consider that perhaps the lonely traveller had taken
+physic, or done something injudicious to bring his complaint
+on. Bullfinch remarked that he thought the waiter who ought
+to wait upon us had brightened a little when suggesting curry;
+and although I knew him to have been at that moment the express
+image of despair, I allowed myself to become elevated in
+spirits. As we walked by the softly-lapping sea, all the
+notabilities of Namelesston, who are for ever going up and down
+with the changelessness of the tides, passed to and fro in
+procession. Pretty girls on horseback, and with detested
+riding-masters; pretty girls on foot; mature ladies in
+hats,&mdash;spectacled, strong-minded, and glaring at the
+opposite or weaker sex. The Stock Exchange was strongly
+represented, Jerusalem was strongly represented, the bores of the
+prosier London clubs were strongly represented.
+Fortune-hunters of all denominations were there, from hirsute
+insolvency, in a curricle, to closely-buttoned swindlery in
+doubtful boots, on the sharp look-out for any likely young
+gentleman disposed to play a game at billiards round the
+corner. Masters of languages, their lessons finished for
+the day, were going to their homes out of sight of the sea;
+mistresses of accomplishments, carrying small portfolios,
+likewise tripped homeward; pairs of scholastic pupils, two and
+two, went languidly along the beach, surveying the face of the
+waters as if waiting for some Ark to come and take them
+off. Spectres of the George the Fourth days flitted
+unsteadily among the crowd, bearing the outward semblance of
+ancient dandies, of every one of whom it might be said, not that
+he had one leg in the grave, or both legs, but that he was
+steeped in grave to the summit of his high shirt-collar, and had
+nothing real about him but his bones. Alone stationary in
+the midst of all the movements, the Namelesston boatmen leaned
+against the railings and yawned, and looked out to sea, or looked
+at the moored fishing-boats and at nothing. Such is the
+unchanging manner of life with this nursery of our hardy seamen;
+and very dry nurses they are, and always wanting something to
+drink. The only two nautical personages detached from the
+railing were the two fortunate possessors of the celebrated
+monstrous unknown barking-fish, just caught (frequently just
+caught off Namelesston), who carried him about in a hamper, and
+pressed the scientific to look in at the lid.</p>
+<p>The sands of the hour had all run out when we got back to the
+Temeraire. Says Bullfinch, then, to the youth in livery,
+with boldness, &lsquo;Lavatory!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>When we arrived at the family vault with a skylight, which the
+youth in livery presented as the institution sought, we had
+already whisked off our cravats and coats; but finding ourselves
+in the presence of an evil smell, and no linen but two crumpled
+towels newly damp from the countenances of two somebody elses, we
+put on our cravats and coats again, and fled unwashed to the
+coffee-room.</p>
+<p>There the waiter who ought to wait upon us had set forth our
+knives and forks and glasses, on the cloth whose dirty
+acquaintance we had already had the pleasure of making, and which
+we were pleased to recognise by the familiar expression of its
+stains. And now there occurred the truly surprising
+phenomenon, that the waiter who ought not to wait upon us swooped
+down upon us, clutched our loaf of bread, and vanished with the
+same.</p>
+<p>Bullfinch, with distracted eyes, was following this
+unaccountable figure &lsquo;out at the portal,&rsquo; like the
+ghost in Hamlet, when the waiter who ought to wait upon us
+jostled against it, carrying a tureen.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Waiter!&rsquo; said a severe diner, lately finished,
+perusing his bill fiercely through his eye-glass.</p>
+<p>The waiter put down our tureen on a remote side-table, and
+went to see what was amiss in this new direction.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;This is not right, you know, waiter. Look here!
+here&rsquo;s yesterday&rsquo;s sherry, one and eightpence, and
+here we are again, two shillings. And what does sixpence
+mean?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>So far from knowing what sixpence meant, the waiter protested
+that he didn&rsquo;t know what anything meant. He wiped the
+perspiration from his clammy brow, and said it was impossible to
+do it,&mdash;not particularising what,&mdash;and the kitchen was
+so far off.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Take the bill to the bar, and get it altered,&rsquo;
+said Mr. Indignation Cocker, so to call him.</p>
+<p>The waiter took it, looked intensely at it, didn&rsquo;t seem
+to like the idea of taking it to the bar, and submitted, as a new
+light upon the case, that perhaps sixpence meant sixpence.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I tell you again,&rsquo; said Mr. Indignation Cocker,
+&lsquo;here&rsquo;s yesterday&rsquo;s sherry&mdash;can&rsquo;t
+you see it?&mdash;one and eightpence, and here we are again, two
+shillings. What do you make of one and eightpence and two
+shillings?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Totally unable to make anything of one and eightpence and two
+shillings, the waiter went out to try if anybody else could;
+merely casting a helpless backward glance at Bullfinch, in
+acknowledgement of his pathetic entreaties for our
+soup-tureen. After a pause, during which Mr. Indignation
+Cocker read a newspaper and coughed defiant coughs, Bullfinch
+arose to get the tureen, when the waiter reappeared and brought
+it,&mdash;dropping Mr. Indignation Cocker&rsquo;s altered bill on
+Mr. Indignation Cocker&rsquo;s table as he came along.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s quite impossible to do it, gentlemen,&rsquo;
+murmured the waiter; &lsquo;and the kitchen is so far
+off.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, you don&rsquo;t keep the house; it&rsquo;s not
+your fault, we suppose. Bring some sherry.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Waiter!&rsquo; from Mr. Indignation Cocker, with a new
+and burning sense of injury upon him.</p>
+<p>The waiter, arrested on his way to our sherry, stopped short,
+and came back to see what was wrong now.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Will you look here? This is worse than
+before. <i>Do</i> you understand? Here&rsquo;s
+yesterday&rsquo;s sherry, one and eightpence, and here we are
+again two shillings. And what the devil does ninepence
+mean?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>This new portent utterly confounded the waiter. He wrung
+his napkin, and mutely appealed to the ceiling.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Waiter, fetch that sherry,&rsquo; says Bullfinch, in
+open wrath and revolt.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I want to know,&rsquo; persisted Mr. Indignation
+Cocker, &lsquo;the meaning of ninepence. I want to know the
+meaning of sherry one and eightpence yesterday, and of here we
+are again two shillings. Send somebody.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The distracted waiter got out of the room on pretext of
+sending somebody, and by that means got our wine. But the
+instant he appeared with our decanter, Mr. Indignation Cocker
+descended on him again.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Waiter!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You will now have the goodness to attend to our dinner,
+waiter,&rsquo; said Bullfinch, sternly.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am very sorry, but it&rsquo;s quite impossible to do
+it, gentlemen,&rsquo; pleaded the waiter; &lsquo;and the
+kitchen&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Waiter!&rsquo; said Mr. Indignation Cocker.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&mdash;Is,&rsquo; resumed the waiter, &lsquo;so far
+off, that&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Waiter!&rsquo; persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker,
+&lsquo;send somebody.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>We were not without our fears that the waiter rushed out to
+hang himself; and we were much relieved by his fetching
+somebody,&mdash;in graceful, flowing skirts and with a
+waist,&mdash;who very soon settled Mr. Indignation Cocker&rsquo;s
+business.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh!&rsquo; said Mr. Cocker, with his fire surprisingly
+quenched by this apparition; &lsquo;I wished to ask about this
+bill of mine, because it appears to me that there&rsquo;s a
+little mistake here. Let me show you. Here&rsquo;s
+yesterday&rsquo;s sherry one and eightpence, and here we are
+again two shillings. And how do you explain
+ninepence?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>However it was explained, in tones too soft to be
+overheard. Mr. Cocker was heard to say nothing more than
+&lsquo;Ah-h-h! Indeed; thank you! Yes,&rsquo; and
+shortly afterwards went out, a milder man.</p>
+<p>The lonely traveller with the stomach-ache had all this time
+suffered severely, drawing up a leg now and then, and sipping hot
+brandy-and-water with grated ginger in it. When we tasted
+our (very) mock-turtle soup, and were instantly seized with
+symptoms of some disorder simulating apoplexy, and occasioned by
+the surcharge of nose and brain with lukewarm dish-water holding
+in solution sour flour, poisonous condiments, and (say)
+seventy-five per cent. of miscellaneous kitchen stuff rolled into
+balls, we were inclined to trace his disorder to that
+source. On the other hand, there was a silent anguish upon
+him too strongly resembling the results established within
+ourselves by the sherry, to be discarded from alarmed
+consideration. Again, we observed him, with terror, to be
+much overcome by our sole&rsquo;s being aired in a temporary
+retreat close to him, while the waiter went out (as we conceived)
+to see his friends. And when the curry made its appearance
+he suddenly retired in great disorder.</p>
+<p>In fine, for the uneatable part of this little dinner (as
+contradistinguished from the undrinkable) we paid only seven
+shillings and sixpence each. And Bullfinch and I agreed
+unanimously, that no such ill-served, ill-appointed, ill-cooked,
+nasty little dinner could be got for the money anywhere else
+under the sun. With that comfort to our backs, we turned
+them on the dear old Temeraire, the charging Temeraire, and
+resolved (in the Scotch dialect) to gang nae mair to the flabby
+Temeraire.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap34"></a>XXXIV<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">MR. BARLOW</span></h2>
+<p>A <span class="smcap">great</span> reader of good fiction at
+an unusually early age, it seems to me as though I had been born
+under the superintendence of the estimable but terrific gentleman
+whose name stands at the head of my present reflections.
+The instructive monomaniac, Mr. Barlow, will be remembered as the
+tutor of Master Harry Sandford and Master Tommy Merton. He
+knew everything, and didactically improved all sorts of
+occasions, from the consumption of a plate of cherries to the
+contemplation of a starlight night. What youth came to
+without Mr. Barlow was displayed in the history of Sandford and
+Merton, by the example of a certain awful Master Mash. This
+young wretch wore buckles and powder, conducted himself with
+insupportable levity at the theatre, had no idea of facing a mad
+bull single-handed (in which I think him less reprehensible, as
+remotely reflecting my own character), and was a frightful
+instance of the enervating effects of luxury upon the human
+race.</p>
+<p>Strange destiny on the part of Mr. Barlow, to go down to
+posterity as childhood&rsquo;s experience of a bore!
+Immortal Mr. Barlow, boring his way through the verdant freshness
+of ages!</p>
+<p>My personal indictment against Mr. Barlow is one of many
+counts. I will proceed to set forth a few of the injuries
+he has done me.</p>
+<p>In the first place, he never made or took a joke. This
+insensibility on Mr. Barlow&rsquo;s part not only cast its own
+gloom over my boyhood, but blighted even the sixpenny jest-books
+of the time; for, groaning under a moral spell constraining me to
+refer all things to Mr. Barlow, I could not choose but ask myself
+in a whisper when tickled by a printed jest, &lsquo;What would
+<i>he</i> think of it? What would <i>he</i> see in
+it?&rsquo; The point of the jest immediately became a
+sting, and stung my conscience. For my mind&rsquo;s eye saw
+him stolid, frigid, perchance taking from its shelf some dreary
+Greek book, and translating at full length what some dismal sage
+said (and touched up afterwards, perhaps, for publication), when
+he banished some unlucky joker from Athens.</p>
+<p>The incompatibility of Mr. Barlow with all other portions of
+my young life but himself, the adamantine inadaptability of the
+man to my favourite fancies and amusements, is the thing for
+which I hate him most. What right had he to bore his way
+into my Arabian Nights? Yet he did. He was always
+hinting doubts of the veracity of Sindbad the Sailor. If he
+could have got hold of the Wonderful Lamp, I knew he would have
+trimmed it and lighted it, and delivered a lecture over it on the
+qualities of sperm-oil, with a glance at the whale
+fisheries. He would so soon have found out&mdash;on
+mechanical principles&mdash;the peg in the neck of the Enchanted
+Horse, and would have turned it the right way in so workmanlike a
+manner, that the horse could never have got any height into the
+air, and the story couldn&rsquo;t have been. He would have
+proved, by map and compass, that there was no such kingdom as the
+delightful kingdom of Casgar, on the frontiers of Tartary.
+He would have caused that hypocritical young prig Harry to make
+an experiment,&mdash;with the aid of a temporary building in the
+garden and a dummy,&mdash;demonstrating that you couldn&rsquo;t
+let a choked hunchback down an Eastern chimney with a cord, and
+leave him upright on the hearth to terrify the sultan&rsquo;s
+purveyor.</p>
+<p>The golden sounds of the overture to the first metropolitan
+pantomime, I remember, were alloyed by Mr. Barlow. Click
+click, ting ting, bang bang, weedle weedle weedle, bang! I
+recall the chilling air that ran across my frame and cooled my
+hot delight, as the thought occurred to me, &lsquo;This would
+never do for Mr. Barlow!&rsquo; After the curtain drew up,
+dreadful doubts of Mr. Barlow&rsquo;s considering the costumes of
+the Nymphs of the Nebula as being sufficiently opaque, obtruded
+themselves on my enjoyment. In the clown I perceived two
+persons; one a fascinating unaccountable creature of a hectic
+complexion, joyous in spirits though feeble in intellect, with
+flashes of brilliancy; the other a pupil for Mr. Barlow. I
+thought how Mr. Barlow would secretly rise early in the morning,
+and butter the pavement for <i>him</i>, and, when he had brought
+him down, would look severely out of his study window and ask
+<i>him</i> how he enjoyed the fun.</p>
+<p>I thought how Mr. Barlow would heat all the pokers in the
+house, and singe him with the whole collection, to bring him
+better acquainted with the properties of incandescent iron, on
+which he (Barlow) would fully expatiate. I pictured Mr.
+Barlow&rsquo;s instituting a comparison between the clown&rsquo;s
+conduct at his studies,&mdash;drinking up the ink, licking his
+copy-book, and using his head for blotting-paper,&mdash;and that
+of the already mentioned young prig of prigs, Harry, sitting at
+the Barlovian feet, sneakingly pretending to be in a rapture of
+youthful knowledge. I thought how soon Mr. Barlow would
+smooth the clown&rsquo;s hair down, instead of letting it stand
+erect in three tall tufts; and how, after a couple of years or so
+with Mr. Barlow, he would keep his legs close together when he
+walked, and would take his hands out of his big loose pockets,
+and wouldn&rsquo;t have a jump left in him.</p>
+<p>That I am particularly ignorant what most things in the
+universe are made of, and how they are made, is another of my
+charges against Mr. Barlow. With the dread upon me of
+developing into a Harry, and with a further dread upon me of
+being Barlowed if I made inquiries, by bringing down upon myself
+a cold shower-bath of explanations and experiments, I forbore
+enlightenment in my youth, and became, as they say in melodramas,
+&lsquo;the wreck you now behold.&rsquo; That I consorted
+with idlers and dunces is another of the melancholy facts for
+which I hold Mr. Barlow responsible. That pragmatical prig,
+Harry, became so detestable in my sight, that, he being reported
+studious in the South, I would have fled idle to the extremest
+North. Better to learn misconduct from a Master Mash than
+science and statistics from a Sandford! So I took the path,
+which, but for Mr. Barlow, I might never have trodden.
+Thought I, with a shudder, &lsquo;Mr. Barlow is a bore, with an
+immense constructive power of making bores. His prize
+specimen is a bore. He seeks to make a bore of me.
+That knowledge is power I am not prepared to gainsay; but, with
+Mr. Barlow, knowledge is power to bore.&rsquo; Therefore I
+took refuge in the caves of ignorance, wherein I have resided
+ever since, and which are still my private address.</p>
+<p>But the weightiest charge of all my charges against Mr. Barlow
+is, that he still walks the earth in various disguises, seeking
+to make a Tommy of me, even in my maturity. Irrepressible,
+instructive monomaniac, Mr. Barlow fills my life with pitfalls,
+and lies hiding at the bottom to burst out upon me when I least
+expect him.</p>
+<p>A few of these dismal experiences of mine shall suffice.</p>
+<p>Knowing Mr. Barlow to have invested largely in the moving
+panorama trade, and having on various occasions identified him in
+the dark with a long wand in his hand, holding forth in his old
+way (made more appalling in this connection by his sometimes
+cracking a piece of Mr. Carlyle&rsquo;s own Dead-Sea fruit in
+mistake for a joke), I systematically shun pictorial
+entertainment on rollers. Similarly, I should demand
+responsible bail and guaranty against the appearance of Mr.
+Barlow, before committing myself to attendance at any assemblage
+of my fellow-creatures where a bottle of water and a note-book
+were conspicuous objects; for in either of those associations, I
+should expressly expect him. But such is the designing
+nature of the man, that he steals in where no reasoning
+precaution or provision could expect him. As in the
+following case:&mdash;</p>
+<p>Adjoining the Caves of Ignorance is a country town. In
+this country town the Mississippi Momuses, nine in number, were
+announced to appear in the town-hall, for the general
+delectation, this last Christmas week. Knowing Mr. Barlow
+to be unconnected with the Mississippi, though holding republican
+opinions, and deeming myself secure, I took a stall. My
+object was to hear and see the Mississippi Momuses in what the
+bills described as their &lsquo;National ballads, plantation
+break-downs, nigger part-songs, choice conundrums, sparkling
+repartees, &amp;c.&rsquo; I found the nine dressed alike,
+in the black coat and trousers, white waistcoat, very large
+shirt-front, very large shirt-collar, and very large white tie
+and wristbands, which constitute the dress of the mass of the
+African race, and which has been observed by travellers to
+prevail over a vast number of degrees of latitude. All the
+nine rolled their eyes exceedingly, and had very red lips.
+At the extremities of the curve they formed, seated in their
+chairs, were the performers on the tambourine and bones.
+The centre Momus, a black of melancholy aspect (who inspired me
+with a vague uneasiness for which I could not then account),
+performed on a Mississippi instrument closely resembling what was
+once called in this island a hurdy-gurdy. The Momuses on
+either side of him had each another instrument peculiar to the
+Father of Waters, which may be likened to a stringed
+weather-glass held upside down. There were likewise a
+little flute and a violin. All went well for awhile, and we
+had had several sparkling repartees exchanged between the
+performers on the tambourine and bones, when the black of
+melancholy aspect, turning to the latter, and addressing him in a
+deep and improving voice as &lsquo;Bones, sir,&rsquo; delivered
+certain grave remarks to him concerning the juveniles present,
+and the season of the year; whereon I perceived that I was in the
+presence of Mr. Barlow&mdash;corked!</p>
+<p>Another night&mdash;and this was in London&mdash;I attended
+the representation of a little comedy. As the characters
+were lifelike (and consequently not improving), and as they went
+upon their several ways and designs without personally addressing
+themselves to me, I felt rather confident of coming through it
+without being regarded as Tommy, the more so, as we were clearly
+getting close to the end. But I deceived myself. All
+of a sudden, Apropos of nothing, everybody concerned came to a
+check and halt, advanced to the foot-lights in a general rally to
+take dead aim at me, and brought me down with a moral homily, in
+which I detected the dread hand of Barlow.</p>
+<p>Nay, so intricate and subtle are the toils of this hunter,
+that on the very next night after that, I was again entrapped,
+where no vestige of a spring could have been apprehended by the
+timidest. It was a burlesque that I saw performed; an
+uncompromising burlesque, where everybody concerned, but
+especially the ladies, carried on at a very considerable rate
+indeed. Most prominent and active among the corps of
+performers was what I took to be (and she really gave me very
+fair opportunities of coming to a right conclusion) a young lady
+of a pretty figure. She was dressed as a picturesque young
+gentleman, whose pantaloons had been cut off in their infancy;
+and she had very neat knees and very neat satin boots.
+Immediately after singing a slang song and dancing a slang dance,
+this engaging figure approached the fatal lamps, and, bending
+over them, delivered in a thrilling voice a random eulogium on,
+and exhortation to pursue, the virtues. &lsquo;Great
+Heaven!&rsquo; was my exclamation; &lsquo;Barlow!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>There is still another aspect in which Mr. Barlow perpetually
+insists on my sustaining the character of Tommy, which is more
+unendurable yet, on account of its extreme aggressiveness.
+For the purposes of a review or newspaper, he will get up an
+abstruse subject with definite pains, will Barlow, utterly
+regardless of the price of midnight oil, and indeed of everything
+else, save cramming himself to the eyes.</p>
+<p>But mark. When Mr. Barlow blows his information off, he
+is not contented with having rammed it home, and discharged it
+upon me, Tommy, his target, but he pretends that he was always in
+possession of it, and made nothing of it,&mdash;that he imbibed
+it with mother&rsquo;s milk,&mdash;and that I, the wretched
+Tommy, am most abjectly behindhand in not having done the
+same. I ask, why is Tommy to be always the foil of Mr.
+Barlow to this extent? What Mr. Barlow had not the
+slightest notion of himself, a week ago, it surely cannot be any
+very heavy backsliding in me not to have at my fingers&rsquo;
+ends to-day! And yet Mr. Barlow systematically carries it
+over me with a high hand, and will tauntingly ask me, in his
+articles, whether it is possible that I am not aware that every
+school-boy knows that the fourteenth turning on the left in the
+steppes of Russia will conduct to such and such a wandering
+tribe? with other disparaging questions of like nature. So,
+when Mr. Barlow addresses a letter to any journal as a volunteer
+correspondent (which I frequently find him doing), he will
+previously have gotten somebody to tell him some tremendous
+technicality, and will write in the coolest manner, &lsquo;Now,
+sir, I may assume that every reader of your columns, possessing
+average information and intelligence, knows as well as I do
+that&rsquo;&mdash;say that the draught from the touch-hole of a
+cannon of such a calibre bears such a proportion in the nicest
+fractions to the draught from the muzzle; or some equally
+familiar little fact. But whatever it is, be certain that
+it always tends to the exaltation of Mr. Barlow, and the
+depression of his enforced and enslaved pupil.</p>
+<p>Mr. Barlow&rsquo;s knowledge of my own pursuits I find to be
+so profound, that my own knowledge of them becomes as
+nothing. Mr. Barlow (disguised and bearing a feigned name,
+but detected by me) has occasionally taught me, in a sonorous
+voice, from end to end of a long dinner-table, trifles that I
+took the liberty of teaching him five-and-twenty years ago.
+My closing article of impeachment against Mr. Barlow is, that he
+goes out to breakfast, goes out to dinner, goes out everywhere,
+high and low, and that he <span class="GutSmall">WILL</span>
+preach to me, and that I <span
+class="GutSmall">CAN&rsquo;T</span> get rid of him. He
+makes me a Promethean Tommy, bound; and he is the vulture that
+gorges itself upon the liver of my uninstructed mind.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap35"></a>XXXV<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">ON AN AMATEUR BEAT</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> is one of my fancies, that even
+my idlest walk must always have its appointed destination.
+I set myself a task before I leave my lodging in Covent-garden on
+a street expedition, and should no more think of altering my
+route by the way, or turning back and leaving a part of it
+unachieved, than I should think of fraudulently violating an
+agreement entered into with somebody else. The other day,
+finding myself under this kind of obligation to proceed to
+Limehouse, I started punctually at noon, in compliance with the
+terms of the contract with myself to which my good faith was
+pledged.</p>
+<p>On such an occasion, it is my habit to regard my walk as my
+beat, and myself as a higher sort of police-constable doing duty
+on the same. There is many a ruffian in the streets whom I
+mentally collar and clear out of them, who would see mighty
+little of London, I can tell him, if I could deal with him
+physically.</p>
+<p>Issuing forth upon this very beat, and following with my eyes
+three hulking garrotters on their way home,&mdash;which home I
+could confidently swear to be within so many yards of Drury-lane,
+in such a narrow and restricted direction (though they live in
+their lodging quite as undisturbed as I in mine),&mdash;I went on
+duty with a consideration which I respectfully offer to the new
+Chief Commissioner,&mdash;in whom I thoroughly confide as a tried
+and efficient public servant. How often (thought I) have I
+been forced to swallow, in police-reports, the intolerable
+stereotyped pill of nonsense, how that the police-constable
+informed the worthy magistrate how that the associates of the
+prisoner did, at that present speaking, dwell in a street or
+court which no man dared go down, and how that the worthy
+magistrate had heard of the dark reputation of such street or
+court, and how that our readers would doubtless remember that it
+was always the same street or court which was thus edifyingly
+discoursed about, say once a fortnight.</p>
+<p>Now, suppose that a Chief Commissioner sent round a circular
+to every division of police employed in London, requiring
+instantly the names in all districts of all such much-puffed
+streets or courts which no man durst go down; and suppose that in
+such circular he gave plain warning, &lsquo;If those places
+really exist, they are a proof of police inefficiency which I
+mean to punish; and if they do not exist, but are a conventional
+fiction, then they are a proof of lazy tacit police connivance
+with professional crime, which I also mean to
+punish&rsquo;&mdash;what then? Fictions or realities, could
+they survive the touchstone of this atom of common sense?
+To tell us in open court, until it has become as trite a feature
+of news as the great gooseberry, that a costly police-system such
+as was never before heard of, has left in London, in the days of
+steam and gas and photographs of thieves and electric telegraphs,
+the sanctuaries and stews of the Stuarts! Why, a parity of
+practice, in all departments, would bring back the Plague in two
+summers, and the Druids in a century!</p>
+<p>Walking faster under my share of this public injury, I
+overturned a wretched little creature, who, clutching at the rags
+of a pair of trousers with one of its claws, and at its ragged
+hair with the other, pattered with bare feet over the muddy
+stones. I stopped to raise and succour this poor weeping
+wretch, and fifty like it, but of both sexes, were about me in a
+moment, begging, tumbling, fighting, clamouring, yelling,
+shivering in their nakedness and hunger. The piece of money
+I had put into the claw of the child I had over-turned was clawed
+out of it, and was again clawed out of that wolfish gripe, and
+again out of that, and soon I had no notion in what part of the
+obscene scuffle in the mud, of rags and legs and arms and dirt,
+the money might be. In raising the child, I had drawn it
+aside out of the main thoroughfare, and this took place among
+some wooden hoardings and barriers and ruins of demolished
+buildings, hard by Temple Bar.</p>
+<p>Unexpectedly, from among them emerged a genuine
+police-constable, before whom the dreadful brood dispersed in
+various directions, he making feints and darts in this direction
+and in that, and catching nothing. When all were frightened
+away, he took off his hat, pulled out a handkerchief from it,
+wiped his heated brow, and restored the handkerchief and hat to
+their places, with the air of a man who had discharged a great
+moral duty,&mdash;as indeed he had, in doing what was set down
+for him. I looked at him, and I looked about at the
+disorderly traces in the mud, and I thought of the drops of rain
+and the footprints of an extinct creature, hoary ages upon ages
+old, that geologists have identified on the face of a cliff; and
+this speculation came over me: If this mud could petrify at this
+moment, and could lie concealed here for ten thousand years, I
+wonder whether the race of men then to be our successors on the
+earth could, from these or any marks, by the utmost force of the
+human intellect, unassisted by tradition, deduce such an
+astounding inference as the existence of a polished state of
+society that bore with the public savagery of neglected children
+in the streets of its capital city, and was proud of its power by
+sea and land, and never used its power to seize and save
+them!</p>
+<p>After this, when I came to the Old Bailey and glanced up it
+towards Newgate, I found that the prison had an inconsistent
+look. There seemed to be some unlucky inconsistency in the
+atmosphere that day; for though the proportions of St.
+Paul&rsquo;s Cathedral are very beautiful, it had an air of being
+somewhat out of drawing, in my eyes. I felt as though the
+cross were too high up, and perched upon the intervening golden
+ball too far away.</p>
+<p>Facing eastward, I left behind me Smithfield and Old
+Bailey,&mdash;fire and faggot, condemned hold, public hanging,
+whipping through the city at the cart-tail, pillory,
+branding-iron, and other beautiful ancestral landmarks, which
+rude hands have rooted up, without bringing the stars quite down
+upon us as yet,&mdash;and went my way upon my beat, noting how
+oddly characteristic neighbourhoods are divided from one another,
+hereabout, as though by an invisible line across the way.
+Here shall cease the bankers and the money-changers; here shall
+begin the shipping interest and the nautical-instrument shops;
+here shall follow a scarcely perceptible flavouring of groceries
+and drugs; here shall come a strong infusion of butchers; now,
+small hosiers shall be in the ascendant; henceforth, everything
+exposed for sale shall have its ticketed price attached.
+All this as if specially ordered and appointed.</p>
+<p>A single stride at Houndsditch Church, no wider than sufficed
+to cross the kennel at the bottom of the Canon-gate, which the
+debtors in Holyrood sanctuary were wont to relieve their minds by
+skipping over, as Scott relates, and standing in delightful
+daring of catchpoles on the free side,&mdash;a single stride, and
+everything is entirely changed in grain and character. West
+of the stride, a table, or a chest of drawers on sale, shall be
+of mahogany and French-polished; east of the stride, it shall be
+of deal, smeared with a cheap counterfeit resembling
+lip-salve. West of the stride, a penny loaf or bun shall be
+compact and self-contained; east of the stride, it shall be of a
+sprawling and splay-footed character, as seeking to make more of
+itself for the money. My beat lying round by Whitechapel
+Church, and the adjacent sugar-refineries,&mdash;great buildings,
+tier upon tier, that have the appearance of being nearly related
+to the dock-warehouses at Liverpool,&mdash;I turned off to my
+right, and, passing round the awkward corner on my left, came
+suddenly on an apparition familiar to London streets afar
+off.</p>
+<p>What London peripatetic of these times has not seen the woman
+who has fallen forward, double, through some affection of the
+spine, and whose head has of late taken a turn to one side, so
+that it now droops over the back of one of her arms at about the
+wrist? Who does not know her staff, and her shawl, and her
+basket, as she gropes her way along, capable of seeing nothing
+but the pavement, never begging, never stopping, for ever going
+somewhere on no business? How does she live, whence does
+she come, whither does she go, and why? I mind the time
+when her yellow arms were naught but bone and parchment.
+Slight changes steal over her; for there is a shadowy suggestion
+of human skin on them now. The Strand may be taken as the
+central point about which she revolves in a half-mile
+orbit. How comes she so far east as this? And coming
+back too! Having been how much farther? She is a rare
+spectacle in this neighbourhood. I receive intelligent
+information to this effect from a dog&mdash;a lop-sided mongrel
+with a foolish tail, plodding along with his tail up, and his
+ears pricked, and displaying an amiable interest in the ways of
+his fellow-men,&mdash;if I may be allowed the expression.
+After pausing at a pork-shop, he is jogging eastward like myself,
+with a benevolent countenance and a watery mouth, as though
+musing on the many excellences of pork, when he beholds this
+doubled-up bundle approaching. He is not so much astonished
+at the bundle (though amazed by that), as the circumstance that
+it has within itself the means of locomotion. He stops,
+pricks his ears higher, makes a slight point, stares, utters a
+short, low growl, and glistens at the nose,&mdash;as I conceive
+with terror. The bundle continuing to approach, he barks,
+turns tail, and is about to fly, when, arguing with himself that
+flight is not becoming in a dog, he turns, and once more faces
+the advancing heap of clothes. After much hesitation, it
+occurs to him that there may be a face in it somewhere.
+Desperately resolving to undertake the adventure, and pursue the
+inquiry, he goes slowly up to the bundle, goes slowly round it,
+and coming at length upon the human countenance down there where
+never human countenance should be, gives a yelp of horror, and
+flies for the East India Docks.</p>
+<p>Being now in the Commercial Road district of my beat, and
+bethinking myself that Stepney Station is near, I quicken my pace
+that I may turn out of the road at that point, and see how my
+small eastern star is shining.</p>
+<p>The Children&rsquo;s Hospital, to which I gave that name, is
+in full force. All its beds are occupied. There is a
+new face on the bed where my pretty baby lay, and that sweet
+little child is now at rest for ever. Much kind sympathy
+has been here since my former visit, and it is good to see the
+walls profusely garnished with dolls. I wonder what Poodles
+may think of them, as they stretch out their arms above the beds,
+and stare, and display their splendid dresses. Poodles has
+a greater interest in the patients. I find him making the
+round of the beds, like a house-surgeon, attended by another
+dog,&mdash;a friend,&mdash;who appears to trot about with him in
+the character of his pupil dresser. Poodles is anxious to
+make me known to a pretty little girl looking wonderfully
+healthy, who had had a leg taken off for cancer of the
+knee. A difficult operation, Poodles intimates, wagging his
+tail on the counterpane, but perfectly successful, as you see,
+dear sir! The patient, patting Poodles, adds with a smile,
+&lsquo;The leg was so much trouble to me, that I am glad
+it&rsquo;s gone.&rsquo; I never saw anything in doggery
+finer than the deportment of Poodles, when another little girl
+opens her mouth to show a peculiar enlargement of the
+tongue. Poodles (at that time on a table, to be on a level
+with the occasion) looks at the tongue (with his own
+sympathetically out) so very gravely and knowingly, that I feel
+inclined to put my hand in my waistcoat-pocket, and give him a
+guinea, wrapped in paper.</p>
+<p>On my beat again, and close to Limehouse Church, its
+termination, I found myself near to certain
+&lsquo;Lead-Mills.&rsquo; Struck by the name, which was
+fresh in my memory, and finding, on inquiry, that these same
+lead-mills were identified with those same lead-mills of which I
+made mention when I first visited the East London
+Children&rsquo;s Hospital and its neighbourhood as Uncommercial
+Traveller, I resolved to have a look at them.</p>
+<p>Received by two very intelligent gentlemen, brothers, and
+partners with their father in the concern, and who testified
+every desire to show their works to me freely, I went over the
+lead-mills. The purport of such works is the conversion of
+pig-lead into white-lead. This conversion is brought about
+by the slow and gradual effecting of certain successive chemical
+changes in the lead itself. The processes are picturesque
+and interesting,&mdash;the most so, being the burying of the
+lead, at a certain stage of preparation, in pots, each pot
+containing a certain quantity of acid besides, and all the pots
+being buried in vast numbers, in layers, under tan, for some ten
+weeks.</p>
+<p>Hopping up ladders, and across planks, and on elevated
+perches, until I was uncertain whether to liken myself to a bird
+or a brick-layer, I became conscious of standing on nothing
+particular, looking down into one of a series of large cocklofts,
+with the outer day peeping in through the chinks in the tiled
+roof above. A number of women were ascending to, and
+descending from, this cockloft, each carrying on the upward
+journey a pot of prepared lead and acid, for deposition under the
+smoking tan. When one layer of pots was completely filled,
+it was carefully covered in with planks, and those were carefully
+covered with tan again, and then another layer of pots was begun
+above; sufficient means of ventilation being preserved through
+wooden tubes. Going down into the cockloft then filling, I
+found the heat of the tan to be surprisingly great, and also the
+odour of the lead and acid to be not absolutely exquisite, though
+I believe not noxious at that stage. In other cocklofts,
+where the pots were being exhumed, the heat of the steaming tan
+was much greater, and the smell was penetrating and
+peculiar. There were cocklofts in all stages; full and
+empty, half filled and half emptied; strong, active women were
+clambering about them busily; and the whole thing had rather the
+air of the upper part of the house of some immensely rich old
+Turk, whose faithful seraglio were hiding his money because the
+sultan or the pasha was coming.</p>
+<p>As is the case with most pulps or pigments, so in the instance
+of this white-lead, processes of stirring, separating, washing,
+grinding, rolling, and pressing succeed. Some of these are
+unquestionably inimical to health, the danger arising from
+inhalation of particles of lead, or from contact between the lead
+and the touch, or both. Against these dangers, I found good
+respirators provided (simply made of flannel and muslin, so as to
+be inexpensively renewed, and in some instances washed with
+scented soap), and gauntlet gloves, and loose gowns.
+Everywhere, there was as much fresh air as windows, well placed
+and opened, could possibly admit. And it was explained that
+the precaution of frequently changing the women employed in the
+worst parts of the work (a precaution originating in their own
+experience or apprehension of its ill effects) was found
+salutary. They had a mysterious and singular appearance,
+with the mouth and nose covered, and the loose gown on, and yet
+bore out the simile of the old Turk and the seraglio all the
+better for the disguise.</p>
+<p>At last this vexed white-lead, having been buried and
+resuscitated, and heated and cooled and stirred, and separated
+and washed and ground, and rolled and pressed, is subjected to
+the action of intense fiery heat. A row of women, dressed
+as above described, stood, let us say, in a large stone
+bakehouse, passing on the baking-dishes as they were given out by
+the cooks, from hand to hand, into the ovens. The oven, or
+stove, cold as yet, looked as high as an ordinary house, and was
+full of men and women on temporary footholds, briskly passing up
+and stowing away the dishes. The door of another oven, or
+stove, about to be cooled and emptied, was opened from above, for
+the uncommercial countenance to peer down into. The
+uncommercial countenance withdrew itself, with expedition and a
+sense of suffocation, from the dull-glowing heat and the
+overpowering smell. On the whole, perhaps the going into
+these stoves to work, when they are freshly opened, may be the
+worst part of the occupation.</p>
+<p>But I made it out to be indubitable that the owners of these
+lead-mills honestly and sedulously try to reduce the dangers of
+the occupation to the lowest point.</p>
+<p>A washing-place is provided for the women (I thought there
+might have been more towels), and a room in which they hang their
+clothes, and take their meals, and where they have a good
+fire-range and fire, and a female attendant to help them, and to
+watch that they do not neglect the cleansing of their hands
+before touching their food. An experienced medical
+attendant is provided for them, and any premonitory symptoms of
+lead-poisoning are carefully treated. Their teapots and
+such things were set out on tables ready for their afternoon
+meal, when I saw their room; and it had a homely look. It
+is found that they bear the work much better than men: some few
+of them have been at it for years, and the great majority of
+those I observed were strong and active. On the other hand,
+it should be remembered that most of them are very capricious and
+irregular in their attendance.</p>
+<p>American inventiveness would seem to indicate that before very
+long white-lead may be made entirely by machinery. The
+sooner, the better. In the meantime, I parted from my two
+frank conductors over the mills, by telling them that they had
+nothing there to be concealed, and nothing to be blamed
+for. As to the rest, the philosophy of the matter of
+lead-poisoning and workpeople seems to me to have been pretty
+fairly summed up by the Irishwoman whom I quoted in my former
+paper: &lsquo;Some of them gets lead-pisoned soon, and some of
+them gets lead-pisoned later, and some, but not many, niver; and
+&rsquo;tis all according to the constitooshun, sur; and some
+constitooshuns is strong and some is weak.&rsquo; Retracing
+my footsteps over my beat, I went off duty.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap36"></a>XXXVI<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">A FLY-LEAF IN A LIFE</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Once</span> upon a time (no matter when),
+I was engaged in a pursuit (no matter what), which could be
+transacted by myself alone; in which I could have no help; which
+imposed a constant strain on the attention, memory, observation,
+and physical powers; and which involved an almost fabulous amount
+of change of place and rapid railway travelling. I had
+followed this pursuit through an exceptionally trying winter in
+an always trying climate, and had resumed it in England after but
+a brief repose. Thus it came to be prolonged until, at
+length&mdash;and, as it seemed, all of a sudden&mdash;it so wore
+me out that I could not rely, with my usual cheerful confidence,
+upon myself to achieve the constantly recurring task, and began
+to feel (for the first time in my life) giddy, jarred, shaken,
+faint, uncertain of voice and sight and tread and touch, and dull
+of spirit. The medical advice I sought within a few hours,
+was given in two words: &lsquo;instant rest.&rsquo; Being
+accustomed to observe myself as curiously as if I were another
+man, and knowing the advice to meet my only need, I instantly
+halted in the pursuit of which I speak, and rested.</p>
+<p>My intention was, to interpose, as it were, a fly-leaf in the
+book of my life, in which nothing should be written from without
+for a brief season of a few weeks. But some very singular
+experiences recorded themselves on this same fly-leaf, and I am
+going to relate them literally. I repeat the word:
+literally.</p>
+<p>My first odd experience was of the remarkable coincidence
+between my case, in the general mind, and one Mr. Merdle&rsquo;s
+as I find it recorded in a work of fiction called <span
+class="smcap">Little Dorrit</span>. To be sure, Mr. Merdle
+was a swindler, forger, and thief, and my calling had been of a
+less harmful (and less remunerative) nature; but it was all one
+for that.</p>
+<p>Here is Mr. Merdle&rsquo;s case:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;At first, he was dead of all the diseases that ever
+were known, and of several bran-new maladies invented with the
+speed of Light to meet the demand of the occasion. He had
+concealed a dropsy from infancy, he had inherited a large estate
+of water on the chest from his grandfather, he had had an
+operation performed upon him every morning of his life for
+eighteen years, he had been subject to the explosion of important
+veins in his body after the manner of fireworks, he had had
+something the matter with his lungs, he had had something the
+matter with his heart, he had had something the matter with his
+brain. Five hundred people who sat down to breakfast
+entirely uninformed on the whole subject, believed before they
+had done breakfast, that they privately and personally knew
+Physician to have said to Mr. Merdle, &ldquo;You must expect to
+go out, some day, like the snuff of a candle;&rdquo; and that
+they knew Mr. Merdle to have said to Physician, &ldquo;A man can
+die but once.&rdquo; By about eleven o&rsquo;clock in the
+forenoon, something the matter with the brain, became the
+favourite theory against the field; and by twelve the something
+had been distinctly ascertained to be &ldquo;Pressure.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Pressure was so entirely satisfactory to the public
+mind, and seemed to make every one so comfortable, that it might
+have lasted all day but for Bar&rsquo;s having taken the real
+state of the case into Court at half-past nine. Pressure,
+however, so far from being overthrown by the discovery, became a
+greater favourite than ever. There was a general moralising
+upon Pressure, in every street. All the people who had
+tried to make money and had not been able to do it, said, There
+you were! You no sooner began to devote yourself to the
+pursuit of wealth, than you got Pressure. The idle people
+improved the occasion in a similar manner. See, said they,
+what you brought yourself to by work, work, work! You
+persisted in working, you overdid it, Pressure came on, and you
+were done for! This consideration was very potent in many
+quarters, but nowhere more so than among the young clerks and
+partners who had never been in the slightest danger of overdoing
+it. These, one and all declared, quite piously, that they
+hoped they would never forget the warning as long as they lived,
+and that their conduct might be so regulated as to keep off
+Pressure, and preserve them, a comfort to their friends, for many
+years.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Just my case&mdash;if I had only known it&mdash;when I was
+quietly basking in the sunshine in my Kentish meadow!</p>
+<p>But while I so rested, thankfully recovering every hour, I had
+experiences more odd than this. I had experiences of
+spiritual conceit, for which, as giving me a new warning against
+that curse of mankind, I shall always feel grateful to the
+supposition that I was too far gone to protest against playing
+sick lion to any stray donkey with an itching hoof. All
+sorts of people seemed to become vicariously religious at my
+expense. I received the most uncompromising warning that I
+was a Heathen: on the conclusive authority of a field preacher,
+who, like the most of his ignorant and vain and daring class,
+could not construct a tolerable sentence in his native tongue or
+pen a fair letter. This inspired individual called me to
+order roundly, and knew in the freest and easiest way where I was
+going to, and what would become of me if I failed to fashion
+myself on his bright example, and was on terms of blasphemous
+confidence with the Heavenly Host. He was in the secrets of
+my heart, and in the lowest soundings of my
+soul&mdash;he!&mdash;and could read the depths of my nature
+better than his A B C, and could turn me inside out, like his own
+clammy glove. But what is far more extraordinary than
+this&mdash;for such dirty water as this could alone be drawn from
+such a shallow and muddy source&mdash;I found from the
+information of a beneficed clergyman, of whom I never heard and
+whom I never saw, that I had not, as I rather supposed I had,
+lived a life of some reading, contemplation, and inquiry; that I
+had not studied, as I rather supposed I had, to inculcate some
+Christian lessons in books; that I had never tried, as I rather
+supposed I had, to turn a child or two tenderly towards the
+knowledge and love of our Saviour; that I had never had, as I
+rather supposed I had had, departed friends, or stood beside open
+graves; but that I had lived a life of &lsquo;uninterrupted
+prosperity,&rsquo; and that I needed this &lsquo;check,
+overmuch,&rsquo; and that the way to turn it to account was to
+read these sermons and these poems, enclosed, and written and
+issued by my correspondent! I beg it may be understood that
+I relate facts of my own uncommercial experience, and no vain
+imaginings. The documents in proof lie near my hand.</p>
+<p>Another odd entry on the fly-leaf, of a more entertaining
+character, was the wonderful persistency with which kind
+sympathisers assumed that I had injuriously coupled with the so
+suddenly relinquished pursuit, those personal habits of mine most
+obviously incompatible with it, and most plainly impossible of
+being maintained, along with it. As, all that exercise, all
+that cold bathing, all that wind and weather, all that uphill
+training&mdash;all that everything else, say, which is usually
+carried about by express trains in a portmanteau and hat-box, and
+partaken of under a flaming row of gas-lights in the company of
+two thousand people. This assuming of a whole case against
+all fact and likelihood, struck me as particularly droll, and was
+an oddity of which I certainly had had no adequate experience in
+life until I turned that curious fly-leaf.</p>
+<p>My old acquaintances the begging-letter writers came out on
+the fly-leaf, very piously indeed. They were glad, at such
+a serious crisis, to afford me another opportunity of sending
+that Post-office order. I needn&rsquo;t make it a pound, as
+previously insisted on; ten shillings might ease my mind.
+And Heaven forbid that they should refuse, at such an
+insignificant figure, to take a weight off the memory of an
+erring fellow-creature! One gentleman, of an artistic turn
+(and copiously illustrating the books of the Mendicity Society),
+thought it might soothe my conscience, in the tender respect of
+gifts misused, if I would immediately cash up in aid of his lowly
+talent for original design&mdash;as a specimen of which he
+enclosed me a work of art which I recognized as a tracing from a
+woodcut originally published in the late Mrs. Trollope&rsquo;s
+book on America, forty or fifty years ago. The number of
+people who were prepared to live long years after me, untiring
+benefactors to their species, for fifty pounds apiece down, was
+astonishing. Also, of those who wanted bank-notes for stiff
+penitential amounts, to give away:&mdash;not to keep, on any
+account.</p>
+<p>Divers wonderful medicines and machines insinuated
+recommendations of themselves into the fly-leaf that was to have
+been so blank. It was specially observable that every
+prescriber, whether in a moral or physical direction, knew me
+thoroughly&mdash;knew me from head to heel, in and out, through
+and through, upside down. I was a glass piece of general
+property, and everybody was on the most surprisingly intimate
+terms with me. A few public institutions had complimentary
+perceptions of corners in my mind, of which, after considerable
+self-examination, I have not discovered any indication.
+Neat little printed forms were addressed to those corners,
+beginning with the words: &lsquo;I give and bequeath.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Will it seem exaggerative to state my belief that the most
+honest, the most modest, and the least vain-glorious of all the
+records upon this strange fly-leaf, was a letter from the
+self-deceived discoverer of the recondite secret &lsquo;how to
+live four or five hundred years&rsquo;? Doubtless it will
+seem so, yet the statement is not exaggerative by any means, but
+is made in my serious and sincere conviction. With this,
+and with a laugh at the rest that shall not be cynical, I turn
+the Fly-leaf, and go on again.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap37"></a>XXXVII<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">One</span> day this last Whitsuntide, at
+precisely eleven o&rsquo;clock in the forenoon, there suddenly
+rode into the field of view commanded by the windows of my
+lodging an equestrian phenomenon. It was a fellow-creature
+on horseback, dressed in the absurdest manner. The
+fellow-creature wore high boots; some other (and much larger)
+fellow-creature&rsquo;s breeches, of a slack-baked doughy colour
+and a baggy form; a blue shirt, whereof the skirt, or tail, was
+puffily tucked into the waist-band of the said breeches; no coat;
+a red shoulder-belt; and a demi-semi-military scarlet hat, with a
+feathered ornament in front, which, to the uninstructed human
+vision, had the appearance of a moulting shuttlecock. I
+laid down the newspaper with which I had been occupied, and
+surveyed the fellow-man in question with astonishment.
+Whether he had been sitting to any painter as a frontispiece for
+a new edition of &lsquo;Sartor Resartus;&rsquo; whether
+&lsquo;the husk or shell of him,&rsquo; as the esteemed Herr
+Teufelsdroch might put it, were founded on a jockey, on a circus,
+on General Garibaldi, on cheap porcelain, on a toy shop, on Guy
+Fawkes, on waxwork, on gold-digging, on Bedlam, or on
+all,&mdash;were doubts that greatly exercised my mind.
+Meanwhile, my fellow-man stumbled and slided, excessively against
+his will, on the slippery stones of my Covent-garden street, and
+elicited shrieks from several sympathetic females, by
+convulsively restraining himself from pitching over his
+horse&rsquo;s head. In the very crisis of these evolutions,
+and indeed at the trying moment when his charger&rsquo;s tail was
+in a tobacconist&rsquo;s shop, and his head anywhere about town,
+this cavalier was joined by two similar portents, who, likewise
+stumbling and sliding, caused him to stumble and slide the more
+distressingly. At length this Gilpinian triumvirate
+effected a halt, and, looking northward, waved their three right
+hands as commanding unseen troops, to &lsquo;Up, guards! and at
+&rsquo;em.&rsquo; Hereupon a brazen band burst forth, which
+caused them to be instantly bolted with to some remote spot of
+earth in the direction of the Surrey Hills.</p>
+<p>Judging from these appearances that a procession was under
+way, I threw up my window, and, craning out, had the satisfaction
+of beholding it advancing along the streets. It was a
+Teetotal procession, as I learnt from its banners, and was long
+enough to consume twenty minutes in passing. There were a
+great number of children in it, some of them so very young in
+their mothers&rsquo; arms as to be in the act of practically
+exemplifying their abstinence from fermented liquors, and
+attachment to an unintoxicating drink, while the procession
+defiled. The display was, on the whole, pleasant to see, as
+any good-humoured holiday assemblage of clean, cheerful, and
+well-conducted people should be. It was bright with
+ribbons, tinsel, and shoulder-belts, and abounded in flowers, as
+if those latter trophies had come up in profusion under much
+watering. The day being breezy, the insubordination of the
+large banners was very reprehensible. Each of these being
+borne aloft on two poles and stayed with some half-dozen lines,
+was carried, as polite books in the last century used to be
+written, by &lsquo;various hands,&rsquo; and the anxiety
+expressed in the upturned faces of those
+officers,&mdash;something between the anxiety attendant on the
+balancing art, and that inseparable from the pastime of
+kite-flying, with a touch of the angler&rsquo;s quality in
+landing his scaly prey,&mdash;much impressed me. Suddenly,
+too, a banner would shiver in the wind, and go about in the most
+inconvenient manner. This always happened oftenest with
+such gorgeous standards as those representing a gentleman in
+black, corpulent with tea and water, in the laudable act of
+summarily reforming a family, feeble and pinched with beer.
+The gentleman in black distended by wind would then conduct
+himself with the most unbecoming levity, while the beery family,
+growing beerier, would frantically try to tear themselves away
+from his ministration. Some of the inscriptions
+accompanying the banners were of a highly determined character,
+as &lsquo;We never, never will give up the temperance
+cause,&rsquo; with similar sound resolutions rather suggestive to
+the profane mind of Mrs. Micawber&rsquo;s &lsquo;I never will
+desert Mr. Micawber,&rsquo; and of Mr. Micawber&rsquo;s retort,
+&lsquo;Really, my dear, I am not aware that you were ever
+required by any human being to do anything of the
+sort.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>At intervals, a gloom would fall on the passing members of the
+procession, for which I was at first unable to account. But
+this I discovered, after a little observation, to be occasioned
+by the coming on of the executioners,&mdash;the terrible official
+beings who were to make the speeches by-and-by,&mdash;who were
+distributed in open carriages at various points of the
+cavalcade. A dark cloud and a sensation of dampness, as
+from many wet blankets, invariably preceded the rolling on of the
+dreadful cars containing these headsmen; and I noticed that the
+wretched people who closely followed them, and who were in a
+manner forced to contemplate their folded arms, complacent
+countenances, and threatening lips, were more overshadowed by the
+cloud and damp than those in front. Indeed, I perceived in
+some of these so moody an implacability towards the magnates of
+the scaffold, and so plain a desire to tear them limb from limb,
+that I would respectfully suggest to the managers the expediency
+of conveying the executioners to the scene of their dismal
+labours by unfrequented ways, and in closely-tilted carts, next
+Whitsuntide.</p>
+<p>The procession was composed of a series of smaller
+processions, which had come together, each from its own
+metropolitan district. An infusion of allegory became
+perceptible when patriotic Peckham advanced. So I judged,
+from the circumstance of Peckham&rsquo;s unfurling a silken
+banner that fanned heaven and earth with the words, &lsquo;The
+Peckham Lifeboat.&rsquo; No boat being in attendance,
+though life, in the likeness of &lsquo;a gallant, gallant
+crew,&rsquo; in nautical uniform, followed the flag, I was led to
+meditate on the fact that Peckham is described by geographers as
+an inland settlement, with no larger or nearer shore-line than
+the towing-path of the Surrey Canal, on which stormy station I
+had been given to understand no lifeboat exists. Thus I
+deduced an allegorical meaning, and came to the conclusion, that
+if patriotic Peckham picked a peck of pickled poetry, this
+<i>was</i> the peck of pickled poetry which patriotic Peckham
+picked.</p>
+<p>I have observed that the aggregate procession was on the whole
+pleasant to see. I made use of that qualified expression
+with a direct meaning, which I will now explain. It
+involves the title of this paper, and a little fair trying of
+teetotalism by its own tests. There were many people on
+foot, and many people in vehicles of various kinds. The
+former were pleasant to see, and the latter were not pleasant to
+see; for the reason that I never, on any occasion or under any
+circumstances, have beheld heavier overloading of horses than in
+this public show. Unless the imposition of a great van
+laden with from ten to twenty people on a single horse be a
+moderate tasking of the poor creature, then the temperate use of
+horses was immoderate and cruel. From the smallest and
+lightest horse to the largest and heaviest, there were many
+instances in which the beast of burden was so shamefully
+overladen, that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
+Animals have frequently interposed in less gross cases.</p>
+<p>Now, I have always held that there may be, and that there
+unquestionably is, such a thing as use without abuse, and that
+therefore the total abolitionists are irrational and
+wrong-headed. But the procession completely converted
+me. For so large a number of the people using
+draught-horses in it were so clearly unable to use them without
+abusing them, that I perceived total abstinence from horseflesh
+to be the only remedy of which the case admitted. As it is
+all one to teetotalers whether you take half a pint of beer or
+half a gallon, so it was all one here whether the beast of burden
+were a pony or a cart-horse. Indeed, my case had the
+special strength that the half-pint quadruped underwent as much
+suffering as the half-gallon quadruped. Moral: total
+abstinence from horseflesh through the whole length and breadth
+of the scale. This pledge will be in course of
+administration to all teetotal processionists, not pedestrians,
+at the publishing office of &lsquo;All the Year Round,&rsquo; on
+the 1st day of April, 1870.</p>
+<p>Observe a point for consideration. This procession
+comprised many persons in their gigs, broughams, tax-carts,
+barouches, chaises, and what not, who were merciful to the dumb
+beasts that drew them, and did not overcharge their
+strength. What is to be done with those unoffending
+persons? I will not run amuck and vilify and defame them,
+as teetotal tracts and platforms would most assuredly do, if the
+question were one of drinking instead of driving: I merely ask
+what is to be done with them! The reply admits of no
+dispute whatever. Manifestly, in strict accordance with
+teetotal doctrines, <span class="GutSmall">THEY</span> must come
+in too, and take the total abstinence from horseflesh
+pledge. It is not pretended that those members of the
+procession misused certain auxiliaries which in most countries
+and all ages have been bestowed upon man for his use, but it is
+undeniable that other members of the procession did.
+Teetotal mathematics demonstrate that the less includes the
+greater; that the guilty include the innocent, the blind the
+seeing, the deaf the hearing, the dumb the speaking, the drunken
+the sober. If any of the moderate users of draught-cattle
+in question should deem that there is any gentle violence done to
+their reason by these elements of logic, they are invited to come
+out of the procession next Whitsuntide, and look at it from my
+window.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>FOOTNOTES.</h2>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="footnote188"></a><a href="#citation188">[188]</a> After this Uncommercial Journey
+was printed, I happened to mention the experience it describes to
+Lord Houghton. That gentleman then showed me an article of
+his writing, in <i>The Edinburgh Review</i> for January, 1862,
+which is highly remarkable for its philosophical and literary
+research concerning these Latter-Day Saints. I find in it
+the following sentences:&mdash;&lsquo;The Select Committee of the
+House of Commons on emigrant ships for 1854 summoned the Mormon
+agent and passenger-broker before it, and came to the conclusion
+that no ships under the provisions of the &ldquo;Passengers
+Act&rdquo; could be depended upon for comfort and security in the
+same degree as those under his administration. The Mormon ship is
+a Family under strong and accepted discipline, with every
+provision for comfort, decorum and internal peace.&rsquo;</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER ***</div>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Uncommercial Traveller, by Charles Dickens
+(#23 in our series by Charles Dickens)
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+Title: The Uncommercial Traveller
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Release Date: May, 1997  [EBook #914]
+[This file was first posted on May 20, 1997]
+[Most recently updated: May 20, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--HIS GENERAL LINE OF BUSINESS
+
+
+
+Allow me to introduce myself--first negatively.
+
+No landlord is my friend and brother, no chambermaid loves me, no
+waiter worships me, no boots admires and envies me.  No round of
+beef or tongue or ham is expressly cooked for me, no pigeon-pie is
+especially made for me, no hotel-advertisement is personally
+addressed to me, no hotel-room tapestried with great-coats and
+railway wrappers is set apart for me, no house of public
+entertainment in the United Kingdom greatly cares for my opinion of
+its brandy or sherry.  When I go upon my journeys, I am not usually
+rated at a low figure in the bill; when I come home from my
+journeys, I never get any commission.  I know nothing about prices,
+and should have no idea, if I were put to it, how to wheedle a man
+into ordering something he doesn't want.  As a town traveller, I am
+never to be seen driving a vehicle externally like a young and
+volatile pianoforte van, and internally like an oven in which a
+number of flat boxes are baking in layers.  As a country traveller,
+I am rarely to be found in a gig, and am never to be encountered by
+a pleasure train, waiting on the platform of a branch station,
+quite a Druid in the midst of a light Stonehenge of samples.
+
+And yet--proceeding now, to introduce myself positively--I am both
+a town traveller and a country traveller, and am always on the
+road.  Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of Human
+Interest Brothers, and have rather a large connection in the fancy
+goods way.  Literally speaking, I am always wandering here and
+there from my rooms in Covent-garden, London--now about the city
+streets:  now, about the country by-roads--seeing many little
+things, and some great things, which, because they interest me, I
+think may interest others.
+
+These are my chief credentials as the Uncommercial Traveller.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--THE SHIPWRECK
+
+
+
+Never had I seen a year going out, or going on, under quieter
+circumstances.  Eighteen hundred and fifty-nine had but another day
+to live, and truly its end was Peace on that sea-shore that
+morning.
+
+So settled and orderly was everything seaward, in the bright light
+of the sun and under the transparent shadows of the clouds, that it
+was hard to imagine the bay otherwise, for years past or to come,
+than it was that very day.  The Tug-steamer lying a little off the
+shore, the Lighter lying still nearer to the shore, the boat
+alongside the Lighter, the regularly-turning windlass aboard the
+Lighter, the methodical figures at work, all slowly and regularly
+heaving up and down with the breathing of the sea, all seemed as
+much a part of the nature of the place as the tide itself.  The
+tide was on the flow, and had been for some two hours and a half;
+there was a slight obstruction in the sea within a few yards of my
+feet:  as if the stump of a tree, with earth enough about it to
+keep it from lying horizontally on the water, had slipped a little
+from the land--and as I stood upon the beach and observed it
+dimpling the light swell that was coming in, I cast a stone over
+it.
+
+So orderly, so quiet, so regular--the rising and falling of the
+Tug-steamer, the Lighter, and the boat--the turning of the
+windlass--the coming in of the tide--that I myself seemed, to my
+own thinking, anything but new to the spot.  Yet, I had never seen
+it in my life, a minute before, and had traversed two hundred miles
+to get at it.  That very morning I had come bowling down, and
+struggling up, hill-country roads; looking back at snowy summits;
+meeting courteous peasants well to do, driving fat pigs and cattle
+to market:  noting the neat and thrifty dwellings, with their
+unusual quantity of clean white linen, drying on the bushes; having
+windy weather suggested by every cotter's little rick, with its
+thatch straw-ridged and extra straw-ridged into overlapping
+compartments like the back of a rhinoceros.  Had I not given a lift
+of fourteen miles to the Coast-guardsman (kit and all), who was
+coming to his spell of duty there, and had we not just now parted
+company?  So it was; but the journey seemed to glide down into the
+placid sea, with other chafe and trouble, and for the moment
+nothing was so calmly and monotonously real under the sunlight as
+the gentle rising and falling of the water with its freight, the
+regular turning of the windlass aboard the Lighter, and the slight
+obstruction so very near my feet.
+
+O reader, haply turning this page by the fireside at Home, and
+hearing the night wind rumble in the chimney, that slight
+obstruction was the uppermost fragment of the Wreck of the Royal
+Charter, Australian trader and passenger ship, Homeward bound, that
+struck here on the terrible morning of the twenty-sixth of this
+October, broke into three parts, went down with her treasure of at
+least five hundred human lives, and has never stirred since!
+
+From which point, or from which, she drove ashore, stern foremost;
+on which side, or on which, she passed the little Island in the
+bay, for ages henceforth to be aground certain yards outside her;
+these are rendered bootless questions by the darkness of that night
+and the darkness of death.  Here she went down.
+
+Even as I stood on the beach with the words 'Here she went down!'
+in my ears, a diver in his grotesque dress, dipped heavily over the
+side of the boat alongside the Lighter, and dropped to the bottom.
+On the shore by the water's edge, was a rough tent, made of
+fragments of wreck, where other divers and workmen sheltered
+themselves, and where they had kept Christmas-day with rum and
+roast beef, to the destruction of their frail chimney.  Cast up
+among the stones and boulders of the beach, were great spars of the
+lost vessel, and masses of iron twisted by the fury of the sea into
+the strangest forms.  The timber was already bleached and iron
+rusted, and even these objects did no violence to the prevailing
+air the whole scene wore, of having been exactly the same for years
+and years.
+
+Yet, only two short months had gone, since a man, living on the
+nearest hill-top overlooking the sea, being blown out of bed at
+about daybreak by the wind that had begun to strip his roof off,
+and getting upon a ladder with his nearest neighbour to construct
+some temporary device for keeping his house over his head, saw from
+the ladder's elevation as he looked down by chance towards the
+shore, some dark troubled object close in with the land.  And he
+and the other, descending to the beach, and finding the sea
+mercilessly beating over a great broken ship, had clambered up the
+stony ways, like staircases without stairs, on which the wild
+village hangs in little clusters, as fruit hangs on boughs, and had
+given the alarm.  And so, over the hill-slopes, and past the
+waterfall, and down the gullies where the land drains off into the
+ocean, the scattered quarrymen and fishermen inhabiting that part
+of Wales had come running to the dismal sight--their clergyman
+among them.  And as they stood in the leaden morning, stricken with
+pity, leaning hard against the wind, their breath and vision often
+failing as the sleet and spray rushed at them from the ever forming
+and dissolving mountains of sea, and as the wool which was a part
+of the vessel's cargo blew in with the salt foam and remained upon
+the land when the foam melted, they saw the ship's life-boat put
+off from one of the heaps of wreck; and first, there were three men
+in her, and in a moment she capsized, and there were but two; and
+again, she was struck by a vast mass of water, and there was but
+one; and again, she was thrown bottom upward, and that one, with
+his arm struck through the broken planks and waving as if for the
+help that could never reach him, went down into the deep.
+
+It was the clergyman himself from whom I heard this, while I stood
+on the shore, looking in his kind wholesome face as it turned to
+the spot where the boat had been.  The divers were down then, and
+busy.  They were 'lifting' to-day the gold found yesterday--some
+five-and-twenty thousand pounds.  Of three hundred and fifty
+thousand pounds' worth of gold, three hundred thousand pounds'
+worth, in round numbers, was at that time recovered.  The great
+bulk of the remainder was surely and steadily coming up.  Some loss
+of sovereigns there would be, of course; indeed, at first
+sovereigns had drifted in with the sand, and been scattered far and
+wide over the beach, like sea-shells; but most other golden
+treasure would be found.  As it was brought up, it went aboard the
+Tug-steamer, where good account was taken of it.  So tremendous had
+the force of the sea been when it broke the ship, that it had
+beaten one great ingot of gold, deep into a strong and heavy piece
+of her solid iron-work:  in which, also, several loose sovereigns
+that the ingot had swept in before it, had been found, as firmly
+embedded as though the iron had been liquid when they were forced
+there.  It had been remarked of such bodies come ashore, too, as
+had been seen by scientific men, that they had been stunned to
+death, and not suffocated.  Observation, both of the internal
+change that had been wrought in them, and of their external
+expression, showed death to have been thus merciful and easy.  The
+report was brought, while I was holding such discourse on the
+beach, that no more bodies had come ashore since last night.  It
+began to be very doubtful whether many more would be thrown up,
+until the north-east winds of the early spring set in.  Moreover, a
+great number of the passengers, and particularly the second-class
+women-passengers, were known to have been in the middle of the ship
+when she parted, and thus the collapsing wreck would have fallen
+upon them after yawning open, and would keep them down.  A diver
+made known, even then, that he had come upon the body of a man, and
+had sought to release it from a great superincumbent weight; but
+that, finding he could not do so without mutilating the remains, he
+had left it where it was.
+
+It was the kind and wholesome face I have made mention of as being
+then beside me, that I had purposed to myself to see, when I left
+home for Wales.  I had heard of that clergyman, as having buried
+many scores of the shipwrecked people; of his having opened his
+house and heart to their agonised friends; of his having used a
+most sweet and patient diligence for weeks and weeks, in the
+performance of the forlornest offices that Man can render to his
+kind; of his having most tenderly and thoroughly devoted himself to
+the dead, and to those who were sorrowing for the dead.  I had said
+to myself, 'In the Christmas season of the year, I should like to
+see that man!'  And he had swung the gate of his little garden in
+coming out to meet me, not half an hour ago.
+
+So cheerful of spirit and guiltless of affectation, as true
+practical Christianity ever is!  I read more of the New Testament
+in the fresh frank face going up the village beside me, in five
+minutes, than I have read in anathematising discourses (albeit put
+to press with enormous flourishing of trumpets), in all my life.  I
+heard more of the Sacred Book in the cordial voice that had nothing
+to say about its owner, than in all the would-be celestial pairs of
+bellows that have ever blown conceit at me.
+
+We climbed towards the little church, at a cheery pace, among the
+loose stones, the deep mud, the wet coarse grass, the outlying
+water, and other obstructions from which frost and snow had lately
+thawed.  It was a mistake (my friend was glad to tell me, on the
+way) to suppose that the peasantry had shown any superstitious
+avoidance of the drowned; on the whole, they had done very well,
+and had assisted readily.  Ten shillings had been paid for the
+bringing of each body up to the church, but the way was steep, and
+a horse and cart (in which it was wrapped in a sheet) were
+necessary, and three or four men, and, all things considered, it
+was not a great price.  The people were none the richer for the
+wreck, for it was the season of the herring-shoal--and who could
+cast nets for fish, and find dead men and women in the draught?
+
+He had the church keys in his hand, and opened the churchyard gate,
+and opened the church door; and we went in.
+
+It is a little church of great antiquity; there is reason to
+believe that some church has occupied the spot, these thousand
+years or more.  The pulpit was gone, and other things usually
+belonging to the church were gone, owing to its living congregation
+having deserted it for the neighbouring school-room, and yielded it
+up to the dead.  The very Commandments had been shouldered out of
+their places, in the bringing in of the dead; the black wooden
+tables on which they were painted, were askew, and on the stone
+pavement below them, and on the stone pavement all over the church,
+were the marks and stains where the drowned had been laid down.
+The eye, with little or no aid from the imagination, could yet see
+how the bodies had been turned, and where the head had been and
+where the feet.  Some faded traces of the wreck of the Australian
+ship may be discernible on the stone pavement of this little
+church, hundreds of years hence, when the digging for gold in
+Australia shall have long and long ceased out of the land.
+
+Forty-four shipwrecked men and women lay here at one time, awaiting
+burial.  Here, with weeping and wailing in every room of his house,
+my companion worked alone for hours, solemnly surrounded by eyes
+that could not see him, and by lips that could not speak to him,
+patiently examining the tattered clothing, cutting off buttons,
+hair, marks from linen, anything that might lead to subsequent
+identification, studying faces, looking for a scar, a bent finger,
+a crooked toe, comparing letters sent to him with the ruin about
+him.  'My dearest brother had bright grey eyes and a pleasant
+smile,' one sister wrote.  O poor sister! well for you to be far
+from here, and keep that as your last remembrance of him!
+
+The ladies of the clergyman's family, his wife and two sisters-in-
+law, came in among the bodies often.  It grew to be the business of
+their lives to do so.  Any new arrival of a bereaved woman would
+stimulate their pity to compare the description brought, with the
+dread realities.  Sometimes, they would go back able to say, 'I
+have found him,' or, 'I think she lies there.'  Perhaps, the
+mourner, unable to bear the sight of all that lay in the church,
+would be led in blindfold.  Conducted to the spot with many
+compassionate words, and encouraged to look, she would say, with a
+piercing cry, 'This is my boy!' and drop insensible on the
+insensible figure.
+
+He soon observed that in some cases of women, the identification of
+persons, though complete, was quite at variance with the marks upon
+the linen; this led him to notice that even the marks upon the
+linen were sometimes inconsistent with one another; and thus he
+came to understand that they had dressed in great haste and
+agitation, and that their clothes had become mixed together.  The
+identification of men by their dress, was rendered extremely
+difficult, in consequence of a large proportion of them being
+dressed alike--in clothes of one kind, that is to say, supplied by
+slopsellers and outfitters, and not made by single garments but by
+hundreds.  Many of the men were bringing over parrots, and had
+receipts upon them for the price of the birds; others had bills of
+exchange in their pockets, or in belts.  Some of these documents,
+carefully unwrinkled and dried, were little less fresh in
+appearance that day, than the present page will be under ordinary
+circumstances, after having been opened three or four times.
+
+In that lonely place, it had not been easy to obtain even such
+common commodities in towns, as ordinary disinfectants.  Pitch had
+been burnt in the church, as the readiest thing at hand, and the
+frying-pan in which it had bubbled over a brazier of coals was
+still there, with its ashes.  Hard by the Communion-Table, were
+some boots that had been taken off the drowned and preserved--a
+gold-digger's boot, cut down the leg for its removal--a trodden-
+down man's ankle-boot with a buff cloth top--and others--soaked and
+sandy, weedy and salt.
+
+From the church, we passed out into the churchyard.  Here, there
+lay, at that time, one hundred and forty-five bodies, that had come
+ashore from the wreck.  He had buried them, when not identified, in
+graves containing four each.  He had numbered each body in a
+register describing it, and had placed a corresponding number on
+each coffin, and over each grave.  Identified bodies he had buried
+singly, in private graves, in another part of the church-yard.
+Several bodies had been exhumed from the graves of four, as
+relatives had come from a distance and seen his register; and, when
+recognised, these have been reburied in private graves, so that the
+mourners might erect separate headstones over the remains.  In all
+such cases he had performed the funeral service a second time, and
+the ladies of his house had attended.  There had been no offence in
+the poor ashes when they were brought again to the light of day;
+the beneficent Earth had already absorbed it.  The drowned were
+buried in their clothes.  To supply the great sudden demand for
+coffins, he had got all the neighbouring people handy at tools, to
+work the livelong day, and Sunday likewise.  The coffins were
+neatly formed;--I had seen two, waiting for occupants, under the
+lee of the ruined walls of a stone hut on the beach, within call of
+the tent where the Christmas Feast was held.  Similarly, one of the
+graves for four was lying open and ready, here, in the churchyard.
+So much of the scanty space was already devoted to the wrecked
+people, that the villagers had begun to express uneasy doubts
+whether they themselves could lie in their own ground, with their
+forefathers and descendants, by-and-by.  The churchyard being but a
+step from the clergyman's dwelling-house, we crossed to the latter;
+the white surplice was hanging up near the door ready to be put on
+at any time, for a funeral service.
+
+The cheerful earnestness of this good Christian minister was as
+consolatory, as the circumstances out of which it shone were sad.
+I never have seen anything more delightfully genuine than the calm
+dismissal by himself and his household of all they had undergone,
+as a simple duty that was quietly done and ended.  In speaking of
+it, they spoke of it with great compassion for the bereaved; but
+laid no stress upon their own hard share in those weary weeks,
+except as it had attached many people to them as friends, and
+elicited many touching expressions of gratitude.  This clergyman's
+brother--himself the clergyman of two adjoining parishes, who had
+buried thirty-four of the bodies in his own churchyard, and who had
+done to them all that his brother had done as to the larger number-
+-must be understood as included in the family.  He was there, with
+his neatly arranged papers, and made no more account of his trouble
+than anybody else did.  Down to yesterday's post outward, my
+clergyman alone had written one thousand and seventy-five letters
+to relatives and friends of the lost people.  In the absence of
+self-assertion, it was only through my now and then delicately
+putting a question as the occasion arose, that I became informed of
+these things.  It was only when I had remarked again and again, in
+the church, on the awful nature of the scene of death he had been
+required so closely to familiarise himself with for the soothing of
+the living, that he had casually said, without the least abatement
+of his cheerfulness, 'indeed, it had rendered him unable for a time
+to eat or drink more than a little coffee now and then, and a piece
+of bread.'
+
+In this noble modesty, in this beautiful simplicity, in this serene
+avoidance of the least attempt to 'improve' an occasion which might
+be supposed to have sunk of its own weight into my heart, I seemed
+to have happily come, in a few steps, from the churchyard with its
+open grave, which was the type of Death, to the Christian dwelling
+side by side with it, which was the type of Resurrection.  I never
+shall think of the former, without the latter.  The two will always
+rest side by side in my memory.  If I had lost any one dear to me
+in this unfortunate ship, if I had made a voyage from Australia to
+look at the grave in the churchyard, I should go away, thankful to
+GOD that that house was so close to it, and that its shadow by day
+and its domestic lights by night fell upon the earth in which its
+Master had so tenderly laid my dear one's head.
+
+The references that naturally arose out of our conversation, to the
+descriptions sent down of shipwrecked persons, and to the gratitude
+of relations and friends, made me very anxious to see some of those
+letters.  I was presently seated before a shipwreck of papers, all
+bordered with black, and from them I made the following few
+extracts.
+
+A mother writes:
+
+
+REVEREND SIR.  Amongst the many who perished on your shore was
+numbered my beloved son.  I was only just recovering from a severe
+illness, and this fearful affliction has caused a relapse, so that
+I am unable at present to go to identify the remains of the loved
+and lost.  My darling son would have been sixteen on Christmas-day
+next.  He was a most amiable and obedient child, early taught the
+way of salvation.  We fondly hoped that as a British seaman he
+might be an ornament to his profession, but, 'it is well;' I feel
+assured my dear boy is now with the redeemed.  Oh, he did not wish
+to go this last voyage!  On the fifteenth of October, I received a
+letter from him from Melbourne, date August twelfth; he wrote in
+high spirits, and in conclusion he says:  'Pray for a fair breeze,
+dear mamma, and I'll not forget to whistle for it! and, God
+permitting, I shall see you and all my little pets again.  Good-
+bye, dear mother--good-bye, dearest parents.  Good-bye, dear
+brother.'  Oh, it was indeed an eternal farewell.  I do not
+apologise for thus writing you, for oh, my heart is so very
+sorrowful.
+
+
+A husband writes:
+
+
+MY DEAR KIND SIR.  Will you kindly inform me whether there are any
+initials upon the ring and guard you have in possession, found, as
+the Standard says, last Tuesday?  Believe me, my dear sir, when I
+say that I cannot express my deep gratitude in words sufficiently
+for your kindness to me on that fearful and appalling day.  Will
+you tell me what I can do for you, and will you write me a
+consoling letter to prevent my mind from going astray?
+
+
+A widow writes:
+
+
+Left in such a state as I am, my friends and I thought it best that
+my dear husband should be buried where he lies, and, much as I
+should have liked to have had it otherwise, I must submit.  I feel,
+from all I have heard of you, that you will see it done decently
+and in order.  Little does it signify to us, when the soul has
+departed, where this poor body lies, but we who are left behind
+would do all we can to show how we loved them.  This is denied me,
+but it is God's hand that afflicts us, and I try to submit.  Some
+day I may be able to visit the spot, and see where he lies, and
+erect a simple stone to his memory.  Oh! it will be long, long
+before I forget that dreadful night!  Is there such a thing in the
+vicinity, or any shop in Bangor, to which I could send for a small
+picture of Moelfra or Llanallgo church, a spot now sacred to me?
+
+
+Another widow writes:
+
+
+I have received your letter this morning, and do thank you most
+kindly for the interest you have taken about my dear husband, as
+well for the sentiments yours contains, evincing the spirit of a
+Christian who can sympathise with those who, like myself, are
+broken down with grief.
+
+May God bless and sustain you, and all in connection with you, in
+this great trial.  Time may roll on and bear all its sons away, but
+your name as a disinterested person will stand in history, and, as
+successive years pass, many a widow will think of your noble
+conduct, and the tears of gratitude flow down many a cheek, the
+tribute of a thankful heart, when other things are forgotten for
+ever.
+
+
+A father writes:
+
+
+I am at a loss to find words to sufficiently express my gratitude
+to you for your kindness to my son Richard upon the melancholy
+occasion of his visit to his dear brother's body, and also for your
+ready attention in pronouncing our beautiful burial service over my
+poor unfortunate son's remains.  God grant that your prayers over
+him may reach the Mercy Seat, and that his soul may be received
+(through Christ's intercession) into heaven!
+
+His dear mother begs me to convey to you her heartfelt thanks.
+
+
+Those who were received at the clergyman's house, write thus, after
+leaving it:
+
+
+DEAR AND NEVER-TO-BE-FORGOTTEN FRIENDS.  I arrived here yesterday
+morning without accident, and am about to proceed to my home by
+railway.
+
+I am overpowered when I think of you and your hospitable home.  No
+words could speak language suited to my heart.  I refrain.  God
+reward you with the same measure you have meted with!
+
+I enumerate no names, but embrace you all.
+
+
+MY BELOVED FRIENDS.  This is the first day that I have been able to
+leave my bedroom since I returned, which will explain the reason of
+my not writing sooner.
+
+If I could only have had my last melancholy hope realised in
+recovering the body of my beloved and lamented son, I should have
+returned home somewhat comforted, and I think I could then have
+been comparatively resigned.
+
+I fear now there is but little prospect, and I mourn as one without
+hope.
+
+The only consolation to my distressed mind is in having been so
+feelingly allowed by you to leave the matter in your hands, by whom
+I well know that everything will be done that can be, according to
+arrangements made before I left the scene of the awful catastrophe,
+both as to the identification of my dear son, and also his
+interment.
+
+I feel most anxious to hear whether anything fresh has transpired
+since I left you; will you add another to the many deep obligations
+I am under to you by writing to me?  And should the body of my dear
+and unfortunate son be identified, let me hear from you
+immediately, and I will come again.
+
+Words cannot express the gratitude I feel I owe to you all for your
+benevolent aid, your kindness, and your sympathy.
+
+
+MY DEARLY BELOVED FRIENDS.  I arrived in safety at my house
+yesterday, and a night's rest has restored and tranquillised me.  I
+must again repeat, that language has no words by which I can
+express my sense of obligation to you.  You are enshrined in my
+heart of hearts.
+
+I have seen him! and can now realise my misfortune more than I have
+hitherto been able to do.  Oh, the bitterness of the cup I drink!
+But I bow submissive.  God MUST have done right.  I do not want to
+feel less, but to acquiesce more simply.
+
+
+There were some Jewish passengers on board the Royal Charter, and
+the gratitude of the Jewish people is feelingly expressed in the
+following letter bearing date from 'the office of the Chief Rabbi:'
+
+
+REVEREND SIR.  I cannot refrain from expressing to you my heartfelt
+thanks on behalf of those of my flock whose relatives have
+unfortunately been among those who perished at the late wreck of
+the Royal Charter.  You have, indeed, like Boaz, 'not left off your
+kindness to the living and the dead.'
+
+You have not alone acted kindly towards the living by receiving
+them hospitably at your house, and energetically assisting them in
+their mournful duty, but also towards the dead, by exerting
+yourself to have our co-religionists buried in our ground, and
+according to our rites.  May our heavenly Father reward you for
+your acts of humanity and true philanthropy!
+
+
+The 'Old Hebrew congregation of Liverpool' thus express themselves
+through their secretary:
+
+
+REVEREND SIR.  The wardens of this congregation have learned with
+great pleasure that, in addition to those indefatigable exertions,
+at the scene of the late disaster to the Royal Charter, which have
+received universal recognition, you have very benevolently employed
+your valuable efforts to assist such members of our faith as have
+sought the bodies of lost friends to give them burial in our
+consecrated grounds, with the observances and rites prescribed by
+the ordinances of our religion.
+
+The wardens desire me to take the earliest available opportunity to
+offer to you, on behalf of our community, the expression of their
+warm acknowledgments and grateful thanks, and their sincere wishes
+for your continued welfare and prosperity.
+
+
+A Jewish gentleman writes:
+
+
+REVEREND AND DEAR SIR.  I take the opportunity of thanking you
+right earnestly for the promptness you displayed in answering my
+note with full particulars concerning my much lamented brother, and
+I also herein beg to express my sincere regard for the willingness
+you displayed and for the facility you afforded for getting the
+remains of my poor brother exhumed.  It has been to us a most
+sorrowful and painful event, but when we meet with such friends as
+yourself, it in a measure, somehow or other, abates that mental
+anguish, and makes the suffering so much easier to be borne.
+Considering the circumstances connected with my poor brother's
+fate, it does, indeed, appear a hard one.  He had been away in all
+seven years; he returned four years ago to see his family.  He was
+then engaged to a very amiable young lady.  He had been very
+successful abroad, and was now returning to fulfil his sacred vow;
+he brought all his property with him in gold uninsured.  We heard
+from him when the ship stopped at Queenstown, when he was in the
+highest of hope, and in a few short hours afterwards all was washed
+away.
+
+
+Mournful in the deepest degree, but too sacred for quotation here,
+were the numerous references to those miniatures of women worn
+round the necks of rough men (and found there after death), those
+locks of hair, those scraps of letters, those many many slight
+memorials of hidden tenderness.  One man cast up by the sea bore
+about him, printed on a perforated lace card, the following
+singular (and unavailing) charm:
+
+
+A BLESSING.
+
+
+May the blessing of God await thee.  May the sun of glory shine
+around thy bed; and may the gates of plenty, honour, and happiness
+be ever open to thee.  May no sorrow distress thy days; may no
+grief disturb thy nights.  May the pillow of peace kiss thy cheek,
+and the pleasures of imagination attend thy dreams; and when length
+of years makes thee tired of earthly joys, and the curtain of death
+gently closes around thy last sleep of human existence, may the
+Angel of God attend thy bed, and take care that the expiring lamp
+of life shall not receive one rude blast to hasten on its
+extinction.
+
+
+A sailor had these devices on his right arm.  'Our Saviour on the
+Cross, the forehead of the Crucifix and the vesture stained red; on
+the lower part of the arm, a man and woman; on one side of the
+Cross, the appearance of a half moon, with a face; on the other
+side, the sun; on the top of the Cross, the letters I.H.S.; on the
+left arm, a man and woman dancing, with an effort to delineate the
+female's dress; under which, initials.'  Another seaman 'had, on
+the lower part of the right arm, the device of a sailor and a
+female; the man holding the Union Jack with a streamer, the folds
+of which waved over her head, and the end of it was held in her
+hand.  On the upper part of the arm, a device of Our Lord on the
+Cross, with stars surrounding the head of the Cross, and one large
+star on the side in Indian Ink.  On the left arm, a flag, a true
+lover's knot, a face, and initials.'  This tattooing was found
+still plain, below the discoloured outer surface of a mutilated
+arm, when such surface was carefully scraped away with a knife.  It
+is not improbable that the perpetuation of this marking custom
+among seamen, may be referred back to their desire to be
+identified, if drowned and flung ashore.
+
+It was some time before I could sever myself from the many
+interesting papers on the table, and then I broke bread and drank
+wine with the kind family before I left them.  As I brought the
+Coast-guard down, so I took the Postman back, with his leathern
+wallet, walking-stick, bugle, and terrier dog.  Many a heart-broken
+letter had he brought to the Rectory House within two months many;
+a benignantly painstaking answer had he carried back.
+
+As I rode along, I thought of the many people, inhabitants of this
+mother country, who would make pilgrimages to the little churchyard
+in the years to come; I thought of the many people in Australia,
+who would have an interest in such a shipwreck, and would find
+their way here when they visit the Old World; I thought of the
+writers of all the wreck of letters I had left upon the table; and
+I resolved to place this little record where it stands.
+Convocations, Conferences, Diocesan Epistles, and the like, will do
+a great deal for Religion, I dare say, and Heaven send they may!
+but I doubt if they will ever do their Master's service half so
+well, in all the time they last, as the Heavens have seen it done
+in this bleak spot upon the rugged coast of Wales.
+
+Had I lost the friend of my life, in the wreck of the Royal
+Charter; had I lost my betrothed, the more than friend of my life;
+had I lost my maiden daughter, had I lost my hopeful boy, had I
+lost my little child; I would kiss the hands that worked so busily
+and gently in the church, and say, 'None better could have touched
+the form, though it had lain at home.'  I could be sure of it, I
+could be thankful for it:  I could be content to leave the grave
+near the house the good family pass in and out of every day,
+undisturbed, in the little churchyard where so many are so
+strangely brought together.
+
+Without the name of the clergyman to whom--I hope, not without
+carrying comfort to some heart at some time--I have referred, my
+reference would be as nothing.  He is the Reverend Stephen Roose
+Hughes, of Llanallgo, near Moelfra, Anglesey.  His brother is the
+Reverend Hugh Robert Hughes, of Penrhos, Alligwy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--WAPPING WORKHOUSE
+
+
+
+My day's no-business beckoning me to the East-end of London, I had
+turned my face to that point of the metropolitan compass on leaving
+Covent-garden, and had got past the India House, thinking in my
+idle manner of Tippoo-Sahib and Charles Lamb, and had got past my
+little wooden midshipman, after affectionately patting him on one
+leg of his knee-shorts for old acquaintance' sake, and had got past
+Aldgate Pump, and had got past the Saracen's Head (with an
+ignominious rash of posting bills disfiguring his swarthy
+countenance), and had strolled up the empty yard of his ancient
+neighbour the Black or Blue Boar, or Bull, who departed this life I
+don't know when, and whose coaches are all gone I don't know where;
+and I had come out again into the age of railways, and I had got
+past Whitechapel Church, and was--rather inappropriately for an
+Uncommercial Traveller--in the Commercial Road.  Pleasantly
+wallowing in the abundant mud of that thoroughfare, and greatly
+enjoying the huge piles of building belonging to the sugar
+refiners, the little masts and vanes in small back gardens in back
+streets, the neighbouring canals and docks, the India vans
+lumbering along their stone tramway, and the pawnbrokers' shops
+where hard-up Mates had pawned so many sextants and quadrants, that
+I should have bought a few cheap if I had the least notion how to
+use them, I at last began to file off to the right, towards
+Wapping.
+
+Not that I intended to take boat at Wapping Old Stairs, or that I
+was going to look at the locality, because I believe (for I don't)
+in the constancy of the young woman who told her sea-going lover,
+to such a beautiful old tune, that she had ever continued the same,
+since she gave him the 'baccer-box marked with his name; I am
+afraid he usually got the worst of those transactions, and was
+frightfully taken in.  No, I was going to Wapping, because an
+Eastern police magistrate had said, through the morning papers,
+that there was no classification at the Wapping workhouse for
+women, and that it was a disgrace and a shame, and divers other
+hard names, and because I wished to see how the fact really stood.
+For, that Eastern police magistrates are not always the wisest men
+of the East, may be inferred from their course of procedure
+respecting the fancy-dressing and pantomime-posturing at St.
+George's in that quarter:  which is usually, to discuss the matter
+at issue, in a state of mind betokening the weakest perplexity,
+with all parties concerned and unconcerned, and, for a final
+expedient, to consult the complainant as to what he thinks ought to
+be done with the defendant, and take the defendant's opinion as to
+what he would recommend to be done with himself.
+
+Long before I reached Wapping, I gave myself up as having lost my
+way, and, abandoning myself to the narrow streets in a Turkish
+frame of mind, relied on predestination to bring me somehow or
+other to the place I wanted if I were ever to get there.  When I
+had ceased for an hour or so to take any trouble about the matter,
+I found myself on a swing-bridge looking down at some dark locks in
+some dirty water.  Over against me, stood a creature remotely in
+the likeness of a young man, with a puffed sallow face, and a
+figure all dirty and shiny and slimy, who may have been the
+youngest son of his filthy old father, Thames, or the drowned man
+about whom there was a placard on the granite post like a large
+thimble, that stood between us.
+
+I asked this apparition what it called the place?  Unto which, it
+replied, with a ghastly grin and a sound like gurgling water in its
+throat:
+
+'Mr. Baker's trap.'
+
+As it is a point of great sensitiveness with me on such occasions
+to be equal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation, I
+deeply considered the meaning of this speech, while I eyed the
+apparition--then engaged in hugging and sucking a horizontal iron
+bar at the top of the locks.  Inspiration suggested to me that Mr.
+Baker was the acting coroner of that neighbourhood.
+
+'A common place for suicide,' said I, looking down at the locks.
+
+'Sue?' returned the ghost, with a stare.  'Yes!  And Poll.
+Likewise Emily.  And Nancy.  And Jane;' he sucked the iron between
+each name; 'and all the bileing.  Ketches off their bonnets or
+shorls, takes a run, and headers down here, they doos.  Always a
+headerin' down here, they is.  Like one o'clock.'
+
+'And at about that hour of the morning, I suppose?'
+
+'Ah!' said the apparition.  'THEY an't partickler.  Two 'ull do for
+THEM.  Three.  All times o' night.  On'y mind you!'  Here the
+apparition rested his profile on the bar, and gurgled in a
+sarcastic manner.  'There must be somebody comin'.  They don't go a
+headerin' down here, wen there an't no Bobby nor gen'ral Cove, fur
+to hear the splash.'
+
+According to my interpretation of these words, I was myself a
+General Cove, or member of the miscellaneous public.  In which
+modest character I remarked:
+
+'They are often taken out, are they, and restored?'
+
+'I dunno about restored,' said the apparition, who, for some occult
+reason, very much objected to that word; 'they're carried into the
+werkiss and put into a 'ot bath, and brought round.  But I dunno
+about restored,' said the apparition; 'blow THAT!'--and vanished.
+
+As it had shown a desire to become offensive, I was not sorry to
+find myself alone, especially as the 'werkiss' it had indicated
+with a twist of its matted head, was close at hand.  So I left Mr.
+Baker's terrible trap (baited with a scum that was like the soapy
+rinsing of sooty chimneys), and made bold to ring at the workhouse
+gate, where I was wholly unexpected and quite unknown.
+
+A very bright and nimble little matron, with a bunch of keys in her
+hand, responded to my request to see the House.  I began to doubt
+whether the police magistrate was quite right in his facts, when I
+noticed her quick, active little figure and her intelligent eyes.
+
+The Traveller (the matron intimated) should see the worst first.
+He was welcome to see everything.  Such as it was, there it all
+was.
+
+This was the only preparation for our entering 'the Foul wards.'
+They were in an old building squeezed away in a corner of a paved
+yard, quite detached from the more modern and spacious main body of
+the workhouse.  They were in a building most monstrously behind the
+time--a mere series of garrets or lofts, with every inconvenient
+and objectionable circumstance in their construction, and only
+accessible by steep and narrow staircases, infamously ill-adapted
+for the passage up-stairs of the sick or down-stairs of the dead.
+
+A-bed in these miserable rooms, here on bedsteads, there (for a
+change, as I understood it) on the floor, were women in every stage
+of distress and disease.  None but those who have attentively
+observed such scenes, can conceive the extraordinary variety of
+expression still latent under the general monotony and uniformity
+of colour, attitude, and condition.  The form a little coiled up
+and turned away, as though it had turned its back on this world for
+ever; the uninterested face at once lead-coloured and yellow,
+looking passively upward from the pillow; the haggard mouth a
+little dropped, the hand outside the coverlet, so dull and
+indifferent, so light, and yet so heavy; these were on every
+pallet; but when I stopped beside a bed, and said ever so slight a
+word to the figure lying there, the ghost of the old character came
+into the face, and made the Foul ward as various as the fair world.
+No one appeared to care to live, but no one complained; all who
+could speak, said that as much was done for them as could be done
+there, that the attendance was kind and patient, that their
+suffering was very heavy, but they had nothing to ask for.  The
+wretched rooms were as clean and sweet as it is possible for such
+rooms to be; they would become a pest-house in a single week, if
+they were ill-kept.
+
+I accompanied the brisk matron up another barbarous staircase, into
+a better kind of loft devoted to the idiotic and imbecile.  There
+was at least Light in it, whereas the windows in the former wards
+had been like sides of school-boys' bird-cages.  There was a strong
+grating over the fire here, and, holding a kind of state on either
+side of the hearth, separated by the breadth of this grating, were
+two old ladies in a condition of feeble dignity, which was surely
+the very last and lowest reduction of self-complacency to be found
+in this wonderful humanity of ours.  They were evidently jealous of
+each other, and passed their whole time (as some people do, whose
+fires are not grated) in mentally disparaging each other, and
+contemptuously watching their neighbours.  One of these parodies on
+provincial gentlewomen was extremely talkative, and expressed a
+strong desire to attend the service on Sundays, from which she
+represented herself to have derived the greatest interest and
+consolation when allowed that privilege.  She gossiped so well, and
+looked altogether so cheery and harmless, that I began to think
+this a case for the Eastern magistrate, until I found that on the
+last occasion of her attending chapel she had secreted a small
+stick, and had caused some confusion in the responses by suddenly
+producing it and belabouring the congregation.
+
+So, these two old ladies, separated by the breadth of the grating--
+otherwise they would fly at one another's caps--sat all day long,
+suspecting one another, and contemplating a world of fits.  For
+everybody else in the room had fits, except the wards-woman; an
+elderly, able-bodied pauperess, with a large upper lip, and an air
+of repressing and saving her strength, as she stood with her hands
+folded before her, and her eyes slowly rolling, biding her time for
+catching or holding somebody.  This civil personage (in whom I
+regretted to identify a reduced member of my honourable friend Mrs.
+Gamp's family) said, 'They has 'em continiwal, sir.  They drops
+without no more notice than if they was coach-horses dropped from
+the moon, sir.  And when one drops, another drops, and sometimes
+there'll be as many as four or five on 'em at once, dear me, a
+rolling and a tearin', bless you!--this young woman, now, has 'em
+dreadful bad.'
+
+She turned up this young woman's face with her hand as she said it.
+This young woman was seated on the floor, pondering in the
+foreground of the afflicted.  There was nothing repellent either in
+her face or head.  Many, apparently worse, varieties of epilepsy
+and hysteria were about her, but she was said to be the worst here.
+When I had spoken to her a little, she still sat with her face
+turned up, pondering, and a gleam of the mid-day sun shone in upon
+her.
+
+- Whether this young woman, and the rest of these so sorely
+troubled, as they sit or lie pondering in their confused dull way,
+ever get mental glimpses among the motes in the sunlight, of
+healthy people and healthy things?  Whether this young woman,
+brooding like this in the summer season, ever thinks that somewhere
+there are trees and flowers, even mountains and the great sea?
+Whether, not to go so far, this young woman ever has any dim
+revelation of that young woman--that young woman who is not here
+and never will come here; who is courted, and caressed, and loved,
+and has a husband, and bears children, and lives in a home, and who
+never knows what it is to have this lashing and tearing coming upon
+her?  And whether this young woman, God help her, gives herself up
+then and drops like a coach-horse from the moon?
+
+I hardly knew whether the voices of infant children, penetrating
+into so hopeless a place, made a sound that was pleasant or painful
+to me.  It was something to be reminded that the weary world was
+not all aweary, and was ever renewing itself; but, this young woman
+was a child not long ago, and a child not long hence might be such
+as she.  Howbeit, the active step and eye of the vigilant matron
+conducted me past the two provincial gentlewomen (whose dignity was
+ruffled by the children), and into the adjacent nursery.
+
+There were many babies here, and more than one handsome young
+mother.  There were ugly young mothers also, and sullen young
+mothers, and callous young mothers.  But, the babies had not
+appropriated to themselves any bad expression yet, and might have
+been, for anything that appeared to the contrary in their soft
+faces, Princes Imperial, and Princesses Royal.  I had the pleasure
+of giving a poetical commission to the baker's man to make a cake
+with all despatch and toss it into the oven for one red-headed
+young pauper and myself, and felt much the better for it.  Without
+that refreshment, I doubt if I should have been in a condition for
+'the Refractories,' towards whom my quick little matron--for whose
+adaptation to her office I had by this time conceived a genuine
+respect--drew me next, and marshalled me the way that I was going.
+
+The Refractories were picking oakum, in a small room giving on a
+yard.  They sat in line on a form, with their backs to a window;
+before them, a table, and their work.  The oldest Refractory was,
+say twenty; youngest Refractory, say sixteen.  I have never yet
+ascertained in the course of my uncommercial travels, why a
+Refractory habit should affect the tonsils and uvula; but, I have
+always observed that Refractories of both sexes and every grade,
+between a Ragged School and the Old Bailey, have one voice, in
+which the tonsils and uvula gain a diseased ascendency.
+
+'Five pound indeed!  I hain't a going fur to pick five pound,' said
+the Chief of the Refractories, keeping time to herself with her
+head and chin.  'More than enough to pick what we picks now, in
+sich a place as this, and on wot we gets here!'
+
+(This was in acknowledgment of a delicate intimation that the
+amount of work was likely to be increased.  It certainly was not
+heavy then, for one Refractory had already done her day's task--it
+was barely two o'clock--and was sitting behind it, with a head
+exactly matching it.)
+
+'A pretty Ouse this is, matron, ain't it?' said Refractory Two,
+'where a pleeseman's called in, if a gal says a word!'
+
+'And wen you're sent to prison for nothink or less!' said the
+Chief, tugging at her oakum as if it were the matron's hair.  'But
+any place is better than this; that's one thing, and be thankful!'
+
+A laugh of Refractories led by Oakum Head with folded arms--who
+originated nothing, but who was in command of the skirmishers
+outside the conversation.
+
+'If any place is better than this,' said my brisk guide, in the
+calmest manner, 'it is a pity you left a good place when you had
+one.'
+
+'Ho, no, I didn't, matron,' returned the Chief, with another pull
+at her oakum, and a very expressive look at the enemy's forehead.
+'Don't say that, matron, cos it's lies!'
+
+Oakum Head brought up the skirmishers again, skirmished, and
+retired.
+
+'And _I_ warn't a going,' exclaimed Refractory Two, 'though I was
+in one place for as long as four year--_I_ warn't a going fur to
+stop in a place that warn't fit for me--there!  And where the
+family warn't 'spectable characters--there!  And where I
+fortunately or hunfort'nately, found that the people warn't what
+they pretended to make theirselves out to be--there!  And where it
+wasn't their faults, by chalks, if I warn't made bad and ruinated--
+Hah!'
+
+During this speech, Oakum Head had again made a diversion with the
+skirmishers, and had again withdrawn.
+
+The Uncommercial Traveller ventured to remark that he supposed
+Chief Refractory and Number One, to be the two young women who had
+been taken before the magistrate?
+
+'Yes!' said the Chief, 'we har! and the wonder is, that a pleeseman
+an't 'ad in now, and we took off agen.  You can't open your lips
+here, without a pleeseman.'
+
+Number Two laughed (very uvularly), and the skirmishers followed
+suit.
+
+'I'm sure I'd be thankful,' protested the Chief, looking sideways
+at the Uncommercial, 'if I could be got into a place, or got
+abroad.  I'm sick and tired of this precious Ouse, I am, with
+reason.'
+
+So would be, and so was, Number Two.  So would be, and so was,
+Oakum Head.  So would be, and so were, Skirmishers.
+
+The Uncommercial took the liberty of hinting that he hardly thought
+it probable that any lady or gentleman in want of a likely young
+domestic of retiring manners, would be tempted into the engagement
+of either of the two leading Refractories, on her own presentation
+of herself as per sample.
+
+'It ain't no good being nothink else here,' said the Chief.
+
+The Uncommercial thought it might be worth trying.
+
+'Oh no it ain't,' said the Chief.
+
+'Not a bit of good,' said Number Two.
+
+'And I'm sure I'd be very thankful to be got into a place, or got
+abroad,' said the Chief.
+
+'And so should I,' said Number Two.  'Truly thankful, I should.'
+
+Oakum Head then rose, and announced as an entirely new idea, the
+mention of which profound novelty might be naturally expected to
+startle her unprepared hearers, that she would be very thankful to
+be got into a place, or got abroad.  And, as if she had then said,
+'Chorus, ladies!' all the Skirmishers struck up to the same
+purpose.  We left them, thereupon, and began a long walk among the
+women who were simply old and infirm; but whenever, in the course
+of this same walk, I looked out of any high window that commanded
+the yard, I saw Oakum Head and all the other Refractories looking
+out at their low window for me, and never failing to catch me, the
+moment I showed my head.
+
+In ten minutes I had ceased to believe in such fables of a golden
+time as youth, the prime of life, or a hale old age.  In ten
+minutes, all the lights of womankind seemed to have been blown out,
+and nothing in that way to be left this vault to brag of, but the
+flickering and expiring snuffs.
+
+And what was very curious, was, that these dim old women had one
+company notion which was the fashion of the place.  Every old woman
+who became aware of a visitor and was not in bed hobbled over a
+form into her accustomed seat, and became one of a line of dim old
+women confronting another line of dim old women across a narrow
+table.  There was no obligation whatever upon them to range
+themselves in this way; it was their manner of 'receiving.'  As a
+rule, they made no attempt to talk to one another, or to look at
+the visitor, or to look at anything, but sat silently working their
+mouths, like a sort of poor old Cows.  In some of these wards, it
+was good to see a few green plants; in others, an isolated
+Refractory acting as nurse, who did well enough in that capacity,
+when separated from her compeers; every one of these wards, day
+room, night room, or both combined, was scrupulously clean and
+fresh.  I have seen as many such places as most travellers in my
+line, and I never saw one such, better kept.
+
+Among the bedridden there was great patience, great reliance on the
+books under the pillow, great faith in GOD.  All cared for
+sympathy, but none much cared to be encouraged with hope of
+recovery; on the whole, I should say, it was considered rather a
+distinction to have a complication of disorders, and to be in a
+worse way than the rest.  From some of the windows, the river could
+be seen with all its life and movement; the day was bright, but I
+came upon no one who was looking out.
+
+In one large ward, sitting by the fire in arm-chairs of
+distinction, like the President and Vice of the good company, were
+two old women, upwards of ninety years of age.  The younger of the
+two, just turned ninety, was deaf, but not very, and could easily
+be made to hear.  In her early time she had nursed a child, who was
+now another old woman, more infirm than herself, inhabiting the
+very same chamber.  She perfectly understood this when the matron
+told it, and, with sundry nods and motions of her forefinger,
+pointed out the woman in question.  The elder of this pair, ninety-
+three, seated before an illustrated newspaper (but not reading it),
+was a bright-eyed old soul, really not deaf, wonderfully preserved,
+and amazingly conversational.  She had not long lost her husband,
+and had been in that place little more than a year.  At Boston, in
+the State of Massachusetts, this poor creature would have been
+individually addressed, would have been tended in her own room, and
+would have had her life gently assimilated to a comfortable life
+out of doors.  Would that be much to do in England for a woman who
+has kept herself out of a workhouse more than ninety rough long
+years?  When Britain first, at Heaven's command, arose, with a
+great deal of allegorical confusion, from out the azure main, did
+her guardian angels positively forbid it in the Charter which has
+been so much besung?
+
+The object of my journey was accomplished when the nimble matron
+had no more to show me.  As I shook hands with her at the gate, I
+told her that I thought justice had not used her very well, and
+that the wise men of the East were not infallible.
+
+Now, I reasoned with myself, as I made my journey home again,
+concerning those Foul wards.  They ought not to exist; no person of
+common decency and humanity can see them and doubt it.  But what is
+this Union to do?  The necessary alteration would cost several
+thousands of pounds; it has already to support three workhouses;
+its inhabitants work hard for their bare lives, and are already
+rated for the relief of the Poor to the utmost extent of reasonable
+endurance.  One poor parish in this very Union is rated to the
+amount of FIVE AND SIXPENCE in the pound, at the very same time
+when the rich parish of Saint George's, Hanover-square, is rated at
+about SEVENPENCE in the pound, Paddington at about FOURPENCE, Saint
+James's, Westminster, at about TENPENCE!  It is only through the
+equalisation of Poor Rates that what is left undone in this wise,
+can be done.  Much more is left undone, or is ill-done, than I have
+space to suggest in these notes of a single uncommercial journey;
+but, the wise men of the East, before they can reasonably hold
+forth about it, must look to the North and South and West; let them
+also, any morning before taking the seat of Solomon, look into the
+shops and dwellings all around the Temple, and first ask themselves
+'how much more can these poor people--many of whom keep themselves
+with difficulty enough out of the workhouse--bear?'
+
+I had yet other matter for reflection as I journeyed home, inasmuch
+as, before I altogether departed from the neighbourhood of Mr.
+Baker's trap, I had knocked at the gate of the workhouse of St.
+George's-in-the-East, and had found it to be an establishment
+highly creditable to those parts, and thoroughly well administered
+by a most intelligent master.  I remarked in it, an instance of the
+collateral harm that obstinate vanity and folly can do.  'This was
+the Hall where those old paupers, male and female, whom I had just
+seen, met for the Church service, was it?'--'Yes.'--'Did they sing
+the Psalms to any instrument?'--'They would like to, very much;
+they would have an extraordinary interest in doing so.'--'And could
+none be got?'--'Well, a piano could even have been got for nothing,
+but these unfortunate dissensions--'  Ah! better, far better, my
+Christian friend in the beautiful garment, to have let the singing
+boys alone, and left the multitude to sing for themselves!  You
+should know better than I, but I think I have read that they did
+so, once upon a time, and that 'when they had sung an hymn,' Some
+one (not in a beautiful garment) went up into the Mount of Olives.
+
+It made my heart ache to think of this miserable trifling, in the
+streets of a city where every stone seemed to call to me, as I
+walked along, 'Turn this way, man, and see what waits to be done!'
+So I decoyed myself into another train of thought to ease my heart.
+But, I don't know that I did it, for I was so full of paupers, that
+it was, after all, only a change to a single pauper, who took
+possession of my remembrance instead of a thousand.
+
+'I beg your pardon, sir,' he had said, in a confidential manner, on
+another occasion, taking me aside; 'but I have seen better days.'
+
+'I am very sorry to hear it.'
+
+'Sir, I have a complaint to make against the master.'
+
+'I have no power here, I assure you.  And if I had--'
+
+'But, allow me, sir, to mention it, as between yourself and a man
+who has seen better days, sir.  The master and myself are both
+masons, sir, and I make him the sign continually; but, because I am
+in this unfortunate position, sir, he won't give me the counter-
+sign!'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--TWO VIEWS OF A CHEAP THEATRE
+
+
+
+As I shut the door of my lodging behind me, and came out into the
+streets at six on a drizzling Saturday evening in the last past
+month of January, all that neighbourhood of Covent-garden looked
+very desolate.  It is so essentially a neighbourhood which has seen
+better days, that bad weather affects it sooner than another place
+which has not come down in the World.  In its present reduced
+condition it bears a thaw almost worse than any place I know.  It
+gets so dreadfully low-spirited when damp breaks forth.  Those
+wonderful houses about Drury-lane Theatre, which in the palmy days
+of theatres were prosperous and long-settled places of business,
+and which now change hands every week, but never change their
+character of being divided and sub-divided on the ground floor into
+mouldy dens of shops where an orange and half-a-dozen nuts, or a
+pomatum-pot, one cake of fancy soap, and a cigar box, are offered
+for sale and never sold, were most ruefully contemplated that
+evening, by the statue of Shakespeare, with the rain-drops coursing
+one another down its innocent nose.  Those inscrutable pigeon-hole
+offices, with nothing in them (not so much as an inkstand) but a
+model of a theatre before the curtain, where, in the Italian Opera
+season, tickets at reduced prices are kept on sale by nomadic
+gentlemen in smeary hats too tall for them, whom one occasionally
+seems to have seen on race-courses, not wholly unconnected with
+strips of cloth of various colours and a rolling ball--those
+Bedouin establishments, deserted by the tribe, and tenantless,
+except when sheltering in one corner an irregular row of ginger-
+beer bottles, which would have made one shudder on such a night,
+but for its being plain that they had nothing in them, shrunk from
+the shrill cries of the news-boys at their Exchange in the kennel
+of Catherine-street, like guilty things upon a fearful summons.  At
+the pipe-shop in Great Russell-street, the Death's-head pipes were
+like theatrical memento mori, admonishing beholders of the decline
+of the playhouse as an Institution.  I walked up Bow-street,
+disposed to be angry with the shops there, that were letting out
+theatrical secrets by exhibiting to work-a-day humanity the stuff
+of which diadems and robes of kings are made.  I noticed that some
+shops which had once been in the dramatic line, and had struggled
+out of it, were not getting on prosperously--like some actors I
+have known, who took to business and failed to make it answer.  In
+a word, those streets looked so dull, and, considered as theatrical
+streets, so broken and bankrupt, that the FOUND DEAD on the black
+board at the police station might have announced the decease of the
+Drama, and the pools of water outside the fire-engine maker's at
+the corner of Long-acre might have been occasioned by his having
+brought out the whole of his stock to play upon its last
+smouldering ashes.
+
+And yet, on such a night in so degenerate a time, the object of my
+journey was theatrical.  And yet within half an hour I was in an
+immense theatre, capable of holding nearly five thousand people.
+
+What Theatre?  Her Majesty's?  Far better.  Royal Italian Opera?
+Far better.  Infinitely superior to the latter for hearing in;
+infinitely superior to both, for seeing in.  To every part of this
+Theatre, spacious fire-proof ways of ingress and egress.  For every
+part of it, convenient places of refreshment and retiring rooms.
+Everything to eat and drink carefully supervised as to quality, and
+sold at an appointed price; respectable female attendants ready for
+the commonest women in the audience; a general air of
+consideration, decorum, and supervision, most commendable; an
+unquestionably humanising influence in all the social arrangements
+of the place.
+
+Surely a dear Theatre, then?  Because there were in London (not
+very long ago) Theatres with entrance-prices up to half-a-guinea a
+head, whose arrangements were not half so civilised.  Surely,
+therefore, a dear Theatre?  Not very dear.  A gallery at three-
+pence, another gallery at fourpence, a pit at sixpence, boxes and
+pit-stalls at a shilling, and a few private boxes at half-a-crown.
+
+My uncommercial curiosity induced me to go into every nook of this
+great place, and among every class of the audience assembled in it-
+-amounting that evening, as I calculated, to about two thousand and
+odd hundreds.  Magnificently lighted by a firmament of sparkling
+chandeliers, the building was ventilated to perfection.  My sense
+of smell, without being particularly delicate, has been so offended
+in some of the commoner places of public resort, that I have often
+been obliged to leave them when I have made an uncommercial journey
+expressly to look on.  The air of this Theatre was fresh, cool, and
+wholesome.  To help towards this end, very sensible precautions had
+been used, ingeniously combining the experience of hospitals and
+railway stations.  Asphalt pavements substituted for wooden floors,
+honest bare walls of glazed brick and tile--even at the back of the
+boxes--for plaster and paper, no benches stuffed, and no carpeting
+or baize used; a cool material with a light glazed surface, being
+the covering of the seats.
+
+These various contrivances are as well considered in the place in
+question as if it were a Fever Hospital; the result is, that it is
+sweet and healthful.  It has been constructed from the ground to
+the roof, with a careful reference to sight and sound in every
+corner; the result is, that its form is beautiful, and that the
+appearance of the audience, as seen from the proscenium--with every
+face in it commanding the stage, and the whole so admirably raked
+and turned to that centre, that a hand can scarcely move in the
+great assemblage without the movement being seen from thence--is
+highly remarkable in its union of vastness with compactness.  The
+stage itself, and all its appurtenances of machinery, cellarage,
+height and breadth, are on a scale more like the Scala at Milan, or
+the San Carlo at Naples, or the Grand Opera at Paris, than any
+notion a stranger would be likely to form of the Britannia Theatre
+at Hoxton, a mile north of St. Luke's Hospital in the Old-street-
+road, London.  The Forty Thieves might be played here, and every
+thief ride his real horse, and the disguised captain bring in his
+oil jars on a train of real camels, and nobody be put out of the
+way.  This really extraordinary place is the achievement of one
+man's enterprise, and was erected on the ruins of an inconvenient
+old building in less than five months, at a round cost of five-and-
+twenty thousand pounds.  To dismiss this part of my subject, and
+still to render to the proprietor the credit that is strictly his
+due, I must add that his sense of the responsibility upon him to
+make the best of his audience, and to do his best for them, is a
+highly agreeable sign of these times.
+
+As the spectators at this theatre, for a reason I will presently
+show, were the object of my journey, I entered on the play of the
+night as one of the two thousand and odd hundreds, by looking about
+me at my neighbours.  We were a motley assemblage of people, and we
+had a good many boys and young men among us; we had also many girls
+and young women.  To represent, however, that we did not include a
+very great number, and a very fair proportion of family groups,
+would be to make a gross mis-statement.  Such groups were to be
+seen in all parts of the house; in the boxes and stalls
+particularly, they were composed of persons of very decent
+appearance, who had many children with them.  Among our dresses
+there were most kinds of shabby and greasy wear, and much fustian
+and corduroy that was neither sound nor fragrant.  The caps of our
+young men were mostly of a limp character, and we who wore them,
+slouched, high-shouldered, into our places with our hands in our
+pockets, and occasionally twisted our cravats about our necks like
+eels, and occasionally tied them down our breasts like links of
+sausages, and occasionally had a screw in our hair over each cheek-
+bone with a slight Thief-flavour in it.  Besides prowlers and
+idlers, we were mechanics, dock-labourers, costermongers, petty
+tradesmen, small clerks, milliners, stay-makers, shoe-binders,
+slop-workers, poor workers in a hundred highways and byways.  Many
+of us--on the whole, the majority--were not at all clean, and not
+at all choice in our lives or conversation.  But we had all come
+together in a place where our convenience was well consulted, and
+where we were well looked after, to enjoy an evening's
+entertainment in common.  We were not going to lose any part of
+what we had paid for through anybody's caprice, and as a community
+we had a character to lose.  So, we were closely attentive, and
+kept excellent order; and let the man or boy who did otherwise
+instantly get out from this place, or we would put him out with the
+greatest expedition.
+
+We began at half-past six with a pantomime--with a pantomime so
+long, that before it was over I felt as if I had been travelling
+for six weeks--going to India, say, by the Overland Mail.  The
+Spirit of Liberty was the principal personage in the Introduction,
+and the Four Quarters of the World came out of the globe,
+glittering, and discoursed with the Spirit, who sang charmingly.
+We were delighted to understand that there was no liberty anywhere
+but among ourselves, and we highly applauded the agreeable fact.
+In an allegorical way, which did as well as any other way, we and
+the Spirit of Liberty got into a kingdom of Needles and Pins, and
+found them at war with a potentate who called in to his aid their
+old arch enemy Rust, and who would have got the better of them if
+the Spirit of Liberty had not in the nick of time transformed the
+leaders into Clown, Pantaloon, Harlequin, Columbine, Harlequina,
+and a whole family of Sprites, consisting of a remarkably stout
+father and three spineless sons.  We all knew what was coming when
+the Spirit of Liberty addressed the king with a big face, and His
+Majesty backed to the side-scenes and began untying himself behind,
+with his big face all on one side.  Our excitement at that crisis
+was great, and our delight unbounded.  After this era in our
+existence, we went through all the incidents of a pantomime; it was
+not by any means a savage pantomime, in the way of burning or
+boiling people, or throwing them out of window, or cutting them up;
+was often very droll; was always liberally got up, and cleverly
+presented.  I noticed that the people who kept the shops, and who
+represented the passengers in the thoroughfares, and so forth, had
+no conventionality in them, but were unusually like the real thing-
+-from which I infer that you may take that audience in (if you wish
+to) concerning Knights and Ladies, Fairies, Angels, or such like,
+but they are not to be done as to anything in the streets.  I
+noticed, also, that when two young men, dressed in exact imitation
+of the eel-and-sausage-cravated portion of the audience, were
+chased by policemen, and, finding themselves in danger of being
+caught, dropped so suddenly as to oblige the policemen to tumble
+over them, there was great rejoicing among the caps--as though it
+were a delicate reference to something they had heard of before.
+
+The Pantomime was succeeded by a Melo-Drama.  Throughout the
+evening I was pleased to observe Virtue quite as triumphant as she
+usually is out of doors, and indeed I thought rather more so.  We
+all agreed (for the time) that honesty was the best policy, and we
+were as hard as iron upon Vice, and we wouldn't hear of Villainy
+getting on in the world--no, not on any consideration whatever.
+
+Between the pieces, we almost all of us went out and refreshed.
+Many of us went the length of drinking beer at the bar of the
+neighbouring public-house, some of us drank spirits, crowds of us
+had sandwiches and ginger-beer at the refreshment-bars established
+for us in the Theatre.  The sandwich--as substantial as was
+consistent with portability, and as cheap as possible--we hailed as
+one of our greatest institutions.  It forced its way among us at
+all stages of the entertainment, and we were always delighted to
+see it; its adaptability to the varying moods of our nature was
+surprising; we could never weep so comfortably as when our tears
+fell on our sandwich; we could never laugh so heartily as when we
+choked with sandwich; Virtue never looked so beautiful or Vice so
+deformed as when we paused, sandwich in hand, to consider what
+would come of that resolution of Wickedness in boots, to sever
+Innocence in flowered chintz from Honest Industry in striped
+stockings.  When the curtain fell for the night, we still fell back
+upon sandwich, to help us through the rain and mire, and home to
+bed.
+
+This, as I have mentioned, was Saturday night.  Being Saturday
+night, I had accomplished but the half of my uncommercial journey;
+for, its object was to compare the play on Saturday evening with
+the preaching in the same Theatre on Sunday evening.
+
+Therefore, at the same hour of half-past six on the similarly damp
+and muddy Sunday evening, I returned to this Theatre.  I drove up
+to the entrance (fearful of being late, or I should have come on
+foot), and found myself in a large crowd of people who, I am happy
+to state, were put into excellent spirits by my arrival.  Having
+nothing to look at but the mud and the closed doors, they looked at
+me, and highly enjoyed the comic spectacle.  My modesty inducing me
+to draw off, some hundreds of yards, into a dark corner, they at
+once forgot me, and applied themselves to their former occupation
+of looking at the mud and looking in at the closed doors:  which,
+being of grated ironwork, allowed the lighted passage within to be
+seen.  They were chiefly people of respectable appearance, odd and
+impulsive as most crowds are, and making a joke of being there as
+most crowds do.
+
+In the dark corner I might have sat a long while, but that a very
+obliging passer-by informed me that the Theatre was already full,
+and that the people whom I saw in the street were all shut out for
+want of room.  After that, I lost no time in worming myself into
+the building, and creeping to a place in a Proscenium box that had
+been kept for me.
+
+There must have been full four thousand people present.  Carefully
+estimating the pit alone, I could bring it out as holding little
+less than fourteen hundred.  Every part of the house was well
+filled, and I had not found it easy to make my way along the back
+of the boxes to where I sat.  The chandeliers in the ceiling were
+lighted; there was no light on the stage; the orchestra was empty.
+The green curtain was down, and, packed pretty closely on chairs on
+the small space of stage before it, were some thirty gentlemen, and
+two or three ladies.  In the centre of these, in a desk or pulpit
+covered with red baize, was the presiding minister.  The kind of
+rostrum he occupied will be very well understood, if I liken it to
+a boarded-up fireplace turned towards the audience, with a
+gentleman in a black surtout standing in the stove and leaning
+forward over the mantelpiece.
+
+A portion of Scripture was being read when I went in.  It was
+followed by a discourse, to which the congregation listened with
+most exemplary attention and uninterrupted silence and decorum.  My
+own attention comprehended both the auditory and the speaker, and
+shall turn to both in this recalling of the scene, exactly as it
+did at the time.
+
+'A very difficult thing,' I thought, when the discourse began, 'to
+speak appropriately to so large an audience, and to speak with
+tact.  Without it, better not to speak at all.  Infinitely better,
+to read the New Testament well, and to let THAT speak.  In this
+congregation there is indubitably one pulse; but I doubt if any
+power short of genius can touch it as one, and make it answer as
+one.'
+
+I could not possibly say to myself as the discourse proceeded, that
+the minister was a good speaker.  I could not possibly say to
+myself that he expressed an understanding of the general mind and
+character of his audience.  There was a supposititious working-man
+introduced into the homily, to make supposititious objections to
+our Christian religion and be reasoned down, who was not only a
+very disagreeable person, but remarkably unlike life--very much
+more unlike it than anything I had seen in the pantomime.  The
+native independence of character this artisan was supposed to
+possess, was represented by a suggestion of a dialect that I
+certainly never heard in my uncommercial travels, and with a coarse
+swing of voice and manner anything but agreeable to his feelings, I
+should conceive, considered in the light of a portrait, and as far
+away from the fact as a Chinese Tartar.  There was a model pauper
+introduced in like manner, who appeared to me to be the most
+intolerably arrogant pauper ever relieved, and to show himself in
+absolute want and dire necessity of a course of Stone Yard.  For,
+how did this pauper testify to his having received the gospel of
+humility?  A gentleman met him in the workhouse, and said (which I
+myself really thought good-natured of him), 'Ah, John?  I am sorry
+to see you here.  I am sorry to see you so poor.'  'Poor, sir!'
+replied that man, drawing himself up, 'I am the son of a Prince!
+MY father is the King of Kings.  MY father is the Lord of Lords.
+MY father is the ruler of all the Princes of the Earth!' &c.  And
+this was what all the preacher's fellow-sinners might come to, if
+they would embrace this blessed book--which I must say it did some
+violence to my own feelings of reverence, to see held out at arm's
+length at frequent intervals and soundingly slapped, like a slow
+lot at a sale.  Now, could I help asking myself the question,
+whether the mechanic before me, who must detect the preacher as
+being wrong about the visible manner of himself and the like of
+himself, and about such a noisy lip-server as that pauper, might
+not, most unhappily for the usefulness of the occasion, doubt that
+preacher's being right about things not visible to human senses?
+
+Again.  Is it necessary or advisable to address such an audience
+continually as 'fellow-sinners'?  Is it not enough to be fellow-
+creatures, born yesterday, suffering and striving to-day, dying to-
+morrow?  By our common humanity, my brothers and sisters, by our
+common capacities for pain and pleasure, by our common laughter and
+our common tears, by our common aspiration to reach something
+better than ourselves, by our common tendency to believe in
+something good, and to invest whatever we love or whatever we lose
+with some qualities that are superior to our own failings and
+weaknesses as we know them in our own poor hearts--by these, Hear
+me!--Surely, it is enough to be fellow-creatures.  Surely, it
+includes the other designation, and some touching meanings over and
+above.
+
+Again.  There was a personage introduced into the discourse (not an
+absolute novelty, to the best of my remembrance of my reading), who
+had been personally known to the preacher, and had been quite a
+Crichton in all the ways of philosophy, but had been an infidel.
+Many a time had the preacher talked with him on that subject, and
+many a time had he failed to convince that intelligent man.  But he
+fell ill, and died, and before he died he recorded his conversion--
+in words which the preacher had taken down, my fellow-sinners, and
+would read to you from this piece of paper.  I must confess that to
+me, as one of an uninstructed audience, they did not appear
+particularly edifying.  I thought their tone extremely selfish, and
+I thought they had a spiritual vanity in them which was of the
+before-mentioned refractory pauper's family.
+
+All slangs and twangs are objectionable everywhere, but the slang
+and twang of the conventicle--as bad in its way as that of the
+House of Commons, and nothing worse can be said of it--should be
+studiously avoided under such circumstances as I describe.  The
+avoidance was not complete on this occasion.  Nor was it quite
+agreeable to see the preacher addressing his pet 'points' to his
+backers on the stage, as if appealing to those disciples to show
+him up, and testify to the multitude that each of those points was
+a clincher.
+
+But, in respect of the large Christianity of his general tone; of
+his renunciation of all priestly authority; of his earnest and
+reiterated assurance to the people that the commonest among them
+could work out their own salvation if they would, by simply,
+lovingly, and dutifully following Our Saviour, and that they needed
+the mediation of no erring man; in these particulars, this
+gentleman deserved all praise.  Nothing could be better than the
+spirit, or the plain emphatic words of his discourse in these
+respects.  And it was a most significant and encouraging
+circumstance that whenever he struck that chord, or whenever he
+described anything which Christ himself had done, the array of
+faces before him was very much more earnest, and very much more
+expressive of emotion, than at any other time.
+
+And now, I am brought to the fact, that the lowest part of the
+audience of the previous night, WAS NOT THERE.  There is no doubt
+about it.  There was no such thing in that building, that Sunday
+evening.  I have been told since, that the lowest part of the
+audience of the Victoria Theatre has been attracted to its Sunday
+services.  I have been very glad to hear it, but on this occasion
+of which I write, the lowest part of the usual audience of the
+Britannia Theatre, decidedly and unquestionably stayed away.  When
+I first took my seat and looked at the house, my surprise at the
+change in its occupants was as great as my disappointment.  To the
+most respectable class of the previous evening, was added a great
+number of respectable strangers attracted by curiosity, and drafts
+from the regular congregations of various chapels.  It was
+impossible to fail in identifying the character of these last, and
+they were very numerous.  I came out in a strong, slow tide of them
+setting from the boxes.  Indeed, while the discourse was in
+progress, the respectable character of the auditory was so manifest
+in their appearance, that when the minister addressed a
+supposititious 'outcast,' one really felt a little impatient of it,
+as a figure of speech not justified by anything the eye could
+discover.
+
+The time appointed for the conclusion of the proceedings was eight
+o'clock.  The address having lasted until full that time, and it
+being the custom to conclude with a hymn, the preacher intimated in
+a few sensible words that the clock had struck the hour, and that
+those who desired to go before the hymn was sung, could go now,
+without giving offence.  No one stirred.  The hymn was then sung,
+in good time and tune and unison, and its effect was very striking.
+A comprehensive benevolent prayer dismissed the throng, and in
+seven or eight minutes there was nothing left in the Theatre but a
+light cloud of dust.
+
+That these Sunday meetings in Theatres are good things, I do not
+doubt.  Nor do I doubt that they will work lower and lower down in
+the social scale, if those who preside over them will be very
+careful on two heads:  firstly, not to disparage the places in
+which they speak, or the intelligence of their hearers; secondly,
+not to set themselves in antagonism to the natural inborn desire of
+the mass of mankind to recreate themselves and to be amused.
+
+There is a third head, taking precedence of all others, to which my
+remarks on the discourse I heard, have tended.  In the New
+Testament there is the most beautiful and affecting history
+conceivable by man, and there are the terse models for all prayer
+and for all preaching.  As to the models, imitate them, Sunday
+preachers--else why are they there, consider?  As to the history,
+tell it.  Some people cannot read, some people will not read, many
+people (this especially holds among the young and ignorant) find it
+hard to pursue the verse-form in which the book is presented to
+them, and imagine that those breaks imply gaps and want of
+continuity.  Help them over that first stumbling-block, by setting
+forth the history in narrative, with no fear of exhausting it.  You
+will never preach so well, you will never move them so profoundly,
+you will never send them away with half so much to think of.  Which
+is the better interest:  Christ's choice of twelve poor men to help
+in those merciful wonders among the poor and rejected; or the pious
+bullying of a whole Union-full of paupers?  What is your changed
+philosopher to wretched me, peeping in at the door out of the mud
+of the streets and of my life, when you have the widow's son to
+tell me about, the ruler's daughter, the other figure at the door
+when the brother of the two sisters was dead, and one of the two
+ran to the mourner, crying, 'The Master is come and calleth for
+thee'?--Let the preacher who will thoroughly forget himself and
+remember no individuality but one, and no eloquence but one, stand
+up before four thousand men and women at the Britannia Theatre any
+Sunday night, recounting that narrative to them as fellow
+creatures, and he shall see a sight!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--POOR MERCANTILE JACK
+
+
+
+Is the sweet little cherub who sits smiling aloft and keeps watch
+on life of poor Jack, commissioned to take charge of Mercantile
+Jack, as well as Jack of the national navy?  If not, who is?  What
+is the cherub about, and what are we all about, when poor
+
+Mercantile Jack is having his brains slowly knocked out by penny-
+weights, aboard the brig Beelzebub, or the barque Bowie-knife--when
+he looks his last at that infernal craft, with the first officer's
+iron boot-heel in his remaining eye, or with his dying body towed
+overboard in the ship's wake, while the cruel wounds in it do 'the
+multitudinous seas incarnadine'?
+
+Is it unreasonable to entertain a belief that if, aboard the brig
+Beelzebub or the barque Bowie-knife, the first officer did half the
+damage to cotton that he does to men, there would presently arise
+from both sides of the Atlantic so vociferous an invocation of the
+sweet little cherub who sits calculating aloft, keeping watch on
+the markets that pay, that such vigilant cherub would, with a
+winged sword, have that gallant officer's organ of destructiveness
+out of his head in the space of a flash of lightning?
+
+If it be unreasonable, then am I the most unreasonable of men, for
+I believe it with all my soul.
+
+This was my thought as I walked the dock-quays at Liverpool,
+keeping watch on poor Mercantile Jack.  Alas for me!  I have long
+outgrown the state of sweet little cherub; but there I was, and
+there Mercantile Jack was, and very busy he was, and very cold he
+was:  the snow yet lying in the frozen furrows of the land, and the
+north-east winds snipping off the tops of the little waves in the
+Mersey, and rolling them into hailstones to pelt him with.
+Mercantile Jack was hard at it, in the hard weather:  as he mostly
+is in all weathers, poor Jack.  He was girded to ships' masts and
+funnels of steamers, like a forester to a great oak, scraping and
+painting; he was lying out on yards, furling sails that tried to
+beat him off; he was dimly discernible up in a world of giant
+cobwebs, reefing and splicing; he was faintly audible down in
+holds, stowing and unshipping cargo; he was winding round and round
+at capstans melodious, monotonous, and drunk; he was of a
+diabolical aspect, with coaling for the Antipodes; he was washing
+decks barefoot, with the breast of his red shirt open to the blast,
+though it was sharper than the knife in his leathern girdle; he was
+looking over bulwarks, all eyes and hair; he was standing by at the
+shoot of the Cunard steamer, off to-morrow, as the stocks in trade
+of several butchers, poulterers, and fishmongers, poured down into
+the ice-house; he was coming aboard of other vessels, with his kit
+in a tarpaulin bag, attended by plunderers to the very last moment
+of his shore-going existence.  As though his senses, when released
+from the uproar of the elements, were under obligation to be
+confused by other turmoil, there was a rattling of wheels, a
+clattering of hoofs, a clashing of iron, a jolting of cotton and
+hides and casks and timber, an incessant deafening disturbance on
+the quays, that was the very madness of sound.  And as, in the
+midst of it, he stood swaying about, with his hair blown all manner
+of wild ways, rather crazedly taking leave of his plunderers, all
+the rigging in the docks was shrill in the wind, and every little
+steamer coming and going across the Mersey was sharp in its blowing
+off, and every buoy in the river bobbed spitefully up and down, as
+if there were a general taunting chorus of 'Come along, Mercantile
+Jack!  Ill-lodged, ill-fed, ill-used, hocussed, entrapped,
+anticipated, cleaned out.  Come along, Poor Mercantile Jack, and be
+tempest-tossed till you are drowned!'
+
+The uncommercial transaction which had brought me and Jack
+together, was this:- I had entered the Liverpool police force, that
+I might have a look at the various unlawful traps which are every
+night set for Jack.  As my term of service in that distinguished
+corps was short, and as my personal bias in the capacity of one of
+its members has ceased, no suspicion will attach to my evidence
+that it is an admirable force.  Besides that it is composed,
+without favour, of the best men that can be picked, it is directed
+by an unusual intelligence.  Its organisation against Fires, I take
+to be much better than the metropolitan system, and in all respects
+it tempers its remarkable vigilance with a still more remarkable
+discretion.
+
+Jack had knocked off work in the docks some hours, and I had taken,
+for purposes of identification, a photograph-likeness of a thief,
+in the portrait-room at our head police office (on the whole, he
+seemed rather complimented by the proceeding), and I had been on
+police parade, and the small hand of the clock was moving on to
+ten, when I took up my lantern to follow Mr. Superintendent to the
+traps that were set for Jack.  In Mr. Superintendent I saw, as
+anybody might, a tall, well-looking, well-set-up man of a soldierly
+bearing, with a cavalry air, a good chest, and a resolute but not
+by any means ungentle face.  He carried in his hand a plain black
+walking-stick of hard wood; and whenever and wherever, at any
+after-time of the night, he struck it on the pavement with a
+ringing sound, it instantly produced a whistle out of the darkness,
+and a policeman.  To this remarkable stick, I refer an air of
+mystery and magic which pervaded the whole of my perquisition among
+the traps that were set for Jack.
+
+We began by diving into the obscurest streets and lanes of the
+port.  Suddenly pausing in a flow of cheerful discourse, before a
+dead wall, apparently some ten miles long, Mr. Superintendent
+struck upon the ground, and the wall opened and shot out, with
+military salute of hand to temple, two policemen--not in the least
+surprised themselves, not in the least surprising Mr.
+Superintendent.
+
+'All right, Sharpeye?'
+
+'All right, sir.'
+
+'All right, Trampfoot?'
+
+'All right, sir.'
+
+'Is Quickear there?'
+
+'Here am I, sir.'
+
+'Come with us.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+So, Sharpeye went before, and Mr. Superintendent and I went next,
+and Trampfoot and Quickear marched as rear-guard.  Sharp-eye, I
+soon had occasion to remark, had a skilful and quite professional
+way of opening doors--touched latches delicately, as if they were
+keys of musical instruments--opened every door he touched, as if he
+were perfectly confident that there was stolen property behind it--
+instantly insinuated himself, to prevent its being shut.
+
+Sharpeye opened several doors of traps that were set for Jack, but
+Jack did not happen to be in any of them.  They were all such
+miserable places that really, Jack, if I were you, I would give
+them a wider berth.  In every trap, somebody was sitting over a
+fire, waiting for Jack.  Now, it was a crouching old woman, like
+the picture of the Norwood Gipsy in the old sixpenny dream-books;
+now, it was a crimp of the male sex, in a checked shirt and without
+a coat, reading a newspaper; now, it was a man crimp and a woman
+crimp, who always introduced themselves as united in holy
+matrimony; now, it was Jack's delight, his (un)lovely Nan; but they
+were all waiting for Jack, and were all frightfully disappointed to
+see us.
+
+'Who have you got up-stairs here?' says Sharpeye, generally.  (In
+the Move-on tone.)
+
+'Nobody, surr; sure not a blessed sowl!'  (Irish feminine reply.)
+
+'What do you mean by nobody?  Didn't I hear a woman's step go up-
+stairs when my hand was on the latch?'
+
+'Ah! sure thin you're right, surr, I forgot her!  'Tis on'y Betsy
+White, surr.  Ah! you know Betsy, surr.  Come down, Betsy darlin',
+and say the gintlemin.'
+
+Generally, Betsy looks over the banisters (the steep staircase is
+in the room) with a forcible expression in her protesting face, of
+an intention to compensate herself for the present trial by
+grinding Jack finer than usual when he does come.  Generally,
+Sharpeye turns to Mr. Superintendent, and says, as if the subjects
+of his remarks were wax-work:
+
+'One of the worst, sir, this house is.  This woman has been
+indicted three times.  This man's a regular bad one likewise.  His
+real name is Pegg.  Gives himself out as Waterhouse.'
+
+'Never had sitch a name as Pegg near me back, thin, since I was in
+this house, bee the good Lard!' says the woman.
+
+Generally, the man says nothing at all, but becomes exceedingly
+round-shouldered, and pretends to read his paper with rapt
+attention.  Generally, Sharpeye directs our observation with a
+look, to the prints and pictures that are invariably numerous on
+the walls.  Always, Trampfoot and Quickear are taking notice on the
+doorstep.  In default of Sharpeye being acquainted with the exact
+individuality of any gentleman encountered, one of these two is
+sure to proclaim from the outer air, like a gruff spectre, that
+Jackson is not Jackson, but knows himself to be Fogle; or that
+Canlon is Walker's brother, against whom there was not sufficient
+evidence; or that the man who says he never was at sea since he was
+a boy, came ashore from a voyage last Thursday, or sails tomorrow
+morning.  'And that is a bad class of man, you see,' says Mr.
+Superintendent, when he got out into the dark again, 'and very
+difficult to deal with, who, when he has made this place too hot to
+hold him, enters himself for a voyage as steward or cook, and is
+out of knowledge for months, and then turns up again worse than
+ever.'
+
+When we had gone into many such houses, and had come out (always
+leaving everybody relapsing into waiting for Jack), we started off
+to a singing-house where Jack was expected to muster strong.
+
+The vocalisation was taking place in a long low room up-stairs; at
+one end, an orchestra of two performers, and a small platform;
+across the room, a series of open pews for Jack, with an aisle down
+the middle; at the other end a larger pew than the rest, entitled
+SNUG, and reserved for mates and similar good company.  About the
+room, some amazing coffee-coloured pictures varnished an inch deep,
+and some stuffed creatures in cases; dotted among the audience, in
+Sung and out of Snug, the 'Professionals;' among them, the
+celebrated comic favourite Mr. Banjo Bones, looking very hideous
+with his blackened face and limp sugar-loaf hat; beside him,
+sipping rum-and-water, Mrs. Banjo Bones, in her natural colours--a
+little heightened.
+
+It was a Friday night, and Friday night was considered not a good
+night for Jack.  At any rate, Jack did not show in very great force
+even here, though the house was one to which he much resorts, and
+where a good deal of money is taken.  There was British Jack, a
+little maudlin and sleepy, lolling over his empty glass, as if he
+were trying to read his fortune at the bottom; there was Loafing
+Jack of the Stars and Stripes, rather an unpromising customer, with
+his long nose, lank cheek, high cheek-bones, and nothing soft about
+him but his cabbage-leaf hat; there was Spanish Jack, with curls of
+black hair, rings in his ears, and a knife not far from his hand,
+if you got into trouble with him; there were Maltese Jack, and Jack
+of Sweden, and Jack the Finn, looming through the smoke of their
+pipes, and turning faces that looked as if they were carved out of
+dark wood, towards the young lady dancing the hornpipe:  who found
+the platform so exceedingly small for it, that I had a nervous
+expectation of seeing her, in the backward steps, disappear through
+the window.  Still, if all hands had been got together, they would
+not have more than half-filled the room.  Observe, however, said
+Mr. Licensed Victualler, the host, that it was Friday night, and,
+besides, it was getting on for twelve, and Jack had gone aboard.  A
+sharp and watchful man, Mr. Licensed Victualler, the host, with
+tight lips and a complete edition of Cocker's arithmetic in each
+eye.  Attended to his business himself, he said.  Always on the
+spot.  When he heard of talent, trusted nobody's account of it, but
+went off by rail to see it.  If true talent, engaged it.  Pounds a
+week for talent--four pound--five pound.  Banjo Bones was undoubted
+talent.  Hear this instrument that was going to play--it was real
+talent!  In truth it was very good; a kind of piano-accordion,
+played by a young girl of a delicate prettiness of face, figure,
+and dress, that made the audience look coarser.  She sang to the
+instrument, too; first, a song about village bells, and how they
+chimed; then a song about how I went to sea; winding up with an
+imitation of the bagpipes, which Mercantile Jack seemed to
+understand much the best.  A good girl, said Mr. Licensed
+Victualler.  Kept herself select.  Sat in Snug, not listening to
+the blandishments of Mates.  Lived with mother.  Father dead.  Once
+a merchant well to do, but over-speculated himself.  On delicate
+inquiry as to salary paid for item of talent under consideration,
+Mr. Victualler's pounds dropped suddenly to shillings--still it was
+a very comfortable thing for a young person like that, you know;
+she only went on six times a night, and was only required to be
+there from six at night to twelve.  What was more conclusive was,
+Mr. Victualler's assurance that he 'never allowed any language, and
+never suffered any disturbance.'  Sharpeye confirmed the statement,
+and the order that prevailed was the best proof of it that could
+have been cited.  So, I came to the conclusion that poor Mercantile
+Jack might do (as I am afraid he does) much worse than trust
+himself to Mr. Victualler, and pass his evenings here.
+
+But we had not yet looked, Mr. Superintendent--said Trampfoot,
+receiving us in the street again with military salute--for Dark
+Jack.  True, Trampfoot.  Ring the wonderful stick, rub the
+wonderful lantern, and cause the spirits of the stick and lantern
+to convey us to the Darkies.
+
+There was no disappointment in the matter of Dark Jack; HE was
+producible.  The Genii set us down in the little first floor of a
+little public-house, and there, in a stiflingly close atmosphere,
+were Dark Jack, and Dark Jack's delight, his WHITE unlovely Nan,
+sitting against the wall all round the room.  More than that:  Dark
+Jack's delight was the least unlovely Nan, both morally and
+physically, that I saw that night.
+
+As a fiddle and tambourine band were sitting among the company,
+Quickear suggested why not strike up?  'Ah, la'ads!' said a negro
+sitting by the door, 'gib the jebblem a darnse.  Tak' yah pardlers,
+jebblem, for 'um QUAD-rill.'
+
+This was the landlord, in a Greek cap, and a dress half Greek and
+half English.  As master of the ceremonies, he called all the
+figures, and occasionally addressed himself parenthetically--after
+this manner.  When he was very loud, I use capitals.
+
+'Now den!  Hoy!  ONE.  Right and left.  (Put a steam on, gib 'um
+powder.)  LA-dies' chail.  BAL-loon say.  Lemonade!  TWO.  AD-
+warnse and go back (gib 'ell a breakdown, shake it out o' yerselbs,
+keep a movil).  SWING-corners, BAL-loon say, and Lemonade!  (Hoy!)
+THREE.  GENT come for'ard with a lady and go back, hoppersite come
+for'ard and do what yer can.  (Aeiohoy!)  BAL-loon say, and leetle
+lemonade.  (Dat hair nigger by 'um fireplace 'hind a' time, shake
+it out o' yerselbs, gib 'ell a breakdown.)  Now den!  Hoy!  FOUR!
+Lemonade.  BAL-loon say, and swing.  FOUR ladies meet in 'um
+middle, FOUR gents goes round 'um ladies, FOUR gents passes out
+under 'um ladies' arms, SWING--and Lemonade till 'a moosic can't
+play no more!  (Hoy, Hoy!)'
+
+The male dancers were all blacks, and one was an unusually powerful
+man of six feet three or four.  The sound of their flat feet on the
+floor was as unlike the sound of white feet as their faces were
+unlike white faces.  They toed and heeled, shuffled, double-
+shuffled, double-double-shuffled, covered the buckle, and beat the
+time out, rarely, dancing with a great show of teeth, and with a
+childish good-humoured enjoyment that was very prepossessing.  They
+generally kept together, these poor fellows, said Mr.
+Superintendent, because they were at a disadvantage singly, and
+liable to slights in the neighbouring streets.  But, if I were
+Light Jack, I should be very slow to interfere oppressively with
+Dark Jack, for, whenever I have had to do with him I have found him
+a simple and a gentle fellow.  Bearing this in mind, I asked his
+friendly permission to leave him restoration of beer, in wishing
+him good night, and thus it fell out that the last words I heard
+him say as I blundered down the worn stairs, were, 'Jebblem's elth!
+Ladies drinks fust!'
+
+The night was now well on into the morning, but, for miles and
+hours we explored a strange world, where nobody ever goes to bed,
+but everybody is eternally sitting up, waiting for Jack.  This
+exploration was among a labyrinth of dismal courts and blind
+alleys, called Entries, kept in wonderful order by the police, and
+in much better order than by the corporation:  the want of gaslight
+in the most dangerous and infamous of these places being quite
+unworthy of so spirited a town.  I need describe but two or three
+of the houses in which Jack was waited for as specimens of the
+rest.  Many we attained by noisome passages so profoundly dark that
+we felt our way with our hands.  Not one of the whole number we
+visited, was without its show of prints and ornamental crockery;
+the quantity of the latter set forth on little shelves and in
+little cases, in otherwise wretched rooms, indicating that
+Mercantile Jack must have an extraordinary fondness for crockery,
+to necessitate so much of that bait in his traps.
+
+Among such garniture, in one front parlour in the dead of the
+night, four women were sitting by a fire.  One of them had a male
+child in her arms.  On a stool among them was a swarthy youth with
+a guitar, who had evidently stopped playing when our footsteps were
+heard.
+
+'Well I how do YOU do?' says Mr. Superintendent, looking about him.
+
+'Pretty well, sir, and hope you gentlemen are going to treat us
+ladies, now you have come to see us.'
+
+'Order there!' says Sharpeye.
+
+'None of that!' says Quickear.
+
+Trampfoot, outside, is heard to confide to himself, 'Meggisson's
+lot this is.  And a bad 'un!'
+
+'Well!' says Mr. Superintendent, laying his hand on the shoulder of
+the swarthy youth, 'and who's this?'
+
+'Antonio, sir.'
+
+'And what does HE do here?'
+
+'Come to give us a bit of music.  No harm in that, I suppose?'
+
+'A young foreign sailor?'
+
+'Yes.  He's a Spaniard.  You're a Spaniard, ain't you, Antonio?'
+
+'Me Spanish.'
+
+'And he don't know a word you say, not he; not if you was to talk
+to him till doomsday.'  (Triumphantly, as if it redounded to the
+credit of the house.)
+
+'Will he play something?'
+
+'Oh, yes, if you like.  Play something, Antonio.  YOU ain't ashamed
+to play something; are you?'
+
+The cracked guitar raises the feeblest ghost of a tune, and three
+of the women keep time to it with their heads, and the fourth with
+the child.  If Antonio has brought any money in with him, I am
+afraid he will never take it out, and it even strikes me that his
+jacket and guitar may be in a bad way.  But, the look of the young
+man and the tinkling of the instrument so change the place in a
+moment to a leaf out of Don Quixote, that I wonder where his mule
+is stabled, until he leaves off.
+
+I am bound to acknowledge (as it tends rather to my uncommercial
+confusion), that I occasioned a difficulty in this establishment,
+by having taken the child in my arms.  For, on my offering to
+restore it to a ferocious joker not unstimulated by rum, who
+claimed to be its mother, that unnatural parent put her hands
+behind her, and declined to accept it; backing into the fireplace,
+and very shrilly declaring, regardless of remonstrance from her
+friends, that she knowed it to be Law, that whoever took a child
+from its mother of his own will, was bound to stick to it.  The
+uncommercial sense of being in a rather ridiculous position with
+the poor little child beginning to be frightened, was relieved by
+my worthy friend and fellow-constable, Trampfoot; who, laying hands
+on the article as if it were a Bottle, passed it on to the nearest
+woman, and bade her 'take hold of that.'  As we came out the Bottle
+was passed to the ferocious joker, and they all sat down as before,
+including Antonio and the guitar.  It was clear that there was no
+such thing as a nightcap to this baby's head, and that even he
+never went to bed, but was always kept up--and would grow up, kept
+up--waiting for Jack.
+
+Later still in the night, we came (by the court 'where the man was
+murdered,' and by the other court across the street, into which his
+body was dragged) to another parlour in another Entry, where
+several people were sitting round a fire in just the same way.  It
+was a dirty and offensive place, with some ragged clothes drying in
+it; but there was a high shelf over the entrance-door (to be out of
+the reach of marauding hands, possibly) with two large white loaves
+on it, and a great piece of Cheshire cheese.
+
+'Well!' says Mr. Superintendent, with a comprehensive look all
+round.  'How do YOU do?'
+
+'Not much to boast of, sir.'  From the curtseying woman of the
+house.  'This is my good man, sir.'
+
+'You are not registered as a common Lodging House?'
+
+'No, sir.'
+
+Sharpeye (in the Move-on tone) puts in the pertinent inquiry, 'Then
+why ain't you?'
+
+'Ain't got no one here, Mr. Sharpeye,' rejoin the woman and my good
+man together, 'but our own family.'
+
+'How many are you in family?'
+
+The woman takes time to count, under pretence of coughing, and
+adds, as one scant of breath, 'Seven, sir.'
+
+But she has missed one, so Sharpeye, who knows all about it, says:
+
+'Here's a young man here makes eight, who ain't of your family?'
+
+'No, Mr. Sharpeye, he's a weekly lodger.'
+
+'What does he do for a living?'
+
+The young man here, takes the reply upon himself, and shortly
+answers, 'Ain't got nothing to do.'
+
+The young man here, is modestly brooding behind a damp apron
+pendent from a clothes-line.  As I glance at him I become--but I
+don't know why--vaguely reminded of Woolwich, Chatham, Portsmouth,
+and Dover.  When we get out, my respected fellow-constable
+Sharpeye, addressing Mr. Superintendent, says:
+
+'You noticed that young man, sir, in at Darby's?'
+
+'Yes.  What is he?'
+
+'Deserter, sir.'
+
+Mr. Sharpeye further intimates that when we have done with his
+services, he will step back and take that young man.  Which in
+course of time he does:  feeling at perfect ease about finding him,
+and knowing for a moral certainty that nobody in that region will
+be gone to bed.
+
+Later still in the night, we came to another parlour up a step or
+two from the street, which was very cleanly, neatly, even
+tastefully, kept, and in which, set forth on a draped chest of
+drawers masking the staircase, was such a profusion of ornamental
+crockery, that it would have furnished forth a handsome sale-booth
+at a fair.  It backed up a stout old lady--HOGARTH drew her exact
+likeness more than once--and a boy who was carefully writing a copy
+in a copy-book.
+
+'Well, ma'am, how do YOU do?'
+
+Sweetly, she can assure the dear gentlemen, sweetly.  Charmingly,
+charmingly.  And overjoyed to see us!
+
+'Why, this is a strange time for this boy to be writing his copy.
+In the middle of the night!'
+
+'So it is, dear gentlemen, Heaven bless your welcome faces and send
+ye prosperous, but he has been to the Play with a young friend for
+his diversion, and he combinates his improvement with
+entertainment, by doing his school-writing afterwards, God be good
+to ye!'
+
+The copy admonished human nature to subjugate the fire of every
+fierce desire.  One might have thought it recommended stirring the
+fire, the old lady so approved it.  There she sat, rosily beaming
+at the copy-book and the boy, and invoking showers of blessings on
+our heads, when we left her in the middle of the night, waiting for
+Jack.
+
+Later still in the night, we came to a nauseous room with an earth
+floor, into which the refuse scum of an alley trickled.  The stench
+of this habitation was abominable; the seeming poverty of it,
+diseased and dire.  Yet, here again, was visitor or lodger--a man
+sitting before the fire, like the rest of them elsewhere, and
+apparently not distasteful to the mistress's niece, who was also
+before the fire.  The mistress herself had the misfortune of being
+in jail.
+
+Three weird old women of transcendent ghastliness, were at
+needlework at a table in this room.  Says Trampfoot to First Witch,
+'What are you making?'  Says she, 'Money-bags.'
+
+'WHAT are you making?' retorts Trampfoot, a little off his balance.
+
+'Bags to hold your money,' says the witch, shaking her head, and
+setting her teeth; 'you as has got it.'
+
+She holds up a common cash-bag, and on the table is a heap of such
+bags.  Witch Two laughs at us.  Witch Three scowls at us.  Witch
+sisterhood all, stitch, stitch.  First Witch has a circle round
+each eye.  I fancy it like the beginning of the development of a
+perverted diabolical halo, and that when it spreads all round her
+head, she will die in the odour of devilry.
+
+Trampfoot wishes to be informed what First Witch has got behind the
+table, down by the side of her, there?  Witches Two and Three croak
+angrily, 'Show him the child!'
+
+She drags out a skinny little arm from a brown dustheap on the
+ground.  Adjured not to disturb the child, she lets it drop again.
+Thus we find at last that there is one child in the world of
+Entries who goes to bed--if this be bed.
+
+Mr. Superintendent asks how long are they going to work at those
+bags?
+
+How long?  First Witch repeats.  Going to have supper presently.
+See the cups and saucers, and the plates.
+
+'Late?  Ay!  But we has to 'arn our supper afore we eats it!'  Both
+the other witches repeat this after First Witch, and take the
+Uncommercial measurement with their eyes, as for a charmed winding-
+sheet.  Some grim discourse ensues, referring to the mistress of
+the cave, who will be released from jail to-morrow.  Witches
+pronounce Trampfoot 'right there,' when he deems it a trying
+distance for the old lady to walk; she shall be fetched by niece in
+a spring-cart.
+
+As I took a parting look at First Witch in turning away, the red
+marks round her eyes seemed to have already grown larger, and she
+hungrily and thirstily looked out beyond me into the dark doorway,
+to see if Jack was there.  For, Jack came even here, and the
+mistress had got into jail through deluding Jack.
+
+When I at last ended this night of travel and got to bed, I failed
+to keep my mind on comfortable thoughts of Seaman's Homes (not
+overdone with strictness), and improved dock regulations giving
+Jack greater benefit of fire and candle aboard ship, through my
+mind's wandering among the vermin I had seen.  Afterwards the same
+vermin ran all over my sleep.  Evermore, when on a breezy day I see
+Poor Mercantile Jack running into port with a fair wind under all
+sail, I shall think of the unsleeping host of devourers who never
+go to bed, and are always in their set traps waiting for him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--REFRESHMENTS FOR TRAVELLERS
+
+
+
+In the late high winds I was blown to a great many places--and
+indeed, wind or no wind, I generally have extensive transactions on
+hand in the article of Air--but I have not been blown to any
+English place lately, and I very seldom have blown to any English
+place in my life, where I could get anything good to eat and drink
+in five minutes, or where, if I sought it, I was received with a
+welcome.
+
+This is a curious thing to consider.  But before (stimulated by my
+own experiences and the representations of many fellow-travellers
+of every uncommercial and commercial degree) I consider it further,
+I must utter a passing word of wonder concerning high winds.
+
+I wonder why metropolitan gales always blow so hard at Walworth.  I
+cannot imagine what Walworth has done, to bring such windy
+punishment upon itself, as I never fail to find recorded in the
+newspapers when the wind has blown at all hard.  Brixton seems to
+have something on its conscience; Peckham suffers more than a
+virtuous Peckham might be supposed to deserve; the howling
+neighbourhood of Deptford figures largely in the accounts of the
+ingenious gentlemen who are out in every wind that blows, and to
+whom it is an ill high wind that blows no good; but, there can
+hardly be any Walworth left by this time.  It must surely be blown
+away.  I have read of more chimney-stacks and house-copings coming
+down with terrific smashes at Walworth, and of more sacred edifices
+being nearly (not quite) blown out to sea from the same accursed
+locality, than I have read of practised thieves with the appearance
+and manners of gentlemen--a popular phenomenon which never existed
+on earth out of fiction and a police report.  Again:  I wonder why
+people are always blown into the Surrey Canal, and into no other
+piece of water!  Why do people get up early and go out in groups,
+to be blown into the Surrey Canal?  Do they say to one another,
+'Welcome death, so that we get into the newspapers'?  Even that
+would be an insufficient explanation, because even then they might
+sometimes put themselves in the way of being blown into the
+Regent's Canal, instead of always saddling Surrey for the field.
+Some nameless policeman, too, is constantly, on the slightest
+provocation, getting himself blown into this same Surrey Canal.
+Will SIR RICHARD MAYNE see to it, and restrain that weak-minded and
+feeble-bodied constable?
+
+To resume the consideration of the curious question of Refreshment.
+I am a Briton, and, as such, I am aware that I never will be a
+slave--and yet I have latent suspicion that there must be some
+slavery of wrong custom in this matter.
+
+I travel by railroad.  I start from home at seven or eight in the
+morning, after breakfasting hurriedly.  What with skimming over the
+open landscape, what with mining in the damp bowels of the earth,
+what with banging, booming and shrieking the scores of miles away,
+I am hungry when I arrive at the 'Refreshment' station where I am
+expected.  Please to observe, expected.  I have said, I am hungry;
+perhaps I might say, with greater point and force, that I am to
+some extent exhausted, and that I need--in the expressive French
+sense of the word--to be restored.  What is provided for my
+restoration?  The apartment that is to restore me is a wind-trap,
+cunningly set to inveigle all the draughts in that country-side,
+and to communicate a special intensity and velocity to them as they
+rotate in two hurricanes:  one, about my wretched head:  one, about
+my wretched legs.  The training of the young ladies behind the
+counter who are to restore me, has been from their infancy directed
+to the assumption of a defiant dramatic show that I am NOT
+expected.  It is in vain for me to represent to them by my humble
+and conciliatory manners, that I wish to be liberal.  It is in vain
+for me to represent to myself, for the encouragement of my sinking
+soul, that the young ladies have a pecuniary interest in my
+arrival.  Neither my reason nor my feelings can make head against
+the cold glazed glare of eye with which I am assured that I am not
+expected, and not wanted.  The solitary man among the bottles would
+sometimes take pity on me, if he dared, but he is powerless against
+the rights and mights of Woman.  (Of the page I make no account,
+for, he is a boy, and therefore the natural enemy of Creation.)
+Chilling fast, in the deadly tornadoes to which my upper and lower
+extremities are exposed, and subdued by the moral disadvantage at
+which I stand, I turn my disconsolate eyes on the refreshments that
+are to restore me.  I find that I must either scald my throat by
+insanely ladling into it, against time and for no wager, brown hot
+water stiffened with flour; or I must make myself flaky and sick
+with Banbury cake; or, I must stuff into my delicate organisation,
+a currant pincushion which I know will swell into immeasurable
+dimensions when it has got there; or, I must extort from an iron-
+bound quarry, with a fork, as if I were farming an inhospitable
+soil, some glutinous lumps of gristle and grease, called pork-pie.
+While thus forlornly occupied, I find that the depressing banquet
+on the table is, in every phase of its profoundly unsatisfactory
+character, so like the banquet at the meanest and shabbiest of
+evening parties, that I begin to think I must have 'brought down'
+to supper, the old lady unknown, blue with cold, who is setting her
+teeth on edge with a cool orange at my elbow--that the pastrycook
+who has compounded for the company on the lowest terms per head, is
+a fraudulent bankrupt, redeeming his contract with the stale stock
+from his window--that, for some unexplained reason, the family
+giving the party have become my mortal foes, and have given it on
+purpose to affront me.  Or, I fancy that I am 'breaking up' again,
+at the evening conversazione at school, charged two-and-sixpence in
+the half-year's bill; or breaking down again at that celebrated
+evening party given at Mrs. Bogles's boarding-house when I was a
+boarder there, on which occasion Mrs. Bogles was taken in execution
+by a branch of the legal profession who got in as the harp, and was
+removed (with the keys and subscribed capital) to a place of
+durance, half an hour prior to the commencement of the festivities.
+
+Take another case.
+
+Mr. Grazinglands, of the Midland Counties, came to London by
+railroad one morning last week, accompanied by the amiable and
+fascinating Mrs. Grazinglands.  Mr. G. is a gentleman of a
+comfortable property, and had a little business to transact at the
+Bank of England, which required the concurrence and signature of
+Mrs. G.  Their business disposed of, Mr. and Mrs. Grazinglands
+viewed the Royal Exchange, and the exterior of St. Paul's
+Cathedral.  The spirits of Mrs. Grazinglands then gradually
+beginning to flag, Mr. Grazinglands (who is the tenderest of
+husbands) remarked with sympathy, 'Arabella', my dear, 'fear you
+are faint.'  Mrs. Grazing-lands replied, 'Alexander, I am rather
+faint; but don't mind me, I shall be better presently.'  Touched by
+the feminine meekness of this answer, Mr. Grazinglands looked in at
+a pastrycook's window, hesitating as to the expediency of lunching
+at that establishment.  He beheld nothing to eat, but butter in
+various forms, slightly charged with jam, and languidly frizzling
+over tepid water.  Two ancient turtle-shells, on which was
+inscribed the legend, 'SOUPS,' decorated a glass partition within,
+enclosing a stuffy alcove, from which a ghastly mockery of a
+marriage-breakfast spread on a rickety table, warned the terrified
+traveller.  An oblong box of stale and broken pastry at reduced
+prices, mounted on a stool, ornamented the doorway; and two high
+chairs that looked as if they were performing on stilts,
+embellished the counter.  Over the whole, a young lady presided,
+whose gloomy haughtiness as she surveyed the street, announced a
+deep-seated grievance against society, and an implacable
+determination to be avenged.  From a beetle-haunted kitchen below
+this institution, fumes arose, suggestive of a class of soup which
+Mr. Grazinglands knew, from painful experience, enfeebles the mind,
+distends the stomach, forces itself into the complexion, and tries
+to ooze out at the eyes.  As he decided against entering, and
+turned away, Mrs. Grazinglands becoming perceptibly weaker,
+repeated, 'I am rather faint, Alexander, but don't mind me.'  Urged
+to new efforts by these words of resignation, Mr. Grazinglands
+looked in at a cold and floury baker's shop, where utilitarian buns
+unrelieved by a currant, consorted with hard biscuits, a stone
+filter of cold water, a hard pale clock, and a hard little old
+woman with flaxen hair, of an undeveloped-farinaceous aspect, as if
+she had been fed upon seeds.  He might have entered even here, but
+for the timely remembrance coming upon him that Jairing's was but
+round the corner.
+
+Now, Jairing's being an hotel for families and gentlemen, in high
+repute among the midland counties, Mr. Grazinglands plucked up a
+great spirit when he told Mrs. Grazinglands she should have a chop
+there.  That lady, likewise felt that she was going to see Life.
+Arriving on that gay and festive scene, they found the second
+waiter, in a flabby undress, cleaning the windows of the empty
+coffee-room; and the first waiter, denuded of his white tie, making
+up his cruets behind the Post-Office Directory.  The latter (who
+took them in hand) was greatly put out by their patronage, and
+showed his mind to be troubled by a sense of the pressing necessity
+of instantly smuggling Mrs. Grazinglands into the obscurest corner
+of the building.  This slighted lady (who is the pride of her
+division of the county) was immediately conveyed, by several dark
+passages, and up and down several steps, into a penitential
+apartment at the back of the house, where five invalided old plate-
+warmers leaned up against one another under a discarded old
+melancholy sideboard, and where the wintry leaves of all the
+dining-tables in the house lay thick.  Also, a sofa, of
+incomprehensible form regarded from any sofane point of view,
+murmured 'Bed;' while an air of mingled fluffiness and heeltaps,
+added, 'Second Waiter's.'  Secreted in this dismal hold, objects of
+a mysterious distrust and suspicion, Mr. Grazinglands and his
+charming partner waited twenty minutes for the smoke (for it never
+came to a fire), twenty-five minutes for the sherry, half an hour
+for the tablecloth, forty minutes for the knives and forks, three-
+quarters of an hour for the chops, and an hour for the potatoes.
+On settling the little bill--which was not much more than the day's
+pay of a Lieutenant in the navy--Mr.  Grazinglands took heart to
+remonstrate against the general quality and cost of his reception.
+To whom the waiter replied, substantially, that Jairing's made it a
+merit to have accepted him on any terms:  'for,' added the waiter
+(unmistakably coughing at Mrs. Grazinglands, the pride of her
+division of the county), 'when indiwiduals is not staying in the
+'Ouse, their favours is not as a rule looked upon as making it
+worth Mr. Jairing's while; nor is it, indeed, a style of business
+Mr. Jairing wishes.'  Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Grazinglands passed out
+of Jairing's hotel for Families and Gentlemen, in a state of the
+greatest depression, scorned by the bar; and did not recover their
+self-respect for several days.
+
+Or take another case.  Take your own case.
+
+You are going off by railway, from any Terminus.  You have twenty
+minutes for dinner, before you go.  You want your dinner, and like
+Dr. Johnson, Sir, you like to dine.  You present to your mind, a
+picture of the refreshment-table at that terminus.  The
+conventional shabby evening-party supper--accepted as the model for
+all termini and all refreshment stations, because it is the last
+repast known to this state of existence of which any human creature
+would partake, but in the direst extremity--sickens your
+contemplation, and your words are these:  'I cannot dine on stale
+sponge-cakes that turn to sand in the mouth.  I cannot dine on
+shining brown patties, composed of unknown animals within, and
+offering to my view the device of an indigestible star-fish in
+leaden pie-crust without.  I cannot dine on a sandwich that has
+long been pining under an exhausted receiver.  I cannot dine on
+barley-sugar.  I cannot dine on Toffee.'  You repair to the nearest
+hotel, and arrive, agitated, in the coffee-room.
+
+It is a most astonishing fact that the waiter is very cold to you.
+Account for it how you may, smooth it over how you will, you cannot
+deny that he is cold to you.  He is not glad to see you, he does
+not want you, he would much rather you hadn't come.  He opposes to
+your flushed condition, an immovable composure.  As if this were
+not enough, another waiter, born, as it would seem, expressly to
+look at you in this passage of your life, stands at a little
+distance, with his napkin under his arm and his hands folded,
+looking at you with all his might.  You impress on your waiter that
+you have ten minutes for dinner, and he proposes that you shall
+begin with a bit of fish which will be ready in twenty.  That
+proposal declined, he suggests--as a neat originality--'a weal or
+mutton cutlet.'  You close with either cutlet, any cutlet,
+anything.  He goes, leisurely, behind a door and calls down some
+unseen shaft.  A ventriloquial dialogue ensues, tending finally to
+the effect that weal only, is available on the spur of the moment.
+You anxiously call out, 'Veal, then!'  Your waiter having settled
+that point, returns to array your tablecloth, with a table napkin
+folded cocked-hat-wise (slowly, for something out of window engages
+his eye), a white wine-glass, a green wine-glass, a blue finger-
+glass, a tumbler, and a powerful field battery of fourteen casters
+with nothing in them; or at all events--which is enough for your
+purpose--with nothing in them that will come out.  All this time,
+the other waiter looks at you--with an air of mental comparison and
+curiosity, now, as if it had occurred to him that you are rather
+like his brother.  Half your time gone, and nothing come but the
+jug of ale and the bread, you implore your waiter to 'see after
+that cutlet, waiter; pray do!'  He cannot go at once, for he is
+carrying in seventeen pounds of American cheese for you to finish
+with, and a small Landed Estate of celery and water-cresses.  The
+other waiter changes his leg, and takes a new view of you,
+doubtfully, now, as if he had rejected the resemblance to his
+brother, and had begun to think you more like his aunt or his
+grandmother.  Again you beseech your waiter with pathetic
+indignation, to 'see after that cutlet!'  He steps out to see after
+it, and by-and-by, when you are going away without it, comes back
+with it.  Even then, he will not take the sham silver cover off,
+without a pause for a flourish, and a look at the musty cutlet as
+if he were surprised to see it--which cannot possibly be the case,
+he must have seen it so often before.  A sort of fur has been
+produced upon its surface by the cook's art, and in a sham silver
+vessel staggering on two feet instead of three, is a cutaneous kind
+of sauce of brown pimples and pickled cucumber.  You order the
+bill, but your waiter cannot bring your bill yet, because he is
+bringing, instead, three flinty-hearted potatoes and two grim head
+of broccoli, like the occasional ornaments on area railings, badly
+boiled.  You know that you will never come to this pass, any more
+than to the cheese and celery, and you imperatively demand your
+bill; but, it takes time to get, even when gone for, because your
+waiter has to communicate with a lady who lives behind a sash-
+window in a corner, and who appears to have to refer to several
+Ledgers before she can make it out--as if you had been staying
+there a year.  You become distracted to get away, and the other
+waiter, once more changing his leg, still looks at you--but
+suspiciously, now, as if you had begun to remind him of the party
+who took the great-coats last winter.  Your bill at last brought
+and paid, at the rate of sixpence a mouthful, your waiter
+reproachfully reminds you that 'attendance is not charged for a
+single meal,' and you have to search in all your pockets for
+sixpence more.  He has a worse opinion of you than ever, when you
+have given it to him, and lets you out into the street with the air
+of one saying to himself, as you cannot again doubt he is, 'I hope
+we shall never see YOU here again!'
+
+Or, take any other of the numerous travelling instances in which,
+with more time at your disposal, you are, have been, or may be,
+equally ill served.  Take the old-established Bull's Head with its
+old-established knife-boxes on its old-established sideboards, its
+old-established flue under its old-established four-post bedsteads
+in its old-established airless rooms, its old-established
+frouziness up-stairs and down-stairs, its old-established cookery,
+and its old-established principles of plunder.  Count up your
+injuries, in its side-dishes of ailing sweetbreads in white
+poultices, of apothecaries' powders in rice for curry, of pale
+stewed bits of calf ineffectually relying for an adventitious
+interest on forcemeat balls.  You have had experience of the old-
+established Bull's Head stringy fowls, with lower extremities like
+wooden legs, sticking up out of the dish; of its cannibalic boiled
+mutton, gushing horribly among its capers, when carved; of its
+little dishes of pastry--roofs of spermaceti ointment, erected over
+half an apple or four gooseberries.  Well for you if you have yet
+forgotten the old-established Bull's Head fruity port:  whose
+reputation was gained solely by the old-established price the
+Bull's Head put upon it, and by the old-established air with which
+the Bull's Head set the glasses and D'Oyleys on, and held that
+Liquid Gout to the three-and-sixpenny wax-candle, as if its old-
+established colour hadn't come from the dyer's.
+
+Or lastly, take to finish with, two cases that we all know, every
+day.
+
+We all know the new hotel near the station, where it is always
+gusty, going up the lane which is always muddy, where we are sure
+to arrive at night, and where we make the gas start awfully when we
+open the front door.  We all know the flooring of the passages and
+staircases that is too new, and the walls that are too new, and the
+house that is haunted by the ghost of mortar.  We all know the
+doors that have cracked, and the cracked shutters through which we
+get a glimpse of the disconsolate moon.  We all know the new
+people, who have come to keep the new hotel, and who wish they had
+never come, and who (inevitable result) wish WE had never come.  We
+all know how much too scant and smooth and bright the new furniture
+is, and how it has never settled down, and cannot fit itself into
+right places, and will get into wrong places.  We all know how the
+gas, being lighted, shows maps of Damp upon the walls.  We all know
+how the ghost of mortar passes into our sandwich, stirs our negus,
+goes up to bed with us, ascends the pale bedroom chimney, and
+prevents the smoke from following.  We all know how a leg of our
+chair comes off at breakfast in the morning, and how the dejected
+waiter attributes the accident to a general greenness pervading the
+establishment, and informs us, in reply to a local inquiry, that he
+is thankful to say he is an entire stranger in that part of the
+country and is going back to his own connexion on Saturday.
+
+We all know, on the other hand, the great station hotel belonging
+to the company of proprietors, which has suddenly sprung up in the
+back outskirts of any place we like to name, and where we look out
+of our palatial windows at little back yards and gardens, old
+summer-houses, fowl-houses, pigeon-traps, and pigsties.  We all
+know this hotel in which we can get anything we want, after its
+kind, for money; but where nobody is glad to see us, or sorry to
+see us, or minds (our bill paid) whether we come or go, or how, or
+when, or why, or cares about us.  We all know this hotel, where we
+have no individuality, but put ourselves into the general post, as
+it were, and are sorted and disposed of according to our division.
+We all know that we can get on very well indeed at such a place,
+but still not perfectly well; and this may be, because the place is
+largely wholesale, and there is a lingering personal retail
+interest within us that asks to be satisfied.
+
+To sum up.  My uncommercial travelling has not yet brought me to
+the conclusion that we are close to perfection in these matters.
+And just as I do not believe that the end of the world will ever be
+near at hand, so long as any of the very tiresome and arrogant
+people who constantly predict that catastrophe are left in it, so,
+I shall have small faith in the Hotel Millennium, while any of the
+uncomfortable superstitions I have glanced at remain in existence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--TRAVELLING ABROAD
+
+
+
+I got into the travelling chariot--it was of German make, roomy,
+heavy, and unvarnished--I got into the travelling chariot, pulled
+up the steps after me, shut myself in with a smart bang of the
+door, and gave the word, 'Go on!'
+
+Immediately, all that W. and S.W. division of London began to slide
+away at a pace so lively, that I was over the river, and past the
+Old Kent Road, and out on Blackheath, and even ascending Shooter's
+Hill, before I had had time to look about me in the carriage, like
+a collected traveller.
+
+I had two ample Imperials on the roof, other fitted storage for
+luggage in front, and other up behind; I had a net for books
+overhead, great pockets to all the windows, a leathern pouch or two
+hung up for odds and ends, and a reading lamp fixed in the back of
+the chariot, in case I should be benighted.  I was amply provided
+in all respects, and had no idea where I was going (which was
+delightful), except that I was going abroad.
+
+So smooth was the old high road, and so fresh were the horses, and
+so fast went I, that it was midway between Gravesend and Rochester,
+and the widening river was bearing the ships, white sailed or
+black-smoked, out to sea, when I noticed by the wayside a very
+queer small boy.
+
+'Holloa!' said I, to the very queer small boy, 'where do you live?'
+
+'At Chatham,' says he.
+
+'What do you do there?' says I.
+
+'I go to school,' says he.
+
+I took him up in a moment, and we went on.  Presently, the very
+queer small boy says, 'This is Gads-hill we are coming to, where
+Falstaff went out to rob those travellers, and ran away.'
+
+'You know something about Falstaff, eh?' said I.
+
+'All about him,' said the very queer small boy.  'I am old (I am
+nine), and I read all sorts of books.  But DO let us stop at the
+top of the hill, and look at the house there, if you please!'
+
+'You admire that house?' said I.
+
+'Bless you, sir,' said the very queer small boy, 'when I was not
+more than half as old as nine, it used to be a treat for me to be
+brought to look at it.  And now, I am nine, I come by myself to
+look at it.  And ever since I can recollect, my father, seeing me
+so fond of it, has often said to me, "If you were to be very
+persevering and were to work hard, you might some day come to live
+in it."  Though that's impossible!' said the very queer small boy,
+drawing a low breath, and now staring at the house out of window
+with all his might.
+
+I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer small boy;
+for that house happens to be MY house, and I have reason to believe
+that what he said was true.
+
+Well!  I made no halt there, and I soon dropped the very queer
+small boy and went on.  Over the road where the old Romans used to
+march, over the road where the old Canterbury pilgrims used to go,
+over the road where the travelling trains of the old imperious
+priests and princes used to jingle on horseback between the
+continent and this Island through the mud and water, over the road
+where Shakespeare hummed to himself, 'Blow, blow, thou winter
+wind,' as he sat in the saddle at the gate of the inn yard noticing
+the carriers; all among the cherry orchards, apple orchards, corn-
+fields, and hop-gardens; so went I, by Canterbury to Dover.  There,
+the sea was tumbling in, with deep sounds, after dark, and the
+revolving French light on Cape Grinez was seen regularly bursting
+out and becoming obscured, as if the head of a gigantic light-
+keeper in an anxious state of mind were interposed every half-
+minute, to look how it was burning.
+
+Early in the morning I was on the deck of the steam-packet, and we
+were aiming at the bar in the usual intolerable manner, and the bar
+was aiming at us in the usual intolerable manner, and the bar got
+by far the best of it, and we got by far the worst--all in the
+usual intolerable manner.
+
+But, when I was clear of the Custom House on the other side, and
+when I began to make the dust fly on the thirsty French roads, and
+when the twigsome trees by the wayside (which, I suppose, never
+will grow leafy, for they never did) guarded here and there a dusty
+soldier, or field labourer, baking on a heap of broken stones,
+sound asleep in a fiction of shade, I began to recover my
+travelling spirits.  Coming upon the breaker of the broken stones,
+in a hard, hot, shining hat, on which the sun played at a distance
+as on a burning-glass, I felt that now, indeed, I was in the dear
+old France of my affections.  I should have known it, without the
+well-remembered bottle of rough ordinary wine, the cold roast fowl,
+the loaf, and the pinch of salt, on which I lunched with
+unspeakable satisfaction, from one of the stuffed pockets of the
+chariot.
+
+I must have fallen asleep after lunch, for when a bright face
+looked in at the window, I started, and said:
+
+'Good God, Louis, I dreamed you were dead!'
+
+My cheerful servant laughed, and answered:
+
+'Me?  Not at all, sir.'
+
+'How glad I am to wake!  What are we doing Louis?'
+
+'We go to take relay of horses.  Will you walk up the hill?'
+
+'Certainly.'
+
+Welcome the old French hill, with the old French lunatic (not in
+the most distant degree related to Sterne's Maria) living in a
+thatched dog-kennel half-way up, and flying out with his crutch and
+his big head and extended nightcap, to be beforehand with the old
+men and women exhibiting crippled children, and with the children
+exhibiting old men and women, ugly and blind, who always seemed by
+resurrectionary process to be recalled out of the elements for the
+sudden peopling of the solitude!
+
+'It is well,' said I, scattering among them what small coin I had;
+'here comes Louis, and I am quite roused from my nap.'
+
+We journeyed on again, and I welcomed every new assurance that
+France stood where I had left it.  There were the posting-houses,
+with their archways, dirty stable-yards, and clean post-masters'
+wives, bright women of business, looking on at the putting-to of
+the horses; there were the postilions counting what money they got,
+into their hats, and never making enough of it; there were the
+standard population of grey horses of Flanders descent, invariably
+biting one another when they got a chance; there were the fleecy
+sheepskins, looped on over their uniforms by the postilions, like
+bibbed aprons when it blew and rained; there were their Jack-boots,
+and their cracking whips; there were the cathedrals that I got out
+to see, as under some cruel bondage, in no wise desiring to see
+them; there were the little towns that appeared to have no reason
+for being towns, since most of their houses were to let and nobody
+could be induced to look at them, except the people who couldn't
+let them and had nothing else to do but look at them all day.  I
+lay a night upon the road and enjoyed delectable cookery of
+potatoes, and some other sensible things, adoption of which at home
+would inevitably be shown to be fraught with ruin, somehow or
+other, to that rickety national blessing, the British farmer; and
+at last I was rattled, like a single pill in a box, over leagues of
+stones, until--madly cracking, plunging, and flourishing two grey
+tails about--I made my triumphal entry into Paris.
+
+At Paris, I took an upper apartment for a few days in one of the
+hotels of the Rue de Rivoli; my front windows looking into the
+garden of the Tuileries (where the principal difference between the
+nursemaids and the flowers seemed to be that the former were
+locomotive and the latter not):  my back windows looking at all the
+other back windows in the hotel, and deep down into a paved yard,
+where my German chariot had retired under a tight-fitting archway,
+to all appearance for life, and where bells rang all day without
+anybody's minding them but certain chamberlains with feather brooms
+and green baize caps, who here and there leaned out of some high
+window placidly looking down, and where neat waiters with trays on
+their left shoulders passed and repassed from morning to night.
+
+Whenever I am at Paris, I am dragged by invisible force into the
+Morgue.  I never want to go there, but am always pulled there.  One
+Christmas Day, when I would rather have been anywhere else, I was
+attracted in, to see an old grey man lying all alone on his cold
+bed, with a tap of water turned on over his grey hair, and running,
+drip, drip, drip, down his wretched face until it got to the corner
+of his mouth, where it took a turn, and made him look sly.  One New
+Year's Morning (by the same token, the sun was shining outside, and
+there was a mountebank balancing a feather on his nose, within a
+yard of the gate), I was pulled in again to look at a flaxen-haired
+boy of eighteen, with a heart hanging on his breast--'from his
+mother,' was engraven on it--who had come into the net across the
+river, with a bullet wound in his fair forehead and his hands cut
+with a knife, but whence or how was a blank mystery.  This time, I
+was forced into the same dread place, to see a large dark man whose
+disfigurement by water was in a frightful manner comic, and whose
+expression was that of a prize-fighter who had closed his eyelids
+under a heavy blow, but was going immediately to open them, shake
+his head, and 'come up smiling.'  Oh what this large dark man cost
+me in that bright city!
+
+It was very hot weather, and he was none the better for that, and I
+was much the worse.  Indeed, a very neat and pleasant little woman
+with the key of her lodging on her forefinger, who had been showing
+him to her little girl while she and the child ate sweetmeats,
+observed monsieur looking poorly as we came out together, and asked
+monsieur, with her wondering little eyebrows prettily raised, if
+there were anything the matter?  Faintly replying in the negative,
+monsieur crossed the road to a wine-shop, got some brandy, and
+resolved to freshen himself with a dip in the great floating bath
+on the river.
+
+The bath was crowded in the usual airy manner, by a male population
+in striped drawers of various gay colours, who walked up and down
+arm in arm, drank coffee, smoked cigars, sat at little tables,
+conversed politely with the damsels who dispensed the towels, and
+every now and then pitched themselves into the river head foremost,
+and came out again to repeat this social routine.  I made haste to
+participate in the water part of the entertainments, and was in the
+full enjoyment of a delightful bath, when all in a moment I was
+seized with an unreasonable idea that the large dark body was
+floating straight at me.
+
+I was out of the river, and dressing instantly.  In the shock I had
+taken some water into my mouth, and it turned me sick, for I
+fancied that the contamination of the creature was in it.  I had
+got back to my cool darkened room in the hotel, and was lying on a
+sofa there, before I began to reason with myself.
+
+Of course, I knew perfectly well that the large dark creature was
+stone dead, and that I should no more come upon him out of the
+place where I had seen him dead, than I should come upon the
+cathedral of Notre-Dame in an entirely new situation.  What
+troubled me was the picture of the creature; and that had so
+curiously and strongly painted itself upon my brain, that I could
+not get rid of it until it was worn out.
+
+I noticed the peculiarities of this possession, while it was a real
+discomfort to me.  That very day, at dinner, some morsel on my
+plate looked like a piece of him, and I was glad to get up and go
+out.  Later in the evening, I was walking along the Rue St. Honore,
+when I saw a bill at a public room there, announcing small-sword
+exercise, broad-sword exercise, wrestling, and other such feats.  I
+went in, and some of the sword-play being very skilful, remained.
+A specimen of our own national sport, The British Boaxe, was
+announced to be given at the close of the evening.  In an evil
+hour, I determined to wait for this Boaxe, as became a Briton.  It
+was a clumsy specimen (executed by two English grooms out of
+place), but one of the combatants, receiving a straight right-
+hander with the glove between his eyes, did exactly what the large
+dark creature in the Morgue had seemed going to do--and finished me
+for that night.
+
+There was rather a sickly smell (not at all an unusual fragrance in
+Paris) in the little ante-room of my apartment at the hotel.  The
+large dark creature in the Morgue was by no direct experience
+associated with my sense of smell, because, when I came to the
+knowledge of him, he lay behind a wall of thick plate-glass as good
+as a wall of steel or marble for that matter.  Yet the whiff of the
+room never failed to reproduce him.  What was more curious, was the
+capriciousness with which his portrait seemed to light itself up in
+my mind, elsewhere.  I might be walking in the Palais Royal, lazily
+enjoying the shop windows, and might be regaling myself with one of
+the ready-made clothes shops that are set out there.  My eyes,
+wandering over impossible-waisted dressing-gowns and luminous
+waistcoats, would fall upon the master, or the shopman, or even the
+very dummy at the door, and would suggest to me, 'Something like
+him!'--and instantly I was sickened again.
+
+This would happen at the theatre, in the same manner.  Often it
+would happen in the street, when I certainly was not looking for
+the likeness, and when probably there was no likeness there.  It
+was not because the creature was dead that I was so haunted,
+because I know that I might have been (and I know it because I have
+been) equally attended by the image of a living aversion.  This
+lasted about a week.  The picture did not fade by degrees, in the
+sense that it became a whit less forcible and distinct, but in the
+sense that it obtruded itself less and less frequently.  The
+experience may be worth considering by some who have the care of
+children.  It would be difficult to overstate the intensity and
+accuracy of an intelligent child's observation.  At that
+impressible time of life, it must sometimes produce a fixed
+impression.  If the fixed impression be of an object terrible to
+the child, it will be (for want of reasoning upon) inseparable from
+great fear.  Force the child at such a time, be Spartan with it,
+send it into the dark against its will, leave it in a lonely
+bedroom against its will, and you had better murder it.
+
+On a bright morning I rattled away from Paris, in the German
+chariot, and left the large dark creature behind me for good.  I
+ought to confess, though, that I had been drawn back to the Morgue,
+after he was put underground, to look at his clothes, and that I
+found them frightfully like him--particularly his boots.  However,
+I rattled away for Switzerland, looking forward and not backward,
+and so we parted company.
+
+Welcome again, the long, long spell of France, with the queer
+country inns, full of vases of flowers and clocks, in the dull
+little town, and with the little population not at all dull on the
+little Boulevard in the evening, under the little trees!  Welcome
+Monsieur the Cure, walking alone in the early morning a short way
+out of the town, reading that eternal Breviary of yours, which
+surely might be almost read, without book, by this time!  Welcome
+Monsieur the Cure, later in the day, jolting through the highway
+dust (as if you had already ascended to the cloudy region), in a
+very big-headed cabriolet, with the dried mud of a dozen winters on
+it.  Welcome again Monsieur the Cure, as we exchange salutations;
+you, straightening your back to look at the German chariot, while
+picking in your little village garden a vegetable or two for the
+day's soup:  I, looking out of the German chariot window in that
+delicious traveller's trance which knows no cares, no yesterdays,
+no to-morrows, nothing but the passing objects and the passing
+scents and sounds!  And so I came, in due course of delight, to
+Strasbourg, where I passed a wet Sunday evening at a window, while
+an idle trifle of a vaudeville was played for me at the opposite
+house.
+
+How such a large house came to have only three people living in it,
+was its own affair.  There were at least a score of windows in its
+high roof alone; how many in its grotesque front, I soon gave up
+counting.  The owner was a shopkeeper, by name Straudenheim; by
+trade--I couldn't make out what by trade, for he had forborne to
+write that up, and his shop was shut.
+
+At first, as I looked at Straudenheim's, through the steadily
+falling rain, I set him up in business in the goose-liver line.
+But, inspection of Straudenheim, who became visible at a window on
+the second floor, convinced me that there was something more
+precious than liver in the case.  He wore a black velvet skull-cap,
+and looked usurious and rich.  A large-lipped, pear-nosed old man,
+with white hair, and keen eyes, though near-sighted.  He was
+writing at a desk, was Straudenheim, and ever and again left off
+writing, put his pen in his mouth, and went through actions with
+his right hand, like a man steadying piles of cash.  Five-franc
+pieces, Straudenheim, or golden Napoleons?  A jeweller,
+Straudenheim, a dealer in money, a diamond merchant, or what?
+
+Below Straudenheim, at a window on the first floor, sat his
+housekeeper--far from young, but of a comely presence, suggestive
+of a well-matured foot and ankle.  She was cheerily dressed, had a
+fan in her hand, and wore large gold earrings and a large gold
+cross.  She would have been out holiday-making (as I settled it)
+but for the pestilent rain.  Strasbourg had given up holiday-making
+for that once, as a bad job, because the rain was jerking in gushes
+out of the old roof-spouts, and running in a brook down the middle
+of the street.  The housekeeper, her arms folded on her bosom and
+her fan tapping her chin, was bright and smiling at her open
+window, but otherwise Straudenheim's house front was very dreary.
+The housekeeper's was the only open window in it; Straudenheim kept
+himself close, though it was a sultry evening when air is pleasant,
+and though the rain had brought into the town that vague refreshing
+smell of grass which rain does bring in the summer-time.
+
+The dim appearance of a man at Straudenheim's shoulder, inspired me
+with a misgiving that somebody had come to murder that flourishing
+merchant for the wealth with which I had handsomely endowed him:
+the rather, as it was an excited man, lean and long of figure, and
+evidently stealthy of foot.  But, he conferred with Straudenheim
+instead of doing him a mortal injury, and then they both softly
+opened the other window of that room--which was immediately over
+the housekeeper's--and tried to see her by looking down.  And my
+opinion of Straudenheim was much lowered when I saw that eminent
+citizen spit out of window, clearly with the hope of spitting on
+the housekeeper.
+
+The unconscious housekeeper fanned herself, tossed her head, and
+laughed.  Though unconscious of Straudenheim, she was conscious of
+somebody else--of me?--there was nobody else.
+
+After leaning so far out of the window, that I confidently expected
+to see their heels tilt up, Straudenheim and the lean man drew
+their heads in and shut the window.  Presently, the house door
+secretly opened, and they slowly and spitefully crept forth into
+the pouring rain.  They were coming over to me (I thought) to
+demand satisfaction for my looking at the housekeeper, when they
+plunged into a recess in the architecture under my window and
+dragged out the puniest of little soldiers, begirt with the most
+innocent of little swords.  The tall glazed head-dress of this
+warrior, Straudenheim instantly knocked off, and out of it fell two
+sugar-sticks, and three or four large lumps of sugar.
+
+The warrior made no effort to recover his property or to pick up
+his shako, but looked with an expression of attention at
+Straudenheim when he kicked him five times, and also at the lean
+man when HE kicked him five times, and again at Straudenheim when
+he tore the breast of his (the warrior's) little coat open, and
+shook all his ten fingers in his face, as if they were ten
+thousand.  When these outrages had been committed, Straudenheim and
+his man went into the house again and barred the door.  A wonderful
+circumstance was, that the housekeeper who saw it all (and who
+could have taken six such warriors to her buxom bosom at once),
+only fanned herself and laughed as she had laughed before, and
+seemed to have no opinion about it, one way or other.
+
+But, the chief effect of the drama was the remarkable vengeance
+taken by the little warrior.  Left alone in the rain, he picked up
+his shako; put it on, all wet and dirty as it was; retired into a
+court, of which Straudenheim's house formed the corner; wheeled
+about; and bringing his two forefingers close to the top of his
+nose, rubbed them over one another, cross-wise, in derision,
+defiance, and contempt of Straudenheim.  Although Straudenheim
+could not possibly be supposed to be conscious of this strange
+proceeding, it so inflated and comforted the little warrior's soul,
+that twice he went away, and twice came back into the court to
+repeat it, as though it must goad his enemy to madness.  Not only
+that, but he afterwards came back with two other small warriors,
+and they all three did it together.  Not only that--as I live to
+tell the tale!--but just as it was falling quite dark, the three
+came back, bringing with them a huge bearded Sapper, whom they
+moved, by recital of the original wrong, to go through the same
+performance, with the same complete absence of all possible
+knowledge of it on the part of Straudenheim.  And then they all
+went away, arm in arm, singing.
+
+I went away too, in the German chariot at sunrise, and rattled on,
+day after day, like one in a sweet dream; with so many clear little
+bells on the harness of the horses, that the nursery rhyme about
+Banbury Cross and the venerable lady who rode in state there, was
+always in my ears.  And now I came to the land of wooden houses,
+innocent cakes, thin butter soup, and spotless little inn bedrooms
+with a family likeness to Dairies.  And now the Swiss marksmen were
+for ever rifle-shooting at marks across gorges, so exceedingly near
+my ear, that I felt like a new Gesler in a Canton of Tells, and
+went in highly-deserved danger of my tyrannical life.  The prizes
+at these shootings, were watches, smart handkerchiefs, hats,
+spoons, and (above all) tea-trays; and at these contests I came
+upon a more than usually accomplished and amiable countryman of my
+own, who had shot himself deaf in whole years of competition, and
+had won so many tea-trays that he went about the country with his
+carriage full of them, like a glorified Cheap-Jack.
+
+In the mountain-country into which I had now travelled, a yoke of
+oxen were sometimes hooked on before the post-horses, and I went
+lumbering up, up, up, through mist and rain, with the roar of
+falling water for change of music.  Of a sudden, mist and rain
+would clear away, and I would come down into picturesque little
+towns with gleaming spires and odd towers; and would stroll afoot
+into market-places in steep winding streets, where a hundred women
+in bodices, sold eggs and honey, butter and fruit, and suckled
+their children as they sat by their clean baskets, and had such
+enormous goitres (or glandular swellings in the throat) that it
+became a science to know where the nurse ended and the child began.
+About this time, I deserted my German chariot for the back of a
+mule (in colour and consistency so very like a dusty old hair trunk
+I once had at school, that I half expected to see my initials in
+brass-headed nails on his backbone), and went up a thousand rugged
+ways, and looked down at a thousand woods of fir and pine, and
+would on the whole have preferred my mule's keeping a little nearer
+to the inside, and not usually travelling with a hoof or two over
+the precipice--though much consoled by explanation that this was to
+be attributed to his great sagacity, by reason of his carrying
+broad loads of wood at other times, and not being clear but that I
+myself belonged to that station of life, and required as much room
+as they.  He brought me safely, in his own wise way, among the
+passes of the Alps, and here I enjoyed a dozen climates a day;
+being now (like Don Quixote on the back of the wooden horse) in the
+region of wind, now in the region of fire, now in the region of
+unmelting ice and snow.  Here, I passed over trembling domes of
+ice, beneath which the cataract was roaring; and here was received
+under arches of icicles, of unspeakable beauty; and here the sweet
+air was so bracing and so light, that at halting-times I rolled in
+the snow when I saw my mule do it, thinking that he must know best.
+At this part of the journey we would come, at mid-day, into half an
+hour's thaw:  when the rough mountain inn would be found on an
+island of deep mud in a sea of snow, while the baiting strings of
+mules, and the carts full of casks and bales, which had been in an
+Arctic condition a mile off, would steam again.  By such ways and
+means, I would come to the cluster of chalets where I had to turn
+out of the track to see the waterfall; and then, uttering a howl
+like a young giant, on espying a traveller--in other words,
+something to eat--coming up the steep, the idiot lying on the wood-
+pile who sunned himself and nursed his goitre, would rouse the
+woman-guide within the hut, who would stream out hastily, throwing
+her child over one of her shoulders and her goitre over the other,
+as she came along.  I slept at religious houses, and bleak refuges
+of many kinds, on this journey, and by the stove at night heard
+stories of travellers who had perished within call, in wreaths and
+drifts of snow.  One night the stove within, and the cold outside,
+awakened childish associations long forgotten, and I dreamed I was
+in Russia--the identical serf out of a picture-book I had, before I
+could read it for myself--and that I was going to be knouted by a
+noble personage in a fur cap, boots, and earrings, who, I think,
+must have come out of some melodrama.
+
+Commend me to the beautiful waters among these mountains!  Though I
+was not of their mind:  they, being inveterately bent on getting
+down into the level country, and I ardently desiring to linger
+where I was.  What desperate leaps they took, what dark abysses
+they plunged into, what rocks they wore away, what echoes they
+invoked!  In one part where I went, they were pressed into the
+service of carrying wood down, to be burnt next winter, as costly
+fuel, in Italy.  But, their fierce savage nature was not to be
+easily constrained, and they fought with every limb of the wood;
+whirling it round and round, stripping its bark away, dashing it
+against pointed corners, driving it out of the course, and roaring
+and flying at the peasants who steered it back again from the bank
+with long stout poles.  Alas! concurrent streams of time and water
+carried ME down fast, and I came, on an exquisitely clear day, to
+the Lausanne shore of the Lake of Geneva, where I stood looking at
+the bright blue water, the flushed white mountains opposite, and
+the boats at my feet with their furled Mediterranean sails, showing
+like enormous magnifications of this goose-quill pen that is now in
+my hand.
+
+- The sky became overcast without any notice; a wind very like the
+March east wind of England, blew across me; and a voice said, 'How
+do you like it?  Will it do?'
+
+I had merely shut myself, for half a minute, in a German travelling
+chariot that stood for sale in the Carriage Department of the
+London Pantechnicon.  I had a commission to buy it, for a friend
+who was going abroad; and the look and manner of the chariot, as I
+tried the cushions and the springs, brought all these hints of
+travelling remembrance before me.
+
+'It will do very well,' said I, rather sorrowfully, as I got out at
+the other door, and shut the carriage up.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--THE GREAT TASMANIA'S CARGO
+
+
+
+I travel constantly, up and down a certain line of railway that has
+a terminus in London.  It is the railway for a large military
+depot, and for other large barracks.  To the best of my serious
+belief, I have never been on that railway by daylight, without
+seeing some handcuffed deserters in the train.
+
+It is in the nature of things that such an institution as our
+English army should have many bad and troublesome characters in it.
+But, this is a reason for, and not against, its being made as
+acceptable as possible to well-disposed men of decent behaviour.
+Such men are assuredly not tempted into the ranks, by the beastly
+inversion of natural laws, and the compulsion to live in worse than
+swinish foulness.  Accordingly, when any such Circumlocutional
+embellishments of the soldier's condition have of late been brought
+to notice, we civilians, seated in outer darkness cheerfully
+meditating on an Income Tax, have considered the matter as being
+our business, and have shown a tendency to declare that we would
+rather not have it misregulated, if such declaration may, without
+violence to the Church Catechism, be hinted to those who are put in
+authority over us.
+
+Any animated description of a modern battle, any private soldier's
+letter published in the newspapers, any page of the records of the
+Victoria Cross, will show that in the ranks of the army, there
+exists under all disadvantages as fine a sense of duty as is to be
+found in any station on earth.  Who doubts that if we all did our
+duty as faithfully as the soldier does his, this world would be a
+better place?  There may be greater difficulties in our way than in
+the soldier's.  Not disputed.  But, let us at least do our duty
+towards HIM.
+
+I had got back again to that rich and beautiful port where I had
+looked after Mercantile Jack, and I was walking up a hill there, on
+a wild March morning.  My conversation with my official friend
+Pangloss, by whom I was accidentally accompanied, took this
+direction as we took the up-hill direction, because the object of
+my uncommercial journey was to see some discharged soldiers who had
+recently come home from India.  There were men of HAVELOCK's among
+them; there were men who had been in many of the great battles of
+the great Indian campaign, among them; and I was curious to note
+what our discharged soldiers looked like, when they were done with.
+
+I was not the less interested (as I mentioned to my official friend
+Pangloss) because these men had claimed to be discharged, when
+their right to be discharged was not admitted.  They had behaved
+with unblemished fidelity and bravery; but, a change of
+circumstances had arisen, which, as they considered, put an end to
+their compact and entitled them to enter on a new one.  Their
+demand had been blunderingly resisted by the authorities in India:
+but, it is to be presumed that the men were not far wrong, inasmuch
+as the bungle had ended in their being sent home discharged, in
+pursuance of orders from home.  (There was an immense waste of
+money, of course.)
+
+Under these circumstances--thought I, as I walked up the hill, on
+which I accidentally encountered my official friend--under these
+circumstances of the men having successfully opposed themselves to
+the Pagoda Department of that great Circumlocution Office on which
+the sun never sets and the light of reason never rises, the Pagoda
+Department will have been particularly careful of the national
+honour.  It will have shown these men, in the scrupulous good
+faith, not to say the generosity, of its dealing with them, that
+great national authorities can have no small retaliations and
+revenges.  It will have made every provision for their health on
+the passage home, and will have landed them, restored from their
+campaigning fatigues by a sea-voyage, pure air, sound food, and
+good medicines.  And I pleased myself with dwelling beforehand, on
+the great accounts of their personal treatment which these men
+would carry into their various towns and villages, and on the
+increasing popularity of the service that would insensibly follow.
+I almost began to hope that the hitherto-never-failing deserters on
+my railroad would by-and-by become a phenomenon.
+
+In this agreeable frame of mind I entered the workhouse of
+Liverpool.--For, the cultivation of laurels in a sandy soil, had
+brought the soldiers in question to THAT abode of Glory.
+
+Before going into their wards to visit them, I inquired how they
+had made their triumphant entry there?  They had been brought
+through the rain in carts it seemed, from the landing-place to the
+gate, and had then been carried up-stairs on the backs of paupers.
+Their groans and pains during the performance of this glorious
+pageant, had been so distressing, as to bring tears into the eyes
+of spectators but too well accustomed to scenes of suffering.  The
+men were so dreadfully cold, that those who could get near the
+fires were hard to be restrained from thrusting their feet in among
+the blazing coals.  They were so horribly reduced, that they were
+awful to look upon.  Racked with dysentery and blackened with
+scurvy, one hundred and forty wretched soldiers had been revived
+with brandy and laid in bed.
+
+My official friend Pangloss is lineally descended from a learned
+doctor of that name, who was once tutor to Candide, an ingenious
+young gentleman of some celebrity.  In his personal character, he
+is as humane and worthy a gentleman as any I know; in his official
+capacity, he unfortunately preaches the doctrines of his renowned
+ancestor, by demonstrating on all occasions that we live in the
+best of all possible official worlds.
+
+'In the name of Humanity,' said I, 'how did the men fall into this
+deplorable state?  Was the ship well found in stores?'
+
+'I am not here to asseverate that I know the fact, of my own
+knowledge,' answered Pangloss, 'but I have grounds for asserting
+that the stores were the best of all possible stores.'
+
+A medical officer laid before us, a handful of rotten biscuit, and
+a handful of split peas.  The biscuit was a honeycombed heap of
+maggots, and the excrement of maggots.  The peas were even harder
+than this filth.  A similar handful had been experimentally boiled
+six hours, and had shown no signs of softening.  These were the
+stores on which the soldiers had been fed.
+
+'The beef--' I began, when Pangloss cut me short.
+
+'Was the best of all possible beef,' said he.
+
+But, behold, there was laid before us certain evidence given at the
+Coroner's Inquest, holden on some of the men (who had obstinately
+died of their treatment), and from that evidence it appeared that
+the beef was the worst of possible beef!
+
+'Then I lay my hand upon my heart, and take my stand,' said
+Pangloss, 'by the pork, which was the best of all possible pork.'
+
+'But look at this food before our eyes, if one may so misuse the
+word,' said I.  'Would any Inspector who did his duty, pass such
+abomination?'
+
+'It ought not to have been passed,' Pangloss admitted.
+
+'Then the authorities out there--' I began, when Pangloss cut me
+short again.
+
+'There would certainly seem to have been something wrong
+somewhere,' said he; 'but I am prepared to prove that the
+authorities out there, are the best of all possible authorities.'
+
+I never heard of any impeached public authority in my life, who was
+not the best public authority in existence.
+
+'We are told of these unfortunate men being laid low by scurvy,'
+said I.  'Since lime-juice has been regularly stored and served out
+in our navy, surely that disease, which used to devastate it, has
+almost disappeared?  Was there lime-juice aboard this transport?'
+
+My official friend was beginning 'the best of all possible--' when
+an inconvenient medical forefinger pointed out another passage in
+the evidence, from which it appeared that the lime-juice had been
+bad too.  Not to mention that the vinegar had been bad too, the
+vegetables bad too, the cooking accommodation insufficient (if
+there had been anything worth mentioning to cook), the water supply
+exceedingly inadequate, and the beer sour.
+
+'Then the men,' said Pangloss, a little irritated, 'Were the worst
+of all possible men.'
+
+'In what respect?' I asked.
+
+'Oh!  Habitual drunkards,' said Pangloss.
+
+But, again the same incorrigible medical forefinger pointed out
+another passage in the evidence, showing that the dead men had been
+examined after death, and that they, at least, could not possibly
+have been habitual drunkards, because the organs within them which
+must have shown traces of that habit, were perfectly sound.
+
+'And besides,' said the three doctors present, 'one and all,
+habitual drunkards brought as low as these men have been, could not
+recover under care and food, as the great majority of these men are
+recovering.  They would not have strength of constitution to do
+it.'
+
+'Reckless and improvident dogs, then,' said Pangloss.  'Always are-
+-nine times out of ten.'
+
+I turned to the master of the workhouse, and asked him whether the
+men had any money?
+
+'Money?' said he.  'I have in my iron safe, nearly four hundred
+pounds of theirs; the agents have nearly a hundred pounds more and
+many of them have left money in Indian banks besides.'
+
+'Hah!' said I to myself, as we went up-stairs, 'this is not the
+best of all possible stories, I doubt!'
+
+We went into a large ward, containing some twenty or five-and-
+twenty beds.  We went into several such wards, one after another.
+I find it very difficult to indicate what a shocking sight I saw in
+them, without frightening the reader from the perusal of these
+lines, and defeating my object of making it known.
+
+O the sunken eyes that turned to me as I walked between the rows of
+beds, or--worse still--that glazedly looked at the white ceiling,
+and saw nothing and cared for nothing!  Here, lay the skeleton of a
+man, so lightly covered with a thin unwholesome skin, that not a
+bone in the anatomy was clothed, and I could clasp the arm above
+the elbow, in my finger and thumb.  Here, lay a man with the black
+scurvy eating his legs away, his gums gone, and his teeth all gaunt
+and bare.  This bed was empty, because gangrene had set in, and the
+patient had died but yesterday.  That bed was a hopeless one,
+because its occupant was sinking fast, and could only be roused to
+turn the poor pinched mask of face upon the pillow, with a feeble
+moan.  The awful thinness of the fallen cheeks, the awful
+brightness of the deep set eyes, the lips of lead, the hands of
+ivory, the recumbent human images lying in the shadow of death with
+a kind of solemn twilight on them, like the sixty who had died
+aboard the ship and were lying at the bottom of the sea, O
+Pangloss, GOD forgive you!
+
+In one bed, lay a man whose life had been saved (as it was hoped)
+by deep incisions in the feet and legs.  While I was speaking to
+him, a nurse came up to change the poultices which this operation
+had rendered necessary, and I had an instinctive feeling that it
+was not well to turn away, merely to spare myself.  He was sorely
+wasted and keenly susceptible, but the efforts he made to subdue
+any expression of impatience or suffering, were quite heroic.  It
+was easy to see, in the shrinking of the figure, and the drawing of
+the bed-clothes over the head, how acute the endurance was, and it
+made me shrink too, as if I were in pain; but, when the new
+bandages were on, and the poor feet were composed again, he made an
+apology for himself (though he had not uttered a word), and said
+plaintively, 'I am so tender and weak, you see, sir!'  Neither from
+him nor from any one sufferer of the whole ghastly number, did I
+hear a complaint.  Of thankfulness for present solicitude and care,
+I heard much; of complaint, not a word.
+
+I think I could have recognised in the dismalest skeleton there,
+the ghost of a soldier.  Something of the old air was still latent
+in the palest shadow of life I talked to.  One emaciated creature,
+in the strictest literality worn to the bone, lay stretched on his
+back, looking so like death that I asked one of the doctors if he
+were not dying, or dead?  A few kind words from the doctor, in his
+ear, and he opened his eyes, and smiled--looked, in a moment, as if
+he would have made a salute, if he could.  'We shall pull him
+through, please God,' said the Doctor.  'Plase God, surr, and
+thankye,' said the patient.  'You are much better to-day; are you
+not?' said the Doctor.  'Plase God, surr; 'tis the slape I want,
+surr; 'tis my breathin' makes the nights so long.'  'He is a
+careful fellow this, you must know,' said the Doctor, cheerfully;
+'it was raining hard when they put him in the open cart to bring
+him here, and he had the presence of mind to ask to have a
+sovereign taken out of his pocket that he had there, and a cab
+engaged.  Probably it saved his life.'  The patient rattled out the
+skeleton of a laugh, and said, proud of the story, ''Deed, surr, an
+open cairt was a comical means o' bringin' a dyin' man here, and a
+clever way to kill him.'  You might have sworn to him for a soldier
+when he said it.
+
+One thing had perplexed me very much in going from bed to bed.  A
+very significant and cruel thing.  I could find no young man but
+one.  He had attracted my notice, by having got up and dressed
+himself in his soldier's jacket and trousers, with the intention of
+sitting by the fire; but he had found himself too weak, and had
+crept back to his bed and laid himself down on the outside of it.
+I could have pronounced him, alone, to be a young man aged by
+famine and sickness.  As we were standing by the Irish soldier's
+bed, I mentioned my perplexity to the Doctor.  He took a board with
+an inscription on it from the head of the Irishman's bed, and asked
+me what age I supposed that man to be?  I had observed him with
+attention while talking to him, and answered, confidently, 'Fifty.'
+The Doctor, with a pitying glance at the patient, who had dropped
+into a stupor again, put the board back, and said, 'Twenty-four.'
+
+All the arrangements of the wards were excellent.  They could not
+have been more humane, sympathising, gentle, attentive, or
+wholesome.  The owners of the ship, too, had done all they could,
+liberally.  There were bright fires in every room, and the
+convalescent men were sitting round them, reading various papers
+and periodicals.  I took the liberty of inviting my official friend
+Pangloss to look at those convalescent men, and to tell me whether
+their faces and bearing were or were not, generally, the faces and
+bearing of steady respectable soldiers?  The master of the
+workhouse, overhearing me, said he had had a pretty large
+experience of troops, and that better conducted men than these, he
+had never had to do with.  They were always (he added) as we saw
+them.  And of us visitors (I add) they knew nothing whatever,
+except that we were there.
+
+It was audacious in me, but I took another liberty with Pangloss.
+Prefacing it with the observation that, of course, I knew
+beforehand that there was not the faintest desire, anywhere, to
+hush up any part of this dreadful business, and that the Inquest
+was the fairest of all possible Inquests, I besought four things of
+Pangloss.  Firstly, to observe that the Inquest WAS NOT HELD IN
+THAT PLACE, but at some distance off.  Secondly, to look round upon
+those helpless spectres in their beds.  Thirdly, to remember that
+the witnesses produced from among them before that Inquest, could
+not have been selected because they were the men who had the most
+to tell it, but because they happened to be in a state admitting of
+their safe removal.  Fourthly, to say whether the coroner and jury
+could have come there, to those pillows, and taken a little
+evidence?  My official friend declined to commit himself to a
+reply.
+
+There was a sergeant, reading, in one of the fireside groups.  As
+he was a man of very intelligent countenance, and as I have a great
+respect for non-commissioned officers as a class, I sat down on the
+nearest bed, to have some talk with him.  (It was the bed of one of
+the grisliest of the poor skeletons, and he died soon afterwards.)
+
+'I was glad to see, in the evidence of an officer at the Inquest,
+sergeant, that he never saw men behave better on board ship than
+these men.'
+
+'They did behave very well, sir.'
+
+'I was glad to see, too, that every man had a hammock.'  The
+sergeant gravely shook his head.  'There must be some mistake, sir.
+The men of my own mess had no hammocks.  There were not hammocks
+enough on board, and the men of the two next messes laid hold of
+hammocks for themselves as soon as they got on board, and squeezed
+my men out, as I may say.'
+
+'Had the squeezed-out men none then?'
+
+'None, sir.  As men died, their hammocks were used by other men,
+who wanted hammocks; but many men had none at all.'
+
+'Then you don't agree with the evidence on that point?'
+
+'Certainly not, sir.  A man can't, when he knows to the contrary.'
+
+'Did any of the men sell their bedding for drink?'
+
+'There is some mistake on that point too, sir.  Men were under the
+impression--I knew it for a fact at the time--that it was not
+allowed to take blankets or bedding on board, and so men who had
+things of that sort came to sell them purposely.'
+
+'Did any of the men sell their clothes for drink?'
+
+'They did, sir.'  (I believe there never was a more truthful
+witness than the sergeant.  He had no inclination to make out a
+case.)
+
+'Many?'
+
+'Some, sir' (considering the question).  'Soldier-like.  They had
+been long marching in the rainy season, by bad roads--no roads at
+all, in short--and when they got to Calcutta, men turned to and
+drank, before taking a last look at it.  Soldier-like.'
+
+'Do you see any men in this ward, for example, who sold clothes for
+drink at that time?'
+
+The sergeant's wan eye, happily just beginning to rekindle with
+health, travelled round the place and came back to me.  'Certainly,
+sir.'
+
+'The marching to Calcutta in the rainy season must have been
+severe?'
+
+'It was very severe, sir.'
+
+'Yet what with the rest and the sea air, I should have thought that
+the men (even the men who got drunk) would have soon begun to
+recover on board ship?'
+
+'So they might; but the bad food told upon them, and when we got
+into a cold latitude, it began to tell more, and the men dropped.'
+
+'The sick had a general disinclination for food, I am told,
+sergeant?'
+
+'Have you seen the food, sir?'
+
+'Some of it.'
+
+'Have you seen the state of their mouths, sir?'
+
+If the sergeant, who was a man of a few orderly words, had spoken
+the amount of this volume, he could not have settled that question
+better.  I believe the sick could as soon have eaten the ship, as
+the ship's provisions.
+
+I took the additional liberty with my friend Pangloss, when I had
+left the sergeant with good wishes, of asking Pangloss whether he
+had ever heard of biscuit getting drunk and bartering its
+nutritious qualities for putrefaction and vermin; of peas becoming
+hardened in liquor; of hammocks drinking themselves off the face of
+the earth; of lime-juice, vegetables, vinegar, cooking
+accommodation, water supply, and beer, all taking to drinking
+together and going to ruin?  'If not (I asked him), what did he say
+in defence of the officers condemned by the Coroner's jury, who, by
+signing the General Inspection report relative to the ship Great
+Tasmania, chartered for these troops, had deliberately asserted all
+that bad and poisonous dunghill refuse, to be good and wholesome
+food?'  My official friend replied that it was a remarkable fact,
+that whereas some officers were only positively good, and other
+officers only comparatively better, those particular officers were
+superlatively the very best of all possible officers.
+
+My hand and my heart fail me, in writing my record of this journey.
+The spectacle of the soldiers in the hospital-beds of that
+Liverpool workhouse (a very good workhouse, indeed, be it
+understood), was so shocking and so shameful, that as an Englishman
+I blush to remember it.  It would have been simply unbearable at
+the time, but for the consideration and pity with which they were
+soothed in their sufferings.
+
+No punishment that our inefficient laws provide, is worthy of the
+name when set against the guilt of this transaction.  But, if the
+memory of it die out unavenged, and if it do not result in the
+inexorable dismissal and disgrace of those who are responsible for
+it, their escape will be infamous to the Government (no matter of
+what party) that so neglects its duty, and infamous to the nation
+that tamely suffers such intolerable wrong to be done in its name.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES
+
+
+
+If the confession that I have often travelled from this Covent
+Garden lodging of mine on Sundays, should give offence to those who
+never travel on Sundays, they will be satisfied (I hope) by my
+adding that the journeys in question were made to churches.
+
+Not that I have any curiosity to hear powerful preachers.  Time
+was, when I was dragged by the hair of my head, as one may say, to
+hear too many.  On summer evenings, when every flower, and tree,
+and bird, might have better addressed my soft young heart, I have
+in my day been caught in the palm of a female hand by the crown,
+have been violently scrubbed from the neck to the roots of the hair
+as a purification for the Temple, and have then been carried off
+highly charged with saponaceous electricity, to be steamed like a
+potato in the unventilated breath of the powerful Boanerges Boiler
+and his congregation, until what small mind I had, was quite
+steamed out of me.  In which pitiable plight I have been haled out
+of the place of meeting, at the conclusion of the exercises, and
+catechised respecting Boanerges Boiler, his fifthly, his sixthly,
+and his seventhly, until I have regarded that reverend person in
+the light of a most dismal and oppressive Charade.  Time was, when
+I was carried off to platform assemblages at which no human child,
+whether of wrath or grace, could possibly keep its eyes open, and
+when I felt the fatal sleep stealing, stealing over me, and when I
+gradually heard the orator in possession, spinning and humming like
+a great top, until he rolled, collapsed, and tumbled over, and I
+discovered to my burning shame and fear, that as to that last stage
+it was not he, but I.  I have sat under Boanerges when he has
+specifically addressed himself to us--us, the infants--and at this
+present writing I hear his lumbering jocularity (which never amused
+us, though we basely pretended that it did), and I behold his big
+round face, and I look up the inside of his outstretched coat-
+sleeve as if it were a telescope with the stopper on, and I hate
+him with an unwholesome hatred for two hours.  Through such means
+did it come to pass that I knew the powerful preacher from
+beginning to end, all over and all through, while I was very young,
+and that I left him behind at an early period of life.  Peace be
+with him!  More peace than he brought to me!
+
+Now, I have heard many preachers since that time--not powerful;
+merely Christian, unaffected, and reverential--and I have had many
+such preachers on my roll of friends.  But, it was not to hear
+these, any more than the powerful class, that I made my Sunday
+journeys.  They were journeys of curiosity to the numerous churches
+in the City of London.  It came into my head one day, here had I
+been cultivating a familiarity with all the churches of Rome, and I
+knew nothing of the insides of the old churches of London!  This
+befell on a Sunday morning.  I began my expeditions that very same
+day, and they lasted me a year.
+
+I never wanted to know the names of the churches to which I went,
+and to this hour I am profoundly ignorant in that particular of at
+least nine-tenths of them.  Indeed, saying that I know the church
+of old GOWER'S tomb (he lies in effigy with his head upon his
+books) to be the church of Saint Saviour's, Southwark; and the
+church of MILTON'S tomb to be the church of Cripplegate; and the
+church on Cornhill with the great golden keys to be the church of
+Saint Peter; I doubt if I could pass a competitive examination in
+any of the names.  No question did I ever ask of living creature
+concerning these churches, and no answer to any antiquarian
+question on the subject that I ever put to books, shall harass the
+reader's soul.  A full half of my pleasure in them arose out of
+their mystery; mysterious I found them; mysterious they shall
+remain for me.
+
+Where shall I begin my round of hidden and forgotten old churches
+in the City of London?
+
+It is twenty minutes short of eleven on a Sunday morning, when I
+stroll down one of the many narrow hilly streets in the City that
+tend due south to the Thames.  It is my first experiment, and I
+have come to the region of Whittington in an omnibus, and we have
+put down a fierce-eyed, spare old woman, whose slate-coloured gown
+smells of herbs, and who walked up Aldersgate-street to some chapel
+where she comforts herself with brimstone doctrine, I warrant.  We
+have also put down a stouter and sweeter old lady, with a pretty
+large prayer-book in an unfolded pocket-handkerchief, who got out
+at a corner of a court near Stationers' Hall, and who I think must
+go to church there, because she is the widow of some deceased old
+Company's Beadle.  The rest of our freight were mere chance
+pleasure-seekers and rural walkers, and went on to the Blackwall
+railway.  So many bells are ringing, when I stand undecided at a
+street corner, that every sheep in the ecclesiastical fold might be
+a bell-wether.  The discordance is fearful.  My state of indecision
+is referable to, and about equally divisible among, four great
+churches, which are all within sight and sound, all within the
+space of a few square yards.
+
+As I stand at the street corner, I don't see as many as four people
+at once going to church, though I see as many as four churches with
+their steeples clamouring for people.  I choose my church, and go
+up the flight of steps to the great entrance in the tower.  A
+mouldy tower within, and like a neglected washhouse.  A rope comes
+through the beamed roof, and a man in the corner pulls it and
+clashes the bell--a whity-brown man, whose clothes were once black-
+-a man with flue on him, and cobweb.  He stares at me, wondering
+how I come there, and I stare at him, wondering how he comes there.
+Through a screen of wood and glass, I peep into the dim church.
+About twenty people are discernible, waiting to begin.  Christening
+would seem to have faded out of this church long ago, for the font
+has the dust of desuetude thick upon it, and its wooden cover
+(shaped like an old-fashioned tureen-cover) looks as if it wouldn't
+come off, upon requirement.  I perceive the altar to be rickety and
+the Commandments damp.  Entering after this survey, I jostle the
+clergyman in his canonicals, who is entering too from a dark lane
+behind a pew of state with curtains, where nobody sits.  The pew is
+ornamented with four blue wands, once carried by four somebodys, I
+suppose, before somebody else, but which there is nobody now to
+hold or receive honour from.  I open the door of a family pew, and
+shut myself in; if I could occupy twenty family pews at once I
+might have them.  The clerk, a brisk young man (how does HE come
+here?), glances at me knowingly, as who should say, 'You have done
+it now; you must stop.'  Organ plays.  Organ-loft is in a small
+gallery across the church; gallery congregation, two girls.  I
+wonder within myself what will happen when we are required to sing.
+
+There is a pale heap of books in the corner of my pew, and while
+the organ, which is hoarse and sleepy, plays in such fashion that I
+can hear more of the rusty working of the stops than of any music,
+I look at the books, which are mostly bound in faded baize and
+stuff.  They belonged in 1754, to the Dowgate family; and who were
+they?  Jane Comport must have married Young Dowgate, and come into
+the family that way; Young Dowgate was courting Jane Comport when
+he gave her her prayer-book, and recorded the presentation in the
+fly-leaf; if Jane were fond of Young Dowgate, why did she die and
+leave the book here?  Perhaps at the rickety altar, and before the
+damp Commandments, she, Comport, had taken him, Dowgate, in a flush
+of youthful hope and joy, and perhaps it had not turned out in the
+long run as great a success as was expected?
+
+The opening of the service recalls my wandering thoughts.  I then
+find, to my astonishment, that I have been, and still am, taking a
+strong kind of invisible snuff, up my nose, into my eyes, and down
+my throat.  I wink, sneeze, and cough.  The clerk sneezes; the
+clergyman winks; the unseen organist sneezes and coughs (and
+probably winks); all our little party wink, sneeze, and cough.  The
+snuff seems to be made of the decay of matting, wood, cloth, stone,
+iron, earth, and something else.  Is the something else, the decay
+of dead citizens in the vaults below?  As sure as Death it is!  Not
+only in the cold, damp February day, do we cough and sneeze dead
+citizens, all through the service, but dead citizens have got into
+the very bellows of the organ, and half choked the same.  We stamp
+our feet to warm them, and dead citizens arise in heavy clouds.
+Dead citizens stick upon the walls, and lie pulverised on the
+sounding-board over the clergyman's head, and, when a gust of air
+comes, tumble down upon him.
+
+In this first experience I was so nauseated by too much snuff, made
+of the Dowgate family, the Comport branch, and other families and
+branches, that I gave but little heed to our dull manner of ambling
+through the service; to the brisk clerk's manner of encouraging us
+to try a note or two at psalm time; to the gallery-congregation's
+manner of enjoying a shrill duet, without a notion of time or tune;
+to the whity-brown man's manner of shutting the minister into the
+pulpit, and being very particular with the lock of the door, as if
+he were a dangerous animal.  But, I tried again next Sunday, and
+soon accustomed myself to the dead citizens when I found that I
+could not possibly get on without them among the City churches.
+
+Another Sunday.
+
+After being again rung for by conflicting bells, like a leg of
+mutton or a laced hat a hundred years ago, I make selection of a
+church oddly put away in a corner among a number of lanes--a
+smaller church than the last, and an ugly:  of about the date of
+Queen Anne.  As a congregation, we are fourteen strong:  not
+counting an exhausted charity school in a gallery, which has
+dwindled away to four boys, and two girls.  In the porch, is a
+benefaction of loaves of bread, which there would seem to be nobody
+left in the exhausted congregation to claim, and which I saw an
+exhausted beadle, long faded out of uniform, eating with his eyes
+for self and family when I passed in.  There is also an exhausted
+clerk in a brown wig, and two or three exhausted doors and windows
+have been bricked up, and the service books are musty, and the
+pulpit cushions are threadbare, and the whole of the church
+furniture is in a very advanced stage of exhaustion.  We are three
+old women (habitual), two young lovers (accidental), two tradesmen,
+one with a wife and one alone, an aunt and nephew, again two girls
+(these two girls dressed out for church with everything about them
+limp that should be stiff, and vice versa, are an invariable
+experience), and three sniggering boys.  The clergyman is, perhaps,
+the chaplain of a civic company; he has the moist and vinous look,
+and eke the bulbous boots, of one acquainted with 'Twenty port, and
+comet vintages.
+
+We are so quiet in our dulness that the three sniggering boys, who
+have got away into a corner by the altar-railing, give us a start,
+like crackers, whenever they laugh.  And this reminds me of my own
+village church where, during sermon-time on bright Sundays when the
+birds are very musical indeed, farmers' boys patter out over the
+stone pavement, and the clerk steps out from his desk after them,
+and is distinctly heard in the summer repose to pursue and punch
+them in the churchyard, and is seen to return with a meditative
+countenance, making believe that nothing of the sort has happened.
+The aunt and nephew in this City church are much disturbed by the
+sniggering boys.  The nephew is himself a boy, and the sniggerers
+tempt him to secular thoughts of marbles and string, by secretly
+offering such commodities to his distant contemplation.  This young
+Saint Anthony for a while resists, but presently becomes a
+backslider, and in dumb show defies the sniggerers to 'heave' a
+marble or two in his direction.  Here in he is detected by the aunt
+(a rigorous reduced gentlewoman who has the charge of offices), and
+I perceive that worthy relative to poke him in the side, with the
+corrugated hooked handle of an ancient umbrella.  The nephew
+revenges himself for this, by holding his breath and terrifying his
+kinswoman with the dread belief that he has made up his mind to
+burst.  Regardless of whispers and shakes, he swells and becomes
+discoloured, and yet again swells and becomes discoloured, until
+the aunt can bear it no longer, but leads him out, with no visible
+neck, and with his eyes going before him like a prawn's.  This
+causes the sniggerers to regard flight as an eligible move, and I
+know which of them will go out first, because of the over-devout
+attention that he suddenly concentrates on the clergyman.  In a
+little while, this hypocrite, with an elaborate demonstration of
+hushing his footsteps, and with a face generally expressive of
+having until now forgotten a religious appointment elsewhere, is
+gone.  Number two gets out in the same way, but rather quicker.
+Number three getting safely to the door, there turns reckless, and
+banging it open, flies forth with a Whoop! that vibrates to the top
+of the tower above us.
+
+The clergyman, who is of a prandial presence and a muffled voice,
+may be scant of hearing as well as of breath, but he only glances
+up, as having an idea that somebody has said Amen in a wrong place,
+and continues his steady jog-trot, like a farmer's wife going to
+market.  He does all he has to do, in the same easy way, and gives
+us a concise sermon, still like the jog-trot of the farmer's wife
+on a level road.  Its drowsy cadence soon lulls the three old women
+asleep, and the unmarried tradesman sits looking out at window, and
+the married tradesman sits looking at his wife's bonnet, and the
+lovers sit looking at one another, so superlatively happy, that I
+mind when I, turned of eighteen, went with my Angelica to a City
+church on account of a shower (by this special coincidence that it
+was in Huggin-lane), and when I said to my Angelica, 'Let the
+blessed event, Angelica, occur at no altar but this!' and when my
+Angelica consented that it should occur at no other--which it
+certainly never did, for it never occurred anywhere.  And O,
+Angelica, what has become of you, this present Sunday morning when
+I can't attend to the sermon; and, more difficult question than
+that, what has become of Me as I was when I sat by your side!
+
+But, we receive the signal to make that unanimous dive which surely
+is a little conventional--like the strange rustlings and settlings
+and clearings of throats and noses, which are never dispensed with,
+at certain points of the Church service, and are never held to be
+necessary under any other circumstances.  In a minute more it is
+all over, and the organ expresses itself to be as glad of it as it
+can be of anything in its rheumatic state, and in another minute we
+are all of us out of the church, and Whity-brown has locked it up.
+Another minute or little more, and, in the neighbouring churchyard-
+-not the yard of that church, but of another--a churchyard like a
+great shabby old mignonette box, with two trees in it and one tomb-
+-I meet Whity-brown, in his private capacity, fetching a pint of
+beer for his dinner from the public-house in the corner, where the
+keys of the rotting fire-ladders are kept and were never asked for,
+and where there is a ragged, white-seamed, out-at-elbowed bagatelle
+board on the first floor.
+
+In one of these City churches, and only in one, I found an
+individual who might have been claimed as expressly a City
+personage.  I remember the church, by the feature that the
+clergyman couldn't get to his own desk without going through the
+clerk's, or couldn't get to the pulpit without going through the
+reading-desk--I forget which, and it is no matter--and by the
+presence of this personage among the exceedingly sparse
+congregation.  I doubt if we were a dozen, and we had no exhausted
+charity school to help us out.  The personage was dressed in black
+of square cut, and was stricken in years, and wore a black velvet
+cap, and cloth shoes.  He was of a staid, wealthy, and dissatisfied
+aspect.  In his hand, he conducted to church a mysterious child:  a
+child of the feminine gender.  The child had a beaver hat, with a
+stiff drab plume that surely never belonged to any bird of the air.
+The child was further attired in a nankeen frock and spencer, brown
+boxing-gloves, and a veil.  It had a blemish, in the nature of
+currant jelly, on its chin; and was a thirsty child.  Insomuch that
+the personage carried in his pocket a green bottle, from which,
+when the first psalm was given out, the child was openly refreshed.
+At all other times throughout the service it was motionless, and
+stood on the seat of the large pew, closely fitted into the corner,
+like a rain-water pipe.
+
+The personage never opened his book, and never looked at the
+clergyman.  He never sat down either, but stood with his arms
+leaning on the top of the pew, and his forehead sometimes shaded
+with his right hand, always looking at the church door.  It was a
+long church for a church of its size, and he was at the upper end,
+but he always looked at the door.  That he was an old bookkeeper,
+or an old trader who had kept his own books, and that he might be
+seen at the Bank of England about Dividend times, no doubt.  That
+he had lived in the City all his life and was disdainful of other
+localities, no doubt.  Why he looked at the door, I never
+absolutely proved, but it is my belief that he lived in expectation
+of the time when the citizens would come back to live in the City,
+and its ancient glories would be renewed.  He appeared to expect
+that this would occur on a Sunday, and that the wanderers would
+first appear, in the deserted churches, penitent and humbled.
+Hence, he looked at the door which they never darkened.  Whose
+child the child was, whether the child of a disinherited daughter,
+or some parish orphan whom the personage had adopted, there was
+nothing to lead up to.  It never played, or skipped, or smiled.
+Once, the idea occurred to me that it was an automaton, and that
+the personage had made it; but following the strange couple out one
+Sunday, I heard the personage say to it, 'Thirteen thousand
+pounds;' to which it added in a weak human voice, 'Seventeen and
+fourpence.'  Four Sundays I followed them out, and this is all I
+ever heard or saw them say.  One Sunday, I followed them home.
+They lived behind a pump, and the personage opened their abode with
+an exceeding large key.  The one solitary inscription on their
+house related to a fire-plug.  The house was partly undermined by a
+deserted and closed gateway; its windows were blind with dirt; and
+it stood with its face disconsolately turned to a wall.  Five great
+churches and two small ones rang their Sunday bells between this
+house and the church the couple frequented, so they must have had
+some special reason for going a quarter of a mile to it.  The last
+time I saw them, was on this wise.  I had been to explore another
+church at a distance, and happened to pass the church they
+frequented, at about two of the afternoon when that edifice was
+closed.  But, a little side-door, which I had never observed
+before, stood open, and disclosed certain cellarous steps.
+Methought 'They are airing the vaults to-day,' when the personage
+and the child silently arrived at the steps, and silently
+descended.  Of course, I came to the conclusion that the personage
+had at last despaired of the looked-for return of the penitent
+citizens, and that he and the child went down to get themselves
+buried.
+
+In the course of my pilgrimages I came upon one obscure church
+which had broken out in the melodramatic style, and was got up with
+various tawdry decorations, much after the manner of the extinct
+London may-poles.  These attractions had induced several young
+priests or deacons in black bibs for waistcoats, and several young
+ladies interested in that holy order (the proportion being, as I
+estimated, seventeen young ladies to a deacon), to come into the
+City as a new and odd excitement.  It was wonderful to see how
+these young people played out their little play in the heart of the
+City, all among themselves, without the deserted City's knowing
+anything about it.  It was as if you should take an empty counting-
+house on a Sunday, and act one of the old Mysteries there.  They
+had impressed a small school (from what neighbourhood I don't know)
+to assist in the performances, and it was pleasant to notice
+frantic garlands of inscription on the walls, especially addressing
+those poor innocents in characters impossible for them to decipher.
+There was a remarkably agreeable smell of pomatum in this
+congregation.
+
+But, in other cases, rot and mildew and dead citizens formed the
+uppermost scent, while, infused into it in a dreamy way not at all
+displeasing, was the staple character of the neighbourhood.  In the
+churches about Mark-lane, for example, there was a dry whiff of
+wheat; and I accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of an
+aged hassock in one of them.  From Rood-lane to Tower-street, and
+thereabouts, there was often a subtle flavour of wine:  sometimes,
+of tea.  One church near Mincing-lane smelt like a druggist's
+drawer.  Behind the Monument the service had a flavour of damaged
+oranges, which, a little further down towards the river, tempered
+into herrings, and gradually toned into a cosmopolitan blast of
+fish.  In one church, the exact counterpart of the church in the
+Rake's Progress where the hero is being married to the horrible old
+lady, there was no speciality of atmosphere, until the organ shook
+a perfume of hides all over us from some adjacent warehouse.
+
+Be the scent what it would, however, there was no speciality in the
+people.  There were never enough of them to represent any calling
+or neighbourhood.  They had all gone elsewhere over-night, and the
+few stragglers in the many churches languished there
+inexpressively.
+
+Among the Uncommercial travels in which I have engaged, this year
+of Sunday travel occupies its own place, apart from all the rest.
+Whether I think of the church where the sails of the oyster-boats
+in the river almost flapped against the windows, or of the church
+where the railroad made the bells hum as the train rushed by above
+the roof, I recall a curious experience.  On summer Sundays, in the
+gentle rain or the bright sunshine--either, deepening the idleness
+of the idle City--I have sat, in that singular silence which
+belongs to resting-places usually astir, in scores of buildings at
+the heart of the world's metropolis, unknown to far greater numbers
+of people speaking the English tongue, than the ancient edifices of
+the Eternal City, or the Pyramids of Egypt.  The dark vestries and
+registries into which I have peeped, and the little hemmed-in
+churchyards that have echoed to my feet, have left impressions on
+my memory as distinct and quaint as any it has in that way
+received.  In all those dusty registers that the worms are eating,
+there is not a line but made some hearts leap, or some tears flow,
+in their day.  Still and dry now, still and dry! and the old tree
+at the window with no room for its branches, has seen them all out.
+So with the tomb of the old Master of the old Company, on which it
+drips.  His son restored it and died, his daughter restored it and
+died, and then he had been remembered long enough, and the tree
+took possession of him, and his name cracked out.
+
+There are few more striking indications of the changes of manners
+and customs that two or three hundred years have brought about,
+than these deserted churches.  Many of them are handsome and costly
+structures, several of them were designed by WREN, many of them
+arose from the ashes of the great fire, others of them outlived the
+plague and the fire too, to die a slow death in these later days.
+No one can be sure of the coming time; but it is not too much to
+say of it that it has no sign in its outsetting tides, of the
+reflux to these churches of their congregations and uses.  They
+remain like the tombs of the old citizens who lie beneath them and
+around them, Monuments of another age.  They are worth a Sunday-
+exploration, now and then, for they yet echo, not unharmoniously,
+to the time when the City of London really was London; when the
+'Prentices and Trained Bands were of mark in the state; when even
+the Lord Mayor himself was a Reality--not a Fiction conventionally
+be-puffed on one day in the year by illustrious friends, who no
+less conventionally laugh at him on the remaining three hundred and
+sixty-four days.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X--SHY NEIGHBOURHOODS
+
+
+
+So much of my travelling is done on foot, that if I cherished
+betting propensities, I should probably be found registered in
+sporting newspapers under some such title as the Elastic Novice,
+challenging all eleven stone mankind to competition in walking.  My
+last special feat was turning out of bed at two, after a hard day,
+pedestrian and otherwise, and walking thirty miles into the country
+to breakfast.  The road was so lonely in the night, that I fell
+asleep to the monotonous sound of my own feet, doing their regular
+four miles an hour.  Mile after mile I walked, without the
+slightest sense of exertion, dozing heavily and dreaming
+constantly.  It was only when I made a stumble like a drunken man,
+or struck out into the road to avoid a horseman close upon me on
+the path--who had no existence--that I came to myself and looked
+about.  The day broke mistily (it was autumn time), and I could not
+disembarrass myself of the idea that I had to climb those heights
+and banks of cloud, and that there was an Alpine Convent somewhere
+behind the sun, where I was going to breakfast.  This sleepy notion
+was so much stronger than such substantial objects as villages and
+haystacks, that, after the sun was up and bright, and when I was
+sufficiently awake to have a sense of pleasure in the prospect, I
+still occasionally caught myself looking about for wooden arms to
+point the right track up the mountain, and wondering there was no
+snow yet.  It is a curiosity of broken sleep that I made immense
+quantities of verses on that pedestrian occasion (of course I never
+make any when I am in my right senses), and that I spoke a certain
+language once pretty familiar to me, but which I have nearly
+forgotten from disuse, with fluency.  Of both these phenomena I
+have such frequent experience in the state between sleeping and
+waking, that I sometimes argue with myself that I know I cannot be
+awake, for, if I were, I should not be half so ready.  The
+readiness is not imaginary, because I often recall long strings of
+the verses, and many turns of the fluent speech, after I am broad
+awake.
+
+My walking is of two kinds:  one, straight on end to a definite
+goal at a round pace; one, objectless, loitering, and purely
+vagabond.  In the latter state, no gipsy on earth is a greater
+vagabond than myself; it is so natural to me, and strong with me,
+that I think I must be the descendant, at no great distance, of
+some irreclaimable tramp.
+
+One of the pleasantest things I have lately met with, in a vagabond
+course of shy metropolitan neighbourhoods and small shops, is the
+fancy of a humble artist, as exemplified in two portraits
+representing Mr. Thomas Sayers, of Great Britain, and Mr. John
+Heenan, of the United States of America.  These illustrious men are
+highly coloured in fighting trim, and fighting attitude.  To
+suggest the pastoral and meditative nature of their peaceful
+calling, Mr. Heenan is represented on emerald sward, with primroses
+and other modest flowers springing up under the heels of his half-
+boots; while Mr. Sayers is impelled to the administration of his
+favourite blow, the Auctioneer, by the silent eloquence of a
+village church.  The humble homes of England, with their domestic
+virtues and honeysuckle porches, urge both heroes to go in and win;
+and the lark and other singing birds are observable in the upper
+air, ecstatically carolling their thanks to Heaven for a fight.  On
+the whole, the associations entwined with the pugilistic art by
+this artist are much in the manner of Izaak Walton.
+
+But, it is with the lower animals of back streets and by-ways that
+my present purpose rests.  For human notes we may return to such
+neighbourhoods when leisure and opportunity serve.
+
+Nothing in shy neighbourhoods perplexes my mind more, than the bad
+company birds keep.  Foreign birds often get into good society, but
+British birds are inseparable from low associates.  There is a
+whole street of them in St. Giles's; and I always find them in poor
+and immoral neighbourhoods, convenient to the public-house and the
+pawnbroker's.  They seem to lead people into drinking, and even the
+man who makes their cages usually gets into a chronic state of
+black eye.  Why is this?  Also, they will do things for people in
+short-skirted velveteen coats with bone buttons, or in sleeved
+waistcoats and fur caps, which they cannot be persuaded by the
+respectable orders of society to undertake.  In a dirty court in
+Spitalfields, once, I found a goldfinch drawing his own water, and
+drawing as much of it as if he were in a consuming fever.  That
+goldfinch lived at a bird-shop, and offered, in writing, to barter
+himself against old clothes, empty bottles, or even kitchen stuff.
+Surely a low thing and a depraved taste in any finch!  I bought
+that goldfinch for money.  He was sent home, and hung upon a nail
+over against my table.  He lived outside a counterfeit dwelling-
+house, supposed (as I argued) to be a dyer's; otherwise it would
+have been impossible to account for his perch sticking out of the
+garret window.  From the time of his appearance in my room, either
+he left off being thirsty--which was not in the bond--or he could
+not make up his mind to hear his little bucket drop back into his
+well when he let it go:  a shock which in the best of times had
+made him tremble.  He drew no water but by stealth and under the
+cloak of night.  After an interval of futile and at length hopeless
+expectation, the merchant who had educated him was appealed to.
+The merchant was a bow-legged character, with a flat and cushiony
+nose, like the last new strawberry.  He wore a fur cap, and shorts,
+and was of the velveteen race, velveteeny.  He sent word that he
+would 'look round.'  He looked round, appeared in the doorway of
+the room, and slightly cocked up his evil eye at the goldfinch.
+Instantly a raging thirst beset that bird; when it was appeased, he
+still drew several unnecessary buckets of water; and finally,
+leaped about his perch and sharpened his bill, as if he had been to
+the nearest wine vaults and got drunk.
+
+Donkeys again.  I know shy neighbourhoods where the Donkey goes in
+at the street door, and appears to live up-stairs, for I have
+examined the back-yard from over the palings, and have been unable
+to make him out.  Gentility, nobility, Royalty, would appeal to
+that donkey in vain to do what he does for a costermonger.  Feed
+him with oats at the highest price, put an infant prince and
+princess in a pair of panniers on his back, adjust his delicate
+trappings to a nicety, take him to the softest slopes at Windsor,
+and try what pace you can get out of him.  Then, starve him,
+harness him anyhow to a truck with a flat tray on it, and see him
+bowl from Whitechapel to Bayswater.  There appears to be no
+particular private understanding between birds and donkeys, in a
+state of nature; but in the shy neighbourhood state, you shall see
+them always in the same hands and always developing their very best
+energies for the very worst company.  I have known a donkey--by
+sight; we were not on speaking terms--who lived over on the Surrey
+side of London-bridge, among the fastnesses of Jacob's Island and
+Dockhead.  It was the habit of that animal, when his services were
+not in immediate requisition, to go out alone, idling.  I have met
+him a mile from his place of residence, loitering about the
+streets; and the expression of his countenance at such times was
+most degraded.  He was attached to the establishment of an elderly
+lady who sold periwinkles, and he used to stand on Saturday nights
+with a cartful of those delicacies outside a gin-shop, pricking up
+his ears when a customer came to the cart, and too evidently
+deriving satisfaction from the knowledge that they got bad measure.
+His mistress was sometimes overtaken by inebriety.  The last time I
+ever saw him (about five years ago) he was in circumstances of
+difficulty, caused by this failing.  Having been left alone with
+the cart of periwinkles, and forgotten, he went off idling.  He
+prowled among his usual low haunts for some time, gratifying his
+depraved tastes, until, not taking the cart into his calculations,
+he endeavoured to turn up a narrow alley, and became greatly
+involved.  He was taken into custody by the police, and, the Green
+Yard of the district being near at hand, was backed into that place
+of durance.  At that crisis, I encountered him; the stubborn sense
+he evinced of being--not to compromise the expression--a
+blackguard, I never saw exceeded in the human subject.  A flaring
+candle in a paper shade, stuck in among his periwinkles, showed
+him, with his ragged harness broken and his cart extensively
+shattered, twitching his mouth and shaking his hanging head, a
+picture of disgrace and obduracy.  I have seen boys being taken to
+station-houses, who were as like him as his own brother.
+
+The dogs of shy neighbourhoods, I observe to avoid play, and to be
+conscious of poverty.  They avoid work, too, if they can, of
+course; that is in the nature of all animals.  I have the pleasure
+to know a dog in a back street in the neighbourhood of Walworth,
+who has greatly distinguished himself in the minor drama, and who
+takes his portrait with him when he makes an engagement, for the
+illustration of the play-bill.  His portrait (which is not at all
+like him) represents him in the act of dragging to the earth a
+recreant Indian, who is supposed to have tomahawked, or essayed to
+tomahawk, a British officer.  The design is pure poetry, for there
+is no such Indian in the piece, and no such incident.  He is a dog
+of the Newfoundland breed, for whose honesty I would be bail to any
+amount; but whose intellectual qualities in association with
+dramatic fiction, I cannot rate high.  Indeed, he is too honest for
+the profession he has entered.  Being at a town in Yorkshire last
+summer, and seeing him posted in the bill of the night, I attended
+the performance.  His first scene was eminently successful; but, as
+it occupied a second in its representation (and five lines in the
+bill), it scarcely afforded ground for a cool and deliberate
+judgment of his powers.  He had merely to bark, run on, and jump
+through an inn window, after a comic fugitive.  The next scene of
+importance to the fable was a little marred in its interest by his
+over-anxiety; forasmuch as while his master (a belated soldier in a
+den of robbers on a tempestuous night) was feelingly lamenting the
+absence of his faithful dog, and laying great stress on the fact
+that he was thirty leagues away, the faithful dog was barking
+furiously in the prompter's box, and clearly choking himself
+against his collar.  But it was in his greatest scene of all, that
+his honesty got the better of him.  He had to enter a dense and
+trackless forest, on the trail of the murderer, and there to fly at
+the murderer when he found him resting at the foot of a tree, with
+his victim bound ready for slaughter.  It was a hot night, and he
+came into the forest from an altogether unexpected direction, in
+the sweetest temper, at a very deliberate trot, not in the least
+excited; trotted to the foot-lights with his tongue out; and there
+sat down, panting, and amiably surveying the audience, with his
+tail beating on the boards, like a Dutch clock.  Meanwhile the
+murderer, impatient to receive his doom, was audibly calling to him
+'CO-O-OME here!' while the victim, struggling with his bonds,
+assailed him with the most injurious expressions.  It happened
+through these means, that when he was in course of time persuaded
+to trot up and rend the murderer limb from limb, he made it (for
+dramatic purposes) a little too obvious that he worked out that
+awful retribution by licking butter off his blood-stained hands.
+
+In a shy street, behind Long-acre, two honest dogs live, who
+perform in Punch's shows.  I may venture to say that I am on terms
+of intimacy with both, and that I never saw either guilty of the
+falsehood of failing to look down at the man inside the show,
+during the whole performance.  The difficulty other dogs have in
+satisfying their minds about these dogs, appears to be never
+overcome by time.  The same dogs must encounter them over and over
+again, as they trudge along in their off-minutes behind the legs of
+the show and beside the drum; but all dogs seem to suspect their
+frills and jackets, and to sniff at them as if they thought those
+articles of personal adornment, an eruption--a something in the
+nature of mange, perhaps.  From this Covent-garden window of mine I
+noticed a country dog, only the other day, who had come up to
+Covent-garden Market under a cart, and had broken his cord, an end
+of which he still trailed along with him.  He loitered about the
+corners of the four streets commanded by my window; and bad London
+dogs came up, and told him lies that he didn't believe; and worse
+London dogs came up, and made proposals to him to go and steal in
+the market, which his principles rejected; and the ways of the town
+confused him, and he crept aside and lay down in a doorway.  He had
+scarcely got a wink of sleep, when up comes Punch with Toby.  He
+was darting to Toby for consolation and advice, when he saw the
+frill, and stopped, in the middle of the street, appalled.  The
+show was pitched, Toby retired behind the drapery, the audience
+formed, the drum and pipes struck up.  My country dog remained
+immovable, intently staring at these strange appearances, until
+Toby opened the drama by appearing on his ledge, and to him entered
+Punch, who put a tobacco-pipe into Toby's mouth.  At this
+spectacle, the country dog threw up his head, gave one terrible
+howl, and fled due west.
+
+We talk of men keeping dogs, but we might often talk more
+expressively of dogs keeping men.  I know a bull-dog in a shy
+corner of Hammersmith who keeps a man.  He keeps him up a yard, and
+makes him go to public-houses and lay wagers on him, and obliges
+him to lean against posts and look at him, and forces him to
+neglect work for him, and keeps him under rigid coercion.  I once
+knew a fancy terrier who kept a gentleman--a gentleman who had been
+brought up at Oxford, too.  The dog kept the gentleman entirely for
+his glorification, and the gentleman never talked about anything
+but the terrier.  This, however, was not in a shy neighbourhood,
+and is a digression consequently.
+
+There are a great many dogs in shy neighbourhoods, who keep boys.
+I have my eye on a mongrel in Somerstown who keeps three boys.  He
+feigns that he can bring down sparrows, and unburrow rats (he can
+do neither), and he takes the boys out on sporting pretences into
+all sorts of suburban fields.  He has likewise made them believe
+that he possesses some mysterious knowledge of the art of fishing,
+and they consider themselves incompletely equipped for the
+Hampstead ponds, with a pickle-jar and wide-mouthed bottle, unless
+he is with them and barking tremendously.  There is a dog residing
+in the Borough of Southwark who keeps a blind man.  He may be seen,
+most days, in Oxford-street, haling the blind man away on
+expeditions wholly uncontemplated by, and unintelligible to, the
+man:  wholly of the dog's conception and execution.  Contrariwise,
+when the man has projects, the dog will sit down in a crowded
+thoroughfare and meditate.  I saw him yesterday, wearing the money-
+tray like an easy collar, instead of offering it to the public,
+taking the man against his will, on the invitation of a
+disreputable cur, apparently to visit a dog at Harrow--he was so
+intent on that direction.  The north wall of Burlington House
+Gardens, between the Arcade and the Albany, offers a shy spot for
+appointments among blind men at about two or three o'clock in the
+afternoon.  They sit (very uncomfortably) on a sloping stone there,
+and compare notes.  Their dogs may always be observed at the same
+time, openly disparaging the men they keep, to one another, and
+settling where they shall respectively take their men when they
+begin to move again.  At a small butcher's, in a shy neighbourhood
+(there is no reason for suppressing the name; it is by Notting-
+hill, and gives upon the district called the Potteries), I know a
+shaggy black and white dog who keeps a drover.  He is a dog of an
+easy disposition, and too frequently allows this drover to get
+drunk.  On these occasions, it is the dog's custom to sit outside
+the public-house, keeping his eye on a few sheep, and thinking.  I
+have seen him with six sheep, plainly casting up in his mind how
+many he began with when he left the market, and at what places he
+has left the rest.  I have seen him perplexed by not being able to
+account to himself for certain particular sheep.  A light has
+gradually broken on him, he has remembered at what butcher's he
+left them, and in a burst of grave satisfaction has caught a fly
+off his nose, and shown himself much relieved.  If I could at any
+time have doubted the fact that it was he who kept the drover, and
+not the drover who kept him, it would have been abundantly proved
+by his way of taking undivided charge of the six sheep, when the
+drover came out besmeared with red ochre and beer, and gave him
+wrong directions, which he calmly disregarded.  He has taken the
+sheep entirely into his own hands, has merely remarked with
+respectful firmness, 'That instruction would place them under an
+omnibus; you had better confine your attention to yourself--you
+will want it all;' and has driven his charge away, with an
+intelligence of ears and tail, and a knowledge of business, that
+has left his lout of a man very, very far behind.
+
+As the dogs of shy neighbourhoods usually betray a slinking
+consciousness of being in poor circumstances--for the most part
+manifested in an aspect of anxiety, an awkwardness in their play,
+and a misgiving that somebody is going to harness them to
+something, to pick up a living--so the cats of shy neighbourhoods
+exhibit a strong tendency to relapse into barbarism.  Not only are
+they made selfishly ferocious by ruminating on the surplus
+population around them, and on the densely crowded state of all the
+avenues to cat's meat; not only is there a moral and politico-
+economical haggardness in them, traceable to these reflections; but
+they evince a physical deterioration.  Their linen is not clean,
+and is wretchedly got up; their black turns rusty, like old
+mourning; they wear very indifferent fur; and take to the shabbiest
+cotton velvet, instead of silk velvet.  I am on terms of
+recognition with several small streets of cats, about the Obelisk
+in Saint George's Fields, and also in the vicinity of Clerkenwell-
+green, and also in the back settlements of Drury-lane.  In
+appearance, they are very like the women among whom they live.
+They seem to turn out of their unwholesome beds into the street,
+without any preparation.  They leave their young families to
+stagger about the gutters, unassisted, while they frouzily quarrel
+and swear and scratch and spit, at street corners.  In particular,
+I remark that when they are about to increase their families (an
+event of frequent recurrence) the resemblance is strongly expressed
+in a certain dusty dowdiness, down-at-heel self-neglect, and
+general giving up of things.  I cannot honestly report that I have
+ever seen a feline matron of this class washing her face when in an
+interesting condition.
+
+Not to prolong these notes of uncommercial travel among the lower
+animals of shy neighbourhoods, by dwelling at length upon the
+exasperated moodiness of the tom-cats, and their resemblance in
+many respects to a man and a brother, I will come to a close with a
+word on the fowls of the same localities.
+
+That anything born of an egg and invested with wings, should have
+got to the pass that it hops contentedly down a ladder into a
+cellar, and calls THAT going home, is a circumstance so amazing as
+to leave one nothing more in this connexion to wonder at.
+Otherwise I might wonder at the completeness with which these fowls
+have become separated from all the birds of the air--have taken to
+grovelling in bricks and mortar and mud--have forgotten all about
+live trees, and make roosting-places of shop-boards, barrows,
+oyster-tubs, bulk-heads, and door-scrapers.  I wonder at nothing
+concerning them, and take them as they are.  I accept as products
+of Nature and things of course, a reduced Bantam family of my
+acquaintance in the Hackney-road, who are incessantly at the
+pawnbroker's.  I cannot say that they enjoy themselves, for they
+are of a melancholy temperament; but what enjoyment they are
+capable of, they derive from crowding together in the pawnbroker's
+side-entry.  Here, they are always to be found in a feeble flutter,
+as if they were newly come down in the world, and were afraid of
+being identified.  I know a low fellow, originally of a good family
+from Dorking, who takes his whole establishment of wives, in single
+file, in at the door of the jug Department of a disorderly tavern
+near the Haymarket, manoeuvres them among the company's legs,
+emerges with them at the Bottle Entrance, and so passes his life:
+seldom, in the season, going to bed before two in the morning.
+Over Waterloo-bridge, there is a shabby old speckled couple (they
+belong to the wooden French-bedstead, washing-stand, and towel-
+horse-making trade), who are always trying to get in at the door of
+a chapel.  Whether the old lady, under a delusion reminding one of
+Mrs. Southcott, has an idea of entrusting an egg to that particular
+denomination, or merely understands that she has no business in the
+building and is consequently frantic to enter it, I cannot
+determine; but she is constantly endeavouring to undermine the
+principal door:  while her partner, who is infirm upon his legs,
+walks up and down, encouraging her and defying the Universe.  But,
+the family I have been best acquainted with, since the removal from
+this trying sphere of a Chinese circle at Brentford, reside in the
+densest part of Bethnal-green.  Their abstraction from the objects
+among which they live, or rather their conviction that those
+objects have all come into existence in express subservience to
+fowls, has so enchanted me, that I have made them the subject of
+many journeys at divers hours.  After careful observation of the
+two lords and the ten ladies of whom this family consists, I have
+come to the conclusion that their opinions are represented by the
+leading lord and leading lady:  the latter, as I judge, an aged
+personage, afflicted with a paucity of feather and visibility of
+quill, that gives her the appearance of a bundle of office pens.
+When a railway goods van that would crush an elephant comes round
+the corner, tearing over these fowls, they emerge unharmed from
+under the horses, perfectly satisfied that the whole rush was a
+passing property in the air, which may have left something to eat
+behind it.  They look upon old shoes, wrecks of kettles and
+saucepans, and fragments of bonnets, as a kind of meteoric
+discharge, for fowls to peck at.  Peg-tops and hoops they account,
+I think, as a sort of hail; shuttlecocks, as rain, or dew.
+Gaslight comes quite as natural to them as any other light; and I
+have more than a suspicion that, in the minds of the two lords, the
+early public-house at the corner has superseded the sun.  I have
+established it as a certain fact, that they always begin to crow
+when the public-house shutters begin to be taken down, and that
+they salute the potboy, the instant he appears to perform that
+duty, as if he were Phoebus in person.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI--TRAMPS
+
+
+
+The chance use of the word 'Tramp' in my last paper, brought that
+numerous fraternity so vividly before my mind's eye, that I had no
+sooner laid down my pen than a compulsion was upon me to take it up
+again, and make notes of the Tramps whom I perceived on all the
+summer roads in all directions.
+
+Whenever a tramp sits down to rest by the wayside, he sits with his
+legs in a dry ditch; and whenever he goes to sleep (which is very
+often indeed), he goes to sleep on his back.  Yonder, by the high
+road, glaring white in the bright sunshine, lies, on the dusty bit
+of turf under the bramble-bush that fences the coppice from the
+highway, the tramp of the order savage, fast asleep.  He lies on
+the broad of his back, with his face turned up to the sky, and one
+of his ragged arms loosely thrown across his face.  His bundle
+(what can be the contents of that mysterious bundle, to make it
+worth his while to carry it about?) is thrown down beside him, and
+the waking woman with him sits with her legs in the ditch, and her
+back to the road.  She wears her bonnet rakishly perched on the
+front of her head, to shade her face from the sun in walking, and
+she ties her skirts round her in conventionally tight tramp-fashion
+with a sort of apron.  You can seldom catch sight of her, resting
+thus, without seeing her in a despondently defiant manner doing
+something to her hair or her bonnet, and glancing at you between
+her fingers.  She does not often go to sleep herself in the
+daytime, but will sit for any length of time beside the man.  And
+his slumberous propensities would not seem to be referable to the
+fatigue of carrying the bundle, for she carries it much oftener and
+further than he.  When they are afoot, you will mostly find him
+slouching on ahead, in a gruff temper, while she lags heavily
+behind with the burden.  He is given to personally correcting her,
+too--which phase of his character develops itself oftenest, on
+benches outside alehouse doors--and she appears to become strongly
+attached to him for these reasons; it may usually be noticed that
+when the poor creature has a bruised face, she is the most
+affectionate.  He has no occupation whatever, this order of tramp,
+and has no object whatever in going anywhere.  He will sometimes
+call himself a brickmaker, or a sawyer, but only when he takes an
+imaginary flight.  He generally represents himself, in a vague way,
+as looking out for a job of work; but he never did work, he never
+does, and he never will.  It is a favourite fiction with him,
+however (as if he were the most industrious character on earth),
+that YOU never work; and as he goes past your garden and sees you
+looking at your flowers, you will overhear him growl with a strong
+sense of contrast, 'YOU are a lucky hidle devil, YOU are!'
+
+The slinking tramp is of the same hopeless order, and has the same
+injured conviction on him that you were born to whatever you
+possess, and never did anything to get it:  but he is of a less
+audacious disposition.  He will stop before your gate, and say to
+his female companion with an air of constitutional humility and
+propitiation--to edify any one who may be within hearing behind a
+blind or a bush--'This is a sweet spot, ain't it?  A lovelly spot!
+And I wonder if they'd give two poor footsore travellers like me
+and you, a drop of fresh water out of such a pretty gen-teel crib?
+We'd take it wery koind on 'em, wouldn't us?  Wery koind, upon my
+word, us would?'  He has a quick sense of a dog in the vicinity,
+and will extend his modestly-injured propitiation to the dog
+chained up in your yard; remarking, as he slinks at the yard gate,
+'Ah!  You are a foine breed o' dog, too, and YOU ain't kep for
+nothink!  I'd take it wery koind o' your master if he'd elp a
+traveller and his woife as envies no gentlefolk their good fortun,
+wi' a bit o' your broken wittles.  He'd never know the want of it,
+nor more would you.  Don't bark like that, at poor persons as never
+done you no arm; the poor is down-trodden and broke enough without
+that; O DON'T!'  He generally heaves a prodigious sigh in moving
+away, and always looks up the lane and down the lane, and up the
+road and down the road, before going on.
+
+Both of these orders of tramp are of a very robust habit; let the
+hard-working labourer at whose cottage-door they prowl and beg,
+have the ague never so badly, these tramps are sure to be in good
+health.
+
+There is another kind of tramp, whom you encounter this bright
+summer day--say, on a road with the sea-breeze making its dust
+lively, and sails of ships in the blue distance beyond the slope of
+Down.  As you walk enjoyingly on, you descry in the perspective at
+the bottom of a steep hill up which your way lies, a figure that
+appears to be sitting airily on a gate, whistling in a cheerful and
+disengaged manner.  As you approach nearer to it, you observe the
+figure to slide down from the gate, to desist from whistling, to
+uncock its hat, to become tender of foot, to depress its head and
+elevate its shoulders, and to present all the characteristics of
+profound despondency.  Arriving at the bottom of the hill and
+coming close to the figure, you observe it to be the figure of a
+shabby young man.  He is moving painfully forward, in the direction
+in which you are going, and his mind is so preoccupied with his
+misfortunes that he is not aware of your approach until you are
+close upon him at the hill-foot.  When he is aware of you, you
+discover him to be a remarkably well-behaved young man, and a
+remarkably well-spoken young man.  You know him to be well-behaved,
+by his respectful manner of touching his hat:  you know him to be
+well-spoken, by his smooth manner of expressing himself.  He says
+in a flowing confidential voice, and without punctuation, 'I ask
+your pardon sir but if you would excuse the liberty of being so
+addressed upon the public Iway by one who is almost reduced to rags
+though it as not always been so and by no fault of his own but
+through ill elth in his family and many unmerited sufferings it
+would be a great obligation sir to know the time.'  You give the
+well-spoken young man the time.  The well-spoken young man, keeping
+well up with you, resumes:  'I am aware sir that it is a liberty to
+intrude a further question on a gentleman walking for his
+entertainment but might I make so bold as ask the favour of the way
+to Dover sir and about the distance?'  You inform the well-spoken
+young man that the way to Dover is straight on, and the distance
+some eighteen miles.  The well-spoken young man becomes greatly
+agitated.  'In the condition to which I am reduced,' says he, 'I
+could not ope to reach Dover before dark even if my shoes were in a
+state to take me there or my feet were in a state to old out over
+the flinty road and were not on the bare ground of which any
+gentleman has the means to satisfy himself by looking Sir may I
+take the liberty of speaking to you?'  As the well-spoken young man
+keeps so well up with you that you can't prevent his taking the
+liberty of speaking to you, he goes on, with fluency:  'Sir it is
+not begging that is my intention for I was brought up by the best
+of mothers and begging is not my trade I should not know sir how to
+follow it as a trade if such were my shameful wishes for the best
+of mothers long taught otherwise and in the best of omes though now
+reduced to take the present liberty on the Iway Sir my business was
+the law-stationering and I was favourably known to the Solicitor-
+General the Attorney-General the majority of the judges and the ole
+of the legal profession but through ill elth in my family and the
+treachery of a friend for whom I became security and he no other
+than my own wife's brother the brother of my own wife I was cast
+forth with my tender partner and three young children not to beg
+for I will sooner die of deprivation but to make my way to the sea-
+port town of Dover where I have a relative i in respect not only
+that will assist me but that would trust me with untold gold Sir in
+appier times and hare this calamity fell upon me I made for my
+amusement when I little thought that I should ever need it
+excepting for my air this'--here the well-spoken young man put his
+hand into his breast--'this comb!  Sir I implore you in the name of
+charity to purchase a tortoiseshell comb which is a genuine article
+at any price that your humanity may put upon it and may the
+blessings of a ouseless family awaiting with beating arts the
+return of a husband and a father from Dover upon the cold stone
+seats of London-bridge ever attend you Sir may I take the liberty
+of speaking to you I implore you to buy this comb!'  By this time,
+being a reasonably good walker, you will have been too much for the
+well-spoken young man, who will stop short and express his disgust
+and his want of breath, in a long expectoration, as you leave him
+behind.
+
+Towards the end of the same walk, on the same bright summer day, at
+the corner of the next little town or village, you may find another
+kind of tramp, embodied in the persons of a most exemplary couple
+whose only improvidence appears to have been, that they spent the
+last of their little All on soap.  They are a man and woman,
+spotless to behold--John Anderson, with the frost on his short
+smock-frock instead of his 'pow,' attended by Mrs. Anderson.  John
+is over-ostentatious of the frost upon his raiment, and wears a
+curious and, you would say, an almost unnecessary demonstration of
+girdle of white linen wound about his waist--a girdle, snowy as
+Mrs. Anderson's apron.  This cleanliness was the expiring effort of
+the respectable couple, and nothing then remained to Mr. Anderson
+but to get chalked upon his spade in snow-white copy-book
+characters, HUNGRY! and to sit down here.  Yes; one thing more
+remained to Mr. Anderson--his character; Monarchs could not deprive
+him of his hard-earned character.  Accordingly, as you come up with
+this spectacle of virtue in distress, Mrs. Anderson rises, and with
+a decent curtsey presents for your consideration a certificate from
+a Doctor of Divinity, the reverend the Vicar of Upper Dodgington,
+who informs his Christian friends and all whom it may concern that
+the bearers, John Anderson and lawful wife, are persons to whom you
+cannot be too liberal.  This benevolent pastor omitted no work of
+his hands to fit the good couple out, for with half an eye you can
+recognise his autograph on the spade.
+
+Another class of tramp is a man, the most valuable part of whose
+stock-in-trade is a highly perplexed demeanour.  He is got up like
+a countryman, and you will often come upon the poor fellow, while
+he is endeavouring to decipher the inscription on a milestone--
+quite a fruitless endeavour, for he cannot read.  He asks your
+pardon, he truly does (he is very slow of speech, this tramp, and
+he looks in a bewildered way all round the prospect while he talks
+to you), but all of us shold do as we wold be done by, and he'll
+take it kind, if you'll put a power man in the right road fur to
+jine his eldest son as has broke his leg bad in the masoning, and
+is in this heere Orspit'l as is wrote down by Squire Pouncerby's
+own hand as wold not tell a lie fur no man.  He then produces from
+under his dark frock (being always very slow and perplexed) a neat
+but worn old leathern purse, from which he takes a scrap of paper.
+On this scrap of paper is written, by Squire Pouncerby, of The
+Grove, 'Please to direct the Bearer, a poor but very worthy man, to
+the Sussex County Hospital, near Brighton'--a matter of some
+difficulty at the moment, seeing that the request comes suddenly
+upon you in the depths of Hertfordshire.  The more you endeavour to
+indicate where Brighton is--when you have with the greatest
+difficulty remembered--the less the devoted father can be made to
+comprehend, and the more obtusely he stares at the prospect;
+whereby, being reduced to extremity, you recommend the faithful
+parent to begin by going to St. Albans, and present him with half-
+a-crown.  It does him good, no doubt, but scarcely helps him
+forward, since you find him lying drunk that same evening in the
+wheelwright's sawpit under the shed where the felled trees are,
+opposite the sign of the Three Jolly Hedgers.
+
+But, the most vicious, by far, of all the idle tramps, is the tramp
+who pretends to have been a gentleman.  'Educated,' he writes, from
+the village beer-shop in pale ink of a ferruginous complexion;
+'educated at Trin. Coll. Cam.--nursed in the lap of affluence--once
+in my small way the pattron of the Muses,' &c. &c. &c.--surely a
+sympathetic mind will not withhold a trifle, to help him on to the
+market-town where he thinks of giving a Lecture to the fruges
+consumere nati, on things in general?  This shameful creature
+lolling about hedge tap-rooms in his ragged clothes, now so far
+from being black that they look as if they never can have been
+black, is more selfish and insolent than even the savage tramp.  He
+would sponge on the poorest boy for a farthing, and spurn him when
+he had got it; he would interpose (if he could get anything by it)
+between the baby and the mother's breast.  So much lower than the
+company he keeps, for his maudlin assumption of being higher, this
+pitiless rascal blights the summer road as he maunders on between
+the luxuriant hedges; where (to my thinking) even the wild
+convolvulus and rose and sweet-briar, are the worse for his going
+by, and need time to recover from the taint of him in the air.
+
+The young fellows who trudge along barefoot, five or six together,
+their boots slung over their shoulders, their shabby bundles under
+their arms, their sticks newly cut from some roadside wood, are not
+eminently prepossessing, but are much less objectionable.  There is
+a tramp-fellowship among them.  They pick one another up at resting
+stations, and go on in companies.  They always go at a fast swing--
+though they generally limp too--and there is invariably one of the
+company who has much ado to keep up with the rest.  They generally
+talk about horses, and any other means of locomotion than walking:
+or, one of the company relates some recent experiences of the road-
+-which are always disputes and difficulties.  As for example.  'So
+as I'm a standing at the pump in the market, blest if there don't
+come up a Beadle, and he ses, "Mustn't stand here," he ses.  "Why
+not?" I ses.  "No beggars allowed in this town," he ses.  "Who's a
+beggar?" I ses.  "You are," he ses.  "Who ever see ME beg?  Did
+YOU?" I ses.  "Then you're a tramp," he ses.  "I'd rather be that
+than a Beadle," I ses.'  (The company express great approval.)
+'"Would you?" he ses to me.  "Yes, I would," I ses to him.  "Well,"
+he ses, "anyhow, get out of this town."  "Why, blow your little
+town!" I ses, "who wants to be in it?  Wot does your dirty little
+town mean by comin' and stickin' itself in the road to anywhere?
+Why don't you get a shovel and a barrer, and clear your town out o'
+people's way?"'  (The company expressing the highest approval and
+laughing aloud, they all go down the hill.)
+
+Then, there are the tramp handicraft men.  Are they not all over
+England, in this Midsummer time?  Where does the lark sing, the
+corn grow, the mill turn, the river run, and they are not among the
+lights and shadows, tinkering, chair-mending, umbrella-mending,
+clock-mending, knife-grinding?  Surely, a pleasant thing, if we
+were in that condition of life, to grind our way through Kent,
+Sussex, and Surrey.  For the worst six weeks or so, we should see
+the sparks we ground off, fiery bright against a background of
+green wheat and green leaves.  A little later, and the ripe harvest
+would pale our sparks from red to yellow, until we got the dark
+newly-turned land for a background again, and they were red once
+more.  By that time, we should have ground our way to the sea
+cliffs, and the whirr of our wheel would be lost in the breaking of
+the waves.  Our next variety in sparks would be derived from
+contrast with the gorgeous medley of colours in the autumn woods,
+and, by the time we had ground our way round to the heathy lands
+between Reigate and Croydon, doing a prosperous stroke of business
+all along, we should show like a little firework in the light
+frosty air, and be the next best thing to the blacksmith's forge.
+Very agreeable, too, to go on a chair-mending tour.  What judges we
+should be of rushes, and how knowingly (with a sheaf and a
+bottomless chair at our back) we should lounge on bridges, looking
+over at osier-beds!  Among all the innumerable occupations that
+cannot possibly be transacted without the assistance of lookers-on,
+chair-mending may take a station in the first rank.  When we sat
+down with our backs against the barn or the public-house, and began
+to mend, what a sense of popularity would grow upon us!  When all
+the children came to look at us, and the tailor, and the general
+dealer, and the farmer who had been giving a small order at the
+little saddler's, and the groom from the great house, and the
+publican, and even the two skittle-players (and here note that,
+howsoever busy all the rest of village human-kind may be, there
+will always be two people with leisure to play at skittles,
+wherever village skittles are), what encouragement would be on us
+to plait and weave!  No one looks at us while we plait and weave
+these words.  Clock-mending again.  Except for the slight
+inconvenience of carrying a clock under our arm, and the monotony
+of making the bell go, whenever we came to a human habitation, what
+a pleasant privilege to give a voice to the dumb cottage-clock, and
+set it talking to the cottage family again!  Likewise we foresee
+great interest in going round by the park plantations, under the
+overhanging boughs (hares, rabbits, partridges, and pheasants,
+scudding like mad across and across the chequered ground before
+us), and so over the park ladder, and through the wood, until we
+came to the Keeper's lodge.  Then, would, the Keeper be
+discoverable at his door, in a deep nest of leaves, smoking his
+pipe.  Then, on our accosting him in the way of our trade, would he
+call to Mrs. Keeper, respecting 't'ould clock' in the kitchen.
+Then, would Mrs. Keeper ask us into the lodge, and on due
+examination we should offer to make a good job of it for
+eighteenpence; which offer, being accepted, would set us tinkling
+and clinking among the chubby, awe-struck little Keepers for an
+hour and more.  So completely to the family's satisfaction would we
+achieve our work, that the Keeper would mention how that there was
+something wrong with the bell of the turret stable-clock up at the
+Hall, and that if we thought good of going up to the housekeeper on
+the chance of that job too, why he would take us.  Then, should we
+go, among the branching oaks and the deep fern, by silent ways of
+mystery known to the Keeper, seeing the herd glancing here and
+there as we went along, until we came to the old Hall, solemn and
+grand.  Under the Terrace Flower Garden, and round by the stables,
+would the Keeper take us in, and as we passed we should observe how
+spacious and stately the stables, and how fine the painting of the
+horses' names over their stalls, and how solitary all:  the family
+being in London.  Then, should we find ourselves presented to the
+housekeeper, sitting, in hushed state, at needlework, in a bay-
+window looking out upon a mighty grim red-brick quadrangle, guarded
+by stone lions disrespectfully throwing somersaults over the
+escutcheons of the noble family.  Then, our services accepted and
+we insinuated with a candle into the stable-turret, we should find
+it to be a mere question of pendulum, but one that would hold us
+until dark.  Then, should we fall to work, with a general
+impression of Ghosts being about, and of pictures indoors that of a
+certainty came out of their frames and 'walked,' if the family
+would only own it.  Then, should we work and work, until the day
+gradually turned to dusk, and even until the dusk gradually turned
+to dark.  Our task at length accomplished, we should be taken into
+an enormous servants' hall, and there regaled with beef and bread,
+and powerful ale.  Then, paid freely, we should be at liberty to
+go, and should be told by a pointing helper to keep round over
+yinder by the blasted ash, and so straight through the woods, till
+we should see the town-lights right afore us.  Then, feeling
+lonesome, should we desire upon the whole, that the ash had not
+been blasted, or that the helper had had the manners not to mention
+it.  However, we should keep on, all right, till suddenly the
+stable bell would strike ten in the dolefullest way, quite chilling
+our blood, though we had so lately taught him how to acquit
+himself.  Then, as we went on, should we recall old stories, and
+dimly consider what it would be most advisable to do, in the event
+of a tall figure, all in white, with saucer eyes, coming up and
+saying, 'I want you to come to a churchyard and mend a church
+clock.  Follow me!'  Then, should we make a burst to get clear of
+the trees, and should soon find ourselves in the open, with the
+town-lights bright ahead of us.  So should we lie that night at the
+ancient sign of the Crispin and Crispanus, and rise early next
+morning to be betimes on tramp again.
+
+Bricklayers often tramp, in twos and threes, lying by night at
+their 'lodges,' which are scattered all over the country.
+Bricklaying is another of the occupations that can by no means be
+transacted in rural parts, without the assistance of spectators--of
+as many as can be convened.  In thinly-peopled spots, I have known
+brick-layers on tramp, coming up with bricklayers at work, to be so
+sensible of the indispensability of lookers-on, that they
+themselves have sat up in that capacity, and have been unable to
+subside into the acceptance of a proffered share in the job, for
+two or three days together.  Sometimes, the 'navvy,' on tramp, with
+an extra pair of half-boots over his shoulder, a bag, a bottle, and
+a can, will take a similar part in a job of excavation, and will
+look at it without engaging in it, until all his money is gone.
+The current of my uncommercial pursuits caused me only last summer
+to want a little body of workmen for a certain spell of work in a
+pleasant part of the country; and I was at one time honoured with
+the attendance of as many as seven-and-twenty, who were looking at
+six.
+
+Who can be familiar with any rustic highway in summer-time, without
+storing up knowledge of the many tramps who go from one oasis of
+town or village to another, to sell a stock in trade, apparently
+not worth a shilling when sold?  Shrimps are a favourite commodity
+for this kind of speculation, and so are cakes of a soft and spongy
+character, coupled with Spanish nuts and brandy balls.  The stock
+is carried on the head in a basket, and, between the head and the
+basket, are the trestles on which the stock is displayed at trading
+times.  Fleet of foot, but a careworn class of tramp this, mostly;
+with a certain stiffness of neck, occasioned by much anxious
+balancing of baskets; and also with a long, Chinese sort of eye,
+which an overweighted forehead would seem to have squeezed into
+that form.
+
+On the hot dusty roads near seaport towns and great rivers, behold
+the tramping Soldier.  And if you should happen never to have asked
+yourself whether his uniform is suited to his work, perhaps the
+poor fellow's appearance as he comes distressfully towards you,
+with his absurdly tight jacket unbuttoned, his neck-gear in his
+hand, and his legs well chafed by his trousers of baize, may
+suggest the personal inquiry, how you think YOU would like it.
+Much better the tramping Sailor, although his cloth is somewhat too
+thick for land service.  But, why the tramping merchant-mate should
+put on a black velvet waistcoat, for a chalky country in the dog-
+days, is one of the great secrets of nature that will never be
+discovered.
+
+I have my eye upon a piece of Kentish road, bordered on either side
+by a wood, and having on one hand, between the road-dust and the
+trees, a skirting patch of grass.  Wild flowers grow in abundance
+on this spot, and it lies high and airy, with a distant river
+stealing steadily away to the ocean, like a man's life.  To gain
+the milestone here, which the moss, primroses, violets, blue-bells,
+and wild roses, would soon render illegible but for peering
+travellers pushing them aside with their sticks, you must come up a
+steep hill, come which way you may.  So, all the tramps with carts
+or caravans--the Gipsy-tramp, the Show-tramp, the Cheap Jack--find
+it impossible to resist the temptations of the place, and all turn
+the horse loose when they come to it, and boil the pot.  Bless the
+place, I love the ashes of the vagabond fires that have scorched
+its grass!  What tramp children do I see here, attired in a handful
+of rags, making a gymnasium of the shafts of the cart, making a
+feather-bed of the flints and brambles, making a toy of the hobbled
+old horse who is not much more like a horse than any cheap toy
+would be!  Here, do I encounter the cart of mats and brooms and
+baskets--with all thoughts of business given to the evening wind--
+with the stew made and being served out--with Cheap Jack and Dear
+Jill striking soft music out of the plates that are rattled like
+warlike cymbals when put up for auction at fairs and markets--their
+minds so influenced (no doubt) by the melody of the nightingales as
+they begin to sing in the woods behind them, that if I were to
+propose to deal, they would sell me anything at cost price.  On
+this hallowed ground has it been my happy privilege (let me whisper
+it), to behold the White-haired Lady with the pink eyes, eating
+meat-pie with the Giant:  while, by the hedge-side, on the box of
+blankets which I knew contained the snakes, were set forth the cups
+and saucers and the teapot.  It was on an evening in August, that I
+chanced upon this ravishing spectacle, and I noticed that, whereas
+the Giant reclined half concealed beneath the overhanging boughs
+and seemed indifferent to Nature, the white hair of the gracious
+Lady streamed free in the breath of evening, and her pink eyes
+found pleasure in the landscape.  I heard only a single sentence of
+her uttering, yet it bespoke a talent for modest repartee.  The
+ill-mannered Giant--accursed be his evil race!--had interrupted the
+Lady in some remark, and, as I passed that enchanted corner of the
+wood, she gently reproved him, with the words, 'Now, Cobby;'--
+Cobby! so short a name!--'ain't one fool enough to talk at a time?'
+
+Within appropriate distance of this magic ground, though not so
+near it as that the song trolled from tap or bench at door, can
+invade its woodland silence, is a little hostelry which no man
+possessed of a penny was ever known to pass in warm weather.
+Before its entrance, are certain pleasant, trimmed limes; likewise,
+a cool well, with so musical a bucket-handle that its fall upon the
+bucket rim will make a horse prick up his ears and neigh, upon the
+droughty road half a mile off.  This is a house of great resort for
+haymaking tramps and harvest tramps, insomuch that as they sit
+within, drinking their mugs of beer, their relinquished scythes and
+reaping-hooks glare out of the open windows, as if the whole
+establishment were a family war-coach of Ancient Britons.  Later in
+the season, the whole country-side, for miles and miles, will swarm
+with hopping tramps.  They come in families, men, women, and
+children, every family provided with a bundle of bedding, an iron
+pot, a number of babies, and too often with some poor sick creature
+quite unfit for the rough life, for whom they suppose the smell of
+the fresh hop to be a sovereign remedy.  Many of these hoppers are
+Irish, but many come from London.  They crowd all the roads, and
+camp under all the hedges and on all the scraps of common-land, and
+live among and upon the hops until they are all picked, and the
+hop-gardens, so beautiful through the summer, look as if they had
+been laid waste by an invading army.  Then, there is a vast exodus
+of tramps out of the country; and if you ride or drive round any
+turn of any road, at more than a foot pace, you will be bewildered
+to find that you have charged into the bosom of fifty families, and
+that there are splashing up all around you, in the utmost
+prodigality of confusion, bundles of bedding, babies, iron pots,
+and a good-humoured multitude of both sexes and all ages, equally
+divided between perspiration and intoxication.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII--DULLBOROUGH TOWN
+
+
+
+It lately happened that I found myself rambling about the scenes
+among which my earliest days were passed; scenes from which I
+departed when I was a child, and which I did not revisit until I
+was a man.  This is no uncommon chance, but one that befalls some
+of us any day; perhaps it may not be quite uninteresting to compare
+notes with the reader respecting an experience so familiar and a
+journey so uncommercial.
+
+I call my boyhood's home (and I feel like a Tenor in an English
+Opera when I mention it) Dullborough.  Most of us come from
+Dullborough who come from a country town.
+
+As I left Dullborough in the days when there were no railroads in
+the land, I left it in a stage-coach.  Through all the years that
+have since passed, have I ever lost the smell of the damp straw in
+which I was packed--like game--and forwarded, carriage paid, to the
+Cross Keys, Wood-street, Cheapside, London?  There was no other
+inside passenger, and I consumed my sandwiches in solitude and
+dreariness, and it rained hard all the way, and I thought life
+sloppier than I had expected to find it.
+
+With this tender remembrance upon me, I was cavalierly shunted back
+into Dullborough the other day, by train.  My ticket had been
+previously collected, like my taxes, and my shining new portmanteau
+had had a great plaster stuck upon it, and I had been defied by Act
+of Parliament to offer an objection to anything that was done to
+it, or me, under a penalty of not less than forty shillings or more
+than five pounds, compoundable for a term of imprisonment.  When I
+had sent my disfigured property on to the hotel, I began to look
+about me; and the first discovery I made, was, that the Station had
+swallowed up the playing-field.
+
+It was gone.  The two beautiful hawthorn-trees, the hedge, the
+turf, and all those buttercups and daisies, had given place to the
+stoniest of jolting roads:  while, beyond the Station, an ugly dark
+monster of a tunnel kept its jaws open, as if it had swallowed them
+and were ravenous for more destruction.  The coach that had carried
+me away, was melodiously called Timpson's Blue-Eyed Maid, and
+belonged to Timpson, at the coach-office up-street; the locomotive
+engine that had brought me back, was called severely No. 97, and
+belonged to S.E.R., and was spitting ashes and hot water over the
+blighted ground.
+
+When I had been let out at the platform-door, like a prisoner whom
+his turnkey grudgingly released, I looked in again over the low
+wall, at the scene of departed glories.  Here, in the haymaking
+time, had I been delivered from the dungeons of Seringapatam, an
+immense pile (of haycock), by my own countrymen, the victorious
+British (boy next door and his two cousins), and had been
+recognised with ecstasy by my affianced one (Miss Green), who had
+come all the way from England (second house in the terrace) to
+ransom me, and marry me.  Here, had I first heard in confidence,
+from one whose father was greatly connected, being under
+Government, of the existence of a terrible banditti, called 'The
+Radicals,' whose principles were, that the Prince Regent wore
+stays, and that nobody had a right to any salary, and that the army
+and navy ought to be put down--horrors at which I trembled in my
+bed, after supplicating that the Radicals might be speedily taken
+and hanged.  Here, too, had we, the small boys of Boles's, had that
+cricket match against the small boys of Coles's, when Boles and
+Coles had actually met upon the ground, and when, instead of
+instantly hitting out at one another with the utmost fury, as we
+had all hoped and expected, those sneaks had said respectively, 'I
+hope Mrs. Boles is well,' and 'I hope Mrs. Coles and the baby are
+doing charmingly.'  Could it be that, after all this, and much
+more, the Playing-field was a Station, and No. 97 expectorated
+boiling water and redhot cinders on it, and the whole belonged by
+Act of Parliament to S.E.R.?
+
+As it could be, and was, I left the place with a heavy heart for a
+walk all over the town.  And first of Timpson's up-street.  When I
+departed from Dullborough in the strawy arms of Timpson's Blue-Eyed
+Maid, Timpson's was a moderate-sized coach-office (in fact, a
+little coach-office), with an oval transparency in the window,
+which looked beautiful by night, representing one of Timpson's
+coaches in the act of passing a milestone on the London road with
+great velocity, completely full inside and out, and all the
+passengers dressed in the first style of fashion, and enjoying
+themselves tremendously.  I found no such place as Timpson's now--
+no such bricks and rafters, not to mention the name--no such
+edifice on the teeming earth.  Pickford had come and knocked
+Timpson's down.  Pickford had not only knocked Timpson's down, but
+had knocked two or three houses down on each side of Timpson's, and
+then had knocked the whole into one great establishment with a pair
+of big gates, in and out of which, his (Pickford's) waggons are, in
+these days, always rattling, with their drivers sitting up so high,
+that they look in at the second-floor windows of the old-fashioned
+houses in the High-street as they shake the town.  I have not the
+honour of Pickford's acquaintance, but I felt that he had done me
+an injury, not to say committed an act of boyslaughter, in running
+over my Childhood in this rough manner; and if ever I meet Pickford
+driving one of his own monsters, and smoking a pipe the while
+(which is the custom of his men), he shall know by the expression
+of my eye, if it catches his, that there is something wrong between
+us.
+
+Moreover, I felt that Pickford had no right to come rushing into
+Dullborough and deprive the town of a public picture.  He is not
+Napoleon Bonaparte.  When he took down the transparent stage-coach,
+he ought to have given the town a transparent van.  With a gloomy
+conviction that Pickford is wholly utilitarian and unimaginative, I
+proceeded on my way.
+
+It is a mercy I have not a red and green lamp and a night-bell at
+my door, for in my very young days I was taken to so many lyings-in
+that I wonder I escaped becoming a professional martyr to them in
+after-life.  I suppose I had a very sympathetic nurse, with a large
+circle of married acquaintance.  However that was, as I continued
+my walk through Dullborough, I found many houses to be solely
+associated in my mind with this particular interest.  At one little
+greengrocer's shop, down certain steps from the street, I remember
+to have waited on a lady who had had four children (I am afraid to
+write five, though I fully believe it was five) at a birth.  This
+meritorious woman held quite a reception in her room on the morning
+when I was introduced there, and the sight of the house brought
+vividly to my mind how the four (five) deceased young people lay,
+side by side, on a clean cloth on a chest of drawers; reminding me
+by a homely association, which I suspect their complexion to have
+assisted, of pigs' feet as they are usually displayed at a neat
+tripe-shop.  Hot candle was handed round on the occasion, and I
+further remembered as I stood contemplating the greengrocer's, that
+a subscription was entered into among the company, which became
+extremely alarming to my consciousness of having pocket-money on my
+person.  This fact being known to my conductress, whoever she was,
+I was earnestly exhorted to contribute, but resolutely declined:
+therein disgusting the company, who gave me to understand that I
+must dismiss all expectations of going to Heaven.
+
+How does it happen that when all else is change wherever one goes,
+there yet seem, in every place, to be some few people who never
+alter?  As the sight of the greengrocer's house recalled these
+trivial incidents of long ago, the identical greengrocer appeared
+on the steps, with his hands in his pockets, and leaning his
+shoulder against the door-post, as my childish eyes had seen him
+many a time; indeed, there was his old mark on the door-post yet,
+as if his shadow had become a fixture there.  It was he himself; he
+might formerly have been an old-looking young man, or he might now
+be a young-looking old man, but there he was.  In walking along the
+street, I had as yet looked in vain for a familiar face, or even a
+transmitted face; here was the very greengrocer who had been
+weighing and handling baskets on the morning of the reception.  As
+he brought with him a dawning remembrance that he had had no
+proprietary interest in those babies, I crossed the road, and
+accosted him on the subject.  He was not in the least excited or
+gratified, or in any way roused, by the accuracy of my
+recollection, but said, Yes, summut out of the common--he didn't
+remember how many it was (as if half-a-dozen babes either way made
+no difference)--had happened to a Mrs. What's-her-name, as once
+lodged there--but he didn't call it to mind, particular.  Nettled
+by this phlegmatic conduct, I informed him that I had left the town
+when I was a child.  He slowly returned, quite unsoftened, and not
+without a sarcastic kind of complacency, HAD I?  Ah!  And did I
+find it had got on tolerably well without me?  Such is the
+difference (I thought, when I had left him a few hundred yards
+behind, and was by so much in a better temper) between going away
+from a place and remaining in it.  I had no right, I reflected, to
+be angry with the greengrocer for his want of interest, I was
+nothing to him:  whereas he was the town, the cathedral, the
+bridge, the river, my childhood, and a large slice of my life, to
+me.
+
+Of course the town had shrunk fearfully, since I was a child there.
+I had entertained the impression that the High-street was at least
+as wide as Regent-street, London, or the Italian Boulevard at
+Paris.  I found it little better than a lane.  There was a public
+clock in it, which I had supposed to be the finest clock in the
+world:  whereas it now turned out to be as inexpressive, moon-
+faced, and weak a clock as ever I saw.  It belonged to a Town Hall,
+where I had seen an Indian (who I now suppose wasn't an Indian)
+swallow a sword (which I now suppose he didn't).  The edifice had
+appeared to me in those days so glorious a structure, that I had
+set it up in my mind as the model on which the Genie of the Lamp
+built the palace for Aladdin.  A mean little brick heap, like a
+demented chapel, with a few yawning persons in leather gaiters, and
+in the last extremity for something to do, lounging at the door
+with their hands in their pockets, and calling themselves a Corn
+Exchange!
+
+The Theatre was in existence, I found, on asking the fishmonger,
+who had a compact show of stock in his window, consisting of a sole
+and a quart of shrimps--and I resolved to comfort my mind by going
+to look at it.  Richard the Third, in a very uncomfortable cloak,
+had first appeared to me there, and had made my heart leap with
+terror by backing up against the stage-box in which I was posted,
+while struggling for life against the virtuous Richmond.  It was
+within those walls that I had learnt as from a page of English
+history, how that wicked King slept in war-time on a sofa much too
+short for him, and how fearfully his conscience troubled his boots.
+There, too, had I first seen the funny countryman, but countryman
+of noble principles, in a flowered waistcoat, crunch up his little
+hat and throw it on the ground, and pull off his coat, saying, 'Dom
+thee, squire, coom on with thy fistes then!'  At which the lovely
+young woman who kept company with him (and who went out gleaning,
+in a narrow white muslin apron with five beautiful bars of five
+different-coloured ribbons across it) was so frightened for his
+sake, that she fainted away.  Many wondrous secrets of Nature had I
+come to the knowledge of in that sanctuary:  of which not the least
+terrific were, that the witches in Macbeth bore an awful
+resemblance to the Thanes and other proper inhabitants of Scotland;
+and that the good King Duncan couldn't rest in his grave, but was
+constantly coming out of it and calling himself somebody else.  To
+the Theatre, therefore, I repaired for consolation.  But I found
+very little, for it was in a bad and declining way.  A dealer in
+wine and bottled beer had already squeezed his trade into the box-
+office, and the theatrical money was taken--when it came--in a kind
+of meat-safe in the passage.  The dealer in wine and bottled beer
+must have insinuated himself under the stage too; for he announced
+that he had various descriptions of alcoholic drinks 'in the wood,'
+and there was no possible stowage for the wood anywhere else.
+Evidently, he was by degrees eating the establishment away to the
+core, and would soon have sole possession of it.  It was To Let,
+and hopelessly so, for its old purposes; and there had been no
+entertainment within its walls for a long time except a Panorama;
+and even that had been announced as 'pleasingly instructive,' and I
+know too well the fatal meaning and the leaden import of those
+terrible expressions.  No, there was no comfort in the Theatre.  It
+was mysteriously gone, like my own youth.  Unlike my own youth, it
+might be coming back some day; but there was little promise of it.
+
+As the town was placarded with references to the Dullborough
+Mechanics' Institution, I thought I would go and look at that
+establishment next.  There had been no such thing in the town, in
+my young day, and it occurred to me that its extreme prosperity
+might have brought adversity upon the Drama.  I found the
+Institution with some difficulty, and should scarcely have known
+that I had found it if I had judged from its external appearance
+only; but this was attributable to its never having been finished,
+and having no front:  consequently, it led a modest and retired
+existence up a stable-yard.  It was (as I learnt, on inquiry) a
+most flourishing Institution, and of the highest benefit to the
+town:  two triumphs which I was glad to understand were not at all
+impaired by the seeming drawbacks that no mechanics belonged to it,
+and that it was steeped in debt to the chimney-pots.  It had a
+large room, which was approached by an infirm step-ladder:  the
+builder having declined to construct the intended staircase,
+without a present payment in cash, which Dullborough (though
+profoundly appreciative of the Institution) seemed unaccountably
+bashful about subscribing.  The large room had cost--or would, when
+paid for--five hundred pounds; and it had more mortar in it and
+more echoes, than one might have expected to get for the money.  It
+was fitted up with a platform, and the usual lecturing tools,
+including a large black board of a menacing appearance.  On
+referring to lists of the courses of lectures that had been given
+in this thriving Hall, I fancied I detected a shyness in admitting
+that human nature when at leisure has any desire whatever to be
+relieved and diverted; and a furtive sliding in of any poor make-
+weight piece of amusement, shame-facedly and edgewise.  Thus, I
+observed that it was necessary for the members to be knocked on the
+head with Gas, Air, Water, Food, the Solar System, the Geological
+periods, Criticism on Milton, the Steam-engine, John Bunyan, and
+Arrow-Headed Inscriptions, before they might be tickled by those
+unaccountable choristers, the negro singers in the court costume of
+the reign of George the Second.  Likewise, that they must be
+stunned by a weighty inquiry whether there was internal evidence in
+Shakespeare's works, to prove that his uncle by the mother's side
+lived for some years at Stoke Newington, before they were brought-
+to by a Miscellaneous Concert.  But, indeed, the masking of
+entertainment, and pretending it was something else--as people mask
+bedsteads when they are obliged to have them in sitting-rooms, and
+make believe that they are book-cases, sofas, chests of drawers,
+anything rather than bedsteads--was manifest even in the pretence
+of dreariness that the unfortunate entertainers themselves felt
+obliged in decency to put forth when they came here.  One very
+agreeable professional singer, who travelled with two professional
+ladies, knew better than to introduce either of those ladies to
+sing the ballad 'Comin' through the Rye' without prefacing it
+himself, with some general remarks on wheat and clover; and even
+then, he dared not for his life call the song, a song, but
+disguised it in the bill as an 'Illustration.'  In the library,
+also--fitted with shelves for three thousand books, and containing
+upwards of one hundred and seventy (presented copies mostly),
+seething their edges in damp plaster--there was such a painfully
+apologetic return of 62 offenders who had read Travels, Popular
+Biography, and mere Fiction descriptive of the aspirations of the
+hearts and souls of mere human creatures like themselves; and such
+an elaborate parade of 2 bright examples who had had down Euclid
+after the day's occupation and confinement; and 3 who had had down
+Metaphysics after ditto; and 1 who had had down Theology after
+ditto; and 4 who had worried Grammar, Political Economy, Botany,
+and Logarithms all at once after ditto; that I suspected the
+boasted class to be one man, who had been hired to do it.
+
+Emerging from the Mechanics' Institution and continuing my walk
+about the town, I still noticed everywhere the prevalence, to an
+extraordinary degree, of this custom of putting the natural demand
+for amusement out of sight, as some untidy housekeepers put dust,
+and pretending that it was swept away.  And yet it was ministered
+to, in a dull and abortive manner, by all who made this feint.
+Looking in at what is called in Dullborough 'the serious
+bookseller's,' where, in my childhood, I had studied the faces of
+numbers of gentlemen depicted in rostrums with a gaslight on each
+side of them, and casting my eyes over the open pages of certain
+printed discourses there, I found a vast deal of aiming at jocosity
+and dramatic effect, even in them--yes, verily, even on the part of
+one very wrathful expounder who bitterly anathematised a poor
+little Circus.  Similarly, in the reading provided for the young
+people enrolled in the Lasso of Love, and other excellent unions, I
+found the writers generally under a distressing sense that they
+must start (at all events) like story-tellers, and delude the young
+persons into the belief that they were going to be interesting.  As
+I looked in at this window for twenty minutes by the clock, I am in
+a position to offer a friendly remonstrance--not bearing on this
+particular point--to the designers and engravers of the pictures in
+those publications.  Have they considered the awful consequences
+likely to flow from their representations of Virtue?  Have they
+asked themselves the question, whether the terrific prospect of
+acquiring that fearful chubbiness of head, unwieldiness of arm,
+feeble dislocation of leg, crispiness of hair, and enormity of
+shirt-collar, which they represent as inseparable from Goodness,
+may not tend to confirm sensitive waverers, in Evil?  A most
+impressive example (if I had believed it) of what a Dustman and a
+Sailor may come to, when they mend their ways, was presented to me
+in this same shop-window.  When they were leaning (they were
+intimate friends) against a post, drunk and reckless, with
+surpassingly bad hats on, and their hair over their foreheads, they
+were rather picturesque, and looked as if they might be agreeable
+men, if they would not be beasts.  But, when they had got over
+their bad propensities, and when, as a consequence, their heads had
+swelled alarmingly, their hair had got so curly that it lifted
+their blown-out cheeks up, their coat-cuffs were so long that they
+never could do any work, and their eyes were so wide open that they
+never could do any sleep, they presented a spectacle calculated to
+plunge a timid nature into the depths of Infamy.
+
+But, the clock that had so degenerated since I saw it last,
+admonished me that I had stayed here long enough; and I resumed my
+walk.
+
+I had not gone fifty paces along the street when I was suddenly
+brought up by the sight of a man who got out of a little phaeton at
+the doctor's door, and went into the doctor's house.  Immediately,
+the air was filled with the scent of trodden grass, and the
+perspective of years opened, and at the end of it was a little
+likeness of this man keeping a wicket, and I said, 'God bless my
+soul!  Joe Specks!'
+
+Through many changes and much work, I had preserved a tenderness
+for the memory of Joe, forasmuch as we had made the acquaintance of
+Roderick Random together, and had believed him to be no ruffian,
+but an ingenuous and engaging hero.  Scorning to ask the boy left
+in the phaeton whether it was really Joe, and scorning even to read
+the brass plate on the door--so sure was I--I rang the bell and
+informed the servant maid that a stranger sought audience of Mr.
+Specks.  Into a room, half surgery, half study, I was shown to
+await his coming, and I found it, by a series of elaborate
+accidents, bestrewn with testimonies to Joe.  Portrait of Mr.
+Specks, bust of Mr. Specks, silver cup from grateful patient to Mr.
+Specks, presentation sermon from local clergyman, dedication poem
+from local poet, dinner-card from local nobleman, tract on balance
+of power from local refugee, inscribed Hommage de l'auteur a
+Specks.
+
+When my old schoolfellow came in, and I informed him with a smile
+that I was not a patient, he seemed rather at a loss to perceive
+any reason for smiling in connexion with that fact, and inquired to
+what was he to attribute the honour?  I asked him with another
+smile, could he remember me at all?  He had not (he said) that
+pleasure.  I was beginning to have but a poor opinion of Mr.
+Specks, when he said reflectively, 'And yet there's a something
+too.'  Upon that, I saw a boyish light in his eyes that looked
+well, and I asked him if he could inform me, as a stranger who
+desired to know and had not the means of reference at hand, what
+the name of the young lady was, who married Mr. Random?  Upon that,
+he said 'Narcissa,' and, after staring for a moment, called me by
+my name, shook me by the hand, and melted into a roar of laughter.
+'Why, of course, you'll remember Lucy Green,' he said, after we had
+talked a little.  'Of course,' said I.  'Whom do you think she
+married?' said he.  'You?' I hazarded.  'Me,' said Specks, 'and you
+shall see her.'  So I saw her, and she was fat, and if all the hay
+in the world had been heaped upon her, it could scarcely have
+altered her face more than Time had altered it from my remembrance
+of the face that had once looked down upon me into the fragrant
+dungeons of Seringapatam.  But when her youngest child came in
+after dinner (for I dined with them, and we had no other company
+than Specks, Junior, Barrister-at-law, who went away as soon as the
+cloth was removed, to look after the young lady to whom he was
+going to be married next week), I saw again, in that little
+daughter, the little face of the hayfield, unchanged, and it quite
+touched my foolish heart.  We talked immensely, Specks and Mrs.
+Specks, and I, and we spoke of our old selves as though our old
+selves were dead and gone, and indeed, indeed they were--dead and
+gone as the playing-field that had become a wilderness of rusty
+iron, and the property of S.E.R.
+
+Specks, however, illuminated Dullborough with the rays of interest
+that I wanted and should otherwise have missed in it, and linked
+its present to its past, with a highly agreeable chain.  And in
+Specks's society I had new occasion to observe what I had before
+noticed in similar communications among other men.  All the
+schoolfellows and others of old, whom I inquired about, had either
+done superlatively well or superlatively ill--had either become
+uncertificated bankrupts, or been felonious and got themselves
+transported; or had made great hits in life, and done wonders.  And
+this is so commonly the case, that I never can imagine what becomes
+of all the mediocre people of people's youth--especially
+considering that we find no lack of the species in our maturity.
+But, I did not propound this difficulty to Specks, for no pause in
+the conversation gave me an occasion.  Nor, could I discover one
+single flaw in the good doctor--when he reads this, he will receive
+in a friendly spirit the pleasantly meant record--except that he
+had forgotten his Roderick Random, and that he confounded Strap
+with Lieutenant Hatchway; who never knew Random, howsoever intimate
+with Pickle.
+
+When I went alone to the Railway to catch my train at night (Specks
+had meant to go with me, but was inopportunely called out), I was
+in a more charitable mood with Dullborough than I had been all day;
+and yet in my heart I had loved it all day too.  Ah! who was I that
+I should quarrel with the town for being changed to me, when I
+myself had come back, so changed, to it!  All my early readings and
+early imaginations dated from this place, and I took them away so
+full of innocent construction and guileless belief, and I brought
+them back so worn and torn, so much the wiser and so much the
+worse!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII--NIGHT WALKS
+
+
+
+Some years ago, a temporary inability to sleep, referable to a
+distressing impression, caused me to walk about the streets all
+night, for a series of several nights.  The disorder might have
+taken a long time to conquer, if it had been faintly experimented
+on in bed; but, it was soon defeated by the brisk treatment of
+getting up directly after lying down, and going out, and coming
+home tired at sunrise.
+
+In the course of those nights, I finished my education in a fair
+amateur experience of houselessness.  My principal object being to
+get through the night, the pursuit of it brought me into
+sympathetic relations with people who have no other object every
+night in the year.
+
+The month was March, and the weather damp, cloudy, and cold.  The
+sun not rising before half-past five, the night perspective looked
+sufficiently long at half-past twelve:  which was about my time for
+confronting it.
+
+The restlessness of a great city, and the way in which it tumbles
+and tosses before it can get to sleep, formed one of the first
+entertainments offered to the contemplation of us houseless people.
+It lasted about two hours.  We lost a great deal of companionship
+when the late public-houses turned their lamps out, and when the
+potmen thrust the last brawling drunkards into the street; but
+stray vehicles and stray people were left us, after that.  If we
+were very lucky, a policeman's rattle sprang and a fray turned up;
+but, in general, surprisingly little of this diversion was
+provided.  Except in the Haymarket, which is the worst kept part of
+London, and about Kent-street in the Borough, and along a portion
+of the line of the Old Kent-road, the peace was seldom violently
+broken.  But, it was always the case that London, as if in
+imitation of individual citizens belonging to it, had expiring fits
+and starts of restlessness.  After all seemed quiet, if one cab
+rattled by, half-a-dozen would surely follow; and Houselessness
+even observed that intoxicated people appeared to be magnetically
+attracted towards each other; so that we knew when we saw one
+drunken object staggering against the shutters of a shop, that
+another drunken object would stagger up before five minutes were
+out, to fraternise or fight with it.  When we made a divergence
+from the regular species of drunkard, the thin-armed, puff-faced,
+leaden-lipped gin-drinker, and encountered a rarer specimen of a
+more decent appearance, fifty to one but that specimen was dressed
+in soiled mourning.  As the street experience in the night, so the
+street experience in the day; the common folk who come unexpectedly
+into a little property, come unexpectedly into a deal of liquor.
+
+At length these flickering sparks would die away, worn out--the
+last veritable sparks of waking life trailed from some late pieman
+or hot-potato man--and London would sink to rest.  And then the
+yearning of the houseless mind would be for any sign of company,
+any lighted place, any movement, anything suggestive of any one
+being up--nay, even so much as awake, for the houseless eye looked
+out for lights in windows.
+
+Walking the streets under the pattering rain, Houselessness would
+walk and walk and walk, seeing nothing but the interminable tangle
+of streets, save at a corner, here and there, two policemen in
+conversation, or the sergeant or inspector looking after his men.
+Now and then in the night--but rarely--Houselessness would become
+aware of a furtive head peering out of a doorway a few yards before
+him, and, coming up with the head, would find a man standing bolt
+upright to keep within the doorway's shadow, and evidently intent
+upon no particular service to society.  Under a kind of
+fascination, and in a ghostly silence suitable to the time,
+Houselessness and this gentleman would eye one another from head to
+foot, and so, without exchange of speech, part, mutually
+suspicious.  Drip, drip, drip, from ledge and coping, splash from
+pipes and water-spouts, and by-and-by the houseless shadow would
+fall upon the stones that pave the way to Waterloo-bridge; it being
+in the houseless mind to have a halfpenny worth of excuse for
+saying 'Good-night' to the toll-keeper, and catching a glimpse of
+his fire.  A good fire and a good great-coat and a good woollen
+neck-shawl, were comfortable things to see in conjunction with the
+toll-keeper; also his brisk wakefulness was excellent company when
+he rattled the change of halfpence down upon that metal table of
+his, like a man who defied the night, with all its sorrowful
+thoughts, and didn't care for the coming of dawn.  There was need
+of encouragement on the threshold of the bridge, for the bridge was
+dreary.  The chopped-up murdered man, had not been lowered with a
+rope over the parapet when those nights were; he was alive, and
+slept then quietly enough most likely, and undisturbed by any dream
+of where he was to come.  But the river had an awful look, the
+buildings on the banks were muffled in black shrouds, and the
+reflected lights seemed to originate deep in the water, as if the
+spectres of suicides were holding them to show where they went
+down.  The wild moon and clouds were as restless as an evil
+conscience in a tumbled bed, and the very shadow of the immensity
+of London seemed to lie oppressively upon the river.
+
+Between the bridge and the two great theatres, there was but the
+distance of a few hundred paces, so the theatres came next.  Grim
+and black within, at night, those great dry Wells, and lonesome to
+imagine, with the rows of faces faded out, the lights extinguished,
+and the seats all empty.  One would think that nothing in them knew
+itself at such a time but Yorick's skull.  In one of my night
+walks, as the church steeples were shaking the March winds and rain
+with the strokes of Four, I passed the outer boundary of one of
+these great deserts, and entered it.  With a dim lantern in my
+hand, I groped my well-known way to the stage and looked over the
+orchestra--which was like a great grave dug for a time of
+pestilence--into the void beyond.  A dismal cavern of an immense
+aspect, with the chandelier gone dead like everything else, and
+nothing visible through mist and fog and space, but tiers of
+winding-sheets.  The ground at my feet where, when last there, I
+had seen the peasantry of Naples dancing among the vines, reckless
+of the burning mountain which threatened to overwhelm them, was now
+in possession of a strong serpent of engine-hose, watchfully lying
+in wait for the serpent Fire, and ready to fly at it if it showed
+its forked tongue.  A ghost of a watchman, carrying a faint corpse
+candle, haunted the distant upper gallery and flitted away.
+Retiring within the proscenium, and holding my light above my head
+towards the rolled-up curtain--green no more, but black as ebony--
+my sight lost itself in a gloomy vault, showing faint indications
+in it of a shipwreck of canvas and cordage.  Methought I felt much
+as a diver might, at the bottom of the sea.
+
+In those small hours when there was no movement in the streets, it
+afforded matter for reflection to take Newgate in the way, and,
+touching its rough stone, to think of the prisoners in their sleep,
+and then to glance in at the lodge over the spiked wicket, and see
+the fire and light of the watching turnkeys, on the white wall.
+Not an inappropriate time either, to linger by that wicked little
+Debtors' Door--shutting tighter than any other door one ever saw--
+which has been Death's Door to so many.  In the days of the
+uttering of forged one-pound notes by people tempted up from the
+country, how many hundreds of wretched creatures of both sexes--
+many quite innocent--swung out of a pitiless and inconsistent
+world, with the tower of yonder Christian church of Saint Sepulchre
+monstrously before their eyes!  Is there any haunting of the Bank
+Parlour, by the remorseful souls of old directors, in the nights of
+these later days, I wonder, or is it as quiet as this degenerate
+Aceldama of an Old Bailey?
+
+To walk on to the Bank, lamenting the good old times and bemoaning
+the present evil period, would be an easy next step, so I would
+take it, and would make my houseless circuit of the Bank, and give
+a thought to the treasure within; likewise to the guard of soldiers
+passing the night there, and nodding over the fire.  Next, I went
+to Billingsgate, in some hope of market-people, but it proving as
+yet too early, crossed London-bridge and got down by the water-side
+on the Surrey shore among the buildings of the great brewery.
+There was plenty going on at the brewery; and the reek, and the
+smell of grains, and the rattling of the plump dray horses at their
+mangers, were capital company.  Quite refreshed by having mingled
+with this good society, I made a new start with a new heart,
+setting the old King's Bench prison before me for my next object,
+and resolving, when I should come to the wall, to think of poor
+Horace Kinch, and the Dry Rot in men.
+
+A very curious disease the Dry Rot in men, and difficult to detect
+the beginning of.  It had carried Horace Kinch inside the wall of
+the old King's Bench prison, and it had carried him out with his
+feet foremost.  He was a likely man to look at, in the prime of
+life, well to do, as clever as he needed to be, and popular among
+many friends.  He was suitably married, and had healthy and pretty
+children.  But, like some fair-looking houses or fair-looking
+ships, he took the Dry Rot.  The first strong external revelation
+of the Dry Rot in men, is a tendency to lurk and lounge; to be at
+street-corners without intelligible reason; to be going anywhere
+when met; to be about many places rather than at any; to do nothing
+tangible, but to have an intention of performing a variety of
+intangible duties to-morrow or the day after.  When this
+manifestation of the disease is observed, the observer will usually
+connect it with a vague impression once formed or received, that
+the patient was living a little too hard.  He will scarcely have
+had leisure to turn it over in his mind and form the terrible
+suspicion 'Dry Rot,' when he will notice a change for the worse in
+the patient's appearance:  a certain slovenliness and
+deterioration, which is not poverty, nor dirt, nor intoxication,
+nor ill-health, but simply Dry Rot.  To this, succeeds a smell as
+of strong waters, in the morning; to that, a looseness respecting
+money; to that, a stronger smell as of strong waters, at all times;
+to that, a looseness respecting everything; to that, a trembling of
+the limbs, somnolency, misery, and crumbling to pieces.  As it is
+in wood, so it is in men.  Dry Rot advances at a compound usury
+quite incalculable.  A plank is found infected with it, and the
+whole structure is devoted.  Thus it had been with the unhappy
+Horace Kinch, lately buried by a small subscription.  Those who
+knew him had not nigh done saying, 'So well off, so comfortably
+established, with such hope before him--and yet, it is feared, with
+a slight touch of Dry Rot!' when lo! the man was all Dry Rot and
+dust.
+
+From the dead wall associated on those houseless nights with this
+too common story, I chose next to wander by Bethlehem Hospital;
+partly, because it lay on my road round to Westminster; partly,
+because I had a night fancy in my head which could be best pursued
+within sight of its walls and dome.  And the fancy was this:  Are
+not the sane and the insane equal at night as the sane lie a
+dreaming?  Are not all of us outside this hospital, who dream, more
+or less in the condition of those inside it, every night of our
+lives?  Are we not nightly persuaded, as they daily are, that we
+associate preposterously with kings and queens, emperors and
+empresses, and notabilities of all sorts?  Do we not nightly jumble
+events and personages and times and places, as these do daily?  Are
+we not sometimes troubled by our own sleeping inconsistencies, and
+do we not vexedly try to account for them or excuse them, just as
+these do sometimes in respect of their waking delusions?  Said an
+afflicted man to me, when I was last in a hospital like this, 'Sir,
+I can frequently fly.'  I was half ashamed to reflect that so could
+I--by night.  Said a woman to me on the same occasion, 'Queen
+Victoria frequently comes to dine with me, and her Majesty and I
+dine off peaches and maccaroni in our night-gowns, and his Royal
+Highness the Prince Consort does us the honour to make a third on
+horseback in a Field-Marshal's uniform.'  Could I refrain from
+reddening with consciousness when I remembered the amazing royal
+parties I myself had given (at night), the unaccountable viands I
+had put on table, and my extraordinary manner of conducting myself
+on those distinguished occasions?  I wonder that the great master
+who knew everything, when he called Sleep the death of each day's
+life, did not call Dreams the insanity of each day's sanity.
+
+By this time I had left the Hospital behind me, and was again
+setting towards the river; and in a short breathing space I was on
+Westminster-bridge, regaling my houseless eyes with the external
+walls of the British Parliament--the perfection of a stupendous
+institution, I know, and the admiration of all surrounding nations
+and succeeding ages, I do not doubt, but perhaps a little the
+better now and then for being pricked up to its work.  Turning off
+into Old Palace-yard, the Courts of Law kept me company for a
+quarter of an hour; hinting in low whispers what numbers of people
+they were keeping awake, and how intensely wretched and horrible
+they were rendering the small hours to unfortunate suitors.
+Westminster Abbey was fine gloomy society for another quarter of an
+hour; suggesting a wonderful procession of its dead among the dark
+arches and pillars, each century more amazed by the century
+following it than by all the centuries going before.  And indeed in
+those houseless night walks--which even included cemeteries where
+watchmen went round among the graves at stated times, and moved the
+tell-tale handle of an index which recorded that they had touched
+it at such an hour--it was a solemn consideration what enormous
+hosts of dead belong to one old great city, and how, if they were
+raised while the living slept, there would not be the space of a
+pin's point in all the streets and ways for the living to come out
+into.  Not only that, but the vast armies of dead would overflow
+the hills and valleys beyond the city, and would stretch away all
+round it, God knows how far.
+
+When a church clock strikes, on houseless ears in the dead of the
+night, it may be at first mistaken for company and hailed as such.
+But, as the spreading circles of vibration, which you may perceive
+at such a time with great clearness, go opening out, for ever and
+ever afterwards widening perhaps (as the philosopher has suggested)
+in eternal space, the mistake is rectified and the sense of
+loneliness is profounder.  Once--it was after leaving the Abbey and
+turning my face north--I came to the great steps of St. Martin's
+church as the clock was striking Three.  Suddenly, a thing that in
+a moment more I should have trodden upon without seeing, rose up at
+my feet with a cry of loneliness and houselessness, struck out of
+it by the bell, the like of which I never heard.  We then stood
+face to face looking at one another, frightened by one another.
+The creature was like a beetle-browed hair-lipped youth of twenty,
+and it had a loose bundle of rags on, which it held together with
+one of its hands.  It shivered from head to foot, and its teeth
+chattered, and as it stared at me--persecutor, devil, ghost,
+whatever it thought me--it made with its whining mouth as if it
+were snapping at me, like a worried dog.  Intending to give this
+ugly object money, I put out my hand to stay it--for it recoiled as
+it whined and snapped--and laid my hand upon its shoulder.
+Instantly, it twisted out of its garment, like the young man in the
+New Testament, and left me standing alone with its rags in my
+hands.
+
+Covent-garden Market, when it was market morning, was wonderful
+company.  The great waggons of cabbages, with growers' men and boys
+lying asleep under them, and with sharp dogs from market-garden
+neighbourhoods looking after the whole, were as good as a party.
+But one of the worst night sights I know in London, is to be found
+in the children who prowl about this place; who sleep in the
+baskets, fight for the offal, dart at any object they think they
+can lay their their thieving hands on, dive under the carts and
+barrows, dodge the constables, and are perpetually making a blunt
+pattering on the pavement of the Piazza with the rain of their
+naked feet.  A painful and unnatural result comes of the comparison
+one is forced to institute between the growth of corruption as
+displayed in the so much improved and cared for fruits of the
+earth, and the growth of corruption as displayed in these all
+uncared for (except inasmuch as ever-hunted) savages.
+
+There was early coffee to be got about Covent-garden Market, and
+that was more company--warm company, too, which was better.  Toast
+of a very substantial quality, was likewise procurable:  though the
+towzled-headed man who made it, in an inner chamber within the
+coffee-room, hadn't got his coat on yet, and was so heavy with
+sleep that in every interval of toast and coffee he went off anew
+behind the partition into complicated cross-roads of choke and
+snore, and lost his way directly.  Into one of these establishments
+(among the earliest) near Bow-street, there came one morning as I
+sat over my houseless cup, pondering where to go next, a man in a
+high and long snuff-coloured coat, and shoes, and, to the best of
+my belief, nothing else but a hat, who took out of his hat a large
+cold meat pudding; a meat pudding so large that it was a very tight
+fit, and brought the lining of the hat out with it.  This
+mysterious man was known by his pudding, for on his entering, the
+man of sleep brought him a pint of hot tea, a small loaf, and a
+large knife and fork and plate.  Left to himself in his box, he
+stood the pudding on the bare table, and, instead of cutting it,
+stabbed it, overhand, with the knife, like a mortal enemy; then
+took the knife out, wiped it on his sleeve, tore the pudding
+asunder with his fingers, and ate it all up.  The remembrance of
+this man with the pudding remains with me as the remembrance of the
+most spectral person my houselessness encountered.  Twice only was
+I in that establishment, and twice I saw him stalk in (as I should
+say, just out of bed, and presently going back to bed), take out
+his pudding, stab his pudding, wipe the dagger, and eat his pudding
+all up.  He was a man whose figure promised cadaverousness, but who
+had an excessively red face, though shaped like a horse's.  On the
+second occasion of my seeing him, he said huskily to the man of
+sleep, 'Am I red to-night?'  'You are,' he uncompromisingly
+answered.  'My mother,' said the spectre, 'was a red-faced woman
+that liked drink, and I looked at her hard when she laid in her
+coffin, and I took the complexion.'  Somehow, the pudding seemed an
+unwholesome pudding after that, and I put myself in its way no
+more.
+
+When there was no market, or when I wanted variety, a railway
+terminus with the morning mails coming in, was remunerative
+company.  But like most of the company to be had in this world, it
+lasted only a very short time.  The station lamps would burst out
+ablaze, the porters would emerge from places of concealment, the
+cabs and trucks would rattle to their places (the post-office carts
+were already in theirs), and, finally, the bell would strike up,
+and the train would come banging in.  But there were few passengers
+and little luggage, and everything scuttled away with the greatest
+expedition.  The locomotive post-offices, with their great nets--as
+if they had been dragging the country for bodies--would fly open as
+to their doors, and would disgorge a smell of lamp, an exhausted
+clerk, a guard in a red coat, and their bags of letters; the engine
+would blow and heave and perspire, like an engine wiping its
+forehead and saying what a run it had had; and within ten minutes
+the lamps were out, and I was houseless and alone again.
+
+But now, there were driven cattle on the high road near, wanting
+(as cattle always do) to turn into the midst of stone walls, and
+squeeze themselves through six inches' width of iron railing, and
+getting their heads down (also as cattle always do) for tossing-
+purchase at quite imaginary dogs, and giving themselves and every
+devoted creature associated with them a most extraordinary amount
+of unnecessary trouble.  Now, too, the conscious gas began to grow
+pale with the knowledge that daylight was coming, and straggling
+workpeople were already in the streets, and, as waking life had
+become extinguished with the last pieman's sparks, so it began to
+be rekindled with the fires of the first street-corner breakfast-
+sellers.  And so by faster and faster degrees, until the last
+degrees were very fast, the day came, and I was tired and could
+sleep.  And it is not, as I used to think, going home at such
+times, the least wonderful thing in London, that in the real desert
+region of the night, the houseless wanderer is alone there.  I knew
+well enough where to find Vice and Misfortune of all kinds, if I
+had chosen; but they were put out of sight, and my houselessness
+had many miles upon miles of streets in which it could, and did,
+have its own solitary way.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV--CHAMBERS
+
+
+
+Having occasion to transact some business with a solicitor who
+occupies a highly suicidal set of chambers in Gray's Inn, I
+afterwards took a turn in the large square of that stronghold of
+Melancholy, reviewing, with congenial surroundings, my experiences
+of Chambers.
+
+I began, as was natural, with the Chambers I had just left.  They
+were an upper set on a rotten staircase, with a mysterious bunk or
+bulkhead on the landing outside them, of a rather nautical and
+Screw Collier-like appearance than otherwise, and painted an
+intense black.  Many dusty years have passed since the
+appropriation of this Davy Jones's locker to any purpose, and
+during the whole period within the memory of living man, it has
+been hasped and padlocked.  I cannot quite satisfy my mind whether
+it was originally meant for the reception of coals, or bodies, or
+as a place of temporary security for the plunder 'looted' by
+laundresses; but I incline to the last opinion.  It is about breast
+high, and usually serves as a bulk for defendants in reduced
+circumstances to lean against and ponder at, when they come on the
+hopeful errand of trying to make an arrangement without money--
+under which auspicious circumstances it mostly happens that the
+legal gentleman they want to see, is much engaged, and they pervade
+the staircase for a considerable period.  Against this opposing
+bulk, in the absurdest manner, the tomb-like outer door of the
+solicitor's chambers (which is also of an intense black) stands in
+dark ambush, half open, and half shut, all day.  The solicitor's
+apartments are three in number; consisting of a slice, a cell, and
+a wedge.  The slice is assigned to the two clerks, the cell is
+occupied by the principal, and the wedge is devoted to stray
+papers, old game baskets from the country, a washing-stand, and a
+model of a patent Ship's Caboose which was exhibited in Chancery at
+the commencement of the present century on an application for an
+injunction to restrain infringement.  At about half-past nine on
+every week-day morning, the younger of the two clerks (who, I have
+reason to believe, leads the fashion at Pentonville in the articles
+of pipes and shirts) may be found knocking the dust out of his
+official door-key on the bunk or locker before mentioned; and so
+exceedingly subject to dust is his key, and so very retentive of
+that superfluity, that in exceptional summer weather when a ray of
+sunlight has fallen on the locker in my presence, I have noticed
+its inexpressive countenance to be deeply marked by a kind of
+Bramah erysipelas or small-pox.
+
+This set of chambers (as I have gradually discovered, when I have
+had restless occasion to make inquiries or leave messages, after
+office hours) is under the charge of a lady named Sweeney, in
+figure extremely like an old family-umbrella:  whose dwelling
+confronts a dead wall in a court off Gray's Inn-lane, and who is
+usually fetched into the passage of that bower, when wanted, from
+some neighbouring home of industry, which has the curious property
+of imparting an inflammatory appearance to her visage.  Mrs.
+Sweeney is one of the race of professed laundresses, and is the
+compiler of a remarkable manuscript volume entitled 'Mrs. Sweeney's
+Book,' from which much curious statistical information may be
+gathered respecting the high prices and small uses of soda, soap,
+sand, firewood, and other such articles.  I have created a legend
+in my mind--and consequently I believe it with the utmost
+pertinacity--that the late Mr. Sweeney was a ticket-porter under
+the Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, and that, in consideration of
+his long and valuable services, Mrs. Sweeney was appointed to her
+present post.  For, though devoid of personal charms, I have
+observed this lady to exercise a fascination over the elderly
+ticker-porter mind (particularly under the gateway, and in corners
+and entries), which I can only refer to her being one of the
+fraternity, yet not competing with it.  All that need be said
+concerning this set of chambers, is said, when I have added that it
+is in a large double house in Gray's Inn-square, very much out of
+repair, and that the outer portal is ornamented in a hideous manner
+with certain stone remains, which have the appearance of the
+dismembered bust, torso, and limbs of a petrified bencher.
+
+Indeed, I look upon Gray's Inn generally as one of the most
+depressing institutions in brick and mortar, known to the children
+of men.  Can anything be more dreary than its arid Square, Sahara
+Desert of the law, with the ugly old tiled-topped tenements, the
+dirty windows, the bills To Let, To Let, the door-posts inscribed
+like gravestones, the crazy gateway giving upon the filthy Lane,
+the scowling, iron-barred prison-like passage into Verulam-
+buildings, the mouldy red-nosed ticket-porters with little coffin
+plates, and why with aprons, the dry, hard, atomy-like appearance
+of the whole dust-heap?  When my uncommercial travels tend to this
+dismal spot, my comfort is its rickety state.  Imagination gloats
+over the fulness of time when the staircases shall have quite
+tumbled down--they are daily wearing into an ill-savoured powder,
+but have not quite tumbled down yet--when the last old prolix
+bencher all of the olden time, shall have been got out of an upper
+window by means of a Fire Ladder, and carried off to the Holborn
+Union; when the last clerk shall have engrossed the last parchment
+behind the last splash on the last of the mud-stained windows,
+which, all through the miry year, are pilloried out of recognition
+in Gray's Inn-lane.  Then, shall a squalid little trench, with rank
+grass and a pump in it, lying between the coffee-house and South-
+square, be wholly given up to cats and rats, and not, as now, have
+its empire divided between those animals and a few briefless
+bipeds--surely called to the Bar by voices of deceiving spirits,
+seeing that they are wanted there by no mortal--who glance down,
+with eyes better glazed than their casements, from their dreary and
+lacklustre rooms.  Then shall the way Nor' Westward, now lying
+under a short grim colonnade where in summer-time pounce flies from
+law-stationering windows into the eyes of laymen, be choked with
+rubbish and happily become impassable.  Then shall the gardens
+where turf, trees, and gravel wear a legal livery of black, run
+rank, and pilgrims go to Gorhambury to see Bacon's effigy as he
+sat, and not come here (which in truth they seldom do) to see where
+he walked.  Then, in a word, shall the old-established vendor of
+periodicals sit alone in his little crib of a shop behind the
+Holborn Gate, like that lumbering Marius among the ruins of
+Carthage, who has sat heavy on a thousand million of similes.
+
+At one period of my uncommercial career I much frequented another
+set of chambers in Gray's Inn-square.  They were what is familiarly
+called 'a top set,' and all the eatables and drinkables introduced
+into them acquired a flavour of Cockloft.  I have known an unopened
+Strasbourg pate fresh from Fortnum and Mason's, to draw in this
+cockloft tone through its crockery dish, and become penetrated with
+cockloft to the core of its inmost truffle in three-quarters of an
+hour.  This, however, was not the most curious feature of those
+chambers; that, consisted in the profound conviction entertained by
+my esteemed friend Parkle (their tenant) that they were clean.
+Whether it was an inborn hallucination, or whether it was imparted
+to him by Mrs. Miggot the laundress, I never could ascertain.  But,
+I believe he would have gone to the stake upon the question.  Now,
+they were so dirty that I could take off the distinctest impression
+of my figure on any article of furniture by merely lounging upon it
+for a few moments; and it used to be a private amusement of mine to
+print myself off--if I may use the expression--all over the rooms.
+It was the first large circulation I had.  At other times I have
+accidentally shaken a window curtain while in animated conversation
+with Parkle, and struggling insects which were certainly red, and
+were certainly not ladybirds, have dropped on the back of my hand.
+Yet Parkle lived in that top set years, bound body and soul to the
+superstition that they were clean.  He used to say, when
+congratulated upon them, 'Well, they are not like chambers in one
+respect, you know; they are clean.'  Concurrently, he had an idea
+which he could never explain, that Mrs. Miggot was in some way
+connected with the Church.  When he was in particularly good
+spirits, he used to believe that a deceased uncle of hers had been
+a Dean; when he was poorly and low, he believed that her brother
+had been a Curate.  I and Mrs. Miggot (she was a genteel woman)
+were on confidential terms, but I never knew her to commit herself
+to any distinct assertion on the subject; she merely claimed a
+proprietorship in the Church, by looking when it was mentioned, as
+if the reference awakened the slumbering Past, and were personal.
+It may have been his amiable confidence in Mrs. Miggot's better
+days that inspired my friend with his delusion respecting the
+chambers, but he never wavered in his fidelity to it for a moment,
+though he wallowed in dirt seven years.
+
+Two of the windows of these chambers looked down into the garden;
+and we have sat up there together many a summer evening, saying how
+pleasant it was, and talking of many things.  To my intimacy with
+that top set, I am indebted for three of my liveliest personal
+impressions of the loneliness of life in chambers.  They shall
+follow here, in order; first, second, and third.
+
+First.  My Gray's Inn friend, on a time, hurt one of his legs, and
+it became seriously inflamed.  Not knowing of his indisposition, I
+was on my way to visit him as usual, one summer evening, when I was
+much surprised by meeting a lively leech in Field-court, Gray's
+Inn, seemingly on his way to the West End of London.  As the leech
+was alone, and was of course unable to explain his position, even
+if he had been inclined to do so (which he had not the appearance
+of being), I passed him and went on.  Turning the corner of Gray's
+Inn-square, I was beyond expression amazed by meeting another
+leech--also entirely alone, and also proceeding in a westerly
+direction, though with less decision of purpose.  Ruminating on
+this extraordinary circumstance, and endeavouring to remember
+whether I had ever read, in the Philosophical Transactions or any
+work on Natural History, of a migration of Leeches, I ascended to
+the top set, past the dreary series of closed outer doors of
+offices and an empty set or two, which intervened between that
+lofty region and the surface.  Entering my friend's rooms, I found
+him stretched upon his back, like Prometheus Bound, with a
+perfectly demented ticket-porter in attendance on him instead of
+the Vulture:  which helpless individual, who was feeble and
+frightened, and had (my friend explained to me, in great choler)
+been endeavouring for some hours to apply leeches to his leg, and
+as yet had only got on two out of twenty.  To this Unfortunate's
+distraction between a damp cloth on which he had placed the leeches
+to freshen them, and the wrathful adjurations of my friend to
+'Stick 'em on, sir!' I referred the phenomenon I had encountered:
+the rather as two fine specimens were at that moment going out at
+the door, while a general insurrection of the rest was in progress
+on the table.  After a while our united efforts prevailed, and,
+when the leeches came off and had recovered their spirits, we
+carefully tied them up in a decanter.  But I never heard more of
+them than that they were all gone next morning, and that the Out-
+of-door young man of Bickle, Bush and Bodger, on the ground floor,
+had been bitten and blooded by some creature not identified.  They
+never 'took' on Mrs. Miggot, the laundress; but, I have always
+preserved fresh, the belief that she unconsciously carried several
+about her, until they gradually found openings in life.
+
+Second.  On the same staircase with my friend Parkle, and on the
+same floor, there lived a man of law who pursued his business
+elsewhere, and used those chambers as his place of residence.  For
+three or four years, Parkle rather knew of him than knew him, but
+after that--for Englishmen--short pause of consideration, they
+began to speak.  Parkle exchanged words with him in his private
+character only, and knew nothing of his business ways, or means.
+He was a man a good deal about town, but always alone.  We used to
+remark to one another, that although we often encountered him in
+theatres, concert-rooms, and similar public places, he was always
+alone.  Yet he was not a gloomy man, and was of a decidedly
+conversational turn; insomuch that he would sometimes of an evening
+lounge with a cigar in his mouth, half in and half out of Parkle's
+rooms, and discuss the topics of the day by the hour.  He used to
+hint on these occasions that he had four faults to find with life;
+firstly, that it obliged a man to be always winding up his watch;
+secondly, that London was too small; thirdly, that it therefore
+wanted variety; fourthly, that there was too much dust in it.
+There was so much dust in his own faded chambers, certainly, that
+they reminded me of a sepulchre, furnished in prophetic
+anticipation of the present time, which had newly been brought to
+light, after having remained buried a few thousand years.  One dry,
+hot autumn evening at twilight, this man, being then five years
+turned of fifty, looked in upon Parkle in his usual lounging way,
+with his cigar in his mouth as usual, and said, 'I am going out of
+town.'  As he never went out of town, Parkle said, 'Oh indeed!  At
+last?'  'Yes,' says he, 'at last.  For what is a man to do?  London
+is so small!  If you go West, you come to Hounslow.  If you go
+East, you come to Bow.  If you go South, there's Brixton or
+Norwood.  If you go North, you can't get rid of Barnet.  Then, the
+monotony of all the streets, streets, streets--and of all the
+roads, roads, roads--and the dust, dust, dust!'  When he had said
+this, he wished Parkle a good evening, but came back again and
+said, with his watch in his hand, 'Oh, I really cannot go on
+winding up this watch over and over again; I wish you would take
+care of it.'  So, Parkle laughed and consented, and the man went
+out of town.  The man remained out of town so long, that his
+letter-box became choked, and no more letters could be got into it,
+and they began to be left at the lodge and to accumulate there.  At
+last the head-porter decided, on conference with the steward, to
+use his master-key and look into the chambers, and give them the
+benefit of a whiff of air.  Then, it was found that he had hanged
+himself to his bedstead, and had left this written memorandum:  'I
+should prefer to be cut down by my neighbour and friend (if he will
+allow me to call him so), H. Parkle, Esq.'  This was an end of
+Parkle's occupancy of chambers.  He went into lodgings immediately.
+
+Third.  While Parkle lived in Gray's Inn, and I myself was
+uncommercially preparing for the Bar--which is done, as everybody
+knows, by having a frayed old gown put on in a pantry by an old
+woman in a chronic state of Saint Anthony's fire and dropsy, and,
+so decorated, bolting a bad dinner in a party of four, whereof each
+individual mistrusts the other three--I say, while these things
+were, there was a certain elderly gentleman who lived in a court of
+the Temple, and was a great judge and lover of port wine.  Every
+day he dined at his club and drank his bottle or two of port wine,
+and every night came home to the Temple and went to bed in his
+lonely chambers.  This had gone on many years without variation,
+when one night he had a fit on coming home, and fell and cut his
+head deep, but partly recovered and groped about in the dark to
+find the door.  When he was afterwards discovered, dead, it was
+clearly established by the marks of his hands about the room that
+he must have done so.  Now, this chanced on the night of Christmas
+Eve, and over him lived a young fellow who had sisters and young
+country friends, and who gave them a little party that night, in
+the course of which they played at Blindman's Buff.  They played
+that game, for their greater sport, by the light of the fire only;
+and once, when they were all quietly rustling and stealing about,
+and the blindman was trying to pick out the prettiest sister (for
+which I am far from blaming him), somebody cried, Hark!  The man
+below must be playing Blindman's Buff by himself to-night!  They
+listened, and they heard sounds of some one falling about and
+stumbling against furniture, and they all laughed at the conceit,
+and went on with their play, more light-hearted and merry than
+ever.  Thus, those two so different games of life and death were
+played out together, blindfolded, in the two sets of chambers.
+
+Such are the occurrences, which, coming to my knowledge, imbued me
+long ago with a strong sense of the loneliness of chambers.  There
+was a fantastic illustration to much the same purpose implicitly
+believed by a strange sort of man now dead, whom I knew when I had
+not quite arrived at legal years of discretion, though I was
+already in the uncommercial line.
+
+This was a man who, though not more than thirty, had seen the world
+in divers irreconcilable capacities--had been an officer in a South
+American regiment among other odd things--but had not achieved much
+in any way of life, and was in debt, and in hiding.  He occupied
+chambers of the dreariest nature in Lyons Inn; his name, however,
+was not up on the door, or door-post, but in lieu of it stood the
+name of a friend who had died in the chambers, and had given him
+the furniture.  The story arose out of the furniture, and was to
+this effect:- Let the former holder of the chambers, whose name was
+still upon the door and door-post, be Mr. Testator.
+
+Mr. Testator took a set of chambers in Lyons Inn when he had but
+very scanty furniture for his bedroom, and none for his sitting-
+room.  He had lived some wintry months in this condition, and had
+found it very bare and cold.  One night, past midnight, when he sat
+writing and still had writing to do that must be done before he
+went to bed, he found himself out of coals.  He had coals down-
+stairs, but had never been to his cellar; however the cellar-key
+was on his mantelshelf, and if he went down and opened the cellar
+it fitted, he might fairly assume the coals in that cellar to be
+his.  As to his laundress, she lived among the coal-waggons and
+Thames watermen--for there were Thames watermen at that time--in
+some unknown rat-hole by the river, down lanes and alleys on the
+other side of the Strand.  As to any other person to meet him or
+obstruct him, Lyons Inn was dreaming, drunk, maudlin, moody,
+betting, brooding over bill-discounting or renewing--asleep or
+awake, minding its own affairs.  Mr. Testator took his coal-scuttle
+in one hand, his candle and key in the other, and descended to the
+dismallest underground dens of Lyons Inn, where the late vehicles
+in the streets became thunderous, and all the water-pipes in the
+neighbourhood seemed to have Macbeth's Amen sticking in their
+throats, and to be trying to get it out.  After groping here and
+there among low doors to no purpose, Mr. Testator at length came to
+a door with a rusty padlock which his key fitted.  Getting the door
+open with much trouble, and looking in, he found, no coals, but a
+confused pile of furniture.  Alarmed by this intrusion on another
+man's property, he locked the door again, found his own cellar,
+filled his scuttle, and returned up-stairs.
+
+But the furniture he had seen, ran on castors across and across Mr.
+Testator's mind incessantly, when, in the chill hour of five in the
+morning, he got to bed.  He particularly wanted a table to write
+at, and a table expressly made to be written at, had been the piece
+of furniture in the foreground of the heap.  When his laundress
+emerged from her burrow in the morning to make his kettle boil, he
+artfully led up to the subject of cellars and furniture; but the
+two ideas had evidently no connexion in her mind.  When she left
+him, and he sat at his breakfast, thinking about the furniture, he
+recalled the rusty state of the padlock, and inferred that the
+furniture must have been stored in the cellars for a long time--was
+perhaps forgotten--owner dead, perhaps?  After thinking it over, a
+few days, in the course of which he could pump nothing out of Lyons
+Inn about the furniture, he became desperate, and resolved to
+borrow that table.  He did so, that night.  He had not had the
+table long, when he determined to borrow an easy-chair; he had not
+had that long, when he made up his mind to borrow a bookcase; then,
+a couch; then, a carpet and rug.  By that time, he felt he was 'in
+furniture stepped in so far,' as that it could be no worse to
+borrow it all.  Consequently, he borrowed it all, and locked up the
+cellar for good.  He had always locked it, after every visit.  He
+had carried up every separate article in the dead of the night,
+and, at the best, had felt as wicked as a Resurrection Man.  Every
+article was blue and furry when brought into his rooms, and he had
+had, in a murderous and guilty sort of way, to polish it up while
+London slept.
+
+Mr. Testator lived in his furnished chambers two or three years, or
+more, and gradually lulled himself into the opinion that the
+furniture was his own.  This was his convenient state of mind when,
+late one night, a step came up the stairs, and a hand passed over
+his door feeling for his knocker, and then one deep and solemn rap
+was rapped that might have been a spring in Mr. Testator's easy-
+chair to shoot him out of it; so promptly was it attended with that
+effect.
+
+With a candle in his hand, Mr. Testator went to the door, and found
+there, a very pale and very tall man; a man who stooped; a man with
+very high shoulders, a very narrow chest, and a very red nose; a
+shabby-genteel man.  He was wrapped in a long thread-bare black
+coat, fastened up the front with more pins than buttons, and under
+his arm he squeezed an umbrella without a handle, as if he were
+playing bagpipes.  He said, 'I ask your pardon, but can you tell
+me--' and stopped; his eyes resting on some object within the
+chambers.
+
+'Can I tell you what?' asked Mr. Testator, noting his stoppage with
+quick alarm.
+
+'I ask your pardon,' said the stranger, 'but--this is not the
+inquiry I was going to make--DO I see in there, any small article
+of property belonging to ME?'
+
+Mr. Testator was beginning to stammer that he was not aware--when
+the visitor slipped past him, into the chambers.  There, in a
+goblin way which froze Mr. Testator to the marrow, he examined,
+first, the writing-table, and said, 'Mine;' then, the easy-chair,
+and said, 'Mine;' then, the bookcase, and said, 'Mine;' then,
+turned up a corner of the carpet, and said, 'Mine!' in a word,
+inspected every item of furniture from the cellar, in succession,
+and said, 'Mine!'  Towards the end of this investigation, Mr.
+Testator perceived that he was sodden with liquor, and that the
+liquor was gin.  He was not unsteady with gin, either in his speech
+or carriage; but he was stiff with gin in both particulars.
+
+Mr. Testator was in a dreadful state, for (according to his making
+out of the story) the possible consequences of what he had done in
+recklessness and hardihood, flashed upon him in their fulness for
+the first time.  When they had stood gazing at one another for a
+little while, he tremulously began:
+
+'Sir, I am conscious that the fullest explanation, compensation,
+and restitution, are your due.  They shall be yours.  Allow me to
+entreat that, without temper, without even natural irritation on
+your part, we may have a little--'
+
+'Drop of something to drink,' interposed the stranger.  'I am
+agreeable.'
+
+Mr. Testator had intended to say, 'a little quiet conversation,'
+but with great relief of mind adopted the amendment.  He produced a
+decanter of gin, and was bustling about for hot water and sugar,
+when he found that his visitor had already drunk half of the
+decanter's contents.  With hot water and sugar the visitor drank
+the remainder before he had been an hour in the chambers by the
+chimes of the church of St. Mary in the Strand; and during the
+process he frequently whispered to himself, 'Mine!'
+
+The gin gone, and Mr. Testator wondering what was to follow it, the
+visitor rose and said, with increased stiffness, 'At what hour of
+the morning, sir, will it be convenient?'  Mr. Testator hazarded,
+'At ten?'  'Sir,' said the visitor, 'at ten, to the moment, I shall
+be here.'  He then contemplated Mr. Testator somewhat at leisure,
+and said, 'God bless you!  How is your wife?'  Mr. Testator (who
+never had a wife) replied with much feeling, 'Deeply anxious, poor
+soul, but otherwise well.'  The visitor thereupon turned and went
+away, and fell twice in going down-stairs.  From that hour he was
+never heard of.  Whether he was a ghost, or a spectral illusion of
+conscience, or a drunken man who had no business there, or the
+drunken rightful owner of the furniture, with a transitory gleam of
+memory; whether he got safe home, or had no time to get to; whether
+he died of liquor on the way, or lived in liquor ever afterwards;
+he never was heard of more.  This was the story, received with the
+furniture and held to be as substantial, by its second possessor in
+an upper set of chambers in grim Lyons Inn.
+
+It is to be remarked of chambers in general, that they must have
+been built for chambers, to have the right kind of loneliness.  You
+may make a great dwelling-house very lonely, but isolating suites
+of rooms and calling them chambers, but you cannot make the true
+kind of loneliness.  In dwelling-houses, there have been family
+festivals; children have grown in them, girls have bloomed into
+women in them, courtships and marriages have taken place in them.
+True chambers never were young, childish, maidenly; never had dolls
+in them, or rocking-horses, or christenings, or betrothals, or
+little coffins.  Let Gray's Inn identify the child who first
+touched hands and hearts with Robinson Crusoe, in any one of its
+many 'sets,' and that child's little statue, in white marble with a
+golden inscription, shall be at its service, at my cost and charge,
+as a drinking fountain for the spirit, to freshen its thirsty
+square.  Let Lincoln's produce from all its houses, a twentieth of
+the procession derivable from any dwelling-house one-twentieth of
+its age, of fair young brides who married for love and hope, not
+settlements, and all the Vice-Chancellors shall thenceforward be
+kept in nosegays for nothing, on application to the writer hereof.
+It is not denied that on the terrace of the Adelphi, or in any of
+the streets of that subterranean-stable-haunted spot, or about
+Bedford-row, or James-street of that ilk (a grewsome place), or
+anywhere among the neighbourhoods that have done flowering and have
+run to seed, you may find Chambers replete with the accommodations
+of Solitude, Closeness, and Darkness, where you may be as low-
+spirited as in the genuine article, and might be as easily
+murdered, with the placid reputation of having merely gone down to
+the sea-side.  But, the many waters of life did run musical in
+those dry channels once;--among the Inns, never.  The only popular
+legend known in relation to any one of the dull family of Inns, is
+a dark Old Bailey whisper concerning Clement's, and importing how
+the black creature who holds the sun-dial there, was a negro who
+slew his master and built the dismal pile out of the contents of
+his strong box--for which architectural offence alone he ought to
+have been condemned to live in it.  But, what populace would waste
+fancy upon such a place, or on New Inn, Staple Inn, Barnard's Inn,
+or any of the shabby crew?
+
+The genuine laundress, too, is an institution not to be had in its
+entirety out of and away from the genuine Chambers.  Again, it is
+not denied that you may be robbed elsewhere.  Elsewhere you may
+have--for money--dishonesty, drunkenness, dirt, laziness, and
+profound incapacity.  But the veritable shining-red-faced shameless
+laundress; the true Mrs. Sweeney--in figure, colour, texture, and
+smell, like the old damp family umbrella; the tip-top complicated
+abomination of stockings, spirits, bonnet, limpness, looseness, and
+larceny; is only to be drawn at the fountain-head.  Mrs. Sweeney is
+beyond the reach of individual art.  It requires the united efforts
+of several men to ensure that great result, and it is only
+developed in perfection under an Honourable Society and in an Inn
+of Court.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV--NURSE'S STORIES
+
+
+
+There are not many places that I find it more agreeable to revisit
+when I am in an idle mood, than some places to which I have never
+been.  For, my acquaintance with those spots is of such long
+standing, and has ripened into an intimacy of so affectionate a
+nature, that I take a particular interest in assuring myself that
+they are unchanged.
+
+I never was in Robinson Crusoe's Island, yet I frequently return
+there.  The colony he established on it soon faded away, and it is
+uninhabited by any descendants of the grave and courteous
+Spaniards, or of Will Atkins and the other mutineers, and has
+relapsed into its original condition.  Not a twig of its wicker
+houses remains, its goats have long run wild again, its screaming
+parrots would darken the sun with a cloud of many flaming colours
+if a gun were fired there, no face is ever reflected in the waters
+of the little creek which Friday swam across when pursued by his
+two brother cannibals with sharpened stomachs.  After comparing
+notes with other travellers who have similarly revisited the Island
+and conscientiously inspected it, I have satisfied myself that it
+contains no vestige of Mr. Atkins's domesticity or theology, though
+his track on the memorable evening of his landing to set his
+captain ashore, when he was decoyed about and round about until it
+was dark, and his boat was stove, and his strength and spirits
+failed him, is yet plainly to be traced.  So is the hill-top on
+which Robinson was struck dumb with joy when the reinstated captain
+pointed to the ship, riding within half a mile of the shore, that
+was to bear him away, in the nine-and-twentieth year of his
+seclusion in that lonely place.  So is the sandy beach on which the
+memorable footstep was impressed, and where the savages hauled up
+their canoes when they came ashore for those dreadful public
+dinners, which led to a dancing worse than speech-making.  So is
+the cave where the flaring eyes of the old goat made such a goblin
+appearance in the dark.  So is the site of the hut where Robinson
+lived with the dog and the parrot and the cat, and where he endured
+those first agonies of solitude, which--strange to say--never
+involved any ghostly fancies; a circumstance so very remarkable,
+that perhaps he left out something in writing his record?  Round
+hundreds of such objects, hidden in the dense tropical foliage, the
+tropical sea breaks evermore; and over them the tropical sky,
+saving in the short rainy season, shines bright and cloudless.
+
+Neither, was I ever belated among wolves, on the borders of France
+and Spain; nor, did I ever, when night was closing in and the
+ground was covered with snow, draw up my little company among some
+felled trees which served as a breastwork, and there fire a train
+of gunpowder so dexterously that suddenly we had three or four
+score blazing wolves illuminating the darkness around us.
+Nevertheless, I occasionally go back to that dismal region and
+perform the feat again; when indeed to smell the singeing and the
+frying of the wolves afire, and to see them setting one another
+alight as they rush and tumble, and to behold them rolling in the
+snow vainly attempting to put themselves out, and to hear their
+howlings taken up by all the echoes as well as by all the unseen
+wolves within the woods, makes me tremble.
+
+I was never in the robbers' cave, where Gil Blas lived, but I often
+go back there and find the trap-door just as heavy to raise as it
+used to be, while that wicked old disabled Black lies everlastingly
+cursing in bed.  I was never in Don Quixote's study, where he read
+his books of chivalry until he rose and hacked at imaginary giants,
+and then refreshed himself with great draughts of water, yet you
+couldn't move a book in it without my knowledge, or with my
+consent.  I was never (thank Heaven) in company with the little old
+woman who hobbled out of the chest and told the merchant Abudah to
+go in search of the Talisman of Oromanes, yet I make it my business
+to know that she is well preserved and as intolerable as ever.  I
+was never at the school where the boy Horatio Nelson got out of bed
+to steal the pears:  not because he wanted any, but because every
+other boy was afraid:  yet I have several times been back to this
+Academy, to see him let down out of window with a sheet.  So with
+Damascus, and Bagdad, and Brobingnag (which has the curious fate of
+being usually misspelt when written), and Lilliput, and Laputa, and
+the Nile, and Abyssinia, and the Ganges, and the North Pole, and
+many hundreds of places--I was never at them, yet it is an affair
+of my life to keep them intact, and I am always going back to them.
+
+But, when I was in Dullborough one day, revisiting the associations
+of my childhood as recorded in previous pages of these notes, my
+experience in this wise was made quite inconsiderable and of no
+account, by the quantity of places and people--utterly impossible
+places and people, but none the less alarmingly real--that I found
+I had been introduced to by my nurse before I was six years old,
+and used to be forced to go back to at night without at all wanting
+to go.  If we all knew our own minds (in a more enlarged sense than
+the popular acceptation of that phrase), I suspect we should find
+our nurses responsible for most of the dark corners we are forced
+to go back to, against our wills.
+
+The first diabolical character who intruded himself on my peaceful
+youth (as I called to mind that day at Dullborough), was a certain
+Captain Murderer.  This wretch must have been an off-shoot of the
+Blue Beard family, but I had no suspicion of the consanguinity in
+those times.  His warning name would seem to have awakened no
+general prejudice against him, for he was admitted into the best
+society and possessed immense wealth.  Captain Murderer's mission
+was matrimony, and the gratification of a cannibal appetite with
+tender brides.  On his marriage morning, he always caused both
+sides of the way to church to be planted with curious flowers; and
+when his bride said, 'Dear Captain Murderer, I ever saw flowers
+like these before:  what are they called?' he answered, 'They are
+called Garnish for house-lamb,' and laughed at his ferocious
+practical joke in a horrid manner, disquieting the minds of the
+noble bridal company, with a very sharp show of teeth, then
+displayed for the first time.  He made love in a coach and six, and
+married in a coach and twelve, and all his horses were milk-white
+horses with one red spot on the back which he caused to be hidden
+by the harness.  For, the spot WOULD come there, though every horse
+was milk-white when Captain Murderer bought him.  And the spot was
+young bride's blood.  (To this terrific point I am indebted for my
+first personal experience of a shudder and cold beads on the
+forehead.)  When Captain Murderer had made an end of feasting and
+revelry, and had dismissed the noble guests, and was alone with his
+wife on the day month after their marriage, it was his whimsical
+custom to produce a golden rolling-pin and a silver pie-board.
+Now, there was this special feature in the Captain's courtships,
+that he always asked if the young lady could make pie-crust; and if
+she couldn't by nature or education, she was taught.  Well.  When
+the bride saw Captain Murderer produce the golden rolling-pin and
+silver pie-board, she remembered this, and turned up her laced-silk
+sleeves to make a pie.  The Captain brought out a silver pie-dish
+of immense capacity, and the Captain brought out flour and butter
+and eggs and all things needful, except the inside of the pie; of
+materials for the staple of the pie itself, the Captain brought out
+none.  Then said the lovely bride, 'Dear Captain Murderer, what pie
+is this to be?'  He replied, 'A meat pie.'  Then said the lovely
+bride, 'Dear Captain Murderer, I see no meat.'  The Captain
+humorously retorted, 'Look in the glass.'  She looked in the glass,
+but still she saw no meat, and then the Captain roared with
+laughter, and suddenly frowning and drawing his sword, bade her
+roll out the crust.  So she rolled out the crust, dropping large
+tears upon it all the time because he was so cross, and when she
+had lined the dish with crust and had cut the crust all ready to
+fit the top, the Captain called out, 'I see the meat in the glass!'
+And the bride looked up at the glass, just in time to see the
+Captain cutting her head off; and he chopped her in pieces, and
+peppered her, and salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent it
+to the baker's, and ate it all, and picked the bones.
+
+Captain Murderer went on in this way, prospering exceedingly, until
+he came to choose a bride from two twin sisters, and at first
+didn't know which to choose.  For, though one was fair and the
+other dark, they were both equally beautiful.  But the fair twin
+loved him, and the dark twin hated him, so he chose the fair one.
+The dark twin would have prevented the marriage if she could, but
+she couldn't; however, on the night before it, much suspecting
+Captain Murderer, she stole out and climbed his garden wall, and
+looked in at his window through a chink in the shutter, and saw him
+having his teeth filed sharp.  Next day she listened all day, and
+heard him make his joke about the house-lamb.  And that day month,
+he had the paste rolled out, and cut the fair twin's head off, and
+chopped her in pieces, and peppered her, and salted her, and put
+her in the pie, and sent it to the baker's, and ate it all, and
+picked the bones.
+
+Now, the dark twin had had her suspicions much increased by the
+filing of the Captain's teeth, and again by the house-lamb joke.
+Putting all things together when he gave out that her sister was
+dead, she divined the truth, and determined to be revenged.  So,
+she went up to Captain Murderer's house, and knocked at the knocker
+and pulled at the bell, and when the Captain came to the door,
+said:  'Dear Captain Murderer, marry me next, for I always loved
+you and was jealous of my sister.'  The Captain took it as a
+compliment, and made a polite answer, and the marriage was quickly
+arranged.  On the night before it, the bride again climbed to his
+window, and again saw him having his teeth filed sharp.  At this
+sight she laughed such a terrible laugh at the chink in the
+shutter, that the Captain's blood curdled, and he said:  'I hope
+nothing has disagreed with me!'  At that, she laughed again, a
+still more terrible laugh, and the shutter was opened and search
+made, but she was nimbly gone, and there was no one.  Next day they
+went to church in a coach and twelve, and were married.  And that
+day month, she rolled the pie-crust out, and Captain Murderer cut
+her head off, and chopped her in pieces, and peppered her, and
+salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent it to the baker's, and
+ate it all, and picked the bones.
+
+But before she began to roll out the paste she had taken a deadly
+poison of a most awful character, distilled from toads' eyes and
+spiders' knees; and Captain Murderer had hardly picked her last
+bone, when he began to swell, and to turn blue, and to be all over
+spots, and to scream.  And he went on swelling and turning bluer,
+and being more all over spots and screaming, until he reached from
+floor to ceiling and from wall to wall; and then, at one o'clock in
+the morning, he blew up with a loud explosion.  At the sound of it,
+all the milk-white horses in the stables broke their halters and
+went mad, and then they galloped over everybody in Captain
+Murderer's house (beginning with the family blacksmith who had
+filed his teeth) until the whole were dead, and then they galloped
+away.
+
+Hundreds of times did I hear this legend of Captain Murderer, in my
+early youth, and added hundreds of times was there a mental
+compulsion upon me in bed, to peep in at his window as the dark
+twin peeped, and to revisit his horrible house, and look at him in
+his blue and spotty and screaming stage, as he reached from floor
+to ceiling and from wall to wall.  The young woman who brought me
+acquainted with Captain Murderer had a fiendish enjoyment of my
+terrors, and used to begin, I remember--as a sort of introductory
+overture--by clawing the air with both hands, and uttering a long
+low hollow groan.  So acutely did I suffer from this ceremony in
+combination with this infernal Captain, that I sometimes used to
+plead I thought I was hardly strong enough and old enough to hear
+the story again just yet.  But, she never spared me one word of it,
+and indeed commanded the awful chalice to my lips as the only
+preservative known to science against 'The Black Cat'--a weird and
+glaring-eyed supernatural Tom, who was reputed to prowl about the
+world by night, sucking the breath of infancy, and who was endowed
+with a special thirst (as I was given to understand) for mine.
+
+This female bard--may she have been repaid my debt of obligation to
+her in the matter of nightmares and perspirations!--reappears in my
+memory as the daughter of a shipwright.  Her name was Mercy, though
+she had none on me.  There was something of a shipbuilding flavour
+in the following story.  As it always recurs to me in a vague
+association with calomel pills, I believe it to have been reserved
+for dull nights when I was low with medicine.
+
+There was once a shipwright, and he wrought in a Government Yard,
+and his name was Chips.  And his father's name before him was
+Chips, and HIS father's name before HIM was Chips, and they were
+all Chipses.  And Chips the father had sold himself to the Devil
+for an iron pot and a bushel of tenpenny nails and half a ton of
+copper and a rat that could speak; and Chips the grandfather had
+sold himself to the Devil for an iron pot and a bushel of tenpenny
+nails and half a ton of copper and a rat that could speak; and
+Chips the great-grandfather had disposed of himself in the same
+direction on the same terms; and the bargain had run in the family
+for a long, long time.  So, one day, when young Chips was at work
+in the Dock Slip all alone, down in the dark hold of an old
+Seventy-four that was haled up for repairs, the Devil presented
+himself, and remarked:
+
+
+'A Lemon has pips,
+And a Yard has ships,
+And _I_'ll have Chips!'
+
+
+(I don't know why, but this fact of the Devil's expressing himself
+in rhyme was peculiarly trying to me.)  Chips looked up when he
+heard the words, and there he saw the Devil with saucer eyes that
+squinted on a terrible great scale, and that struck out sparks of
+blue fire continually.  And whenever he winked his eyes, showers of
+blue sparks came out, and his eyelashes made a clattering like
+flints and steels striking lights.  And hanging over one of his
+arms by the handle was an iron pot, and under that arm was a bushel
+of tenpenny nails, and under his other arm was half a ton of
+copper, and sitting on one of his shoulders was a rat that could
+speak.  So, the Devil said again:
+
+
+'A Lemon has pips,
+And a Yard has ships,
+And _I_'ll have Chips!'
+
+
+(The invariable effect of this alarming tautology on the part of
+the Evil Spirit was to deprive me of my senses for some moments.)
+So, Chips answered never a word, but went on with his work.  'What
+are you doing, Chips?' said the rat that could speak.  'I am
+putting in new planks where you and your gang have eaten old away,'
+said Chips.  'But we'll eat them too,' said the rat that could
+speak; 'and we'll let in the water and drown the crew, and we'll
+eat them too.'  Chips, being only a shipwright, and not a Man-of-
+war's man, said, 'You are welcome to it.'  But he couldn't keep his
+eyes off the half a ton of copper or the bushel of tenpenny nails;
+for nails and copper are a shipwright's sweethearts, and
+shipwrights will run away with them whenever they can.  So, the
+Devil said, 'I see what you are looking at, Chips.  You had better
+strike the bargain.  You know the terms.  Your father before you
+was well acquainted with them, and so were your grandfather and
+great-grandfather before him.'  Says Chips, 'I like the copper, and
+I like the nails, and I don't mind the pot, but I don't like the
+rat.'  Says the Devil, fiercely, 'You can't have the metal without
+him--and HE'S a curiosity.  I'm going.'  Chips, afraid of losing
+the half a ton of copper and the bushel of nails, then said, 'Give
+us hold!'  So, he got the copper and the nails and the pot and the
+rat that could speak, and the Devil vanished.  Chips sold the
+copper, and he sold the nails, and he would have sold the pot; but
+whenever he offered it for sale, the rat was in it, and the dealers
+dropped it, and would have nothing to say to the bargain.  So,
+Chips resolved to kill the rat, and, being at work in the Yard one
+day with a great kettle of hot pitch on one side of him and the
+iron pot with the rat in it on the other, he turned the scalding
+pitch into the pot, and filled it full.  Then, he kept his eye upon
+it till it cooled and hardened, and then he let it stand for twenty
+days, and then he heated the pitch again and turned it back into
+the kettle, and then he sank the pot in water for twenty days more,
+and then he got the smelters to put it in the furnace for twenty
+days more, and then they gave it him out, red hot, and looking like
+red-hot glass instead of iron-yet there was the rat in it, just the
+same as ever!  And the moment it caught his eye, it said with a
+jeer:
+
+
+'A Lemon has pips,
+And a Yard has ships,
+And _I_'ll have Chips!'
+
+
+(For this Refrain I had waited since its last appearance, with
+inexpressible horror, which now culminated.)  Chips now felt
+certain in his own mind that the rat would stick to him; the rat,
+answering his thought, said, 'I will--like pitch!'
+
+Now, as the rat leaped out of the pot when it had spoken, and made
+off, Chips began to hope that it wouldn't keep its word.  But, a
+terrible thing happened next day.  For, when dinner-time came, and
+the Dock-bell rang to strike work, he put his rule into the long
+pocket at the side of his trousers, and there he found a rat--not
+that rat, but another rat.  And in his hat, he found another; and
+in his pocket-handkerchief, another; and in the sleeves of his
+coat, when he pulled it on to go to dinner, two more.  And from
+that time he found himself so frightfully intimate with all the
+rats in the Yard, that they climbed up his legs when he was at
+work, and sat on his tools while he used them.  And they could all
+speak to one another, and he understood what they said.  And they
+got into his lodging, and into his bed, and into his teapot, and
+into his beer, and into his boots.  And he was going to be married
+to a corn-chandler's daughter; and when he gave her a workbox he
+had himself made for her, a rat jumped out of it; and when he put
+his arm round her waist, a rat clung about her; so the marriage was
+broken off, though the banns were already twice put up--which the
+parish clerk well remembers, for, as he handed the book to the
+clergyman for the second time of asking, a large fat rat ran over
+the leaf.  (By this time a special cascade of rats was rolling down
+my back, and the whole of my small listening person was overrun
+with them.  At intervals ever since, I have been morbidly afraid of
+my own pocket, lest my exploring hand should find a specimen or two
+of those vermin in it.)
+
+You may believe that all this was very terrible to Chips; but even
+all this was not the worst.  He knew besides, what the rats were
+doing, wherever they were.  So, sometimes he would cry aloud, when
+he was at his club at night, 'Oh!  Keep the rats out of the
+convicts' burying-ground!  Don't let them do that!'  Or, 'There's
+one of them at the cheese down-stairs!'  Or, 'There's two of them
+smelling at the baby in the garret!'  Or, other things of that
+sort.  At last, he was voted mad, and lost his work in the Yard,
+and could get no other work.  But, King George wanted men, so
+before very long he got pressed for a sailor.  And so he was taken
+off in a boat one evening to his ship, lying at Spithead, ready to
+sail.  And so the first thing he made out in her as he got near
+her, was the figure-head of the old Seventy-four, where he had seen
+the Devil.  She was called the Argonaut, and they rowed right under
+the bowsprit where the figure-head of the Argonaut, with a
+sheepskin in his hand and a blue gown on, was looking out to sea;
+and sitting staring on his forehead was the rat who could speak,
+and his exact words were these:  'Chips ahoy!  Old boy!  We've
+pretty well eat them too, and we'll drown the crew, and will eat
+them too!'  (Here I always became exceedingly faint, and would have
+asked for water, but that I was speechless.)
+
+The ship was bound for the Indies; and if you don't know where that
+is, you ought to it, and angels will never love you.  (Here I felt
+myself an outcast from a future state.)  The ship set sail that
+very night, and she sailed, and sailed, and sailed.  Chips's
+feelings were dreadful.  Nothing ever equalled his terrors.  No
+wonder.  At last, one day he asked leave to speak to the Admiral.
+The Admiral giv' leave.  Chips went down on his knees in the Great
+State Cabin.  'Your Honour, unless your Honour, without a moment's
+loss of time, makes sail for the nearest shore, this is a doomed
+ship, and her name is the Coffin!'  'Young man, your words are a
+madman's words.'  'Your Honour no; they are nibbling us away.'
+'They?'  'Your Honour, them dreadful rats.  Dust and hollowness
+where solid oak ought to be!  Rats nibbling a grave for every man
+on board!  Oh!  Does your Honour love your Lady and your pretty
+children?'  'Yes, my man, to be sure.'  'Then, for God's sake, make
+for the nearest shore, for at this present moment the rats are all
+stopping in their work, and are all looking straight towards you
+with bare teeth, and are all saying to one another that you shall
+never, never, never, never, see your Lady and your children more.'
+'My poor fellow, you are a case for the doctor.  Sentry, take care
+of this man!'
+
+So, he was bled and he was blistered, and he was this and that, for
+six whole days and nights.  So, then he again asked leave to speak
+to the Admiral.  The Admiral giv' leave.  He went down on his knees
+in the Great State Cabin.  'Now, Admiral, you must die!  You took
+no warning; you must die!  The rats are never wrong in their
+calculations, and they make out that they'll be through, at twelve
+to-night.  So, you must die!--With me and all the rest!'  And so at
+twelve o'clock there was a great leak reported in the ship, and a
+torrent of water rushed in and nothing could stop it, and they all
+went down, every living soul.  And what the rats--being water-rats-
+-left of Chips, at last floated to shore, and sitting on him was an
+immense overgrown rat, laughing, that dived when the corpse touched
+the beach and never came up.  And there was a deal of seaweed on
+the remains.  And if you get thirteen bits of seaweed, and dry them
+and burn them in the fire, they will go off like in these thirteen
+words as plain as plain can be:
+
+
+'A Lemon has pips,
+And a Yard has ships,
+And _I_'ve got Chips!'
+
+
+The same female bard--descended, possibly, from those terrible old
+Scalds who seem to have existed for the express purpose of addling
+the brains of mankind when they begin to investigate languages--
+made a standing pretence which greatly assisted in forcing me back
+to a number of hideous places that I would by all means have
+avoided.  This pretence was, that all her ghost stories had
+occurred to her own relations.  Politeness towards a meritorious
+family, therefore, forbade my doubting them, and they acquired an
+air of authentication that impaired my digestive powers for life.
+There was a narrative concerning an unearthly animal foreboding
+death, which appeared in the open street to a parlour-maid who
+'went to fetch the beer' for supper:  first (as I now recall it)
+assuming the likeness of a black dog, and gradually rising on its
+hind-legs and swelling into the semblance of some quadruped greatly
+surpassing a hippopotamus:  which apparition--not because I deemed
+it in the least improbable, but because I felt it to be really too
+large to bear--I feebly endeavoured to explain away.  But, on
+Mercy's retorting with wounded dignity that the parlour-maid was
+her own sister-in-law, I perceived there was no hope, and resigned
+myself to this zoological phenomenon as one of my many pursuers.
+There was another narrative describing the apparition of a young
+woman who came out of a glass-case and haunted another young woman
+until the other young woman questioned it and elicited that its
+bones (Lord!  To think of its being so particular about its bones!)
+were buried under the glass-case, whereas she required them to be
+interred, with every Undertaking solemnity up to twenty-four pound
+ten, in another particular place.  This narrative I considered--I
+had a personal interest in disproving, because we had glass-cases
+at home, and how, otherwise, was I to be guaranteed from the
+intrusion of young women requiring ME TO bury them up to twenty-
+four pound ten, when I had only twopence a week?  But my
+remorseless nurse cut the ground from under my tender feet, by
+informing me that She was the other young woman; and I couldn't say
+'I don't believe you;' it was not possible.
+
+Such are a few of the uncommercial journeys that I was forced to
+make, against my will, when I was very young and unreasoning.  And
+really, as to the latter part of them, it is not so very long ago--
+now I come to think of it--that I was asked to undertake them once
+again, with a steady countenance.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI--ARCADIAN LONDON
+
+
+
+Being in a humour for complete solitude and uninterrupted
+meditation this autumn, I have taken a lodging for six weeks in the
+most unfrequented part of England--in a word, in London.
+
+The retreat into which I have withdrawn myself, is Bond-street.
+From this lonely spot I make pilgrimages into the surrounding
+wilderness, and traverse extensive tracts of the Great Desert.  The
+first solemn feeling of isolation overcome, the first oppressive
+consciousness of profound retirement conquered, I enjoy that sense
+of freedom, and feel reviving within me that latent wildness of the
+original savage, which has been (upon the whole somewhat
+frequently) noticed by Travellers.
+
+My lodgings are at a hatter's--my own hatter's.  After exhibiting
+no articles in his window for some weeks, but sea-side wide-awakes,
+shooting-caps, and a choice of rough waterproof head-gear for the
+moors and mountains, he has put upon the heads of his family as
+much of this stock as they could carry, and has taken them off to
+the Isle of Thanet.  His young man alone remains--and remains alone
+in the shop.  The young man has let out the fire at which the irons
+are heated, and, saving his strong sense of duty, I see no reason
+why he should take the shutters down.
+
+Happily for himself and for his country the young man is a
+Volunteer; most happily for himself, or I think he would become the
+prey of a settled melancholy.  For, to live surrounded by human
+hats, and alienated from human heads to fit them on, is surely a
+great endurance.  But, the young man, sustained by practising his
+exercise, and by constantly furbishing up his regulation plume (it
+is unnecessary to observe that, as a hatter, he is in a cock's-
+feather corps), is resigned, and uncomplaining.  On a Saturday,
+when he closes early and gets his Knickerbockers on, he is even
+cheerful.  I am gratefully particular in this reference to him,
+because he is my companion through many peaceful hours.
+
+My hatter has a desk up certain steps behind his counter, enclosed
+like the clerk's desk at Church.  I shut myself into this place of
+seclusion, after breakfast, and meditate.  At such times, I observe
+the young man loading an imaginary rifle with the greatest
+precision, and maintaining a most galling and destructive fire upon
+the national enemy.  I thank him publicly for his companionship and
+his patriotism.
+
+The simple character of my life, and the calm nature of the scenes
+by which I am surrounded, occasion me to rise early.  I go forth in
+my slippers, and promenade the pavement.  It is pastoral to feel
+the freshness of the air in the uninhabited town, and to appreciate
+the shepherdess character of the few milkwomen who purvey so little
+milk that it would be worth nobody's while to adulterate it, if
+anybody were left to undertake the task.  On the crowded sea-shore,
+the great demand for milk, combined with the strong local
+temptation of chalk, would betray itself in the lowered quality of
+the article.  In Arcadian London I derive it from the cow.
+
+The Arcadian simplicity of the metropolis altogether, and the
+primitive ways into which it has fallen in this autumnal Golden
+Age, make it entirely new to me.  Within a few hundred yards of my
+retreat, is the house of a friend who maintains a most sumptuous
+butler.  I never, until yesterday, saw that butler out of superfine
+black broadcloth.  Until yesterday, I never saw him off duty, never
+saw him (he is the best of butlers) with the appearance of having
+any mind for anything but the glory of his master and his master's
+friends.  Yesterday morning, walking in my slippers near the house
+of which he is the prop and ornament--a house now a waste of
+shutters--I encountered that butler, also in his slippers, and in a
+shooting suit of one colour, and in a low-crowned straw-hat,
+smoking an early cigar.  He felt that we had formerly met in
+another state of existence, and that we were translated into a new
+sphere.  Wisely and well, he passed me without recognition.  Under
+his arm he carried the morning paper, and shortly afterwards I saw
+him sitting on a rail in the pleasant open landscape of Regent-
+street, perusing it at his ease under the ripening sun.
+
+My landlord having taken his whole establishment to be salted down,
+I am waited on by an elderly woman labouring under a chronic sniff,
+who, at the shadowy hour of half-past nine o'clock of every
+evening, gives admittance at the street door to a meagre and mouldy
+old man whom I have never yet seen detached from a flat pint of
+beer in a pewter pot.  The meagre and mouldy old man is her
+husband, and the pair have a dejected consciousness that they are
+not justified in appearing on the surface of the earth.  They come
+out of some hole when London empties itself, and go in again when
+it fills.  I saw them arrive on the evening when I myself took
+possession, and they arrived with the flat pint of beer, and their
+bed in a bundle.  The old man is a weak old man, and appeared to me
+to get the bed down the kitchen stairs by tumbling down with and
+upon it.  They make their bed in the lowest and remotest corner of
+the basement, and they smell of bed, and have no possession but
+bed:  unless it be (which I rather infer from an under-current of
+flavour in them) cheese.  I know their name, through the chance of
+having called the wife's attention, at half-past nine on the second
+evening of our acquaintance, to the circumstance of there being
+some one at the house door; when she apologetically explained,
+'It's only Mr. Klem.'  What becomes of Mr. Klem all day, or when he
+goes out, or why, is a mystery I cannot penetrate; but at half-past
+nine he never fails to turn up on the door-step with the flat pint
+of beer.  And the pint of beer, flat as it is, is so much more
+important than himself, that it always seems to my fancy as if it
+had found him drivelling in the street and had humanely brought him
+home.  In making his way below, Mr. Klem never goes down the middle
+of the passage, like another Christian, but shuffles against the
+wall as if entreating me to take notice that he is occupying as
+little space as possible in the house; and whenever I come upon him
+face to face, he backs from me in fascinated confusion.  The most
+extraordinary circumstance I have traced in connexion with this
+aged couple, is, that there is a Miss Klem, their daughter,
+apparently ten years older than either of them, who has also a bed
+and smells of it, and carries it about the earth at dusk and hides
+it in deserted houses.  I came into this piece of knowledge through
+Mrs. Klem's beseeching me to sanction the sheltering of Miss Klem
+under that roof for a single night, 'between her takin' care of the
+upper part in Pall Mall which the family of his back, and a 'ouse
+in Serjameses-street, which the family of leaves towng ter-morrer.'
+I gave my gracious consent (having nothing that I know of to do
+with it), and in the shadowy hours Miss Klem became perceptible on
+the door-step, wrestling with a bed in a bundle.  Where she made it
+up for the night I cannot positively state, but, I think, in a
+sink.  I know that with the instinct of a reptile or an insect, she
+stowed it and herself away in deep obscurity.  In the Klem family,
+I have noticed another remarkable gift of nature, and that is a
+power they possess of converting everything into flue.  Such broken
+victuals as they take by stealth, appear (whatever the nature of
+the viands) invariably to generate flue; and even the nightly pint
+of beer, instead of assimilating naturally, strikes me as breaking
+out in that form, equally on the shabby gown of Mrs. Klem, and the
+threadbare coat of her husband.
+
+Mrs. Klem has no idea of my name--as to Mr. Klem he has no idea of
+anything--and only knows me as her good gentleman.  Thus, if
+doubtful whether I am in my room or no, Mrs. Klem taps at the door
+and says, 'Is my good gentleman here?'  Or, if a messenger desiring
+to see me were consistent with my solitude, she would show him in
+with 'Here is my good gentleman.'  I find this to be a generic
+custom.  For, I meant to have observed before now, that in its
+Arcadian time all my part of London is indistinctly pervaded by the
+Klem species.  They creep about with beds, and go to bed in miles
+of deserted houses.  They hold no companionship except that
+sometimes, after dark, two of them will emerge from opposite
+houses, and meet in the middle of the road as on neutral ground, or
+will peep from adjoining houses over an interposing barrier of area
+railings, and compare a few reserved mistrustful notes respecting
+their good ladies or good gentlemen.  This I have discovered in the
+course of various solitary rambles I have taken Northward from my
+retirement, along the awful perspectives of Wimpole-street, Harley-
+street, and similar frowning regions.  Their effect would be
+scarcely distinguishable from that of the primeval forests, but for
+the Klem stragglers; these may be dimly observed, when the heavy
+shadows fall, flitting to and fro, putting up the door-chain,
+taking in the pint of beer, lowering like phantoms at the dark
+parlour windows, or secretly consorting underground with the dust-
+bin and the water-cistern.
+
+In the Burlington Arcade, I observe, with peculiar pleasure, a
+primitive state of manners to have superseded the baneful
+influences of ultra civilisation.  Nothing can surpass the
+innocence of the ladies' shoe-shops, the artificial-flower
+repositories, and the head-dress depots.  They are in strange hands
+at this time of year--hands of unaccustomed persons, who are
+imperfectly acquainted with the prices of the goods, and
+contemplate them with unsophisticated delight and wonder.  The
+children of these virtuous people exchange familiarities in the
+Arcade, and temper the asperity of the two tall beadles.  Their
+youthful prattle blends in an unwonted manner with the harmonious
+shade of the scene, and the general effect is, as of the voices of
+birds in a grove.  In this happy restoration of the golden time, it
+has been my privilege even to see the bigger beadle's wife.  She
+brought him his dinner in a basin, and he ate it in his arm-chair,
+and afterwards fell asleep like a satiated child.  At Mr.
+Truefitt's, the excellent hairdresser's, they are learning French
+to beguile the time; and even the few solitaries left on guard at
+Mr. Atkinson's, the perfumer's round the corner (generally the most
+inexorable gentleman in London, and the most scornful of three-and-
+sixpence), condescend a little, as they drowsily bide or recall
+their turn for chasing the ebbing Neptune on the ribbed sea-sand.
+From Messrs. Hunt and Roskell's, the jewellers, all things are
+absent but the precious stones, and the gold and silver, and the
+soldierly pensioner at the door with his decorated breast.  I might
+stand night and day for a month to come, in Saville-row, with my
+tongue out, yet not find a doctor to look at it for love or money.
+The dentists' instruments are rusting in their drawers, and their
+horrible cool parlours, where people pretend to read the Every-Day
+Book and not to be afraid, are doing penance for their grimness in
+white sheets.  The light-weight of shrewd appearance, with one eye
+always shut up, as if he were eating a sharp gooseberry in all
+seasons, who usually stands at the gateway of the livery-stables on
+very little legs under a very large waistcoat, has gone to
+Doncaster.  Of such undesigning aspect is his guileless yard now,
+with its gravel and scarlet beans, and the yellow Break housed
+under a glass roof in a corner, that I almost believe I could not
+be taken in there, if I tried.  In the places of business of the
+great tailors, the cheval-glasses are dim and dusty for lack of
+being looked into.  Ranges of brown paper coat and waistcoat bodies
+look as funereal as if they were the hatchments of the customers
+with whose names they are inscribed; the measuring tapes hang idle
+on the wall; the order-taker, left on the hopeless chance of some
+one looking in, yawns in the last extremity over the book of
+patterns, as if he were trying to read that entertaining library.
+The hotels in Brook-street have no one in them, and the staffs of
+servants stare disconsolately for next season out of all the
+windows.  The very man who goes about like an erect Turtle, between
+two boards recommendatory of the Sixteen Shilling Trousers, is
+aware of himself as a hollow mockery, and eats filberts while he
+leans his hinder shell against a wall.
+
+Among these tranquillising objects, it is my delight to walk and
+meditate.  Soothed by the repose around me, I wander insensibly to
+considerable distances, and guide myself back by the stars.  Thus,
+I enjoy the contrast of a few still partially inhabited and busy
+spots where all the lights are not fled, where all the garlands are
+not dead, whence all but I have not departed.  Then, does it appear
+to me that in this age three things are clamorously required of Man
+in the miscellaneous thoroughfares of the metropolis.  Firstly,
+that he have his boots cleaned.  Secondly, that he eat a penny ice.
+Thirdly, that he get himself photographed.  Then do I speculate,
+What have those seam-worn artists been who stand at the photograph
+doors in Greek caps, sample in hand, and mysteriously salute the
+public--the female public with a pressing tenderness--to come in
+and be 'took'?  What did they do with their greasy blandishments,
+before the era of cheap photography?  Of what class were their
+previous victims, and how victimised?  And how did they get, and
+how did they pay for, that large collection of likenesses, all
+purporting to have been taken inside, with the taking of none of
+which had that establishment any more to do than with the taking of
+Delhi?
+
+But, these are small oases, and I am soon back again in
+metropolitan Arcadia.  It is my impression that much of its serene
+and peaceful character is attributable to the absence of customary
+Talk.  How do I know but there may be subtle influences in Talk, to
+vex the souls of men who don't hear it?  How do I know but that
+Talk, five, ten, twenty miles off, may get into the air and
+disagree with me?  If I rise from my bed, vaguely troubled and
+wearied and sick of my life, in the session of Parliament, who
+shall say that my noble friend, my right reverend friend, my right
+honourable friend, my honourable friend, my honourable and learned
+friend, or my honourable and gallant friend, may not be responsible
+for that effect upon my nervous system?  Too much Ozone in the air,
+I am informed and fully believe (though I have no idea what it is),
+would affect me in a marvellously disagreeable way; why may not too
+much Talk?  I don't see or hear the Ozone; I don't see or hear the
+Talk.  And there is so much Talk; so much too much; such loud cry,
+and such scant supply of wool; such a deal of fleecing, and so
+little fleece!  Hence, in the Arcadian season, I find it a
+delicious triumph to walk down to deserted Westminster, and see the
+Courts shut up; to walk a little further and see the Two Houses
+shut up; to stand in the Abbey Yard, like the New Zealander of the
+grand English History (concerning which unfortunate man, a whole
+rookery of mares' nests is generally being discovered), and gloat
+upon the ruins of Talk.  Returning to my primitive solitude and
+lying down to sleep, my grateful heart expands with the
+consciousness that there is no adjourned Debate, no ministerial
+explanation, nobody to give notice of intention to ask the noble
+Lord at the head of her Majesty's Government five-and-twenty
+bootless questions in one, no term time with legal argument, no
+Nisi Prius with eloquent appeal to British Jury; that the air will
+to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, remain untroubled by this
+superabundant generating of Talk.  In a minor degree it is a
+delicious triumph to me to go into the club, and see the carpets
+up, and the Bores and the other dust dispersed to the four winds.
+Again, New Zealander-like, I stand on the cold hearth, and say in
+the solitude, 'Here I watched Bore A 1, with voice always
+mysteriously low and head always mysteriously drooped, whispering
+political secrets into the ears of Adam's confiding children.
+Accursed be his memory for ever and a day!'
+
+But, I have all this time been coming to the point, that the happy
+nature of my retirement is most sweetly expressed in its being the
+abode of Love.  It is, as it were, an inexpensive Agapemone:
+nobody's speculation:  everybody's profit.  The one great result of
+the resumption of primitive habits, and (convertible terms) the not
+having much to do, is, the abounding of Love.
+
+The Klem species are incapable of the softer emotions; probably, in
+that low nomadic race, the softer emotions have all degenerated
+into flue.  But, with this exception, all the sharers of my retreat
+make love.
+
+I have mentioned Saville-row.  We all know the Doctor's servant.
+We all know what a respectable man he is, what a hard dry man, what
+a firm man, what a confidential man:  how he lets us into the
+waiting-room, like a man who knows minutely what is the matter with
+us, but from whom the rack should not wring the secret.  In the
+prosaic "season," he has distinctly the appearance of a man
+conscious of money in the savings bank, and taking his stand on his
+respectability with both feet.  At that time it is as impossible to
+associate him with relaxation, or any human weakness, as it is to
+meet his eye without feeling guilty of indisposition.  In the blest
+Arcadian time, how changed!  I have seen him, in a pepper-and-salt
+jacket--jacket--and drab trousers, with his arm round the waist of
+a bootmaker's housemaid, smiling in open day.  I have seen him at
+the pump by the Albany, unsolicitedly pumping for two fair young
+creatures, whose figures as they bent over their cans, were--if I
+may be allowed an original expression--a model for the sculptor.  I
+have seen him trying the piano in the Doctor's drawing-room with
+his forefinger, and have heard him humming tunes in praise of
+lovely woman.  I have seen him seated on a fire-engine, and going
+(obviously in search of excitement) to a fire.  I saw him, one
+moonlight evening when the peace and purity of our Arcadian west
+were at their height, polk with the lovely daughter of a cleaner of
+gloves, from the door-steps of his own residence, across Saville-
+row, round by Clifford-street and Old Burlington-street, back to
+Burlington-gardens.  Is this the Golden Age revived, or Iron
+London?
+
+The Dentist's servant.  Is that man no mystery to us, no type of
+invisible power?  The tremendous individual knows (who else does?)
+what is done with the extracted teeth; he knows what goes on in the
+little room where something is always being washed or filed; he
+knows what warm spicy infusion is put into the comfortable tumbler
+from which we rinse our wounded mouth, with a gap in it that feels
+a foot wide; he knows whether the thing we spit into is a fixture
+communicating with the Thames, or could be cleared away for a
+dance; he sees the horrible parlour where there are no patients in
+it, and he could reveal, if he would, what becomes of the Every-Day
+Book then.  The conviction of my coward conscience when I see that
+man in a professional light, is, that he knows all the statistics
+of my teeth and gums, my double teeth, my single teeth, my stopped
+teeth, and my sound.  In this Arcadian rest, I am fearless of him
+as of a harmless, powerless creature in a Scotch cap, who adores a
+young lady in a voluminous crinoline, at a neighbouring billiard-
+room, and whose passion would be uninfluenced if every one of her
+teeth were false.  They may be.  He takes them all on trust.
+
+In secluded corners of the place of my seclusion, there are little
+shops withdrawn from public curiosity, and never two together,
+where servants' perquisites are bought.  The cook may dispose of
+grease at these modest and convenient marts; the butler, of
+bottles; the valet and lady's maid, of clothes; most servants,
+indeed, of most things they may happen to lay hold of.  I have been
+told that in sterner times loving correspondence, otherwise
+interdicted, may be maintained by letter through the agency of some
+of these useful establishments.  In the Arcadian autumn, no such
+device is necessary.  Everybody loves, and openly and blamelessly
+loves.  My landlord's young man loves the whole of one side of the
+way of Old Bond-street, and is beloved several doors up New Bond-
+street besides.  I never look out of window but I see kissing of
+hands going on all around me.  It is the morning custom to glide
+from shop to shop and exchange tender sentiments; it is the evening
+custom for couples to stand hand in hand at house doors, or roam,
+linked in that flowery manner, through the unpeopled streets.
+There is nothing else to do but love; and what there is to do, is
+done.
+
+In unison with this pursuit, a chaste simplicity obtains in the
+domestic habits of Arcadia.  Its few scattered people dine early,
+live moderately, sup socially, and sleep soundly.  It is rumoured
+that the Beadles of the Arcade, from being the mortal enemies of
+boys, have signed with tears an address to Lord Shaftesbury, and
+subscribed to a ragged school.  No wonder!  For, they might turn
+their heavy maces into crooks and tend sheep in the Arcade, to the
+purling of the water-carts as they give the thirsty streets much
+more to drink than they can carry.
+
+A happy Golden Age, and a serene tranquillity.  Charming picture,
+but it will fade.  The iron age will return, London will come back
+to town, if I show my tongue then in Saville-row for half a minute
+I shall be prescribed for, the Doctor's man and the Dentist's man
+will then pretend that these days of unprofessional innocence never
+existed.  Where Mr. and Mrs. Klem and their bed will be at that
+time, passes human knowledge; but my hatter hermitage will then
+know them no more, nor will it then know me.  The desk at which I
+have written these meditations will retributively assist at the
+making out of my account, and the wheels of gorgeous carriages and
+the hoofs of high-stepping horses will crush the silence out of
+Bond-street--will grind Arcadia away, and give it to the elements
+in granite powder.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII--THE ITALIAN PRISONER
+
+
+
+The rising of the Italian people from under their unutterable
+wrongs, and the tardy burst of day upon them after the long long
+night of oppression that has darkened their beautiful country, have
+naturally caused my mind to dwell often of late on my own small
+wanderings in Italy.  Connected with them, is a curious little
+drama, in which the character I myself sustained was so very
+subordinate that I may relate its story without any fear of being
+suspected of self-display.  It is strictly a true story.
+
+I am newly arrived one summer evening, in a certain small town on
+the Mediterranean.  I have had my dinner at the inn, and I and the
+mosquitoes are coming out into the streets together.  It is far
+from Naples; but a bright, brown, plump little woman-servant at the
+inn, is a Neapolitan, and is so vivaciously expert in panto-mimic
+action, that in the single moment of answering my request to have a
+pair of shoes cleaned which I have left up-stairs, she plies
+imaginary brushes, and goes completely through the motions of
+polishing the shoes up, and laying them at my feet.  I smile at the
+brisk little woman in perfect satisfaction with her briskness; and
+the brisk little woman, amiably pleased with me because I am
+pleased with her, claps her hands and laughs delightfully.  We are
+in the inn yard.  As the little woman's bright eyes sparkle on the
+cigarette I am smoking, I make bold to offer her one; she accepts
+it none the less merrily, because I touch a most charming little
+dimple in her fat cheek, with its light paper end.  Glancing up at
+the many green lattices to assure herself that the mistress is not
+looking on, the little woman then puts her two little dimple arms
+a-kimbo, and stands on tiptoe to light her cigarette at mine.  'And
+now, dear little sir,' says she, puffing out smoke in a most
+innocent and cherubic manner, 'keep quite straight on, take the
+first to the right and probably you will see him standing at his
+door.'
+
+I gave a commission to 'him,' and I have been inquiring about him.
+I have carried the commission about Italy several months.  Before I
+left England, there came to me one night a certain generous and
+gentle English nobleman (he is dead in these days when I relate the
+story, and exiles have lost their best British friend), with this
+request:  'Whenever you come to such a town, will you seek out one
+Giovanni Carlavero, who keeps a little wine-shop there, mention my
+name to him suddenly, and observe how it affects him?'  I accepted
+the trust, and am on my way to discharge it.
+
+The sirocco has been blowing all day, and it is a hot unwholesome
+evening with no cool sea-breeze.  Mosquitoes and fire-flies are
+lively enough, but most other creatures are faint.  The coquettish
+airs of pretty young women in the tiniest and wickedest of dolls'
+straw hats, who lean out at opened lattice blinds, are almost the
+only airs stirring.  Very ugly and haggard old women with distaffs,
+and with a grey tow upon them that looks as if they were spinning
+out their own hair (I suppose they were once pretty, too, but it is
+very difficult to believe so), sit on the footway leaning against
+house walls.  Everybody who has come for water to the fountain,
+stays there, and seems incapable of any such energetic idea as
+going home.  Vespers are over, though not so long but that I can
+smell the heavy resinous incense as I pass the church.  No man
+seems to be at work, save the coppersmith.  In an Italian town he
+is always at work, and always thumping in the deadliest manner.
+
+I keep straight on, and come in due time to the first on the right:
+a narrow dull street, where I see a well-favoured man of good
+stature and military bearing, in a great cloak, standing at a door.
+Drawing nearer to this threshold, I see it is the threshold of a
+small wine-shop; and I can just make out, in the dim light, the
+inscription that it is kept by Giovanni Carlavero.
+
+I touch my hat to the figure in the cloak, and pass in, and draw a
+stool to a little table.  The lamp (just such another as they dig
+out of Pompeii) is lighted, but the place is empty.  The figure in
+the cloak has followed me in, and stands before me.
+
+'The master?'
+
+'At your service, sir.'
+
+'Please to give me a glass of the wine of the country.'
+
+He turns to a little counter, to get it.  As his striking face is
+pale, and his action is evidently that of an enfeebled man, I
+remark that I fear he has been ill.  It is not much, he courteously
+and gravely answers, though bad while it lasts:  the fever.
+
+As he sets the wine on the little table, to his manifest surprise I
+lay my hand on the back of his, look him in the face, and say in a
+low voice:  'I am an Englishman, and you are acquainted with a
+friend of mine.  Do you recollect--?' and I mentioned the name of
+my generous countryman.
+
+Instantly, he utters a loud cry, bursts into tears, and falls on
+his knees at my feet, clasping my legs in both his arms and bowing
+his head to the ground.
+
+Some years ago, this man at my feet, whose over-fraught heart is
+heaving as if it would burst from his breast, and whose tears are
+wet upon the dress I wear, was a galley-slave in the North of
+Italy.  He was a political offender, having been concerned in the
+then last rising, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life.  That
+he would have died in his chains, is certain, but for the
+circumstance that the Englishman happened to visit his prison.
+
+It was one of the vile old prisons of Italy, and a part of it was
+below the waters of the harbour.  The place of his confinement was
+an arched under-ground and under-water gallery, with a grill-gate
+at the entrance, through which it received such light and air as it
+got.  Its condition was insufferably foul, and a stranger could
+hardly breathe in it, or see in it with the aid of a torch.  At the
+upper end of this dungeon, and consequently in the worst position,
+as being the furthest removed from light and air, the Englishman
+first beheld him, sitting on an iron bedstead to which he was
+chained by a heavy chain.  His countenance impressed the Englishmen
+as having nothing in common with the faces of the malefactors with
+whom he was associated, and he talked with him, and learnt how he
+came to be there.
+
+When the Englishman emerged from the dreadful den into the light of
+day, he asked his conductor, the governor of the jail, why Giovanni
+Carlavero was put into the worst place?
+
+'Because he is particularly recommended,' was the stringent answer.
+
+'Recommended, that is to say, for death?'
+
+'Excuse me; particularly recommended,' was again the answer.
+
+'He has a bad tumour in his neck, no doubt occasioned by the
+hardship of his miserable life.  If he continues to be neglected,
+and he remains where he is, it will kill him.'
+
+'Excuse me, I can do nothing.  He is particularly recommended.'
+The Englishman was staying in that town, and he went to his home
+there; but the figure of this man chained to the bedstead made it
+no home, and destroyed his rest and peace.  He was an Englishman of
+an extraordinarily tender heart, and he could not bear the picture.
+He went back to the prison grate; went back again and again, and
+talked to the man and cheered him.  He used his utmost influence to
+get the man unchained from the bedstead, were it only for ever so
+short a time in the day, and permitted to come to the grate.  It
+look a long time, but the Englishman's station, personal character,
+and steadiness of purpose, wore out opposition so far, and that
+grace was at last accorded.  Through the bars, when he could thus
+get light upon the tumour, the Englishman lanced it, and it did
+well, and healed.  His strong interest in the prisoner had greatly
+increased by this time, and he formed the desperate resolution that
+he would exert his utmost self-devotion and use his utmost efforts,
+to get Carlavero pardoned.
+
+If the prisoner had been a brigand and a murderer, if he had
+committed every non-political crime in the Newgate Calendar and out
+of it, nothing would have been easier than for a man of any court
+or priestly influence to obtain his release.  As it was, nothing
+could have been more difficult.  Italian authorities, and English
+authorities who had interest with them, alike assured the
+Englishman that his object was hopeless.  He met with nothing but
+evasion, refusal, and ridicule.  His political prisoner became a
+joke in the place.  It was especially observable that English
+Circumlocution, and English Society on its travels, were as
+humorous on the subject as Circumlocution and Society may be on any
+subject without loss of caste.  But, the Englishman possessed (and
+proved it well in his life) a courage very uncommon among us:  he
+had not the least fear of being considered a bore, in a good humane
+cause.  So he went on persistently trying, and trying, and trying,
+to get Giovanni Carlavero out.  That prisoner had been rigorously
+re-chained, after the tumour operation, and it was not likely that
+his miserable life could last very long.
+
+One day, when all the town knew about the Englishman and his
+political prisoner, there came to the Englishman, a certain
+sprightly Italian Advocate of whom he had some knowledge; and he
+made this strange proposal.  'Give me a hundred pounds to obtain
+Carlavero's release.  I think I can get him a pardon, with that
+money.  But I cannot tell you what I am going to do with the money,
+nor must you ever ask me the question if I succeed, nor must you
+ever ask me for an account of the money if I fail.'  The Englishman
+decided to hazard the hundred pounds.  He did so, and heard not
+another word of the matter.  For half a year and more, the Advocate
+made no sign, and never once 'took on' in any way, to have the
+subject on his mind.  The Englishman was then obliged to change his
+residence to another and more famous town in the North of Italy.
+He parted from the poor prisoner with a sorrowful heart, as from a
+doomed man for whom there was no release but Death.
+
+The Englishman lived in his new place of abode another half-year
+and more, and had no tidings of the wretched prisoner.  At length,
+one day, he received from the Advocate a cool, concise, mysterious
+note, to this effect.  'If you still wish to bestow that benefit
+upon the man in whom you were once interested, send me fifty pounds
+more, and I think it can be ensured.'  Now, the Englishman had long
+settled in his mind that the Advocate was a heartless sharper, who
+had preyed upon his credulity and his interest in an unfortunate
+sufferer.  So, he sat down and wrote a dry answer, giving the
+Advocate to understand that he was wiser now than he had been
+formerly, and that no more money was extractable from his pocket.
+
+He lived outside the city gates, some mile or two from the post-
+office, and was accustomed to walk into the city with his letters
+and post them himself.  On a lovely spring day, when the sky was
+exquisitely blue, and the sea Divinely beautiful, he took his usual
+walk, carrying this letter to the Advocate in his pocket.  As he
+went along, his gentle heart was much moved by the loveliness of
+the prospect, and by the thought of the slowly dying prisoner
+chained to the bedstead, for whom the universe had no delights.  As
+he drew nearer and nearer to the city where he was to post the
+letter, he became very uneasy in his mind.  He debated with
+himself, was it remotely possible, after all, that this sum of
+fifty pounds could restore the fellow-creature whom he pitied so
+much, and for whom he had striven so hard, to liberty?  He was not
+a conventionally rich Englishman--very far from that--but, he had a
+spare fifty pounds at the banker's.  He resolved to risk it.
+Without doubt, GOD has recompensed him for the resolution.
+
+He went to the banker's, and got a bill for the amount, and
+enclosed it in a letter to the Advocate that I wish I could have
+seen.  He simply told the Advocate that he was quite a poor man,
+and that he was sensible it might be a great weakness in him to
+part with so much money on the faith of so vague a communication;
+but, that there it was, and that he prayed the Advocate to make a
+good use of it.  If he did otherwise no good could ever come of it,
+and it would lie heavy on his soul one day.
+
+Within a week, the Englishman was sitting at his breakfast, when he
+heard some suppressed sounds of agitation on the staircase, and
+Giovanni Carlavero leaped into the room and fell upon his breast, a
+free man!
+
+Conscious of having wronged the Advocate in his own thoughts, the
+Englishman wrote him an earnest and grateful letter, avowing the
+fact, and entreating him to confide by what means and through what
+agency he had succeeded so well.  The Advocate returned for answer
+through the post, 'There are many things, as you know, in this
+Italy of ours, that are safest and best not even spoken of--far
+less written of.  We may meet some day, and then I may tell you
+what you want to know; not here, and now.'  But, the two never did
+meet again.  The Advocate was dead when the Englishman gave me my
+trust; and how the man had been set free, remained as great a
+mystery to the Englishman, and to the man himself, as it was to me.
+
+But, I knew this:- here was the man, this sultry night, on his
+knees at my feet, because I was the Englishman's friend; here were
+his tears upon my dress; here were his sobs choking his utterance;
+here were his kisses on my hands, because they had touched the
+hands that had worked out his release.  He had no need to tell me
+it would be happiness to him to die for his benefactor; I doubt if
+I ever saw real, sterling, fervent gratitude of soul, before or
+since.
+
+He was much watched and suspected, he said, and had had enough to
+do to keep himself out of trouble.  This, and his not having
+prospered in his worldly affairs, had led to his having failed in
+his usual communications to the Englishman for--as I now remember
+the period--some two or three years.  But, his prospects were
+brighter, and his wife who had been very ill had recovered, and his
+fever had left him, and he had bought a little vineyard, and would
+I carry to his benefactor the first of its wine?  Ay, that I would
+(I told him with enthusiasm), and not a drop of it should be
+spilled or lost!
+
+He had cautiously closed the door before speaking of himself, and
+had talked with such excess of emotion, and in a provincial Italian
+so difficult to understand, that I had more than once been obliged
+to stop him, and beg him to have compassion on me and be slower and
+calmer.  By degrees he became so, and tranquilly walked back with
+me to the hotel.  There, I sat down before I went to bed and wrote
+a faithful account of him to the Englishman:  which I concluded by
+saying that I would bring the wine home, against any difficulties,
+every drop.
+
+Early next morning, when I came out at the hotel door to pursue my
+journey, I found my friend waiting with one of those immense
+bottles in which the Italian peasants store their wine--a bottle
+holding some half-dozen gallons--bound round with basket-work for
+greater safety on the journey.  I see him now, in the bright
+sunshine, tears of gratitude in his eyes, proudly inviting my
+attention to this corpulent bottle.  (At the street-comer hard by,
+two high-flavoured, able-bodied monks--pretending to talk together,
+but keeping their four evil eyes upon us.)
+
+How the bottle had been got there, did not appear; but the
+difficulty of getting it into the ramshackle vetturino carriage in
+which I was departing, was so great, and it took up so much room
+when it was got in, that I elected to sit outside.  The last I saw
+of Giovanni Carlavero was his running through the town by the side
+of the jingling wheels, clasping my hand as I stretched it down
+from the box, charging me with a thousand last loving and dutiful
+messages to his dear patron, and finally looking in at the bottle
+as it reposed inside, with an admiration of its honourable way of
+travelling that was beyond measure delightful.
+
+And now, what disquiet of mind this dearly-beloved and highly-
+treasured Bottle began to cost me, no man knows.  It was my
+precious charge through a long tour, and, for hundreds of miles, I
+never had it off my mind by day or by night.  Over bad roads--and
+they were many--I clung to it with affectionate desperation.  Up
+mountains, I looked in at it and saw it helplessly tilting over on
+its back, with terror.  At innumerable inn doors when the weather
+was bad, I was obliged to be put into my vehicle before the Bottle
+could be got in, and was obliged to have the Bottle lifted out
+before human aid could come near me.  The Imp of the same name,
+except that his associations were all evil and these associations
+were all good, would have been a less troublesome travelling
+companion.  I might have served Mr. Cruikshank as a subject for a
+new illustration of the miseries of the Bottle.  The National
+Temperance Society might have made a powerful Tract of me.
+
+The suspicions that attached to this innocent Bottle, greatly
+aggravated my difficulties.  It was like the apple-pie in the
+child's book.  Parma pouted at it, Modena mocked it, Tuscany
+tackled it, Naples nibbled it, Rome refused it, Austria accused it,
+Soldiers suspected it, Jesuits jobbed it.  I composed a neat
+Oration, developing my inoffensive intentions in connexion with
+this Bottle, and delivered it in an infinity of guard-houses, at a
+multitude of town gates, and on every drawbridge, angle, and
+rampart, of a complete system of fortifications.  Fifty times a
+day, I got down to harangue an infuriated soldiery about the
+Bottle.  Through the filthy degradation of the abject and vile
+Roman States, I had as much difficulty in working my way with the
+Bottle, as if it had bottled up a complete system of heretical
+theology.  In the Neapolitan country, where everybody was a spy, a
+soldier, a priest, or a lazzarone, the shameless beggars of all
+four denominations incessantly pounced on the Bottle and made it a
+pretext for extorting money from me.  Quires--quires do I say?
+Reams--of forms illegibly printed on whity-brown paper were filled
+up about the Bottle, and it was the subject of more stamping and
+sanding than I had ever seen before.  In consequence of which haze
+of sand, perhaps, it was always irregular, and always latent with
+dismal penalties of going back or not going forward, which were
+only to be abated by the silver crossing of a base hand, poked
+shirtless out of a ragged uniform sleeve.  Under all
+discouragements, however, I stuck to my Bottle, and held firm to my
+resolution that every drop of its contents should reach the
+Bottle's destination.
+
+The latter refinement cost me a separate heap of troubles on its
+own separate account.  What corkscrews did I see the military power
+bring out against that Bottle; what gimlets, spikes, divining rods,
+gauges, and unknown tests and instruments!  At some places, they
+persisted in declaring that the wine must not be passed, without
+being opened and tasted; I, pleading to the contrary, used then to
+argue the question seated on the Bottle lest they should open it in
+spite of me.  In the southern parts of Italy more violent
+shrieking, face-making, and gesticulating, greater vehemence of
+speech and countenance and action, went on about that Bottle than
+would attend fifty murders in a northern latitude.  It raised
+important functionaries out of their beds, in the dead of night.  I
+have known half-a-dozen military lanterns to disperse themselves at
+all points of a great sleeping Piazza, each lantern summoning some
+official creature to get up, put on his cocked-hat instantly, and
+come and stop the Bottle.  It was characteristic that while this
+innocent Bottle had such immense difficulty in getting from little
+town to town, Signor Mazzini and the fiery cross were traversing
+Italy from end to end.
+
+Still, I stuck to my Bottle, like any fine old English gentleman
+all of the olden time.  The more the Bottle was interfered with,
+the stauncher I became (if possible) in my first determination that
+my countryman should have it delivered to him intact, as the man
+whom he had so nobly restored to life and liberty had delivered it
+to me.  If ever I had been obstinate in my days--and I may have
+been, say, once or twice--I was obstinate about the Bottle.  But, I
+made it a rule always to keep a pocket full of small coin at its
+service, and never to be out of temper in its cause.  Thus, I and
+the Bottle made our way.  Once we had a break-down; rather a bad
+break-down, on a steep high place with the sea below us, on a
+tempestuous evening when it blew great guns.  We were driving four
+wild horses abreast, Southern fashion, and there was some little
+difficulty in stopping them.  I was outside, and not thrown off;
+but no words can describe my feelings when I saw the Bottle--
+travelling inside, as usual--burst the door open, and roll obesely
+out into the road.  A blessed Bottle with a charmed existence, he
+took no hurt, and we repaired damage, and went on triumphant.
+
+A thousand representations were made to me that the Bottle must be
+left at this place, or that, and called for again.  I never yielded
+to one of them, and never parted from the Bottle, on any pretence,
+consideration, threat, or entreaty.  I had no faith in any official
+receipt for the Bottle, and nothing would induce me to accept one.
+These unmanageable politics at last brought me and the Bottle,
+still triumphant, to Genoa.  There, I took a tender and reluctant
+leave of him for a few weeks, and consigned him to a trusty English
+captain, to be conveyed to the Port of London by sea.
+
+While the Bottle was on his voyage to England, I read the Shipping
+Intelligence as anxiously as if I had been an underwriter.  There
+was some stormy weather after I myself had got to England by way of
+Switzerland and France, and my mind greatly misgave me that the
+Bottle might be wrecked.  At last to my great joy, I received
+notice of his safe arrival, and immediately went down to Saint
+Katharine's Docks, and found him in a state of honourable captivity
+in the Custom House.
+
+The wine was mere vinegar when I set it down before the generous
+Englishman--probably it had been something like vinegar when I took
+it up from Giovanni Carlavero--but not a drop of it was spilled or
+gone.  And the Englishman told me, with much emotion in his face
+and voice, that he had never tasted wine that seemed to him so
+sweet and sound.  And long afterwards, the Bottle graced his table.
+And the last time I saw him in this world that misses him, he took
+me aside in a crowd, to say, with his amiable smile:  'We were
+talking of you only to-day at dinner, and I wished you had been
+there, for I had some Claret up in Carlavero's Bottle.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII--THE CALAIS NIGHT MAIL
+
+
+
+It is an unsettled question with me whether I shall leave Calais
+something handsome in my will, or whether I shall leave it my
+malediction.  I hate it so much, and yet I am always so very glad
+to see it, that I am in a state of constant indecision on this
+subject.  When I first made acquaintance with Calais, it was as a
+maundering young wretch in a clammy perspiration and dripping
+saline particles, who was conscious of no extremities but the one
+great extremity, sea-sickness--who was a mere bilious torso, with a
+mislaid headache somewhere in its stomach--who had been put into a
+horrible swing in Dover Harbour, and had tumbled giddily out of it
+on the French coast, or the Isle of Man, or anywhere.  Times have
+changed, and now I enter Calais self-reliant and rational.  I know
+where it is beforehand, I keep a look out for it, I recognise its
+landmarks when I see any of them, I am acquainted with its ways,
+and I know--and I can bear--its worst behaviour.
+
+Malignant Calais!  Low-lying alligator, evading the eyesight and
+discouraging hope!  Dodging flat streak, now on this bow, now on
+that, now anywhere, now everywhere, now nowhere!  In vain Cape
+Grinez, coming frankly forth into the sea, exhorts the failing to
+be stout of heart and stomach:  sneaking Calais, prone behind its
+bar, invites emetically to despair.  Even when it can no longer
+quite conceal itself in its muddy dock, it has an evil way of
+falling off, has Calais, which is more hopeless than its
+invisibility.  The pier is all but on the bowsprit, and you think
+you are there--roll, roar, wash!--Calais has retired miles inland,
+and Dover has burst out to look for it.  It has a last dip and
+slide in its character, has Calais, to be especially commanded to
+the infernal gods.  Thrice accursed be that garrison-town, when it
+dives under the boat's keel, and comes up a league or two to the
+right, with the packet shivering and spluttering and staring about
+for it!
+
+Not but what I have my animosities towards Dover.  I particularly
+detest Dover for the self-complacency with which it goes to bed.
+It always goes to bed (when I am going to Calais) with a more
+brilliant display of lamp and candle than any other town.  Mr. and
+Mrs. Birmingham, host and hostess of the Lord Warden Hotel, are my
+much esteemed friends, but they are too conceited about the
+comforts of that establishment when the Night Mail is starting.  I
+know it is a good house to stay at, and I don't want the fact
+insisted upon in all its warm bright windows at such an hour.  I
+know the Warden is a stationary edifice that never rolls or
+pitches, and I object to its big outline seeming to insist upon
+that circumstance, and, as it were, to come over me with it, when I
+am reeling on the deck of the boat.  Beshrew the Warden likewise,
+for obstructing that corner, and making the wind so angry as it
+rushes round.  Shall I not know that it blows quite soon enough,
+without the officious Warden's interference?
+
+As I wait here on board the night packet, for the South-Eastern
+Train to come down with the Mail, Dover appears to me to be
+illuminated for some intensely aggravating festivity in my personal
+dishonour.  All its noises smack of taunting praises of the land,
+and dispraises of the gloomy sea, and of me for going on it.  The
+drums upon the heights have gone to bed, or I know they would
+rattle taunts against me for having my unsteady footing on this
+slippery deck.  The many gas eyes of the Marine Parade twinkle in
+an offensive manner, as if with derision.  The distant dogs of
+Dover bark at me in my misshapen wrappers, as if I were Richard the
+Third.
+
+A screech, a bell, and two red eyes come gliding down the Admiralty
+Pier with a smoothness of motion rendered more smooth by the
+heaving of the boat.  The sea makes noises against the pier, as if
+several hippopotami were lapping at it, and were prevented by
+circumstances over which they had no control from drinking
+peaceably.  We, the boat, become violently agitated--rumble, hum,
+scream, roar, and establish an immense family washing-day at each
+paddle-box.  Bright patches break out in the train as the doors of
+the post-office vans are opened, and instantly stooping figures
+with sacks upon their backs begin to be beheld among the piles,
+descending as it would seem in ghostly procession to Davy Jones's
+Locker.  The passengers come on board; a few shadowy Frenchmen,
+with hatboxes shaped like the stoppers of gigantic case-bottles; a
+few shadowy Germans in immense fur coats and boots; a few shadowy
+Englishmen prepared for the worst and pretending not to expect it.
+I cannot disguise from my uncommercial mind the miserable fact that
+we are a body of outcasts; that the attendants on us are as scant
+in number as may serve to get rid of us with the least possible
+delay; that there are no night-loungers interested in us; that the
+unwilling lamps shiver and shudder at us; that the sole object is
+to commit us to the deep and abandon us.  Lo, the two red eyes
+glaring in increasing distance, and then the very train itself has
+gone to bed before we are off!
+
+What is the moral support derived by some sea-going amateurs from
+an umbrella?  Why do certain voyagers across the Channel always put
+up that article, and hold it up with a grim and fierce tenacity?  A
+fellow-creature near me--whom I only know to BE a fellow-creature,
+because of his umbrella:  without which he might be a dark bit of
+cliff, pier, or bulkbead--clutches that instrument with a desperate
+grasp, that will not relax until he lands at Calais.  Is there any
+analogy, in certain constitutions, between keeping an umbrella up,
+and keeping the spirits up?  A hawser thrown on board with a flop
+replies 'Stand by!'  'Stand by, below!'  'Half a turn a head!'
+'Half a turn a head!'  'Half speed!'  'Half speed!'  'Port!'
+'Port!'  'Steady!'  'Steady!'  'Go on!'  'Go on!'
+
+A stout wooden wedge driven in at my right temple and out at my
+left, a floating deposit of lukewarm oil in my throat, and a
+compression of the bridge of my nose in a blunt pair of pincers,--
+these are the personal sensations by which I know we are off, and
+by which I shall continue to know it until I am on the soil of
+France.  My symptoms have scarcely established themselves
+comfortably, when two or three skating shadows that have been
+trying to walk or stand, get flung together, and other two or three
+shadows in tarpaulin slide with them into corners and cover them
+up.  Then the South Foreland lights begin to hiccup at us in a way
+that bodes no good.
+
+It is at about this period that my detestation of Calais knows no
+bounds.  Inwardly I resolve afresh that I never will forgive that
+hated town.  I have done so before, many times, but that is past.
+Let me register a vow.  Implacable animosity to Calais everm- that
+was an awkward sea, and the funnel seems of my opinion, for it
+gives a complaining roar.
+
+The wind blows stiffly from the Nor-East, the sea runs high, we
+ship a deal of water, the night is dark and cold, and the shapeless
+passengers lie about in melancholy bundles, as if they were sorted
+out for the laundress; but for my own uncommercial part I cannot
+pretend that I am much inconvenienced by any of these things.  A
+general howling, whistling, flopping, gurgling, and scooping, I am
+aware of, and a general knocking about of Nature; but the
+impressions I receive are very vague.  In a sweet faint temper,
+something like the smell of damaged oranges, I think I should feel
+languidly benevolent if I had time.  I have not time, because I am
+under a curious compulsion to occupy myself with the Irish
+melodies.  'Rich and rare were the gems she wore,' is the
+particular melody to which I find myself devoted.  I sing it to
+myself in the most charming manner and with the greatest
+expression.  Now and then, I raise my head (I am sitting on the
+hardest of wet seats, in the most uncomfortable of wet attitudes,
+but I don't mind it,) and notice that I am a whirling shuttlecock
+between a fiery battledore of a lighthouse on the French coast and
+a fiery battledore of a lighthouse on the English coast; but I
+don't notice it particularly, except to feel envenomed in my hatred
+of Calais.  Then I go on again, 'Rich and rare were the ge-ems she-
+e-e-e wore, And a bright gold ring on her wa-and she bo-ore, But O
+her beauty was fa-a-a-a-r beyond'--I am particularly proud of my
+execution here, when I become aware of another awkward shock from
+the sea, and another protest from the funnel, and a fellow-creature
+at the paddle-box more audibly indisposed than I think he need be--
+'Her sparkling gems, or snow-white wand, But O her beauty was fa-a-
+a-a-a-r beyond'--another awkward one here, and the fellow-creature
+with the umbrella down and picked up--'Her spa-a-rkling ge-ems, or
+her Port! port! steady! steady! snow-white fellow-creature at the
+paddle-box very selfishly audible, bump, roar, wash, white wand.'
+
+As my execution of the Irish melodies partakes of my imperfect
+perceptions of what is going on around me, so what is going on
+around me becomes something else than what it is.  The stokers open
+the furnace doors below, to feed the fires, and I am again on the
+box of the old Exeter Telegraph fast coach, and that is the light
+of the for ever extinguished coach-lamps, and the gleam on the
+hatches and paddle-boxes is THEIR gleam on cottages and haystacks,
+and the monotonous noise of the engines is the steady jingle of the
+splendid team.  Anon, the intermittent funnel roar of protest at
+every violent roll, becomes the regular blast of a high pressure
+engine, and I recognise the exceedingly explosive steamer in which
+I ascended the Mississippi when the American civil war was not, and
+when only its causes were.  A fragment of mast on which the light
+of a lantern falls, an end of rope, and a jerking block or so,
+become suggestive of Franconi's Circus at Paris where I shall be
+this very night mayhap (for it must be morning now), and they dance
+to the self-same time and tune as the trained steed, Black Raven.
+What may be the speciality of these waves as they come rushing on,
+I cannot desert the pressing demands made upon me by the gems she
+wore, to inquire, but they are charged with something about
+Robinson Crusoe, and I think it was in Yarmouth Roads that he first
+went a seafaring and was near foundering (what a terrific sound
+that word had for me when I was a boy!) in his first gale of wind.
+Still, through all this, I must ask her (who WAS she I wonder!) for
+the fiftieth time, and without ever stopping, Does she not fear to
+stray, So lone and lovely through this bleak way, And are Erin's
+sons so good or so cold, As not to be tempted by more fellow-
+creatures at the paddle-box or gold?  Sir Knight I feel not the
+least alarm, No son of Erin will offer me harm, For though they
+love fellow-creature with umbrella down again and golden store, Sir
+Knight they what a tremendous one love honour and virtue more:  For
+though they love Stewards with a bull's eye bright, they'll trouble
+you for your ticket, sir-rough passage to-night!
+
+I freely admit it to be a miserable piece of human weakness and
+inconsistency, but I no sooner become conscious of those last words
+from the steward than I begin to soften towards Calais.  Whereas I
+have been vindictively wishing that those Calais burghers who came
+out of their town by a short cut into the History of England, with
+those fatal ropes round their necks by which they have since been
+towed into so many cartoons, had all been hanged on the spot, I now
+begin to regard them as highly respectable and virtuous tradesmen.
+Looking about me, I see the light of Cape Grinez well astern of the
+boat on the davits to leeward, and the light of Calais Harbour
+undeniably at its old tricks, but still ahead and shining.
+Sentiments of forgiveness of Calais, not to say of attachment to
+Calais, begin to expand my bosom.  I have weak notions that I will
+stay there a day or two on my way back.  A faded and recumbent
+stranger pausing in a profound reverie over the rim of a basin,
+asks me what kind of place Calais is?  I tell him (Heaven forgive
+me!) a very agreeable place indeed--rather hilly than otherwise.
+
+So strangely goes the time, and on the whole so quickly--though
+still I seem to have been on board a week--that I am bumped,
+rolled, gurgled, washed and pitched into Calais Harbour before her
+maiden smile has finally lighted her through the Green Isle, When
+blest for ever is she who relied, On entering Calais at the top of
+the tide.  For we have not to land to-night down among those slimy
+timbers--covered with green hair as if it were the mermaids'
+favourite combing-place--where one crawls to the surface of the
+jetty, like a stranded shrimp, but we go steaming up the harbour to
+the Railway Station Quay.  And as we go, the sea washes in and out
+among piles and planks, with dead heavy beats and in quite a
+furious manner (whereof we are proud), and the lamps shake in the
+wind, and the bells of Calais striking One seem to send their
+vibrations struggling against troubled air, as we have come
+struggling against troubled water.  And now, in the sudden relief
+and wiping of faces, everybody on board seems to have had a
+prodigious double-tooth out, and to be this very instant free of
+the Dentist's hands.  And now we all know for the first time how
+wet and cold we are, and how salt we are; and now I love Calais
+with my heart of hearts!
+
+'Hotel Dessin!' (but in this one case it is not a vocal cry; it is
+but a bright lustre in the eyes of the cheery representative of
+that best of inns).  'Hotel Meurice!'  'Hotel de France!'  'Hotel
+de Calais!'  'The Royal Hotel, Sir, Angaishe ouse!'  'You going to
+Parry, Sir?'  'Your baggage, registair froo, Sir?'  Bless ye, my
+Touters, bless ye, my commissionaires, bless ye, my hungry-eyed
+mysteries in caps of a military form, who are always here, day or
+night, fair weather or foul, seeking inscrutable jobs which I never
+see you get!  Bless ye, my Custom House officers in green and grey;
+permit me to grasp the welcome hands that descend into my
+travelling-bag, one on each side, and meet at the bottom to give my
+change of linen a peculiar shake up, as if it were a measure of
+chaff or grain!  I have nothing to declare, Monsieur le Douanier,
+except that when I cease to breathe, Calais will be found written
+on my heart.  No article liable to local duty have I with me,
+Monsieur l'Officier de l'Octroi, unless the overflowing of a breast
+devoted to your charming town should be in that wise chargeable.
+Ah! see at the gangway by the twinkling lantern, my dearest brother
+and friend, he once of the Passport Office, he who collects the
+names!  May he be for ever changeless in his buttoned black
+surtout, with his note-book in his hand, and his tall black hat,
+surmounting his round, smiling, patient face!  Let us embrace, my
+dearest brother.  I am yours a tout jamais--for the whole of ever.
+
+Calais up and doing at the railway station, and Calais down and
+dreaming in its bed; Calais with something of 'an ancient and fish-
+like smell' about it, and Calais blown and sea-washed pure; Calais
+represented at the Buffet by savoury roast fowls, hot coffee,
+cognac, and Bordeaux; and Calais represented everywhere by flitting
+persons with a monomania for changing money--though I never shall
+be able to understand in my present state of existence how they
+live by it, but I suppose I should, if I understood the currency
+question--Calais en gros, and Calais en detail, forgive one who has
+deeply wronged you.--I was not fully aware of it on the other side,
+but I meant Dover.
+
+Ding, ding!  To the carriages, gentlemen the travellers.  Ascend
+then, gentlemen the travellers, for Hazebroucke, Lille, Douai,
+Bruxelles, Arras, Amiens, and Paris!  I, humble representative of
+the uncommercial interest, ascend with the rest.  The train is
+light to-night, and I share my compartment with but two fellow-
+travellers; one, a compatriot in an obsolete cravat, who thinks it
+a quite unaccountable thing that they don't keep 'London time' on a
+French railway, and who is made angry by my modestly suggesting the
+possibility of Paris time being more in their way; the other, a
+young priest, with a very small bird in a very small cage, who
+feeds the small bird with a quill, and then puts him up in the
+network above his head, where he advances twittering, to his front
+wires, and seems to address me in an electioneering manner.  The
+compatriot (who crossed in the boat, and whom I judge to be some
+person of distinction, as he was shut up, like a stately species of
+rabbit, in a private hutch on deck) and the young priest (who
+joined us at Calais) are soon asleep, and then the bird and I have
+it all to ourselves.
+
+A stormy night still; a night that sweeps the wires of the electric
+telegraph with a wild and fitful hand; a night so very stormy, with
+the added storm of the train-progress through it, that when the
+Guard comes clambering round to mark the tickets while we are at
+full speed (a really horrible performance in an express train,
+though he holds on to the open window by his elbows in the most
+deliberate manner), he stands in such a whirlwind that I grip him
+fast by the collar, and feel it next to manslaughter to let him go.
+Still, when he is gone, the small, small bird remains at his front
+wires feebly twittering to me--twittering and twittering, until,
+leaning back in my place and looking at him in drowsy fascination,
+I find that he seems to jog my memory as we rush along.
+
+Uncommercial travels (thus the small, small bird) have lain in
+their idle thriftless way through all this range of swamp and dyke,
+as through many other odd places; and about here, as you very well
+know, are the queer old stone farm-houses, approached by
+drawbridges, and the windmills that you get at by boats.  Here, are
+the lands where the women hoe and dig, paddling canoe-wise from
+field to field, and here are the cabarets and other peasant-houses
+where the stone dove-cotes in the littered yards are as strong as
+warders' towers in old castles.  Here, are the long monotonous
+miles of canal, with the great Dutch-built barges garishly painted,
+and the towing girls, sometimes harnessed by the forehead,
+sometimes by the girdle and the shoulders, not a pleasant sight to
+see.  Scattered through this country are mighty works of VAUBAN,
+whom you know about, and regiments of such corporals as you heard
+of once upon a time, and many a blue-eyed Bebelle.  Through these
+flat districts, in the shining summer days, walk those long,
+grotesque files of young novices in enormous shovel-hats, whom you
+remember blackening the ground checkered by the avenues of leafy
+trees.  And now that Hazebroucke slumbers certain kilometres ahead,
+recall the summer evening when your dusty feet strolling up from
+the station tended hap-hazard to a Fair there, where the oldest
+inhabitants were circling round and round a barrel-organ on hobby-
+horses, with the greatest gravity, and where the principal show in
+the Fair was a Religious Richardson's--literally, on its own
+announcement in great letters, THEATRE RELIGIEUX.  In which
+improving Temple, the dramatic representation was of 'all the
+interesting events in the life of our Lord, from the Manger to the
+Tomb;' the principal female character, without any reservation or
+exception, being at the moment of your arrival, engaged in trimming
+the external Moderators (as it was growing dusk), while the next
+principal female character took the money, and the Young Saint John
+disported himself upside down on the platform.
+
+Looking up at this point to confirm the small, small bird in every
+particular he has mentioned, I find he has ceased to twitter, and
+has put his head under his wing.  Therefore, in my different way I
+follow the good example.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX--SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF MORTALITY
+
+
+
+I had parted from the small bird at somewhere about four o'clock in
+the morning, when he had got out at Arras, and had been received by
+two shovel-hats in waiting at the station, who presented an
+appropriately ornithological and crow-like appearance.  My
+compatriot and I had gone on to Paris; my compatriot enlightening
+me occasionally with a long list of the enormous grievances of
+French railway travelling:  every one of which, as I am a sinner,
+was perfectly new to me, though I have as much experience of French
+railways as most uncommercials.  I had left him at the terminus
+(through his conviction, against all explanation and remonstrance,
+that his baggage-ticket was his passenger-ticket), insisting in a
+very high temper to the functionary on duty, that in his own
+personal identity he was four packages weighing so many
+kilogrammes--as if he had been Cassim Baba!  I had bathed and
+breakfasted, and was strolling on the bright quays.  The subject of
+my meditations was the question whether it is positively in the
+essence and nature of things, as a certain school of Britons would
+seem to think it, that a Capital must be ensnared and enslaved
+before it can be made beautiful:  when I lifted up my eyes and
+found that my feet, straying like my mind, had brought me to Notre-
+Dame.
+
+That is to say, Notre-Dame was before me, but there was a large
+open space between us.  A very little while gone, I had left that
+space covered with buildings densely crowded; and now it was
+cleared for some new wonder in the way of public Street, Place,
+Garden, Fountain, or all four.  Only the obscene little Morgue,
+slinking on the brink of the river and soon to come down, was left
+there, looking mortally ashamed of itself, and supremely wicked.  I
+had but glanced at this old acquaintance, when I beheld an airy
+procession coming round in front of Notre-Dame, past the great
+hospital.  It had something of a Masaniello look, with fluttering
+striped curtains in the midst of it, and it came dancing round the
+cathedral in the liveliest manner.
+
+I was speculating on a marriage in Blouse-life, or a Christening,
+or some other domestic festivity which I would see out, when I
+found, from the talk of a quick rush of Blouses past me, that it
+was a Body coming to the Morgue.  Having never before chanced upon
+this initiation, I constituted myself a Blouse likewise, and ran
+into the Morgue with the rest.  It was a very muddy day, and we
+took in a quantity of mire with us, and the procession coming in
+upon our heels brought a quantity more.  The procession was in the
+highest spirits, and consisted of idlers who had come with the
+curtained litter from its starting-place, and of all the
+reinforcements it had picked up by the way.  It set the litter down
+in the midst of the Morgue, and then two Custodians proclaimed
+aloud that we were all 'invited' to go out.  This invitation was
+rendered the more pressing, if not the more flattering, by our
+being shoved out, and the folding-gates being barred upon us.
+
+Those who have never seen the Morgue, may see it perfectly, by
+presenting to themselves on indifferently paved coach-house
+accessible from the street by a pair of folding-gates; on the left
+of the coach-house, occupying its width, any large London tailor's
+or linendraper's plate-glass window reaching to the ground; within
+the window, on two rows of inclined plane, what the coach-house has
+to show; hanging above, like irregular stalactites from the roof of
+a cave, a quantity of clothes--the clothes of the dead and buried
+shows of the coach-house.
+
+We had been excited in the highest degree by seeing the Custodians
+pull off their coats and tuck up their shirt-sleeves, as the
+procession came along.  It looked so interestingly like business.
+Shut out in the muddy street, we now became quite ravenous to know
+all about it.  Was it river, pistol, knife, love, gambling,
+robbery, hatred, how many stabs, how many bullets, fresh or
+decomposed, suicide or murder?  All wedged together, and all
+staring at one another with our heads thrust forward, we propounded
+these inquiries and a hundred more such.  Imperceptibly, it came to
+be known that Monsieur the tall and sallow mason yonder, was
+acquainted with the facts.  Would Monsieur the tall and sallow
+mason, surged at by a new wave of us, have the goodness to impart?
+It was but a poor old man, passing along the street under one of
+the new buildings, on whom a stone had fallen, and who had tumbled
+dead.  His age?  Another wave surged up against the tall and sallow
+mason, and our wave swept on and broke, and he was any age from
+sixty-five to ninety.
+
+An old man was not much:  moreover, we could have wished he had
+been killed by human agency--his own, or somebody else's:  the
+latter, preferable--but our comfort was, that he had nothing about
+him to lead to his identification, and that his people must seek
+him here.  Perhaps they were waiting dinner for him even now?  We
+liked that.  Such of us as had pocket-handkerchiefs took a slow,
+intense, protracted wipe at our noses, and then crammed our
+handkerchiefs into the breast of our blouses.  Others of us who had
+no handkerchiefs administered a similar relief to our overwrought
+minds, by means of prolonged smears or wipes of our mouths on our
+sleeves.  One man with a gloomy malformation of brow--a homicidal
+worker in white-lead, to judge from his blue tone of colour, and a
+certain flavour of paralysis pervading him--got his coat-collar
+between his teeth, and bit at it with an appetite.  Several decent
+women arrived upon the outskirts of the crowd, and prepared to
+launch themselves into the dismal coach-house when opportunity
+should come; among them, a pretty young mother, pretending to bite
+the forefinger of her baby-boy, kept it between her rosy lips that
+it might be handy for guiding to point at the show.  Meantime, all
+faces were turned towards the building, and we men waited with a
+fixed and stern resolution:- for the most part with folded arms.
+Surely, it was the only public French sight these uncommercial eyes
+had seen, at which the expectant people did not form en queue.  But
+there was no such order of arrangement here; nothing but a general
+determination to make a rush for it, and a disposition to object to
+some boys who had mounted on the two stone posts by the hinges of
+the gates, with the design of swooping in when the hinges should
+turn.
+
+Now, they turned, and we rushed!  Great pressure, and a scream or
+two from the front.  Then a laugh or two, some expressions of
+disappointment, and a slackening of the pressure and subsidence of
+the struggle.--Old man not there.
+
+'But what would you have?' the Custodian reasonably argues, as he
+looks out at his little door.  'Patience, patience!  We make his
+toilette, gentlemen.  He will be exposed presently.  It is
+necessary to proceed according to rule.  His toilette is not made
+all at a blow.  He will be exposed in good time, gentlemen, in good
+time.'  And so retires, smoking, with a wave of his sleeveless arm
+towards the window, importing, 'Entertain yourselves in the
+meanwhile with the other curiosities.  Fortunately the Museum is
+not empty to-day.'
+
+Who would have thought of public fickleness even at the Morgue?
+But there it was, on that occasion.  Three lately popular articles
+that had been attracting greatly when the litter was first descried
+coming dancing round the corner by the great cathedral, were so
+completely deposed now, that nobody save two little girls (one
+showing them to a doll) would look at them.  Yet the chief of the
+three, the article in the front row, had received jagged injury of
+the left temple; and the other two in the back row, the drowned two
+lying side by side with their heads very slightly turned towards
+each other, seemed to be comparing notes about it.  Indeed, those
+two of the back row were so furtive of appearance, and so (in their
+puffed way) assassinatingly knowing as to the one of the front,
+that it was hard to think the three had never come together in
+their lives, and were only chance companions after death.  Whether
+or no this was the general, as it was the uncommercial, fancy, it
+is not to be disputed that the group had drawn exceedingly within
+ten minutes.  Yet now, the inconstant public turned its back upon
+them, and even leaned its elbows carelessly against the bar outside
+the window and shook off the mud from its shoes, and also lent and
+borrowed fire for pipes.
+
+Custodian re-enters from his door.  'Again once, gentlemen, you are
+invited--'  No further invitation necessary.  Ready dash into the
+street.  Toilette finished.  Old man coming out.
+
+This time, the interest was grown too hot to admit of toleration of
+the boys on the stone posts.  The homicidal white-lead worker made
+a pounce upon one boy who was hoisting himself up, and brought him
+to earth amidst general commendation.  Closely stowed as we were,
+we yet formed into groups--groups of conversation, without
+separation from the mass--to discuss the old man.  Rivals of the
+tall and sallow mason sprang into being, and here again was popular
+inconstancy.  These rivals attracted audiences, and were greedily
+listened to; and whereas they had derived their information solely
+from the tall and sallow one, officious members of the crowd now
+sought to enlighten HIM on their authority.  Changed by this social
+experience into an iron-visaged and inveterate misanthrope, the
+mason glared at mankind, and evidently cherished in his breast the
+wish that the whole of the present company could change places with
+the deceased old man.  And now listeners became inattentive, and
+people made a start forward at a slight sound, and an unholy fire
+kindled in the public eye, and those next the gates beat at them
+impatiently, as if they were of the cannibal species and hungry.
+
+Again the hinges creaked, and we rushed.  Disorderly pressure for
+some time ensued before the uncommercial unit got figured into the
+front row of the sum.  It was strange to see so much heat and
+uproar seething about one poor spare, white-haired old man, quiet
+for evermore.  He was calm of feature and undisfigured, as he lay
+on his back--having been struck upon the hinder part of his head,
+and thrown forward--and something like a tear or two had started
+from the closed eyes, and lay wet upon the face.  The uncommercial
+interest, sated at a glance, directed itself upon the striving
+crowd on either side and behind:  wondering whether one might have
+guessed, from the expression of those faces merely, what kind of
+sight they were looking at.  The differences of expression were not
+many.  There was a little pity, but not much, and that mostly with
+a selfish touch in it--as who would say, 'Shall I, poor I, look
+like that, when the time comes!'  There was more of a secretly
+brooding contemplation and curiosity, as 'That man I don't like,
+and have the grudge against; would such be his appearance, if some
+one--not to mention names--by any chance gave him an knock?'  There
+was a wolfish stare at the object, in which homicidal white-lead
+worker shone conspicuous.  And there was a much more general,
+purposeless, vacant staring at it--like looking at waxwork, without
+a catalogue, and not knowing what to make of it.  But all these
+expressions concurred in possessing the one underlying expression
+of LOOKING AT SOMETHING THAT COULD NOT RETURN A LOOK.  The
+uncommercial notice had established this as very remarkable, when a
+new pressure all at once coming up from the street pinioned him
+ignominiously, and hurried him into the arms (now sleeved again) of
+the Custodian smoking at his door, and answering questions, between
+puffs, with a certain placid meritorious air of not being proud,
+though high in office.  And mentioning pride, it may be observed,
+by the way, that one could not well help investing the original
+sole occupant of the front row with an air depreciatory of the
+legitimate attraction of the poor old man:  while the two in the
+second row seemed to exult at this superseded popularity.
+
+Pacing presently round the garden of the Tower of St. Jacques de la
+Boucherie, and presently again in front of the Hotel de Ville, I
+called to mind a certain desolate open-air Morgue that I happened
+to light upon in London, one day in the hard winter of 1861, and
+which seemed as strange to me, at the time of seeing it, as if I
+had found it in China.  Towards that hour of a winter's afternoon
+when the lamp-lighters are beginning to light the lamps in the
+streets a little before they are wanted, because the darkness
+thickens fast and soon, I was walking in from the country on the
+northern side of the Regent's Park--hard frozen and deserted--when
+I saw an empty Hansom cab drive up to the lodge at Gloucester-gate,
+and the driver with great agitation call to the man there:  who
+quickly reached a long pole from a tree, and, deftly collared by
+the driver, jumped to the step of his little seat, and so the
+Hansom rattled out at the gate, galloping over the iron-bound road.
+I followed running, though not so fast but that when I came to the
+right-hand Canal Bridge, near the cross-path to Chalk Farm, the
+Hansom was stationary, the horse was smoking hot, the long pole was
+idle on the ground, and the driver and the park-keeper were looking
+over the bridge parapet.  Looking over too, I saw, lying on the
+towing-path with her face turned up towards us, a woman, dead a day
+or two, and under thirty, as I guessed, poorly dressed in black.
+The feet were lightly crossed at the ankles, and the dark hair, all
+pushed back from the face, as though that had been the last action
+of her desperate hands, streamed over the ground.  Dabbled all
+about her, was the water and the broken ice that had dropped from
+her dress, and had splashed as she was got out.  The policeman who
+had just got her out, and the passing costermonger who had helped
+him, were standing near the body; the latter with that stare at it
+which I have likened to being at a waxwork exhibition without a
+catalogue; the former, looking over his stock, with professional
+stiffness and coolness, in the direction in which the bearers he
+had sent for were expected.  So dreadfully forlorn, so dreadfully
+sad, so dreadfully mysterious, this spectacle of our dear sister
+here departed!  A barge came up, breaking the floating ice and the
+silence, and a woman steered it.  The man with the horse that towed
+it, cared so little for the body, that the stumbling hoofs had been
+among the hair, and the tow-rope had caught and turned the head,
+before our cry of horror took him to the bridle.  At which sound
+the steering woman looked up at us on the bridge, with contempt
+unutterable, and then looking down at the body with a similar
+expression--as if it were made in another likeness from herself,
+had been informed with other passions, had been lost by other
+chances, had had another nature dragged down to perdition--steered
+a spurning streak of mud at it, and passed on.
+
+A better experience, but also of the Morgue kind, in which chance
+happily made me useful in a slight degree, arose to my remembrance
+as I took my way by the Boulevard de Sebastopol to the brighter
+scenes of Paris.
+
+The thing happened, say five-and-twenty years ago.  I was a modest
+young uncommercial then, and timid and inexperienced.  Many suns
+and winds have browned me in the line, but those were my pale days.
+Having newly taken the lease of a house in a certain distinguished
+metropolitan parish--a house which then appeared to me to be a
+frightfully first-class Family Mansion, involving awful
+responsibilities--I became the prey of a Beadle.  I think the
+Beadle must have seen me going in or coming out, and must have
+observed that I tottered under the weight of my grandeur.  Or he
+may have been in hiding under straw when I bought my first horse
+(in the desirable stable-yard attached to the first-class Family
+Mansion), and when the vendor remarked to me, in an original
+manner, on bringing him for approval, taking his cloth off and
+smacking him, 'There, Sir!  THERE'S a Orse!'  And when I said
+gallantly, 'How much do you want for him?' and when the vendor
+said, 'No more than sixty guineas, from you,' and when I said
+smartly, 'Why not more than sixty from ME?'  And when he said
+crushingly, 'Because upon my soul and body he'd be considered cheap
+at seventy, by one who understood the subject--but you don't.'--I
+say, the Beadle may have been in hiding under straw, when this
+disgrace befell me, or he may have noted that I was too raw and
+young an Atlas to carry the first-class Family Mansion in a knowing
+manner.  Be this as it may, the Beadle did what Melancholy did to
+the youth in Gray's Elegy--he marked me for his own.  And the way
+in which the Beadle did it, was this:  he summoned me as a Juryman
+on his Coroner's Inquests.
+
+In my first feverish alarm I repaired 'for safety and for succour'-
+-like those sagacious Northern shepherds who, having had no
+previous reason whatever to believe in young Norval, very prudently
+did not originate the hazardous idea of believing in him--to a deep
+householder.  This profound man informed me that the Beadle counted
+on my buying him off; on my bribing him not to summon me; and that
+if I would attend an Inquest with a cheerful countenance, and
+profess alacrity in that branch of my country's service, the Beadle
+would be disheartened, and would give up the game.
+
+I roused my energies, and the next time the wily Beadle summoned
+me, I went.  The Beadle was the blankest Beadle I have ever looked
+on when I answered to my name; and his discomfiture gave me courage
+to go through with it.
+
+We were impanelled to inquire concerning the death of a very little
+mite of a child.  It was the old miserable story.  Whether the
+mother had committed the minor offence of concealing the birth, or
+whether she had committed the major offence of killing the child,
+was the question on which we were wanted.  We must commit her on
+one of the two issues.
+
+The Inquest came off in the parish workhouse, and I have yet a
+lively impression that I was unanimously received by my brother
+Jurymen as a brother of the utmost conceivable insignificance.
+Also, that before we began, a broker who had lately cheated me
+fearfully in the matter of a pair of card-tables, was for the
+utmost rigour of the law.  I remember that we sat in a sort of
+board-room, on such very large square horse-hair chairs that I
+wondered what race of Patagonians they were made for; and further,
+that an undertaker gave me his card when we were in the full moral
+freshness of having just been sworn, as 'an inhabitant that was
+newly come into the parish, and was likely to have a young family.'
+The case was then stated to us by the Coroner, and then we went
+down-stairs--led by the plotting Beadle--to view the body.  From
+that day to this, the poor little figure, on which that sounding
+legal appellation was bestowed, has lain in the same place and with
+the same surroundings, to my thinking.  In a kind of crypt devoted
+to the warehousing of the parochial coffins, and in the midst of a
+perfect Panorama of coffins of all sizes, it was stretched on a
+box; the mother had put it in her box--this box--almost as soon as
+it was born, and it had been presently found there.  It had been
+opened, and neatly sewn up, and regarded from that point of view,
+it looked like a stuffed creature.  It rested on a clean white
+cloth, with a surgical instrument or so at hand, and regarded from
+that point of view, it looked as if the cloth were 'laid,' and the
+Giant were coming to dinner.  There was nothing repellent about the
+poor piece of innocence, and it demanded a mere form of looking at.
+So, we looked at an old pauper who was going about among the
+coffins with a foot rule, as if he were a case of Self-Measurement;
+and we looked at one another; and we said the place was well
+whitewashed anyhow; and then our conversational powers as a British
+Jury flagged, and the foreman said, 'All right, gentlemen?  Back
+again, Mr. Beadle!'
+
+The miserable young creature who had given birth to this child
+within a very few days, and who had cleaned the cold wet door-steps
+immediately afterwards, was brought before us when we resumed our
+horse-hair chairs, and was present during the proceedings.  She had
+a horse-hair chair herself, being very weak and ill; and I remember
+how she turned to the unsympathetic nurse who attended her, and who
+might have been the figure-head of a pauper-ship, and how she hid
+her face and sobs and tears upon that wooden shoulder.  I remember,
+too, how hard her mistress was upon her (she was a servant-of-all-
+work), and with what a cruel pertinacity that piece of Virtue spun
+her thread of evidence double, by intertwisting it with the
+sternest thread of construction.  Smitten hard by the terrible low
+wail from the utterly friendless orphan girl, which never ceased
+during the whole inquiry, I took heart to ask this witness a
+question or two, which hopefully admitted of an answer that might
+give a favourable turn to the case.  She made the turn as little
+favourable as it could be, but it did some good, and the Coroner,
+who was nobly patient and humane (he was the late Mr. Wakley), cast
+a look of strong encouragement in my direction.  Then, we had the
+doctor who had made the examination, and the usual tests as to
+whether the child was born alive; but he was a timid, muddle-headed
+doctor, and got confused and contradictory, and wouldn't say this,
+and couldn't answer for that, and the immaculate broker was too
+much for him, and our side slid back again.  However, I tried
+again, and the Coroner backed me again, for which I ever afterwards
+felt grateful to him as I do now to his memory; and we got another
+favourable turn, out of some other witness, some member of the
+family with a strong prepossession against the sinner; and I think
+we had the doctor back again; and I know that the Coroner summed up
+for our side, and that I and my British brothers turned round to
+discuss our verdict, and get ourselves into great difficulties with
+our large chairs and the broker.  At that stage of the case I tried
+hard again, being convinced that I had cause for it; and at last we
+found for the minor offence of only concealing the birth; and the
+poor desolate creature, who had been taken out during our
+deliberation, being brought in again to be told of the verdict,
+then dropped upon her knees before us, with protestations that we
+were right--protestations among the most affecting that I have ever
+heard in my life--and was carried away insensible.
+
+(In private conversation after this was all over, the Coroner
+showed me his reasons as a trained surgeon, for perceiving it to be
+impossible that the child could, under the most favourable
+circumstances, have drawn many breaths, in the very doubtful case
+of its having ever breathed at all; this, owing to the discovery of
+some foreign matter in the windpipe, quite irreconcilable with many
+moments of life.)
+
+When the agonised girl had made those final protestations, I had
+seen her face, and it was in unison with her distracted heartbroken
+voice, and it was very moving.  It certainly did not impress me by
+any beauty that it had, and if I ever see it again in another world
+I shall only know it by the help of some new sense or intelligence.
+But it came to me in my sleep that night, and I selfishly dismissed
+it in the most efficient way I could think of.  I caused some extra
+care to be taken of her in the prison, and counsel to be retained
+for her defence when she was tried at the Old Bailey; and her
+sentence was lenient, and her history and conduct proved that it
+was right.  In doing the little I did for her, I remember to have
+had the kind help of some gentle-hearted functionary to whom I
+addressed myself--but what functionary I have long forgotten--who I
+suppose was officially present at the Inquest.
+
+I regard this as a very notable uncommercial experience, because
+this good came of a Beadle.  And to the best of my knowledge,
+information, and belief, it is the only good that ever did come of
+a Beadle since the first Beadle put on his cocked-hat.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX--BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS
+
+
+
+It came into my mind that I would recall in these notes a few of
+the many hostelries I have rested at in the course of my journeys;
+and, indeed, I had taken up my pen for the purpose, when I was
+baffled by an accidental circumstance.  It was the having to leave
+off, to wish the owner of a certain bright face that looked in at
+my door, 'many happy returns of the day.'  Thereupon a new thought
+came into my mind, driving its predecessor out, and I began to
+recall--instead of Inns--the birthdays that I have put up at, on my
+way to this present sheet of paper.
+
+I can very well remember being taken out to visit some peach-faced
+creature in a blue sash, and shoes to correspond, whose life I
+supposed to consist entirely of birthdays.  Upon seed-cake, sweet
+wine, and shining presents, that glorified young person seemed to
+me to be exclusively reared.  At so early a stage of my travels did
+I assist at the anniversary of her nativity (and become enamoured
+of her), that I had not yet acquired the recondite knowledge that a
+birthday is the common property of all who are born, but supposed
+it to be a special gift bestowed by the favouring Heavens on that
+one distinguished infant.  There was no other company, and we sat
+in a shady bower--under a table, as my better (or worse) knowledge
+leads me to believe--and were regaled with saccharine substances
+and liquids, until it was time to part.  A bitter powder was
+administered to me next morning, and I was wretched.  On the whole,
+a pretty accurate foreshadowing of my more mature experiences in
+such wise!
+
+Then came the time when, inseparable from one's own birthday, was a
+certain sense of merit, a consciousness of well-earned distinction.
+When I regarded my birthday as a graceful achievement of my own, a
+monument of my perseverance, independence, and good sense,
+redounding greatly to my honour.  This was at about the period when
+Olympia Squires became involved in the anniversary.  Olympia was
+most beautiful (of course), and I loved her to that degree, that I
+used to be obliged to get out of my little bed in the night,
+expressly to exclaim to Solitude, 'O, Olympia Squires!'  Visions of
+Olympia, clothed entirely in sage-green, from which I infer a
+defectively educated taste on the part of her respected parents,
+who were necessarily unacquainted with the South Kensington Museum,
+still arise before me.  Truth is sacred, and the visions are
+crowned by a shining white beaver bonnet, impossibly suggestive of
+a little feminine postboy.  My memory presents a birthday when
+Olympia and I were taken by an unfeeling relative--some cruel
+uncle, or the like--to a slow torture called an Orrery.  The
+terrible instrument was set up at the local Theatre, and I had
+expressed a profane wish in the morning that it was a Play:  for
+which a serious aunt had probed my conscience deep, and my pocket
+deeper, by reclaiming a bestowed half-crown.  It was a venerable
+and a shabby Orrery, at least one thousand stars and twenty-five
+comets behind the age.  Nevertheless, it was awful.  When the low-
+spirited gentleman with a wand said, 'Ladies and gentlemen'
+(meaning particularly Olympia and me), 'the lights are about to be
+put out, but there is not the slightest cause for alarm,' it was
+very alarming.  Then the planets and stars began.  Sometimes they
+wouldn't come on, sometimes they wouldn't go off, sometimes they
+had holes in them, and mostly they didn't seem to be good
+likenesses.  All this time the gentleman with the wand was going on
+in the dark (tapping away at the heavenly bodies between whiles,
+like a wearisome woodpecker), about a sphere revolving on its own
+axis eight hundred and ninety-seven thousand millions of times--or
+miles--in two hundred and sixty-three thousand five hundred and
+twenty-four millions of something elses, until I thought if this
+was a birthday it were better never to have been born.  Olympia,
+also, became much depressed, and we both slumbered and woke cross,
+and still the gentleman was going on in the dark--whether up in the
+stars, or down on the stage, it would have been hard to make out,
+if it had been worth trying--cyphering away about planes of orbits,
+to such an infamous extent that Olympia, stung to madness, actually
+kicked me.  A pretty birthday spectacle, when the lights were
+turned up again, and all the schools in the town (including the
+National, who had come in for nothing, and serve them right, for
+they were always throwing stones) were discovered with exhausted
+countenances, screwing their knuckles into their eyes, or clutching
+their heads of hair.  A pretty birthday speech when Dr. Sleek of
+the City-Free bobbed up his powdered head in the stage-box, and
+said that before this assembly dispersed he really must beg to
+express his entire approval of a lecture as improving, as
+informing, as devoid of anything that could call a blush into the
+cheek of youth, as any it had ever been his lot to hear delivered.
+A pretty birthday altogether, when Astronomy couldn't leave poor
+Small Olympia Squires and me alone, but must put an end to our
+loves!  For, we never got over it; the threadbare Orrery outwore
+our mutual tenderness; the man with the wand was too much for the
+boy with the bow.
+
+When shall I disconnect the combined smells of oranges, brown
+paper, and straw, from those other birthdays at school, when the
+coming hamper casts its shadow before, and when a week of social
+harmony--shall I add of admiring and affectionate popularity--led
+up to that Institution?  What noble sentiments were expressed to me
+in the days before the hamper, what vows of friendship were sworn
+to me, what exceedingly old knives were given me, what generous
+avowals of having been in the wrong emanated from else obstinate
+spirits once enrolled among my enemies!  The birthday of the potted
+game and guava jelly, is still made special to me by the noble
+conduct of Bully Globson.  Letters from home had mysteriously
+inquired whether I should be much surprised and disappointed if
+among the treasures in the coming hamper I discovered potted game,
+and guava jelly from the Western Indies.  I had mentioned those
+hints in confidence to a few friends, and had promised to give
+away, as I now see reason to believe, a handsome covey of
+partridges potted, and about a hundredweight of guava jelly.  It
+was now that Globson, Bully no more, sought me out in the
+playground.  He was a big fat boy, with a big fat head and a big
+fat fist, and at the beginning of that Half had raised such a bump
+on my forehead that I couldn't get my hat of state on, to go to
+church.  He said that after an interval of cool reflection (four
+months) he now felt this blow to have been an error of judgment,
+and that he wished to apologise for the same.  Not only that, but
+holding down his big head between his two big hands in order that I
+might reach it conveniently, he requested me, as an act of justice
+which would appease his awakened conscience, to raise a retributive
+bump upon it, in the presence of witnesses.  This handsome proposal
+I modestly declined, and he then embraced me, and we walked away
+conversing.  We conversed respecting the West India Islands, and,
+in the pursuit of knowledge he asked me with much interest whether
+in the course of my reading I had met with any reliable description
+of the mode of manufacturing guava jelly; or whether I had ever
+happened to taste that conserve, which he had been given to
+understand was of rare excellence.
+
+Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty; and then with the waning
+months came an ever augmenting sense of the dignity of twenty-one.
+Heaven knows I had nothing to 'come into,' save the bare birthday,
+and yet I esteemed it as a great possession.  I now and then paved
+the way to my state of dignity, by beginning a proposition with the
+casual words, 'say that a man of twenty-one,' or by the incidental
+assumption of a fact that could not sanely be disputed, as, 'for
+when a fellow comes to be a man of twenty-one.'  I gave a party on
+the occasion.  She was there.  It is unnecessary to name Her, more
+particularly; She was older than I, and had pervaded every chink
+and crevice of my mind for three or four years.  I had held volumes
+of Imaginary Conversations with her mother on the subject of our
+union, and I had written letters more in number than Horace
+Walpole's, to that discreet woman, soliciting her daughter's hand
+in marriage.  I had never had the remotest intention of sending any
+of those letters; but to write them, and after a few days tear them
+up, had been a sublime occupation.  Sometimes, I had begun
+'Honoured Madam.  I think that a lady gifted with those powers of
+observation which I know you to possess, and endowed with those
+womanly sympathies with the young and ardent which it were more
+than heresy to doubt, can scarcely have failed to discover that I
+love your adorable daughter, deeply, devotedly.'  In less buoyant
+states of mind I had begun, 'Bear with me, Dear Madam, bear with a
+daring wretch who is about to make a surprising confession to you,
+wholly unanticipated by yourself, and which he beseeches you to
+commit to the flames as soon as you have become aware to what a
+towering height his mad ambition soars.'  At other times--periods
+of profound mental depression, when She had gone out to balls where
+I was not--the draft took the affecting form of a paper to be left
+on my table after my departure to the confines of the globe.  As
+thus:  'For Mrs. Onowenever, these lines when the hand that traces
+them shall be far away.  I could not bear the daily torture of
+hopelessly loving the dear one whom I will not name.  Broiling on
+the coast of Africa, or congealing on the shores of Greenland, I am
+far far better there than here.'  (In this sentiment my cooler
+judgment perceives that the family of the beloved object would have
+most completely concurred.)  'If I ever emerge from obscurity, and
+my name is ever heralded by Fame, it will be for her dear sake.  If
+I ever amass Gold, it will be to pour it at her feet.  Should I on
+the other hand become the prey of Ravens--'  I doubt if I ever
+quite made up my mind what was to be done in that affecting case; I
+tried 'then it is better so;' but not feeling convinced that it
+would be better so, I vacillated between leaving all else blank,
+which looked expressive and bleak, or winding up with 'Farewell!'
+
+This fictitious correspondence of mine is to blame for the
+foregoing digression.  I was about to pursue the statement that on
+my twenty-first birthday I gave a party, and She was there.  It was
+a beautiful party.  There was not a single animate or inanimate
+object connected with it (except the company and myself) that I had
+ever seen before.  Everything was hired, and the mercenaries in
+attendance were profound strangers to me.  Behind a door, in the
+crumby part of the night when wine-glasses were to be found in
+unexpected spots, I spoke to Her--spoke out to Her.  What passed, I
+cannot as a man of honour reveal.  She was all angelical
+gentleness, but a word was mentioned--a short and dreadful word of
+three letters, beginning with a B- which, as I remarked at the
+moment, 'scorched my brain.'  She went away soon afterwards, and
+when the hollow throng (though to be sure it was no fault of
+theirs) dispersed, I issued forth, with a dissipated scorner, and,
+as I mentioned expressly to him, 'sought oblivion.'  It was found,
+with a dreadful headache in it, but it didn't last; for, in the
+shaming light of next day's noon, I raised my heavy head in bed,
+looking back to the birthdays behind me, and tracking the circle by
+which I had got round, after all, to the bitter powder and the
+wretchedness again.
+
+This reactionary powder (taken so largely by the human race I am
+inclined to regard it as the Universal Medicine once sought for in
+Laboratories) is capable of being made up in another form for
+birthday use.  Anybody's long-lost brother will do ill to turn up
+on a birthday.  If I had a long-lost brother I should know
+beforehand that he would prove a tremendous fraternal failure if he
+appointed to rush into my arms on my birthday.  The first Magic
+Lantern I ever saw, was secretly and elaborately planned to be the
+great effect of a very juvenile birthday; but it wouldn't act, and
+its images were dim.  My experience of adult birthday Magic
+Lanterns may possibly have been unfortunate, but has certainly been
+similar.  I have an illustrative birthday in my eye:  a birthday of
+my friend Flipfield, whose birthdays had long been remarkable as
+social successes.  There had been nothing set or formal about them;
+Flipfield having been accustomed merely to say, two or three days
+before, 'Don't forget to come and dine, old boy, according to
+custom;'--I don't know what he said to the ladies he invited, but I
+may safely assume it NOT to have been 'old girl.'  Those were
+delightful gatherings, and were enjoyed by all participators.  In
+an evil hour, a long-lost brother of Flipfield's came to light in
+foreign parts.  Where he had been hidden, or what he had been
+doing, I don't know, for Flipfield vaguely informed me that he had
+turned up 'on the banks of the Ganges'--speaking of him as if he
+had been washed ashore.  The Long-lost was coming home, and
+Flipfield made an unfortunate calculation, based on the well-known
+regularity of the P. and O. Steamers, that matters might be so
+contrived as that the Long-lost should appear in the nick of time
+on his (Flipfield's) birthday.  Delicacy commanded that I should
+repress the gloomy anticipations with which my soul became fraught
+when I heard of this plan.  The fatal day arrived, and we assembled
+in force.  Mrs. Flipfield senior formed an interesting feature in
+the group, with a blue-veined miniature of the late Mr. Flipfield
+round her neck, in an oval, resembling a tart from the
+pastrycook's:  his hair powdered, and the bright buttons on his
+coat, evidently very like.  She was accompanied by Miss Flipfield,
+the eldest of her numerous family, who held her pocket-handkerchief
+to her bosom in a majestic manner, and spoke to all of us (none of
+us had ever seen her before), in pious and condoning tones, of all
+the quarrels that had taken place in the family, from her infancy--
+which must have been a long time ago--down to that hour.  The Long-
+lost did not appear.  Dinner, half an hour later than usual, was
+announced, and still no Long-lost.  We sat down to table.  The
+knife and fork of the Long-lost made a vacuum in Nature, and when
+the champagne came round for the first time, Flipfield gave him up
+for the day, and had them removed.  It was then that the Long-lost
+gained the height of his popularity with the company; for my own
+part, I felt convinced that I loved him dearly.  Flipfield's
+dinners are perfect, and he is the easiest and best of
+entertainers.  Dinner went on brilliantly, and the more the Long-
+lost didn't come, the more comfortable we grew, and the more highly
+we thought of him.  Flipfield's own man (who has a regard for me)
+was in the act of struggling with an ignorant stipendiary, to wrest
+from him the wooden leg of a Guinea-fowl which he was pressing on
+my acceptance, and to substitute a slice of the breast, when a
+ringing at the door-bell suspended the strife.  I looked round me,
+and perceived the sudden pallor which I knew my own visage
+revealed, reflected in the faces of the company.  Flipfield
+hurriedly excused himself, went out, was absent for about a minute
+or two, and then re-entered with the Long-lost.
+
+I beg to say distinctly that if the stranger had brought Mont Blanc
+with him, or had come attended by a retinue of eternal snows, he
+could not have chilled the circle to the marrow in a more efficient
+manner.  Embodied Failure sat enthroned upon the Long-lost's brow,
+and pervaded him to his Long-lost boots.  In vain Mrs. Flipfield
+senior, opening her arms, exclaimed, 'My Tom!' and pressed his nose
+against the counterfeit presentment of his other parent.  In vain
+Miss Flipfield, in the first transports of this re-union, showed
+him a dint upon her maidenly cheek, and asked him if he remembered
+when he did that with the bellows?  We, the bystanders, were
+overcome, but overcome by the palpable, undisguisable, utter, and
+total break-down of the Long-lost.  Nothing he could have done
+would have set him right with us but his instant return to the
+Ganges.  In the very same moments it became established that the
+feeling was reciprocal, and that the Long-lost detested us.  When a
+friend of the family (not myself, upon my honour), wishing to set
+things going again, asked him, while he partook of soup--asked him
+with an amiability of intention beyond all praise, but with a
+weakness of execution open to defeat--what kind of river he
+considered the Ganges, the Long-lost, scowling at the friend of the
+family over his spoon, as one of an abhorrent race, replied, 'Why,
+a river of water, I suppose,' and spooned his soup into himself
+with a malignancy of hand and eye that blighted the amiable
+questioner.  Not an opinion could be elicited from the Long-lost,
+in unison with the sentiments of any individual present.  He
+contradicted Flipfield dead, before he had eaten his salmon.  He
+had no idea--or affected to have no idea--that it was his brother's
+birthday, and on the communication of that interesting fact to him,
+merely wanted to make him out four years older than he was.  He was
+an antipathetical being, with a peculiar power and gift of treading
+on everybody's tenderest place.  They talk in America of a man's
+'Platform.'  I should describe the Platform of the Long-lost as a
+Platform composed of other people's corns, on which he had stumped
+his way, with all his might and main, to his present position.  It
+is needless to add that Flipfield's great birthday went by the
+board, and that he was a wreck when I pretended at parting to wish
+him many happy returns of it.
+
+There is another class of birthdays at which I have so frequently
+assisted, that I may assume such birthdays to be pretty well known
+to the human race.  My friend Mayday's birthday is an example.  The
+guests have no knowledge of one another except on that one day in
+the year, and are annually terrified for a week by the prospect of
+meeting one another again.  There is a fiction among us that we
+have uncommon reasons for being particularly lively and spirited on
+the occasion, whereas deep despondency is no phrase for the
+expression of our feelings.  But the wonderful feature of the case
+is, that we are in tacit accordance to avoid the subject--to keep
+it as far off as possible, as long as possible--and to talk about
+anything else, rather than the joyful event.  I may even go so far
+as to assert that there is a dumb compact among us that we will
+pretend that it is NOT Mayday's birthday.  A mysterious and gloomy
+Being, who is said to have gone to school with Mayday, and who is
+so lank and lean that he seriously impugns the Dietary of the
+establishment at which they were jointly educated, always leads us,
+as I may say, to the block, by laying his grisly hand on a decanter
+and begging us to fill our glasses.  The devices and pretences that
+I have seen put in practice to defer the fatal moment, and to
+interpose between this man and his purpose, are innumerable.  I
+have known desperate guests, when they saw the grisly hand
+approaching the decanter, wildly to begin, without any antecedent
+whatsoever, 'That reminds me--' and to plunge into long stories.
+When at last the hand and the decanter come together, a shudder, a
+palpable perceptible shudder, goes round the table.  We receive the
+reminder that it is Mayday's birthday, as if it were the
+anniversary of some profound disgrace he had undergone, and we
+sought to comfort him.  And when we have drunk Mayday's health, and
+wished him many happy returns, we are seized for some moments with
+a ghastly blitheness, an unnatural levity, as if we were in the
+first flushed reaction of having undergone a surgical operation.
+
+Birthdays of this species have a public as well as a private phase.
+My 'boyhood's home,' Dullborough, presents a case in point.  An
+Immortal Somebody was wanted in Dullborough, to dimple for a day
+the stagnant face of the waters; he was rather wanted by
+Dullborough generally, and much wanted by the principal hotel-
+keeper.  The County history was looked up for a locally Immortal
+Somebody, but the registered Dullborough worthies were all
+Nobodies.  In this state of things, it is hardly necessary to
+record that Dullborough did what every man does when he wants to
+write a book or deliver a lecture, and is provided with all the
+materials except a subject.  It fell back upon Shakespeare.
+
+No sooner was it resolved to celebrate Shakespeare's birthday in
+Dullborough, than the popularity of the immortal bard became
+surprising.  You might have supposed the first edition of his works
+to have been published last week, and enthusiastic Dullborough to
+have got half through them.  (I doubt, by the way, whether it had
+ever done half that, but that is a private opinion.)  A young
+gentleman with a sonnet, the retention of which for two years had
+enfeebled his mind and undermined his knees, got the sonnet into
+the Dullborough Warden, and gained flesh.  Portraits of Shakespeare
+broke out in the bookshop windows, and our principal artist painted
+a large original portrait in oils for the decoration of the dining-
+room.  It was not in the least like any of the other Portraits, and
+was exceedingly admired, the head being much swollen.  At the
+Institution, the Debating Society discussed the new question, Was
+there sufficient ground for supposing that the Immortal Shakespeare
+ever stole deer?  This was indignantly decided by an overwhelming
+majority in the negative; indeed, there was but one vote on the
+Poaching side, and that was the vote of the orator who had
+undertaken to advocate it, and who became quite an obnoxious
+character--particularly to the Dullborough 'roughs,' who were about
+as well informed on the matter as most other people.  Distinguished
+speakers were invited down, and very nearly came (but not quite).
+Subscriptions were opened, and committees sat, and it would have
+been far from a popular measure in the height of the excitement, to
+have told Dullborough that it wasn't Stratford-upon-Avon.  Yet,
+after all these preparations, when the great festivity took place,
+and the portrait, elevated aloft, surveyed the company as if it
+were in danger of springing a mine of intellect and blowing itself
+up, it did undoubtedly happen, according to the inscrutable
+mysteries of things, that nobody could be induced, not to say to
+touch upon Shakespeare, but to come within a mile of him, until the
+crack speaker of Dullborough rose to propose the immortal memory.
+Which he did with the perplexing and astonishing result that before
+he had repeated the great name half-a-dozen times, or had been upon
+his legs as many minutes, he was assailed with a general shout of
+'Question.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI--THE SHORT-TIMERS
+
+
+
+'Within so many yards of this Covent-garden lodging of mine, as
+within so many yards of Westminster Abbey, Saint Paul's Cathedral,
+the Houses of Parliament, the Prisons, the Courts of Justice, all
+the Institutions that govern the land, I can find--MUST find,
+whether I will or no--in the open streets, shameful instances of
+neglect of children, intolerable toleration of the engenderment of
+paupers, idlers, thieves, races of wretched and destructive
+cripples both in body and mind, a misery to themselves, a misery to
+the community, a disgrace to civilisation, and an outrage on
+Christianity.--I know it to be a fact as easy of demonstration as
+any sum in any of the elementary rules of arithmetic, that if the
+State would begin its work and duty at the beginning, and would
+with the strong hand take those children out of the streets, while
+they are yet children, and wisely train them, it would make them a
+part of England's glory, not its shame--of England's strength, not
+its weakness--would raise good soldiers and sailors, and good
+citizens, and many great men, out of the seeds of its criminal
+population.  Yet I go on bearing with the enormity as if it were
+nothing, and I go on reading the Parliamentary Debates as if they
+were something, and I concern myself far more about one railway-
+bridge across a public thoroughfare, than about a dozen generations
+of scrofula, ignorance, wickedness, prostitution, poverty, and
+felony.  I can slip out at my door, in the small hours after any
+midnight, and, in one circuit of the purlieus of Covent-garden
+Market, can behold a state of infancy and youth, as vile as if a
+Bourbon sat upon the English throne; a great police force looking
+on with authority to do no more than worry and hunt the dreadful
+vermin into corners, and there leave them.  Within the length of a
+few streets I can find a workhouse, mismanaged with that dull
+short-sighted obstinacy that its greatest opportunities as to the
+children it receives are lost, and yet not a farthing saved to any
+one.  But the wheel goes round, and round, and round; and because
+it goes round--so I am told by the politest authorities--it goes
+well.'
+
+Thus I reflected, one day in the Whitsun week last past, as I
+floated down the Thames among the bridges, looking--not
+inappropriately--at the drags that were hanging up at certain dirty
+stairs to hook the drowned out, and at the numerous conveniences
+provided to facilitate their tumbling in.  My object in that
+uncommercial journey called up another train of thought, and it ran
+as follows:
+
+'When I was at school, one of seventy boys, I wonder by what secret
+understanding our attention began to wander when we had pored over
+our books for some hours.  I wonder by what ingenuity we brought on
+that confused state of mind when sense became nonsense, when
+figures wouldn't work, when dead languages wouldn't construe, when
+live languages wouldn't be spoken, when memory wouldn't come, when
+dulness and vacancy wouldn't go.  I cannot remember that we ever
+conspired to be sleepy after dinner, or that we ever particularly
+wanted to be stupid, and to have flushed faces and hot beating
+heads, or to find blank hopelessness and obscurity this afternoon
+in what would become perfectly clear and bright in the freshness of
+to-morrow morning.  We suffered for these things, and they made us
+miserable enough.  Neither do I remember that we ever bound
+ourselves by any secret oath or other solemn obligation, to find
+the seats getting too hard to be sat upon after a certain time; or
+to have intolerable twitches in our legs, rendering us aggressive
+and malicious with those members; or to be troubled with a similar
+uneasiness in our elbows, attended with fistic consequences to our
+neighbours; or to carry two pounds of lead in the chest, four
+pounds in the head, and several active blue-bottles in each ear.
+Yet, for certain, we suffered under those distresses, and were
+always charged at for labouring under them, as if we had brought
+them on, of our own deliberate act and deed.  As to the mental
+portion of them being my own fault in my own case--I should like to
+ask any well-trained and experienced teacher, not to say
+psychologist.  And as to the physical portion--I should like to ask
+PROFESSOR OWEN.'
+
+It happened that I had a small bundle of papers with me, on what is
+called 'The Half-Time System' in schools.  Referring to one of
+those papers I found that the indefatigable MR. CHADWICK had been
+beforehand with me, and had already asked Professor Owen:  who had
+handsomely replied that I was not to blame, but that, being
+troubled with a skeleton, and having been constituted according to
+certain natural laws, I and my skeleton were unfortunately bound by
+those laws even in school--and had comported ourselves accordingly.
+Much comforted by the good Professor's being on my side, I read on
+to discover whether the indefatigable Mr. Chadwick had taken up the
+mental part of my afflictions.  I found that he had, and that he
+had gained on my behalf, SIR BENJAMIN BRODIE, SIR DAVID WILKIE, SIR
+WALTER SCOTT, and the common sense of mankind.  For which I beg Mr.
+Chadwick, if this should meet his eye, to accept my warm
+acknowledgments.
+
+Up to that time I had retained a misgiving that the seventy
+unfortunates of whom I was one, must have been, without knowing it,
+leagued together by the spirit of evil in a sort of perpetual Guy
+Fawkes Plot, to grope about in vaults with dark lanterns after a
+certain period of continuous study.  But now the misgiving
+vanished, and I floated on with a quieted mind to see the Half-Time
+System in action.  For that was the purpose of my journey, both by
+steamboat on the Thames, and by very dirty railway on the shore.
+To which last institution, I beg to recommend the legal use of coke
+as engine-fuel, rather than the illegal use of coal; the
+recommendation is quite disinterested, for I was most liberally
+supplied with small coal on the journey, for which no charge was
+made.  I had not only my eyes, nose, and ears filled, but my hat,
+and all my pockets, and my pocket-book, and my watch.
+
+The V.D.S.C.R.C. (or Very Dirty and Small Coal Railway Company)
+delivered me close to my destination, and I soon found the Half-
+Time System established in spacious premises, and freely placed at
+my convenience and disposal.
+
+What would I see first of the Half-Time System?  I chose Military
+Drill.  'Atten-tion!'  Instantly a hundred boys stood forth in the
+paved yard as one boy; bright, quick, eager, steady, watchful for
+the look of command, instant and ready for the word.  Not only was
+there complete precision--complete accord to the eye and to the
+ear--but an alertness in the doing of the thing which deprived it,
+curiously, of its monotonous or mechanical character.  There was
+perfect uniformity, and yet an individual spirit and emulation.  No
+spectator could doubt that the boys liked it.  With non-
+commissioned officers varying from a yard to a yard and a half
+high, the result could not possibly have been attained otherwise.
+They marched, and counter-marched, and formed in line and square,
+and company, and single file and double file, and performed a
+variety of evolutions; all most admirably.  In respect of an air of
+enjoyable understanding of what they were about, which seems to be
+forbidden to English soldiers, the boys might have been small
+French troops.  When they were dismissed and the broadsword
+exercise, limited to a much smaller number, succeeded, the boys who
+had no part in that new drill, either looked on attentively, or
+disported themselves in a gymnasium hard by.  The steadiness of the
+broadsword boys on their short legs, and the firmness with which
+they sustained the different positions, was truly remarkable.
+
+The broadsword exercise over, suddenly there was great excitement
+and a rush.  Naval Drill!
+
+In the corner of the ground stood a decked mimic ship, with real
+masts, yards, and sails--mainmast seventy feet high.  At the word
+of command from the Skipper of this ship--a mahogany-faced Old
+Salt, with the indispensable quid in his cheek, the true nautical
+roll, and all wonderfully complete--the rigging was covered with a
+swarm of boys:  one, the first to spring into the shrouds,
+outstripping all the others, and resting on the truck of the main-
+topmast in no time.
+
+And now we stood out to sea, in a most amazing manner; the Skipper
+himself, the whole crew, the Uncommercial, and all hands present,
+implicitly believing that there was not a moment to lose, that the
+wind had that instant chopped round and sprung up fair, and that we
+were away on a voyage round the world.  Get all sail upon her!
+With a will, my lads!  Lay out upon the main-yard there!  Look
+alive at the weather earring!  Cheery, my boys!  Let go the sheet,
+now!  Stand by at the braces, you!  With a will, aloft there!
+Belay, starboard watch!  Fifer!  Come aft, fifer, and give 'em a
+tune!  Forthwith, springs up fifer, fife in hand--smallest boy ever
+seen--big lump on temple, having lately fallen down on a paving-
+stone--gives 'em a tune with all his might and main.  Hoo-roar,
+fifer!  With a will, my lads!  Tip 'em a livelier one, fifer!
+Fifer tips 'em a livelier one, and excitement increases.  Shake 'em
+out, my lads!  Well done!  There you have her!  Pretty, pretty!
+Every rag upon her she can carry, wind right astarn, and ship
+cutting through the water fifteen knots an hour!
+
+At this favourable moment of her voyage, I gave the alarm 'A man
+overboard!' (on the gravel), but he was immediately recovered, none
+the worse.  Presently, I observed the Skipper overboard, but
+forbore to mention it, as he seemed in no wise disconcerted by the
+accident.  Indeed, I soon came to regard the Skipper as an
+amphibious creature, for he was so perpetually plunging overboard
+to look up at the hands aloft, that he was oftener in the bosom of
+the ocean than on deck.  His pride in his crew on those occasions
+was delightful, and the conventional unintelligibility of his
+orders in the ears of uncommercial landlubbers and loblolly boys,
+though they were always intelligible to the crew, was hardly less
+pleasant.  But we couldn't expect to go on in this way for ever;
+dirty weather came on, and then worse weather, and when we least
+expected it we got into tremendous difficulties.  Screw loose in
+the chart perhaps--something certainly wrong somewhere--but here we
+were with breakers ahead, my lads, driving head on, slap on a lee
+shore!  The Skipper broached this terrific announcement in such
+great agitation, that the small fifer, not fifeing now, but
+standing looking on near the wheel with his fife under his arm,
+seemed for the moment quite unboyed, though he speedily recovered
+his presence of mind.  In the trying circumstances that ensued, the
+Skipper and the crew proved worthy of one another.  The Skipper got
+dreadfully hoarse, but otherwise was master of the situation.  The
+man at the wheel did wonders; all hands (except the fifer) were
+turned up to wear ship; and I observed the fifer, when we were at
+our greatest extremity, to refer to some document in his waistcoat-
+pocket, which I conceived to be his will.  I think she struck.  I
+was not myself conscious of any collision, but I saw the Skipper so
+very often washed overboard and back again, that I could only
+impute it to the beating of the ship.  I am not enough of a seaman
+to describe the manoeuvres by which we were saved, but they made
+the Skipper very hot (French polishing his mahogany face) and the
+crew very nimble, and succeeded to a marvel; for, within a few
+minutes of the first alarm, we had wore ship and got her off, and
+were all a-tauto--which I felt very grateful for:  not that I knew
+what it was, but that I perceived that we had not been all a-tauto
+lately.  Land now appeared on our weather-bow, and we shaped our
+course for it, having the wind abeam, and frequently changing the
+man at the helm, in order that every man might have his spell.  We
+worked into harbour under prosperous circumstances, and furled our
+sails, and squared our yards, and made all ship-shape and handsome,
+and so our voyage ended.  When I complimented the Skipper at
+parting on his exertions and those of his gallant crew, he informed
+me that the latter were provided for the worst, all hands being
+taught to swim and dive; and he added that the able seaman at the
+main-topmast truck especially, could dive as deep as he could go
+high.
+
+The next adventure that befell me in my visit to the Short-Timers,
+was the sudden apparition of a military band.  I had been
+inspecting the hammocks of the crew of the good ship, when I saw
+with astonishment that several musical instruments, brazen and of
+great size, appeared to have suddenly developed two legs each, and
+to be trotting about a yard.  And my astonishment was heightened
+when I observed a large drum, that had previously been leaning
+helpless against a wall, taking up a stout position on four legs.
+Approaching this drum and looking over it, I found two boys behind
+it (it was too much for one), and then I found that each of the
+brazen instruments had brought out a boy, and was going to
+discourse sweet sounds.  The boys--not omitting the fifer, now
+playing a new instrument--were dressed in neat uniform, and stood
+up in a circle at their music-stands, like any other Military Band.
+They played a march or two, and then we had Cheer boys, Cheer, and
+then we had Yankee Doodle, and we finished, as in loyal duty bound,
+with God save the Queen.  The band's proficiency was perfectly
+wonderful, and it was not at all wonderful that the whole body
+corporate of Short-Timers listened with faces of the liveliest
+interest and pleasure.
+
+What happened next among the Short-Timers?  As if the band had
+blown me into a great class-room out of their brazen tubes, IN a
+great class-room I found myself now, with the whole choral force of
+Short-Timers singing the praises of a summer's day to the
+harmonium, and my small but highly respected friend the fifer
+blazing away vocally, as if he had been saving up his wind for the
+last twelvemonth; also the whole crew of the good ship Nameless
+swarming up and down the scale as if they had never swarmed up and
+down the rigging.  This done, we threw our whole power into God
+bless the Prince of Wales, and blessed his Royal Highness to such
+an extent that, for my own Uncommercial part, I gasped again when
+it was over.  The moment this was done, we formed, with surpassing
+freshness, into hollow squares, and fell to work at oral lessons as
+if we never did, and had never thought of doing, anything else.
+
+Let a veil be drawn over the self-committals into which the
+Uncommercial Traveller would have been betrayed but for a discreet
+reticence, coupled with an air of absolute wisdom on the part of
+that artful personage.  Take the square of five, multiply it by
+fifteen, divide it by three, deduct eight from it, add four dozen
+to it, give me the result in pence, and tell me how many eggs I
+could get for it at three farthings apiece.  The problem is hardly
+stated, when a dozen small boys pour out answers.  Some wide, some
+very nearly right, some worked as far as they go with such
+accuracy, as at once to show what link of the chain has been
+dropped in the hurry.  For the moment, none are quite right; but
+behold a labouring spirit beating the buttons on its corporeal
+waistcoat, in a process of internal calculation, and knitting an
+accidental bump on its corporeal forehead in a concentration of
+mental arithmetic!  It is my honourable friend (if he will allow me
+to call him so) the fifer.  With right arm eagerly extended in
+token of being inspired with an answer, and with right leg
+foremost, the fifer solves the mystery:  then recalls both arm and
+leg, and with bump in ambush awaits the next poser.  Take the
+square of three, multiply it by seven, divide it by four, add fifty
+to it, take thirteen from it, multiply it by two, double it, give
+me the result in pence, and say how many halfpence.  Wise as the
+serpent is the four feet of performer on the nearest approach to
+that instrument, whose right arm instantly appears, and quenches
+this arithmetical fire.  Tell me something about Great Britain,
+tell me something about its principal productions, tell me
+something about its ports, tell me something about its seas and
+rivers, tell me something about coal, iron, cotton, timber, tin,
+and turpentine.  The hollow square bristles with extended right
+arms; but ever faithful to fact is the fifer, ever wise as the
+serpent is the performer on that instrument, ever prominently
+buoyant and brilliant are all members of the band.  I observe the
+player of the cymbals to dash at a sounding answer now and then
+rather than not cut in at all; but I take that to be in the way of
+his instrument.  All these questions, and many such, are put on the
+spur of the moment, and by one who has never examined these boys.
+The Uncommercial, invited to add another, falteringly demands how
+many birthdays a man born on the twenty-ninth of February will have
+had on completing his fiftieth year?  A general perception of trap
+and pitfall instantly arises, and the fifer is seen to retire
+behind the corduroys of his next neighbours, as perceiving special
+necessity for collecting himself and communing with his mind.
+Meanwhile, the wisdom of the serpent suggests that the man will
+have had only one birthday in all that time, for how can any man
+have more than one, seeing that he is born once and dies once?  The
+blushing Uncommercial stands corrected, and amends the formula.
+Pondering ensues, two or three wrong answers are offered, and
+Cymbals strikes up 'Six!' but doesn't know why.  Then modestly
+emerging from his Academic Grove of corduroys appears the fifer,
+right arm extended, right leg foremost, bump irradiated.  'Twelve,
+and two over!'
+
+The feminine Short-Timers passed a similar examination, and very
+creditably too.  Would have done better perhaps, with a little more
+geniality on the part of their pupil-teacher; for a cold eye, my
+young friend, and a hard, abrupt manner, are not by any means the
+powerful engines that your innocence supposes them to be.  Both
+girls and boys wrote excellently, from copy and dictation; both
+could cook; both could mend their own clothes; both could clean up
+everything about them in an orderly and skilful way, the girls
+having womanly household knowledge superadded.  Order and method
+began in the songs of the Infant School which I visited likewise,
+and they were even in their dwarf degree to be found in the
+Nursery, where the Uncommercial walking-stick was carried off with
+acclamations, and where 'the Doctor'--a medical gentleman of two,
+who took his degree on the night when he was found at an
+apothecary's door--did the honours of the establishment with great
+urbanity and gaiety.
+
+These have long been excellent schools; long before the days of the
+Short-Time.  I first saw them, twelve or fifteen years ago.  But
+since the introduction of the Short-Time system it has been proved
+here that eighteen hours a week of book-learning are more
+profitable than thirty-six, and that the pupils are far quicker and
+brighter than of yore.  The good influences of music on the whole
+body of children have likewise been surprisingly proved.  Obviously
+another of the immense advantages of the Short-Time system to the
+cause of good education is the great diminution of its cost, and of
+the period of time over which it extends.  The last is a most
+important consideration, as poor parents are always impatient to
+profit by their children's labour.
+
+It will be objected:  Firstly, that this is all very well, but
+special local advantages and special selection of children must be
+necessary to such success.  Secondly, that this is all very well,
+but must be very expensive.  Thirdly, that this is all very well,
+but we have no proof of the results, sir, no proof.
+
+On the first head of local advantages and special selection.  Would
+Limehouse Hole be picked out for the site of a Children's Paradise?
+Or would the legitimate and illegitimate pauper children of the
+long-shore population of such a riverside district, be regarded as
+unusually favourable specimens to work with?  Yet these schools are
+at Limehouse, and are the Pauper Schools of the Stepney Pauper
+Union.
+
+On the second head of expense.  Would sixpence a week be considered
+a very large cost for the education of each pupil, including all
+salaries of teachers and rations of teachers?  But supposing the
+cost were not sixpence a week, not fivepence? it is FOURPENCE-
+HALFPENNY.
+
+On the third head of no proof, sir, no proof.  Is there any proof
+in the facts that Pupil Teachers more in number, and more highly
+qualified, have been produced here under the Short-Time system than
+under the Long-Time system?  That the Short-Timers, in a writing
+competition, beat the Long-Timers of a first-class National School?
+That the sailor-boys are in such demand for merchant ships, that
+whereas, before they were trained, 10l. premium used to be given
+with each boy--too often to some greedy brute of a drunken skipper,
+who disappeared before the term of apprenticeship was out, if the
+ill-used boy didn't--captains of the best character now take these
+boys more than willingly, with no premium at all?  That they are
+also much esteemed in the Royal Navy, which they prefer, 'because
+everything is so neat and clean and orderly'?  Or, is there any
+proof in Naval captains writing 'Your little fellows are all that I
+can desire'?  Or, is there any proof in such testimony as this:
+'The owner of a vessel called at the school, and said that as his
+ship was going down Channel on her last voyage, with one of the
+boys from the school on board, the pilot said, "It would be as well
+if the royal were lowered; I wish it were down."  Without waiting
+for any orders, and unobserved by the pilot, the lad, whom they had
+taken on board from the school, instantly mounted the mast and
+lowered the royal, and at the next glance of the pilot to the
+masthead, he perceived that the sail had been let down.  He
+exclaimed, "Who's done that job?"  The owner, who was on board,
+said, "That was the little fellow whom I put on board two days
+ago."  The pilot immediately said, "Why, where could he have been
+brought up?"  The boy had never seen the sea or been on a real ship
+before'?  Or, is there any proof in these boys being in greater
+demand for Regimental Bands than the Union can meet?  Or, in
+ninety-eight of them having gone into Regimental Bands in three
+years?  Or, in twelve of them being in the band of one regiment?
+Or, in the colonel of that regiment writing, 'We want six more
+boys; they are excellent lads'?  Or, in one of the boys having
+risen to be band-corporal in the same regiment?  Or, in employers
+of all kinds chorusing, 'Give us drilled boys, for they are prompt,
+obedient, and punctual'?  Other proofs I have myself beheld with
+these Uncommercial eyes, though I do not regard myself as having a
+right to relate in what social positions they have seen respected
+men and women who were once pauper children of the Stepney Union.
+
+Into what admirable soldiers others of these boys have the
+capabilities for being turned, I need not point out.  Many of them
+are always ambitious of military service; and once upon a time when
+an old boy came back to see the old place, a cavalry soldier all
+complete, WITH HIS SPURS ON, such a yearning broke out to get into
+cavalry regiments and wear those sublime appendages, that it was
+one of the greatest excitements ever known in the school.  The
+girls make excellent domestic servants, and at certain periods come
+back, a score or two at a time, to see the old building, and to
+take tea with the old teachers, and to hear the old band, and to
+see the old ship with her masts towering up above the neighbouring
+roofs and chimneys.  As to the physical health of these schools, it
+is so exceptionally remarkable (simply because the sanitary
+regulations are as good as the other educational arrangements),
+that when Mr. TUFNELL, the Inspector, first stated it in a report,
+he was supposed, in spite of his high character, to have been
+betrayed into some extraordinary mistake or exaggeration.  In the
+moral health of these schools--where corporal punishment is
+unknown--Truthfulness stands high.  When the ship was first
+erected, the boys were forbidden to go aloft, until the nets, which
+are now always there, were stretched as a precaution against
+accidents.  Certain boys, in their eagerness, disobeyed the
+injunction, got out of window in the early daylight, and climbed to
+the masthead.  One boy unfortunately fell, and was killed.  There
+was no clue to the others; but all the boys were assembled, and the
+chairman of the Board addressed them.  'I promise nothing; you see
+what a dreadful thing has happened; you know what a grave offence
+it is that has led to such a consequence; I cannot say what will be
+done with the offenders; but, boys, you have been trained here,
+above all things, to respect the truth.  I want the truth.  Who are
+the delinquents?'  Instantly, the whole number of boys concerned,
+separated from the rest, and stood out.
+
+Now, the head and heart of that gentleman (it is needless to say, a
+good head and a good heart) have been deeply interested in these
+schools for many years, and are so still; and the establishment is
+very fortunate in a most admirable master, and moreover the schools
+of the Stepney Union cannot have got to be what they are, without
+the Stepney Board of Guardians having been earnest and humane men
+strongly imbued with a sense of their responsibility.  But what one
+set of men can do in this wise, another set of men can do; and this
+is a noble example to all other Bodies and Unions, and a noble
+example to the State.  Followed, and enlarged upon by its
+enforcement on bad parents, it would clear London streets of the
+most terrible objects they smite the sight with--myriads of little
+children who awfully reverse Our Saviour's words, and are not of
+the Kingdom of Heaven, but of the Kingdom of Hell.
+
+Clear the public streets of such shame, and the public conscience
+of such reproach?  Ah!  Almost prophetic, surely, the child's
+jingle:
+
+
+When will that be,
+Say the bells of Step-ney!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII--BOUND FOR THE GREAT SALT LAKE
+
+
+
+Behold me on my way to an Emigrant Ship, on a hot morning early in
+June.  My road lies through that part of London generally known to
+the initiated as 'Down by the Docks.'  Down by the Docks, is home
+to a good many people--to too many, if I may judge from the
+overflow of local population in the streets--but my nose insinuates
+that the number to whom it is Sweet Home might be easily counted.
+Down by the Docks, is a region I would choose as my point of
+embarkation aboard ship if I were an emigrant.  It would present my
+intention to me in such a sensible light; it would show me so many
+things to be run away from.
+
+Down by the Docks, they eat the largest oysters and scatter the
+roughest oyster-shells, known to the descendants of Saint George
+and the Dragon.  Down by the Docks, they consume the slimiest of
+shell-fish, which seem to have been scraped off the copper bottoms
+of ships.  Down by the Docks, the vegetables at green-grocers'
+doors acquire a saline and a scaly look, as if they had been
+crossed with fish and seaweed.  Down by the Docks, they 'board
+seamen' at the eating-houses, the public-houses, the slop-shops,
+the coffee-shops, the tally-shops, all kinds of shops mentionable
+and unmentionable--board them, as it were, in the piratical sense,
+making them bleed terribly, and giving no quarter.  Down by the
+Docks, the seamen roam in mid-street and mid-day, their pockets
+inside out, and their heads no better.  Down by the Docks, the
+daughters of wave-ruling Britannia also rove, clad in silken
+attire, with uncovered tresses streaming in the breeze, bandanna
+kerchiefs floating from their shoulders, and crinoline not wanting.
+Down by the Docks, you may hear the Incomparable Joe Jackson sing
+the Standard of England, with a hornpipe, any night; or any day may
+see at the waxwork, for a penny and no waiting, him as killed the
+policeman at Acton and suffered for it.  Down by the Docks, you may
+buy polonies, saveloys, and sausage preparations various, if you
+are not particular what they are made of besides seasoning.  Down
+by the Docks, the children of Israel creep into any gloomy cribs
+and entries they can hire, and hang slops there--pewter watches,
+sou'-wester hats, waterproof overalls--'firtht rate articleth,
+Thjack.'  Down by the Docks, such dealers exhibiting on a frame a
+complete nautical suit without the refinement of a waxen visage in
+the hat, present the imaginary wearer as drooping at the yard-arm,
+with his seafaring and earthfaring troubles over.  Down by the
+Docks, the placards in the shops apostrophise the customer, knowing
+him familiarly beforehand, as, 'Look here, Jack!'  'Here's your
+sort, my lad!'  'Try our sea-going mixed, at two and nine!'  'The
+right kit for the British tar!'  'Ship ahoy!'  'Splice the main-
+brace, brother!'  'Come, cheer up, my lads.  We've the best liquors
+here, And you'll find something new In our wonderful Beer!'  Down
+by the Docks, the pawnbroker lends money on Union-Jack pocket-
+handkerchiefs, on watches with little ships pitching fore and aft
+on the dial, on telescopes, nautical instruments in cases, and
+such-like.  Down by the Docks, the apothecary sets up in business
+on the wretchedest scale--chiefly on lint and plaster for the
+strapping of wounds--and with no bright bottles, and with no little
+drawers.  Down by the Docks, the shabby undertaker's shop will bury
+you for next to nothing, after the Malay or Chinaman has stabbed
+you for nothing at all:  so you can hardly hope to make a cheaper
+end.  Down by the Docks, anybody drunk will quarrel with anybody
+drunk or sober, and everybody else will have a hand in it, and on
+the shortest notice you may revolve in a whirlpool of red shirts,
+shaggy beards, wild heads of hair, bare tattooed arms, Britannia's
+daughters, malice, mud, maundering, and madness.  Down by the
+Docks, scraping fiddles go in the public-houses all day long, and,
+shrill above their din and all the din, rises the screeching of
+innumerable parrots brought from foreign parts, who appear to be
+very much astonished by what they find on these native shores of
+ours.  Possibly the parrots don't know, possibly they do, that Down
+by the Docks is the road to the Pacific Ocean, with its lovely
+islands, where the savage girls plait flowers, and the savage boys
+carve cocoa-nut shells, and the grim blind idols muse in their
+shady groves to exactly the same purpose as the priests and chiefs.
+And possibly the parrots don't know, possibly they do, that the
+noble savage is a wearisome impostor wherever he is, and has five
+hundred thousand volumes of indifferent rhyme, and no reason, to
+answer for.
+
+Shadwell church!  Pleasant whispers of there being a fresher air
+down the river than down by the Docks, go pursuing one another,
+playfully, in and out of the openings in its spire.  Gigantic in
+the basin just beyond the church, looms my Emigrant Ship:  her
+name, the Amazon.  Her figure-head is not disfigured as those
+beauteous founders of the race of strong-minded women are fabled to
+have been, for the convenience of drawing the bow; but I sympathise
+with the carver:
+
+
+A flattering carver who made it his care
+To carve busts as they ought to be--not as they were.
+
+
+My Emigrant Ship lies broadside-on to the wharf.  Two great
+gangways made of spars and planks connect her with the wharf; and
+up and down these gangways, perpetually crowding to and fro and in
+and out, like ants, are the Emigrants who are going to sail in my
+Emigrant Ship.  Some with cabbages, some with loaves of bread, some
+with cheese and butter, some with milk and beer, some with boxes,
+beds, and bundles, some with babies--nearly all with children--
+nearly all with bran-new tin cans for their daily allowance of
+water, uncomfortably suggestive of a tin flavour in the drink.  To
+and fro, up and down, aboard and ashore, swarming here and there
+and everywhere, my Emigrants.  And still as the Dock-Gate swings
+upon its hinges, cabs appear, and carts appear, and vans appear,
+bringing more of my Emigrants, with more cabbages, more loaves,
+more cheese and butter, more milk and beer, more boxes, beds, and
+bundles, more tin cans, and on those shipping investments
+accumulated compound interest of children.
+
+I go aboard my Emigrant Ship.  I go first to the great cabin, and
+find it in the usual condition of a Cabin at that pass.  Perspiring
+landsmen, with loose papers, and with pens and inkstands, pervade
+it; and the general appearance of things is as if the late Mr.
+Amazon's funeral had just come home from the cemetery, and the
+disconsolate Mrs. Amazon's trustees found the affairs in great
+disorder, and were looking high and low for the will.  I go out on
+the poop-deck, for air, and surveying the emigrants on the deck
+below (indeed they are crowded all about me, up there too), find
+more pens and inkstands in action, and more papers, and
+interminable complication respecting accounts with individuals for
+tin cans and what not.  But nobody is in an ill-temper, nobody is
+the worse for drink, nobody swears an oath or uses a coarse word,
+nobody appears depressed, nobody is weeping, and down upon the deck
+in every corner where it is possible to find a few square feet to
+kneel, crouch, or lie in, people, in every unsuitable attitude for
+writing, are writing letters.
+
+Now, I have seen emigrant ships before this day in June.  And these
+people are so strikingly different from all other people in like
+circumstances whom I have ever seen, that I wonder aloud, 'What
+WOULD a stranger suppose these emigrants to be!'
+
+The vigilant, bright face of the weather-browned captain of the
+Amazon is at my shoulder, and he says, 'What, indeed!  The most of
+these came aboard yesterday evening.  They came from various parts
+of England in small parties that had never seen one another before.
+Yet they had not been a couple of hours on board, when they
+established their own police, made their own regulations, and set
+their own watches at all the hatchways.  Before nine o'clock, the
+ship was as orderly and as quiet as a man-of-war.'
+
+I looked about me again, and saw the letter-writing going on with
+the most curious composure.  Perfectly abstracted in the midst of
+the crowd; while great casks were swinging aloft, and being lowered
+into the hold; while hot agents were hurrying up and down,
+adjusting the interminable accounts; while two hundred strangers
+were searching everywhere for two hundred other strangers, and were
+asking questions about them of two hundred more; while the children
+played up and down all the steps, and in and out among all the
+people's legs, and were beheld, to the general dismay, toppling
+over all the dangerous places; the letter-writers wrote on calmly.
+On the starboard side of the ship, a grizzled man dictated a long
+letter to another grizzled man in an immense fur cap:  which letter
+was of so profound a quality, that it became necessary for the
+amanuensis at intervals to take off his fur cap in both his hands,
+for the ventilation of his brain, and stare at him who dictated, as
+a man of many mysteries who was worth looking at.  On the lar-board
+side, a woman had covered a belaying-pin with a white cloth to make
+a neat desk of it, and was sitting on a little box, writing with
+the deliberation of a bookkeeper.  Down, upon her breast on the
+planks of the deck at this woman's feet, with her head diving in
+under a beam of the bulwarks on that side, as an eligible place of
+refuge for her sheet of paper, a neat and pretty girl wrote for a
+good hour (she fainted at last), only rising to the surface
+occasionally for a dip of ink.  Alongside the boat, close to me on
+the poop-deck, another girl, a fresh, well-grown country girl, was
+writing another letter on the bare deck.  Later in the day, when
+this self-same boat was filled with a choir who sang glees and
+catches for a long time, one of the singers, a girl, sang her part
+mechanically all the while, and wrote a letter in the bottom of the
+boat while doing so.
+
+'A stranger would be puzzled to guess the right name for these
+people, Mr. Uncommercial,' says the captain.
+
+'Indeed he would.'
+
+'If you hadn't known, could you ever have supposed--?'
+
+'How could I!  I should have said they were in their degree, the
+pick and flower of England.'
+
+'So should I,' says the captain.
+
+'How many are they?'
+
+'Eight hundred in round numbers.'
+
+I went between-decks, where the families with children swarmed in
+the dark, where unavoidable confusion had been caused by the last
+arrivals, and where the confusion was increased by the little
+preparations for dinner that were going on in each group.  A few
+women here and there, had got lost, and were laughing at it, and
+asking their way to their own people, or out on deck again.  A few
+of the poor children were crying; but otherwise the universal
+cheerfulness was amazing.  'We shall shake down by to-morrow.'  'We
+shall come all right in a day or so.'  'We shall have more light at
+sea.'  Such phrases I heard everywhere, as I groped my way among
+chests and barrels and beams and unstowed cargo and ring-bolts and
+Emigrants, down to the lower-deck, and thence up to the light of
+day again, and to my former station.
+
+Surely, an extraordinary people in their power of self-abstraction!
+All the former letter-writers were still writing calmly, and many
+more letter-writers had broken out in my absence.  A boy with a bag
+of books in his hand and a slate under his arm, emerged from below,
+concentrated himself in my neighbourhood (espying a convenient
+skylight for his purpose), and went to work at a sum as if he were
+stone deaf.  A father and mother and several young children, on the
+main deck below me, had formed a family circle close to the foot of
+the crowded restless gangway, where the children made a nest for
+themselves in a coil of rope, and the father and mother, she
+suckling the youngest, discussed family affairs as peaceably as if
+they were in perfect retirement.  I think the most noticeable
+characteristic in the eight hundred as a mass, was their exemption
+from hurry.
+
+Eight hundred what?  'Geese, villain?'  EIGHT HUNDRED MORMONS.  I,
+Uncommercial Traveller for the firm of Human Interest Brothers, had
+come aboard this Emigrant Ship to see what Eight hundred Latter-day
+Saints were like, and I found them (to the rout and overthrow of
+all my expectations) like what I now describe with scrupulous
+exactness.
+
+The Mormon Agent who had been active in getting them together, and
+in making the contract with my friends the owners of the ship to
+take them as far as New York on their way to the Great Salt Lake,
+was pointed out to me.  A compactly-made handsome man in black,
+rather short, with rich brown hair and beard, and clear bright
+eyes.  From his speech, I should set him down as American.
+Probably, a man who had 'knocked about the world' pretty much.  A
+man with a frank open manner, and unshrinking look; withal a man of
+great quickness.  I believe he was wholly ignorant of my
+Uncommercial individuality, and consequently of my immense
+Uncommercial importance.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  These are a very fine set of people you have brought
+together here.
+
+MORMON AGENT.  Yes, sir, they are a VERY fine set of people.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL (looking about).  Indeed, I think it would be
+difficult to find Eight hundred people together anywhere else, and
+find so much beauty and so much strength and capacity for work
+among them.
+
+MORMON AGENT (not looking about, but looking steadily at
+Uncommercial).  I think so.--We sent out about a thousand more,
+yes'day, from Liverpool.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  You are not going with these emigrants?
+
+MORMON AGENT.  No, sir.  I remain.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  But you have been in the Mormon Territory?
+
+MORMON AGENT.  Yes; I left Utah about three years ago.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  It is surprising to me that these people are all so
+cheery, and make so little of the immense distance before them.
+
+MORMON AGENT.  Well, you see; many of 'em have friends out at Utah,
+and many of 'em look forward to meeting friends on the way.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  On the way?
+
+MORMON AGENT.  This way 'tis.  This ship lands 'em in New York
+City.  Then they go on by rail right away beyond St. Louis, to that
+part of the Banks of the Missouri where they strike the Plains.
+There, waggons from the settlement meet 'em to bear 'em company on
+their journey 'cross-twelve hundred miles about.  Industrious
+people who come out to the settlement soon get waggons of their
+own, and so the friends of some of these will come down in their
+own waggons to meet 'em.  They look forward to that, greatly.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  On their long journey across the Desert, do you arm
+them?
+
+MORMON AGENT.  Mostly you would find they have arms of some kind or
+another already with them.  Such as had not arms we should arm
+across the Plains, for the general protection and defence.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  Will these waggons bring down any produce to the
+Missouri?
+
+MORMON AGENT.  Well, since the war broke out, we've taken to
+growing cotton, and they'll likely bring down cotton to be
+exchanged for machinery.  We want machinery.  Also we have taken to
+growing indigo, which is a fine commodity for profit.  It has been
+found that the climate on the further side of the Great Salt Lake
+suits well for raising indigo.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  I am told that these people now on board are
+principally from the South of England?
+
+MORMON AGENT.  And from Wales.  That's true.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  Do you get many Scotch?
+
+MORMON AGENT.  Not many.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  Highlanders, for instance?
+
+MORMON AGENT.  No, not Highlanders.  They ain't interested enough
+in universal brotherhood and peace and good will.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  The old fighting blood is strong in them?
+
+MORMON AGENT.  Well, yes.  And besides; they've no faith.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL (who has been burning to get at the Prophet Joe Smith,
+and seems to discover an opening).  Faith in--!
+
+MORMON AGENT (far too many for Uncommercial).  Well.--In anything!
+
+Similarly on this same head, the Uncommercial underwent
+discomfiture from a Wiltshire labourer:  a simple, fresh-coloured
+farm-labourer, of eight-and-thirty, who at one time stood beside
+him looking on at new arrivals, and with whom he held this
+dialogue:
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  Would you mind my asking you what part of the
+country you come from?
+
+WILTSHIRE.  Not a bit.  Theer! (exultingly) I've worked all my life
+o' Salisbury Plain, right under the shadder o' Stonehenge.  You
+mightn't think it, but I haive.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  And a pleasant country too.
+
+WILTSHIRE.  Ah!  'Tis a pleasant country.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  Have you any family on board?
+
+WILTSHIRE.  Two children, boy and gal.  I am a widderer, _I_ am,
+and I'm going out alonger my boy and gal.  That's my gal, and she's
+a fine gal o' sixteen (pointing out the girl who is writing by the
+boat).  I'll go and fetch my boy.  I'd like to show you my boy.
+(Here Wiltshire disappears, and presently comes back with a big,
+shy boy of twelve, in a superabundance of boots, who is not at all
+glad to be presented.)  He is a fine boy too, and a boy fur to
+work!  (Boy having undutifully bolted, Wiltshire drops him.)
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  It must cost you a great deal of money to go so far,
+three strong.
+
+WILTSHIRE.  A power of money.  Theer!  Eight shillen a week, eight
+shillen a week, eight shillen a week, put by out of the week's
+wages for ever so long.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL.  I wonder how you did it.
+
+WILTSHIRE (recognising in this a kindred spirit).  See theer now!
+I wonder how I done it!  But what with a bit o' subscription heer,
+and what with a bit o' help theer, it were done at last, though I
+don't hardly know how.  Then it were unfort'net for us, you see, as
+we got kep' in Bristol so long--nigh a fortnight, it were--on
+accounts of a mistake wi' Brother Halliday.  Swaller'd up money, it
+did, when we might have come straight on.
+
+UNCOMMERCIAL (delicately approaching Joe Smith).  You are of the
+Mormon religion, of course?
+
+WILTSHIRE (confidently).  O yes, I'm a Mormon.  (Then
+reflectively.)  I'm a Mormon.  (Then, looking round the ship,
+feigns to descry a particular friend in an empty spot, and evades
+the Uncommercial for evermore.)
+
+After a noontide pause for dinner, during which my Emigrants were
+nearly all between-decks, and the Amazon looked deserted, a general
+muster took place.  The muster was for the ceremony of passing the
+Government Inspector and the Doctor.  Those authorities held their
+temporary state amidships, by a cask or two; and, knowing that the
+whole Eight hundred emigrants must come face to face with them, I
+took my station behind the two.  They knew nothing whatever of me,
+I believe, and my testimony to the unpretending gentleness and good
+nature with which they discharged their duty, may be of the greater
+worth.  There was not the slightest flavour of the Circumlocution
+Office about their proceedings.
+
+The emigrants were now all on deck.  They were densely crowded aft,
+and swarmed upon the poop-deck like bees.  Two or three Mormon
+agents stood ready to hand them on to the Inspector, and to hand
+them forward when they had passed.  By what successful means, a
+special aptitude for organisation had been infused into these
+people, I am, of course, unable to report.  But I know that, even
+now, there was no disorder, hurry, or difficulty.
+
+All being ready, the first group are handed on.  That member of the
+party who is entrusted with the passenger-ticket for the whole, has
+been warned by one of the agents to have it ready, and here it is
+in his hand.  In every instance through the whole eight hundred,
+without an exception, this paper is always ready.
+
+INSPECTOR (reading the ticket).  Jessie Jobson, Sophronia Jobson,
+Jessie Jobson again, Matilda Jobson, William Jobson, Jane Jobson,
+Matilda Jobson again, Brigham Jobson, Leonardo Jobson, and Orson
+Jobson.  Are you all here? (glancing at the party, over his
+spectacles).
+
+JESSIE JOBSON NUMBER TWO.  All here, sir.
+
+This group is composed of an old grandfather and grandmother, their
+married son and his wife, and THEIR family of children.  Orson
+Jobson is a little child asleep in his mother's arms.  The Doctor,
+with a kind word or so, lifts up the corner of the mother's shawl,
+looks at the child's face, and touches the little clenched hand.
+If we were all as well as Orson Jobson, doctoring would be a poor
+profession.
+
+INSPECTOR.  Quite right, Jessie Jobson.  Take your ticket, Jessie,
+and pass on.
+
+And away they go.  Mormon agent, skilful and quiet, hands them on.
+Mormon agent, skilful and quiet, hands next party up.
+
+INSPECTOR (reading ticket again).  Susannah Cleverly and William
+Cleverly.  Brother and sister, eh?
+
+SISTER (young woman of business, hustling slow brother).  Yes, sir.
+
+INSPECTOR.  Very good, Susannah Cleverly.  Take your ticket,
+Susannah, and take care of it.
+
+And away they go.
+
+INSPECTOR (taking ticket again).  Sampson Dibble and Dorothy Dibble
+(surveying a very old couple over his spectacles, with some
+surprise).  Your husband quite blind, Mrs. Dibble?
+
+MRS. DIBBLE.  Yes, sir, he be stone-blind.
+
+MR. DIBBLE (addressing the mast).  Yes, sir, I be stone-blind.
+
+INSPECTOR.  That's a bad job.  Take your ticket, Mrs. Dibble, and
+don't lose it, and pass on.
+
+Doctor taps Mr. Dibble on the eyebrow with his forefinger, and away
+they go.
+
+INSPECTOR (taking ticket again).  Anastatia Weedle.
+
+ANASTATIA (a pretty girl, in a bright Garibaldi, this morning
+elected by universal suffrage the Beauty of the Ship).  That is me,
+sir.
+
+INSPECTOR.  Going alone, Anastatia?
+
+ANASTATIA (shaking her curls).  I am with Mrs. Jobson, sir, but
+I've got separated for the moment.
+
+INSPECTOR.  Oh!  You are with the Jobsons?  Quite right.  That'll
+do, Miss Weedle.  Don't lose your ticket.
+
+Away she goes, and joins the Jobsons who are waiting for her, and
+stoops and kisses Brigham Jobson--who appears to be considered too
+young for the purpose, by several Mormons rising twenty, who are
+looking on.  Before her extensive skirts have departed from the
+casks, a decent widow stands there with four children, and so the
+roll goes.
+
+The faces of some of the Welsh people, among whom there were many
+old persons, were certainly the least intelligent.  Some of these
+emigrants would have bungled sorely, but for the directing hand
+that was always ready.  The intelligence here was unquestionably of
+a low order, and the heads were of a poor type.  Generally the case
+was the reverse.  There were many worn faces bearing traces of
+patient poverty and hard work, and there was great steadiness of
+purpose and much undemonstrative self-respect among this class.  A
+few young men were going singly.  Several girls were going, two or
+three together.  These latter I found it very difficult to refer
+back, in my mind, to their relinquished homes and pursuits.
+Perhaps they were more like country milliners, and pupil teachers
+rather tawdrily dressed, than any other classes of young women.  I
+noticed, among many little ornaments worn, more than one
+photograph-brooch of the Princess of Wales, and also of the late
+Prince Consort.  Some single women of from thirty to forty, whom
+one might suppose to be embroiderers, or straw-bonnet-makers, were
+obviously going out in quest of husbands, as finer ladies go to
+India.  That they had any distinct notions of a plurality of
+husbands or wives, I do not believe.  To suppose the family groups
+of whom the majority of emigrants were composed, polygamically
+possessed, would be to suppose an absurdity, manifest to any one
+who saw the fathers and mothers.
+
+I should say (I had no means of ascertaining the fact) that most
+familiar kinds of handicraft trades were represented here.  Farm-
+labourers, shepherds, and the like, had their full share of
+representation, but I doubt if they preponderated.  It was
+interesting to see how the leading spirit in the family circle
+never failed to show itself, even in the simple process of
+answering to the names as they were called, and checking off the
+owners of the names.  Sometimes it was the father, much oftener the
+mother, sometimes a quick little girl second or third in order of
+seniority.  It seemed to occur for the first time to some heavy
+fathers, what large families they had; and their eyes rolled about,
+during the calling of the list, as if they half misdoubted some
+other family to have been smuggled into their own.  Among all the
+fine handsome children, I observed but two with marks upon their
+necks that were probably scrofulous.  Out of the whole number of
+emigrants, but one old woman was temporarily set aside by the
+doctor, on suspicion of fever; but even she afterwards obtained a
+clean bill of health.
+
+When all had 'passed,' and the afternoon began to wear on, a black
+box became visible on deck, which box was in charge of certain
+personages also in black, of whom only one had the conventional air
+of an itinerant preacher.  This box contained a supply of hymn-
+books, neatly printed and got up, published at Liverpool, and also
+in London at the 'Latter-Day Saints' Book Depot, 30, Florence-
+street.'  Some copies were handsomely bound; the plainer were the
+more in request, and many were bought.  The title ran:  'Sacred
+Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the Church of Jesus Church of Latter-
+Day Saints.'  The Preface, dated Manchester, 1840, ran thus:- 'The
+Saints in this country have been very desirous for a Hymn Book
+adapted to their faith and worship, that they might sing the truth
+with an understanding heart, and express their praise, joy, and
+gratitude in songs adapted to the New and Everlasting Covenant.  In
+accordance with their wishes, we have selected the following
+volume, which we hope will prove acceptable until a greater variety
+can be added.  With sentiments of high consideration and esteem, we
+subscribe ourselves your brethren in the New and Everlasting
+Covenant, BRIGHAM YOUNG, PARLEY P. PRATT, JOHN TAYLOR.'  From this
+book--by no means explanatory to myself of the New and Everlasting
+Covenant, and not at all making my heart an understanding one on
+the subject of that mystery--a hymn was sung, which did not attract
+any great amount of attention, and was supported by a rather select
+circle.  But the choir in the boat was very popular and pleasant;
+and there was to have been a Band, only the Cornet was late in
+coming on board.  In the course of the afternoon, a mother appeared
+from shore, in search of her daughter, 'who had run away with the
+Mormons.'  She received every assistance from the Inspector, but
+her daughter was not found to be on board.  The saints did not seem
+to me, particularly interested in finding her.
+
+Towards five o'clock, the galley became full of tea-kettles, and an
+agreeable fragrance of tea pervaded the ship.  There was no
+scrambling or jostling for the hot water, no ill humour, no
+quarrelling.  As the Amazon was to sail with the next tide, and as
+it would not be high water before two o'clock in the morning, I
+left her with her tea in full action, and her idle Steam Tug lying
+by, deputing steam and smoke for the time being to the Tea-kettles.
+
+I afterwards learned that a Despatch was sent home by the captain
+before he struck out into the wide Atlantic, highly extolling the
+behaviour of these Emigrants, and the perfect order and propriety
+of all their social arrangements.  What is in store for the poor
+people on the shores of the Great Salt Lake, what happy delusions
+they are labouring under now, on what miserable blindness their
+eyes may be opened then, I do not pretend to say.  But I went on
+board their ship to bear testimony against them if they deserved
+it, as I fully believed they would; to my great astonishment they
+did not deserve it; and my predispositions and tendencies must not
+affect me as an honest witness.  I went over the Amazon's side,
+feeling it impossible to deny that, so far, some remarkable
+influence had produced a remarkable result, which better known
+influences have often missed. *
+
+* After this Uncommercial Journey was printed, I happened to
+mention the experience it describes to Lord Houghton.  That
+gentleman then showed me an article of his writing, in The
+Edinburgh Review for January, 1862, which is highly remarkable for
+its philosophical and literary research concerning these Latter-Day
+Saints.  I find in it the following sentences:- 'The Select
+Committee of the House of Commons on emigrant ships for 1854
+summoned the Mormon agent and passenger-broker before it, and came
+to the conclusion that no ships under the provisions of the
+"Passengers Act" could be depended upon for comfort and security in
+the same degree as those under his administration. The Mormon ship
+is a Family under strong and accepted discipline, with every
+provision for comfort, decorum and internal peace.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII--THE CITY OF THE ABSENT
+
+
+
+When I think I deserve particularly well of myself, and have earned
+the right to enjoy a little treat, I stroll from Covent-garden into
+the City of London, after business-hours there, on a Saturday, or--
+better yet--on a Sunday, and roam about its deserted nooks and
+corners.  It is necessary to the full enjoyment of these journeys
+that they should be made in summer-time, for then the retired spots
+that I love to haunt, are at their idlest and dullest.  A gentle
+fall of rain is not objectionable, and a warm mist sets off my
+favourite retreats to decided advantage.
+
+Among these, City Churchyards hold a high place.  Such strange
+churchyards hide in the City of London; churchyards sometimes so
+entirely detached from churches, always so pressed upon by houses;
+so small, so rank, so silent, so forgotten, except by the few
+people who ever look down into them from their smoky windows.  As I
+stand peeping in through the iron gates and rails, I can peel the
+rusty metal off, like bark from an old tree.  The illegible
+tombstones are all lop-sided, the grave-mounds lost their shape in
+the rains of a hundred years ago, the Lombardy Poplar or Plane-Tree
+that was once a drysalter's daughter and several common-councilmen,
+has withered like those worthies, and its departed leaves are dust
+beneath it.  Contagion of slow ruin overhangs the place.  The
+discoloured tiled roofs of the environing buildings stand so awry,
+that they can hardly be proof against any stress of weather.  Old
+crazy stacks of chimneys seem to look down as they overhang,
+dubiously calculating how far they will have to fall.  In an angle
+of the walls, what was once the tool-house of the grave-digger rots
+away, encrusted with toadstools.  Pipes and spouts for carrying off
+the rain from the encompassing gables, broken or feloniously cut
+for old lead long ago, now let the rain drip and splash as it list,
+upon the weedy earth.  Sometimes there is a rusty pump somewhere
+near, and, as I look in at the rails and meditate, I hear it
+working under an unknown hand with a creaking protest:  as though
+the departed in the churchyard urged, 'Let us lie here in peace;
+don't suck us up and drink us!'
+
+One of my best beloved churchyards, I call the churchyard of Saint
+Ghastly Grim; touching what men in general call it, I have no
+information.  It lies at the heart of the City, and the Blackwall
+Railway shrieks at it daily.  It is a small small churchyard, with
+a ferocious, strong, spiked iron gate, like a jail.  This gate is
+ornamented with skulls and cross-bones, larger than the life,
+wrought in stone; but it likewise came into the mind of Saint
+Ghastly Grim, that to stick iron spikes a-top of the stone skulls,
+as though they were impaled, would be a pleasant device.  Therefore
+the skulls grin aloft horribly, thrust through and through with
+iron spears.  Hence, there is attraction of repulsion for me in
+Saint Ghastly Grim, and, having often contemplated it in the
+daylight and the dark, I once felt drawn towards it in a
+thunderstorm at midnight.  'Why not?' I said, in self-excuse.  'I
+have been to see the Colosseum by the light of the moon; is it
+worse to go to see Saint Ghastly Grim by the light of the
+lightning?'  I repaired to the Saint in a hackney cab, and found
+the skulls most effective, having the air of a public execution,
+and seeming, as the lightning flashed, to wink and grin with the
+pain of the spikes.  Having no other person to whom to impart my
+satisfaction, I communicated it to the driver.  So far from being
+responsive, he surveyed me--he was naturally a bottled-nosed, red-
+faced man--with a blanched countenance.  And as he drove me back,
+he ever and again glanced in over his shoulder through the little
+front window of his carriage, as mistrusting that I was a fare
+originally from a grave in the churchyard of Saint Ghastly Grim,
+who might have flitted home again without paying.
+
+Sometimes, the queer Hall of some queer Company gives upon a
+churchyard such as this, and, when the Livery dine, you may hear
+them (if you are looking in through the iron rails, which you never
+are when I am) toasting their own Worshipful prosperity.
+Sometimes, a wholesale house of business, requiring much room for
+stowage, will occupy one or two or even all three sides of the
+enclosing space, and the backs of bales of goods will lumber up the
+windows, as if they were holding some crowded trade-meeting of
+themselves within.  Sometimes, the commanding windows are all
+blank, and show no more sign of life than the graves below--not so
+much, for THEY tell of what once upon a time was life undoubtedly.
+Such was the surrounding of one City churchyard that I saw last
+summer, on a Volunteering Saturday evening towards eight of the
+clock, when with astonishment I beheld an old old man and an old
+old woman in it, making hay.  Yes, of all occupations in this
+world, making hay!  It was a very confined patch of churchyard
+lying between Gracechurch-street and the Tower, capable of
+yielding, say an apronful of hay.  By what means the old old man
+and woman had got into it, with an almost toothless hay-making
+rake, I could not fathom.  No open window was within view; no
+window at all was within view, sufficiently near the ground to have
+enabled their old legs to descend from it; the rusty churchyard-
+gate was locked, the mouldy church was locked.  Gravely among the
+graves, they made hay, all alone by themselves.  They looked like
+Time and his wife.  There was but the one rake between them, and
+they both had hold of it in a pastorally-loving manner, and there
+was hay on the old woman's black bonnet, as if the old man had
+recently been playful.  The old man was quite an obsolete old man,
+in knee-breeches and coarse grey stockings, and the old woman wore
+mittens like unto his stockings in texture and in colour.  They
+took no heed of me as I looked on, unable to account for them.  The
+old woman was much too bright for a pew-opener, the old man much
+too meek for a beadle.  On an old tombstone in the foreground
+between me and them, were two cherubim; but for those celestial
+embellishments being represented as having no possible use for
+knee-breeches, stockings, or mittens, I should have compared them
+with the hay-makers, and sought a likeness.  I coughed and awoke
+the echoes, but the hay-makers never looked at me.  They used the
+rake with a measured action, drawing the scanty crop towards them;
+and so I was fain to leave them under three yards and a half of
+darkening sky, gravely making hay among the graves, all alone by
+themselves.  Perhaps they were Spectres, and I wanted a Medium.
+
+In another City churchyard of similar cramped dimensions, I saw,
+that selfsame summer, two comfortable charity children.  They were
+making love--tremendous proof of the vigour of that immortal
+article, for they were in the graceful uniform under which English
+Charity delights to hide herself--and they were overgrown, and
+their legs (his legs at least, for I am modestly incompetent to
+speak of hers) were as much in the wrong as mere passive weakness
+of character can render legs.  O it was a leaden churchyard, but no
+doubt a golden ground to those young persons!  I first saw them on
+a Saturday evening, and, perceiving from their occupation that
+Saturday evening was their trysting-time, I returned that evening
+se'nnight, and renewed the contemplation of them.  They came there
+to shake the bits of matting which were spread in the church
+aisles, and they afterwards rolled them up, he rolling his end, she
+rolling hers, until they met, and over the two once divided now
+united rolls--sweet emblem!--gave and received a chaste salute.  It
+was so refreshing to find one of my faded churchyards blooming into
+flower thus, that I returned a second time, and a third, and
+ultimately this befell:- They had left the church door open, in
+their dusting and arranging.  Walking in to look at the church, I
+became aware, by the dim light, of him in the pulpit, of her in the
+reading-desk, of him looking down, of her looking up, exchanging
+tender discourse.  Immediately both dived, and became as it were
+non-existent on this sphere.  With an assumption of innocence I
+turned to leave the sacred edifice, when an obese form stood in the
+portal, puffily demanding Joseph, or in default of Joseph, Celia.
+Taking this monster by the sleeve, and luring him forth on pretence
+of showing him whom he sought, I gave time for the emergence of
+Joseph and Celia, who presently came towards us in the churchyard,
+bending under dusty matting, a picture of thriving and unconscious
+industry.  It would be superfluous to hint that I have ever since
+deemed this the proudest passage in my life.
+
+But such instances, or any tokens of vitality, are rare indeed in
+my City churchyards.  A few sparrows occasionally try to raise a
+lively chirrup in their solitary tree--perhaps, as taking a
+different view of worms from that entertained by humanity--but they
+are flat and hoarse of voice, like the clerk, the organ, the bell,
+the clergyman, and all the rest of the Church-works when they are
+wound up for Sunday.  Caged larks, thrushes, or blackbirds, hanging
+in neighbouring courts, pour forth their strains passionately, as
+scenting the tree, trying to break out, and see leaves again before
+they die, but their song is Willow, Willow--of a churchyard cast.
+So little light lives inside the churches of my churchyards, when
+the two are co-existent, that it is often only by an accident and
+after long acquaintance that I discover their having stained glass
+in some odd window.  The westering sun slants into the churchyard
+by some unwonted entry, a few prismatic tears drop on an old
+tombstone, and a window that I thought was only dirty, is for the
+moment all bejewelled.  Then the light passes and the colours die.
+Though even then, if there be room enough for me to fall back so
+far as that I can gaze up to the top of the Church Tower, I see the
+rusty vane new burnished, and seeming to look out with a joyful
+flash over the sea of smoke at the distant shore of country.
+
+Blinking old men who are let out of workhouses by the hour, have a
+tendency to sit on bits of coping stone in these churchyards,
+leaning with both hands on their sticks and asthmatically gasping.
+The more depressed class of beggars too, bring hither broken meats,
+and munch.  I am on nodding terms with a meditative turncock who
+lingers in one of them, and whom I suspect of a turn for poetry;
+the rather, as he looks out of temper when he gives the fire-plug a
+disparaging wrench with that large tuning-fork of his which would
+wear out the shoulder of his coat, but for a precautionary piece of
+inlaid leather.  Fire-ladders, which I am satisfied nobody knows
+anything about, and the keys of which were lost in ancient times,
+moulder away in the larger churchyards, under eaves like wooden
+eyebrows; and so removed are those corners from the haunts of men
+and boys, that once on a fifth of November I found a 'Guy' trusted
+to take care of himself there, while his proprietors had gone to
+dinner.  Of the expression of his face I cannot report, because it
+was turned to the wall; but his shrugged shoulders and his ten
+extended fingers, appeared to denote that he had moralised in his
+little straw chair on the mystery of mortality until he gave it up
+as a bad job.
+
+You do not come upon these churchyards violently; there are shapes
+of transition in the neighbourhood.  An antiquated news shop, or
+barber's shop, apparently bereft of customers in the earlier days
+of George the Third, would warn me to look out for one, if any
+discoveries in this respect were left for me to make.  A very quiet
+court, in combination with an unaccountable dyer's and scourer's,
+would prepare me for a churchyard.  An exceedingly retiring public-
+house, with a bagatelle-board shadily visible in a sawdusty parlour
+shaped like an omnibus, and with a shelf of punch-bowls in the bar,
+would apprise me that I stood near consecrated ground.  A 'Dairy,'
+exhibiting in its modest window one very little milk-can and three
+eggs, would suggest to me the certainty of finding the poultry hard
+by, pecking at my forefathers.  I first inferred the vicinity of
+Saint Ghastly Grim, from a certain air of extra repose and gloom
+pervading a vast stack of warehouses.
+
+From the hush of these places, it is congenial to pass into the
+hushed resorts of business.  Down the lanes I like to see the carts
+and waggons huddled together in repose, the cranes idle, and the
+warehouses shut.  Pausing in the alleys behind the closed Banks of
+mighty Lombard-street, it gives one as good as a rich feeling to
+think of the broad counters with a rim along the edge, made for
+telling money out on, the scales for weighing precious metals, the
+ponderous ledgers, and, above all, the bright copper shovels for
+shovelling gold.  When I draw money, it never seems so much money
+as when it is shovelled at me out of a bright copper shovel.  I
+like to say, 'In gold,' and to see seven pounds musically pouring
+out of the shovel, like seventy; the Bank appearing to remark to
+me--I italicise APPEARING--'if you want more of this yellow earth,
+we keep it in barrows at your service.'  To think of the banker's
+clerk with his deft finger turning the crisp edges of the Hundred-
+Pound Notes he has taken in a fat roll out of a drawer, is again to
+hear the rustling of that delicious south-cash wind.  'How will you
+have it?'  I once heard this usual question asked at a Bank Counter
+of an elderly female, habited in mourning and steeped in
+simplicity, who answered, open-eyed, crook-fingered, laughing with
+expectation, 'Anyhow!'  Calling these things to mind as I stroll
+among the Banks, I wonder whether the other solitary Sunday man I
+pass, has designs upon the Banks.  For the interest and mystery of
+the matter, I almost hope he may have, and that his confederate may
+be at this moment taking impressions of the keys of the iron
+closets in wax, and that a delightful robbery may be in course of
+transaction.  About College-hill, Mark-lane, and so on towards the
+Tower, and Dockward, the deserted wine-merchants' cellars are fine
+subjects for consideration; but the deserted money-cellars of the
+Bankers, and their plate-cellars, and their jewel-cellars, what
+subterranean regions of the Wonderful Lamp are these!  And again:
+possibly some shoeless boy in rags, passed through this street
+yesterday, for whom it is reserved to be a Banker in the fulness of
+time, and to be surpassing rich.  Such reverses have been, since
+the days of Whittington; and were, long before.  I want to know
+whether the boy has any foreglittering of that glittering fortune
+now, when he treads these stones, hungry.  Much as I also want to
+know whether the next man to be hanged at Newgate yonder, had any
+suspicion upon him that he was moving steadily towards that fate,
+when he talked so much about the last man who paid the same great
+debt at the same small Debtors' Door.
+
+Where are all the people who on busy working-days pervade these
+scenes?  The locomotive banker's clerk, who carries a black
+portfolio chained to him by a chain of steel, where is he?  Does he
+go to bed with his chain on--to church with his chain on--or does
+he lay it by?  And if he lays it by, what becomes of his portfolio
+when he is unchained for a holiday?  The wastepaper baskets of
+these closed counting-houses would let me into many hints of
+business matters if I had the exploration of them; and what secrets
+of the heart should I discover on the 'pads' of the young clerks--
+the sheets of cartridge-paper and blotting-paper interposed between
+their writing and their desks!  Pads are taken into confidence on
+the tenderest occasions, and oftentimes when I have made a business
+visit, and have sent in my name from the outer office, have I had
+it forced on my discursive notice that the officiating young
+gentleman has over and over again inscribed AMELIA, in ink of
+various dates, on corners of his pad.  Indeed, the pad may be
+regarded as the legitimate modern successor of the old forest-tree:
+whereon these young knights (having no attainable forest nearer
+than Epping) engrave the names of their mistresses.  After all, it
+is a more satisfactory process than carving, and can be oftener
+repeated.  So these courts in their Sunday rest are courts of Love
+Omnipotent (I rejoice to bethink myself), dry as they look.  And
+here is Garraway's, bolted and shuttered hard and fast!  It is
+possible to imagine the man who cuts the sandwiches, on his back in
+a hayfield; it is possible to imagine his desk, like the desk of a
+clerk at church, without him; but imagination is unable to pursue
+the men who wait at Garraway's all the week for the men who never
+come.  When they are forcibly put out of Garraway's on Saturday
+night--which they must be, for they never would go out of their own
+accord--where do they vanish until Monday morning?  On the first
+Sunday that I ever strayed here, I expected to find them hovering
+about these lanes, like restless ghosts, and trying to peep into
+Garraway's through chinks in the shutters, if not endeavouring to
+turn the lock of the door with false keys, picks, and screw-
+drivers.  But the wonder is, that they go clean away!  And now I
+think of it, the wonder is, that every working-day pervader of
+these scenes goes clean away.  The man who sells the dogs' collars
+and the little toy coal-scuttles, feels under as great an
+obligation to go afar off, as Glyn and Co., or Smith, Payne, and
+Smith.  There is an old monastery-crypt under Garraway's (I have
+been in it among the port wine), and perhaps Garraway's, taking
+pity on the mouldy men who wait in its public-room all their lives,
+gives them cool house-room down there over Sundays; but the
+catacombs of Paris would not be large enough to hold the rest of
+the missing.  This characteristic of London City greatly helps its
+being the quaint place it is in the weekly pause of business, and
+greatly helps my Sunday sensation in it of being the Last Man.  In
+my solitude, the ticket-porters being all gone with the rest, I
+venture to breathe to the quiet bricks and stones my confidential
+wonderment why a ticket-porter, who never does any work with his
+hands, is bound to wear a white apron, and why a great
+Ecclesiastical Dignitary, who never does any work with his hands
+either, is equally bound to wear a black one.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV--AN OLD STAGE-COACHING HOUSE
+
+
+
+Before the waitress had shut the door, I had forgotten how many
+stage-coaches she said used to change horses in the town every day.
+But it was of little moment; any high number would do as well as
+another.  It had been a great stage-coaching town in the great
+stage-coaching times, and the ruthless railways had killed and
+buried it.
+
+The sign of the house was the Dolphin's Head.  Why only head, I
+don't know; for the Dolphin's effigy at full length, and upside
+down--as a Dolphin is always bound to be when artistically treated,
+though I suppose he is sometimes right side upward in his natural
+condition--graced the sign-board.  The sign-board chafed its rusty
+hooks outside the bow-window of my room, and was a shabby work.  No
+visitor could have denied that the Dolphin was dying by inches, but
+he showed no bright colours.  He had once served another master;
+there was a newer streak of paint below him, displaying with
+inconsistent freshness the legend, By J. MELLOWS.
+
+My door opened again, and J. Mellows's representative came back.  I
+had asked her what I could have for dinner, and she now returned
+with the counter question, what would I like?  As the Dolphin stood
+possessed of nothing that I do like, I was fain to yield to the
+suggestion of a duck, which I don't like.  J. Mellows's
+representative was a mournful young woman with eye susceptible of
+guidance, and one uncontrollable eye; which latter, seeming to
+wander in quest of stage-coaches, deepened the melancholy in which
+the Dolphin was steeped.
+
+This young woman had but shut the door on retiring again when I
+bethought me of adding to my order, the words, 'with nice
+vegetables.'  Looking out at the door to give them emphatic
+utterance, I found her already in a state of pensive catalepsy in
+the deserted gallery, picking her teeth with a pin.
+
+At the Railway Station seven miles off, I had been the subject of
+wonder when I ordered a fly in which to come here.  And when I gave
+the direction 'To the Dolphin's Head,' I had observed an ominous
+stare on the countenance of the strong young man in velveteen, who
+was the platform servant of the Company.  He had also called to my
+driver at parting, 'All ri-ight!  Don't hang yourself when you get
+there, Geo-o-rge!' in a sarcastic tone, for which I had entertained
+some transitory thoughts of reporting him to the General Manager.
+
+I had no business in the town--I never have any business in any
+town--but I had been caught by the fancy that I would come and look
+at it in its degeneracy.  My purpose was fitly inaugurated by the
+Dolphin's Head, which everywhere expressed past coachfulness and
+present coachlessness.  Coloured prints of coaches, starting,
+arriving, changing horses, coaches in the sunshine, coaches in the
+snow, coaches in the wind, coaches in the mist and rain, coaches on
+the King's birthday, coaches in all circumstances compatible with
+their triumph and victory, but never in the act of breaking down or
+overturning, pervaded the house.  Of these works of art, some,
+framed and not glazed, had holes in them; the varnish of others had
+become so brown and cracked, that they looked like overdone pie-
+crust; the designs of others were almost obliterated by the flies
+of many summers.  Broken glasses, damaged frames, lop-sided
+hanging, and consignment of incurable cripples to places of refuge
+in dark corners, attested the desolation of the rest.  The old room
+on the ground floor where the passengers of the Highflyer used to
+dine, had nothing in it but a wretched show of twigs and flower-
+pots in the broad window to hide the nakedness of the land, and in
+a corner little Mellows's perambulator, with even its parasol-head
+turned despondently to the wall.  The other room, where post-horse
+company used to wait while relays were getting ready down the yard,
+still held its ground, but was as airless as I conceive a hearse to
+be:  insomuch that Mr. Pitt, hanging high against the partition
+(with spots on him like port wine, though it is mysterious how port
+wine ever got squirted up there), had good reason for perking his
+nose and sniffing.  The stopperless cruets on the spindle-shanked
+sideboard were in a miserably dejected state:  the anchovy sauce
+having turned blue some years ago, and the cayenne pepper (with a
+scoop in it like a small model of a wooden leg) having turned
+solid.  The old fraudulent candles which were always being paid for
+and never used, were burnt out at last; but their tall stilts of
+candlesticks still lingered, and still outraged the human intellect
+by pretending to be silver.  The mouldy old unreformed Borough
+Member, with his right hand buttoned up in the breast of his coat,
+and his back characteristically turned on bales of petitions from
+his constituents, was there too; and the poker which never had been
+among the fire-irons, lest post-horse company should overstir the
+fire, was NOT there, as of old.
+
+Pursuing my researches in the Dolphin's Head, I found it sorely
+shrunken.  When J. Mellows came into possession, he had walled off
+half the bar, which was now a tobacco-shop with its own entrance in
+the yard--the once glorious yard where the postboys, whip in hand
+and always buttoning their waistcoats at the last moment, used to
+come running forth to mount and away.  A 'Scientific Shoeing--Smith
+and Veterinary Surgeon,' had further encroached upon the yard; and
+a grimly satirical jobber, who announced himself as having to Let
+'A neat one-horse fly, and a one-horse cart,' had established his
+business, himself, and his family, in a part of the extensive
+stables.  Another part was lopped clean off from the Dolphin's
+Head, and now comprised a chapel, a wheelwright's, and a Young
+Men's Mutual Improvement and Discussion Society (in a loft):  the
+whole forming a back lane.  No audacious hand had plucked down the
+vane from the central cupola of the stables, but it had grown rusty
+and stuck at N-Nil:  while the score or two of pigeons that
+remained true to their ancestral traditions and the place, had
+collected in a row on the roof-ridge of the only outhouse retained
+by the Dolphin, where all the inside pigeons tried to push the
+outside pigeon off.  This I accepted as emblematical of the
+struggle for post and place in railway times.
+
+Sauntering forth into the town, by way of the covered and pillared
+entrance to the Dolphin's Yard, once redolent of soup and stable-
+litter, now redolent of musty disuse, I paced the street.  It was a
+hot day, and the little sun-blinds of the shops were all drawn
+down, and the more enterprising tradesmen had caused their
+'Prentices to trickle water on the pavement appertaining to their
+frontage.  It looked as if they had been shedding tears for the
+stage-coaches, and drying their ineffectual pocket-handkerchiefs.
+Such weakness would have been excusable; for business was--as one
+dejected porkman who kept a shop which refused to reciprocate the
+compliment by keeping him, informed me--'bitter bad.'  Most of the
+harness-makers and corn-dealers were gone the way of the coaches,
+but it was a pleasant recognition of the eternal procession of
+Children down that old original steep Incline, the Valley of the
+Shadow, that those tradesmen were mostly succeeded by vendors of
+sweetmeats and cheap toys.  The opposition house to the Dolphin,
+once famous as the New White Hart, had long collapsed.  In a fit of
+abject depression, it had cast whitewash on its windows, and
+boarded up its front door, and reduced itself to a side entrance;
+but even that had proved a world too wide for the Literary
+Institution which had been its last phase; for the Institution had
+collapsed too, and of the ambitious letters of its inscription on
+the White Hart's front, all had fallen off but these:
+
+
+L      Y   INS    T
+
+
+- suggestive of Lamentably Insolvent.  As to the neighbouring
+market-place, it seemed to have wholly relinquished marketing, to
+the dealer in crockery whose pots and pans straggled half across
+it, and to the Cheap Jack who sat with folded arms on the shafts of
+his cart, superciliously gazing around; his velveteen waistcoat,
+evidently harbouring grave doubts whether it was worth his while to
+stay a night in such a place.
+
+The church bells began to ring as I left this spot, but they by no
+means improved the case, for they said, in a petulant way, and
+speaking with some difficulty in their irritation, WHAT'S-be-come-
+of-THE-coach-ES!'  Nor would they (I found on listening) ever vary
+their emphasis, save in respect of growing more sharp and vexed,
+but invariably went on, 'WHAT'S-be-come-of-THE-coach-ES!'--always
+beginning the inquiry with an unpolite abruptness.  Perhaps from
+their elevation they saw the railway, and it aggravated them.
+
+Coming upon a coachmaker's workshop, I began to look about me with
+a revived spirit, thinking that perchance I might behold there some
+remains of the old times of the town's greatness.  There was only
+one man at work--a dry man, grizzled, and far advanced in years,
+but tall and upright, who, becoming aware of me looking on,
+straightened his back, pushed up his spectacles against his brown-
+paper cap, and appeared inclined to defy me.  To whom I pacifically
+said:
+
+'Good day, sir!'
+
+'What?' said he.
+
+'Good day, sir.'
+
+He seemed to consider about that, and not to agree with me.--'Was
+you a looking for anything?' he then asked, in a pointed manner.
+
+'I was wondering whether there happened to be any fragment of an
+old stage-coach here.'
+
+'Is that all?'
+
+'That's all.'
+
+'No, there ain't.'
+
+It was now my turn to say 'Oh!' and I said it.  Not another word
+did the dry and grizzled man say, but bent to his work again.  In
+the coach-making days, the coach-painters had tried their brushes
+on a post beside him; and quite a Calendar of departed glories was
+to be read upon it, in blue and yellow and red and green, some
+inches thick.  Presently he looked up again.
+
+'You seem to have a deal of time on your hands,' was his querulous
+remark.
+
+I admitted the fact.
+
+'I think it's a pity you was not brought up to something,' said he.
+
+I said I thought so too.
+
+Appearing to be informed with an idea, he laid down his plane (for
+it was a plane he was at work with), pushed up his spectacles
+again, and came to the door.
+
+'Would a po-shay do for you?' he asked.
+
+'I am not sure that I understand what you mean.'
+
+'Would a po-shay,' said the coachmaker, standing close before me,
+and folding his arms in the manner of a cross-examining counsel--
+'would a po-shay meet the views you have expressed?  Yes, or no?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Then you keep straight along down there till you see one.  YOU'LL
+see one if you go fur enough.'
+
+With that, he turned me by the shoulder in the direction I was to
+take, and went in and resumed his work against a background of
+leaves and grapes.  For, although he was a soured man and a
+discontented, his workshop was that agreeable mixture of town and
+country, street and garden, which is often to be seen in a small
+English town.
+
+I went the way he had turned me, and I came to the Beer-shop with
+the sign of The First and Last, and was out of the town on the old
+London road.  I came to the Turnpike, and I found it, in its silent
+way, eloquent respecting the change that had fallen on the road.
+The Turnpike-house was all overgrown with ivy; and the Turnpike-
+keeper, unable to get a living out of the tolls, plied the trade of
+a cobbler.  Not only that, but his wife sold ginger-beer, and, in
+the very window of espial through which the Toll-takers of old
+times used with awe to behold the grand London coaches coming on at
+a gallop, exhibited for sale little barber's-poles of sweetstuff in
+a sticky lantern.
+
+The political economy of the master of the turnpike thus expressed
+itself.
+
+'How goes turnpike business, master?' said I to him, as he sat in
+his little porch, repairing a shoe.
+
+'It don't go at all, master,' said he to me.  'It's stopped.'
+
+'That's bad,' said I.
+
+'Bad?' he repeated.  And he pointed to one of his sunburnt dusty
+children who was climbing the turnpike-gate, and said, extending
+his open right hand in remonstrance with Universal Nature.  'Five
+on 'em!'
+
+'But how to improve Turnpike business?' said I.
+
+'There's a way, master,' said he, with the air of one who had
+thought deeply on the subject.
+
+'I should like to know it.'
+
+'Lay a toll on everything as comes through; lay a toll on walkers.
+Lay another toll on everything as don't come through; lay a toll on
+them as stops at home.'
+
+'Would the last remedy be fair?'
+
+'Fair?  Them as stops at home, could come through if they liked;
+couldn't they?'
+
+'Say they could.'
+
+'Toll 'em.  If they don't come through, it's THEIR look out.
+Anyways,--Toll 'em!'
+
+Finding it was as impossible to argue with this financial genius as
+if he had been Chancellor of the Exchequer, and consequently the
+right man in the right place, I passed on meekly.
+
+My mind now began to misgive me that the disappointed coach-maker
+had sent me on a wild-goose errand, and that there was no post-
+chaise in those parts.  But coming within view of certain
+allotment-gardens by the roadside, I retracted the suspicion, and
+confessed that I had done him an injustice.  For, there I saw,
+surely, the poorest superannuated post-chaise left on earth.
+
+It was a post-chaise taken off its axletree and wheels, and plumped
+down on the clayey soil among a ragged growth of vegetables.  It
+was a post-chaise not even set straight upon the ground, but tilted
+over, as if it had fallen out of a balloon.  It was a post-chaise
+that had been a long time in those decayed circumstances, and
+against which scarlet beans were trained.  It was a post-chaise
+patched and mended with old tea-trays, or with scraps of iron that
+looked like them, and boarded up as to the windows, but having A
+KNOCKER on the off-side door.  Whether it was a post-chaise used as
+tool-house, summer-house, or dwelling-house, I could not discover,
+for there was nobody at home at the post-chaise when I knocked, but
+it was certainly used for something, and locked up.  In the wonder
+of this discovery, I walked round and round the post-chaise many
+times, and sat down by the post-chaise, waiting for further
+elucidation.  None came.  At last, I made my way back to the old
+London road by the further end of the allotment-gardens, and
+consequently at a point beyond that from which I had diverged.  I
+had to scramble through a hedge and down a steep bank, and I nearly
+came down a-top of a little spare man who sat breaking stones by
+the roadside.
+
+He stayed his hammer, and said, regarding me mysteriously through
+his dark goggles of wire:
+
+'Are you aware, sir, that you've been trespassing?'
+
+'I turned out of the way,' said I, in explanation, 'to look at that
+odd post-chaise.  Do you happen to know anything about it?'
+
+'I know it was many a year upon the road,' said he.
+
+'So I supposed.  Do you know to whom it belongs?'
+
+The stone-breaker bent his brows and goggles over his heap of
+stones, as if he were considering whether he should answer the
+question or not.  Then, raising his barred eyes to my features as
+before, he said:
+
+'To me.'
+
+Being quite unprepared for the reply, I received it with a
+sufficiently awkward 'Indeed!  Dear me!'  Presently I added, 'Do
+you--' I was going to say 'live there,' but it seemed so absurd a
+question, that I substituted 'live near here?'
+
+The stone-breaker, who had not broken a fragment since we began to
+converse, then did as follows.  He raised himself by poising his
+finger on his hammer, and took his coat, on which he had been
+seated, over his arm.  He then backed to an easier part of the bank
+than that by which I had come down, keeping his dark goggles
+silently upon me all the time, and then shouldered his hammer,
+suddenly turned, ascended, and was gone.  His face was so small,
+and his goggles were so large, that he left me wholly uninformed as
+to his countenance; but he left me a profound impression that the
+curved legs I had seen from behind as he vanished, were the legs of
+an old postboy.  It was not until then that I noticed he had been
+working by a grass-grown milestone, which looked like a tombstone
+erected over the grave of the London road.
+
+My dinner-hour being close at hand, I had no leisure to pursue the
+goggles or the subject then, but made my way back to the Dolphin's
+Head.  In the gateway I found J. Mellows, looking at nothing, and
+apparently experiencing that it failed to raise his spirits.
+
+'_I_ don't care for the town,' said J. Mellows, when I complimented
+him on the sanitary advantages it may or may not possess; 'I wish I
+had never seen the town!'
+
+'You don't belong to it, Mr. Mellows?'
+
+'Belong to it!' repeated Mellows.  'If I didn't belong to a better
+style of town than this, I'd take and drown myself in a pail.'  It
+then occurred to me that Mellows, having so little to do, was
+habitually thrown back on his internal resources--by which I mean
+the Dolphin's cellar.
+
+'What we want,' said Mellows, pulling off his hat, and making as if
+he emptied it of the last load of Disgust that had exuded from his
+brain, before he put it on again for another load; 'what we want,
+is a Branch.  The Petition for the Branch Bill is in the coffee-
+room.  Would you put your name to it?  Every little helps.'
+
+I found the document in question stretched out flat on the coffee-
+room table by the aid of certain weights from the kitchen, and I
+gave it the additional weight of my uncommercial signature.  To the
+best of my belief, I bound myself to the modest statement that
+universal traffic, happiness, prosperity, and civilisation,
+together with unbounded national triumph in competition with the
+foreigner, would infallibly flow from the Branch.
+
+Having achieved this constitutional feat, I asked Mr. Mellows if he
+could grace my dinner with a pint of good wine?  Mr. Mellows thus
+replied.
+
+'If I couldn't give you a pint of good wine, I'd--there!--I'd take
+and drown myself in a pail.  But I was deceived when I bought this
+business, and the stock was higgledy-piggledy, and I haven't yet
+tasted my way quite through it with a view to sorting it.
+Therefore, if you order one kind and get another, change till it
+comes right.  For what,' said Mellows, unloading his hat as before,
+'what would you or any gentleman do, if you ordered one kind of
+wine and was required to drink another?  Why, you'd (and naturally
+and properly, having the feelings of a gentleman), you'd take and
+drown yourself in a pail!'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV--THE BOILED BEEF OF NEW ENGLAND
+
+
+
+The shabbiness of our English capital, as compared with Paris,
+Bordeaux, Frankfort, Milan, Geneva--almost any important town on
+the continent of Europe--I find very striking after an absence of
+any duration in foreign parts.  London is shabby in contrast with
+Edinburgh, with Aberdeen, with Exeter, with Liverpool, with a
+bright little town like Bury St. Edmunds.  London is shabby in
+contrast with New York, with Boston, with Philadelphia.  In detail,
+one would say it can rarely fail to be a disappointing piece of
+shabbiness, to a stranger from any of those places.  There is
+nothing shabbier than Drury-lane, in Rome itself.  The meanness of
+Regent-street, set against the great line of Boulevards in Paris,
+is as striking as the abortive ugliness of Trafalgar-square, set
+against the gallant beauty of the Place de la Concorde.  London is
+shabby by daylight, and shabbier by gaslight.  No Englishman knows
+what gaslight is, until he sees the Rue de Rivoli and the Palais
+Royal after dark.
+
+The mass of London people are shabby.  The absence of distinctive
+dress has, no doubt, something to do with it.  The porters of the
+Vintners' Company, the draymen, and the butchers, are about the
+only people who wear distinctive dresses; and even these do not
+wear them on holidays.  We have nothing which for cheapness,
+cleanliness, convenience, or picturesqueness, can compare with the
+belted blouse.  As to our women;--next Easter or Whitsuntide, look
+at the bonnets at the British Museum or the National Gallery, and
+think of the pretty white French cap, the Spanish mantilla, or the
+Genoese mezzero.
+
+Probably there are not more second-hand clothes sold in London than
+in Paris, and yet the mass of the London population have a second-
+hand look which is not to be detected on the mass of the Parisian
+population.  I think this is mainly because a Parisian workman does
+not in the least trouble himself about what is worn by a Parisian
+idler, but dresses in the way of his own class, and for his own
+comfort.  In London, on the contrary, the fashions descend; and you
+never fully know how inconvenient or ridiculous a fashion is, until
+you see it in its last descent.  It was but the other day, on a
+race-course, that I observed four people in a barouche deriving
+great entertainment from the contemplation of four people on foot.
+The four people on foot were two young men and two young women; the
+four people in the barouche were two young men and two young women.
+The four young women were dressed in exactly the same style; the
+four young men were dressed in exactly the same style.  Yet the two
+couples on wheels were as much amused by the two couples on foot,
+as if they were quite unconscious of having themselves set those
+fashions, or of being at that very moment engaged in the display of
+them.
+
+Is it only in the matter of clothes that fashion descends here in
+London--and consequently in England--and thence shabbiness arises?
+Let us think a little, and be just.  The 'Black Country' round
+about Birmingham, is a very black country; but is it quite as black
+as it has been lately painted?  An appalling accident happened at
+the People's Park near Birmingham, this last July, when it was
+crowded with people from the Black Country--an appalling accident
+consequent on a shamefully dangerous exhibition.  Did the
+shamefully dangerous exhibition originate in the moral blackness of
+the Black Country, and in the Black People's peculiar love of the
+excitement attendant on great personal hazard, which they looked on
+at, but in which they did not participate?  Light is much wanted in
+the Black Country.  O we are all agreed on that.  But, we must not
+quite forget the crowds of gentlefolks who set the shamefully
+dangerous fashion, either.  We must not quite forget the
+enterprising Directors of an Institution vaunting mighty
+educational pretences, who made the low sensation as strong as they
+possibly could make it, by hanging the Blondin rope as high as they
+possibly could hang it.  All this must not be eclipsed in the
+Blackness of the Black Country.  The reserved seats high up by the
+rope, the cleared space below it, so that no one should be smashed
+but the performer, the pretence of slipping and falling off, the
+baskets for the feet and the sack for the head, the photographs
+everywhere, and the virtuous indignation nowhere--all this must not
+be wholly swallowed up in the blackness of the jet-black country.
+
+Whatsoever fashion is set in England, is certain to descend.  This
+is a text for a perpetual sermon on care in setting fashions.  When
+you find a fashion low down, look back for the time (it will never
+be far off) when it was the fashion high up.  This is the text for
+a perpetual sermon on social justice.  From imitations of Ethiopian
+Serenaders, to imitations of Prince's coats and waistcoats, you
+will find the original model in St. James's Parish.  When the
+Serenaders become tiresome, trace them beyond the Black Country;
+when the coats and waistcoats become insupportable, refer them to
+their source in the Upper Toady Regions.
+
+Gentlemen's clubs were once maintained for purposes of savage party
+warfare; working men's clubs of the same day assumed the same
+character.  Gentlemen's clubs became places of quiet inoffensive
+recreation; working men's clubs began to follow suit.  If working
+men have seemed rather slow to appreciate advantages of combination
+which have saved the pockets of gentlemen, and enhanced their
+comforts, it is because working men could scarcely, for want of
+capital, originate such combinations without help; and because help
+has not been separable from that great impertinence, Patronage.
+The instinctive revolt of his spirit against patronage, is a
+quality much to be respected in the English working man.  It is the
+base of the base of his best qualities.  Nor is it surprising that
+he should be unduly suspicious of patronage, and sometimes
+resentful of it even where it is not, seeing what a flood of washy
+talk has been let loose on his devoted head, or with what
+complacent condescension the same devoted head has been smoothed
+and patted.  It is a proof to me of his self-control that he never
+strikes out pugilistically, right and left, when addressed as one
+of 'My friends,' or 'My assembled friends;' that he does not become
+inappeasable, and run amuck like a Malay, whenever he sees a biped
+in broadcloth getting on a platform to talk to him; that any
+pretence of improving his mind, does not instantly drive him out of
+his mind, and cause him to toss his obliging patron like a mad
+bull.
+
+For, how often have I heard the unfortunate working man lectured,
+as if he were a little charity-child, humid as to his nasal
+development, strictly literal as to his Catechism, and called by
+Providence to walk all his days in a station in life represented on
+festive occasions by a mug of warm milk-and-water and a bun!  What
+popguns of jokes have these ears tingled to hear let off at him,
+what asinine sentiments, what impotent conclusions, what spelling-
+book moralities, what adaptations of the orator's insufferable
+tediousness to the assumed level of his understanding!  If his
+sledge-hammers, his spades and pick-axes, his saws and chisels, his
+paint-pots and brushes, his forges, furnaces, and engines, the
+horses that he drove at his work, and the machines that drove him
+at his work, were all toys in one little paper box, and he the baby
+who played with them, he could not have been discoursed to, more
+impertinently and absurdly than I have heard him discoursed to
+times innumerable.  Consequently, not being a fool or a fawner, he
+has come to acknowledge his patronage by virtually saying:  'Let me
+alone.  If you understand me no better than THAT, sir and madam,
+let me alone.  You mean very well, I dare say, but I don't like it,
+and I won't come here again to have any more of it.'
+
+Whatever is done for the comfort and advancement of the working man
+must be so far done by himself as that it is maintained by himself.
+And there must be in it no touch of condescension, no shadow of
+patronage.  In the great working districts, this truth is studied
+and understood.  When the American civil war rendered it necessary,
+first in Glasgow, and afterwards in Manchester, that the working
+people should be shown how to avail themselves of the advantages
+derivable from system, and from the combination of numbers, in the
+purchase and the cooking of their food, this truth was above all
+things borne in mind.  The quick consequence was, that suspicion
+and reluctance were vanquished, and that the effort resulted in an
+astonishing and a complete success.
+
+Such thoughts passed through my mind on a July morning of this
+summer, as I walked towards Commercial Street (not Uncommercial
+Street), Whitechapel.  The Glasgow and Manchester system had been
+lately set a-going there, by certain gentlemen who felt an interest
+in its diffusion, and I had been attracted by the following hand-
+bill printed on rose-coloured paper:
+
+
+SELF-SUPPORTING
+COOKING DEPOT
+FOR THE WORKING CLASSES
+
+Commercial-street, Whitechapel,
+Where Accommodation is provided for Dining comfortably
+300 Persons at a time.
+
+Open from 7 A.M. till 7 P.M.
+
+PRICES.
+
+All Articles of the BEST QUALITY.
+
+Cup of Tea or Coffee           One Penny
+Bread and Butter               One Penny
+Bread and Cheese               One Penny
+Slice of bread                 One half-penny or
+                               One Penny
+Boiled Egg                     One Penny
+Ginger Beer                    One Penny
+
+The above Articles always ready.
+
+Besides the above may be had, from 12 to 3 o'clock,
+
+Bowl of Scotch Broth           One Penny
+Bowl of Soup                   One Penny
+Plate of Potatoes              One Penny
+Plate of Minced Beef           Twopence
+Plate of Cold Beef             Twopence
+Plate of Cold Ham              Twopence
+Plate of Plum Pudding or Rice  One Penny
+
+As the Economy of Cooking depends greatly upon the simplicity of
+the arrangements with which a great number of persons can be served
+at one time, the Upper Room of this Establishment will be
+especially set apart for a
+
+PUBLIC DINNER EVERY DAY
+
+From 12 till 3 o'clock,
+
+Consisting of the following Dishes:
+
+Bowl of Broth, or Soup,
+Plate of Cold Beef or Ham,
+Plate of Potatoes,
+Plum Pudding, or Rice.
+
+FIXED CHARGE 4.5d.
+
+THE DAILY PAPERS PROVIDED.
+
+N.B.--This Establishment is conducted on the strictest business
+principles, with the full intention of making it self-supporting,
+so that every one may frequent it with a feeling of perfect
+independence.
+
+The assistance of all frequenting the Depot is confidently expected
+in checking anything interfering with the comfort, quiet, and
+regularity of the establishment.
+
+Please do not destroy this Hand Bill, but hand it to some other
+person whom it may interest.
+
+
+The Self-Supporting Cooking Depot (not a very good name, and one
+would rather give it an English one) had hired a newly-built
+warehouse that it found to let; therefore it was not established in
+premises specially designed for the purpose.  But, at a small cost
+they were exceedingly well adapted to the purpose:  being light,
+well ventilated, clean, and cheerful.  They consisted of three
+large rooms.  That on the basement story was the kitchen; that on
+the ground floor was the general dining-room; that on the floor
+above was the Upper Room referred to in the hand-bill, where the
+Public Dinner at fourpence-halfpenny a head was provided every day.
+The cooking was done, with much economy of space and fuel, by
+American cooking-stoves, and by young women not previously, brought
+up as cooks; the walls and pillars of the two dining-rooms were
+agreeably brightened with ornamental colours; the tables were
+capable of accommodating six or eight persons each; the attendants
+were all young women, becomingly and neatly dressed, and dressed
+alike.  I think the whole staff was female, with the exception of
+the steward or manager.
+
+My first inquiries were directed to the wages of this staff;
+because, if any establishment claiming to be self-supporting, live
+upon the spoliation of anybody or anything, or eke out a feeble
+existence by poor mouths and beggarly resources (as too many so-
+called Mechanics' Institutions do), I make bold to express my
+Uncommercial opinion that it has no business to live, and had
+better die.  It was made clear to me by the account books, that
+every person employed was properly paid.  My next inquiries were
+directed to the quality of the provisions purchased, and to the
+terms on which they were bought.  It was made equally clear to me
+that the quality was the very best, and that all bills were paid
+weekly.  My next inquiries were directed to the balance-sheet for
+the last two weeks--only the third and fourth of the
+establishment's career.  It was made equally clear to me, that
+after everything bought was paid for, and after each week was
+charged with its full share of wages, rent and taxes, depreciation
+of plant in use, and interest on capital at the rate of four per
+cent. per annum, the last week had yielded a profit of (in round
+numbers) one pound ten; and the previous week a profit of six
+pounds ten.  By this time I felt that I had a healthy appetite for
+the dinners.
+
+It had just struck twelve, and a quick succession of faces had
+already begun to appear at a little window in the wall of the
+partitioned space where I sat looking over the books.  Within this
+little window, like a pay-box at a theatre, a neat and brisk young
+woman presided to take money and issue tickets.  Every one coming
+in must take a ticket.  Either the fourpence-halfpenny ticket for
+the upper room (the most popular ticket, I think), or a penny
+ticket for a bowl of soup, or as many penny tickets as he or she
+choose to buy.  For three penny tickets one had quite a wide range
+of choice.  A plate of cold boiled beef and potatoes; or a plate of
+cold ham and potatoes; or a plate of hot minced beef and potatoes;
+or a bowl of soup, bread and cheese, and a plate of plum-pudding.
+Touching what they should have, some customers on taking their
+seats fell into a reverie--became mildly distracted--postponed
+decision, and said in bewilderment, they would think of it.  One
+old man I noticed when I sat among the tables in the lower room,
+who was startled by the bill of fare, and sat contemplating it as
+if it were something of a ghostly nature.  The decision of the boys
+was as rapid as their execution, and always included pudding.
+
+There were several women among the diners, and several clerks and
+shopmen.  There were carpenters and painters from the neighbouring
+buildings under repair, and there were nautical men, and there
+were, as one diner observed to me, 'some of most sorts.'  Some were
+solitary, some came two together, some dined in parties of three or
+four, or six.  The latter talked together, but assuredly no one was
+louder than at my club in Pall-Mall.  One young fellow whistled in
+rather a shrill manner while he waited for his dinner, but I was
+gratified to observe that he did so in evident defiance of my
+Uncommercial individuality.  Quite agreeing with him, on
+consideration, that I had no business to be there, unless I dined
+like the rest, 'I went in,' as the phrase is, for fourpence-
+halfpenny.
+
+The room of the fourpence-halfpenny banquet had, like the lower
+room, a counter in it, on which were ranged a great number of cold
+portions ready for distribution.  Behind this counter, the fragrant
+soup was steaming in deep cans, and the best-cooked of potatoes
+were fished out of similar receptacles.  Nothing to eat was touched
+with his hand.  Every waitress had her own tables to attend to.  As
+soon as she saw a new customer seat himself at one of her tables,
+she took from the counter all his dinner--his soup, potatoes, meat,
+and pudding--piled it up dexterously in her two hands, set it
+before him, and took his ticket.  This serving of the whole dinner
+at once, had been found greatly to simplify the business of
+attendance, and was also popular with the customers:  who were thus
+enabled to vary the meal by varying the routine of dishes:
+beginning with soup-to-day, putting soup in the middle to-morrow,
+putting soup at the end the day after to-morrow, and ringing
+similar changes on meat and pudding.  The rapidity with which every
+new-comer got served, was remarkable; and the dexterity with which
+the waitresses (quite new to the art a month before) discharged
+their duty, was as agreeable to see, as the neat smartness with
+which they wore their dress and had dressed their hair.
+
+If I seldom saw better waiting, so I certainly never ate better
+meat, potatoes, or pudding.  And the soup was an honest and stout
+soup, with rice and barley in it, and 'little matters for the teeth
+to touch,' as had been observed to me by my friend below stairs
+already quoted.  The dinner-service, too, was neither conspicuously
+hideous for High Art nor for Low Art, but was of a pleasant and
+pure appearance.  Concerning the viands and their cookery, one last
+remark.  I dined at my club in Pall-Mall aforesaid, a few days
+afterwards, for exactly twelve times the money, and not half as
+well.
+
+The company thickened after one o'clock struck, and changed pretty
+quickly.  Although experience of the place had been so recently
+attainable, and although there was still considerable curiosity out
+in the street and about the entrance, the general tone was as good
+as could be, and the customers fell easily into the ways of the
+place.  It was clear to me, however, that they were there to have
+what they paid for, and to be on an independent footing.  To the
+best of my judgment, they might be patronised out of the building
+in a month.  With judicious visiting, and by dint of being
+questioned, read to, and talked at, they might even be got rid of
+(for the next quarter of a century) in half the time.
+
+This disinterested and wise movement is fraught with so many
+wholesome changes in the lives of the working people, and with so
+much good in the way of overcoming that suspicion which our own
+unconscious impertinence has engendered, that it is scarcely
+gracious to criticise details as yet; the rather, because it is
+indisputable that the managers of the Whitechapel establishment
+most thoroughly feel that they are upon their honour with the
+customers, as to the minutest points of administration.  But,
+although the American stoves cannot roast, they can surely boil one
+kind of meat as well as another, and need not always circumscribe
+their boiling talents within the limits of ham and beef.  The most
+enthusiastic admirer of those substantials, would probably not
+object to occasional inconstancy in respect of pork and mutton:
+or, especially in cold weather, to a little innocent trifling with
+Irish stews, meat pies, and toads in holes.  Another drawback on
+the Whitechapel establishment, is the absence of beer.  Regarded
+merely as a question of policy, it is very impolitic, as having a
+tendency to send the working men to the public-house, where gin is
+reported to be sold.  But, there is a much higher ground on which
+this absence of beer is objectionable.  It expresses distrust of
+the working man.  It is a fragment of that old mantle of patronage
+in which so many estimable Thugs, so darkly wandering up and down
+the moral world, are sworn to muffle him.  Good beer is a good
+thing for him, he says, and he likes it; the Depot could give it
+him good, and he now gets it bad.  Why does the Depot not give it
+him good?  Because he would get drunk.  Why does the Depot not let
+him have a pint with his dinner, which would not make him drunk?
+Because he might have had another pint, or another two pints,
+before he came.  Now, this distrust is an affront, is exceedingly
+inconsistent with the confidence the managers express in their
+hand-bills, and is a timid stopping-short upon the straight
+highway.  It is unjust and unreasonable, also.  It is unjust,
+because it punishes the sober man for the vice of the drunken man.
+It is unreasonable, because any one at all experienced in such
+things knows that the drunken workman does not get drunk where he
+goes to eat and drink, but where he goes to drink--expressly to
+drink.  To suppose that the working man cannot state this question
+to himself quite as plainly as I state it here, is to suppose that
+he is a baby, and is again to tell him in the old wearisome,
+condescending, patronising way that he must be goody-poody, and do
+as he is toldy-poldy, and not be a manny-panny or a voter-poter,
+but fold his handy-pandys, and be a childy-pildy.
+
+I found from the accounts of the Whitechapel Self-Supporting
+Cooking Depot, that every article sold in it, even at the prices I
+have quoted, yields a certain small profit!  Individual speculators
+are of course already in the field, and are of course already
+appropriating the name.  The classes for whose benefit the real
+depots are designed, will distinguish between the two kinds of
+enterprise.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI--CHATHAM DOCKYARD
+
+
+
+There are some small out-of-the-way landing places on the Thames
+and the Medway, where I do much of my summer idling.  Running water
+is favourable to day-dreams, and a strong tidal river is the best
+of running water for mine.  I like to watch the great ships
+standing out to sea or coming home richly laden, the active little
+steam-tugs confidently puffing with them to and from the sea-
+horizon, the fleet of barges that seem to have plucked their brown
+and russet sails from the ripe trees in the landscape, the heavy
+old colliers, light in ballast, floundering down before the tide,
+the light screw barks and schooners imperiously holding a straight
+course while the others patiently tack and go about, the yachts
+with their tiny hulls and great white sheets of canvas, the little
+sailing-boats bobbing to and fro on their errands of pleasure or
+business, and--as it is the nature of little people to do--making a
+prodigious fuss about their small affairs.  Watching these objects,
+I still am under no obligation to think about them, or even so much
+as to see them, unless it perfectly suits my humour.  As little am
+I obliged to hear the plash and flop of the tide, the ripple at my
+feet, the clinking windlass afar off, or the humming steam-ship
+paddles further away yet.  These, with the creaking little jetty on
+which I sit, and the gaunt high-water marks and low-water marks in
+the mud, and the broken causeway, and the broken bank, and the
+broken stakes and piles leaning forward as if they were vain of
+their personal appearance and looking for their reflection in the
+water, will melt into any train of fancy.  Equally adaptable to any
+purpose or to none, are the posturing sheep and kine upon the
+marshes, the gulls that wheel and dip around me, the crows (well
+out of gunshot) going home from the rich harvest-fields, the heron
+that has been out a-fishing and looks as melancholy, up there in
+the sky, as if it hadn't agreed with him.  Everything within the
+range of the senses will, by the aid of the running water, lend
+itself to everything beyond that range, and work into a drowsy
+whole, not unlike a kind of tune, but for which there is no exact
+definition.
+
+One of these landing-places is near an old fort (I can see the Nore
+Light from it with my pocket-glass), from which fort mysteriously
+emerges a boy, to whom I am much indebted for additions to my
+scanty stock of knowledge.  He is a young boy, with an intelligent
+face burnt to a dust colour by the summer sun, and with crisp hair
+of the same hue.  He is a boy in whom I have perceived nothing
+incompatible with habits of studious inquiry and meditation, unless
+an evanescent black eye (I was delicate of inquiring how
+occasioned) should be so considered.  To him am I indebted for
+ability to identify a Custom-house boat at any distance, and for
+acquaintance with all the forms and ceremonies observed by a
+homeward-bound Indiaman coming up the river, when the Custom-house
+officers go aboard her.  But for him, I might never have heard of
+'the dumb-ague,' respecting which malady I am now learned.  Had I
+never sat at his feet, I might have finished my mortal career and
+never known that when I see a white horse on a barge's sail, that
+barge is a lime barge.  For precious secrets in reference to beer,
+am I likewise beholden to him, involving warning against the beer
+of a certain establishment, by reason of its having turned sour
+through failure in point of demand:  though my young sage is not of
+opinion that similar deterioration has befallen the ale.  He has
+also enlightened me touching the mushrooms of the marshes, and has
+gently reproved my ignorance in having supposed them to be
+impregnated with salt.  His manner of imparting information, is
+thoughtful, and appropriate to the scene.  As he reclines beside
+me, he pitches into the river, a little stone or piece of grit, and
+then delivers himself oracularly, as though he spoke out of the
+centre of the spreading circle that it makes in the water.  He
+never improves my mind without observing this formula.
+
+With the wise boy--whom I know by no other name than the Spirit of
+the Fort--I recently consorted on a breezy day when the river
+leaped about us and was full of life.  I had seen the sheaved corn
+carrying in the golden fields as I came down to the river; and the
+rosy farmer, watching his labouring-men in the saddle on his cob,
+had told me how he had reaped his two hundred and sixty acres of
+long-strawed corn last week, and how a better week's work he had
+never done in all his days.  Peace and abundance were on the
+country-side in beautiful forms and beautiful colours, and the
+harvest seemed even to be sailing out to grace the never-reaped sea
+in the yellow-laden barges that mellowed the distance.
+
+It was on this occasion that the Spirit of the Fort, directing his
+remarks to a certain floating iron battery lately lying in that
+reach of the river, enriched my mind with his opinions on naval
+architecture, and informed me that he would like to be an engineer.
+I found him up to everything that is done in the contracting line
+by Messrs. Peto and Brassey--cunning in the article of concrete--
+mellow in the matter of iron--great on the subject of gunnery.
+When he spoke of pile-driving and sluice-making, he left me not a
+leg to stand on, and I can never sufficiently acknowledge his
+forbearance with me in my disabled state.  While he thus
+discoursed, he several times directed his eyes to one distant
+quarter of the landscape, and spoke with vague mysterious awe of
+'the Yard.'  Pondering his lessons after we had parted, I bethought
+me that the Yard was one of our large public Dockyards, and that it
+lay hidden among the crops down in the dip behind the windmills, as
+if it modestly kept itself out of view in peaceful times, and
+sought to trouble no man.  Taken with this modesty on the part of
+the Yard, I resolved to improve the Yard's acquaintance.
+
+My good opinion of the Yard's retiring character was not dashed by
+nearer approach.  It resounded with the noise of hammers beating
+upon iron; and the great sheds or slips under which the mighty men-
+of-war are built, loomed business-like when contemplated from the
+opposite side of the river.  For all that, however, the Yard made
+no display, but kept itself snug under hill-sides of corn-fields,
+hop-gardens, and orchards; its great chimneys smoking with a quiet-
+-almost a lazy--air, like giants smoking tobacco; and the great
+Shears moored off it, looking meekly and inoffensively out of
+proportion, like the Giraffe of the machinery creation.  The store
+of cannon on the neighbouring gun-wharf, had an innocent toy-like
+appearance, and the one red-coated sentry on duty over them was a
+mere toy figure, with a clock-work movement.  As the hot sunlight
+sparkled on him he might have passed for the identical little man
+who had the little gun, and whose bullets they were made of lead,
+lead, lead.
+
+Crossing the river and landing at the Stairs, where a drift of
+chips and weed had been trying to land before me and had not
+succeeded, but had got into a corner instead, I found the very
+street posts to be cannon, and the architectural ornaments to be
+shells.  And so I came to the Yard, which was shut up tight and
+strong with great folded gates, like an enormous patent safe.
+These gates devouring me, I became digested into the Yard; and it
+had, at first, a clean-swept holiday air, as if it had given over
+work until next war-time.  Though indeed a quantity of hemp for
+rope was tumbling out of store-houses, even there, which would
+hardly be lying like so much hay on the white stones if the Yard
+were as placid as it pretended.
+
+Ding, Clash, Dong, BANG, Boom, Rattle, Clash, BANG, Clink, BANG,
+Dong, BANG, Clatter, BANG BANG BANG!  What on earth is this!  This
+is, or soon will be, the Achilles, iron armour-plated ship.  Twelve
+hundred men are working at her now; twelve hundred men working on
+stages over her sides, over her bows, over her stern, under her
+keel, between her decks, down in her hold, within her and without,
+crawling and creeping into the finest curves of her lines wherever
+it is possible for men to twist.  Twelve hundred hammerers,
+measurers, caulkers, armourers, forgers, smiths, shipwrights;
+twelve hundred dingers, clashers, dongers, rattlers, clinkers,
+bangers bangers bangers!  Yet all this stupendous uproar around the
+rising Achilles is as nothing to the reverberations with which the
+perfected Achilles shall resound upon the dreadful day when the
+full work is in hand for which this is but note of preparation--the
+day when the scuppers that are now fitting like great, dry, thirsty
+conduit-pipes, shall run red.  All these busy figures between
+decks, dimly seen bending at their work in smoke and fire, are as
+nothing to the figures that shall do work here of another kind in
+smoke and fire, that day.  These steam-worked engines alongside,
+helping the ship by travelling to and fro, and wafting tons of iron
+plates about, as though they were so many leaves of trees, would be
+rent limb from limb if they stood by her for a minute then.  To
+think that this Achilles, monstrous compound of iron tank and oaken
+chest, can ever swim or roll!  To think that any force of wind and
+wave could ever break her!  To think that wherever I see a glowing
+red-hot iron point thrust out of her side from within--as I do now,
+there, and there, and there!--and two watching men on a stage
+without, with bared arms and sledge-hammers, strike at it fiercely,
+and repeat their blows until it is black and flat, I see a rivet
+being driven home, of which there are many in every iron plate, and
+thousands upon thousands in the ship!  To think that the difficulty
+I experience in appreciating the ship's size when I am on board,
+arises from her being a series of iron tanks and oaken chests, so
+that internally she is ever finishing and ever beginning, and half
+of her might be smashed, and yet the remaining half suffice and be
+sound.  Then, to go over the side again and down among the ooze and
+wet to the bottom of the dock, in the depths of the subterranean
+forest of dog-shores and stays that hold her up, and to see the
+immense mass bulging out against the upper light, and tapering down
+towards me, is, with great pains and much clambering, to arrive at
+an impossibility of realising that this is a ship at all, and to
+become possessed by the fancy that it is an enormous immovable
+edifice set up in an ancient amphitheatre (say, that at Verona),
+and almost filling it! Yet what would even these things be, without
+the tributary workshops and the mechanical powers for piercing the
+iron plates--four inches and a half thick--for rivets, shaping them
+under hydraulic pressure to the finest tapering turns of the ship's
+lines, and paring them away, with knives shaped like the beaks of
+strong and cruel birds, to the nicest requirements of the design!
+These machines of tremendous force, so easily directed by one
+attentive face and presiding hand, seem to me to have in them
+something of the retiring character of the Yard.  'Obedient
+monster, please to bite this mass of iron through and through, at
+equal distances, where these regular chalk-marks are, all round.'
+Monster looks at its work, and lifting its ponderous head, replies,
+'I don't particularly want to do it; but if it must be done--!'
+The solid metal wriggles out, hot from the monster's crunching
+tooth, and it IS done.  'Dutiful monster, observe this other mass
+of iron.  It is required to be pared away, according to this
+delicately lessening and arbitrary line, which please to look at.'
+Monster (who has been in a reverie) brings down its blunt head,
+and, much in the manner of Doctor Johnson, closely looks along the
+line--very closely, being somewhat near-sighted.  'I don't
+particularly want to do it; but if it must be done--!'  Monster
+takes another near-sighted look, takes aim, and the tortured piece
+writhes off, and falls, a hot, tight-twisted snake, among the
+ashes.  The making of the rivets is merely a pretty round game,
+played by a man and a boy, who put red-hot barley sugar in a Pope
+Joan board, and immediately rivets fall out of window; but the tone
+of the great machines is the tone of the great Yard and the great
+country:  'We don't particularly want to do it; but if it must be
+done--!'
+
+How such a prodigious mass as the Achilles can ever be held by such
+comparatively little anchors as those intended for her and lying
+near her here, is a mystery of seamanship which I will refer to the
+wise boy.  For my own part, I should as soon have thought of
+tethering an elephant to a tent-peg, or the larger hippopotamus in
+the Zoological Gardens to my shirt-pin.  Yonder in the river,
+alongside a hulk, lie two of this ship's hollow iron masts.  THEY
+are large enough for the eye, I find, and so are all her other
+appliances.  I wonder why only her anchors look small.
+
+I have no present time to think about it, for I am going to see the
+workshops where they make all the oars used in the British Navy.  A
+pretty large pile of building, I opine, and a pretty long job!  As
+to the building, I am soon disappointed, because the work is all
+done in one loft.  And as to a long job--what is this?  Two rather
+large mangles with a swarm of butterflies hovering over them?  What
+can there be in the mangles that attracts butterflies?
+
+Drawing nearer, I discern that these are not mangles, but intricate
+machines, set with knives and saws and planes, which cut smooth and
+straight here, and slantwise there, and now cut such a depth, and
+now miss cutting altogether, according to the predestined
+requirements of the pieces of wood that are pushed on below them:
+each of which pieces is to be an oar, and is roughly adapted to
+that purpose before it takes its final leave of far-off forests,
+and sails for England.  Likewise I discern that the butterflies are
+not true butterflies, but wooden shavings, which, being spirted up
+from the wood by the violence of the machinery, and kept in rapid
+and not equal movement by the impulse of its rotation on the air,
+flutter and play, and rise and fall, and conduct themselves as like
+butterflies as heart could wish.  Suddenly the noise and motion
+cease, and the butterflies drop dead.  An oar has been made since I
+came in, wanting the shaped handle.  As quickly as I can follow it
+with my eye and thought, the same oar is carried to a turning
+lathe.  A whirl and a Nick!  Handle made.  Oar finished.
+
+The exquisite beauty and efficiency of this machinery need no
+illustration, but happen to have a pointed illustration to-day.  A
+pair of oars of unusual size chance to be wanted for a special
+purpose, and they have to be made by hand.  Side by side with the
+subtle and facile machine, and side by side with the fast-growing
+pile of oars on the floor, a man shapes out these special oars with
+an axe.  Attended by no butterflies, and chipping and dinting, by
+comparison as leisurely as if he were a labouring Pagan getting
+them ready against his decease at threescore and ten, to take with
+him as a present to Charon for his boat, the man (aged about
+thirty) plies his task.  The machine would make a regulation oar
+while the man wipes his forehead.  The man might be buried in a
+mound made of the strips of thin, broad, wooden ribbon torn from
+the wood whirled into oars as the minutes fall from the clock,
+before he had done a forenoon's work with his axe.
+
+Passing from this wonderful sight to the Ships again--for my heart,
+as to the Yard, is where the ships are--I notice certain unfinished
+wooden walls left seasoning on the stocks, pending the solution of
+the merits of the wood and iron question, and having an air of
+biding their time with surly confidence.  The names of these
+worthies are set up beside them, together with their capacity in
+guns--a custom highly conducive to ease and satisfaction in social
+intercourse, if it could be adapted to mankind.  By a plank more
+gracefully pendulous than substantial, I make bold to go aboard a
+transport ship (iron screw) just sent in from the contractor's yard
+to be inspected and passed.  She is a very gratifying experience,
+in the simplicity and humanity of her arrangements for troops, in
+her provision for light and air and cleanliness, and in her care
+for women and children.  It occurs to me, as I explore her, that I
+would require a handsome sum of money to go aboard her, at midnight
+by the Dockyard bell, and stay aboard alone till morning; for
+surely she must be haunted by a crowd of ghosts of obstinate old
+martinets, mournfully flapping their cherubic epaulettes over the
+changed times.  Though still we may learn from the astounding ways
+and means in our Yards now, more highly than ever to respect the
+forefathers who got to sea, and fought the sea, and held the sea,
+without them.  This remembrance putting me in the best of tempers
+with an old hulk, very green as to her copper, and generally dim
+and patched, I pull off my hat to her.  Which salutation a callow
+and downy-faced young officer of Engineers, going by at the moment,
+perceiving, appropriates--and to which he is most heartily welcome,
+I am sure.
+
+Having been torn to pieces (in imagination) by the steam circular
+saws, perpendicular saws, horizontal saws, and saws of eccentric
+action, I come to the sauntering part of my expedition, and
+consequently to the core of my Uncommercial pursuits.
+
+Everywhere, as I saunter up and down the Yard, I meet with tokens
+of its quiet and retiring character.  There is a gravity upon its
+red brick offices and houses, a staid pretence of having nothing
+worth mentioning to do, an avoidance of display, which I never saw
+out of England.  The white stones of the pavement present no other
+trace of Achilles and his twelve hundred banging men (not one of
+whom strikes an attitude) than a few occasional echoes.  But for a
+whisper in the air suggestive of sawdust and shavings, the oar-
+making and the saws of many movements might be miles away.  Down
+below here, is the great reservoir of water where timber is steeped
+in various temperatures, as a part of its seasoning process.  Above
+it, on a tramroad supported by pillars, is a Chinese Enchanter's
+Car, which fishes the logs up, when sufficiently steeped, and rolls
+smoothly away with them to stack them.  When I was a child (the
+Yard being then familiar to me) I used to think that I should like
+to play at Chinese Enchanter, and to have that apparatus placed at
+my disposal for the purpose by a beneficent country.  I still think
+that I should rather like to try the effect of writing a book in
+it.  Its retirement is complete, and to go gliding to and fro among
+the stacks of timber would be a convenient kind of travelling in
+foreign countries--among the forests of North America, the sodden
+Honduras swamps, the dark pine woods, the Norwegian frosts, and the
+tropical heats, rainy seasons, and thunderstorms.  The costly store
+of timber is stacked and stowed away in sequestered places, with
+the pervading avoidance of flourish or effect.  It makes as little
+of itself as possible, and calls to no one 'Come and look at me!'
+And yet it is picked out from the trees of the world; picked out
+for length, picked out for breadth, picked out for straightness,
+picked out for crookedness, chosen with an eye to every need of
+ship and boat.  Strangely twisted pieces lie about, precious in the
+sight of shipwrights.  Sauntering through these groves, I come upon
+an open glade where workmen are examining some timber recently
+delivered.  Quite a pastoral scene, with a background of river and
+windmill! and no more like War than the American States are at
+present like an Union.
+
+Sauntering among the ropemaking, I am spun into a state of blissful
+indolence, wherein my rope of life seems to be so untwisted by the
+process as that I can see back to very early days indeed, when my
+bad dreams--they were frightful, though my more mature
+understanding has never made out why--were of an interminable sort
+of ropemaking, with long minute filaments for strands, which, when
+they were spun home together close to my eyes, occasioned
+screaming.  Next, I walk among the quiet lofts of stores--of sails,
+spars, rigging, ships' boats--determined to believe that somebody
+in authority wears a girdle and bends beneath the weight of a
+massive bunch of keys, and that, when such a thing is wanted, he
+comes telling his keys like Blue Beard, and opens such a door.
+Impassive as the long lofts look, let the electric battery send
+down the word, and the shutters and doors shall fly open, and such
+a fleet of armed ships, under steam and under sail, shall burst
+forth as will charge the old Medway--where the merry Stuart let the
+Dutch come, while his not so merry sailors starved in the streets--
+with something worth looking at to carry to the sea.  Thus I idle
+round to the Medway again, where it is now flood tide; and I find
+the river evincing a strong solicitude to force a way into the dry
+dock where Achilles is waited on by the twelve hundred bangers,
+with intent to bear the whole away before they are ready.
+
+To the last, the Yard puts a quiet face upon it; for I make my way
+to the gates through a little quiet grove of trees, shading the
+quaintest of Dutch landing-places, where the leaf-speckled shadow
+of a shipwright just passing away at the further end might be the
+shadow of Russian Peter himself.  So, the doors of the great patent
+safe at last close upon me, and I take boat again:  somehow,
+thinking as the oars dip, of braggart Pistol and his brood, and of
+the quiet monsters of the Yard, with their 'We don't particularly
+want to do it; but if it must be done--!'  Scrunch.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII--IN THE FRENCH-FLEMISH COUNTRY
+
+
+
+'It is neither a bold nor a diversified country,' said I to myself,
+'this country which is three-quarters Flemish, and a quarter
+French; yet it has its attractions too.  Though great lines of
+railway traverse it, the trains leave it behind, and go puffing off
+to Paris and the South, to Belgium and Germany, to the Northern
+Sea-Coast of France, and to England, and merely smoke it a little
+in passing.  Then I don't know it, and that is a good reason for
+being here; and I can't pronounce half the long queer names I see
+inscribed over the shops, and that is another good reason for being
+here, since I surely ought to learn how.'  In short, I was 'here,'
+and I wanted an excuse for not going away from here, and I made it
+to my satisfaction, and stayed here.
+
+What part in my decision was borne by Monsieur P. Salcy, is of no
+moment, though I own to encountering that gentleman's name on a red
+bill on the wall, before I made up my mind.  Monsieur P. Salcy,
+'par permission de M. le Maire,' had established his theatre in the
+whitewashed Hotel de Ville, on the steps of which illustrious
+edifice I stood.  And Monsieur P. Salcy, privileged director of
+such theatre, situate in 'the first theatrical arrondissement of
+the department of the North,' invited French-Flemish mankind to
+come and partake of the intellectual banquet provided by his family
+of dramatic artists, fifteen subjects in number.  'La Famille P.
+SALCY, composee d'artistes dramatiques, au nombre de 15 sujets.'
+
+Neither a bold nor a diversified country, I say again, and withal
+an untidy country, but pleasant enough to ride in, when the paved
+roads over the flats and through the hollows, are not too deep in
+black mud.  A country so sparely inhabited, that I wonder where the
+peasants who till and sow and reap the ground, can possibly dwell,
+and also by what invisible balloons they are conveyed from their
+distant homes into the fields at sunrise and back again at sunset.
+The occasional few poor cottages and farms in this region, surely
+cannot afford shelter to the numbers necessary to the cultivation,
+albeit the work is done so very deliberately, that on one long
+harvest day I have seen, in twelve miles, about twice as many men
+and women (all told) reaping and binding.  Yet have I seen more
+cattle, more sheep, more pigs, and all in better case, than where
+there is purer French spoken, and also better ricks--round swelling
+peg-top ricks, well thatched; not a shapeless brown heap, like the
+toast of a Giant's toast-and-water, pinned to the earth with one of
+the skewers out of his kitchen.  A good custom they have about
+here, likewise, of prolonging the sloping tiled roof of farm or
+cottage, so that it overhangs three or four feet, carrying off the
+wet, and making a good drying-place wherein to hang up herbs, or
+implements, or what not.  A better custom than the popular one of
+keeping the refuse-heap and puddle close before the house door:
+which, although I paint my dwelling never so brightly blue (and it
+cannot be too blue for me, hereabouts), will bring fever inside my
+door.  Wonderful poultry of the French-Flemish country, why take
+the trouble to BE poultry?  Why not stop short at eggs in the
+rising generation, and die out and have done with it?  Parents of
+chickens have I seen this day, followed by their wretched young
+families, scratching nothing out of the mud with an air--tottering
+about on legs so scraggy and weak, that the valiant word drumsticks
+becomes a mockery when applied to them, and the crow of the lord
+and master has been a mere dejected case of croup.  Carts have I
+seen, and other agricultural instruments, unwieldy, dislocated,
+monstrous.  Poplar-trees by the thousand fringe the fields and
+fringe the end of the flat landscape, so that I feel, looking
+straight on before me, as if, when I pass the extremest fringe on
+the low horizon, I shall tumble over into space.  Little
+whitewashed black holes of chapels, with barred doors and Flemish
+inscriptions, abound at roadside corners, and often they are
+garnished with a sheaf of wooden crosses, like children's swords;
+or, in their default, some hollow old tree with a saint roosting in
+it, is similarly decorated, or a pole with a very diminutive saint
+enshrined aloft in a sort of sacred pigeon-house.  Not that we are
+deficient in such decoration in the town here, for, over at the
+church yonder, outside the building, is a scenic representation of
+the Crucifixion, built up with old bricks and stones, and made out
+with painted canvas and wooden figures:  the whole surmounting the
+dusty skull of some holy personage (perhaps), shut up behind a
+little ashy iron grate, as if it were originally put there to be
+cooked, and the fire had long gone out.  A windmilly country this,
+though the windmills are so damp and rickety, that they nearly
+knock themselves off their legs at every turn of their sails, and
+creak in loud complaint.  A weaving country, too, for in the
+wayside cottages the loom goes wearily--rattle and click, rattle
+and click--and, looking in, I see the poor weaving peasant, man or
+woman, bending at the work, while the child, working too, turns a
+little hand-wheel put upon the ground to suit its height.  An
+unconscionable monster, the loom in a small dwelling, asserting
+himself ungenerously as the bread-winner, straddling over the
+children's straw beds, cramping the family in space and air, and
+making himself generally objectionable and tyrannical.  He is
+tributary, too, to ugly mills and factories and bleaching-grounds,
+rising out of the sluiced fields in an abrupt bare way, disdaining,
+like himself, to be ornamental or accommodating.  Surrounded by
+these things, here I stood on the steps of the Hotel de Ville,
+persuaded to remain by the P. Salcy family, fifteen dramatic
+subjects strong.
+
+There was a Fair besides.  The double persuasion being
+irresistible, and my sponge being left behind at the last Hotel, I
+made the tour of the little town to buy another.  In the small
+sunny shops--mercers, opticians, and druggist-grocers, with here
+and there an emporium of religious images--the gravest of old
+spectacled Flemish husbands and wives sat contemplating one another
+across bare counters, while the wasps, who seemed to have taken
+military possession of the town, and to have placed it under wasp-
+martial law, executed warlike manoeuvres in the windows.  Other
+shops the wasps had entirely to themselves, and nobody cared and
+nobody came when I beat with a five-franc piece upon the board of
+custom.  What I sought was no more to be found than if I had sought
+a nugget of Californian gold:  so I went, spongeless, to pass the
+evening with the Family P. Salcy.
+
+The members of the Family P. Salcy were so fat and so like one
+another--fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, uncles, and aunts--
+that I think the local audience were much confused about the plot
+of the piece under representation, and to the last expected that
+everybody must turn out to be the long-lost relative of everybody
+else.  The Theatre was established on the top story of the Hotel de
+Ville, and was approached by a long bare staircase, whereon, in an
+airy situation, one of the P. Salcy Family--a stout gentleman
+imperfectly repressed by a belt--took the money.  This occasioned
+the greatest excitement of the evening; for, no sooner did the
+curtain rise on the introductory Vaudeville, and reveal in the
+person of the young lover (singing a very short song with his
+eyebrows) apparently the very same identical stout gentleman
+imperfectly repressed by a belt, than everybody rushed out to the
+paying-place, to ascertain whether he could possibly have put on
+that dress-coat, that clear complexion, and those arched black
+vocal eyebrows, in so short a space of time.  It then became
+manifest that this was another stout gentleman imperfectly
+repressed by a belt:  to whom, before the spectators had recovered
+their presence of mind, entered a third stout gentleman imperfectly
+repressed by a belt, exactly like him.  These two 'subjects,'
+making with the money-taker three of the announced fifteen, fell
+into conversation touching a charming young widow:  who, presently
+appearing, proved to be a stout lady altogether irrepressible by
+any means--quite a parallel case to the American Negro--fourth of
+the fifteen subjects, and sister of the fifth who presided over the
+check-department.  In good time the whole of the fifteen subjects
+were dramatically presented, and we had the inevitable Ma Mere, Ma
+Mere! and also the inevitable malediction d'un pere, and likewise
+the inevitable Marquis, and also the inevitable provincial young
+man, weak-minded but faithful, who followed Julie to Paris, and
+cried and laughed and choked all at once.  The story was wrought
+out with the help of a virtuous spinning-wheel in the beginning, a
+vicious set of diamonds in the middle, and a rheumatic blessing
+(which arrived by post) from Ma Mere towards the end; the whole
+resulting in a small sword in the body of one of the stout
+gentlemen imperfectly repressed by a belt, fifty thousand francs
+per annum and a decoration to the other stout gentleman imperfectly
+repressed by a belt, and an assurance from everybody to the
+provincial young man that if he were not supremely happy--which he
+seemed to have no reason whatever for being--he ought to be.  This
+afforded him a final opportunity of crying and laughing and choking
+all at once, and sent the audience home sentimentally delighted.
+Audience more attentive or better behaved there could not possibly
+be, though the places of second rank in the Theatre of the Family
+P. Salcy were sixpence each in English money, and the places of
+first rank a shilling.  How the fifteen subjects ever got so fat
+upon it, the kind Heavens know.
+
+What gorgeous china figures of knights and ladies, gilded till they
+gleamed again, I might have bought at the Fair for the garniture of
+my home, if I had been a French-Flemish peasant, and had had the
+money!  What shining coffee-cups and saucers I might have won at
+the turntables, if I had had the luck!  Ravishing perfumery also,
+and sweetmeats, I might have speculated in, or I might have fired
+for prizes at a multitude of little dolls in niches, and might have
+hit the doll of dolls, and won francs and fame.  Or, being a
+French-Flemish youth, I might have been drawn in a hand-cart by my
+compeers, to tilt for municipal rewards at the water-quintain;
+which, unless I sent my lance clean through the ring, emptied a
+full bucket over me; to fend off which, the competitors wore
+grotesque old scarecrow hats.  Or, being French-Flemish man or
+woman, boy or girl, I might have circled all night on my hobby-
+horse in a stately cavalcade of hobby-horses four abreast,
+interspersed with triumphal cars, going round and round and round
+and round, we the goodly company singing a ceaseless chorus to the
+music of the barrel-organ, drum, and cymbals.  On the whole, not
+more monotonous than the Ring in Hyde Park, London, and much
+merrier; for when do the circling company sing chorus, THERE, to
+the barrel-organ, when do the ladies embrace their horses round the
+neck with both arms, when do the gentlemen fan the ladies with the
+tails of their gallant steeds?  On all these revolving delights,
+and on their own especial lamps and Chinese lanterns revolving with
+them, the thoughtful weaver-face brightens, and the Hotel de Ville
+sheds an illuminated line of gaslight:  while above it, the Eagle
+of France, gas-outlined and apparently afflicted with the
+prevailing infirmities that have lighted on the poultry, is in a
+very undecided state of policy, and as a bird moulting.  Flags
+flutter all around.  Such is the prevailing gaiety that the keeper
+of the prison sits on the stone steps outside the prison-door, to
+have a look at the world that is not locked up; while that
+agreeable retreat, the wine-shop opposite to the prison in the
+prison-alley (its sign La Tranquillite, because of its charming
+situation), resounds with the voices of the shepherds and
+shepherdesses who resort there this festive night.  And it reminds
+me that only this afternoon, I saw a shepherd in trouble, tending
+this way, over the jagged stones of a neighbouring street.  A
+magnificent sight it was, to behold him in his blouse, a feeble
+little jog-trot rustic, swept along by the wind of two immense
+gendarmes, in cocked-hats for which the street was hardly wide
+enough, each carrying a bundle of stolen property that would not
+have held his shoulder-knot, and clanking a sabre that dwarfed the
+prisoner.
+
+'Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you at this Fair, as a mark of
+my confidence in the people of this so-renowned town, and as an act
+of homage to their good sense and fine taste, the Ventriloquist,
+the Ventriloquist!  Further, Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to
+you the Face-Maker, the Physiognomist, the great Changer of
+Countenances, who transforms the features that Heaven has bestowed
+upon him into an endless succession of surprising and extraordinary
+visages, comprehending, Messieurs et Mesdames, all the contortions,
+energetic and expressive, of which the human face is capable, and
+all the passions of the human heart, as Love, Jealousy, Revenge,
+Hatred, Avarice, Despair!  Hi hi!  Ho ho!  Lu lu!  Come in!'  To
+this effect, with an occasional smite upon a sonorous kind of
+tambourine--bestowed with a will, as if it represented the people
+who won't come in--holds forth a man of lofty and severe demeanour;
+a man in stately uniform, gloomy with the knowledge he possesses of
+the inner secrets of the booth.  'Come in, come in!  Your
+opportunity presents itself to-night; to-morrow it will be gone for
+ever.  To-morrow morning by the Express Train the railroad will
+reclaim the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker!  Algeria will reclaim
+the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker!  Yes!  For the honour of
+their country they have accepted propositions of a magnitude
+incredible, to appear in Algeria.  See them for the last time
+before their departure!  We go to commence on the instant.  Hi hi!
+Ho ho!  Lu lu!  Come in!  Take the money that now ascends, Madame;
+but after that, no more, for we commence!  Come in!'
+
+Nevertheless, the eyes both of the gloomy Speaker and of Madame
+receiving sous in a muslin bower, survey the crowd pretty sharply
+after the ascending money has ascended, to detect any lingering
+sous at the turning-point.  'Come in, come in!  Is there any more
+money, Madame, on the point of ascending?  If so, we wait for it.
+If not, we commence!'  The orator looks back over his shoulder to
+say it, lashing the spectators with the conviction that he beholds
+through the folds of the drapery into which he is about to plunge,
+the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker.  Several sous burst out of
+pockets, and ascend.  'Come up, then, Messieurs!' exclaims Madame
+in a shrill voice, and beckoning with a bejewelled finger.  'Come
+up!  This presses.  Monsieur has commanded that they commence!'
+Monsieur dives into his Interior, and the last half-dozen of us
+follow.  His Interior is comparatively severe; his Exterior also.
+A true Temple of Art needs nothing but seats, drapery, a small
+table with two moderator lamps hanging over it, and an ornamental
+looking-glass let into the wall.  Monsieur in uniform gets behind
+the table and surveys us with disdain, his forehead becoming
+diabolically intellectual under the moderators.  'Messieurs et
+Mesdames, I present to you the Ventriloquist.  He will commence
+with the celebrated Experience of the bee in the window.  The bee,
+apparently the veritable bee of Nature, will hover in the window,
+and about the room.  He will be with difficulty caught in the hand
+of Monsieur the Ventriloquist--he will escape--he will again hover-
+-at length he will be recaptured by Monsieur the Ventriloquist, and
+will be with difficulty put into a bottle.  Achieve then,
+Monsieur!'  Here the proprietor is replaced behind the table by the
+Ventriloquist, who is thin and sallow, and of a weakly aspect.
+While the bee is in progress, Monsieur the Proprietor sits apart on
+a stool, immersed in dark and remote thought.  The moment the bee
+is bottled, he stalks forward, eyes us gloomily as we applaud, and
+then announces, sternly waving his hand:  'The magnificent
+Experience of the child with the whooping-cough!'  The child
+disposed of, he starts up as before.  'The superb and extraordinary
+Experience of the dialogue between Monsieur Tatambour in his
+dining-room, and his domestic, Jerome, in the cellar; concluding
+with the songsters of the grove, and the Concert of domestic Farm-
+yard animals.'  All this done, and well done, Monsieur the
+Ventriloquist withdraws, and Monsieur the Face-Maker bursts in, as
+if his retiring-room were a mile long instead of a yard.  A
+corpulent little man in a large white waistcoat, with a comic
+countenance, and with a wig in his hand.  Irreverent disposition to
+laugh, instantly checked by the tremendous gravity of the Face-
+Maker, who intimates in his bow that if we expect that sort of
+thing we are mistaken.  A very little shaving-glass with a leg
+behind it is handed in, and placed on the table before the Face-
+Maker.  'Messieurs et Mesdames, with no other assistance than this
+mirror and this wig, I shall have the honour of showing you a
+thousand characters.'  As a preparation, the Face-Maker with both
+hands gouges himself, and turns his mouth inside out.  He then
+becomes frightfully grave again, and says to the Proprietor, 'I am
+ready!'  Proprietor stalks forth from baleful reverie, and
+announces 'The Young Conscript!'  Face-Maker claps his wig on, hind
+side before, looks in the glass, and appears above it as a
+conscript so very imbecile, and squinting so extremely hard, that I
+should think the State would never get any good of him.  Thunders
+of applause.  Face-Maker dips behind the looking-glass, brings his
+own hair forward, is himself again, is awfully grave.  'A
+distinguished inhabitant of the Faubourg St. Germain.'  Face-Maker
+dips, rises, is supposed to be aged, blear-eyed, toothless,
+slightly palsied, supernaturally polite, evidently of noble birth.
+'The oldest member of the Corps of Invalides on the fete-day of his
+master.'  Face-Maker dips, rises, wears the wig on one side, has
+become the feeblest military bore in existence, and (it is clear)
+would lie frightfully about his past achievements, if he were not
+confined to pantomime.  'The Miser!'  Face-Maker dips, rises,
+clutches a bag, and every hair of the wig is on end to express that
+he lives in continual dread of thieves.  'The Genius of France!'
+Face-Maker dips, rises, wig pushed back and smoothed flat, little
+cocked-hat (artfully concealed till now) put a-top of it, Face-
+Maker's white waistcoat much advanced, Face-Maker's left hand in
+bosom of white waistcoat, Face-Maker's right hand behind his back.
+Thunders.  This is the first of three positions of the Genius of
+France.  In the second position, the Face-Maker takes snuff; in the
+third, rolls up his fight hand, and surveys illimitable armies
+through that pocket-glass.  The Face-Maker then, by putting out his
+tongue, and wearing the wig nohow in particular, becomes the
+Village Idiot.  The most remarkable feature in the whole of his
+ingenious performance, is, that whatever he does to disguise
+himself, has the effect of rendering him rather more like himself
+than he was at first.
+
+There were peep-shows in this Fair, and I had the pleasure of
+recognising several fields of glory with which I became well
+acquainted a year or two ago as Crimean battles, now doing duty as
+Mexican victories.  The change was neatly effected by some extra
+smoking of the Russians, and by permitting the camp followers free
+range in the foreground to despoil the enemy of their uniforms.  As
+no British troops had ever happened to be within sight when the
+artist took his original sketches, it followed fortunately that
+none were in the way now.
+
+The Fair wound up with a ball.  Respecting the particular night of
+the week on which the ball took place, I decline to commit myself;
+merely mentioning that it was held in a stable-yard so very close
+to the railway, that it was a mercy the locomotive did not set fire
+to it.  (In Scotland, I suppose, it would have done so.)  There, in
+a tent prettily decorated with looking-glasses and a myriad of toy
+flags, the people danced all night. It was not an expensive
+recreation, the price of a double ticket for a cavalier and lady
+being one and threepence in English money, and even of that small
+sum fivepence was reclaimable for 'consommation:' which word I
+venture to translate into refreshments of no greater strength, at
+the strongest, than ordinary wine made hot, with sugar and lemon in
+it.  It was a ball of great good humour and of great enjoyment,
+though very many of the dancers must have been as poor as the
+fifteen subjects of the P. Salcy Family.
+
+In short, not having taken my own pet national pint pot with me to
+this Fair, I was very well satisfied with the measure of simple
+enjoyment that it poured into the dull French-Flemish country life.
+How dull that is, I had an opportunity of considering--when the
+Fair was over--when the tri-coloured flags were withdrawn from the
+windows of the houses on the Place where the Fair was held--when
+the windows were close shut, apparently until next Fair-time--when
+the Hotel de Ville had cut off its gas and put away its eagle--when
+the two paviours, whom I take to form the entire paving population
+of the town, were ramming down the stones which had been pulled up
+for the erection of decorative poles--when the jailer had slammed
+his gate, and sulkily locked himself in with his charges.  But
+then, as I paced the ring which marked the track of the departed
+hobby-horses on the market-place, pondering in my mind how long
+some hobby-horses do leave their tracks in public ways, and how
+difficult they are to erase, my eyes were greeted with a goodly
+sight.  I beheld four male personages thoughtfully pacing the Place
+together, in the sunlight, evidently not belonging to the town, and
+having upon them a certain loose cosmopolitan air of not belonging
+to any town.  One was clad in a suit of white canvas, another in a
+cap and blouse, the third in an old military frock, the fourth in a
+shapeless dress that looked as if it had been made out of old
+umbrellas.  All wore dust-coloured shoes.  My heart beat high; for,
+in those four male personages, although complexionless and
+eyebrowless, I beheld four subjects of the Family P. Salcy.  Blue-
+bearded though they were, and bereft of the youthful smoothness of
+cheek which is imparted by what is termed in Albion a 'Whitechapel
+shave' (and which is, in fact, whitening, judiciously applied to
+the jaws with the palm of the hand), I recognised them.  As I stood
+admiring, there emerged from the yard of a lowly Cabaret, the
+excellent Ma Mere, Ma Mere, with the words, 'The soup is served;'
+words which so elated the subject in the canvas suit, that when
+they all ran in to partake, he went last, dancing with his hands
+stuck angularly into the pockets of his canvas trousers, after the
+Pierrot manner.  Glancing down the Yard, the last I saw of him was,
+that he looked in through a window (at the soup, no doubt) on one
+leg.
+
+Full of this pleasure, I shortly afterwards departed from the town,
+little dreaming of an addition to my good fortune.  But more was in
+reserve.  I went by a train which was heavy with third-class
+carriages, full of young fellows (well guarded) who had drawn
+unlucky numbers in the last conscription, and were on their way to
+a famous French garrison town where much of the raw military
+material is worked up into soldiery.  At the station they had been
+sitting about, in their threadbare homespun blue garments, with
+their poor little bundles under their arms, covered with dust and
+clay, and the various soils of France; sad enough at heart, most of
+them, but putting a good face upon it, and slapping their breasts
+and singing choruses on the smallest provocation; the gayest
+spirits shouldering half loaves of black bread speared upon their
+walking-sticks.  As we went along, they were audible at every
+station, chorusing wildly out of tune, and feigning the highest
+hilarity.  After a while, however, they began to leave off singing,
+and to laugh naturally, while at intervals there mingled with their
+laughter the barking of a dog.  Now, I had to alight short of their
+destination, and, as that stoppage of the train was attended with a
+quantity of horn blowing, bell ringing, and proclamation of what
+Messieurs les Voyageurs were to do, and were not to do, in order to
+reach their respective destinations, I had ample leisure to go
+forward on the platform to take a parting look at my recruits,
+whose heads were all out at window, and who were laughing like
+delighted children.  Then I perceived that a large poodle with a
+pink nose, who had been their travelling companion and the cause of
+their mirth, stood on his hind-legs presenting arms on the extreme
+verge of the platform, ready to salute them as the train went off.
+This poodle wore a military shako (it is unnecessary to add, very
+much on one side over one eye), a little military coat, and the
+regulation white gaiters.  He was armed with a little musket and a
+little sword-bayonet, and he stood presenting arms in perfect
+attitude, with his unobscured eye on his master or superior
+officer, who stood by him.  So admirable was his discipline, that,
+when the train moved, and he was greeted with the parting cheers of
+the recruits, and also with a shower of centimes, several of which
+struck his shako, and had a tendency to discompose him, he remained
+staunch on his post, until the train was gone.  He then resigned
+his arms to his officer, took off his shako by rubbing his paw over
+it, dropped on four legs, bringing his uniform coat into the
+absurdest relations with the overarching skies, and ran about the
+platform in his white gaiters, waging his tail to an exceeding
+great extent.  It struck me that there was more waggery than this
+in the poodle, and that he knew that the recruits would neither get
+through their exercises, nor get rid of their uniforms, as easily
+as he; revolving which in my thoughts, and seeking in my pockets
+some small money to bestow upon him, I casually directed my eyes to
+the face of his superior officer, and in him beheld the Face-Maker!
+Though it was not the way to Algeria, but quite the reverse, the
+military poodle's Colonel was the Face-Maker in a dark blouse, with
+a small bundle dangling over his shoulder at the end of an
+umbrella, and taking a pipe from his breast to smoke as he and the
+poodle went their mysterious way.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII--MEDICINE MEN OF CIVILISATION
+
+
+
+My voyages (in paper boats) among savages often yield me matter for
+reflection at home.  It is curious to trace the savage in the
+civilised man, and to detect the hold of some savage customs on
+conditions of society rather boastful of being high above them.
+
+I wonder, is the Medicine Man of the North American Indians never
+to be got rid of, out of the North American country?  He comes into
+my Wigwam on all manner of occasions, and with the absurdest
+'Medicine.'  I always find it extremely difficult, and I often find
+it simply impossible, to keep him out of my Wigwam.  For his legal
+'Medicine' he sticks upon his head the hair of quadrupeds, and
+plasters the same with fat, and dirty white powder, and talks a
+gibberish quite unknown to the men and squaws of his tribe.  For
+his religious 'Medicine' he puts on puffy white sleeves, little
+black aprons, large black waistcoats of a peculiar cut, collarless
+coats with Medicine button-holes, Medicine stockings and gaiters
+and shoes, and tops the whole with a highly grotesque Medicinal
+hat.  In one respect, to be sure, I am quite free from him.  On
+occasions when the Medicine Men in general, together with a large
+number of the miscellaneous inhabitants of his village, both male
+and female, are presented to the principal Chief, his native
+'Medicine' is a comical mixture of old odds and ends (hired of
+traders) and new things in antiquated shapes, and pieces of red
+cloth (of which he is particularly fond), and white and red and
+blue paint for the face.  The irrationality of this particular
+Medicine culminates in a mock battle-rush, from which many of the
+squaws are borne out, much dilapidated.  I need not observe how
+unlike this is to a Drawing Room at St. James's Palace.
+
+The African magician I find it very difficult to exclude from my
+Wigwam too.  This creature takes cases of death and mourning under
+his supervision, and will frequently impoverish a whole family by
+his preposterous enchantments.  He is a great eater and drinker,
+and always conceals a rejoicing stomach under a grieving exterior.
+His charms consist of an infinite quantity of worthless scraps, for
+which he charges very high.  He impresses on the poor bereaved
+natives, that the more of his followers they pay to exhibit such
+scraps on their persons for an hour or two (though they never saw
+the deceased in their lives, and are put in high spirits by his
+decease), the more honourably and piously they grieve for the dead.
+The poor people submitting themselves to this conjurer, an
+expensive procession is formed, in which bits of stick, feathers of
+birds, and a quantity of other unmeaning objects besmeared with
+black paint, are carried in a certain ghastly order of which no one
+understands the meaning, if it ever had any, to the brink of the
+grave, and are then brought back again.
+
+In the Tonga Islands everything is supposed to have a soul, so that
+when a hatchet is irreparably broken, they say, 'His immortal part
+has departed; he is gone to the happy hunting-plains.'  This belief
+leads to the logical sequence that when a man is buried, some of
+his eating and drinking vessels, and some of his warlike
+implements, must be broken and buried with him.  Superstitious and
+wrong, but surely a more respectable superstition than the hire of
+antic scraps for a show that has no meaning based on any sincere
+belief.
+
+Let me halt on my Uncommercial road, to throw a passing glance on
+some funeral solemnities that I have seen where North American
+Indians, African Magicians, and Tonga Islanders, are supposed not
+to be.
+
+Once, I dwelt in an Italian city, where there dwelt with me for a
+while, an Englishman of an amiable nature, great enthusiasm, and no
+discretion.  This friend discovered a desolate stranger, mourning
+over the unexpected death of one very dear to him, in a solitary
+cottage among the vineyards of an outlying village.  The
+circumstances of the bereavement were unusually distressing; and
+the survivor, new to the peasants and the country, sorely needed
+help, being alone with the remains.  With some difficulty, but with
+the strong influence of a purpose at once gentle, disinterested,
+and determined, my friend--Mr. Kindheart--obtained access to the
+mourner, and undertook to arrange the burial.
+
+There was a small Protestant cemetery near the city walls, and as
+Mr. Kindheart came back to me, he turned into it and chose the
+spot.  He was always highly flushed when rendering a service
+unaided, and I knew that to make him happy I must keep aloof from
+his ministration.  But when at dinner he warmed with the good
+action of the day, and conceived the brilliant idea of comforting
+the mourner with 'an English funeral,' I ventured to intimate that
+I thought that institution, which was not absolutely sublime at
+home, might prove a failure in Italian hands.  However, Mr.
+Kindheart was so enraptured with his conception, that he presently
+wrote down into the town requesting the attendance with to-morrow's
+earliest light of a certain little upholsterer.  This upholsterer
+was famous for speaking the unintelligible local dialect (his own)
+in a far more unintelligible manner than any other man alive.
+
+When from my bath next morning I overheard Mr. Kindheart and the
+upholsterer in conference on the top of an echoing staircase; and
+when I overheard Mr. Kindheart rendering English Undertaking
+phrases into very choice Italian, and the upholsterer replying in
+the unknown Tongues; and when I furthermore remembered that the
+local funerals had no resemblance to English funerals; I became in
+my secret bosom apprehensive.  But Mr. Kindheart informed me at
+breakfast that measures had been taken to ensure a signal success.
+
+As the funeral was to take place at sunset, and as I knew to which
+of the city gates it must tend, I went out at that gate as the sun
+descended, and walked along the dusty, dusty road.  I had not
+walked far, when I encountered this procession:
+
+1.  Mr. Kindheart, much abashed, on an immense grey horse.
+
+2.  A bright yellow coach and pair, driven by a coachman in bright
+red velvet knee-breeches and waistcoat.  (This was the established
+local idea of State.)  Both coach doors kept open by the coffin,
+which was on its side within, and sticking out at each.
+
+3.  Behind the coach, the mourner, for whom the coach was intended,
+walking in the dust.
+
+4. Concealed behind a roadside well for the irrigation of a garden,
+the unintelligible Upholsterer, admiring.
+
+It matters little now.  Coaches of all colours are alike to poor
+Kindheart, and he rests far North of the little cemetery with the
+cypress-trees, by the city walls where the Mediterranean is so
+beautiful.
+
+My first funeral, a fair representative funeral after its kind, was
+that of the husband of a married servant, once my nurse.  She
+married for money.  Sally Flanders, after a year or two of
+matrimony, became the relict of Flanders, a small master builder;
+and either she or Flanders had done me the honour to express a
+desire that I should 'follow.'  I may have been seven or eight
+years old;--young enough, certainly, to feel rather alarmed by the
+expression, as not knowing where the invitation was held to
+terminate, and how far I was expected to follow the deceased
+Flanders.  Consent being given by the heads of houses, I was jobbed
+up into what was pronounced at home decent mourning (comprehending
+somebody else's shirt, unless my memory deceives me), and was
+admonished that if, when the funeral was in action, I put my hands
+in my pockets, or took my eyes out of my pocket-handkerchief, I was
+personally lost, and my family disgraced.  On the eventful day,
+having tried to get myself into a disastrous frame of mind, and
+having formed a very poor opinion of myself because I couldn't cry,
+I repaired to Sally's.  Sally was an excellent creature, and had
+been a good wife to old Flanders, but the moment I saw her I knew
+that she was not in her own real natural state.  She formed a sort
+of Coat of Arms, grouped with a smelling-bottle, a handkerchief, an
+orange, a bottle of vinegar, Flanders's sister, her own sister,
+Flanders's brother's wife, and two neighbouring gossips--all in
+mourning, and all ready to hold her whenever she fainted.  At sight
+of poor little me she became much agitated (agitating me much
+more), and having exclaimed, 'O here's dear Master Uncommercial!'
+became hysterical, and swooned as if I had been the death of her.
+An affecting scene followed, during which I was handed about and
+poked at her by various people, as if I were the bottle of salts.
+Reviving a little, she embraced me, said, 'You knew him well, dear
+Master Uncommercial, and he knew you!' and fainted again:  which,
+as the rest of the Coat of Arms soothingly said, 'done her credit.'
+Now, I knew that she needn't have fainted unless she liked, and
+that she wouldn't have fainted unless it had been expected of her,
+quite as well as I know it at this day.  It made me feel
+uncomfortable and hypocritical besides.  I was not sure but that it
+might be manners in ME to faint next, and I resolved to keep my eye
+on Flanders's uncle, and if I saw any signs of his going in that
+direction, to go too, politely.  But Flanders's uncle (who was a
+weak little old retail grocer) had only one idea, which was that we
+all wanted tea; and he handed us cups of tea all round,
+incessantly, whether we refused or not.  There was a young nephew
+of Flanders's present, to whom Flanders, it was rumoured, had left
+nineteen guineas.  He drank all the tea that was offered him, this
+nephew--amounting, I should say, to several quarts--and ate as much
+plum-cake as he could possibly come by; but he felt it to be decent
+mourning that he should now and then stop in the midst of a lump of
+cake, and appear to forget that his mouth was full, in the
+contemplation of his uncle's memory.  I felt all this to be the
+fault of the undertaker, who was handing us gloves on a tea-tray as
+if they were muffins, and tying us into cloaks (mine had to be
+pinned up all round, it was so long for me), because I knew that he
+was making game.  So, when we got out into the streets, and I
+constantly disarranged the procession by tumbling on the people
+before me because my handkerchief blinded my eyes, and tripping up
+the people behind me because my cloak was so long, I felt that we
+were all making game.  I was truly sorry for Flanders, but I knew
+that it was no reason why we should be trying (the women with their
+heads in hoods like coal-scuttles with the black side outward) to
+keep step with a man in a scarf, carrying a thing like a mourning
+spy-glass, which he was going to open presently and sweep the
+horizon with.  I knew that we should not all have been speaking in
+one particular key-note struck by the undertaker, if we had not
+been making game.  Even in our faces we were every one of us as
+like the undertaker as if we had been his own family, and I
+perceived that this could not have happened unless we had been
+making game.  When we returned to Sally's, it was all of a piece.
+The continued impossibility of getting on without plum-cake; the
+ceremonious apparition of a pair of decanters containing port and
+sherry and cork; Sally's sister at the tea-table, clinking the best
+crockery and shaking her head mournfully every time she looked down
+into the teapot, as if it were the tomb; the Coat of Arms again,
+and Sally as before; lastly, the words of consolation administered
+to Sally when it was considered right that she should 'come round
+nicely:' which were, that the deceased had had 'as com-for-ta-ble a
+fu-ne-ral as comfortable could be!'
+
+Other funerals have I seen with grown-up eyes, since that day, of
+which the burden has been the same childish burden.  Making game.
+Real affliction, real grief and solemnity, have been outraged, and
+the funeral has been 'performed.'  The waste for which the funeral
+customs of many tribes of savages are conspicuous, has attended
+these civilised obsequies; and once, and twice, have I wished in my
+soul that if the waste must be, they would let the undertaker bury
+the money, and let me bury the friend.
+
+In France, upon the whole, these ceremonies are more sensibly
+regulated, because they are upon the whole less expensively
+regulated.  I cannot say that I have ever been much edified by the
+custom of tying a bib and apron on the front of the house of
+mourning, or that I would myself particularly care to be driven to
+my grave in a nodding and bobbing car, like an infirm four-post
+bedstead, by an inky fellow-creature in a cocked-hat.  But it may
+be that I am constitutionally insensible to the virtues of a
+cocked-hat.  In provincial France, the solemnities are sufficiently
+hideous, but are few and cheap.  The friends and townsmen of the
+departed, in their own dresses and not masquerading under the
+auspices of the African Conjurer, surround the hand-bier, and often
+carry it.  It is not considered indispensable to stifle the
+bearers, or even to elevate the burden on their shoulders;
+consequently it is easily taken up, and easily set down, and is
+carried through the streets without the distressing floundering and
+shuffling that we see at home.  A dirty priest or two, and a
+dirtier acolyte or two, do not lend any especial grace to the
+proceedings; and I regard with personal animosity the bassoon,
+which is blown at intervals by the big-legged priest (it is always
+a big-legged priest who blows the bassoon), when his fellows
+combine in a lugubrious stalwart drawl.  But there is far less of
+the Conjurer and the Medicine Man in the business than under like
+circumstances here.  The grim coaches that we reserve expressly for
+such shows, are non-existent; if the cemetery be far out of the
+town, the coaches that are hired for other purposes of life are
+hired for this purpose; and although the honest vehicles make no
+pretence of being overcome, I have never noticed that the people in
+them were the worse for it.  In Italy, the hooded Members of
+Confraternities who attend on funerals, are dismal and ugly to look
+upon; but the services they render are at least voluntarily
+rendered, and impoverish no one, and cost nothing.  Why should high
+civilisation and low savagery ever come together on the point of
+making them a wantonly wasteful and contemptible set of forms?
+
+Once I lost a friend by death, who had been troubled in his time by
+the Medicine Man and the Conjurer, and upon whose limited resources
+there were abundant claims.  The Conjurer assured me that I must
+positively 'follow,' and both he and the Medicine Man entertained
+no doubt that I must go in a black carriage, and must wear
+'fittings.'  I objected to fittings as having nothing to do with my
+friendship, and I objected to the black carriage as being in more
+senses than one a job.  So, it came into my mind to try what would
+happen if I quietly walked, in my own way, from my own house to my
+friend's burial-place, and stood beside his open grave in my own
+dress and person, reverently listening to the best of Services.  It
+satisfied my mind, I found, quite as well as if I had been
+disguised in a hired hatband and scarf both trailing to my very
+heels, and as if I had cost the orphan children, in their greatest
+need, ten guineas.
+
+Can any one who ever beheld the stupendous absurdities attendant on
+'A message from the Lords' in the House of Commons, turn upon the
+Medicine Man of the poor Indians?  Has he any 'Medicine' in that
+dried skin pouch of his, so supremely ludicrous as the two Masters
+in Chancery holding up their black petticoats and butting their
+ridiculous wigs at Mr. Speaker?  Yet there are authorities
+innumerable to tell me--as there are authorities innumerable among
+the Indians to tell them--that the nonsense is indispensable, and
+that its abrogation would involve most awful consequences.  What
+would any rational creature who had never heard of judicial and
+forensic 'fittings,' think of the Court of Common Pleas on the
+first day of Term?  Or with what an awakened sense of humour would
+LIVINGSTONE'S account of a similar scene be perused, if the fur and
+red cloth and goats' hair and horse hair and powdered chalk and
+black patches on the top of the head, were all at Tala Mungongo
+instead of Westminster?  That model missionary and good brave man
+found at least one tribe of blacks with a very strong sense of the
+ridiculous, insomuch that although an amiable and docile people,
+they never could see the Missionaries dispose of their legs in the
+attitude of kneeling, or hear them begin a hymn in chorus, without
+bursting into roars of irrepressible laughter.  It is much to be
+hoped that no member of this facetious tribe may ever find his way
+to England and get committed for contempt of Court.
+
+In the Tonga Island already mentioned, there are a set of
+personages called Mataboos--or some such name--who are the masters
+of all the public ceremonies, and who know the exact place in which
+every chief must sit down when a solemn public meeting takes place:
+a meeting which bears a family resemblance to our own Public
+Dinner, in respect of its being a main part of the proceedings that
+every gentleman present is required to drink something nasty.
+These Mataboos are a privileged order, so important is their
+avocation, and they make the most of their high functions.  A long
+way out of the Tonga Islands, indeed, rather near the British
+Islands, was there no calling in of the Mataboos the other day to
+settle an earth-convulsing question of precedence; and was there no
+weighty opinion delivered on the part of the Mataboos which, being
+interpreted to that unlucky tribe of blacks with the sense of the
+ridiculous, would infallibly set the whole population screaming
+with laughter?
+
+My sense of justice demands the admission, however, that this is
+not quite a one-sided question.  If we submit ourselves meekly to
+the Medicine Man and the Conjurer, and are not exalted by it, the
+savages may retort upon us that we act more unwisely than they in
+other matters wherein we fail to imitate them.  It is a widely
+diffused custom among savage tribes, when they meet to discuss any
+affair of public importance, to sit up all night making a horrible
+noise, dancing, blowing shells, and (in cases where they are
+familiar with fire-arms) flying out into open places and letting
+off guns.  It is questionable whether our legislative assemblies
+might not take a hint from this.  A shell is not a melodious wind-
+instrument, and it is monotonous; but it is as musical as, and not
+more monotonous than, my Honourable friend's own trumpet, or the
+trumpet that he blows so hard for the Minister.  The uselessness of
+arguing with any supporter of a Government or of an Opposition, is
+well known.  Try dancing.  It is a better exercise, and has the
+unspeakable recommendation that it couldn't be reported.  The
+honourable and savage member who has a loaded gun, and has grown
+impatient of debate, plunges out of doors, fires in the air, and
+returns calm and silent to the Palaver.  Let the honourable and
+civilised member similarly charged with a speech, dart into the
+cloisters of Westminster Abbey in the silence of night, let his
+speech off, and come back harmless.  It is not at first sight a
+very rational custom to paint a broad blue stripe across one's nose
+and both cheeks, and a broad red stripe from the forehead to the
+chin, to attach a few pounds of wood to one's under lip, to stick
+fish-bones in one's ears and a brass curtain-ring in one's nose,
+and to rub one's body all over with rancid oil, as a preliminary to
+entering on business.  But this is a question of taste and
+ceremony, and so is the Windsor Uniform.  The manner of entering on
+the business itself is another question.  A council of six hundred
+savage gentlemen entirely independent of tailors, sitting on their
+hams in a ring, smoking, and occasionally grunting, seem to me,
+according to the experience I have gathered in my voyages and
+travels, somehow to do what they come together for; whereas that is
+not at all the general experience of a council of six hundred
+civilised gentlemen very dependent on tailors and sitting on
+mechanical contrivances.  It is better that an Assembly should do
+its utmost to envelop itself in smoke, than that it should direct
+its endeavours to enveloping the public in smoke; and I would
+rather it buried half a hundred hatchets than buried one subject
+demanding attention.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX--TITBULL'S ALMS-HOUSES
+
+
+
+By the side of most railways out of London, one may see Alms-Houses
+and Retreats (generally with a Wing or a Centre wanting, and
+ambitious of being much bigger than they are), some of which are
+newly-founded Institutions, and some old establishments
+transplanted.  There is a tendency in these pieces of architecture
+to shoot upward unexpectedly, like Jack's bean-stalk, and to be
+ornate in spires of Chapels and lanterns of Halls, which might lead
+to the embellishment of the air with many castles of questionable
+beauty but for the restraining consideration of expense.  However,
+the manners, being always of a sanguine temperament, comfort
+themselves with plans and elevations of Loomings in the future, and
+are influenced in the present by philanthropy towards the railway
+passengers.  For, the question how prosperous and promising the
+buildings can be made to look in their eyes, usually supersedes the
+lesser question how they can be turned to the best account for the
+inmates.
+
+Why none of the people who reside in these places ever look out of
+window, or take an airing in the piece of ground which is going to
+be a garden by-and-by, is one of the wonders I have added to my
+always-lengthening list of the wonders of the world.  I have got it
+into my mind that they live in a state of chronic injury and
+resentment, and on that account refuse to decorate the building
+with a human interest.  As I have known legatees deeply injured by
+a bequest of five hundred pounds because it was not five thousand,
+and as I was once acquainted with a pensioner on the Public to the
+extent of two hundred a year, who perpetually anathematised his
+Country because he was not in the receipt of four, having no claim
+whatever to sixpence:  so perhaps it usually happens, within
+certain limits, that to get a little help is to get a notion of
+being defrauded of more.  'How do they pass their lives in this
+beautiful and peaceful place!' was the subject of my speculation
+with a visitor who once accompanied me to a charming rustic retreat
+for old men and women:  a quaint ancient foundation in a pleasant
+English country, behind a picturesque church and among rich old
+convent gardens.  There were but some dozen or so of houses, and we
+agreed that we would talk with the inhabitants, as they sat in
+their groined rooms between the light of their fires and the light
+shining in at their latticed windows, and would find out.  They
+passed their lives in considering themselves mulcted of certain
+ounces of tea by a deaf old steward who lived among them in the
+quadrangle.  There was no reason to suppose that any such ounces of
+tea had ever been in existence, or that the old steward so much as
+knew what was the matter;--he passed HIS life in considering
+himself periodically defrauded of a birch-broom by the beadle.
+
+But it is neither to old Alms-Houses in the country, nor to new
+Alms-Houses by the railroad, that these present Uncommercial notes
+relate.  They refer back to journeys made among those common-place,
+smoky-fronted London Alms-Houses, with a little paved court-yard in
+front enclosed by iron railings, which have got snowed up, as it
+were, by bricks and mortar; which were once in a suburb, but are
+now in the densely populated town; gaps in the busy life around
+them, parentheses in the close and blotted texts of the streets.
+
+Sometimes, these Alms-Houses belong to a Company or Society.
+Sometimes, they were established by individuals, and are maintained
+out of private funds bequeathed in perpetuity long ago.  My
+favourite among them is Titbull's, which establishment is a picture
+of many.  Of Titbull I know no more than that he deceased in 1723,
+that his Christian name was Sampson, and his social designation
+Esquire, and that he founded these Alms-Houses as Dwellings for
+Nine Poor Women and Six Poor Men by his Will and Testament.  I
+should not know even this much, but for its being inscribed on a
+grim stone very difficult to read, let into the front of the centre
+house of Titbull's Alms-Houses, and which stone is ornamented a-top
+with a piece of sculptured drapery resembling the effigy of
+Titbull's bath-towel.
+
+Titbull's Alms-Houses are in the east of London, in a great
+highway, in a poor, busy, and thronged neighbourhood.  Old iron and
+fried fish, cough drops and artificial flowers, boiled pigs'-feet
+and household furniture that looks as if it were polished up with
+lip-salve, umbrellas full of vocal literature and saucers full of
+shell-fish in a green juice which I hope is natural to them when
+their health is good, garnish the paved sideways as you go to
+Titbull's.  I take the ground to have risen in those parts since
+Titbull's time, and you drop into his domain by three stone steps.
+So did I first drop into it, very nearly striking my brows against
+Titbull's pump, which stands with its back to the thoroughfare just
+inside the gate, and has a conceited air of reviewing Titbull's
+pensioners.
+
+'And a worse one,' said a virulent old man with a pitcher, 'there
+isn't nowhere.  A harder one to work, nor a grudginer one to yield,
+there isn't nowhere!'  This old man wore a long coat, such as we
+see Hogarth's Chairmen represented with, and it was of that
+peculiar green-pea hue without the green, which seems to come of
+poverty.  It had also that peculiar smell of cupboard which seems
+to come of poverty.
+
+'The pump is rusty, perhaps,' said I.
+
+'Not IT,' said the old man, regarding it with undiluted virulence
+in his watery eye.  'It never were fit to be termed a pump.  That's
+what's the matter with IT.'
+
+'Whose fault is that?' said I.
+
+The old man, who had a working mouth which seemed to be trying to
+masticate his anger and to find that it was too hard and there was
+too much of it, replied, 'Them gentlemen.'
+
+'What gentlemen?'
+
+'Maybe you're one of 'em?' said the old man, suspiciously.
+
+'The trustees?'
+
+'I wouldn't trust 'em myself,' said the virulent old man.
+
+'If you mean the gentlemen who administer this place, no, I am not
+one of them; nor have I ever so much as heard of them.'
+
+'I wish _I_ never heard of them,' gasped the old man:  'at my time
+of life--with the rheumatics--drawing water-from that thing!'  Not
+to be deluded into calling it a Pump, the old man gave it another
+virulent look, took up his pitcher, and carried it into a corner
+dwelling-house, shutting the door after him.
+
+Looking around and seeing that each little house was a house of two
+little rooms; and seeing that the little oblong court-yard in front
+was like a graveyard for the inhabitants, saving that no word was
+engraven on its flat dry stones; and seeing that the currents of
+life and noise ran to and fro outside, having no more to do with
+the place than if it were a sort of low-water mark on a lively
+beach; I say, seeing this and nothing else, I was going out at the
+gate when one of the doors opened.
+
+'Was you looking for anything, sir?' asked a tidy, well-favoured
+woman.
+
+Really, no; I couldn't say I was.
+
+'Not wanting any one, sir?'
+
+'No--at least I--pray what is the name of the elderly gentleman who
+lives in the corner there?'
+
+The tidy woman stepped out to be sure of the door I indicated, and
+she and the pump and I stood all three in a row with our backs to
+the thoroughfare.
+
+'Oh!  HIS name is Mr. Battens,' said the tidy woman, dropping her
+voice.
+
+'I have just been talking with him.'
+
+'Indeed?' said the tidy woman.  'Ho!  I wonder Mr. Battens talked!'
+
+'Is he usually so silent?'
+
+'Well, Mr. Battens is the oldest here--that is to say, the oldest
+of the old gentlemen--in point of residence.'
+
+She had a way of passing her hands over and under one another as
+she spoke, that was not only tidy but propitiatory; so I asked her
+if I might look at her little sitting-room?  She willingly replied
+Yes, and we went into it together:  she leaving the door open, with
+an eye as I understood to the social proprieties.  The door opening
+at once into the room without any intervening entry, even scandal
+must have been silenced by the precaution.
+
+It was a gloomy little chamber, but clean, and with a mug of
+wallflower in the window.  On the chimney-piece were two peacock's
+feathers, a carved ship, a few shells, and a black profile with one
+eyelash; whether this portrait purported to be male or female
+passed my comprehension, until my hostess informed me that it was
+her only son, and 'quite a speaking one.'
+
+'He is alive, I hope?'
+
+'No, sir,' said the widow, 'he were cast away in China.'  This was
+said with a modest sense of its reflecting a certain geographical
+distinction on his mother.
+
+'If the old gentlemen here are not given to talking,' said I, 'I
+hope the old ladies are?--not that you are one.'
+
+She shook her head.  'You see they get so cross.'
+
+'How is that?'
+
+'Well, whether the gentlemen really do deprive us of any little
+matters which ought to be ours by rights, I cannot say for certain;
+but the opinion of the old ones is they do.  And Mr. Battens he do
+even go so far as to doubt whether credit is due to the Founder.
+For Mr. Battens he do say, anyhow he got his name up by it and he
+done it cheap.'
+
+'I am afraid the pump has soured Mr. Battens.'
+
+'It may be so,' returned the tidy widow, 'but the handle does go
+very hard.  Still, what I say to myself is, the gentlemen MAY not
+pocket the difference between a good pump and a bad one, and I
+would wish to think well of them.  And the dwellings,' said my
+hostess, glancing round her room; 'perhaps they were convenient
+dwellings in the Founder's time, considered AS his time, and
+therefore he should not be blamed.  But Mrs. Saggers is very hard
+upon them.'
+
+'Mrs. Saggers is the oldest here?'
+
+'The oldest but one.  Mrs. Quinch being the oldest, and have
+totally lost her head.'
+
+'And you?'
+
+'I am the youngest in residence, and consequently am not looked up
+to.  But when Mrs. Quinch makes a happy release, there will be one
+below me.  Nor is it to be expected that Mrs. Saggers will prove
+herself immortal.'
+
+'True.  Nor Mr. Battens.'
+
+'Regarding the old gentlemen,' said my widow slightingly, 'they
+count among themselves.  They do not count among us.  Mr. Battens
+is that exceptional that he have written to the gentlemen many
+times and have worked the case against them.  Therefore he have
+took a higher ground.  But we do not, as a rule, greatly reckon the
+old gentlemen.'
+
+Pursuing the subject, I found it to be traditionally settled among
+the poor ladies that the poor gentlemen, whatever their ages, were
+all very old indeed, and in a state of dotage.  I also discovered
+that the juniors and newcomers preserved, for a time, a waning
+disposition to believe in Titbull and his trustees, but that as
+they gained social standing they lost this faith, and disparaged
+Titbull and all his works.
+
+Improving my acquaintance subsequently with this respected lady,
+whose name was Mrs. Mitts, and occasionally dropping in upon her
+with a little offering of sound Family Hyson in my pocket, I
+gradually became familiar with the inner politics and ways of
+Titbull's Alms-Houses.  But I never could find out who the trustees
+were, or where they were:  it being one of the fixed ideas of the
+place that those authorities must be vaguely and mysteriously
+mentioned as 'the gentlemen' only.  The secretary of 'the
+gentlemen' was once pointed out to me, evidently engaged in
+championing the obnoxious pump against the attacks of the
+discontented Mr. Battens; but I am not in a condition to report
+further of him than that he had the sprightly bearing of a lawyer's
+clerk.  I had it from Mrs. Mitts's lips in a very confidential
+moment, that Mr. Battens was once 'had up before the gentlemen' to
+stand or fall by his accusations, and that an old shoe was thrown
+after him on his departure from the building on this dread errand;-
+-not ineffectually, for, the interview resulting in a plumber, was
+considered to have encircled the temples of Mr. Battens with the
+wreath of victory,
+
+In Titbull's Alms-Houses, the local society is not regarded as good
+society.  A gentleman or lady receiving visitors from without, or
+going out to tea, counts, as it were, accordingly; but visitings or
+tea-drinkings interchanged among Titbullians do not score.  Such
+interchanges, however, are rare, in consequence of internal
+dissensions occasioned by Mrs. Saggers's pail:  which household
+article has split Titbull's into almost as many parties as there
+are dwellings in that precinct.  The extremely complicated nature
+of the conflicting articles of belief on the subject prevents my
+stating them here with my usual perspicuity, but I think they have
+all branched off from the root-and-trunk question, Has Mrs. Saggers
+any right to stand her pail outside her dwelling?  The question has
+been much refined upon, but roughly stated may be stated in those
+terms.
+
+There are two old men in Titbull's Alms-Houses who, I have been
+given to understand, knew each other in the world beyond its pump
+and iron railings, when they were both 'in trade.'  They make the
+best of their reverses, and are looked upon with great contempt.
+They are little, stooping, blear-eyed old men of cheerful
+countenance, and they hobble up and down the court-yard wagging
+their chins and talking together quite gaily.  This has given
+offence, and has, moreover, raised the question whether they are
+justified in passing any other windows than their own.  Mr.
+Battens, however, permitting them to pass HIS windows, on the
+disdainful ground that their imbecility almost amounts to
+irresponsibility, they are allowed to take their walk in peace.
+They live next door to one another, and take it by turns to read
+the newspaper aloud (that is to say, the newest newspaper they can
+get), and they play cribbage at night.  On warm and sunny days they
+have been known to go so far as to bring out two chairs and sit by
+the iron railings, looking forth; but this low conduct, being much
+remarked upon throughout Titbull's, they were deterred by an
+outraged public opinion from repeating it.  There is a rumour--but
+it may be malicious--that they hold the memory of Titbull in some
+weak sort of veneration, and that they once set off together on a
+pilgrimage to the parish churchyard to find his tomb.  To this,
+perhaps, might be traced a general suspicion that they are spies of
+'the gentlemen:' to which they were supposed to have given colour
+in my own presence on the occasion of the weak attempt at
+justification of the pump by the gentlemen's clerk; when they
+emerged bare-headed from the doors of their dwellings, as if their
+dwellings and themselves constituted an old-fashioned weather-glass
+of double action with two figures of old ladies inside, and
+deferentially bowed to him at intervals until he took his
+departure.  They are understood to be perfectly friendless and
+relationless.  Unquestionably the two poor fellows make the very
+best of their lives in Titbull's Alms-Houses, and unquestionably
+they are (as before mentioned) the subjects of unmitigated contempt
+there.
+
+On Saturday nights, when there is a greater stir than usual
+outside, and when itinerant vendors of miscellaneous wares even
+take their stations and light up their smoky lamps before the iron
+railings, Titbull's becomes flurried.  Mrs. Saggers has her
+celebrated palpitations of the heart, for the most part, on
+Saturday nights.  But Titbull's is unfit to strive with the uproar
+of the streets in any of its phases.  It is religiously believed at
+Titbull's that people push more than they used, and likewise that
+the foremost object of the population of England and Wales is to
+get you down and trample on you.  Even of railroads they know, at
+Titbull's, little more than the shriek (which Mrs. Saggers says
+goes through her, and ought to be taken up by Government); and the
+penny postage may even yet be unknown there, for I have never seen
+a letter delivered to any inhabitant.  But there is a tall,
+straight, sallow lady resident in Number Seven, Titbull's, who
+never speaks to anybody, who is surrounded by a superstitious halo
+of lost wealth, who does her household work in housemaid's gloves,
+and who is secretly much deferred to, though openly cavilled at;
+and it has obscurely leaked out that this old lady has a son,
+grandson, nephew, or other relative, who is 'a Contractor,' and who
+would think it nothing of a job to knock down Titbull's, pack it
+off into Cornwall, and knock it together again.  An immense
+sensation was made by a gipsy-party calling in a spring-van, to
+take this old lady up to go for a day's pleasure into Epping
+Forest, and notes were compared as to which of the company was the
+son, grandson, nephew, or other relative, the Contractor.  A thick-
+set personage with a white hat and a cigar in his mouth, was the
+favourite:  though as Titbull's had no other reason to believe that
+the Contractor was there at all, than that this man was supposed to
+eye the chimney stacks as if he would like to knock them down and
+cart them off, the general mind was much unsettled in arriving at a
+conclusion.  As a way out of this difficulty, it concentrated
+itself on the acknowledged Beauty of the party, every stitch in
+whose dress was verbally unripped by the old ladies then and there,
+and whose 'goings on' with another and a thinner personage in a
+white hat might have suffused the pump (where they were principally
+discussed) with blushes, for months afterwards.  Herein Titbull's
+was to Titbull's true, for it has a constitutional dislike of all
+strangers.  As concerning innovations and improvements, it is
+always of opinion that what it doesn't want itself, nobody ought to
+want.  But I think I have met with this opinion outside Titbull's.
+
+Of the humble treasures of furniture brought into Titbull's by the
+inmates when they establish themselves in that place of
+contemplation for the rest of their days, by far the greater and
+more valuable part belongs to the ladies.  I may claim the honour
+of having either crossed the threshold, or looked in at the door,
+of every one of the nine ladies, and I have noticed that they are
+all particular in the article of bedsteads, and maintain favourite
+and long-established bedsteads and bedding as a regular part of
+their rest.  Generally an antiquated chest of drawers is among
+their cherished possessions; a tea-tray always is.  I know of at
+least two rooms in which a little tea-kettle of genuine burnished
+copper, vies with the cat in winking at the fire; and one old lady
+has a tea-urn set forth in state on the top of her chest of
+drawers, which urn is used as her library, and contains four
+duodecimo volumes, and a black-bordered newspaper giving an account
+of the funeral of Her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte.  Among
+the poor old gentlemen there are no such niceties.  Their furniture
+has the air of being contributed, like some obsolete Literary
+Miscellany, 'by several hands;' their few chairs never match; old
+patchwork coverlets linger among them; and they have an untidy
+habit of keeping their wardrobes in hat-boxes.  When I recall one
+old gentleman who is rather choice in his shoe-brushes and
+blacking-bottle, I have summed up the domestic elegances of that
+side of the building.
+
+On the occurrence of a death in Titbull's, it is invariably agreed
+among the survivors--and it is the only subject on which they do
+agree--that the departed did something 'to bring it on.'  Judging
+by Titbull's, I should say the human race need never die, if they
+took care.  But they don't take care, and they do die, and when
+they die in Titbull's they are buried at the cost of the
+Foundation.  Some provision has been made for the purpose, in
+virtue of which (I record this on the strength of having seen the
+funeral of Mrs. Quinch) a lively neighbouring undertaker dresses up
+four of the old men, and four of the old women, hustles them into a
+procession of four couples, and leads off with a large black bow at
+the back of his hat, looking over his shoulder at them airily from
+time to time to see that no member of the party has got lost, or
+has tumbled down; as if they were a company of dim old dolls.
+
+Resignation of a dwelling is of very rare occurrence in Titbull's.
+A story does obtain there, how an old lady's son once drew a prize
+of Thirty Thousand Pounds in the Lottery, and presently drove to
+the gate in his own carriage, with French Horns playing up behind,
+and whisked his mother away, and left ten guineas for a Feast.  But
+I have been unable to substantiate it by any evidence, and regard
+it as an Alms-House Fairy Tale.  It is curious that the only proved
+case of resignation happened within my knowledge.
+
+It happened on this wise.  There is a sharp competition among the
+ladies respecting the gentility of their visitors, and I have so
+often observed visitors to be dressed as for a holiday occasion,
+that I suppose the ladies to have besought them to make all
+possible display when they come.  In these circumstances much
+excitement was one day occasioned by Mrs. Mitts receiving a visit
+from a Greenwich Pensioner.  He was a Pensioner of a bluff and
+warlike appearance, with an empty coat-sleeve, and he was got up
+with unusual care; his coat-buttons were extremely bright, he wore
+his empty coat-sleeve in a graceful festoon, and he had a walking-
+stick in his hand that must have cost money.  When, with the head
+of his walking-stick, he knocked at Mrs. Mitts's door--there are no
+knockers in Titbull's--Mrs. Mitts was overheard by a next-door
+neighbour to utter a cry of surprise expressing much agitation; and
+the same neighbour did afterwards solemnly affirm that when he was
+admitted into Mrs. Mitts's room, she heard a smack.  Heard a smack
+which was not a blow.
+
+There was an air about this Greenwich Pensioner when he took his
+departure, which imbued all Titbull's with the conviction that he
+was coming again.  He was eagerly looked for, and Mrs. Mitts was
+closely watched.  In the meantime, if anything could have placed
+the unfortunate six old gentlemen at a greater disadvantage than
+that at which they chronically stood, it would have been the
+apparition of this Greenwich Pensioner.  They were well shrunken
+already, but they shrunk to nothing in comparison with the
+Pensioner.  Even the poor old gentlemen themselves seemed conscious
+of their inferiority, and to know submissively that they could
+never hope to hold their own against the Pensioner with his warlike
+and maritime experience in the past, and his tobacco money in the
+present:  his chequered career of blue water, black gunpowder, and
+red bloodshed for England, home, and beauty.
+
+Before three weeks were out, the Pensioner reappeared.  Again he
+knocked at Mrs. Mitts's door with the handle of his stick, and
+again was he admitted.  But not again did he depart alone; for Mrs.
+Mitts, in a bonnet identified as having been re-embellished, went
+out walking with him, and stayed out till the ten o'clock beer,
+Greenwich time.
+
+There was now a truce, even as to the troubled waters of Mrs.
+Saggers's pail; nothing was spoken of among the ladies but the
+conduct of Mrs. Mitts and its blighting influence on the reputation
+of Titbull's.  It was agreed that Mr. Battens 'ought to take it
+up,' and Mr. Battens was communicated with on the subject.  That
+unsatisfactory individual replied 'that he didn't see his way yet,'
+and it was unanimously voted by the ladies that aggravation was in
+his nature.
+
+How it came to pass, with some appearance of inconsistency, that
+Mrs. Mitts was cut by all the ladies and the Pensioner admired by
+all the ladies, matters not.  Before another week was out,
+Titbull's was startled by another phenomenon.  At ten o'clock in
+the forenoon appeared a cab, containing not only the Greenwich
+Pensioner with one arm, but, to boot, a Chelsea Pensioner with one
+leg.  Both dismounting to assist Mrs. Mitts into the cab, the
+Greenwich Pensioner bore her company inside, and the Chelsea
+Pensioner mounted the box by the driver:  his wooden leg sticking
+out after the manner of a bowsprit, as if in jocular homage to his
+friend's sea-going career.  Thus the equipage drove away.  No Mrs.
+Mitts returned that night.
+
+What Mr. Battens might have done in the matter of taking it up,
+goaded by the infuriated state of public feeling next morning, was
+anticipated by another phenomenon.  A Truck, propelled by the
+Greenwich Pensioner and the Chelsea Pensioner, each placidly
+smoking a pipe, and pushing his warrior breast against the handle.
+
+The display on the part of the Greenwich Pensioner of his
+'marriage-lines,' and his announcement that himself and friend had
+looked in for the furniture of Mrs. G. Pensioner, late Mitts, by no
+means reconciled the ladies to the conduct of their sister; on the
+contrary, it is said that they appeared more than ever exasperated.
+Nevertheless, my stray visits to Titbull's since the date of this
+occurrence, have confirmed me in an impression that it was a
+wholesome fillip.  The nine ladies are smarter, both in mind and
+dress, than they used to be, though it must be admitted that they
+despise the six gentlemen to the last extent.  They have a much
+greater interest in the external thoroughfare too, than they had
+when I first knew Titbull's.  And whenever I chance to be leaning
+my back against the pump or the iron railings, and to be talking to
+one of the junior ladies, and to see that a flush has passed over
+her face, I immediately know without looking round that a Greenwich
+Pensioner has gone past.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX--THE RUFFIAN
+
+
+
+I entertain so strong an objection to the euphonious softening of
+Ruffian into Rough, which has lately become popular, that I restore
+the right word to the heading of this paper; the rather, as my
+object is to dwell upon the fact that the Ruffian is tolerated
+among us to an extent that goes beyond all unruffianly endurance.
+I take the liberty to believe that if the Ruffian besets my life, a
+professional Ruffian at large in the open streets of a great city,
+notoriously having no other calling than that of Ruffian, and of
+disquieting and despoiling me as I go peacefully about my lawful
+business, interfering with no one, then the Government under which
+I have the great constitutional privilege, supreme honour and
+happiness, and all the rest of it, to exist, breaks down in the
+discharge of any Government's most simple elementary duty.
+
+What did I read in the London daily papers, in the early days of
+this last September?  That the Police had 'AT LENGTH SUCCEEDED IN
+CAPTURING TWO OF THE NOTORIOUS GANG THAT HAVE SO LONG INVESTED THE
+WATERLOO ROAD.'  Is it possible?  What a wonderful Police!  Here is
+a straight, broad, public thoroughfare of immense resort; half a
+mile long; gas-lighted by night; with a great gas-lighted railway
+station in it, extra the street lamps; full of shops; traversed by
+two popular cross thoroughfares of considerable traffic; itself the
+main road to the South of London; and the admirable Police have,
+after long infestment of this dark and lonely spot by a gang of
+Ruffians, actually got hold of two of them.  Why, can it be doubted
+that any man of fair London knowledge and common resolution, armed
+with the powers of the Law, could have captured the whole
+confederacy in a week?
+
+It is to the saving up of the Ruffian class by the Magistracy and
+Police--to the conventional preserving of them, as if they were
+Partridges--that their number and audacity must be in great part
+referred.  Why is a notorious Thief and Ruffian ever left at large?
+He never turns his liberty to any account but violence and plunder,
+he never did a day's work out of gaol, he never will do a day's
+work out of gaol.  As a proved notorious Thief he is always
+consignable to prison for three months.  When he comes out, he is
+surely as notorious a Thief as he was when he went in.  Then send
+him back again.  'Just Heaven!' cries the Society for the
+protection of remonstrant Ruffians.  'This is equivalent to a
+sentence of perpetual imprisonment!'  Precisely for that reason it
+has my advocacy.  I demand to have the Ruffian kept out of my way,
+and out of the way of all decent people.  I demand to have the
+Ruffian employed, perforce, in hewing wood and drawing water
+somewhere for the general service, instead of hewing at her
+Majesty's subjects and drawing their watches out of their pockets.
+If this be termed an unreasonable demand, then the tax-gatherer's
+demand on me must be far more unreasonable, and cannot be otherwise
+than extortionate and unjust.
+
+It will be seen that I treat of the Thief and Ruffian as one.  I do
+so, because I know the two characters to be one, in the vast
+majority of cases, just as well as the Police know it.  (As to the
+Magistracy, with a few exceptions, they know nothing about it but
+what the Police choose to tell them.)  There are disorderly classes
+of men who are not thieves; as railway-navigators, brickmakers,
+wood-sawyers, costermongers.  These classes are often disorderly
+and troublesome; but it is mostly among themselves, and at any rate
+they have their industrious avocations, they work early and late,
+and work hard.  The generic Ruffian--honourable member for what is
+tenderly called the Rough Element--is either a Thief, or the
+companion of Thieves.  When he infamously molests women coming out
+of chapel on Sunday evenings (for which I would have his back
+scarified often and deep) it is not only for the gratification of
+his pleasant instincts, but that there may be a confusion raised by
+which either he or his friends may profit, in the commission of
+highway robberies or in picking pockets.  When he gets a police-
+constable down and kicks him helpless for life, it is because that
+constable once did his duty in bringing him to justice.  When he
+rushes into the bar of a public-house and scoops an eye out of one
+of the company there, or bites his ear off, it is because the man
+he maims gave evidence against him.  When he and a line of comrades
+extending across the footway--say of that solitary mountain-spur of
+the Abruzzi, the Waterloo Road--advance towards me 'skylarking'
+among themselves, my purse or shirt-pin is in predestined peril
+from his playfulness.  Always a Ruffian, always a Thief.  Always a
+Thief, always a Ruffian.
+
+Now, when I, who am not paid to know these things, know them daily
+on the evidence of my senses and experience; when I know that the
+Ruffian never jostles a lady in the streets, or knocks a hat off,
+but in order that the Thief may profit, is it surprising that I
+should require from those who ARE paid to know these things,
+prevention of them?
+
+Look at this group at a street corner.  Number one is a shirking
+fellow of five-and-twenty, in an ill-favoured and ill-savoured
+suit, his trousers of corduroy, his coat of some indiscernible
+groundwork for the deposition of grease, his neckerchief like an
+eel, his complexion like dirty dough, his mangy fur cap pulled low
+upon his beetle brows to hide the prison cut of his hair.  His
+hands are in his pockets.  He puts them there when they are idle,
+as naturally as in other people's pockets when they are busy, for
+he knows that they are not roughened by work, and that they tell a
+tale.  Hence, whenever he takes one out to draw a sleeve across his
+nose--which is often, for he has weak eyes and a constitutional
+cold in his head--he restores it to its pocket immediately
+afterwards.  Number two is a burly brute of five-and-thirty, in a
+tall stiff hat; is a composite as to his clothes of betting-man and
+fighting-man; is whiskered; has a staring pin in his breast, along
+with his right hand; has insolent and cruel eyes:  large shoulders;
+strong legs booted and tipped for kicking.  Number three is forty
+years of age; is short, thick-set, strong, and bow-legged; wears
+knee cords and white stockings, a very long-sleeved waistcoat, a
+very large neckerchief doubled or trebled round his throat, and a
+crumpled white hat crowns his ghastly parchment face.  This fellow
+looks like an executed postboy of other days, cut down from the
+gallows too soon, and restored and preserved by express diabolical
+agency.  Numbers five, six, and seven, are hulking, idle, slouching
+young men, patched and shabby, too short in the sleeves and too
+tight in the legs, slimily clothed, foul-spoken, repulsive wretches
+inside and out.  In all the party there obtains a certain twitching
+character of mouth and furtiveness of eye, that hint how the coward
+is lurking under the bully.  The hint is quite correct, for they
+are a slinking sneaking set, far more prone to lie down on their
+backs and kick out, when in difficulty, than to make a stand for
+it.  (This may account for the street mud on the backs of Numbers
+five, six, and seven, being much fresher than the stale splashes on
+their legs.)
+
+These engaging gentry a Police-constable stands contemplating.  His
+Station, with a Reserve of assistance, is very near at hand.  They
+cannot pretend to any trade, not even to be porters or messengers.
+It would be idle if they did, for he knows them, and they know that
+he knows them, to be nothing but professed Thieves and Ruffians.
+He knows where they resort, knows by what slang names they call one
+another, knows how often they have been in prison, and how long,
+and for what.  All this is known at his Station, too, and is (or
+ought to be) known at Scotland Yard, too.  But does he know, or
+does his Station know, or does Scotland Yard know, or does anybody
+know, why these fellows should be here at liberty, when, as reputed
+Thieves to whom a whole Division of Police could swear, they might
+all be under lock and key at hard labour?  Not he; truly he would
+be a wise man if he did!  He only knows that these are members of
+the 'notorious gang,' which, according to the newspaper Police-
+office reports of this last past September, 'have so long infested'
+the awful solitudes of the Waterloo Road, and out of which almost
+impregnable fastnesses the Police have at length dragged Two, to
+the unspeakable admiration of all good civilians.
+
+The consequences of this contemplative habit on the part of the
+Executive--a habit to be looked for in a hermit, but not in a
+Police System--are familiar to us all.  The Ruffian becomes one of
+the established orders of the body politic.  Under the playful name
+of Rough (as if he were merely a practical joker) his movements and
+successes are recorded on public occasions.  Whether he mustered in
+large numbers, or small; whether he was in good spirits, or
+depressed; whether he turned his generous exertions to very
+prosperous account, or Fortune was against him; whether he was in a
+sanguinary mood, or robbed with amiable horse-play and a gracious
+consideration for life and limb; all this is chronicled as if he
+were an Institution.  Is there any city in Europe, out of England,
+in which these terms are held with the pests of Society?  Or in
+which, at this day, such violent robberies from the person are
+constantly committed as in London?
+
+The Preparatory Schools of Ruffianism are similarly borne with.
+The young Ruffians of London--not Thieves yet, but training for
+scholarships and fellowships in the Criminal Court Universities--
+molest quiet people and their property, to an extent that is hardly
+credible.  The throwing of stones in the streets has become a
+dangerous and destructive offence, which surely could have got to
+no greater height though we had had no Police but our own riding-
+whips and walking-sticks--the Police to which I myself appeal on
+these occasions.  The throwing of stones at the windows of railway
+carriages in motion--an act of wanton wickedness with the very
+Arch-Fiend's hand in it--had become a crying evil, when the railway
+companies forced it on Police notice.  Constabular contemplation
+had until then been the order of the day.
+
+Within these twelve months, there arose among the young gentlemen
+of London aspiring to Ruffianism, and cultivating that much-
+encouraged social art, a facetious cry of 'I'll have this!'
+accompanied with a clutch at some article of a passing lady's
+dress.  I have known a lady's veil to be thus humorously torn from
+her face and carried off in the open streets at noon; and I have
+had the honour of myself giving chase, on Westminster Bridge, to
+another young Ruffian, who, in full daylight early on a summer
+evening, had nearly thrown a modest young woman into a swoon of
+indignation and confusion, by his shameful manner of attacking her
+with this cry as she harmlessly passed along before me.  MR.
+CARLYLE, some time since, awakened a little pleasantry by writing
+of his own experience of the Ruffian of the streets.  I have seen
+the Ruffian act in exact accordance with Mr. Carlyle's description,
+innumerable times, and I never saw him checked.
+
+The blaring use of the very worst language possible, in our public
+thoroughfares--especially in those set apart for recreation--is
+another disgrace to us, and another result of constabular
+contemplation, the like of which I have never heard in any other
+country to which my uncommercial travels have extended.  Years ago,
+when I had a near interest in certain children who were sent with
+their nurses, for air and exercise, into the Regent's Park, I found
+this evil to be so abhorrent and horrible there, that I called
+public attention to it, and also to its contemplative reception by
+the Police.  Looking afterwards into the newest Police Act, and
+finding that the offence was punishable under it, I resolved, when
+striking occasion should arise, to try my hand as prosecutor.  The
+occasion arose soon enough, and I ran the following gauntlet.
+
+The utterer of the base coin in question was a girl of seventeen or
+eighteen, who, with a suitable attendance of blackguards, youths,
+and boys, was flaunting along the streets, returning from an Irish
+funeral, in a Progress interspersed with singing and dancing.  She
+had turned round to me and expressed herself in the most audible
+manner, to the great delight of that select circle.  I attended the
+party, on the opposite side of the way, for a mile further, and
+then encountered a Police-constable.  The party had made themselves
+merry at my expense until now, but seeing me speak to the
+constable, its male members instantly took to their heels, leaving
+the girl alone.  I asked the constable did he know my name?  Yes,
+he did.  'Take that girl into custody, on my charge, for using bad
+language in the streets.'  He had never heard of such a charge.  I
+had.  Would he take my word that he should get into no trouble?
+Yes, sir, he would do that.  So he took the girl, and I went home
+for my Police Act.
+
+With this potent instrument in my pocket, I literally as well as
+figuratively 'returned to the charge,' and presented myself at the
+Police Station of the district.  There, I found on duty a very
+intelligent Inspector (they are all intelligent men), who,
+likewise, had never heard of such a charge.  I showed him my
+clause, and we went over it together twice or thrice.  It was
+plain, and I engaged to wait upon the suburban Magistrate to-morrow
+morning at ten o'clock.
+
+In the morning I put my Police Act in my pocket again, and waited
+on the suburban Magistrate.  I was not quite so courteously
+received by him as I should have been by The Lord Chancellor or The
+Lord Chief Justice, but that was a question of good breeding on the
+suburban Magistrate's part, and I had my clause ready with its leaf
+turned down.  Which was enough for ME.
+
+Conference took place between the Magistrate and clerk respecting
+the charge.  During conference I was evidently regarded as a much
+more objectionable person than the prisoner;--one giving trouble by
+coming there voluntarily, which the prisoner could not be accused
+of doing.  The prisoner had been got up, since I last had the
+pleasure of seeing her, with a great effect of white apron and
+straw bonnet.  She reminded me of an elder sister of Red Riding
+Hood, and I seemed to remind the sympathising Chimney Sweep by whom
+she was attended, of the Wolf.
+
+The Magistrate was doubtful, Mr. Uncommercial Traveller, whether
+this charge could be entertained.  It was not known.  Mr.
+Uncommercial Traveller replied that he wished it were better known,
+and that, if he could afford the leisure, he would use his
+endeavours to make it so.  There was no question about it, however,
+he contended.  Here was the clause.
+
+The clause was handed in, and more conference resulted.  After
+which I was asked the extraordinary question:  'Mr. Uncommercial,
+do you really wish this girl to be sent to prison?'  To which I
+grimly answered, staring:  'If I didn't, why should I take the
+trouble to come here?'  Finally, I was sworn, and gave my agreeable
+evidence in detail, and White Riding Hood was fined ten shillings,
+under the clause, or sent to prison for so many days.  'Why, Lord
+bless you, sir,' said the Police-officer, who showed me out, with a
+great enjoyment of the jest of her having been got up so
+effectively, and caused so much hesitation:  'if she goes to
+prison, that will be nothing new to HER.  She comes from Charles
+Street, Drury Lane!'
+
+The Police, all things considered, are an excellent force, and I
+have borne my small testimony to their merits.  Constabular
+contemplation is the result of a bad system; a system which is
+administered, not invented, by the man in constable's uniform,
+employed at twenty shillings a week.  He has his orders, and would
+be marked for discouragement if he overstepped them.  That the
+system is bad, there needs no lengthened argument to prove, because
+the fact is self-evident.  If it were anything else, the results
+that have attended it could not possibly have come to pass.  Who
+will say that under a good system, our streets could have got into
+their present state?
+
+The objection to the whole Police system, as concerning the
+Ruffian, may be stated, and its failure exemplified, as follows.
+It is well known that on all great occasions, when they come
+together in numbers, the mass of the English people are their own
+trustworthy Police.  It is well known that wheresoever there is
+collected together any fair general representation of the people, a
+respect for law and order, and a determination to discountenance
+lawlessness and disorder, may be relied upon.  As to one another,
+the people are a very good Police, and yet are quite willing in
+their good-nature that the stipendiary Police should have the
+credit of the people's moderation.  But we are all of us powerless
+against the Ruffian, because we submit to the law, and it is his
+only trade, by superior force and by violence, to defy it.
+Moreover, we are constantly admonished from high places (like so
+many Sunday-school children out for a holiday of buns and milk-and-
+water) that we are not to take the law into our own hands, but are
+to hand our defence over to it.  It is clear that the common enemy
+to be punished and exterminated first of all is the Ruffian.  It is
+clear that he is, of all others, THE offender for whose repressal
+we maintain a costly system of Police.  Him, therefore, we
+expressly present to the Police to deal with, conscious that, on
+the whole, we can, and do, deal reasonably well with one another.
+Him the Police deal with so inefficiently and absurdly that he
+flourishes, and multiplies, and, with all his evil deeds upon his
+head as notoriously as his hat is, pervades the streets with no
+more let or hindrance than ourselves.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI--ABOARD SHIP
+
+
+
+My journeys as Uncommercial Traveller for the firm of Human-
+Interest Brothers have not slackened since I last reported of them,
+but have kept me continually on the move.  I remain in the same
+idle employment.  I never solicit an order, I never get any
+commission, I am the rolling stone that gathers no moss,--unless
+any should by chance be found among these samples.
+
+Some half a year ago, I found myself in my idlest, dreamiest, and
+least accountable condition altogether, on board ship, in the
+harbour of the city of New York, in the United States of America.
+Of all the good ships afloat, mine was the good steamship 'RUSSIA,'
+CAPT. COOK, Cunard Line, bound for Liverpool.  What more could I
+wish for?
+
+I had nothing to wish for but a prosperous passage.  My salad-days,
+when I was green of visage and sea-sick, being gone with better
+things (and no worse), no coming event cast its shadow before.
+
+I might but a few moments previously have imitated Sterne, and
+said, '"And yet, methinks, Eugenius,"--laying my forefinger
+wistfully on his coat-sleeve, thus,--"and yet, methinks, Eugenius,
+'tis but sorry work to part with thee, for what fresh fields, . . .
+my dear Eugenius, . . . can be fresher than thou art, and in what
+pastures new shall I find Eliza, or call her, Eugenius, if thou
+wilt, Annie?"'--I say I might have done this; but Eugenius was
+gone, and I hadn't done it.
+
+I was resting on a skylight on the hurricane-deck, watching the
+working of the ship very slowly about, that she might head for
+England.  It was high noon on a most brilliant day in April, and
+the beautiful bay was glorious and glowing.  Full many a time, on
+shore there, had I seen the snow come down, down, down (itself like
+down), until it lay deep in all the ways of men, and particularly,
+as it seemed, in my way, for I had not gone dry-shod many hours for
+months.  Within two or three days last past had I watched the
+feathery fall setting in with the ardour of a new idea, instead of
+dragging at the skirts of a worn-out winter, and permitting
+glimpses of a fresh young spring.  But a bright sun and a clear sky
+had melted the snow in the great crucible of nature; and it had
+been poured out again that morning over sea and land, transformed
+into myriads of gold and silver sparkles.
+
+The ship was fragrant with flowers.  Something of the old Mexican
+passion for flowers may have gradually passed into North America,
+where flowers are luxuriously grown, and tastefully combined in the
+richest profusion; but, be that as it may, such gorgeous farewells
+in flowers had come on board, that the small officer's cabin on
+deck, which I tenanted, bloomed over into the adjacent scuppers,
+and banks of other flowers that it couldn't hold made a garden of
+the unoccupied tables in the passengers' saloon.  These delicious
+scents of the shore, mingling with the fresh airs of the sea, made
+the atmosphere a dreamy, an enchanting one.  And so, with the watch
+aloft setting all the sails, and with the screw below revolving at
+a mighty rate, and occasionally giving the ship an angry shake for
+resisting, I fell into my idlest ways, and lost myself.
+
+As, for instance, whether it was I lying there, or some other
+entity even more mysterious, was a matter I was far too lazy to
+look into.  What did it signify to me if it were I? or to the more
+mysterious entity, if it were he?  Equally as to the remembrances
+that drowsily floated by me, or by him, why ask when or where the
+things happened?  Was it not enough that they befell at some time,
+somewhere?
+
+There was that assisting at the church service on board another
+steamship, one Sunday, in a stiff breeze.  Perhaps on the passage
+out.  No matter.  Pleasant to hear the ship's bells go as like
+church-bells as they could; pleasant to see the watch off duty
+mustered and come in:  best hats, best Guernseys, washed hands and
+faces, smoothed heads.  But then arose a set of circumstances so
+rampantly comical, that no check which the gravest intentions could
+put upon them would hold them in hand.  Thus the scene.  Some
+seventy passengers assembled at the saloon tables.  Prayer-books on
+tables.  Ship rolling heavily.  Pause.  No minister.  Rumour has
+related that a modest young clergyman on board has responded to the
+captain's request that he will officiate.  Pause again, and very
+heavy rolling.
+
+Closed double doors suddenly burst open, and two strong stewards
+skate in, supporting minister between them.  General appearance as
+of somebody picked up drunk and incapable, and under conveyance to
+station-house.  Stoppage, pause, and particularly heavy rolling.
+Stewards watch their opportunity, and balance themselves, but
+cannot balance minister; who, struggling with a drooping head and a
+backward tendency, seems determined to return below, while they are
+as determined that he shall be got to the reading-desk in mid-
+saloon.  Desk portable, sliding away down a long table, and aiming
+itself at the breasts of various members of the congregation.  Here
+the double doors, which have been carefully closed by other
+stewards, fly open again, and worldly passenger tumbles in,
+seemingly with pale-ale designs:  who, seeking friend, says 'Joe!'
+Perceiving incongruity, says, 'Hullo!  Beg yer pardon!' and tumbles
+out again.  All this time the congregation have been breaking up
+into sects,--as the manner of congregations often is, each sect
+sliding away by itself, and all pounding the weakest sect which
+slid first into the corner.  Utmost point of dissent soon attained
+in every corner, and violent rolling.  Stewards at length make a
+dash; conduct minister to the mast in the centre of the saloon,
+which he embraces with both arms; skate out; and leave him in that
+condition to arrange affairs with flock.
+
+There was another Sunday, when an officer of the ship read the
+service.  It was quiet and impressive, until we fell upon the
+dangerous and perfectly unnecessary experiment of striking up a
+hymn.  After it was given out, we all rose, but everybody left it
+to somebody else to begin.  Silence resulting, the officer (no
+singer himself) rather reproachfully gave us the first line again,
+upon which a rosy pippin of an old gentleman, remarkable throughout
+the passage for his cheerful politeness, gave a little stamp with
+his boot (as if he were leading off a country dance), and blithely
+warbled us into a show of joining.  At the end of the first verse
+we became, through these tactics, so much refreshed and encouraged,
+that none of us, howsoever unmelodious, would submit to be left out
+of the second verse; while as to the third we lifted up our voices
+in a sacred howl that left it doubtful whether we were the more
+boastful of the sentiments we united in professing, or of
+professing them with a most discordant defiance of time and tune.
+
+'Lord bless us!' thought I, when the fresh remembrance of these
+things made me laugh heartily alone in the dead water-gurgling
+waste of the night, what time I was wedged into my berth by a
+wooden bar, or I must have rolled out of it, 'what errand was I
+then upon, and to what Abyssinian point had public events then
+marched?  No matter as to me.  And as to them, if the wonderful
+popular rage for a plaything (utterly confounding in its
+inscrutable unreason) I had not then lighted on a poor young savage
+boy, and a poor old screw of a horse, and hauled the first off by
+the hair of his princely head to "inspect" the British volunteers,
+and hauled the second off by the hair of his equine tail to the
+Crystal Palace, why so much the better for all of us outside
+Bedlam!'
+
+So, sticking to the ship, I was at the trouble of asking myself
+would I like to show the grog distribution in 'the fiddle' at noon
+to the Grand United Amalgamated Total Abstinence Society?  Yes, I
+think I should.  I think it would do them good to smell the rum,
+under the circumstances.  Over the grog, mixed in a bucket,
+presides the boatswain's mate, small tin can in hand.  Enter the
+crew, the guilty consumers, the grown-up brood of Giant Despair, in
+contradistinction to the band of youthful angel Hope.  Some in
+boots, some in leggings, some in tarpaulin overalls, some in
+frocks, some in pea-coats, a very few in jackets, most with
+sou'wester hats, all with something rough and rugged round the
+throat; all, dripping salt water where they stand; all pelted by
+weather, besmeared with grease, and blackened by the sooty rigging.
+
+Each man's knife in its sheath in his girdle, loosened for dinner.
+As the first man, with a knowingly kindled eye, watches the filling
+of the poisoned chalice (truly but a very small tin mug, to be
+prosaic), and, tossing back his head, tosses the contents into
+himself, and passes the empty chalice and passes on, so the second
+man with an anticipatory wipe of his mouth on sleeve or
+handkerchief, bides his turn, and drinks and hands and passes on,
+in whom, and in each as his turn approaches, beams a knowingly
+kindled eye, a brighter temper, and a suddenly awakened tendency to
+be jocose with some shipmate.  Nor do I even observe that the man
+in charge of the ship's lamps, who in right of his office has a
+double allowance of poisoned chalices, seems thereby vastly
+degraded, even though he empties the chalices into himself, one
+after the other, much as if he were delivering their contents at
+some absorbent establishment in which he had no personal interest.
+But vastly comforted, I note them all to be, on deck presently,
+even to the circulation of redder blood in their cold blue
+knuckles; and when I look up at them lying out on the yards, and
+holding on for life among the beating sails, I cannot for MY life
+see the justice of visiting on them--or on me--the drunken crimes
+of any number of criminals arraigned at the heaviest of assizes.
+
+Abetting myself in my idle humour, I closed my eyes, and recalled
+life on board of one of those mail-packets, as I lay, part of that
+day, in the Bay of New York, O!  The regular life began--mine
+always did, for I never got to sleep afterwards--with the rigging
+of the pump while it was yet dark, and washing down of decks.  Any
+enormous giant at a prodigious hydropathic establishment,
+conscientiously undergoing the water-cure in all its departments,
+and extremely particular about cleaning his teeth, would make those
+noises.  Swash, splash, scrub, rub, toothbrush, bubble, swash,
+splash, bubble, toothbrush, splash, splash, bubble, rub.  Then the
+day would break, and, descending from my berth by a graceful ladder
+composed of half-opened drawers beneath it, I would reopen my outer
+dead-light and my inner sliding window (closed by a watchman during
+the water-cure), and would look out at the long-rolling, lead-
+coloured, white topped waves over which the dawn, on a cold winter
+morning, cast a level, lonely glance, and through which the ship
+fought her melancholy way at a terrific rate.  And now, lying down
+again, awaiting the season for broiled ham and tea, I would be
+compelled to listen to the voice of conscience,--the screw.
+
+It might be, in some cases, no more than the voice of stomach; but
+I called it in my fancy by the higher name.  Because it seemed to
+me that we were all of us, all day long, endeavouring to stifle the
+voice.  Because it was under everybody's pillow, everybody's plate,
+everybody's camp-stool, everybody's book, everybody's occupation.
+Because we pretended not to hear it, especially at meal-times,
+evening whist, and morning conversation on deck; but it was always
+among us in an under monotone, not to be drowned in pea-soup, not
+to be shuffled with cards, not to be diverted by books, not to be
+knitted into any pattern, not to be walked away from.  It was
+smoked in the weediest cigar, and drunk in the strongest cocktail;
+it was conveyed on deck at noon with limp ladies, who lay there in
+their wrappers until the stars shone; it waited at table with the
+stewards; nobody could put it out with the lights.  It was
+considered (as on shore) ill-bred to acknowledge the voice of
+conscience.  It was not polite to mention it.  One squally day an
+amiable gentleman in love gave much offence to a surrounding
+circle, including the object of his attachment, by saying of it,
+after it had goaded him over two easy-chairs and a skylight,
+'Screw!'
+
+Sometimes it would appear subdued.  In fleeting moments, when
+bubbles of champagne pervaded the nose, or when there was 'hot pot'
+in the bill of fare, or when an old dish we had had regularly every
+day was described in that official document by a new name,--under
+such excitements, one would almost believe it hushed.  The ceremony
+of washing plates on deck, performed after every meal by a circle
+as of ringers of crockery triple-bob majors for a prize, would keep
+it down.  Hauling the reel, taking the sun at noon, posting the
+twenty-four hours' run, altering the ship's time by the meridian,
+casting the waste food overboard, and attracting the eager gulls
+that followed in our wake,--these events would suppress it for a
+while.  But the instant any break or pause took place in any such
+diversion, the voice would be at it again, importuning us to the
+last extent.  A newly married young pair, who walked the deck
+affectionately some twenty miles per day, would, in the full flush
+of their exercise, suddenly become stricken by it, and stand
+trembling, but otherwise immovable, under its reproaches.
+
+When this terrible monitor was most severe with us was when the
+time approached for our retiring to our dens for the night; when
+the lighted candles in the saloon grew fewer and fewer; when the
+deserted glasses with spoons in them grew more and more numerous;
+when waifs of toasted cheese and strays of sardines fried in batter
+slid languidly to and fro in the table-racks; when the man who
+always read had shut up his book, and blown out his candle; when
+the man who always talked had ceased from troubling; when the man
+who was always medically reported as going to have delirium tremens
+had put it off till to-morrow; when the man who every night devoted
+himself to a midnight smoke on deck two hours in length, and who
+every night was in bed within ten minutes afterwards, was buttoning
+himself up in his third coat for his hardy vigil:  for then, as we
+fell off one by one, and, entering our several hutches, came into a
+peculiar atmosphere of bilge-water and Windsor soap, the voice
+would shake us to the centre.  Woe to us when we sat down on our
+sofa, watching the swinging candle for ever trying and retrying to
+stand upon his head! or our coat upon its peg, imitating us as we
+appeared in our gymnastic days by sustaining itself horizontally
+from the wall, in emulation of the lighter and more facile towels!
+Then would the voice especially claim us for its prey, and rend us
+all to pieces.
+
+Lights out, we in our berths, and the wind rising, the voice grows
+angrier and deeper.  Under the mattress and under the pillow, under
+the sofa and under the washing-stand, under the ship and under the
+sea, seeming to rise from the foundations under the earth with
+every scoop of the great Atlantic (and oh! why scoop so?), always
+the voice.  Vain to deny its existence in the night season;
+impossible to be hard of hearing; screw, screw, screw!  Sometimes
+it lifts out of the water, and revolves with a whirr, like a
+ferocious firework,--except that it never expends itself, but is
+always ready to go off again; sometimes it seems to be in anguish,
+and shivers; sometimes it seems to be terrified by its last plunge,
+and has a fit which causes it to struggle, quiver, and for an
+instant stop.  And now the ship sets in rolling, as only ships so
+fiercely screwed through time and space, day and night, fair
+weather and foul, CAN roll.
+
+Did she ever take a roll before like that last?  Did she ever take
+a roll before like this worse one that is coming now?  Here is the
+partition at my ear down in the deep on the lee side.  Are we ever
+coming up again together?  I think not; the partition and I are so
+long about it that I really do believe we have overdone it this
+time.  Heavens, what a scoop!  What a deep scoop, what a hollow
+scoop, what a long scoop!  Will it ever end, and can we bear the
+heavy mass of water we have taken on board, and which has let loose
+all the table furniture in the officers' mess, and has beaten open
+the door of the little passage between the purser and me, and is
+swashing about, even there and even here?  The purser snores
+reassuringly, and the ship's bells striking, I hear the cheerful
+'All's well!' of the watch musically given back the length of the
+deck, as the lately diving partition, now high in air, tries
+(unsoftened by what we have gone through together) to force me out
+of bed and berth.
+
+'All's well!'  Comforting to know, though surely all might be
+better.  Put aside the rolling and the rush of water, and think of
+darting through such darkness with such velocity.  Think of any
+other similar object coming in the opposite direction!
+
+Whether there may be an attraction in two such moving bodies out at
+sea, which may help accident to bring them into collision?
+Thoughts, too, arise (the voice never silent all the while, but
+marvellously suggestive) of the gulf below; of the strange,
+unfruitful mountain ranges and deep valleys over which we are
+passing; of monstrous fish midway; of the ship's suddenly altering
+her course on her own account, and with a wild plunge settling
+down, and making THAT voyage with a crew of dead discoverers.  Now,
+too, one recalls an almost universal tendency on the part of
+passengers to stumble, at some time or other in the day, on the
+topic of a certain large steamer making this same run, which was
+lost at sea, and never heard of more.  Everybody has seemed under a
+spell, compelling approach to the threshold of the grim subject,
+stoppage, discomfiture, and pretence of never having been near it.
+The boatswain's whistle sounds!  A change in the wind, hoarse
+orders issuing, and the watch very busy.  Sails come crashing home
+overhead, ropes (that seem all knot) ditto; every man engaged
+appears to have twenty feet, with twenty times the average amount
+of stamping power in each.  Gradually the noise slackens, the
+hoarse cries die away, the boatswain's whistle softens into the
+soothing and contented notes, which rather reluctantly admit that
+the job is done for the time, and the voice sets in again.
+
+Thus come unintelligible dreams of up hill and down, and swinging
+and swaying, until consciousness revives of atmospherical Windsor
+soap and bilge-water, and the voice announces that the giant has
+come for the water-cure again.
+
+Such were my fanciful reminiscences as I lay, part of that day, in
+the Bay of New York, O!  Also as we passed clear of the Narrows,
+and got out to sea; also in many an idle hour at sea in sunny
+weather!  At length the observations and computations showed that
+we should make the coast of Ireland to-night.  So I stood watch on
+deck all night to-night, to see how we made the coast of Ireland.
+
+Very dark, and the sea most brilliantly phosphorescent.  Great way
+on the ship, and double look-out kept.  Vigilant captain on the
+bridge, vigilant first officer looking over the port side, vigilant
+second officer standing by the quarter-master at the compass,
+vigilant third officer posted at the stern rail with a lantern.  No
+passengers on the quiet decks, but expectation everywhere
+nevertheless.  The two men at the wheel very steady, very serious,
+and very prompt to answer orders.  An order issued sharply now and
+then, and echoed back; otherwise the night drags slowly, silently,
+with no change.
+
+All of a sudden, at the blank hour of two in the morning, a vague
+movement of relief from a long strain expresses itself in all
+hands; the third officer's lantern tinkles, and he fires a rocket,
+and another rocket.  A sullen solitary light is pointed out to me
+in the black sky yonder.  A change is expected in the light, but
+none takes place.  'Give them two more rockets, Mr. Vigilant.'  Two
+more, and a blue-light burnt.  All eyes watch the light again.  At
+last a little toy sky-rocket is flashed up from it; and, even as
+that small streak in the darkness dies away, we are telegraphed to
+Queenstown, Liverpool, and London, and back again under the ocean
+to America.
+
+Then up come the half-dozen passengers who are going ashore at
+Queenstown and up comes the mail-agent in charge of the bags, and
+up come the men who are to carry the bags into the mail-tender that
+will come off for them out of the harbour.  Lamps and lanterns
+gleam here and there about the decks, and impeding bulks are
+knocked away with handspikes; and the port-side bulwark, barren but
+a moment ago, bursts into a crop of heads of seamen, stewards, and
+engineers.
+
+The light begins to be gained upon, begins to be alongside, begins
+to be left astern.  More rockets, and, between us and the land,
+steams beautifully the Inman steamship City of Paris, for New York,
+outward bound.  We observe with complacency that the wind is dead
+against her (it being WITH us), and that she rolls and pitches.
+(The sickest passenger on board is the most delighted by this
+circumstance.)  Time rushes by as we rush on; and now we see the
+light in Queenstown Harbour, and now the lights of the mail-tender
+coming out to us.  What vagaries the mail-tender performs on the
+way, in every point of the compass, especially in those where she
+has no business, and why she performs them, Heaven only knows!  At
+length she is seen plunging within a cable's length of our port
+broadside, and is being roared at through our speaking-trumpets to
+do this thing, and not to do that, and to stand by the other, as if
+she were a very demented tender indeed.  Then, we slackening amidst
+a deafening roar of steam, this much-abused tender is made fast to
+us by hawsers, and the men in readiness carry the bags aboard, and
+return for more, bending under their burdens, and looking just like
+the pasteboard figures of the miller and his men in the theatre of
+our boyhood, and comporting themselves almost as unsteadily.  All
+the while the unfortunate tender plunges high and low, and is
+roared at.  Then the Queenstown passengers are put on board of her,
+with infinite plunging and roaring, and the tender gets heaved up
+on the sea to that surprising extent that she looks within an ace
+of washing aboard of us, high and dry.  Roared at with contumely to
+the last, this wretched tender is at length let go, with a final
+plunge of great ignominy, and falls spinning into our wake.
+
+The voice of conscience resumed its dominion as the day climbed up
+the sky, and kept by all of us passengers into port; kept by us as
+we passed other lighthouses, and dangerous islands off the coast,
+where some of the officers, with whom I stood my watch, had gone
+ashore in sailing-ships in fogs (and of which by that token they
+seemed to have quite an affectionate remembrance), and past the
+Welsh coast, and past the Cheshire coast, and past everything and
+everywhere lying between our ship and her own special dock in the
+Mersey.  Off which, at last, at nine of the clock, on a fair
+evening early in May, we stopped, and the voice ceased.  A very
+curious sensation, not unlike having my own ears stopped, ensued
+upon that silence; and it was with a no less curious sensation that
+I went over the side of the good Cunard ship 'Russia' (whom
+prosperity attend through all her voyages!) and surveyed the outer
+hull of the gracious monster that the voice had inhabited.  So,
+perhaps, shall we all, in the spirit, one day survey the frame that
+held the busier voice from which my vagrant fancy derived this
+similitude.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII--A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST
+
+
+
+I had been looking, yesternight, through the famous 'Dance of
+Death,' and to-day the grim old woodcuts arose in my mind with the
+new significance of a ghastly monotony not to be found in the
+original.  The weird skeleton rattled along the streets before me,
+and struck fiercely; but it was never at the pains of assuming a
+disguise.  It played on no dulcimer here, was crowned with no
+flowers, waved no plume, minced in no flowing robe or train, lifted
+no wine-cup, sat at no feast, cast no dice, counted no gold.  It
+was simply a bare, gaunt, famished skeleton, slaying his way along.
+
+The borders of Ratcliff and Stepney, eastward of London, and giving
+on the impure river, were the scene of this uncompromising dance of
+death, upon a drizzling November day.  A squalid maze of streets,
+courts, and alleys of miserable houses let out in single rooms.  A
+wilderness of dirt, rags, and hunger.  A mud-desert, chiefly
+inhabited by a tribe from whom employment has departed, or to whom
+it comes but fitfully and rarely.  They are not skilled mechanics
+in any wise.  They are but labourers,--dock-labourers, water-side
+labourers, coal-porters, ballast-heavers, such-like hewers of wood
+and drawers of water.  But they have come into existence, and they
+propagate their wretched race.
+
+One grisly joke alone, methought, the skeleton seemed to play off
+here.  It had stuck election-bills on the walls, which the wind and
+rain had deteriorated into suitable rags.  It had even summed up
+the state of the poll, in chalk, on the shutters of one ruined
+house.  It adjured the free and independent starvers to vote for
+Thisman and vote for Thatman; not to plump, as they valued the
+state of parties and the national prosperity (both of great
+importance to them, I think); but, by returning Thisman and
+Thatman, each naught without the other, to compound a glorious and
+immortal whole.  Surely the skeleton is nowhere more cruelly
+ironical in the original monkish idea!
+
+Pondering in my mind the far-seeing schemes of Thisman and Thatman,
+and of the public blessing called Party, for staying the
+degeneracy, physical and moral, of many thousands (who shall say
+how many?) of the English race; for devising employment useful to
+the community for those who want but to work and live; for
+equalising rates, cultivating waste lands, facilitating emigration,
+and, above all things, saving and utilising the oncoming
+generations, and thereby changing ever-growing national weakness
+into strength:  pondering in my mind, I say, these hopeful
+exertions, I turned down a narrow street to look into a house or
+two.
+
+It was a dark street with a dead wall on one side.  Nearly all the
+outer doors of the houses stood open.  I took the first entry, and
+knocked at a parlour-door.  Might I come in?  I might, if I plased,
+sur.
+
+The woman of the room (Irish) had picked up some long strips of
+wood, about some wharf or barge; and they had just now been thrust
+into the otherwise empty grate to make two iron pots boil.  There
+was some fish in one, and there were some potatoes in the other.
+The flare of the burning wood enabled me to see a table, and a
+broken chair or so, and some old cheap crockery ornaments about the
+chimney-piece.  It was not until I had spoken with the woman a few
+minutes, that I saw a horrible brown heap on the floor in a corner,
+which, but for previous experience in this dismal wise, I might not
+have suspected to be 'the bed.'  There was something thrown upon
+it; and I asked what that was.
+
+''Tis the poor craythur that stays here, sur; and 'tis very bad she
+is, and 'tis very bad she's been this long time, and 'tis better
+she'll never be, and 'tis slape she does all day, and 'tis wake she
+does all night, and 'tis the lead, sur.'
+
+'The what?'
+
+'The lead, sur.  Sure 'tis the lead-mills, where the women gets
+took on at eighteen-pence a day, sur, when they makes application
+early enough, and is lucky and wanted; and 'tis lead-pisoned she
+is, sur, and some of them gets lead-pisoned soon, and some of them
+gets lead-pisoned later, and some, but not many, niver; and 'tis
+all according to the constitooshun, sur, and some constitooshuns is
+strong, and some is weak; and her constitooshun is lead-pisoned,
+bad as can be, sur; and her brain is coming out at her ear, and it
+hurts her dreadful; and that's what it is, and niver no more, and
+niver no less, sur.'
+
+The sick young woman moaning here, the speaker bent over her, took
+a bandage from her head, and threw open a back door to let in the
+daylight upon it, from the smallest and most miserable backyard I
+ever saw.
+
+'That's what cooms from her, sur, being lead-pisoned; and it cooms
+from her night and day, the poor, sick craythur; and the pain of it
+is dreadful; and God he knows that my husband has walked the
+sthreets these four days, being a labourer, and is walking them
+now, and is ready to work, and no work for him, and no fire and no
+food but the bit in the pot, and no more than ten shillings in a
+fortnight; God be good to us! and it is poor we are, and dark it is
+and could it is indeed.'
+
+Knowing that I could compensate myself thereafter for my self-
+denial, if I saw fit, I had resolved that I would give nothing in
+the course of these visits.  I did this to try the people.  I may
+state at once that my closest observation could not detect any
+indication whatever of an expectation that I would give money:
+they were grateful to be talked to about their miserable affairs,
+and sympathy was plainly a comfort to them; but they neither asked
+for money in any case, nor showed the least trace of surprise or
+disappointment or resentment at my giving none.
+
+The woman's married daughter had by this time come down from her
+room on the floor above, to join in the conversation.  She herself
+had been to the lead-mills very early that morning to be 'took on,'
+but had not succeeded.  She had four children; and her husband,
+also a water-side labourer, and then out seeking work, seemed in no
+better case as to finding it than her father.  She was English, and
+by nature, of a buxom figure and cheerful.  Both in her poor dress
+and in her mother's there was an effort to keep up some appearance
+of neatness.  She knew all about the sufferings of the unfortunate
+invalid, and all about the lead-poisoning, and how the symptoms
+came on, and how they grew,--having often seen them.  The very
+smell when you stood inside the door of the works was enough to
+knock you down, she said:  yet she was going back again to get
+'took on.'  What could she do?  Better be ulcerated and paralysed
+for eighteen-pence a day, while it lasted, than see the children
+starve.
+
+A dark and squalid cupboard in this room, touching the back door
+and all manner of offence, had been for some time the sleeping-
+place of the sick young woman.  But the nights being now wintry,
+and the blankets and coverlets 'gone to the leaving shop,' she lay
+all night where she lay all day, and was lying then.  The woman of
+the room, her husband, this most miserable patient, and two others,
+lay on the one brown heap together for warmth.
+
+'God bless you, sir, and thank you!' were the parting words from
+these people,--gratefully spoken too,--with which I left this
+place.
+
+Some streets away, I tapped at another parlour-door on another
+ground-floor.  Looking in, I found a man, his wife, and four
+children, sitting at a washing-stool by way of table, at their
+dinner of bread and infused tea-leaves.  There was a very scanty
+cinderous fire in the grate by which they sat; and there was a tent
+bedstead in the room with a bed upon it and a coverlet.  The man
+did not rise when I went in, nor during my stay, but civilly
+inclined his head on my pulling off my hat, and, in answer to my
+inquiry whether I might ask him a question or two, said,
+'Certainly.'  There being a window at each end of this room, back
+and front, it might have been ventilated; but it was shut up tight,
+to keep the cold out, and was very sickening.
+
+The wife, an intelligent, quick woman, rose and stood at her
+husband's elbow; and he glanced up at her as if for help.  It soon
+appeared that he was rather deaf.  He was a slow, simple fellow of
+about thirty.
+
+'What was he by trade?'
+
+'Gentleman asks what are you by trade, John?'
+
+'I am a boilermaker;' looking about him with an exceedingly
+perplexed air, as if for a boiler that had unaccountably vanished.
+
+'He ain't a mechanic, you understand, sir,' the wife put in:  'he's
+only a labourer.'
+
+'Are you in work?'
+
+He looked up at his wife again.  'Gentleman says are you in work,
+John?'
+
+'In work!' cried this forlorn boilermaker, staring aghast at his
+wife, and then working his vision's way very slowly round to me:
+'Lord, no!'
+
+'Ah, he ain't indeed!' said the poor woman, shaking her head, as
+she looked at the four children in succession, and then at him.
+
+'Work!' said the boilermaker, still seeking that evaporated boiler,
+first in my countenance, then in the air, and then in the features
+of his second son at his knee:  'I wish I WAS in work!  I haven't
+had more than a day's work to do this three weeks.'
+
+'How have you lived?'
+
+A faint gleam of admiration lighted up the face of the would-be
+boilermaker, as he stretched out the short sleeve of his thread-
+bare canvas jacket, and replied, pointing her out, 'On the work of
+the wife.'
+
+I forget where boilermaking had gone to, or where he supposed it
+had gone to; but he added some resigned information on that head,
+coupled with an expression of his belief that it was never coming
+back.
+
+The cheery helpfulness of the wife was very remarkable.  She did
+slop-work; made pea-jackets.  She produced the pea-jacket then in
+hand, and spread it out upon the bed,--the only piece of furniture
+in the room on which to spread it.  She showed how much of it she
+made, and how much was afterwards finished off by the machine.
+According to her calculation at the moment, deducting what her
+trimming cost her, she got for making a pea-jacket tenpence half-
+penny, and she could make one in something less than two days.
+
+But, you see, it come to her through two hands, and of course it
+didn't come through the second hand for nothing.  Why did it come
+through the second hand at all?  Why, this way.  The second hand
+took the risk of the given-out work, you see.  If she had money
+enough to pay the security deposit,--call it two pound,--she could
+get the work from the first hand, and so the second would not have
+to be deducted for.  But, having no money at all, the second hand
+come in and took its profit, and so the whole worked down to
+tenpence half-penny.  Having explained all this with great
+intelligence, even with some little pride, and without a whine or
+murmur, she folded her work again, sat down by her husband's side
+at the washing-stool, and resumed her dinner of dry bread.  Mean as
+the meal was, on the bare board, with its old gallipots for cups,
+and what not other sordid makeshifts; shabby as the woman was in
+dress, and toning done towards the Bosjesman colour, with want of
+nutriment and washing,--there was positively a dignity in her, as
+the family anchor just holding the poor ship-wrecked boilermaker's
+bark.  When I left the room, the boiler-maker's eyes were slowly
+turned towards her, as if his last hope of ever again seeing that
+vanished boiler lay in her direction.
+
+These people had never applied for parish relief but once; and that
+was when the husband met with a disabling accident at his work.
+
+Not many doors from here, I went into a room on the first floor.
+The woman apologised for its being in 'an untidy mess.'  The day
+was Saturday, and she was boiling the children's clothes in a
+saucepan on the hearth.  There was nothing else into which she
+could have put them.  There was no crockery, or tinware, or tub, or
+bucket.  There was an old gallipot or two, and there was a broken
+bottle or so, and there were some broken boxes for seats.  The last
+small scraping of coals left was raked together in a corner of the
+floor.  There were some rags in an open cupboard, also on the
+floor.  In a corner of the room was a crazy old French bed-stead,
+with a man lying on his back upon it in a ragged pilot jacket, and
+rough oil-skin fantail hat.  The room was perfectly black.  It was
+difficult to believe, at first, that it was not purposely coloured
+black, the walls were so begrimed.
+
+As I stood opposite the woman boiling the children's clothes,--she
+had not even a piece of soap to wash them with,--and apologising
+for her occupation, I could take in all these things without
+appearing to notice them, and could even correct my inventory.  I
+had missed, at the first glance, some half a pound of bread in the
+otherwise empty safe, an old red ragged crinoline hanging on the
+handle of the door by which I had entered, and certain fragments of
+rusty iron scattered on the floor, which looked like broken tools
+and a piece of stove-pipe.  A child stood looking on.  On the box
+nearest to the fire sat two younger children; one a delicate and
+pretty little creature, whom the other sometimes kissed.
+
+This woman, like the last, was wofully shabby, and was degenerating
+to the Bosjesman complexion.  But her figure, and the ghost of a
+certain vivacity about her, and the spectre of a dimple in her
+cheek, carried my memory strangely back to the old days of the
+Adelphi Theatre, London, when Mrs. Fitzwilliam was the friend of
+Victorine.
+
+'May I ask you what your husband is?'
+
+'He's a coal-porter, sir,'--with a glance and a sigh towards the
+bed.
+
+'Is he out of work?'
+
+'Oh, yes, sir! and work's at all times very, very scanty with him;
+and now he's laid up.'
+
+'It's my legs,' said the man upon the bed.  'I'll unroll 'em.'  And
+immediately began.
+
+'Have you any older children?'
+
+'I have a daughter that does the needle-work, and I have a son that
+does what he can.  She's at her work now, and he's trying for
+work.'
+
+'Do they live here?'
+
+'They sleep here.  They can't afford to pay more rent, and so they
+come here at night.  The rent is very hard upon us.  It's rose upon
+us too, now,--sixpence a week,--on account of these new changes in
+the law, about the rates.  We are a week behind; the landlord's
+been shaking and rattling at that door frightfully; he says he'll
+turn us out.  I don't know what's to come of it.'
+
+The man upon the bed ruefully interposed, 'Here's my legs.  The
+skin's broke, besides the swelling.  I have had a many kicks,
+working, one way and another.'
+
+He looked at his legs (which were much discoloured and misshapen)
+for a while, and then appearing to remember that they were not
+popular with his family, rolled them up again, as if they were
+something in the nature of maps or plans that were not wanted to be
+referred to, lay hopelessly down on his back once more with his
+fantail hat over his face, and stirred not.
+
+'Do your eldest son and daughter sleep in that cupboard?'
+
+'Yes,' replied the woman.
+
+'With the children?'
+
+'Yes.  We have to get together for warmth.  We have little to cover
+us.'
+
+'Have you nothing by you to eat but the piece of bread I see
+there?'
+
+'Nothing.  And we had the rest of the loaf for our breakfast, with
+water.  I don't know what's to come of it.'
+
+'Have you no prospect of improvement?'
+
+'If my eldest son earns anything to-day, he'll bring it home.  Then
+we shall have something to eat to-night, and may be able to do
+something towards the rent.  If not, I don't know what's to come of
+it.'
+
+'This is a sad state of things.'
+
+'Yes, sir; it's a hard, hard life.  Take care of the stairs as you
+go, sir,--they're broken,--and good day, sir!'
+
+These people had a mortal dread of entering the workhouse, and
+received no out-of-door relief.
+
+In another room, in still another tenement, I found a very decent
+woman with five children,--the last a baby, and she herself a
+patient of the parish doctor,--to whom, her husband being in the
+hospital, the Union allowed for the support of herself and family,
+four shillings a week and five loaves.  I suppose when Thisman,
+M.P., and Thatman, M.P., and the Public-blessing Party, lay their
+heads together in course of time, and come to an equalization of
+rating, she may go down to the dance of death to the tune of
+sixpence more.
+
+I could enter no other houses for that one while, for I could not
+bear the contemplation of the children.  Such heart as I had
+summoned to sustain me against the miseries of the adults failed me
+when I looked at the children.  I saw how young they were, how
+hungry, how serious and still.  I thought of them, sick and dying
+in those lairs.  I think of them dead without anguish; but to think
+of them so suffering and so dying quite unmanned me.
+
+Down by the river's bank in Ratcliff, I was turning upward by a
+side-street, therefore, to regain the railway, when my eyes rested
+on the inscription across the road, 'East London Children's
+Hospital.'  I could scarcely have seen an inscription better suited
+to my frame of mind; and I went across and went straight in.
+
+I found the children's hospital established in an old sail-loft or
+storehouse, of the roughest nature, and on the simplest means.
+There were trap-doors in the floors, where goods had been hoisted
+up and down; heavy feet and heavy weights had started every knot in
+the well-trodden planking:  inconvenient bulks and beams and
+awkward staircases perplexed my passage through the wards.  But I
+found it airy, sweet, and clean.  In its seven and thirty beds I
+saw but little beauty; for starvation in the second or third
+generation takes a pinched look:  but I saw the sufferings both of
+infancy and childhood tenderly assuaged; I heard the little
+patients answering to pet playful names, the light touch of a
+delicate lady laid bare the wasted sticks of arms for me to pity;
+and the claw-like little hands, as she did so, twined themselves
+lovingly around her wedding-ring.
+
+One baby mite there was as pretty as any of Raphael's angels.  The
+tiny head was bandaged for water on the brain; and it was suffering
+with acute bronchitis too, and made from time to time a plaintive,
+though not impatient or complaining, little sound.  The smooth
+curve of the cheeks and of the chin was faultless in its
+condensation of infantine beauty, and the large bright eyes were
+most lovely.  It happened as I stopped at the foot of the bed, that
+these eyes rested upon mine with that wistful expression of
+wondering thoughtfulness which we all know sometimes in very little
+children.  They remained fixed on mine, and never turned from me
+while I stood there.  When the utterance of that plaintive sound
+shook the little form, the gaze still remained unchanged.  I felt
+as though the child implored me to tell the story of the little
+hospital in which it was sheltered to any gentle heart I could
+address.  Laying my world-worn hand upon the little unmarked
+clasped hand at the chin, I gave it a silent promise that I would
+do so.
+
+A gentleman and lady, a young husband and wife, have bought and
+fitted up this building for its present noble use, and have quietly
+settled themselves in it as its medical officers and directors.
+Both have had considerable practical experience of medicine and
+surgery; he as house-surgeon of a great London hospital; she as a
+very earnest student, tested by severe examination, and also as a
+nurse of the sick poor during the prevalence of cholera.
+
+With every qualification to lure them away, with youth and
+accomplishments and tastes and habits that can have no response in
+any breast near them, close begirt by every repulsive circumstance
+inseparable from such a neighbourhood, there they dwell.  They live
+in the hospital itself, and their rooms are on its first floor.
+Sitting at their dinner-table, they could hear the cry of one of
+the children in pain.  The lady's piano, drawing-materials, books,
+and other such evidences of refinement are as much a part of the
+rough place as the iron bedsteads of the little patients.  They are
+put to shifts for room, like passengers on board ship.  The
+dispenser of medicines (attracted to them not by self-interest, but
+by their own magnetism and that of their cause) sleeps in a recess
+in the dining-room, and has his washing apparatus in the sideboard.
+
+Their contented manner of making the best of the things around
+them, I found so pleasantly inseparable from their usefulness!
+Their pride in this partition that we put up ourselves, or in that
+partition that we took down, or in that other partition that we
+moved, or in the stove that was given us for the waiting-room, or
+in our nightly conversion of the little consulting-room into a
+smoking-room!  Their admiration of the situation, if we could only
+get rid of its one objectionable incident, the coal-yard at the
+back!  'Our hospital carriage, presented by a friend, and very
+useful.'  That was my presentation to a perambulator, for which a
+coach-house had been discovered in a corner down-stairs, just large
+enough to hold it.  Coloured prints, in all stages of preparation
+for being added to those already decorating the wards, were
+plentiful; a charming wooden phenomenon of a bird, with an
+impossible top-knot, who ducked his head when you set a counter
+weight going, had been inaugurated as a public statue that very
+morning; and trotting about among the beds, on familiar terms with
+all the patients, was a comical mongrel dog, called Poodles.  This
+comical dog (quite a tonic in himself) was found characteristically
+starving at the door of the institution, and was taken in and fed,
+and has lived here ever since.  An admirer of his mental endowments
+has presented him with a collar bearing the legend, 'Judge not
+Poodles by external appearances.'  He was merrily wagging his tail
+on a boy's pillow when he made this modest appeal to me.
+
+When this hospital was first opened, in January of the present
+year, the people could not possibly conceive but that somebody paid
+for the services rendered there; and were disposed to claim them as
+a right, and to find fault if out of temper.  They soon came to
+understand the case better, and have much increased in gratitude.
+The mothers of the patients avail themselves very freely of the
+visiting rules; the fathers often on Sundays.  There is an
+unreasonable (but still, I think, touching and intelligible)
+tendency in the parents to take a child away to its wretched home,
+if on the point of death.  One boy who had been thus carried off on
+a rainy night, when in a violent state of inflammation, and who had
+been afterwards brought back, had been recovered with exceeding
+difficulty; but he was a jolly boy, with a specially strong
+interest in his dinner, when I saw him.
+
+Insufficient food and unwholesome living are the main causes of
+disease among these small patients.  So nourishment, cleanliness,
+and ventilation are the main remedies.  Discharged patients are
+looked after, and invited to come and dine now and then; so are
+certain famishing creatures who were never patients.  Both the lady
+and the gentleman are well acquainted, not only with the histories
+of the patients and their families, but with the characters and
+circumstances of great numbers of their neighbours--of these they
+keep a register.  It is their common experience, that people,
+sinking down by inches into deeper and deeper poverty, will conceal
+it, even from them, if possible, unto the very last extremity.
+
+The nurses of this hospital are all young,--ranging, say, from
+nineteen to four and twenty.  They have even within these narrow
+limits, what many well-endowed hospitals would not give them, a
+comfortable room of their own in which to take their meals.  It is
+a beautiful truth, that interest in the children and sympathy with
+their sorrows bind these young women to their places far more
+strongly than any other consideration could.  The best skilled of
+the nurses came originally from a kindred neighbourhood, almost as
+poor; and she knew how much the work was needed.  She is a fair
+dressmaker.  The hospital cannot pay her as many pounds in the year
+as there are months in it; and one day the lady regarded it as a
+duty to speak to her about her improving her prospects and
+following her trade.  'No,' she said:  she could never be so useful
+or so happy elsewhere any more; she must stay among the children.
+
+And she stays.  One of the nurses, as I passed her, was washing a
+baby-boy.  Liking her pleasant face, I stopped to speak to her
+charge,--a common, bullet-headed, frowning charge enough, laying
+hold of his own nose with a slippery grasp, and staring very
+solemnly out of a blanket.  The melting of the pleasant face into
+delighted smiles, as this young gentleman gave an unexpected kick,
+and laughed at me, was almost worth my previous pain.
+
+An affecting play was acted in Paris years ago, called 'The
+Children's Doctor.'  As I parted from my children's doctor, now in
+question, I saw in his easy black necktie, in his loose buttoned
+black frock-coat, in his pensive face, in the flow of his dark
+hair, in his eyelashes, in the very turn of his moustache, the
+exact realisation of the Paris artist's ideal as it was presented
+on the stage.  But no romancer that I know of has had the boldness
+to prefigure the life and home of this young husband and young wife
+in the Children's Hospital in the east of London.
+
+I came away from Ratcliff by the Stepney railway station to the
+terminus at Fenchurch Street.  Any one who will reverse that route
+may retrace my steps.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII--A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR
+
+
+
+It fell out on a day in this last autumn, that I had to go down
+from London to a place of seaside resort, on an hour's business,
+accompanied by my esteemed friend Bullfinch.  Let the place of
+seaside resort be, for the nonce, called Namelesston.
+
+I had been loitering about Paris in very hot weather, pleasantly
+breakfasting in the open air in the garden of the Palais Royal or
+the Tuileries, pleasantly dining in the open air in the Elysian
+Fields, pleasantly taking my cigar and lemonade in the open air on
+the Italian Boulevard towards the small hours after midnight.
+Bullfinch--an excellent man of business--has summoned me back
+across the Channel, to transact this said hour's business at
+Namelesston; and thus it fell out that Bullfinch and I were in a
+railway carriage together on our way to Namelesston, each with his
+return-ticket in his waistcoat-pocket.
+
+Says Bullfinch, 'I have a proposal to make.  Let us dine at the
+Temeraire.'
+
+I asked Bullfinch, did he recommend the Temeraire? inasmuch as I
+had not been rated on the books of the Temeraire for many years.
+
+Bullfinch declined to accept the responsibility of recommending the
+Temeraire, but on the whole was rather sanguine about it.  He
+'seemed to remember,' Bullfinch said, that he had dined well there.
+A plain dinner, but good.  Certainly not like a Parisian dinner
+(here Bullfinch obviously became the prey of want of confidence),
+but of its kind very fair.
+
+I appeal to Bullfinch's intimate knowledge of my wants and ways to
+decide whether I was usually ready to be pleased with any dinner,
+or--for the matter of that--with anything that was fair of its kind
+and really what it claimed to be.  Bullfinch doing me the honour to
+respond in the affirmative, I agreed to ship myself as an able
+trencherman on board the Temeraire.
+
+'Now, our plan shall be this,' says Bullfinch, with his forefinger
+at his nose.  'As soon as we get to Namelesston, we'll drive
+straight to the Temeraire, and order a little dinner in an hour.
+And as we shall not have more than enough time in which to dispose
+of it comfortably, what do you say to giving the house the best
+opportunities of serving it hot and quickly by dining in the
+coffee-room?'
+
+What I had to say was, Certainly.  Bullfinch (who is by nature of a
+hopeful constitution) then began to babble of green geese.  But I
+checked him in that Falstaffian vein, urging considerations of time
+and cookery.
+
+In due sequence of events we drove up to the Temeraire, and
+alighted.  A youth in livery received us on the door-step.  'Looks
+well,' said Bullfinch confidentially.  And then aloud, 'Coffee-
+room!'
+
+The youth in livery (now perceived to be mouldy) conducted us to
+the desired haven, and was enjoined by Bullfinch to send the waiter
+at once, as we wished to order a little dinner in an hour.  Then
+Bullfinch and I waited for the waiter, until, the waiter continuing
+to wait in some unknown and invisible sphere of action, we rang for
+the waiter; which ring produced the waiter, who announced himself
+as not the waiter who ought to wait upon us, and who didn't wait a
+moment longer.
+
+So Bullfinch approached the coffee-room door, and melodiously
+pitching his voice into a bar where two young ladies were keeping
+the books of the Temeraire, apologetically explained that we wished
+to order a little dinner in an hour, and that we were debarred from
+the execution of our inoffensive purpose by consignment to
+solitude.
+
+Hereupon one of the young ladies ran a bell, which reproduced--at
+the bar this time--the waiter who was not the waiter who ought to
+wait upon us; that extraordinary man, whose life seemed consumed in
+waiting upon people to say that he wouldn't wait upon them,
+repeated his former protest with great indignation, and retired.
+
+Bullfinch, with a fallen countenance, was about to say to me, 'This
+won't do,' when the waiter who ought to wait upon us left off
+keeping us waiting at last.  'Waiter,' said Bullfinch piteously,
+'we have been a long time waiting.'  The waiter who ought to wait
+upon us laid the blame upon the waiter who ought not to wait upon
+us, and said it was all that waiter's fault.
+
+'We wish,' said Bullfinch, much depressed, 'to order a little
+dinner in an hour.  What can we have?'
+
+'What would you like to have, gentlemen?'
+
+Bullfinch, with extreme mournfulness of speech and action, and with
+a forlorn old fly-blown bill of fare in his hand which the waiter
+had given him, and which was a sort of general manuscript index to
+any cookery-book you please, moved the previous question.
+
+We could have mock-turtle soup, a sole, curry, and roast duck.
+Agreed.  At this table by this window.  Punctually in an hour.
+
+I had been feigning to look out of this window; but I had been
+taking note of the crumbs on all the tables, the dirty table-
+cloths, the stuffy, soupy, airless atmosphere, the stale leavings
+everywhere about, the deep gloom of the waiter who ought to wait
+upon us, and the stomach-ache with which a lonely traveller at a
+distant table in a corner was too evidently afflicted.  I now
+pointed out to Bullfinch the alarming circumstance that this
+traveller had DINED.  We hurriedly debated whether, without
+infringement of good breeding, we could ask him to disclose if he
+had partaken of mock-turtle, sole, curry, or roast duck?  We
+decided that the thing could not be politely done, and we had set
+our own stomachs on a cast, and they must stand the hazard of the
+die.
+
+I hold phrenology, within certain limits, to be true; I am much of
+the same mind as to the subtler expressions of the hand; I hold
+physiognomy to be infallible; though all these sciences demand rare
+qualities in the student.  But I also hold that there is no more
+certain index to personal character than the condition of a set of
+casters is to the character of any hotel.  Knowing, and having
+often tested this theory of mine, Bullfinch resigned himself to the
+worst, when, laying aside any remaining veil of disguise, I held up
+before him in succession the cloudy oil and furry vinegar, the
+clogged cayenne, the dirty salt, the obscene dregs of soy, and the
+anchovy sauce in a flannel waistcoat of decomposition.
+
+We went out to transact our business.  So inspiriting was the
+relief of passing into the clean and windy streets of Namelesston
+from the heavy and vapid closeness of the coffee-room of the
+Temeraire, that hope began to revive within us.  We began to
+consider that perhaps the lonely traveller had taken physic, or
+done something injudicious to bring his complaint on.  Bullfinch
+remarked that he thought the waiter who ought to wait upon us had
+brightened a little when suggesting curry; and although I knew him
+to have been at that moment the express image of despair, I allowed
+myself to become elevated in spirits.  As we walked by the softly-
+lapping sea, all the notabilities of Namelesston, who are for ever
+going up and down with the changelessness of the tides, passed to
+and fro in procession.  Pretty girls on horseback, and with
+detested riding-masters; pretty girls on foot; mature ladies in
+hats,--spectacled, strong-minded, and glaring at the opposite or
+weaker sex.  The Stock Exchange was strongly represented, Jerusalem
+was strongly represented, the bores of the prosier London clubs
+were strongly represented.  Fortune-hunters of all denominations
+were there, from hirsute insolvency, in a curricle, to closely-
+buttoned swindlery in doubtful boots, on the sharp look-out for any
+likely young gentleman disposed to play a game at billiards round
+the corner.  Masters of languages, their lessons finished for the
+day, were going to their homes out of sight of the sea; mistresses
+of accomplishments, carrying small portfolios, likewise tripped
+homeward; pairs of scholastic pupils, two and two, went languidly
+along the beach, surveying the face of the waters as if waiting for
+some Ark to come and take them off.  Spectres of the George the
+Fourth days flitted unsteadily among the crowd, bearing the outward
+semblance of ancient dandies, of every one of whom it might be
+said, not that he had one leg in the grave, or both legs, but that
+he was steeped in grave to the summit of his high shirt-collar, and
+had nothing real about him but his bones.  Alone stationary in the
+midst of all the movements, the Namelesston boatmen leaned against
+the railings and yawned, and looked out to sea, or looked at the
+moored fishing-boats and at nothing.  Such is the unchanging manner
+of life with this nursery of our hardy seamen; and very dry nurses
+they are, and always wanting something to drink.  The only two
+nautical personages detached from the railing were the two
+fortunate possessors of the celebrated monstrous unknown barking-
+fish, just caught (frequently just caught off Namelesston), who
+carried him about in a hamper, and pressed the scientific to look
+in at the lid.
+
+The sands of the hour had all run out when we got back to the
+Temeraire.  Says Bullfinch, then, to the youth in livery, with
+boldness, 'Lavatory!'
+
+When we arrived at the family vault with a skylight, which the
+youth in livery presented as the institution sought, we had already
+whisked off our cravats and coats; but finding ourselves in the
+presence of an evil smell, and no linen but two crumpled towels
+newly damp from the countenances of two somebody elses, we put on
+our cravats and coats again, and fled unwashed to the coffee-room.
+
+There the waiter who ought to wait upon us had set forth our knives
+and forks and glasses, on the cloth whose dirty acquaintance we had
+already had the pleasure of making, and which we were pleased to
+recognise by the familiar expression of its stains.  And now there
+occurred the truly surprising phenomenon, that the waiter who ought
+not to wait upon us swooped down upon us, clutched our loaf of
+bread, and vanished with the same.
+
+Bullfinch, with distracted eyes, was following this unaccountable
+figure 'out at the portal,' like the ghost in Hamlet, when the
+waiter who ought to wait upon us jostled against it, carrying a
+tureen.
+
+'Waiter!' said a severe diner, lately finished, perusing his bill
+fiercely through his eye-glass.
+
+The waiter put down our tureen on a remote side-table, and went to
+see what was amiss in this new direction.
+
+'This is not right, you know, waiter.  Look here! here's
+yesterday's sherry, one and eightpence, and here we are again, two
+shillings.  And what does sixpence mean?'
+
+So far from knowing what sixpence meant, the waiter protested that
+he didn't know what anything meant.  He wiped the perspiration from
+his clammy brow, and said it was impossible to do it,--not
+particularising what,--and the kitchen was so far off.
+
+'Take the bill to the bar, and get it altered,' said Mr.
+Indignation Cocker, so to call him.
+
+The waiter took it, looked intensely at it, didn't seem to like the
+idea of taking it to the bar, and submitted, as a new light upon
+the case, that perhaps sixpence meant sixpence.
+
+'I tell you again,' said Mr. Indignation Cocker, 'here's
+yesterday's sherry--can't you see it?--one and eightpence, and here
+we are again, two shillings.  What do you make of one and
+eightpence and two shillings?'
+
+Totally unable to make anything of one and eightpence and two
+shillings, the waiter went out to try if anybody else could; merely
+casting a helpless backward glance at Bullfinch, in acknowledgement
+of his pathetic entreaties for our soup-tureen.  After a pause,
+during which Mr. Indignation Cocker read a newspaper and coughed
+defiant coughs, Bullfinch arose to get the tureen, when the waiter
+reappeared and brought it,--dropping Mr. Indignation Cocker's
+altered bill on Mr. Indignation Cocker's table as he came along.
+
+'It's quite impossible to do it, gentlemen,' murmured the waiter;
+'and the kitchen is so far off.'
+
+'Well, you don't keep the house; it's not your fault, we suppose.
+Bring some sherry.'
+
+'Waiter!' from Mr. Indignation Cocker, with a new and burning sense
+of injury upon him.
+
+The waiter, arrested on his way to our sherry, stopped short, and
+came back to see what was wrong now.
+
+'Will you look here?  This is worse than before.  DO you
+understand?  Here's yesterday's sherry, one and eightpence, and
+here we are again two shillings.  And what the devil does ninepence
+mean?'
+
+This new portent utterly confounded the waiter.  He wrung his
+napkin, and mutely appealed to the ceiling.
+
+'Waiter, fetch that sherry,' says Bullfinch, in open wrath and
+revolt.
+
+'I want to know,' persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker, 'the meaning of
+ninepence.  I want to know the meaning of sherry one and eightpence
+yesterday, and of here we are again two shillings.  Send somebody.'
+
+The distracted waiter got out of the room on pretext of sending
+somebody, and by that means got our wine.  But the instant he
+appeared with our decanter, Mr. Indignation Cocker descended on him
+again.
+
+'Waiter!'
+
+'You will now have the goodness to attend to our dinner, waiter,'
+said Bullfinch, sternly.
+
+'I am very sorry, but it's quite impossible to do it, gentlemen,'
+pleaded the waiter; 'and the kitchen--'
+
+'Waiter!' said Mr. Indignation Cocker.
+
+'--Is,' resumed the waiter, 'so far off, that--'
+
+'Waiter!' persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker, 'send somebody.'
+
+We were not without our fears that the waiter rushed out to hang
+himself; and we were much relieved by his fetching somebody,--in
+graceful, flowing skirts and with a waist,--who very soon settled
+Mr. Indignation Cocker's business.
+
+'Oh!' said Mr. Cocker, with his fire surprisingly quenched by this
+apparition; 'I wished to ask about this bill of mine, because it
+appears to me that there's a little mistake here.  Let me show you.
+Here's yesterday's sherry one and eightpence, and here we are again
+two shillings.  And how do you explain ninepence?'
+
+However it was explained, in tones too soft to be overheard.  Mr.
+Cocker was heard to say nothing more than 'Ah-h-h!  Indeed; thank
+you!  Yes,' and shortly afterwards went out, a milder man.
+
+The lonely traveller with the stomach-ache had all this time
+suffered severely, drawing up a leg now and then, and sipping hot
+brandy-and-water with grated ginger in it.  When we tasted our
+(very) mock-turtle soup, and were instantly seized with symptoms of
+some disorder simulating apoplexy, and occasioned by the surcharge
+of nose and brain with lukewarm dish-water holding in solution sour
+flour, poisonous condiments, and (say) seventy-five per cent. of
+miscellaneous kitchen stuff rolled into balls, we were inclined to
+trace his disorder to that source.  On the other hand, there was a
+silent anguish upon him too strongly resembling the results
+established within ourselves by the sherry, to be discarded from
+alarmed consideration.  Again, we observed him, with terror, to be
+much overcome by our sole's being aired in a temporary retreat
+close to him, while the waiter went out (as we conceived) to see
+his friends.  And when the curry made its appearance he suddenly
+retired in great disorder.
+
+In fine, for the uneatable part of this little dinner (as
+contradistinguished from the undrinkable) we paid only seven
+shillings and sixpence each.  And Bullfinch and I agreed
+unanimously, that no such ill-served, ill-appointed, ill-cooked,
+nasty little dinner could be got for the money anywhere else under
+the sun.  With that comfort to our backs, we turned them on the
+dear old Temeraire, the charging Temeraire, and resolved (in the
+Scotch dialect) to gang nae mair to the flabby Temeraire.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV--MR. BARLOW
+
+
+
+A great reader of good fiction at an unusually early age, it seems
+to me as though I had been born under the superintendence of the
+estimable but terrific gentleman whose name stands at the head of
+my present reflections.  The instructive monomaniac, Mr. Barlow,
+will be remembered as the tutor of Master Harry Sandford and Master
+Tommy Merton.  He knew everything, and didactically improved all
+sorts of occasions, from the consumption of a plate of cherries to
+the contemplation of a starlight night.  What youth came to without
+Mr. Barlow was displayed in the history of Sandford and Merton, by
+the example of a certain awful Master Mash.  This young wretch wore
+buckles and powder, conducted himself with insupportable levity at
+the theatre, had no idea of facing a mad bull single-handed (in
+which I think him less reprehensible, as remotely reflecting my own
+character), and was a frightful instance of the enervating effects
+of luxury upon the human race.
+
+Strange destiny on the part of Mr. Barlow, to go down to posterity
+as childhood's experience of a bore!  Immortal Mr. Barlow, boring
+his way through the verdant freshness of ages!
+
+My personal indictment against Mr. Barlow is one of many counts.  I
+will proceed to set forth a few of the injuries he has done me.
+
+In the first place, he never made or took a joke.  This
+insensibility on Mr. Barlow's part not only cast its own gloom over
+my boyhood, but blighted even the sixpenny jest-books of the time;
+for, groaning under a moral spell constraining me to refer all
+things to Mr. Barlow, I could not choose but ask myself in a
+whisper when tickled by a printed jest, 'What would HE think of it?
+What would HE see in it?'  The point of the jest immediately became
+a sting, and stung my conscience.  For my mind's eye saw him
+stolid, frigid, perchance taking from its shelf some dreary Greek
+book, and translating at full length what some dismal sage said
+(and touched up afterwards, perhaps, for publication), when he
+banished some unlucky joker from Athens.
+
+The incompatibility of Mr. Barlow with all other portions of my
+young life but himself, the adamantine inadaptability of the man to
+my favourite fancies and amusements, is the thing for which I hate
+him most.  What right had he to bore his way into my Arabian
+Nights?  Yet he did.  He was always hinting doubts of the veracity
+of Sindbad the Sailor.  If he could have got hold of the Wonderful
+Lamp, I knew he would have trimmed it and lighted it, and delivered
+a lecture over it on the qualities of sperm-oil, with a glance at
+the whale fisheries.  He would so soon have found out--on
+mechanical principles--the peg in the neck of the Enchanted Horse,
+and would have turned it the right way in so workmanlike a manner,
+that the horse could never have got any height into the air, and
+the story couldn't have been.  He would have proved, by map and
+compass, that there was no such kingdom as the delightful kingdom
+of Casgar, on the frontiers of Tartary.  He would have caused that
+hypocritical young prig Harry to make an experiment,--with the aid
+of a temporary building in the garden and a dummy,--demonstrating
+that you couldn't let a choked hunchback down an Eastern chimney
+with a cord, and leave him upright on the hearth to terrify the
+sultan's purveyor.
+
+The golden sounds of the overture to the first metropolitan
+pantomime, I remember, were alloyed by Mr. Barlow.  Click click,
+ting ting, bang bang, weedle weedle weedle, bang!  I recall the
+chilling air that ran across my frame and cooled my hot delight, as
+the thought occurred to me, 'This would never do for Mr. Barlow!'
+After the curtain drew up, dreadful doubts of Mr. Barlow's
+considering the costumes of the Nymphs of the Nebula as being
+sufficiently opaque, obtruded themselves on my enjoyment.  In the
+clown I perceived two persons; one a fascinating unaccountable
+creature of a hectic complexion, joyous in spirits though feeble in
+intellect, with flashes of brilliancy; the other a pupil for Mr.
+Barlow.  I thought how Mr. Barlow would secretly rise early in the
+morning, and butter the pavement for HIM, and, when he had brought
+him down, would look severely out of his study window and ask HIM
+how he enjoyed the fun.
+
+I thought how Mr. Barlow would heat all the pokers in the house,
+and singe him with the whole collection, to bring him better
+acquainted with the properties of incandescent iron, on which he
+(Barlow) would fully expatiate.  I pictured Mr. Barlow's
+instituting a comparison between the clown's conduct at his
+studies,--drinking up the ink, licking his copy-book, and using his
+head for blotting-paper,--and that of the already mentioned young
+prig of prigs, Harry, sitting at the Barlovian feet, sneakingly
+pretending to be in a rapture of youthful knowledge.  I thought how
+soon Mr. Barlow would smooth the clown's hair down, instead of
+letting it stand erect in three tall tufts; and how, after a couple
+of years or so with Mr. Barlow, he would keep his legs close
+together when he walked, and would take his hands out of his big
+loose pockets, and wouldn't have a jump left in him.
+
+That I am particularly ignorant what most things in the universe
+are made of, and how they are made, is another of my charges
+against Mr. Barlow.  With the dread upon me of developing into a
+Harry, and with a further dread upon me of being Barlowed if I made
+inquiries, by bringing down upon myself a cold shower-bath of
+explanations and experiments, I forbore enlightenment in my youth,
+and became, as they say in melodramas, 'the wreck you now behold.'
+That I consorted with idlers and dunces is another of the
+melancholy facts for which I hold Mr. Barlow responsible.  That
+pragmatical prig, Harry, became so detestable in my sight, that, he
+being reported studious in the South, I would have fled idle to the
+extremest North.  Better to learn misconduct from a Master Mash
+than science and statistics from a Sandford!  So I took the path,
+which, but for Mr. Barlow, I might never have trodden.  Thought I,
+with a shudder, 'Mr. Barlow is a bore, with an immense constructive
+power of making bores.  His prize specimen is a bore.  He seeks to
+make a bore of me.  That knowledge is power I am not prepared to
+gainsay; but, with Mr. Barlow, knowledge is power to bore.'
+Therefore I took refuge in the caves of ignorance, wherein I have
+resided ever since, and which are still my private address.
+
+But the weightiest charge of all my charges against Mr. Barlow is,
+that he still walks the earth in various disguises, seeking to make
+a Tommy of me, even in my maturity.  Irrepressible, instructive
+monomaniac, Mr. Barlow fills my life with pitfalls, and lies hiding
+at the bottom to burst out upon me when I least expect him.
+
+A few of these dismal experiences of mine shall suffice.
+
+Knowing Mr. Barlow to have invested largely in the moving panorama
+trade, and having on various occasions identified him in the dark
+with a long wand in his hand, holding forth in his old way (made
+more appalling in this connection by his sometimes cracking a piece
+of Mr. Carlyle's own Dead-Sea fruit in mistake for a joke), I
+systematically shun pictorial entertainment on rollers.  Similarly,
+I should demand responsible bail and guaranty against the
+appearance of Mr. Barlow, before committing myself to attendance at
+any assemblage of my fellow-creatures where a bottle of water and a
+note-book were conspicuous objects; for in either of those
+associations, I should expressly expect him.  But such is the
+designing nature of the man, that he steals in where no reasoning
+precaution or provision could expect him.  As in the following
+case:-
+
+Adjoining the Caves of Ignorance is a country town.  In this
+country town the Mississippi Momuses, nine in number, were
+announced to appear in the town-hall, for the general delectation,
+this last Christmas week.  Knowing Mr. Barlow to be unconnected
+with the Mississippi, though holding republican opinions, and
+deeming myself secure, I took a stall.  My object was to hear and
+see the Mississippi Momuses in what the bills described as their
+'National ballads, plantation break-downs, nigger part-songs,
+choice conundrums, sparkling repartees, &c.'  I found the nine
+dressed alike, in the black coat and trousers, white waistcoat,
+very large shirt-front, very large shirt-collar, and very large
+white tie and wristbands, which constitute the dress of the mass of
+the African race, and which has been observed by travellers to
+prevail over a vast number of degrees of latitude.  All the nine
+rolled their eyes exceedingly, and had very red lips.  At the
+extremities of the curve they formed, seated in their chairs, were
+the performers on the tambourine and bones.  The centre Momus, a
+black of melancholy aspect (who inspired me with a vague uneasiness
+for which I could not then account), performed on a Mississippi
+instrument closely resembling what was once called in this island a
+hurdy-gurdy.  The Momuses on either side of him had each another
+instrument peculiar to the Father of Waters, which may be likened
+to a stringed weather-glass held upside down.  There were likewise
+a little flute and a violin.  All went well for awhile, and we had
+had several sparkling repartees exchanged between the performers on
+the tambourine and bones, when the black of melancholy aspect,
+turning to the latter, and addressing him in a deep and improving
+voice as 'Bones, sir,' delivered certain grave remarks to him
+concerning the juveniles present, and the season of the year;
+whereon I perceived that I was in the presence of Mr. Barlow--
+corked!
+
+Another night--and this was in London--I attended the
+representation of a little comedy.  As the characters were lifelike
+(and consequently not improving), and as they went upon their
+several ways and designs without personally addressing themselves
+to me, I felt rather confident of coming through it without being
+regarded as Tommy, the more so, as we were clearly getting close to
+the end.  But I deceived myself.  All of a sudden, Apropos of
+nothing, everybody concerned came to a check and halt, advanced to
+the foot-lights in a general rally to take dead aim at me, and
+brought me down with a moral homily, in which I detected the dread
+hand of Barlow.
+
+Nay, so intricate and subtle are the toils of this hunter, that on
+the very next night after that, I was again entrapped, where no
+vestige of a spring could have been apprehended by the timidest.
+It was a burlesque that I saw performed; an uncompromising
+burlesque, where everybody concerned, but especially the ladies,
+carried on at a very considerable rate indeed.  Most prominent and
+active among the corps of performers was what I took to be (and she
+really gave me very fair opportunities of coming to a right
+conclusion) a young lady of a pretty figure.  She was dressed as a
+picturesque young gentleman, whose pantaloons had been cut off in
+their infancy; and she had very neat knees and very neat satin
+boots.  Immediately after singing a slang song and dancing a slang
+dance, this engaging figure approached the fatal lamps, and,
+bending over them, delivered in a thrilling voice a random eulogium
+on, and exhortation to pursue, the virtues.  'Great Heaven!' was my
+exclamation; 'Barlow!'
+
+There is still another aspect in which Mr. Barlow perpetually
+insists on my sustaining the character of Tommy, which is more
+unendurable yet, on account of its extreme aggressiveness.  For the
+purposes of a review or newspaper, he will get up an abstruse
+subject with definite pains, will Barlow, utterly regardless of the
+price of midnight oil, and indeed of everything else, save cramming
+himself to the eyes.
+
+But mark.  When Mr. Barlow blows his information off, he is not
+contented with having rammed it home, and discharged it upon me,
+Tommy, his target, but he pretends that he was always in possession
+of it, and made nothing of it,--that he imbibed it with mother's
+milk,--and that I, the wretched Tommy, am most abjectly behindhand
+in not having done the same.  I ask, why is Tommy to be always the
+foil of Mr. Barlow to this extent?  What Mr. Barlow had not the
+slightest notion of himself, a week ago, it surely cannot be any
+very heavy backsliding in me not to have at my fingers' ends to-
+day!  And yet Mr. Barlow systematically carries it over me with a
+high hand, and will tauntingly ask me, in his articles, whether it
+is possible that I am not aware that every school-boy knows that
+the fourteenth turning on the left in the steppes of Russia will
+conduct to such and such a wandering tribe? with other disparaging
+questions of like nature.  So, when Mr. Barlow addresses a letter
+to any journal as a volunteer correspondent (which I frequently
+find him doing), he will previously have gotten somebody to tell
+him some tremendous technicality, and will write in the coolest
+manner, 'Now, sir, I may assume that every reader of your columns,
+possessing average information and intelligence, knows as well as I
+do that'--say that the draught from the touch-hole of a cannon of
+such a calibre bears such a proportion in the nicest fractions to
+the draught from the muzzle; or some equally familiar little fact.
+But whatever it is, be certain that it always tends to the
+exaltation of Mr. Barlow, and the depression of his enforced and
+enslaved pupil.
+
+Mr. Barlow's knowledge of my own pursuits I find to be so profound,
+that my own knowledge of them becomes as nothing.  Mr. Barlow
+(disguised and bearing a feigned name, but detected by me) has
+occasionally taught me, in a sonorous voice, from end to end of a
+long dinner-table, trifles that I took the liberty of teaching him
+five-and-twenty years ago.  My closing article of impeachment
+against Mr. Barlow is, that he goes out to breakfast, goes out to
+dinner, goes out everywhere, high and low, and that he WILL preach
+to me, and that I CAN'T get rid of him.  He makes me a Promethean
+Tommy, bound; and he is the vulture that gorges itself upon the
+liver of my uninstructed mind.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV--ON AN AMATEUR BEAT
+
+
+
+It is one of my fancies, that even my idlest walk must always have
+its appointed destination.  I set myself a task before I leave my
+lodging in Covent-garden on a street expedition, and should no more
+think of altering my route by the way, or turning back and leaving
+a part of it unachieved, than I should think of fraudulently
+violating an agreement entered into with somebody else.  The other
+day, finding myself under this kind of obligation to proceed to
+Limehouse, I started punctually at noon, in compliance with the
+terms of the contract with myself to which my good faith was
+pledged.
+
+On such an occasion, it is my habit to regard my walk as my beat,
+and myself as a higher sort of police-constable doing duty on the
+same.  There is many a ruffian in the streets whom I mentally
+collar and clear out of them, who would see mighty little of
+London, I can tell him, if I could deal with him physically.
+
+Issuing forth upon this very beat, and following with my eyes three
+hulking garrotters on their way home,--which home I could
+confidently swear to be within so many yards of Drury-lane, in such
+a narrow and restricted direction (though they live in their
+lodging quite as undisturbed as I in mine),--I went on duty with a
+consideration which I respectfully offer to the new Chief
+Commissioner,--in whom I thoroughly confide as a tried and
+efficient public servant.  How often (thought I) have I been forced
+to swallow, in police-reports, the intolerable stereotyped pill of
+nonsense, how that the police-constable informed the worthy
+magistrate how that the associates of the prisoner did, at that
+present speaking, dwell in a street or court which no man dared go
+down, and how that the worthy magistrate had heard of the dark
+reputation of such street or court, and how that our readers would
+doubtless remember that it was always the same street or court
+which was thus edifyingly discoursed about, say once a fortnight.
+
+Now, suppose that a Chief Commissioner sent round a circular to
+every division of police employed in London, requiring instantly
+the names in all districts of all such much-puffed streets or
+courts which no man durst go down; and suppose that in such
+circular he gave plain warning, 'If those places really exist, they
+are a proof of police inefficiency which I mean to punish; and if
+they do not exist, but are a conventional fiction, then they are a
+proof of lazy tacit police connivance with professional crime,
+which I also mean to punish'--what then?  Fictions or realities,
+could they survive the touchstone of this atom of common sense?  To
+tell us in open court, until it has become as trite a feature of
+news as the great gooseberry, that a costly police-system such as
+was never before heard of, has left in London, in the days of steam
+and gas and photographs of thieves and electric telegraphs, the
+sanctuaries and stews of the Stuarts!  Why, a parity of practice,
+in all departments, would bring back the Plague in two summers, and
+the Druids in a century!
+
+Walking faster under my share of this public injury, I overturned a
+wretched little creature, who, clutching at the rags of a pair of
+trousers with one of its claws, and at its ragged hair with the
+other, pattered with bare feet over the muddy stones.  I stopped to
+raise and succour this poor weeping wretch, and fifty like it, but
+of both sexes, were about me in a moment, begging, tumbling,
+fighting, clamouring, yelling, shivering in their nakedness and
+hunger.  The piece of money I had put into the claw of the child I
+had over-turned was clawed out of it, and was again clawed out of
+that wolfish gripe, and again out of that, and soon I had no notion
+in what part of the obscene scuffle in the mud, of rags and legs
+and arms and dirt, the money might be.  In raising the child, I had
+drawn it aside out of the main thoroughfare, and this took place
+among some wooden hoardings and barriers and ruins of demolished
+buildings, hard by Temple Bar.
+
+Unexpectedly, from among them emerged a genuine police-constable,
+before whom the dreadful brood dispersed in various directions, he
+making feints and darts in this direction and in that, and catching
+nothing.  When all were frightened away, he took off his hat,
+pulled out a handkerchief from it, wiped his heated brow, and
+restored the handkerchief and hat to their places, with the air of
+a man who had discharged a great moral duty,--as indeed he had, in
+doing what was set down for him.  I looked at him, and I looked
+about at the disorderly traces in the mud, and I thought of the
+drops of rain and the footprints of an extinct creature, hoary ages
+upon ages old, that geologists have identified on the face of a
+cliff; and this speculation came over me:  If this mud could
+petrify at this moment, and could lie concealed here for ten
+thousand years, I wonder whether the race of men then to be our
+successors on the earth could, from these or any marks, by the
+utmost force of the human intellect, unassisted by tradition,
+deduce such an astounding inference as the existence of a polished
+state of society that bore with the public savagery of neglected
+children in the streets of its capital city, and was proud of its
+power by sea and land, and never used its power to seize and save
+them!
+
+After this, when I came to the Old Bailey and glanced up it towards
+Newgate, I found that the prison had an inconsistent look.  There
+seemed to be some unlucky inconsistency in the atmosphere that day;
+for though the proportions of St. Paul's Cathedral are very
+beautiful, it had an air of being somewhat out of drawing, in my
+eyes.  I felt as though the cross were too high up, and perched
+upon the intervening golden ball too far away.
+
+Facing eastward, I left behind me Smithfield and Old Bailey,--fire
+and faggot, condemned hold, public hanging, whipping through the
+city at the cart-tail, pillory, branding-iron, and other beautiful
+ancestral landmarks, which rude hands have rooted up, without
+bringing the stars quite down upon us as yet,--and went my way upon
+my beat, noting how oddly characteristic neighbourhoods are divided
+from one another, hereabout, as though by an invisible line across
+the way.  Here shall cease the bankers and the money-changers; here
+shall begin the shipping interest and the nautical-instrument
+shops; here shall follow a scarcely perceptible flavouring of
+groceries and drugs; here shall come a strong infusion of butchers;
+now, small hosiers shall be in the ascendant; henceforth,
+everything exposed for sale shall have its ticketed price attached.
+All this as if specially ordered and appointed.
+
+A single stride at Houndsditch Church, no wider than sufficed to
+cross the kennel at the bottom of the Canon-gate, which the debtors
+in Holyrood sanctuary were wont to relieve their minds by skipping
+over, as Scott relates, and standing in delightful daring of
+catchpoles on the free side,--a single stride, and everything is
+entirely changed in grain and character.  West of the stride, a
+table, or a chest of drawers on sale, shall be of mahogany and
+French-polished; east of the stride, it shall be of deal, smeared
+with a cheap counterfeit resembling lip-salve.  West of the stride,
+a penny loaf or bun shall be compact and self-contained; east of
+the stride, it shall be of a sprawling and splay-footed character,
+as seeking to make more of itself for the money.  My beat lying
+round by Whitechapel Church, and the adjacent sugar-refineries,--
+great buildings, tier upon tier, that have the appearance of being
+nearly related to the dock-warehouses at Liverpool,--I turned off
+to my right, and, passing round the awkward corner on my left, came
+suddenly on an apparition familiar to London streets afar off.
+
+What London peripatetic of these times has not seen the woman who
+has fallen forward, double, through some affection of the spine,
+and whose head has of late taken a turn to one side, so that it now
+droops over the back of one of her arms at about the wrist?  Who
+does not know her staff, and her shawl, and her basket, as she
+gropes her way along, capable of seeing nothing but the pavement,
+never begging, never stopping, for ever going somewhere on no
+business?  How does she live, whence does she come, whither does
+she go, and why?  I mind the time when her yellow arms were naught
+but bone and parchment.  Slight changes steal over her; for there
+is a shadowy suggestion of human skin on them now.  The Strand may
+be taken as the central point about which she revolves in a half-
+mile orbit.  How comes she so far east as this?  And coming back
+too!  Having been how much farther?  She is a rare spectacle in
+this neighbourhood.  I receive intelligent information to this
+effect from a dog--a lop-sided mongrel with a foolish tail,
+plodding along with his tail up, and his ears pricked, and
+displaying an amiable interest in the ways of his fellow-men,--if I
+may be allowed the expression.  After pausing at a pork-shop, he is
+jogging eastward like myself, with a benevolent countenance and a
+watery mouth, as though musing on the many excellences of pork,
+when he beholds this doubled-up bundle approaching.  He is not so
+much astonished at the bundle (though amazed by that), as the
+circumstance that it has within itself the means of locomotion.  He
+stops, pricks his ears higher, makes a slight point, stares, utters
+a short, low growl, and glistens at the nose,--as I conceive with
+terror.  The bundle continuing to approach, he barks, turns tail,
+and is about to fly, when, arguing with himself that flight is not
+becoming in a dog, he turns, and once more faces the advancing heap
+of clothes.  After much hesitation, it occurs to him that there may
+be a face in it somewhere.  Desperately resolving to undertake the
+adventure, and pursue the inquiry, he goes slowly up to the bundle,
+goes slowly round it, and coming at length upon the human
+countenance down there where never human countenance should be,
+gives a yelp of horror, and flies for the East India Docks.
+
+Being now in the Commercial Road district of my beat, and
+bethinking myself that Stepney Station is near, I quicken my pace
+that I may turn out of the road at that point, and see how my small
+eastern star is shining.
+
+The Children's Hospital, to which I gave that name, is in full
+force.  All its beds are occupied.  There is a new face on the bed
+where my pretty baby lay, and that sweet little child is now at
+rest for ever.  Much kind sympathy has been here since my former
+visit, and it is good to see the walls profusely garnished with
+dolls.  I wonder what Poodles may think of them, as they stretch
+out their arms above the beds, and stare, and display their
+splendid dresses.  Poodles has a greater interest in the patients.
+I find him making the round of the beds, like a house-surgeon,
+attended by another dog,--a friend,--who appears to trot about with
+him in the character of his pupil dresser.  Poodles is anxious to
+make me known to a pretty little girl looking wonderfully healthy,
+who had had a leg taken off for cancer of the knee.  A difficult
+operation, Poodles intimates, wagging his tail on the counterpane,
+but perfectly successful, as you see, dear sir!  The patient,
+patting Poodles, adds with a smile, 'The leg was so much trouble to
+me, that I am glad it's gone.'  I never saw anything in doggery
+finer than the deportment of Poodles, when another little girl
+opens her mouth to show a peculiar enlargement of the tongue.
+Poodles (at that time on a table, to be on a level with the
+occasion) looks at the tongue (with his own sympathetically out) so
+very gravely and knowingly, that I feel inclined to put my hand in
+my waistcoat-pocket, and give him a guinea, wrapped in paper.
+
+On my beat again, and close to Limehouse Church, its termination, I
+found myself near to certain 'Lead-Mills.'  Struck by the name,
+which was fresh in my memory, and finding, on inquiry, that these
+same lead-mills were identified with those same lead-mills of which
+I made mention when I first visited the East London Children's
+Hospital and its neighbourhood as Uncommercial Traveller, I
+resolved to have a look at them.
+
+Received by two very intelligent gentlemen, brothers, and partners
+with their father in the concern, and who testified every desire to
+show their works to me freely, I went over the lead-mills.  The
+purport of such works is the conversion of pig-lead into white-
+lead.  This conversion is brought about by the slow and gradual
+effecting of certain successive chemical changes in the lead
+itself.  The processes are picturesque and interesting,--the most
+so, being the burying of the lead, at a certain stage of
+preparation, in pots, each pot containing a certain quantity of
+acid besides, and all the pots being buried in vast numbers, in
+layers, under tan, for some ten weeks.
+
+Hopping up ladders, and across planks, and on elevated perches,
+until I was uncertain whether to liken myself to a bird or a brick-
+layer, I became conscious of standing on nothing particular,
+looking down into one of a series of large cocklofts, with the
+outer day peeping in through the chinks in the tiled roof above.  A
+number of women were ascending to, and descending from, this
+cockloft, each carrying on the upward journey a pot of prepared
+lead and acid, for deposition under the smoking tan.  When one
+layer of pots was completely filled, it was carefully covered in
+with planks, and those were carefully covered with tan again, and
+then another layer of pots was begun above; sufficient means of
+ventilation being preserved through wooden tubes.  Going down into
+the cockloft then filling, I found the heat of the tan to be
+surprisingly great, and also the odour of the lead and acid to be
+not absolutely exquisite, though I believe not noxious at that
+stage.  In other cocklofts, where the pots were being exhumed, the
+heat of the steaming tan was much greater, and the smell was
+penetrating and peculiar.  There were cocklofts in all stages; full
+and empty, half filled and half emptied; strong, active women were
+clambering about them busily; and the whole thing had rather the
+air of the upper part of the house of some immensely rich old Turk,
+whose faithful seraglio were hiding his money because the sultan or
+the pasha was coming.
+
+As is the case with most pulps or pigments, so in the instance of
+this white-lead, processes of stirring, separating, washing,
+grinding, rolling, and pressing succeed.  Some of these are
+unquestionably inimical to health, the danger arising from
+inhalation of particles of lead, or from contact between the lead
+and the touch, or both.  Against these dangers, I found good
+respirators provided (simply made of flannel and muslin, so as to
+be inexpensively renewed, and in some instances washed with scented
+soap), and gauntlet gloves, and loose gowns.  Everywhere, there was
+as much fresh air as windows, well placed and opened, could
+possibly admit.  And it was explained that the precaution of
+frequently changing the women employed in the worst parts of the
+work (a precaution originating in their own experience or
+apprehension of its ill effects) was found salutary.  They had a
+mysterious and singular appearance, with the mouth and nose
+covered, and the loose gown on, and yet bore out the simile of the
+old Turk and the seraglio all the better for the disguise.
+
+At last this vexed white-lead, having been buried and resuscitated,
+and heated and cooled and stirred, and separated and washed and
+ground, and rolled and pressed, is subjected to the action of
+intense fiery heat.  A row of women, dressed as above described,
+stood, let us say, in a large stone bakehouse, passing on the
+baking-dishes as they were given out by the cooks, from hand to
+hand, into the ovens.  The oven, or stove, cold as yet, looked as
+high as an ordinary house, and was full of men and women on
+temporary footholds, briskly passing up and stowing away the
+dishes.  The door of another oven, or stove, about to be cooled and
+emptied, was opened from above, for the uncommercial countenance to
+peer down into.  The uncommercial countenance withdrew itself, with
+expedition and a sense of suffocation, from the dull-glowing heat
+and the overpowering smell.  On the whole, perhaps the going into
+these stoves to work, when they are freshly opened, may be the
+worst part of the occupation.
+
+But I made it out to be indubitable that the owners of these lead-
+mills honestly and sedulously try to reduce the dangers of the
+occupation to the lowest point.
+
+A washing-place is provided for the women (I thought there might
+have been more towels), and a room in which they hang their
+clothes, and take their meals, and where they have a good fire-
+range and fire, and a female attendant to help them, and to watch
+that they do not neglect the cleansing of their hands before
+touching their food.  An experienced medical attendant is provided
+for them, and any premonitory symptoms of lead-poisoning are
+carefully treated.  Their teapots and such things were set out on
+tables ready for their afternoon meal, when I saw their room; and
+it had a homely look.  It is found that they bear the work much
+better than men:  some few of them have been at it for years, and
+the great majority of those I observed were strong and active.  On
+the other hand, it should be remembered that most of them are very
+capricious and irregular in their attendance.
+
+American inventiveness would seem to indicate that before very long
+white-lead may be made entirely by machinery.  The sooner, the
+better.  In the meantime, I parted from my two frank conductors
+over the mills, by telling them that they had nothing there to be
+concealed, and nothing to be blamed for.  As to the rest, the
+philosophy of the matter of lead-poisoning and workpeople seems to
+me to have been pretty fairly summed up by the Irishwoman whom I
+quoted in my former paper:  'Some of them gets lead-pisoned soon,
+and some of them gets lead-pisoned later, and some, but not many,
+niver; and 'tis all according to the constitooshun, sur; and some
+constitooshuns is strong and some is weak.'  Retracing my footsteps
+over my beat, I went off duty.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI--A FLY-LEAF IN A LIFE
+
+
+
+Once upon a time (no matter when), I was engaged in a pursuit (no
+matter what), which could be transacted by myself alone; in which I
+could have no help; which imposed a constant strain on the
+attention, memory, observation, and physical powers; and which
+involved an almost fabulous amount of change of place and rapid
+railway travelling.  I had followed this pursuit through an
+exceptionally trying winter in an always trying climate, and had
+resumed it in England after but a brief repose.  Thus it came to be
+prolonged until, at length--and, as it seemed, all of a sudden--it
+so wore me out that I could not rely, with my usual cheerful
+confidence, upon myself to achieve the constantly recurring task,
+and began to feel (for the first time in my life) giddy, jarred,
+shaken, faint, uncertain of voice and sight and tread and touch,
+and dull of spirit.  The medical advice I sought within a few
+hours, was given in two words:  'instant rest.'  Being accustomed
+to observe myself as curiously as if I were another man, and
+knowing the advice to meet my only need, I instantly halted in the
+pursuit of which I speak, and rested.
+
+My intention was, to interpose, as it were, a fly-leaf in the book
+of my life, in which nothing should be written from without for a
+brief season of a few weeks.  But some very singular experiences
+recorded themselves on this same fly-leaf, and I am going to relate
+them literally.  I repeat the word:  literally.
+
+My first odd experience was of the remarkable coincidence between
+my case, in the general mind, and one Mr. Merdle's as I find it
+recorded in a work of fiction called LITTLE DORRIT.  To be sure,
+Mr. Merdle was a swindler, forger, and thief, and my calling had
+been of a less harmful (and less remunerative) nature; but it was
+all one for that.
+
+Here is Mr. Merdle's case:
+
+'At first, he was dead of all the diseases that ever were known,
+and of several bran-new maladies invented with the speed of Light
+to meet the demand of the occasion.  He had concealed a dropsy from
+infancy, he had inherited a large estate of water on the chest from
+his grandfather, he had had an operation performed upon him every
+morning of his life for eighteen years, he had been subject to the
+explosion of important veins in his body after the manner of
+fireworks, he had had something the matter with his lungs, he had
+had something the matter with his heart, he had had something the
+matter with his brain.  Five hundred people who sat down to
+breakfast entirely uninformed on the whole subject, believed before
+they had done breakfast, that they privately and personally knew
+Physician to have said to Mr. Merdle, "You must expect to go out,
+some day, like the snuff of a candle;" and that they knew Mr.
+Merdle to have said to Physician, "A man can die but once."  By
+about eleven o'clock in the forenoon, something the matter with the
+brain, became the favourite theory against the field; and by twelve
+the something had been distinctly ascertained to be "Pressure."
+
+'Pressure was so entirely satisfactory to the public mind, and
+seemed to make every one so comfortable, that it might have lasted
+all day but for Bar's having taken the real state of the case into
+Court at half-past nine.  Pressure, however, so far from being
+overthrown by the discovery, became a greater favourite than ever.
+There was a general moralising upon Pressure, in every street.  All
+the people who had tried to make money and had not been able to do
+it, said, There you were!  You no sooner began to devote yourself
+to the pursuit of wealth, than you got Pressure.  The idle people
+improved the occasion in a similar manner.  See, said they, what
+you brought yourself to by work, work, work!  You persisted in
+working, you overdid it, Pressure came on, and you were done for!
+This consideration was very potent in many quarters, but nowhere
+more so than among the young clerks and partners who had never been
+in the slightest danger of overdoing it.  These, one and all
+declared, quite piously, that they hoped they would never forget
+the warning as long as they lived, and that their conduct might be
+so regulated as to keep off Pressure, and preserve them, a comfort
+to their friends, for many years.'
+
+Just my case--if I had only known it--when I was quietly basking in
+the sunshine in my Kentish meadow!
+
+But while I so rested, thankfully recovering every hour, I had
+experiences more odd than this.  I had experiences of spiritual
+conceit, for which, as giving me a new warning against that curse
+of mankind, I shall always feel grateful to the supposition that I
+was too far gone to protest against playing sick lion to any stray
+donkey with an itching hoof.  All sorts of people seemed to become
+vicariously religious at my expense.  I received the most
+uncompromising warning that I was a Heathen:  on the conclusive
+authority of a field preacher, who, like the most of his ignorant
+and vain and daring class, could not construct a tolerable sentence
+in his native tongue or pen a fair letter.  This inspired
+individual called me to order roundly, and knew in the freest and
+easiest way where I was going to, and what would become of me if I
+failed to fashion myself on his bright example, and was on terms of
+blasphemous confidence with the Heavenly Host.  He was in the
+secrets of my heart, and in the lowest soundings of my soul--he!--
+and could read the depths of my nature better than his A B C, and
+could turn me inside out, like his own clammy glove.  But what is
+far more extraordinary than this--for such dirty water as this
+could alone be drawn from such a shallow and muddy source--I found
+from the information of a beneficed clergyman, of whom I never
+heard and whom I never saw, that I had not, as I rather supposed I
+had, lived a life of some reading, contemplation, and inquiry; that
+I had not studied, as I rather supposed I had, to inculcate some
+Christian lessons in books; that I had never tried, as I rather
+supposed I had, to turn a child or two tenderly towards the
+knowledge and love of our Saviour; that I had never had, as I
+rather supposed I had had, departed friends, or stood beside open
+graves; but that I had lived a life of 'uninterrupted prosperity,'
+and that I needed this 'check, overmuch,' and that the way to turn
+it to account was to read these sermons and these poems, enclosed,
+and written and issued by my correspondent!  I beg it may be
+understood that I relate facts of my own uncommercial experience,
+and no vain imaginings.  The documents in proof lie near my hand.
+
+Another odd entry on the fly-leaf, of a more entertaining
+character, was the wonderful persistency with which kind
+sympathisers assumed that I had injuriously coupled with the so
+suddenly relinquished pursuit, those personal habits of mine most
+obviously incompatible with it, and most plainly impossible of
+being maintained, along with it.  As, all that exercise, all that
+cold bathing, all that wind and weather, all that uphill training--
+all that everything else, say, which is usually carried about by
+express trains in a portmanteau and hat-box, and partaken of under
+a flaming row of gas-lights in the company of two thousand people.
+This assuming of a whole case against all fact and likelihood,
+struck me as particularly droll, and was an oddity of which I
+certainly had had no adequate experience in life until I turned
+that curious fly-leaf.
+
+My old acquaintances the begging-letter writers came out on the
+fly-leaf, very piously indeed.  They were glad, at such a serious
+crisis, to afford me another opportunity of sending that Post-
+office order.  I needn't make it a pound, as previously insisted
+on; ten shillings might ease my mind.  And Heaven forbid that they
+should refuse, at such an insignificant figure, to take a weight
+off the memory of an erring fellow-creature!  One gentleman, of an
+artistic turn (and copiously illustrating the books of the
+Mendicity Society), thought it might soothe my conscience, in the
+tender respect of gifts misused, if I would immediately cash up in
+aid of his lowly talent for original design--as a specimen of which
+he enclosed me a work of art which I recognized as a tracing from a
+woodcut originally published in the late Mrs. Trollope's book on
+America, forty or fifty years ago.  The number of people who were
+prepared to live long years after me, untiring benefactors to their
+species, for fifty pounds apiece down, was astonishing.  Also, of
+those who wanted bank-notes for stiff penitential amounts, to give
+away:- not to keep, on any account.
+
+Divers wonderful medicines and machines insinuated recommendations
+of themselves into the fly-leaf that was to have been so blank.  It
+was specially observable that every prescriber, whether in a moral
+or physical direction, knew me thoroughly--knew me from head to
+heel, in and out, through and through, upside down.  I was a glass
+piece of general property, and everybody was on the most
+surprisingly intimate terms with me.  A few public institutions had
+complimentary perceptions of corners in my mind, of which, after
+considerable self-examination, I have not discovered any
+indication.  Neat little printed forms were addressed to those
+corners, beginning with the words:  'I give and bequeath.'
+
+Will it seem exaggerative to state my belief that the most honest,
+the most modest, and the least vain-glorious of all the records
+upon this strange fly-leaf, was a letter from the self-deceived
+discoverer of the recondite secret 'how to live four or five
+hundred years'?  Doubtless it will seem so, yet the statement is
+not exaggerative by any means, but is made in my serious and
+sincere conviction.  With this, and with a laugh at the rest that
+shall not be cynical, I turn the Fly-leaf, and go on again.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII--A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE
+
+
+
+One day this last Whitsuntide, at precisely eleven o'clock in the
+forenoon, there suddenly rode into the field of view commanded by
+the windows of my lodging an equestrian phenomenon.  It was a
+fellow-creature on horseback, dressed in the absurdest manner.  The
+fellow-creature wore high boots; some other (and much larger)
+fellow-creature's breeches, of a slack-baked doughy colour and a
+baggy form; a blue shirt, whereof the skirt, or tail, was puffily
+tucked into the waist-band of the said breeches; no coat; a red
+shoulder-belt; and a demi-semi-military scarlet hat, with a
+feathered ornament in front, which, to the uninstructed human
+vision, had the appearance of a moulting shuttlecock.  I laid down
+the newspaper with which I had been occupied, and surveyed the
+fellow-man in question with astonishment.  Whether he had been
+sitting to any painter as a frontispiece for a new edition of
+'Sartor Resartus;' whether 'the husk or shell of him,' as the
+esteemed Herr Teufelsdroch might put it, were founded on a jockey,
+on a circus, on General Garibaldi, on cheap porcelain, on a toy
+shop, on Guy Fawkes, on waxwork, on gold-digging, on Bedlam, or on
+all,--were doubts that greatly exercised my mind.  Meanwhile, my
+fellow-man stumbled and slided, excessively against his will, on
+the slippery stones of my Covent-garden street, and elicited
+shrieks from several sympathetic females, by convulsively
+restraining himself from pitching over his horse's head.  In the
+very crisis of these evolutions, and indeed at the trying moment
+when his charger's tail was in a tobacconist's shop, and his head
+anywhere about town, this cavalier was joined by two similar
+portents, who, likewise stumbling and sliding, caused him to
+stumble and slide the more distressingly.  At length this Gilpinian
+triumvirate effected a halt, and, looking northward, waved their
+three right hands as commanding unseen troops, to 'Up, guards! and
+at 'em.'  Hereupon a brazen band burst forth, which caused them to
+be instantly bolted with to some remote spot of earth in the
+direction of the Surrey Hills.
+
+Judging from these appearances that a procession was under way, I
+threw up my window, and, craning out, had the satisfaction of
+beholding it advancing along the streets.  It was a Teetotal
+procession, as I learnt from its banners, and was long enough to
+consume twenty minutes in passing.  There were a great number of
+children in it, some of them so very young in their mothers' arms
+as to be in the act of practically exemplifying their abstinence
+from fermented liquors, and attachment to an unintoxicating drink,
+while the procession defiled.  The display was, on the whole,
+pleasant to see, as any good-humoured holiday assemblage of clean,
+cheerful, and well-conducted people should be.  It was bright with
+ribbons, tinsel, and shoulder-belts, and abounded in flowers, as if
+those latter trophies had come up in profusion under much watering.
+The day being breezy, the insubordination of the large banners was
+very reprehensible.  Each of these being borne aloft on two poles
+and stayed with some half-dozen lines, was carried, as polite books
+in the last century used to be written, by 'various hands,' and the
+anxiety expressed in the upturned faces of those officers,--
+something between the anxiety attendant on the balancing art, and
+that inseparable from the pastime of kite-flying, with a touch of
+the angler's quality in landing his scaly prey,--much impressed me.
+Suddenly, too, a banner would shiver in the wind, and go about in
+the most inconvenient manner.  This always happened oftenest with
+such gorgeous standards as those representing a gentleman in black,
+corpulent with tea and water, in the laudable act of summarily
+reforming a family, feeble and pinched with beer.  The gentleman in
+black distended by wind would then conduct himself with the most
+unbecoming levity, while the beery family, growing beerier, would
+frantically try to tear themselves away from his ministration.
+Some of the inscriptions accompanying the banners were of a highly
+determined character, as 'We never, never will give up the
+temperance cause,' with similar sound resolutions rather suggestive
+to the profane mind of Mrs. Micawber's 'I never will desert Mr.
+Micawber,' and of Mr. Micawber's retort, 'Really, my dear, I am not
+aware that you were ever required by any human being to do anything
+of the sort.'
+
+At intervals, a gloom would fall on the passing members of the
+procession, for which I was at first unable to account.  But this I
+discovered, after a little observation, to be occasioned by the
+coming on of the executioners,--the terrible official beings who
+were to make the speeches by-and-by,--who were distributed in open
+carriages at various points of the cavalcade.  A dark cloud and a
+sensation of dampness, as from many wet blankets, invariably
+preceded the rolling on of the dreadful cars containing these
+headsmen; and I noticed that the wretched people who closely
+followed them, and who were in a manner forced to contemplate their
+folded arms, complacent countenances, and threatening lips, were
+more overshadowed by the cloud and damp than those in front.
+Indeed, I perceived in some of these so moody an implacability
+towards the magnates of the scaffold, and so plain a desire to tear
+them limb from limb, that I would respectfully suggest to the
+managers the expediency of conveying the executioners to the scene
+of their dismal labours by unfrequented ways, and in closely-tilted
+carts, next Whitsuntide.
+
+The procession was composed of a series of smaller processions,
+which had come together, each from its own metropolitan district.
+An infusion of allegory became perceptible when patriotic Peckham
+advanced.  So I judged, from the circumstance of Peckham's
+unfurling a silken banner that fanned heaven and earth with the
+words, 'The Peckham Lifeboat.'  No boat being in attendance, though
+life, in the likeness of 'a gallant, gallant crew,' in nautical
+uniform, followed the flag, I was led to meditate on the fact that
+Peckham is described by geographers as an inland settlement, with
+no larger or nearer shore-line than the towing-path of the Surrey
+Canal, on which stormy station I had been given to understand no
+lifeboat exists.  Thus I deduced an allegorical meaning, and came
+to the conclusion, that if patriotic Peckham picked a peck of
+pickled poetry, this WAS the peck of pickled poetry which patriotic
+Peckham picked.
+
+I have observed that the aggregate procession was on the whole
+pleasant to see.  I made use of that qualified expression with a
+direct meaning, which I will now explain.  It involves the title of
+this paper, and a little fair trying of teetotalism by its own
+tests.  There were many people on foot, and many people in vehicles
+of various kinds.  The former were pleasant to see, and the latter
+were not pleasant to see; for the reason that I never, on any
+occasion or under any circumstances, have beheld heavier
+overloading of horses than in this public show.  Unless the
+imposition of a great van laden with from ten to twenty people on a
+single horse be a moderate tasking of the poor creature, then the
+temperate use of horses was immoderate and cruel.  From the
+smallest and lightest horse to the largest and heaviest, there were
+many instances in which the beast of burden was so shamefully
+overladen, that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
+Animals have frequently interposed in less gross cases.
+
+Now, I have always held that there may be, and that there
+unquestionably is, such a thing as use without abuse, and that
+therefore the total abolitionists are irrational and wrong-headed.
+But the procession completely converted me.  For so large a number
+of the people using draught-horses in it were so clearly unable to
+use them without abusing them, that I perceived total abstinence
+from horseflesh to be the only remedy of which the case admitted.
+As it is all one to teetotalers whether you take half a pint of
+beer or half a gallon, so it was all one here whether the beast of
+burden were a pony or a cart-horse.  Indeed, my case had the
+special strength that the half-pint quadruped underwent as much
+suffering as the half-gallon quadruped.  Moral:  total abstinence
+from horseflesh through the whole length and breadth of the scale.
+This pledge will be in course of administration to all teetotal
+processionists, not pedestrians, at the publishing office of 'All
+the Year Round,' on the 1st day of April, 1870.
+
+Observe a point for consideration.  This procession comprised many
+persons in their gigs, broughams, tax-carts, barouches, chaises,
+and what not, who were merciful to the dumb beasts that drew them,
+and did not overcharge their strength.  What is to be done with
+those unoffending persons?  I will not run amuck and vilify and
+defame them, as teetotal tracts and platforms would most assuredly
+do, if the question were one of drinking instead of driving:  I
+merely ask what is to be done with them!  The reply admits of no
+dispute whatever.  Manifestly, in strict accordance with teetotal
+doctrines, THEY must come in too, and take the total abstinence
+from horseflesh pledge.  It is not pretended that those members of
+the procession misused certain auxiliaries which in most countries
+and all ages have been bestowed upon man for his use, but it is
+undeniable that other members of the procession did.  Teetotal
+mathematics demonstrate that the less includes the greater; that
+the guilty include the innocent, the blind the seeing, the deaf the
+hearing, the dumb the speaking, the drunken the sober.  If any of
+the moderate users of draught-cattle in question should deem that
+there is any gentle violence done to their reason by these elements
+of logic, they are invited to come out of the procession next
+Whitsuntide, and look at it from my window.
+
+
+
+
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+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" />
+<title>The Uncommercial Traveller</title>
+</head>
+<body>
+<h2>
+<a href="#startoftext">The Uncommercial Traveller, by Charles Dickens</a>
+</h2>
+<pre>
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Uncommercial Traveller, by Charles Dickens
+(#23 in our series by Charles Dickens)
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+
+
+Title: The Uncommercial Traveller
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Release Date: May, 1997  [EBook #914]
+[This file was first posted on May 20, 1997]
+[Most recently updated: May 20, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+</pre>
+<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p>
+<p>Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h1>THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER</h1>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER I&mdash;HIS GENERAL LINE OF BUSINESS</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Allow me to introduce myself&mdash;first negatively.</p>
+<p>No landlord is my friend and brother, no chambermaid loves me, no
+waiter worships me, no boots admires and envies me.&nbsp; No round of
+beef or tongue or ham is expressly cooked for me, no pigeon-pie is especially
+made for me, no hotel-advertisement is personally addressed to me, no
+hotel-room tapestried with great-coats and railway wrappers is set apart
+for me, no house of public entertainment in the United Kingdom greatly
+cares for my opinion of its brandy or sherry.&nbsp; When I go upon my
+journeys, I am not usually rated at a low figure in the bill; when I
+come home from my journeys, I never get any commission.&nbsp; I know
+nothing about prices, and should have no idea, if I were put to it,
+how to wheedle a man into ordering something he doesn&rsquo;t want.&nbsp;
+As a town traveller, I am never to be seen driving a vehicle externally
+like a young and volatile pianoforte van, and internally like an oven
+in which a number of flat boxes are baking in layers.&nbsp; As a country
+traveller, I am rarely to be found in a gig, and am never to be encountered
+by a pleasure train, waiting on the platform of a branch station, quite
+a Druid in the midst of a light Stonehenge of samples.</p>
+<p>And yet&mdash;proceeding now, to introduce myself positively&mdash;I
+am both a town traveller and a country traveller, and am always on the
+road.&nbsp; Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of Human
+Interest Brothers, and have rather a large connection in the fancy goods
+way.&nbsp; Literally speaking, I am always wandering here and there
+from my rooms in Covent-garden, London&mdash;now about the city streets:
+now, about the country by-roads&mdash;seeing many little things, and
+some great things, which, because they interest me, I think may interest
+others.</p>
+<p>These are my chief credentials as the Uncommercial Traveller.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER II&mdash;THE SHIPWRECK</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Never had I seen a year going out, or going on, under quieter circumstances.&nbsp;
+Eighteen hundred and fifty-nine had but another day to live, and truly
+its end was Peace on that sea-shore that morning.</p>
+<p>So settled and orderly was everything seaward, in the bright light
+of the sun and under the transparent shadows of the clouds, that it
+was hard to imagine the bay otherwise, for years past or to come, than
+it was that very day.&nbsp; The Tug-steamer lying a little off the shore,
+the Lighter lying still nearer to the shore, the boat alongside the
+Lighter, the regularly-turning windlass aboard the Lighter, the methodical
+figures at work, all slowly and regularly heaving up and down with the
+breathing of the sea, all seemed as much a part of the nature of the
+place as the tide itself.&nbsp; The tide was on the flow, and had been
+for some two hours and a half; there was a slight obstruction in the
+sea within a few yards of my feet: as if the stump of a tree, with earth
+enough about it to keep it from lying horizontally on the water, had
+slipped a little from the land&mdash;and as I stood upon the beach and
+observed it dimpling the light swell that was coming in, I cast a stone
+over it.</p>
+<p>So orderly, so quiet, so regular&mdash;the rising and falling of
+the Tug-steamer, the Lighter, and the boat&mdash;the turning of the
+windlass&mdash;the coming in of the tide&mdash;that I myself seemed,
+to my own thinking, anything but new to the spot.&nbsp; Yet, I had never
+seen it in my life, a minute before, and had traversed two hundred miles
+to get at it.&nbsp; That very morning I had come bowling down, and struggling
+up, hill-country roads; looking back at snowy summits; meeting courteous
+peasants well to do, driving fat pigs and cattle to market: noting the
+neat and thrifty dwellings, with their unusual quantity of clean white
+linen, drying on the bushes; having windy weather suggested by every
+cotter&rsquo;s little rick, with its thatch straw-ridged and extra straw-ridged
+into overlapping compartments like the back of a rhinoceros.&nbsp; Had
+I not given a lift of fourteen miles to the Coast-guardsman (kit and
+all), who was coming to his spell of duty there, and had we not just
+now parted company?&nbsp; So it was; but the journey seemed to glide
+down into the placid sea, with other chafe and trouble, and for the
+moment nothing was so calmly and monotonously real under the sunlight
+as the gentle rising and falling of the water with its freight, the
+regular turning of the windlass aboard the Lighter, and the slight obstruction
+so very near my feet.</p>
+<p>O reader, haply turning this page by the fireside at Home, and hearing
+the night wind rumble in the chimney, that slight obstruction was the
+uppermost fragment of the Wreck of the Royal Charter, Australian trader
+and passenger ship, Homeward bound, that struck here on the terrible
+morning of the twenty-sixth of this October, broke into three parts,
+went down with her treasure of at least five hundred human lives, and
+has never stirred since!</p>
+<p>From which point, or from which, she drove ashore, stern foremost;
+on which side, or on which, she passed the little Island in the bay,
+for ages henceforth to be aground certain yards outside her; these are
+rendered bootless questions by the darkness of that night and the darkness
+of death.&nbsp; Here she went down.</p>
+<p>Even as I stood on the beach with the words &lsquo;Here she went
+down!&rsquo; in my ears, a diver in his grotesque dress, dipped heavily
+over the side of the boat alongside the Lighter, and dropped to the
+bottom.&nbsp; On the shore by the water&rsquo;s edge, was a rough tent,
+made of fragments of wreck, where other divers and workmen sheltered
+themselves, and where they had kept Christmas-day with rum and roast
+beef, to the destruction of their frail chimney.&nbsp; Cast up among
+the stones and boulders of the beach, were great spars of the lost vessel,
+and masses of iron twisted by the fury of the sea into the strangest
+forms.&nbsp; The timber was already bleached and iron rusted, and even
+these objects did no violence to the prevailing air the whole scene
+wore, of having been exactly the same for years and years.</p>
+<p>Yet, only two short months had gone, since a man, living on the nearest
+hill-top overlooking the sea, being blown out of bed at about daybreak
+by the wind that had begun to strip his roof off, and getting upon a
+ladder with his nearest neighbour to construct some temporary device
+for keeping his house over his head, saw from the ladder&rsquo;s elevation
+as he looked down by chance towards the shore, some dark troubled object
+close in with the land.&nbsp; And he and the other, descending to the
+beach, and finding the sea mercilessly beating over a great broken ship,
+had clambered up the stony ways, like staircases without stairs, on
+which the wild village hangs in little clusters, as fruit hangs on boughs,
+and had given the alarm.&nbsp; And so, over the hill-slopes, and past
+the waterfall, and down the gullies where the land drains off into the
+ocean, the scattered quarrymen and fishermen inhabiting that part of
+Wales had come running to the dismal sight&mdash;their clergyman among
+them.&nbsp; And as they stood in the leaden morning, stricken with pity,
+leaning hard against the wind, their breath and vision often failing
+as the sleet and spray rushed at them from the ever forming and dissolving
+mountains of sea, and as the wool which was a part of the vessel&rsquo;s
+cargo blew in with the salt foam and remained upon the land when the
+foam melted, they saw the ship&rsquo;s life-boat put off from one of
+the heaps of wreck; and first, there were three men in her, and in a
+moment she capsized, and there were but two; and again, she was struck
+by a vast mass of water, and there was but one; and again, she was thrown
+bottom upward, and that one, with his arm struck through the broken
+planks and waving as if for the help that could never reach him, went
+down into the deep.</p>
+<p>It was the clergyman himself from whom I heard this, while I stood
+on the shore, looking in his kind wholesome face as it turned to the
+spot where the boat had been.&nbsp; The divers were down then, and busy.&nbsp;
+They were &lsquo;lifting&rsquo; to-day the gold found yesterday&mdash;some
+five-and-twenty thousand pounds.&nbsp; Of three hundred and fifty thousand
+pounds&rsquo; worth of gold, three hundred thousand pounds&rsquo; worth,
+in round numbers, was at that time recovered.&nbsp; The great bulk of
+the remainder was surely and steadily coming up.&nbsp; Some loss of
+sovereigns there would be, of course; indeed, at first sovereigns had
+drifted in with the sand, and been scattered far and wide over the beach,
+like sea-shells; but most other golden treasure would be found.&nbsp;
+As it was brought up, it went aboard the Tug-steamer, where good account
+was taken of it.&nbsp; So tremendous had the force of the sea been when
+it broke the ship, that it had beaten one great ingot of gold, deep
+into a strong and heavy piece of her solid iron-work: in which, also,
+several loose sovereigns that the ingot had swept in before it, had
+been found, as firmly embedded as though the iron had been liquid when
+they were forced there.&nbsp; It had been remarked of such bodies come
+ashore, too, as had been seen by scientific men, that they had been
+stunned to death, and not suffocated.&nbsp; Observation, both of the
+internal change that had been wrought in them, and of their external
+expression, showed death to have been thus merciful and easy.&nbsp;
+The report was brought, while I was holding such discourse on the beach,
+that no more bodies had come ashore since last night.&nbsp; It began
+to be very doubtful whether many more would be thrown up, until the
+north-east winds of the early spring set in.&nbsp; Moreover, a great
+number of the passengers, and particularly the second-class women-passengers,
+were known to have been in the middle of the ship when she parted, and
+thus the collapsing wreck would have fallen upon them after yawning
+open, and would keep them down.&nbsp; A diver made known, even then,
+that he had come upon the body of a man, and had sought to release it
+from a great superincumbent weight; but that, finding he could not do
+so without mutilating the remains, he had left it where it was.</p>
+<p>It was the kind and wholesome face I have made mention of as being
+then beside me, that I had purposed to myself to see, when I left home
+for Wales.&nbsp; I had heard of that clergyman, as having buried many
+scores of the shipwrecked people; of his having opened his house and
+heart to their agonised friends; of his having used a most sweet and
+patient diligence for weeks and weeks, in the performance of the forlornest
+offices that Man can render to his kind; of his having most tenderly
+and thoroughly devoted himself to the dead, and to those who were sorrowing
+for the dead.&nbsp; I had said to myself, &lsquo;In the Christmas season
+of the year, I should like to see that man!&rsquo;&nbsp; And he had
+swung the gate of his little garden in coming out to meet me, not half
+an hour ago.</p>
+<p>So cheerful of spirit and guiltless of affectation, as true practical
+Christianity ever is!&nbsp; I read more of the New Testament in the
+fresh frank face going up the village beside me, in five minutes, than
+I have read in anathematising discourses (albeit put to press with enormous
+flourishing of trumpets), in all my life.&nbsp; I heard more of the
+Sacred Book in the cordial voice that had nothing to say about its owner,
+than in all the would-be celestial pairs of bellows that have ever blown
+conceit at me.</p>
+<p>We climbed towards the little church, at a cheery pace, among the
+loose stones, the deep mud, the wet coarse grass, the outlying water,
+and other obstructions from which frost and snow had lately thawed.&nbsp;
+It was a mistake (my friend was glad to tell me, on the way) to suppose
+that the peasantry had shown any superstitious avoidance of the drowned;
+on the whole, they had done very well, and had assisted readily.&nbsp;
+Ten shillings had been paid for the bringing of each body up to the
+church, but the way was steep, and a horse and cart (in which it was
+wrapped in a sheet) were necessary, and three or four men, and, all
+things considered, it was not a great price.&nbsp; The people were none
+the richer for the wreck, for it was the season of the herring-shoal&mdash;and
+who could cast nets for fish, and find dead men and women in the draught?</p>
+<p>He had the church keys in his hand, and opened the churchyard gate,
+and opened the church door; and we went in.</p>
+<p>It is a little church of great antiquity; there is reason to believe
+that some church has occupied the spot, these thousand years or more.&nbsp;
+The pulpit was gone, and other things usually belonging to the church
+were gone, owing to its living congregation having deserted it for the
+neighbouring school-room, and yielded it up to the dead.&nbsp; The very
+Commandments had been shouldered out of their places, in the bringing
+in of the dead; the black wooden tables on which they were painted,
+were askew, and on the stone pavement below them, and on the stone pavement
+all over the church, were the marks and stains where the drowned had
+been laid down.&nbsp; The eye, with little or no aid from the imagination,
+could yet see how the bodies had been turned, and where the head had
+been and where the feet.&nbsp; Some faded traces of the wreck of the
+Australian ship may be discernible on the stone pavement of this little
+church, hundreds of years hence, when the digging for gold in Australia
+shall have long and long ceased out of the land.</p>
+<p>Forty-four shipwrecked men and women lay here at one time, awaiting
+burial.&nbsp; Here, with weeping and wailing in every room of his house,
+my companion worked alone for hours, solemnly surrounded by eyes that
+could not see him, and by lips that could not speak to him, patiently
+examining the tattered clothing, cutting off buttons, hair, marks from
+linen, anything that might lead to subsequent identification, studying
+faces, looking for a scar, a bent finger, a crooked toe, comparing letters
+sent to him with the ruin about him.&nbsp; &lsquo;My dearest brother
+had bright grey eyes and a pleasant smile,&rsquo; one sister wrote.&nbsp;
+O poor sister! well for you to be far from here, and keep that as your
+last remembrance of him!</p>
+<p>The ladies of the clergyman&rsquo;s family, his wife and two sisters-in-law,
+came in among the bodies often.&nbsp; It grew to be the business of
+their lives to do so.&nbsp; Any new arrival of a bereaved woman would
+stimulate their pity to compare the description brought, with the dread
+realities.&nbsp; Sometimes, they would go back able to say, &lsquo;I
+have found him,&rsquo; or, &lsquo;I think she lies there.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Perhaps, the mourner, unable to bear the sight of all that lay in the
+church, would be led in blindfold.&nbsp; Conducted to the spot with
+many compassionate words, and encouraged to look, she would say, with
+a piercing cry, &lsquo;This is my boy!&rsquo; and drop insensible on
+the insensible figure.</p>
+<p>He soon observed that in some cases of women, the identification
+of persons, though complete, was quite at variance with the marks upon
+the linen; this led him to notice that even the marks upon the linen
+were sometimes inconsistent with one another; and thus he came to understand
+that they had dressed in great haste and agitation, and that their clothes
+had become mixed together.&nbsp; The identification of men by their
+dress, was rendered extremely difficult, in consequence of a large proportion
+of them being dressed alike&mdash;in clothes of one kind, that is to
+say, supplied by slopsellers and outfitters, and not made by single
+garments but by hundreds.&nbsp; Many of the men were bringing over parrots,
+and had receipts upon them for the price of the birds; others had bills
+of exchange in their pockets, or in belts.&nbsp; Some of these documents,
+carefully unwrinkled and dried, were little less fresh in appearance
+that day, than the present page will be under ordinary circumstances,
+after having been opened three or four times.</p>
+<p>In that lonely place, it had not been easy to obtain even such common
+commodities in towns, as ordinary disinfectants.&nbsp; Pitch had been
+burnt in the church, as the readiest thing at hand, and the frying-pan
+in which it had bubbled over a brazier of coals was still there, with
+its ashes.&nbsp; Hard by the Communion-Table, were some boots that had
+been taken off the drowned and preserved&mdash;a gold-digger&rsquo;s
+boot, cut down the leg for its removal&mdash;a trodden-down man&rsquo;s
+ankle-boot with a buff cloth top&mdash;and others&mdash;soaked and sandy,
+weedy and salt.</p>
+<p>From the church, we passed out into the churchyard.&nbsp; Here, there
+lay, at that time, one hundred and forty-five bodies, that had come
+ashore from the wreck.&nbsp; He had buried them, when not identified,
+in graves containing four each.&nbsp; He had numbered each body in a
+register describing it, and had placed a corresponding number on each
+coffin, and over each grave.&nbsp; Identified bodies he had buried singly,
+in private graves, in another part of the church-yard.&nbsp; Several
+bodies had been exhumed from the graves of four, as relatives had come
+from a distance and seen his register; and, when recognised, these have
+been reburied in private graves, so that the mourners might erect separate
+headstones over the remains.&nbsp; In all such cases he had performed
+the funeral service a second time, and the ladies of his house had attended.&nbsp;
+There had been no offence in the poor ashes when they were brought again
+to the light of day; the beneficent Earth had already absorbed it.&nbsp;
+The drowned were buried in their clothes.&nbsp; To supply the great
+sudden demand for coffins, he had got all the neighbouring people handy
+at tools, to work the livelong day, and Sunday likewise.&nbsp; The coffins
+were neatly formed;&mdash;I had seen two, waiting for occupants, under
+the lee of the ruined walls of a stone hut on the beach, within call
+of the tent where the Christmas Feast was held.&nbsp; Similarly, one
+of the graves for four was lying open and ready, here, in the churchyard.&nbsp;
+So much of the scanty space was already devoted to the wrecked people,
+that the villagers had begun to express uneasy doubts whether they themselves
+could lie in their own ground, with their forefathers and descendants,
+by-and-by.&nbsp; The churchyard being but a step from the clergyman&rsquo;s
+dwelling-house, we crossed to the latter; the white surplice was hanging
+up near the door ready to be put on at any time, for a funeral service.</p>
+<p>The cheerful earnestness of this good Christian minister was as consolatory,
+as the circumstances out of which it shone were sad.&nbsp; I never have
+seen anything more delightfully genuine than the calm dismissal by himself
+and his household of all they had undergone, as a simple duty that was
+quietly done and ended.&nbsp; In speaking of it, they spoke of it with
+great compassion for the bereaved; but laid no stress upon their own
+hard share in those weary weeks, except as it had attached many people
+to them as friends, and elicited many touching expressions of gratitude.&nbsp;
+This clergyman&rsquo;s brother&mdash;himself the clergyman of two adjoining
+parishes, who had buried thirty-four of the bodies in his own churchyard,
+and who had done to them all that his brother had done as to the larger
+number&mdash;must be understood as included in the family.&nbsp; He
+was there, with his neatly arranged papers, and made no more account
+of his trouble than anybody else did.&nbsp; Down to yesterday&rsquo;s
+post outward, my clergyman alone had written one thousand and seventy-five
+letters to relatives and friends of the lost people.&nbsp; In the absence
+of self-assertion, it was only through my now and then delicately putting
+a question as the occasion arose, that I became informed of these things.&nbsp;
+It was only when I had remarked again and again, in the church, on the
+awful nature of the scene of death he had been required so closely to
+familiarise himself with for the soothing of the living, that he had
+casually said, without the least abatement of his cheerfulness, &lsquo;indeed,
+it had rendered him unable for a time to eat or drink more than a little
+coffee now and then, and a piece of bread.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>In this noble modesty, in this beautiful simplicity, in this serene
+avoidance of the least attempt to &lsquo;improve&rsquo; an occasion
+which might be supposed to have sunk of its own weight into my heart,
+I seemed to have happily come, in a few steps, from the churchyard with
+its open grave, which was the type of Death, to the Christian dwelling
+side by side with it, which was the type of Resurrection.&nbsp; I never
+shall think of the former, without the latter.&nbsp; The two will always
+rest side by side in my memory.&nbsp; If I had lost any one dear to
+me in this unfortunate ship, if I had made a voyage from Australia to
+look at the grave in the churchyard, I should go away, thankful to GOD
+that that house was so close to it, and that its shadow by day and its
+domestic lights by night fell upon the earth in which its Master had
+so tenderly laid my dear one&rsquo;s head.</p>
+<p>The references that naturally arose out of our conversation, to the
+descriptions sent down of shipwrecked persons, and to the gratitude
+of relations and friends, made me very anxious to see some of those
+letters.&nbsp; I was presently seated before a shipwreck of papers,
+all bordered with black, and from them I made the following few extracts.</p>
+<p>A mother writes:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>REVEREND SIR.&nbsp; Amongst the many who perished on your shore was
+numbered my beloved son.&nbsp; I was only just recovering from a severe
+illness, and this fearful affliction has caused a relapse, so that I
+am unable at present to go to identify the remains of the loved and
+lost.&nbsp; My darling son would have been sixteen on Christmas-day
+next.&nbsp; He was a most amiable and obedient child, early taught the
+way of salvation.&nbsp; We fondly hoped that as a British seaman he
+might be an ornament to his profession, but, &lsquo;it is well;&rsquo;
+I feel assured my dear boy is now with the redeemed.&nbsp; Oh, he did
+not wish to go this last voyage!&nbsp; On the fifteenth of October,
+I received a letter from him from Melbourne, date August twelfth; he
+wrote in high spirits, and in conclusion he says: &lsquo;Pray for a
+fair breeze, dear mamma, and I&rsquo;ll not forget to whistle for it!
+and, God permitting, I shall see you and all my little pets again.&nbsp;
+Good-bye, dear mother&mdash;good-bye, dearest parents.&nbsp; Good-bye,
+dear brother.&rsquo;&nbsp; Oh, it was indeed an eternal farewell.&nbsp;
+I do not apologise for thus writing you, for oh, my heart is so very
+sorrowful.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>A husband writes:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>MY DEAR KIND SIR.&nbsp; Will you kindly inform me whether there are
+any initials upon the ring and guard you have in possession, found,
+as the Standard says, last Tuesday?&nbsp; Believe me, my dear sir, when
+I say that I cannot express my deep gratitude in words sufficiently
+for your kindness to me on that fearful and appalling day.&nbsp; Will
+you tell me what I can do for you, and will you write me a consoling
+letter to prevent my mind from going astray?</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>A widow writes:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Left in such a state as I am, my friends and I thought it best that
+my dear husband should be buried where he lies, and, much as I should
+have liked to have had it otherwise, I must submit.&nbsp; I feel, from
+all I have heard of you, that you will see it done decently and in order.&nbsp;
+Little does it signify to us, when the soul has departed, where this
+poor body lies, but we who are left behind would do all we can to show
+how we loved them.&nbsp; This is denied me, but it is God&rsquo;s hand
+that afflicts us, and I try to submit.&nbsp; Some day I may be able
+to visit the spot, and see where he lies, and erect a simple stone to
+his memory.&nbsp; Oh! it will be long, long before I forget that dreadful
+night!&nbsp; Is there such a thing in the vicinity, or any shop in Bangor,
+to which I could send for a small picture of Moelfra or Llanallgo church,
+a spot now sacred to me?</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Another widow writes:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>I have received your letter this morning, and do thank you most kindly
+for the interest you have taken about my dear husband, as well for the
+sentiments yours contains, evincing the spirit of a Christian who can
+sympathise with those who, like myself, are broken down with grief.</p>
+<p>May God bless and sustain you, and all in connection with you, in
+this great trial.&nbsp; Time may roll on and bear all its sons away,
+but your name as a disinterested person will stand in history, and,
+as successive years pass, many a widow will think of your noble conduct,
+and the tears of gratitude flow down many a cheek, the tribute of a
+thankful heart, when other things are forgotten for ever.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>A father writes:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>I am at a loss to find words to sufficiently express my gratitude
+to you for your kindness to my son Richard upon the melancholy occasion
+of his visit to his dear brother&rsquo;s body, and also for your ready
+attention in pronouncing our beautiful burial service over my poor unfortunate
+son&rsquo;s remains.&nbsp; God grant that your prayers over him may
+reach the Mercy Seat, and that his soul may be received (through Christ&rsquo;s
+intercession) into heaven!</p>
+<p>His dear mother begs me to convey to you her heartfelt thanks.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Those who were received at the clergyman&rsquo;s house, write thus,
+after leaving it:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>DEAR AND NEVER-TO-BE-FORGOTTEN FRIENDS.&nbsp; I arrived here yesterday
+morning without accident, and am about to proceed to my home by railway.</p>
+<p>I am overpowered when I think of you and your hospitable home.&nbsp;
+No words could speak language suited to my heart.&nbsp; I refrain.&nbsp;
+God reward you with the same measure you have meted with!</p>
+<p>I enumerate no names, but embrace you all.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>MY BELOVED FRIENDS.&nbsp; This is the first day that I have been
+able to leave my bedroom since I returned, which will explain the reason
+of my not writing sooner.</p>
+<p>If I could only have had my last melancholy hope realised in recovering
+the body of my beloved and lamented son, I should have returned home
+somewhat comforted, and I think I could then have been comparatively
+resigned.</p>
+<p>I fear now there is but little prospect, and I mourn as one without
+hope.</p>
+<p>The only consolation to my distressed mind is in having been so feelingly
+allowed by you to leave the matter in your hands, by whom I well know
+that everything will be done that can be, according to arrangements
+made before I left the scene of the awful catastrophe, both as to the
+identification of my dear son, and also his interment.</p>
+<p>I feel most anxious to hear whether anything fresh has transpired
+since I left you; will you add another to the many deep obligations
+I am under to you by writing to me?&nbsp; And should the body of my
+dear and unfortunate son be identified, let me hear from you immediately,
+and I will come again.</p>
+<p>Words cannot express the gratitude I feel I owe to you all for your
+benevolent aid, your kindness, and your sympathy.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>MY DEARLY BELOVED FRIENDS.&nbsp; I arrived in safety at my house
+yesterday, and a night&rsquo;s rest has restored and tranquillised me.&nbsp;
+I must again repeat, that language has no words by which I can express
+my sense of obligation to you.&nbsp; You are enshrined in my heart of
+hearts.</p>
+<p>I have seen him! and can now realise my misfortune more than I have
+hitherto been able to do.&nbsp; Oh, the bitterness of the cup I drink!&nbsp;
+But I bow submissive.&nbsp; God <i>must</i> have done right.&nbsp; I
+do not want to feel less, but to acquiesce more simply.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>There were some Jewish passengers on board the Royal Charter, and
+the gratitude of the Jewish people is feelingly expressed in the following
+letter bearing date from &lsquo;the office of the Chief Rabbi:&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>REVEREND SIR.&nbsp; I cannot refrain from expressing to you my heartfelt
+thanks on behalf of those of my flock whose relatives have unfortunately
+been among those who perished at the late wreck of the Royal Charter.&nbsp;
+You have, indeed, like Boaz, &lsquo;not left off your kindness to the
+living and the dead.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>You have not alone acted kindly towards the living by receiving them
+hospitably at your house, and energetically assisting them in their
+mournful duty, but also towards the dead, by exerting yourself to have
+our co-religionists buried in our ground, and according to our rites.&nbsp;
+May our heavenly Father reward you for your acts of humanity and true
+philanthropy!</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The &lsquo;Old Hebrew congregation of Liverpool&rsquo; thus express
+themselves through their secretary:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>REVEREND SIR.&nbsp; The wardens of this congregation have learned
+with great pleasure that, in addition to those indefatigable exertions,
+at the scene of the late disaster to the Royal Charter, which have received
+universal recognition, you have very benevolently employed your valuable
+efforts to assist such members of our faith as have sought the bodies
+of lost friends to give them burial in our consecrated grounds, with
+the observances and rites prescribed by the ordinances of our religion.</p>
+<p>The wardens desire me to take the earliest available opportunity
+to offer to you, on behalf of our community, the expression of their
+warm acknowledgments and grateful thanks, and their sincere wishes for
+your continued welfare and prosperity.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>A Jewish gentleman writes:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>REVEREND AND DEAR SIR.&nbsp; I take the opportunity of thanking you
+right earnestly for the promptness you displayed in answering my note
+with full particulars concerning my much lamented brother, and I also
+herein beg to express my sincere regard for the willingness you displayed
+and for the facility you afforded for getting the remains of my poor
+brother exhumed.&nbsp; It has been to us a most sorrowful and painful
+event, but when we meet with such friends as yourself, it in a measure,
+somehow or other, abates that mental anguish, and makes the suffering
+so much easier to be borne.&nbsp; Considering the circumstances connected
+with my poor brother&rsquo;s fate, it does, indeed, appear a hard one.&nbsp;
+He had been away in all seven years; he returned four years ago to see
+his family.&nbsp; He was then engaged to a very amiable young lady.&nbsp;
+He had been very successful abroad, and was now returning to fulfil
+his sacred vow; he brought all his property with him in gold uninsured.&nbsp;
+We heard from him when the ship stopped at Queenstown, when he was in
+the highest of hope, and in a few short hours afterwards all was washed
+away.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Mournful in the deepest degree, but too sacred for quotation here,
+were the numerous references to those miniatures of women worn round
+the necks of rough men (and found there after death), those locks of
+hair, those scraps of letters, those many many slight memorials of hidden
+tenderness.&nbsp; One man cast up by the sea bore about him, printed
+on a perforated lace card, the following singular (and unavailing) charm:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>A BLESSING.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>May the blessing of God await thee.&nbsp; May the sun of glory shine
+around thy bed; and may the gates of plenty, honour, and happiness be
+ever open to thee.&nbsp; May no sorrow distress thy days; may no grief
+disturb thy nights.&nbsp; May the pillow of peace kiss thy cheek, and
+the pleasures of imagination attend thy dreams; and when length of years
+makes thee tired of earthly joys, and the curtain of death gently closes
+around thy last sleep of human existence, may the Angel of God attend
+thy bed, and take care that the expiring lamp of life shall not receive
+one rude blast to hasten on its extinction.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>A sailor had these devices on his right arm.&nbsp; &lsquo;Our Saviour
+on the Cross, the forehead of the Crucifix and the vesture stained red;
+on the lower part of the arm, a man and woman; on one side of the Cross,
+the appearance of a half moon, with a face; on the other side, the sun;
+on the top of the Cross, the letters I.H.S.; on the left arm, a man
+and woman dancing, with an effort to delineate the female&rsquo;s dress;
+under which, initials.&rsquo;&nbsp; Another seaman &lsquo;had, on the
+lower part of the right arm, the device of a sailor and a female; the
+man holding the Union Jack with a streamer, the folds of which waved
+over her head, and the end of it was held in her hand.&nbsp; On the
+upper part of the arm, a device of Our Lord on the Cross, with stars
+surrounding the head of the Cross, and one large star on the side in
+Indian Ink.&nbsp; On the left arm, a flag, a true lover&rsquo;s knot,
+a face, and initials.&rsquo;&nbsp; This tattooing was found still plain,
+below the discoloured outer surface of a mutilated arm, when such surface
+was carefully scraped away with a knife.&nbsp; It is not improbable
+that the perpetuation of this marking custom among seamen, may be referred
+back to their desire to be identified, if drowned and flung ashore.</p>
+<p>It was some time before I could sever myself from the many interesting
+papers on the table, and then I broke bread and drank wine with the
+kind family before I left them.&nbsp; As I brought the Coast-guard down,
+so I took the Postman back, with his leathern wallet, walking-stick,
+bugle, and terrier dog.&nbsp; Many a heart-broken letter had he brought
+to the Rectory House within two months many; a benignantly painstaking
+answer had he carried back.</p>
+<p>As I rode along, I thought of the many people, inhabitants of this
+mother country, who would make pilgrimages to the little churchyard
+in the years to come; I thought of the many people in Australia, who
+would have an interest in such a shipwreck, and would find their way
+here when they visit the Old World; I thought of the writers of all
+the wreck of letters I had left upon the table; and I resolved to place
+this little record where it stands.&nbsp; Convocations, Conferences,
+Diocesan Epistles, and the like, will do a great deal for Religion,
+I dare say, and Heaven send they may! but I doubt if they will ever
+do their Master&rsquo;s service half so well, in all the time they last,
+as the Heavens have seen it done in this bleak spot upon the rugged
+coast of Wales.</p>
+<p>Had I lost the friend of my life, in the wreck of the Royal Charter;
+had I lost my betrothed, the more than friend of my life; had I lost
+my maiden daughter, had I lost my hopeful boy, had I lost my little
+child; I would kiss the hands that worked so busily and gently in the
+church, and say, &lsquo;None better could have touched the form, though
+it had lain at home.&rsquo;&nbsp; I could be sure of it, I could be
+thankful for it: I could be content to leave the grave near the house
+the good family pass in and out of every day, undisturbed, in the little
+churchyard where so many are so strangely brought together.</p>
+<p>Without the name of the clergyman to whom&mdash;I hope, not without
+carrying comfort to some heart at some time&mdash;I have referred, my
+reference would be as nothing.&nbsp; He is the Reverend Stephen Roose
+Hughes, of Llanallgo, near Moelfra, Anglesey.&nbsp; His brother is the
+Reverend Hugh Robert Hughes, of Penrhos, Alligwy.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER III&mdash;WAPPING WORKHOUSE</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>My day&rsquo;s no-business beckoning me to the East-end of London,
+I had turned my face to that point of the metropolitan compass on leaving
+Covent-garden, and had got past the India House, thinking in my idle
+manner of Tippoo-Sahib and Charles Lamb, and had got past my little
+wooden midshipman, after affectionately patting him on one leg of his
+knee-shorts for old acquaintance&rsquo; sake, and had got past Aldgate
+Pump, and had got past the Saracen&rsquo;s Head (with an ignominious
+rash of posting bills disfiguring his swarthy countenance), and had
+strolled up the empty yard of his ancient neighbour the Black or Blue
+Boar, or Bull, who departed this life I don&rsquo;t know when, and whose
+coaches are all gone I don&rsquo;t know where; and I had come out again
+into the age of railways, and I had got past Whitechapel Church, and
+was&mdash;rather inappropriately for an Uncommercial Traveller&mdash;in
+the Commercial Road.&nbsp; Pleasantly wallowing in the abundant mud
+of that thoroughfare, and greatly enjoying the huge piles of building
+belonging to the sugar refiners, the little masts and vanes in small
+back gardens in back streets, the neighbouring canals and docks, the
+India vans lumbering along their stone tramway, and the pawnbrokers&rsquo;
+shops where hard-up Mates had pawned so many sextants and quadrants,
+that I should have bought a few cheap if I had the least notion how
+to use them, I at last began to file off to the right, towards Wapping.</p>
+<p>Not that I intended to take boat at Wapping Old Stairs, or that I
+was going to look at the locality, because I believe (for I don&rsquo;t)
+in the constancy of the young woman who told her sea-going lover, to
+such a beautiful old tune, that she had ever continued the same, since
+she gave him the &lsquo;baccer-box marked with his name; I am afraid
+he usually got the worst of those transactions, and was frightfully
+taken in.&nbsp; No, I was going to Wapping, because an Eastern police
+magistrate had said, through the morning papers, that there was no classification
+at the Wapping workhouse for women, and that it was a disgrace and a
+shame, and divers other hard names, and because I wished to see how
+the fact really stood.&nbsp; For, that Eastern police magistrates are
+not always the wisest men of the East, may be inferred from their course
+of procedure respecting the fancy-dressing and pantomime-posturing at
+St. George&rsquo;s in that quarter: which is usually, to discuss the
+matter at issue, in a state of mind betokening the weakest perplexity,
+with all parties concerned and unconcerned, and, for a final expedient,
+to consult the complainant as to what he thinks ought to be done with
+the defendant, and take the defendant&rsquo;s opinion as to what he
+would recommend to be done with himself.</p>
+<p>Long before I reached Wapping, I gave myself up as having lost my
+way, and, abandoning myself to the narrow streets in a Turkish frame
+of mind, relied on predestination to bring me somehow or other to the
+place I wanted if I were ever to get there.&nbsp; When I had ceased
+for an hour or so to take any trouble about the matter, I found myself
+on a swing-bridge looking down at some dark locks in some dirty water.&nbsp;
+Over against me, stood a creature remotely in the likeness of a young
+man, with a puffed sallow face, and a figure all dirty and shiny and
+slimy, who may have been the youngest son of his filthy old father,
+Thames, or the drowned man about whom there was a placard on the granite
+post like a large thimble, that stood between us.</p>
+<p>I asked this apparition what it called the place?&nbsp; Unto which,
+it replied, with a ghastly grin and a sound like gurgling water in its
+throat:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mr. Baker&rsquo;s trap.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>As it is a point of great sensitiveness with me on such occasions
+to be equal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation, I deeply
+considered the meaning of this speech, while I eyed the apparition&mdash;then
+engaged in hugging and sucking a horizontal iron bar at the top of the
+locks.&nbsp; Inspiration suggested to me that Mr. Baker was the acting
+coroner of that neighbourhood.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A common place for suicide,&rsquo; said I, looking down at
+the locks.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sue?&rsquo; returned the ghost, with a stare.&nbsp; &lsquo;Yes!&nbsp;
+And Poll.&nbsp; Likewise Emily.&nbsp; And Nancy.&nbsp; And Jane;&rsquo;
+he sucked the iron between each name; &lsquo;and all the bileing.&nbsp;
+Ketches off their bonnets or shorls, takes a run, and headers down here,
+they doos.&nbsp; Always a headerin&rsquo; down here, they is.&nbsp;
+Like one o&rsquo;clock.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And at about that hour of the morning, I suppose?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; said the apparition.&nbsp; &lsquo;<i>They</i> an&rsquo;t
+partickler.&nbsp; Two &rsquo;ull do for <i>them</i>.&nbsp; Three.&nbsp;
+All times o&rsquo; night.&nbsp; On&rsquo;y mind you!&rsquo;&nbsp; Here
+the apparition rested his profile on the bar, and gurgled in a sarcastic
+manner.&nbsp; &lsquo;There must be somebody comin&rsquo;.&nbsp; They
+don&rsquo;t go a headerin&rsquo; down here, wen there an&rsquo;t no
+Bobby nor gen&rsquo;ral Cove, fur to hear the splash.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>According to my interpretation of these words, I was myself a General
+Cove, or member of the miscellaneous public.&nbsp; In which modest character
+I remarked:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;They are often taken out, are they, and restored?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I dunno about restored,&rsquo; said the apparition, who, for
+some occult reason, very much objected to that word; &lsquo;they&rsquo;re
+carried into the werkiss and put into a &rsquo;ot bath, and brought
+round.&nbsp; But I dunno about restored,&rsquo; said the apparition;
+&lsquo;blow <i>that</i>!&rsquo;&mdash;and vanished.</p>
+<p>As it had shown a desire to become offensive, I was not sorry to
+find myself alone, especially as the &lsquo;werkiss&rsquo; it had indicated
+with a twist of its matted head, was close at hand.&nbsp; So I left
+Mr. Baker&rsquo;s terrible trap (baited with a scum that was like the
+soapy rinsing of sooty chimneys), and made bold to ring at the workhouse
+gate, where I was wholly unexpected and quite unknown.</p>
+<p>A very bright and nimble little matron, with a bunch of keys in her
+hand, responded to my request to see the House.&nbsp; I began to doubt
+whether the police magistrate was quite right in his facts, when I noticed
+her quick, active little figure and her intelligent eyes.</p>
+<p>The Traveller (the matron intimated) should see the worst first.&nbsp;
+He was welcome to see everything.&nbsp; Such as it was, there it all
+was.</p>
+<p>This was the only preparation for our entering &lsquo;the Foul wards.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+They were in an old building squeezed away in a corner of a paved yard,
+quite detached from the more modern and spacious main body of the workhouse.&nbsp;
+They were in a building most monstrously behind the time&mdash;a mere
+series of garrets or lofts, with every inconvenient and objectionable
+circumstance in their construction, and only accessible by steep and
+narrow staircases, infamously ill-adapted for the passage up-stairs
+of the sick or down-stairs of the dead.</p>
+<p>A-bed in these miserable rooms, here on bedsteads, there (for a change,
+as I understood it) on the floor, were women in every stage of distress
+and disease.&nbsp; None but those who have attentively observed such
+scenes, can conceive the extraordinary variety of expression still latent
+under the general monotony and uniformity of colour, attitude, and condition.&nbsp;
+The form a little coiled up and turned away, as though it had turned
+its back on this world for ever; the uninterested face at once lead-coloured
+and yellow, looking passively upward from the pillow; the haggard mouth
+a little dropped, the hand outside the coverlet, so dull and indifferent,
+so light, and yet so heavy; these were on every pallet; but when I stopped
+beside a bed, and said ever so slight a word to the figure lying there,
+the ghost of the old character came into the face, and made the Foul
+ward as various as the fair world.&nbsp; No one appeared to care to
+live, but no one complained; all who could speak, said that as much
+was done for them as could be done there, that the attendance was kind
+and patient, that their suffering was very heavy, but they had nothing
+to ask for.&nbsp; The wretched rooms were as clean and sweet as it is
+possible for such rooms to be; they would become a pest-house in a single
+week, if they were ill-kept.</p>
+<p>I accompanied the brisk matron up another barbarous staircase, into
+a better kind of loft devoted to the idiotic and imbecile.&nbsp; There
+was at least Light in it, whereas the windows in the former wards had
+been like sides of school-boys&rsquo; bird-cages.&nbsp; There was a
+strong grating over the fire here, and, holding a kind of state on either
+side of the hearth, separated by the breadth of this grating, were two
+old ladies in a condition of feeble dignity, which was surely the very
+last and lowest reduction of self-complacency to be found in this wonderful
+humanity of ours.&nbsp; They were evidently jealous of each other, and
+passed their whole time (as some people do, whose fires are not grated)
+in mentally disparaging each other, and contemptuously watching their
+neighbours.&nbsp; One of these parodies on provincial gentlewomen was
+extremely talkative, and expressed a strong desire to attend the service
+on Sundays, from which she represented herself to have derived the greatest
+interest and consolation when allowed that privilege.&nbsp; She gossiped
+so well, and looked altogether so cheery and harmless, that I began
+to think this a case for the Eastern magistrate, until I found that
+on the last occasion of her attending chapel she had secreted a small
+stick, and had caused some confusion in the responses by suddenly producing
+it and belabouring the congregation.</p>
+<p>So, these two old ladies, separated by the breadth of the grating&mdash;otherwise
+they would fly at one another&rsquo;s caps&mdash;sat all day long, suspecting
+one another, and contemplating a world of fits.&nbsp; For everybody
+else in the room had fits, except the wards-woman; an elderly, able-bodied
+pauperess, with a large upper lip, and an air of repressing and saving
+her strength, as she stood with her hands folded before her, and her
+eyes slowly rolling, biding her time for catching or holding somebody.&nbsp;
+This civil personage (in whom I regretted to identify a reduced member
+of my honourable friend Mrs. Gamp&rsquo;s family) said, &lsquo;They
+has &rsquo;em continiwal, sir.&nbsp; They drops without no more notice
+than if they was coach-horses dropped from the moon, sir.&nbsp; And
+when one drops, another drops, and sometimes there&rsquo;ll be as many
+as four or five on &rsquo;em at once, dear me, a rolling and a tearin&rsquo;,
+bless you!&mdash;this young woman, now, has &rsquo;em dreadful bad.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She turned up this young woman&rsquo;s face with her hand as she
+said it.&nbsp; This young woman was seated on the floor, pondering in
+the foreground of the afflicted.&nbsp; There was nothing repellent either
+in her face or head.&nbsp; Many, apparently worse, varieties of epilepsy
+and hysteria were about her, but she was said to be the worst here.&nbsp;
+When I had spoken to her a little, she still sat with her face turned
+up, pondering, and a gleam of the mid-day sun shone in upon her.</p>
+<p>- Whether this young woman, and the rest of these so sorely troubled,
+as they sit or lie pondering in their confused dull way, ever get mental
+glimpses among the motes in the sunlight, of healthy people and healthy
+things?&nbsp; Whether this young woman, brooding like this in the summer
+season, ever thinks that somewhere there are trees and flowers, even
+mountains and the great sea?&nbsp; Whether, not to go so far, this young
+woman ever has any dim revelation of that young woman&mdash;that young
+woman who is not here and never will come here; who is courted, and
+caressed, and loved, and has a husband, and bears children, and lives
+in a home, and who never knows what it is to have this lashing and tearing
+coming upon her?&nbsp; And whether this young woman, God help her, gives
+herself up then and drops like a coach-horse from the moon?</p>
+<p>I hardly knew whether the voices of infant children, penetrating
+into so hopeless a place, made a sound that was pleasant or painful
+to me.&nbsp; It was something to be reminded that the weary world was
+not all aweary, and was ever renewing itself; but, this young woman
+was a child not long ago, and a child not long hence might be such as
+she.&nbsp; Howbeit, the active step and eye of the vigilant matron conducted
+me past the two provincial gentlewomen (whose dignity was ruffled by
+the children), and into the adjacent nursery.</p>
+<p>There were many babies here, and more than one handsome young mother.&nbsp;
+There were ugly young mothers also, and sullen young mothers, and callous
+young mothers.&nbsp; But, the babies had not appropriated to themselves
+any bad expression yet, and might have been, for anything that appeared
+to the contrary in their soft faces, Princes Imperial, and Princesses
+Royal.&nbsp; I had the pleasure of giving a poetical commission to the
+baker&rsquo;s man to make a cake with all despatch and toss it into
+the oven for one red-headed young pauper and myself, and felt much the
+better for it.&nbsp; Without that refreshment, I doubt if I should have
+been in a condition for &lsquo;the Refractories,&rsquo; towards whom
+my quick little matron&mdash;for whose adaptation to her office I had
+by this time conceived a genuine respect&mdash;drew me next, and marshalled
+me the way that I was going.</p>
+<p>The Refractories were picking oakum, in a small room giving on a
+yard.&nbsp; They sat in line on a form, with their backs to a window;
+before them, a table, and their work.&nbsp; The oldest Refractory was,
+say twenty; youngest Refractory, say sixteen.&nbsp; I have never yet
+ascertained in the course of my uncommercial travels, why a Refractory
+habit should affect the tonsils and uvula; but, I have always observed
+that Refractories of both sexes and every grade, between a Ragged School
+and the Old Bailey, have one voice, in which the tonsils and uvula gain
+a diseased ascendency.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Five pound indeed!&nbsp; I hain&rsquo;t a going fur to pick
+five pound,&rsquo; said the Chief of the Refractories, keeping time
+to herself with her head and chin.&nbsp; &lsquo;More than enough to
+pick what we picks now, in sich a place as this, and on wot we gets
+here!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>(This was in acknowledgment of a delicate intimation that the amount
+of work was likely to be increased.&nbsp; It certainly was not heavy
+then, for one Refractory had already done her day&rsquo;s task&mdash;it
+was barely two o&rsquo;clock&mdash;and was sitting behind it, with a
+head exactly matching it.)</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A pretty Ouse this is, matron, ain&rsquo;t it?&rsquo; said
+Refractory Two, &lsquo;where a pleeseman&rsquo;s called in, if a gal
+says a word!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And wen you&rsquo;re sent to prison for nothink or less!&rsquo;
+said the Chief, tugging at her oakum as if it were the matron&rsquo;s
+hair.&nbsp; &lsquo;But any place is better than this; that&rsquo;s one
+thing, and be thankful!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A laugh of Refractories led by Oakum Head with folded arms&mdash;who
+originated nothing, but who was in command of the skirmishers outside
+the conversation.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If any place is better than this,&rsquo; said my brisk guide,
+in the calmest manner, &lsquo;it is a pity you left a good place when
+you had one.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ho, no, I didn&rsquo;t, matron,&rsquo; returned the Chief,
+with another pull at her oakum, and a very expressive look at the enemy&rsquo;s
+forehead.&nbsp; &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t say that, matron, cos it&rsquo;s
+lies!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Oakum Head brought up the skirmishers again, skirmished, and retired.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And <i>I</i> warn&rsquo;t a going,&rsquo; exclaimed Refractory
+Two, &lsquo;though I was in one place for as long as four year&mdash;<i>I</i>
+warn&rsquo;t a going fur to stop in a place that warn&rsquo;t fit for
+me&mdash;there!&nbsp; And where the family warn&rsquo;t &rsquo;spectable
+characters&mdash;there!&nbsp; And where I fortunately or hunfort&rsquo;nately,
+found that the people warn&rsquo;t what they pretended to make theirselves
+out to be&mdash;there!&nbsp; And where it wasn&rsquo;t their faults,
+by chalks, if I warn&rsquo;t made bad and ruinated&mdash;Hah!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>During this speech, Oakum Head had again made a diversion with the
+skirmishers, and had again withdrawn.</p>
+<p>The Uncommercial Traveller ventured to remark that he supposed Chief
+Refractory and Number One, to be the two young women who had been taken
+before the magistrate?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes!&rsquo; said the Chief, &lsquo;we har! and the wonder
+is, that a pleeseman an&rsquo;t &rsquo;ad in now, and we took off agen.&nbsp;
+You can&rsquo;t open your lips here, without a pleeseman.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Number Two laughed (very uvularly), and the skirmishers followed
+suit.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I&rsquo;m sure I&rsquo;d be thankful,&rsquo; protested the
+Chief, looking sideways at the Uncommercial, &lsquo;if I could be got
+into a place, or got abroad.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m sick and tired of this
+precious Ouse, I am, with reason.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>So would be, and so was, Number Two.&nbsp; So would be, and so was,
+Oakum Head.&nbsp; So would be, and so were, Skirmishers.</p>
+<p>The Uncommercial took the liberty of hinting that he hardly thought
+it probable that any lady or gentleman in want of a likely young domestic
+of retiring manners, would be tempted into the engagement of either
+of the two leading Refractories, on her own presentation of herself
+as per sample.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It ain&rsquo;t no good being nothink else here,&rsquo; said
+the Chief.</p>
+<p>The Uncommercial thought it might be worth trying.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh no it ain&rsquo;t,&rsquo; said the Chief.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not a bit of good,&rsquo; said Number Two.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And I&rsquo;m sure I&rsquo;d be very thankful to be got into
+a place, or got abroad,&rsquo; said the Chief.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And so should I,&rsquo; said Number Two.&nbsp; &lsquo;Truly
+thankful, I should.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Oakum Head then rose, and announced as an entirely new idea, the
+mention of which profound novelty might be naturally expected to startle
+her unprepared hearers, that she would be very thankful to be got into
+a place, or got abroad.&nbsp; And, as if she had then said, &lsquo;Chorus,
+ladies!&rsquo; all the Skirmishers struck up to the same purpose.&nbsp;
+We left them, thereupon, and began a long walk among the women who were
+simply old and infirm; but whenever, in the course of this same walk,
+I looked out of any high window that commanded the yard, I saw Oakum
+Head and all the other Refractories looking out at their low window
+for me, and never failing to catch me, the moment I showed my head.</p>
+<p>In ten minutes I had ceased to believe in such fables of a golden
+time as youth, the prime of life, or a hale old age.&nbsp; In ten minutes,
+all the lights of womankind seemed to have been blown out, and nothing
+in that way to be left this vault to brag of, but the flickering and
+expiring snuffs.</p>
+<p>And what was very curious, was, that these dim old women had one
+company notion which was the fashion of the place.&nbsp; Every old woman
+who became aware of a visitor and was not in bed hobbled over a form
+into her accustomed seat, and became one of a line of dim old women
+confronting another line of dim old women across a narrow table.&nbsp;
+There was no obligation whatever upon them to range themselves in this
+way; it was their manner of &lsquo;receiving.&rsquo;&nbsp; As a rule,
+they made no attempt to talk to one another, or to look at the visitor,
+or to look at anything, but sat silently working their mouths, like
+a sort of poor old Cows.&nbsp; In some of these wards, it was good to
+see a few green plants; in others, an isolated Refractory acting as
+nurse, who did well enough in that capacity, when separated from her
+compeers; every one of these wards, day room, night room, or both combined,
+was scrupulously clean and fresh.&nbsp; I have seen as many such places
+as most travellers in my line, and I never saw one such, better kept.</p>
+<p>Among the bedridden there was great patience, great reliance on the
+books under the pillow, great faith in GOD.&nbsp; All cared for sympathy,
+but none much cared to be encouraged with hope of recovery; on the whole,
+I should say, it was considered rather a distinction to have a complication
+of disorders, and to be in a worse way than the rest.&nbsp; From some
+of the windows, the river could be seen with all its life and movement;
+the day was bright, but I came upon no one who was looking out.</p>
+<p>In one large ward, sitting by the fire in arm-chairs of distinction,
+like the President and Vice of the good company, were two old women,
+upwards of ninety years of age.&nbsp; The younger of the two, just turned
+ninety, was deaf, but not very, and could easily be made to hear.&nbsp;
+In her early time she had nursed a child, who was now another old woman,
+more infirm than herself, inhabiting the very same chamber.&nbsp; She
+perfectly understood this when the matron told it, and, with sundry
+nods and motions of her forefinger, pointed out the woman in question.&nbsp;
+The elder of this pair, ninety-three, seated before an illustrated newspaper
+(but not reading it), was a bright-eyed old soul, really not deaf, wonderfully
+preserved, and amazingly conversational.&nbsp; She had not long lost
+her husband, and had been in that place little more than a year.&nbsp;
+At Boston, in the State of Massachusetts, this poor creature would have
+been individually addressed, would have been tended in her own room,
+and would have had her life gently assimilated to a comfortable life
+out of doors.&nbsp; Would that be much to do in England for a woman
+who has kept herself out of a workhouse more than ninety rough long
+years?&nbsp; When Britain first, at Heaven&rsquo;s command, arose, with
+a great deal of allegorical confusion, from out the azure main, did
+her guardian angels positively forbid it in the Charter which has been
+so much besung?</p>
+<p>The object of my journey was accomplished when the nimble matron
+had no more to show me.&nbsp; As I shook hands with her at the gate,
+I told her that I thought justice had not used her very well, and that
+the wise men of the East were not infallible.</p>
+<p>Now, I reasoned with myself, as I made my journey home again, concerning
+those Foul wards.&nbsp; They ought not to exist; no person of common
+decency and humanity can see them and doubt it.&nbsp; But what is this
+Union to do?&nbsp; The necessary alteration would cost several thousands
+of pounds; it has already to support three workhouses; its inhabitants
+work hard for their bare lives, and are already rated for the relief
+of the Poor to the utmost extent of reasonable endurance.&nbsp; One
+poor parish in this very Union is rated to the amount of FIVE AND SIXPENCE
+in the pound, at the very same time when the rich parish of Saint George&rsquo;s,
+Hanover-square, is rated at about SEVENPENCE in the pound, Paddington
+at about FOURPENCE, Saint James&rsquo;s, Westminster, at about TENPENCE!&nbsp;
+It is only through the equalisation of Poor Rates that what is left
+undone in this wise, can be done.&nbsp; Much more is left undone, or
+is ill-done, than I have space to suggest in these notes of a single
+uncommercial journey; but, the wise men of the East, before they can
+reasonably hold forth about it, must look to the North and South and
+West; let them also, any morning before taking the seat of Solomon,
+look into the shops and dwellings all around the Temple, and first ask
+themselves &lsquo;how much more can these poor people&mdash;many of
+whom keep themselves with difficulty enough out of the workhouse&mdash;bear?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I had yet other matter for reflection as I journeyed home, inasmuch
+as, before I altogether departed from the neighbourhood of Mr. Baker&rsquo;s
+trap, I had knocked at the gate of the workhouse of St. George&rsquo;s-in-the-East,
+and had found it to be an establishment highly creditable to those parts,
+and thoroughly well administered by a most intelligent master.&nbsp;
+I remarked in it, an instance of the collateral harm that obstinate
+vanity and folly can do.&nbsp; &lsquo;This was the Hall where those
+old paupers, male and female, whom I had just seen, met for the Church
+service, was it?&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Yes.&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Did they
+sing the Psalms to any instrument?&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;They would like
+to, very much; they would have an extraordinary interest in doing so.&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;And
+could none be got?&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Well, a piano could even have
+been got for nothing, but these unfortunate dissensions&mdash;&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Ah! better, far better, my Christian friend in the beautiful garment,
+to have let the singing boys alone, and left the multitude to sing for
+themselves!&nbsp; You should know better than I, but I think I have
+read that they did so, once upon a time, and that &lsquo;when they had
+sung an hymn,&rsquo; Some one (not in a beautiful garment) went up into
+the Mount of Olives.</p>
+<p>It made my heart ache to think of this miserable trifling, in the
+streets of a city where every stone seemed to call to me, as I walked
+along, &lsquo;Turn this way, man, and see what waits to be done!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+So I decoyed myself into another train of thought to ease my heart.&nbsp;
+But, I don&rsquo;t know that I did it, for I was so full of paupers,
+that it was, after all, only a change to a single pauper, who took possession
+of my remembrance instead of a thousand.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I beg your pardon, sir,&rsquo; he had said, in a confidential
+manner, on another occasion, taking me aside; &lsquo;but I have seen
+better days.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am very sorry to hear it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir, I have a complaint to make against the master.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have no power here, I assure you.&nbsp; And if I had&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But, allow me, sir, to mention it, as between yourself and
+a man who has seen better days, sir.&nbsp; The master and myself are
+both masons, sir, and I make him the sign continually; but, because
+I am in this unfortunate position, sir, he won&rsquo;t give me the counter-sign!&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV&mdash;TWO VIEWS OF A CHEAP THEATRE</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>As I shut the door of my lodging behind me, and came out into the
+streets at six on a drizzling Saturday evening in the last past month
+of January, all that neighbourhood of Covent-garden looked very desolate.&nbsp;
+It is so essentially a neighbourhood which has seen better days, that
+bad weather affects it sooner than another place which has not come
+down in the World.&nbsp; In its present reduced condition it bears a
+thaw almost worse than any place I know.&nbsp; It gets so dreadfully
+low-spirited when damp breaks forth.&nbsp; Those wonderful houses about
+Drury-lane Theatre, which in the palmy days of theatres were prosperous
+and long-settled places of business, and which now change hands every
+week, but never change their character of being divided and sub-divided
+on the ground floor into mouldy dens of shops where an orange and half-a-dozen
+nuts, or a pomatum-pot, one cake of fancy soap, and a cigar box, are
+offered for sale and never sold, were most ruefully contemplated that
+evening, by the statue of Shakespeare, with the rain-drops coursing
+one another down its innocent nose.&nbsp; Those inscrutable pigeon-hole
+offices, with nothing in them (not so much as an inkstand) but a model
+of a theatre before the curtain, where, in the Italian Opera season,
+tickets at reduced prices are kept on sale by nomadic gentlemen in smeary
+hats too tall for them, whom one occasionally seems to have seen on
+race-courses, not wholly unconnected with strips of cloth of various
+colours and a rolling ball&mdash;those Bedouin establishments, deserted
+by the tribe, and tenantless, except when sheltering in one corner an
+irregular row of ginger-beer bottles, which would have made one shudder
+on such a night, but for its being plain that they had nothing in them,
+shrunk from the shrill cries of the news-boys at their Exchange in the
+kennel of Catherine-street, like guilty things upon a fearful summons.&nbsp;
+At the pipe-shop in Great Russell-street, the Death&rsquo;s-head pipes
+were like theatrical memento mori, admonishing beholders of the decline
+of the playhouse as an Institution.&nbsp; I walked up Bow-street, disposed
+to be angry with the shops there, that were letting out theatrical secrets
+by exhibiting to work-a-day humanity the stuff of which diadems and
+robes of kings are made.&nbsp; I noticed that some shops which had once
+been in the dramatic line, and had struggled out of it, were not getting
+on prosperously&mdash;like some actors I have known, who took to business
+and failed to make it answer.&nbsp; In a word, those streets looked
+so dull, and, considered as theatrical streets, so broken and bankrupt,
+that the FOUND DEAD on the black board at the police station might have
+announced the decease of the Drama, and the pools of water outside the
+fire-engine maker&rsquo;s at the corner of Long-acre might have been
+occasioned by his having brought out the whole of his stock to play
+upon its last smouldering ashes.</p>
+<p>And yet, on such a night in so degenerate a time, the object of my
+journey was theatrical.&nbsp; And yet within half an hour I was in an
+immense theatre, capable of holding nearly five thousand people.</p>
+<p>What Theatre?&nbsp; Her Majesty&rsquo;s?&nbsp; Far better.&nbsp;
+Royal Italian Opera?&nbsp; Far better.&nbsp; Infinitely superior to
+the latter for hearing in; infinitely superior to both, for seeing in.&nbsp;
+To every part of this Theatre, spacious fire-proof ways of ingress and
+egress.&nbsp; For every part of it, convenient places of refreshment
+and retiring rooms.&nbsp; Everything to eat and drink carefully supervised
+as to quality, and sold at an appointed price; respectable female attendants
+ready for the commonest women in the audience; a general air of consideration,
+decorum, and supervision, most commendable; an unquestionably humanising
+influence in all the social arrangements of the place.</p>
+<p>Surely a dear Theatre, then?&nbsp; Because there were in London (not
+very long ago) Theatres with entrance-prices up to half-a-guinea a head,
+whose arrangements were not half so civilised.&nbsp; Surely, therefore,
+a dear Theatre?&nbsp; Not very dear.&nbsp; A gallery at three-pence,
+another gallery at fourpence, a pit at sixpence, boxes and pit-stalls
+at a shilling, and a few private boxes at half-a-crown.</p>
+<p>My uncommercial curiosity induced me to go into every nook of this
+great place, and among every class of the audience assembled in it&mdash;amounting
+that evening, as I calculated, to about two thousand and odd hundreds.&nbsp;
+Magnificently lighted by a firmament of sparkling chandeliers, the building
+was ventilated to perfection.&nbsp; My sense of smell, without being
+particularly delicate, has been so offended in some of the commoner
+places of public resort, that I have often been obliged to leave them
+when I have made an uncommercial journey expressly to look on.&nbsp;
+The air of this Theatre was fresh, cool, and wholesome.&nbsp; To help
+towards this end, very sensible precautions had been used, ingeniously
+combining the experience of hospitals and railway stations.&nbsp; Asphalt
+pavements substituted for wooden floors, honest bare walls of glazed
+brick and tile&mdash;even at the back of the boxes&mdash;for plaster
+and paper, no benches stuffed, and no carpeting or baize used; a cool
+material with a light glazed surface, being the covering of the seats.</p>
+<p>These various contrivances are as well considered in the place in
+question as if it were a Fever Hospital; the result is, that it is sweet
+and healthful.&nbsp; It has been constructed from the ground to the
+roof, with a careful reference to sight and sound in every corner; the
+result is, that its form is beautiful, and that the appearance of the
+audience, as seen from the proscenium&mdash;with every face in it commanding
+the stage, and the whole so admirably raked and turned to that centre,
+that a hand can scarcely move in the great assemblage without the movement
+being seen from thence&mdash;is highly remarkable in its union of vastness
+with compactness.&nbsp; The stage itself, and all its appurtenances
+of machinery, cellarage, height and breadth, are on a scale more like
+the Scala at Milan, or the San Carlo at Naples, or the Grand Opera at
+Paris, than any notion a stranger would be likely to form of the Britannia
+Theatre at Hoxton, a mile north of St. Luke&rsquo;s Hospital in the
+Old-street-road, London.&nbsp; The Forty Thieves might be played here,
+and every thief ride his real horse, and the disguised captain bring
+in his oil jars on a train of real camels, and nobody be put out of
+the way.&nbsp; This really extraordinary place is the achievement of
+one man&rsquo;s enterprise, and was erected on the ruins of an inconvenient
+old building in less than five months, at a round cost of five-and-twenty
+thousand pounds.&nbsp; To dismiss this part of my subject, and still
+to render to the proprietor the credit that is strictly his due, I must
+add that his sense of the responsibility upon him to make the best of
+his audience, and to do his best for them, is a highly agreeable sign
+of these times.</p>
+<p>As the spectators at this theatre, for a reason I will presently
+show, were the object of my journey, I entered on the play of the night
+as one of the two thousand and odd hundreds, by looking about me at
+my neighbours.&nbsp; We were a motley assemblage of people, and we had
+a good many boys and young men among us; we had also many girls and
+young women.&nbsp; To represent, however, that we did not include a
+very great number, and a very fair proportion of family groups, would
+be to make a gross mis-statement.&nbsp; Such groups were to be seen
+in all parts of the house; in the boxes and stalls particularly, they
+were composed of persons of very decent appearance, who had many children
+with them.&nbsp; Among our dresses there were most kinds of shabby and
+greasy wear, and much fustian and corduroy that was neither sound nor
+fragrant.&nbsp; The caps of our young men were mostly of a limp character,
+and we who wore them, slouched, high-shouldered, into our places with
+our hands in our pockets, and occasionally twisted our cravats about
+our necks like eels, and occasionally tied them down our breasts like
+links of sausages, and occasionally had a screw in our hair over each
+cheek-bone with a slight Thief-flavour in it.&nbsp; Besides prowlers
+and idlers, we were mechanics, dock-labourers, costermongers, petty
+tradesmen, small clerks, milliners, stay-makers, shoe-binders, slop-workers,
+poor workers in a hundred highways and byways.&nbsp; Many of us&mdash;on
+the whole, the majority&mdash;were not at all clean, and not at all
+choice in our lives or conversation.&nbsp; But we had all come together
+in a place where our convenience was well consulted, and where we were
+well looked after, to enjoy an evening&rsquo;s entertainment in common.&nbsp;
+We were not going to lose any part of what we had paid for through anybody&rsquo;s
+caprice, and as a community we had a character to lose.&nbsp; So, we
+were closely attentive, and kept excellent order; and let the man or
+boy who did otherwise instantly get out from this place, or we would
+put him out with the greatest expedition.</p>
+<p>We began at half-past six with a pantomime&mdash;with a pantomime
+so long, that before it was over I felt as if I had been travelling
+for six weeks&mdash;going to India, say, by the Overland Mail.&nbsp;
+The Spirit of Liberty was the principal personage in the Introduction,
+and the Four Quarters of the World came out of the globe, glittering,
+and discoursed with the Spirit, who sang charmingly.&nbsp; We were delighted
+to understand that there was no liberty anywhere but among ourselves,
+and we highly applauded the agreeable fact.&nbsp; In an allegorical
+way, which did as well as any other way, we and the Spirit of Liberty
+got into a kingdom of Needles and Pins, and found them at war with a
+potentate who called in to his aid their old arch enemy Rust, and who
+would have got the better of them if the Spirit of Liberty had not in
+the nick of time transformed the leaders into Clown, Pantaloon, Harlequin,
+Columbine, Harlequina, and a whole family of Sprites, consisting of
+a remarkably stout father and three spineless sons.&nbsp; We all knew
+what was coming when the Spirit of Liberty addressed the king with a
+big face, and His Majesty backed to the side-scenes and began untying
+himself behind, with his big face all on one side.&nbsp; Our excitement
+at that crisis was great, and our delight unbounded.&nbsp; After this
+era in our existence, we went through all the incidents of a pantomime;
+it was not by any means a savage pantomime, in the way of burning or
+boiling people, or throwing them out of window, or cutting them up;
+was often very droll; was always liberally got up, and cleverly presented.&nbsp;
+I noticed that the people who kept the shops, and who represented the
+passengers in the thoroughfares, and so forth, had no conventionality
+in them, but were unusually like the real thing&mdash;from which I infer
+that you may take that audience in (if you wish to) concerning Knights
+and Ladies, Fairies, Angels, or such like, but they are not to be done
+as to anything in the streets.&nbsp; I noticed, also, that when two
+young men, dressed in exact imitation of the eel-and-sausage-cravated
+portion of the audience, were chased by policemen, and, finding themselves
+in danger of being caught, dropped so suddenly as to oblige the policemen
+to tumble over them, there was great rejoicing among the caps&mdash;as
+though it were a delicate reference to something they had heard of before.</p>
+<p>The Pantomime was succeeded by a Melo-Drama.&nbsp; Throughout the
+evening I was pleased to observe Virtue quite as triumphant as she usually
+is out of doors, and indeed I thought rather more so.&nbsp; We all agreed
+(for the time) that honesty was the best policy, and we were as hard
+as iron upon Vice, and we wouldn&rsquo;t hear of Villainy getting on
+in the world&mdash;no, not on any consideration whatever.</p>
+<p>Between the pieces, we almost all of us went out and refreshed.&nbsp;
+Many of us went the length of drinking beer at the bar of the neighbouring
+public-house, some of us drank spirits, crowds of us had sandwiches
+and ginger-beer at the refreshment-bars established for us in the Theatre.&nbsp;
+The sandwich&mdash;as substantial as was consistent with portability,
+and as cheap as possible&mdash;we hailed as one of our greatest institutions.&nbsp;
+It forced its way among us at all stages of the entertainment, and we
+were always delighted to see it; its adaptability to the varying moods
+of our nature was surprising; we could never weep so comfortably as
+when our tears fell on our sandwich; we could never laugh so heartily
+as when we choked with sandwich; Virtue never looked so beautiful or
+Vice so deformed as when we paused, sandwich in hand, to consider what
+would come of that resolution of Wickedness in boots, to sever Innocence
+in flowered chintz from Honest Industry in striped stockings.&nbsp;
+When the curtain fell for the night, we still fell back upon sandwich,
+to help us through the rain and mire, and home to bed.</p>
+<p>This, as I have mentioned, was Saturday night.&nbsp; Being Saturday
+night, I had accomplished but the half of my uncommercial journey; for,
+its object was to compare the play on Saturday evening with the preaching
+in the same Theatre on Sunday evening.</p>
+<p>Therefore, at the same hour of half-past six on the similarly damp
+and muddy Sunday evening, I returned to this Theatre.&nbsp; I drove
+up to the entrance (fearful of being late, or I should have come on
+foot), and found myself in a large crowd of people who, I am happy to
+state, were put into excellent spirits by my arrival.&nbsp; Having nothing
+to look at but the mud and the closed doors, they looked at me, and
+highly enjoyed the comic spectacle.&nbsp; My modesty inducing me to
+draw off, some hundreds of yards, into a dark corner, they at once forgot
+me, and applied themselves to their former occupation of looking at
+the mud and looking in at the closed doors: which, being of grated ironwork,
+allowed the lighted passage within to be seen.&nbsp; They were chiefly
+people of respectable appearance, odd and impulsive as most crowds are,
+and making a joke of being there as most crowds do.</p>
+<p>In the dark corner I might have sat a long while, but that a very
+obliging passer-by informed me that the Theatre was already full, and
+that the people whom I saw in the street were all shut out for want
+of room.&nbsp; After that, I lost no time in worming myself into the
+building, and creeping to a place in a Proscenium box that had been
+kept for me.</p>
+<p>There must have been full four thousand people present.&nbsp; Carefully
+estimating the pit alone, I could bring it out as holding little less
+than fourteen hundred.&nbsp; Every part of the house was well filled,
+and I had not found it easy to make my way along the back of the boxes
+to where I sat.&nbsp; The chandeliers in the ceiling were lighted; there
+was no light on the stage; the orchestra was empty.&nbsp; The green
+curtain was down, and, packed pretty closely on chairs on the small
+space of stage before it, were some thirty gentlemen, and two or three
+ladies.&nbsp; In the centre of these, in a desk or pulpit covered with
+red baize, was the presiding minister.&nbsp; The kind of rostrum he
+occupied will be very well understood, if I liken it to a boarded-up
+fireplace turned towards the audience, with a gentleman in a black surtout
+standing in the stove and leaning forward over the mantelpiece.</p>
+<p>A portion of Scripture was being read when I went in.&nbsp; It was
+followed by a discourse, to which the congregation listened with most
+exemplary attention and uninterrupted silence and decorum.&nbsp; My
+own attention comprehended both the auditory and the speaker, and shall
+turn to both in this recalling of the scene, exactly as it did at the
+time.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A very difficult thing,&rsquo; I thought, when the discourse
+began, &lsquo;to speak appropriately to so large an audience, and to
+speak with tact.&nbsp; Without it, better not to speak at all.&nbsp;
+Infinitely better, to read the New Testament well, and to let <i>that</i>
+speak.&nbsp; In this congregation there is indubitably one pulse; but
+I doubt if any power short of genius can touch it as one, and make it
+answer as one.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I could not possibly say to myself as the discourse proceeded, that
+the minister was a good speaker.&nbsp; I could not possibly say to myself
+that he expressed an understanding of the general mind and character
+of his audience.&nbsp; There was a supposititious working-man introduced
+into the homily, to make supposititious objections to our Christian
+religion and be reasoned down, who was not only a very disagreeable
+person, but remarkably unlike life&mdash;very much more unlike it than
+anything I had seen in the pantomime.&nbsp; The native independence
+of character this artisan was supposed to possess, was represented by
+a suggestion of a dialect that I certainly never heard in my uncommercial
+travels, and with a coarse swing of voice and manner anything but agreeable
+to his feelings, I should conceive, considered in the light of a portrait,
+and as far away from the fact as a Chinese Tartar.&nbsp; There was a
+model pauper introduced in like manner, who appeared to me to be the
+most intolerably arrogant pauper ever relieved, and to show himself
+in absolute want and dire necessity of a course of Stone Yard.&nbsp;
+For, how did this pauper testify to his having received the gospel of
+humility?&nbsp; A gentleman met him in the workhouse, and said (which
+I myself really thought good-natured of him), &lsquo;Ah, John?&nbsp;
+I am sorry to see you here.&nbsp; I am sorry to see you so poor.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Poor, sir!&rsquo; replied that man, drawing himself up, &lsquo;I
+am the son of a Prince!&nbsp; <i>My</i> father is the King of Kings.&nbsp;
+<i>My</i> father is the Lord of Lords.&nbsp; <i>My</i> father is the
+ruler of all the Princes of the Earth!&rsquo; &amp;c.&nbsp; And this
+was what all the preacher&rsquo;s fellow-sinners might come to, if they
+would embrace this blessed book&mdash;which I must say it did some violence
+to my own feelings of reverence, to see held out at arm&rsquo;s length
+at frequent intervals and soundingly slapped, like a slow lot at a sale.&nbsp;
+Now, could I help asking myself the question, whether the mechanic before
+me, who must detect the preacher as being wrong about the visible manner
+of himself and the like of himself, and about such a noisy lip-server
+as that pauper, might not, most unhappily for the usefulness of the
+occasion, doubt that preacher&rsquo;s being right about things not visible
+to human senses?</p>
+<p>Again.&nbsp; Is it necessary or advisable to address such an audience
+continually as &lsquo;fellow-sinners&rsquo;?&nbsp; Is it not enough
+to be fellow-creatures, born yesterday, suffering and striving to-day,
+dying to-morrow?&nbsp; By our common humanity, my brothers and sisters,
+by our common capacities for pain and pleasure, by our common laughter
+and our common tears, by our common aspiration to reach something better
+than ourselves, by our common tendency to believe in something good,
+and to invest whatever we love or whatever we lose with some qualities
+that are superior to our own failings and weaknesses as we know them
+in our own poor hearts&mdash;by these, Hear me!&mdash;Surely, it is
+enough to be fellow-creatures.&nbsp; Surely, it includes the other designation,
+and some touching meanings over and above.</p>
+<p>Again.&nbsp; There was a personage introduced into the discourse
+(not an absolute novelty, to the best of my remembrance of my reading),
+who had been personally known to the preacher, and had been quite a
+Crichton in all the ways of philosophy, but had been an infidel.&nbsp;
+Many a time had the preacher talked with him on that subject, and many
+a time had he failed to convince that intelligent man.&nbsp; But he
+fell ill, and died, and before he died he recorded his conversion&mdash;in
+words which the preacher had taken down, my fellow-sinners, and would
+read to you from this piece of paper.&nbsp; I must confess that to me,
+as one of an uninstructed audience, they did not appear particularly
+edifying.&nbsp; I thought their tone extremely selfish, and I thought
+they had a spiritual vanity in them which was of the before-mentioned
+refractory pauper&rsquo;s family.</p>
+<p>All slangs and twangs are objectionable everywhere, but the slang
+and twang of the conventicle&mdash;as bad in its way as that of the
+House of Commons, and nothing worse can be said of it&mdash;should be
+studiously avoided under such circumstances as I describe.&nbsp; The
+avoidance was not complete on this occasion.&nbsp; Nor was it quite
+agreeable to see the preacher addressing his pet &lsquo;points&rsquo;
+to his backers on the stage, as if appealing to those disciples to show
+him up, and testify to the multitude that each of those points was a
+clincher.</p>
+<p>But, in respect of the large Christianity of his general tone; of
+his renunciation of all priestly authority; of his earnest and reiterated
+assurance to the people that the commonest among them could work out
+their own salvation if they would, by simply, lovingly, and dutifully
+following Our Saviour, and that they needed the mediation of no erring
+man; in these particulars, this gentleman deserved all praise.&nbsp;
+Nothing could be better than the spirit, or the plain emphatic words
+of his discourse in these respects.&nbsp; And it was a most significant
+and encouraging circumstance that whenever he struck that chord, or
+whenever he described anything which Christ himself had done, the array
+of faces before him was very much more earnest, and very much more expressive
+of emotion, than at any other time.</p>
+<p>And now, I am brought to the fact, that the lowest part of the audience
+of the previous night, <i>was not there</i>.&nbsp; There is no doubt
+about it.&nbsp; There was no such thing in that building, that Sunday
+evening.&nbsp; I have been told since, that the lowest part of the audience
+of the Victoria Theatre has been attracted to its Sunday services.&nbsp;
+I have been very glad to hear it, but on this occasion of which I write,
+the lowest part of the usual audience of the Britannia Theatre, decidedly
+and unquestionably stayed away.&nbsp; When I first took my seat and
+looked at the house, my surprise at the change in its occupants was
+as great as my disappointment.&nbsp; To the most respectable class of
+the previous evening, was added a great number of respectable strangers
+attracted by curiosity, and drafts from the regular congregations of
+various chapels.&nbsp; It was impossible to fail in identifying the
+character of these last, and they were very numerous.&nbsp; I came out
+in a strong, slow tide of them setting from the boxes.&nbsp; Indeed,
+while the discourse was in progress, the respectable character of the
+auditory was so manifest in their appearance, that when the minister
+addressed a supposititious &lsquo;outcast,&rsquo; one really felt a
+little impatient of it, as a figure of speech not justified by anything
+the eye could discover.</p>
+<p>The time appointed for the conclusion of the proceedings was eight
+o&rsquo;clock.&nbsp; The address having lasted until full that time,
+and it being the custom to conclude with a hymn, the preacher intimated
+in a few sensible words that the clock had struck the hour, and that
+those who desired to go before the hymn was sung, could go now, without
+giving offence.&nbsp; No one stirred.&nbsp; The hymn was then sung,
+in good time and tune and unison, and its effect was very striking.&nbsp;
+A comprehensive benevolent prayer dismissed the throng, and in seven
+or eight minutes there was nothing left in the Theatre but a light cloud
+of dust.</p>
+<p>That these Sunday meetings in Theatres are good things, I do not
+doubt.&nbsp; Nor do I doubt that they will work lower and lower down
+in the social scale, if those who preside over them will be very careful
+on two heads: firstly, not to disparage the places in which they speak,
+or the intelligence of their hearers; secondly, not to set themselves
+in antagonism to the natural inborn desire of the mass of mankind to
+recreate themselves and to be amused.</p>
+<p>There is a third head, taking precedence of all others, to which
+my remarks on the discourse I heard, have tended.&nbsp; In the New Testament
+there is the most beautiful and affecting history conceivable by man,
+and there are the terse models for all prayer and for all preaching.&nbsp;
+As to the models, imitate them, Sunday preachers&mdash;else why are
+they there, consider?&nbsp; As to the history, tell it.&nbsp; Some people
+cannot read, some people will not read, many people (this especially
+holds among the young and ignorant) find it hard to pursue the verse-form
+in which the book is presented to them, and imagine that those breaks
+imply gaps and want of continuity.&nbsp; Help them over that first stumbling-block,
+by setting forth the history in narrative, with no fear of exhausting
+it.&nbsp; You will never preach so well, you will never move them so
+profoundly, you will never send them away with half so much to think
+of.&nbsp; Which is the better interest: Christ&rsquo;s choice of twelve
+poor men to help in those merciful wonders among the poor and rejected;
+or the pious bullying of a whole Union-full of paupers?&nbsp; What is
+your changed philosopher to wretched me, peeping in at the door out
+of the mud of the streets and of my life, when you have the widow&rsquo;s
+son to tell me about, the ruler&rsquo;s daughter, the other figure at
+the door when the brother of the two sisters was dead, and one of the
+two ran to the mourner, crying, &lsquo;The Master is come and calleth
+for thee&rsquo;?&mdash;Let the preacher who will thoroughly forget himself
+and remember no individuality but one, and no eloquence but one, stand
+up before four thousand men and women at the Britannia Theatre any Sunday
+night, recounting that narrative to them as fellow creatures, and he
+shall see a sight!</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER V&mdash;POOR MERCANTILE JACK</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Is the sweet little cherub who sits smiling aloft and keeps watch
+on life of poor Jack, commissioned to take charge of Mercantile Jack,
+as well as Jack of the national navy?&nbsp; If not, who is?&nbsp; What
+is the cherub about, and what are we all about, when poor</p>
+<p>Mercantile Jack is having his brains slowly knocked out by penny-weights,
+aboard the brig Beelzebub, or the barque Bowie-knife&mdash;when he looks
+his last at that infernal craft, with the first officer&rsquo;s iron
+boot-heel in his remaining eye, or with his dying body towed overboard
+in the ship&rsquo;s wake, while the cruel wounds in it do &lsquo;the
+multitudinous seas incarnadine&rsquo;?</p>
+<p>Is it unreasonable to entertain a belief that if, aboard the brig
+Beelzebub or the barque Bowie-knife, the first officer did half the
+damage to cotton that he does to men, there would presently arise from
+both sides of the Atlantic so vociferous an invocation of the sweet
+little cherub who sits calculating aloft, keeping watch on the markets
+that pay, that such vigilant cherub would, with a winged sword, have
+that gallant officer&rsquo;s organ of destructiveness out of his head
+in the space of a flash of lightning?</p>
+<p>If it be unreasonable, then am I the most unreasonable of men, for
+I believe it with all my soul.</p>
+<p>This was my thought as I walked the dock-quays at Liverpool, keeping
+watch on poor Mercantile Jack.&nbsp; Alas for me!&nbsp; I have long
+outgrown the state of sweet little cherub; but there I was, and there
+Mercantile Jack was, and very busy he was, and very cold he was: the
+snow yet lying in the frozen furrows of the land, and the north-east
+winds snipping off the tops of the little waves in the Mersey, and rolling
+them into hailstones to pelt him with.&nbsp; Mercantile Jack was hard
+at it, in the hard weather: as he mostly is in all weathers, poor Jack.&nbsp;
+He was girded to ships&rsquo; masts and funnels of steamers, like a
+forester to a great oak, scraping and painting; he was lying out on
+yards, furling sails that tried to beat him off; he was dimly discernible
+up in a world of giant cobwebs, reefing and splicing; he was faintly
+audible down in holds, stowing and unshipping cargo; he was winding
+round and round at capstans melodious, monotonous, and drunk; he was
+of a diabolical aspect, with coaling for the Antipodes; he was washing
+decks barefoot, with the breast of his red shirt open to the blast,
+though it was sharper than the knife in his leathern girdle; he was
+looking over bulwarks, all eyes and hair; he was standing by at the
+shoot of the Cunard steamer, off to-morrow, as the stocks in trade of
+several butchers, poulterers, and fishmongers, poured down into the
+ice-house; he was coming aboard of other vessels, with his kit in a
+tarpaulin bag, attended by plunderers to the very last moment of his
+shore-going existence.&nbsp; As though his senses, when released from
+the uproar of the elements, were under obligation to be confused by
+other turmoil, there was a rattling of wheels, a clattering of hoofs,
+a clashing of iron, a jolting of cotton and hides and casks and timber,
+an incessant deafening disturbance on the quays, that was the very madness
+of sound.&nbsp; And as, in the midst of it, he stood swaying about,
+with his hair blown all manner of wild ways, rather crazedly taking
+leave of his plunderers, all the rigging in the docks was shrill in
+the wind, and every little steamer coming and going across the Mersey
+was sharp in its blowing off, and every buoy in the river bobbed spitefully
+up and down, as if there were a general taunting chorus of &lsquo;Come
+along, Mercantile Jack!&nbsp; Ill-lodged, ill-fed, ill-used, hocussed,
+entrapped, anticipated, cleaned out.&nbsp; Come along, Poor Mercantile
+Jack, and be tempest-tossed till you are drowned!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The uncommercial transaction which had brought me and Jack together,
+was this:- I had entered the Liverpool police force, that I might have
+a look at the various unlawful traps which are every night set for Jack.&nbsp;
+As my term of service in that distinguished corps was short, and as
+my personal bias in the capacity of one of its members has ceased, no
+suspicion will attach to my evidence that it is an admirable force.&nbsp;
+Besides that it is composed, without favour, of the best men that can
+be picked, it is directed by an unusual intelligence.&nbsp; Its organisation
+against Fires, I take to be much better than the metropolitan system,
+and in all respects it tempers its remarkable vigilance with a still
+more remarkable discretion.</p>
+<p>Jack had knocked off work in the docks some hours, and I had taken,
+for purposes of identification, a photograph-likeness of a thief, in
+the portrait-room at our head police office (on the whole, he seemed
+rather complimented by the proceeding), and I had been on police parade,
+and the small hand of the clock was moving on to ten, when I took up
+my lantern to follow Mr. Superintendent to the traps that were set for
+Jack.&nbsp; In Mr. Superintendent I saw, as anybody might, a tall, well-looking,
+well-set-up man of a soldierly bearing, with a cavalry air, a good chest,
+and a resolute but not by any means ungentle face.&nbsp; He carried
+in his hand a plain black walking-stick of hard wood; and whenever and
+wherever, at any after-time of the night, he struck it on the pavement
+with a ringing sound, it instantly produced a whistle out of the darkness,
+and a policeman.&nbsp; To this remarkable stick, I refer an air of mystery
+and magic which pervaded the whole of my perquisition among the traps
+that were set for Jack.</p>
+<p>We began by diving into the obscurest streets and lanes of the port.&nbsp;
+Suddenly pausing in a flow of cheerful discourse, before a dead wall,
+apparently some ten miles long, Mr. Superintendent struck upon the ground,
+and the wall opened and shot out, with military salute of hand to temple,
+two policemen&mdash;not in the least surprised themselves, not in the
+least surprising Mr. Superintendent.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;All right, Sharpeye?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;All right, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;All right, Trampfoot?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;All right, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is Quickear there?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Here am I, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Come with us.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>So, Sharpeye went before, and Mr. Superintendent and I went next,
+and Trampfoot and Quickear marched as rear-guard.&nbsp; Sharp-eye, I
+soon had occasion to remark, had a skilful and quite professional way
+of opening doors&mdash;touched latches delicately, as if they were keys
+of musical instruments&mdash;opened every door he touched, as if he
+were perfectly confident that there was stolen property behind it&mdash;instantly
+insinuated himself, to prevent its being shut.</p>
+<p>Sharpeye opened several doors of traps that were set for Jack, but
+Jack did not happen to be in any of them.&nbsp; They were all such miserable
+places that really, Jack, if I were you, I would give them a wider berth.&nbsp;
+In every trap, somebody was sitting over a fire, waiting for Jack.&nbsp;
+Now, it was a crouching old woman, like the picture of the Norwood Gipsy
+in the old sixpenny dream-books; now, it was a crimp of the male sex,
+in a checked shirt and without a coat, reading a newspaper; now, it
+was a man crimp and a woman crimp, who always introduced themselves
+as united in holy matrimony; now, it was Jack&rsquo;s delight, his (un)lovely
+Nan; but they were all waiting for Jack, and were all frightfully disappointed
+to see us.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Who have you got up-stairs here?&rsquo; says Sharpeye, generally.&nbsp;
+(In the Move-on tone.)</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Nobody, surr; sure not a blessed sowl!&rsquo;&nbsp; (Irish
+feminine reply.)</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What do you mean by nobody?&nbsp; Didn&rsquo;t I hear a woman&rsquo;s
+step go up-stairs when my hand was on the latch?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah! sure thin you&rsquo;re right, surr, I forgot her!&nbsp;
+&rsquo;Tis on&rsquo;y Betsy White, surr.&nbsp; Ah! you know Betsy, surr.&nbsp;
+Come down, Betsy darlin&rsquo;, and say the gintlemin.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Generally, Betsy looks over the banisters (the steep staircase is
+in the room) with a forcible expression in her protesting face, of an
+intention to compensate herself for the present trial by grinding Jack
+finer than usual when he does come.&nbsp; Generally, Sharpeye turns
+to Mr. Superintendent, and says, as if the subjects of his remarks were
+wax-work:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;One of the worst, sir, this house is.&nbsp; This woman has
+been indicted three times.&nbsp; This man&rsquo;s a regular bad one
+likewise.&nbsp; His real name is Pegg.&nbsp; Gives himself out as Waterhouse.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Never had sitch a name as Pegg near me back, thin, since I
+was in this house, bee the good Lard!&rsquo; says the woman.</p>
+<p>Generally, the man says nothing at all, but becomes exceedingly round-shouldered,
+and pretends to read his paper with rapt attention.&nbsp; Generally,
+Sharpeye directs our observation with a look, to the prints and pictures
+that are invariably numerous on the walls.&nbsp; Always, Trampfoot and
+Quickear are taking notice on the doorstep.&nbsp; In default of Sharpeye
+being acquainted with the exact individuality of any gentleman encountered,
+one of these two is sure to proclaim from the outer air, like a gruff
+spectre, that Jackson is not Jackson, but knows himself to be Fogle;
+or that Canlon is Walker&rsquo;s brother, against whom there was not
+sufficient evidence; or that the man who says he never was at sea since
+he was a boy, came ashore from a voyage last Thursday, or sails tomorrow
+morning.&nbsp; &lsquo;And that is a bad class of man, you see,&rsquo;
+says Mr. Superintendent, when he got out into the dark again, &lsquo;and
+very difficult to deal with, who, when he has made this place too hot
+to hold him, enters himself for a voyage as steward or cook, and is
+out of knowledge for months, and then turns up again worse than ever.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>When we had gone into many such houses, and had come out (always
+leaving everybody relapsing into waiting for Jack), we started off to
+a singing-house where Jack was expected to muster strong.</p>
+<p>The vocalisation was taking place in a long low room up-stairs; at
+one end, an orchestra of two performers, and a small platform; across
+the room, a series of open pews for Jack, with an aisle down the middle;
+at the other end a larger pew than the rest, entitled SNUG, and reserved
+for mates and similar good company.&nbsp; About the room, some amazing
+coffee-coloured pictures varnished an inch deep, and some stuffed creatures
+in cases; dotted among the audience, in Sung and out of Snug, the &lsquo;Professionals;&rsquo;
+among them, the celebrated comic favourite Mr. Banjo Bones, looking
+very hideous with his blackened face and limp sugar-loaf hat; beside
+him, sipping rum-and-water, Mrs. Banjo Bones, in her natural colours&mdash;a
+little heightened.</p>
+<p>It was a Friday night, and Friday night was considered not a good
+night for Jack.&nbsp; At any rate, Jack did not show in very great force
+even here, though the house was one to which he much resorts, and where
+a good deal of money is taken.&nbsp; There was British Jack, a little
+maudlin and sleepy, lolling over his empty glass, as if he were trying
+to read his fortune at the bottom; there was Loafing Jack of the Stars
+and Stripes, rather an unpromising customer, with his long nose, lank
+cheek, high cheek-bones, and nothing soft about him but his cabbage-leaf
+hat; there was Spanish Jack, with curls of black hair, rings in his
+ears, and a knife not far from his hand, if you got into trouble with
+him; there were Maltese Jack, and Jack of Sweden, and Jack the Finn,
+looming through the smoke of their pipes, and turning faces that looked
+as if they were carved out of dark wood, towards the young lady dancing
+the hornpipe: who found the platform so exceedingly small for it, that
+I had a nervous expectation of seeing her, in the backward steps, disappear
+through the window.&nbsp; Still, if all hands had been got together,
+they would not have more than half-filled the room.&nbsp; Observe, however,
+said Mr. Licensed Victualler, the host, that it was Friday night, and,
+besides, it was getting on for twelve, and Jack had gone aboard.&nbsp;
+A sharp and watchful man, Mr. Licensed Victualler, the host, with tight
+lips and a complete edition of Cocker&rsquo;s arithmetic in each eye.&nbsp;
+Attended to his business himself, he said.&nbsp; Always on the spot.&nbsp;
+When he heard of talent, trusted nobody&rsquo;s account of it, but went
+off by rail to see it.&nbsp; If true talent, engaged it.&nbsp; Pounds
+a week for talent&mdash;four pound&mdash;five pound.&nbsp; Banjo Bones
+was undoubted talent.&nbsp; Hear this instrument that was going to play&mdash;it
+was real talent!&nbsp; In truth it was very good; a kind of piano-accordion,
+played by a young girl of a delicate prettiness of face, figure, and
+dress, that made the audience look coarser.&nbsp; She sang to the instrument,
+too; first, a song about village bells, and how they chimed; then a
+song about how I went to sea; winding up with an imitation of the bagpipes,
+which Mercantile Jack seemed to understand much the best.&nbsp; A good
+girl, said Mr. Licensed Victualler.&nbsp; Kept herself select.&nbsp;
+Sat in Snug, not listening to the blandishments of Mates.&nbsp; Lived
+with mother.&nbsp; Father dead.&nbsp; Once a merchant well to do, but
+over-speculated himself.&nbsp; On delicate inquiry as to salary paid
+for item of talent under consideration, Mr. Victualler&rsquo;s pounds
+dropped suddenly to shillings&mdash;still it was a very comfortable
+thing for a young person like that, you know; she only went on six times
+a night, and was only required to be there from six at night to twelve.&nbsp;
+What was more conclusive was, Mr. Victualler&rsquo;s assurance that
+he &lsquo;never allowed any language, and never suffered any disturbance.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Sharpeye confirmed the statement, and the order that prevailed was the
+best proof of it that could have been cited.&nbsp; So, I came to the
+conclusion that poor Mercantile Jack might do (as I am afraid he does)
+much worse than trust himself to Mr. Victualler, and pass his evenings
+here.</p>
+<p>But we had not yet looked, Mr. Superintendent&mdash;said Trampfoot,
+receiving us in the street again with military salute&mdash;for Dark
+Jack.&nbsp; True, Trampfoot.&nbsp; Ring the wonderful stick, rub the
+wonderful lantern, and cause the spirits of the stick and lantern to
+convey us to the Darkies.</p>
+<p>There was no disappointment in the matter of Dark Jack; <i>he</i>
+was producible.&nbsp; The Genii set us down in the little first floor
+of a little public-house, and there, in a stiflingly close atmosphere,
+were Dark Jack, and Dark Jack&rsquo;s delight, his <i>white</i> unlovely
+Nan, sitting against the wall all round the room.&nbsp; More than that:
+Dark Jack&rsquo;s delight was the least unlovely Nan, both morally and
+physically, that I saw that night.</p>
+<p>As a fiddle and tambourine band were sitting among the company, Quickear
+suggested why not strike up?&nbsp; &lsquo;Ah, la&rsquo;ads!&rsquo; said
+a negro sitting by the door, &lsquo;gib the jebblem a darnse.&nbsp;
+Tak&rsquo; yah pardlers, jebblem, for &rsquo;um QUAD-rill.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>This was the landlord, in a Greek cap, and a dress half Greek and
+half English.&nbsp; As master of the ceremonies, he called all the figures,
+and occasionally addressed himself parenthetically&mdash;after this
+manner.&nbsp; When he was very loud, I use capitals.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Now den!&nbsp; Hoy!&nbsp; ONE.&nbsp; Right and left.&nbsp;
+(Put a steam on, gib &rsquo;um powder.)&nbsp; LA-dies&rsquo; chail.&nbsp;
+BAL-loon say.&nbsp; Lemonade!&nbsp; TWO.&nbsp; AD-warnse and go back
+(gib &rsquo;ell a breakdown, shake it out o&rsquo; yerselbs, keep a
+movil).&nbsp; SWING-corners, BAL-loon say, and Lemonade!&nbsp; (Hoy!)&nbsp;
+THREE.&nbsp; GENT come for&rsquo;ard with a lady and go back, hoppersite
+come for&rsquo;ard and do what yer can.&nbsp; (Aeiohoy!)&nbsp; BAL-loon
+say, and leetle lemonade.&nbsp; (Dat hair nigger by &rsquo;um fireplace
+&rsquo;hind a&rsquo; time, shake it out o&rsquo; yerselbs, gib &rsquo;ell
+a breakdown.)&nbsp; Now den!&nbsp; Hoy!&nbsp; FOUR!&nbsp; Lemonade.&nbsp;
+BAL-loon say, and swing.&nbsp; FOUR ladies meet in &rsquo;um middle,
+FOUR gents goes round &rsquo;um ladies, FOUR gents passes out under
+&rsquo;um ladies&rsquo; arms, SWING&mdash;and Lemonade till &lsquo;a
+moosic can&rsquo;t play no more!&nbsp; (Hoy, Hoy!)&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The male dancers were all blacks, and one was an unusually powerful
+man of six feet three or four.&nbsp; The sound of their flat feet on
+the floor was as unlike the sound of white feet as their faces were
+unlike white faces.&nbsp; They toed and heeled, shuffled, double-shuffled,
+double-double-shuffled, covered the buckle, and beat the time out, rarely,
+dancing with a great show of teeth, and with a childish good-humoured
+enjoyment that was very prepossessing.&nbsp; They generally kept together,
+these poor fellows, said Mr. Superintendent, because they were at a
+disadvantage singly, and liable to slights in the neighbouring streets.&nbsp;
+But, if I were Light Jack, I should be very slow to interfere oppressively
+with Dark Jack, for, whenever I have had to do with him I have found
+him a simple and a gentle fellow.&nbsp; Bearing this in mind, I asked
+his friendly permission to leave him restoration of beer, in wishing
+him good night, and thus it fell out that the last words I heard him
+say as I blundered down the worn stairs, were, &lsquo;Jebblem&rsquo;s
+elth!&nbsp; Ladies drinks fust!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The night was now well on into the morning, but, for miles and hours
+we explored a strange world, where nobody ever goes to bed, but everybody
+is eternally sitting up, waiting for Jack.&nbsp; This exploration was
+among a labyrinth of dismal courts and blind alleys, called Entries,
+kept in wonderful order by the police, and in much better order than
+by the corporation: the want of gaslight in the most dangerous and infamous
+of these places being quite unworthy of so spirited a town.&nbsp; I
+need describe but two or three of the houses in which Jack was waited
+for as specimens of the rest.&nbsp; Many we attained by noisome passages
+so profoundly dark that we felt our way with our hands.&nbsp; Not one
+of the whole number we visited, was without its show of prints and ornamental
+crockery; the quantity of the latter set forth on little shelves and
+in little cases, in otherwise wretched rooms, indicating that Mercantile
+Jack must have an extraordinary fondness for crockery, to necessitate
+so much of that bait in his traps.</p>
+<p>Among such garniture, in one front parlour in the dead of the night,
+four women were sitting by a fire.&nbsp; One of them had a male child
+in her arms.&nbsp; On a stool among them was a swarthy youth with a
+guitar, who had evidently stopped playing when our footsteps were heard.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well I how do <i>you</i> do?&rsquo; says Mr. Superintendent,
+looking about him.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Pretty well, sir, and hope you gentlemen are going to treat
+us ladies, now you have come to see us.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Order there!&rsquo; says Sharpeye.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;None of that!&rsquo; says Quickear.</p>
+<p>Trampfoot, outside, is heard to confide to himself, &lsquo;Meggisson&rsquo;s
+lot this is.&nbsp; And a bad &rsquo;un!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well!&rsquo; says Mr. Superintendent, laying his hand on the
+shoulder of the swarthy youth, &lsquo;and who&rsquo;s this?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Antonio, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And what does <i>he</i> do here?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Come to give us a bit of music.&nbsp; No harm in that, I suppose?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A young foreign sailor?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s a Spaniard.&nbsp; You&rsquo;re a Spaniard,
+ain&rsquo;t you, Antonio?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Me Spanish.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And he don&rsquo;t know a word you say, not he; not if you
+was to talk to him till doomsday.&rsquo;&nbsp; (Triumphantly, as if
+it redounded to the credit of the house.)</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Will he play something?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, yes, if you like.&nbsp; Play something, Antonio.&nbsp;
+<i>You</i> ain&rsquo;t ashamed to play something; are you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The cracked guitar raises the feeblest ghost of a tune, and three
+of the women keep time to it with their heads, and the fourth with the
+child.&nbsp; If Antonio has brought any money in with him, I am afraid
+he will never take it out, and it even strikes me that his jacket and
+guitar may be in a bad way.&nbsp; But, the look of the young man and
+the tinkling of the instrument so change the place in a moment to a
+leaf out of Don Quixote, that I wonder where his mule is stabled, until
+he leaves off.</p>
+<p>I am bound to acknowledge (as it tends rather to my uncommercial
+confusion), that I occasioned a difficulty in this establishment, by
+having taken the child in my arms.&nbsp; For, on my offering to restore
+it to a ferocious joker not unstimulated by rum, who claimed to be its
+mother, that unnatural parent put her hands behind her, and declined
+to accept it; backing into the fireplace, and very shrilly declaring,
+regardless of remonstrance from her friends, that she knowed it to be
+Law, that whoever took a child from its mother of his own will, was
+bound to stick to it.&nbsp; The uncommercial sense of being in a rather
+ridiculous position with the poor little child beginning to be frightened,
+was relieved by my worthy friend and fellow-constable, Trampfoot; who,
+laying hands on the article as if it were a Bottle, passed it on to
+the nearest woman, and bade her &lsquo;take hold of that.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+As we came out the Bottle was passed to the ferocious joker, and they
+all sat down as before, including Antonio and the guitar.&nbsp; It was
+clear that there was no such thing as a nightcap to this baby&rsquo;s
+head, and that even he never went to bed, but was always kept up&mdash;and
+would grow up, kept up&mdash;waiting for Jack.</p>
+<p>Later still in the night, we came (by the court &lsquo;where the
+man was murdered,&rsquo; and by the other court across the street, into
+which his body was dragged) to another parlour in another Entry, where
+several people were sitting round a fire in just the same way.&nbsp;
+It was a dirty and offensive place, with some ragged clothes drying
+in it; but there was a high shelf over the entrance-door (to be out
+of the reach of marauding hands, possibly) with two large white loaves
+on it, and a great piece of Cheshire cheese.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well!&rsquo; says Mr. Superintendent, with a comprehensive
+look all round.&nbsp; &lsquo;How do <i>you</i> do?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not much to boast of, sir.&rsquo;&nbsp; From the curtseying
+woman of the house.&nbsp; &lsquo;This is my good man, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You are not registered as a common Lodging House?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Sharpeye (in the Move-on tone) puts in the pertinent inquiry, &lsquo;Then
+why ain&rsquo;t you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ain&rsquo;t got no one here, Mr. Sharpeye,&rsquo; rejoin the
+woman and my good man together, &lsquo;but our own family.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How many are you in family?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The woman takes time to count, under pretence of coughing, and adds,
+as one scant of breath, &lsquo;Seven, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>But she has missed one, so Sharpeye, who knows all about it, says:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Here&rsquo;s a young man here makes eight, who ain&rsquo;t
+of your family?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, Mr. Sharpeye, he&rsquo;s a weekly lodger.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What does he do for a living?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The young man here, takes the reply upon himself, and shortly answers,
+&lsquo;Ain&rsquo;t got nothing to do.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The young man here, is modestly brooding behind a damp apron pendent
+from a clothes-line.&nbsp; As I glance at him I become&mdash;but I don&rsquo;t
+know why&mdash;vaguely reminded of Woolwich, Chatham, Portsmouth, and
+Dover.&nbsp; When we get out, my respected fellow-constable Sharpeye,
+addressing Mr. Superintendent, says:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You noticed that young man, sir, in at Darby&rsquo;s?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes.&nbsp; What is he?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Deserter, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Sharpeye further intimates that when we have done with his services,
+he will step back and take that young man.&nbsp; Which in course of
+time he does: feeling at perfect ease about finding him, and knowing
+for a moral certainty that nobody in that region will be gone to bed.</p>
+<p>Later still in the night, we came to another parlour up a step or
+two from the street, which was very cleanly, neatly, even tastefully,
+kept, and in which, set forth on a draped chest of drawers masking the
+staircase, was such a profusion of ornamental crockery, that it would
+have furnished forth a handsome sale-booth at a fair.&nbsp; It backed
+up a stout old lady&mdash;HOGARTH drew her exact likeness more than
+once&mdash;and a boy who was carefully writing a copy in a copy-book.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, ma&rsquo;am, how do <i>you</i> do?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Sweetly, she can assure the dear gentlemen, sweetly.&nbsp; Charmingly,
+charmingly.&nbsp; And overjoyed to see us!</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Why, this is a strange time for this boy to be writing his
+copy.&nbsp; In the middle of the night!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;So it is, dear gentlemen, Heaven bless your welcome faces
+and send ye prosperous, but he has been to the Play with a young friend
+for his diversion, and he combinates his improvement with entertainment,
+by doing his school-writing afterwards, God be good to ye!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The copy admonished human nature to subjugate the fire of every fierce
+desire.&nbsp; One might have thought it recommended stirring the fire,
+the old lady so approved it.&nbsp; There she sat, rosily beaming at
+the copy-book and the boy, and invoking showers of blessings on our
+heads, when we left her in the middle of the night, waiting for Jack.</p>
+<p>Later still in the night, we came to a nauseous room with an earth
+floor, into which the refuse scum of an alley trickled.&nbsp; The stench
+of this habitation was abominable; the seeming poverty of it, diseased
+and dire.&nbsp; Yet, here again, was visitor or lodger&mdash;a man sitting
+before the fire, like the rest of them elsewhere, and apparently not
+distasteful to the mistress&rsquo;s niece, who was also before the fire.&nbsp;
+The mistress herself had the misfortune of being in jail.</p>
+<p>Three weird old women of transcendent ghastliness, were at needlework
+at a table in this room.&nbsp; Says Trampfoot to First Witch, &lsquo;What
+are you making?&rsquo;&nbsp; Says she, &lsquo;Money-bags.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;<i>What</i> are you making?&rsquo; retorts Trampfoot, a little
+off his balance.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Bags to hold your money,&rsquo; says the witch, shaking her
+head, and setting her teeth; &lsquo;you as has got it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She holds up a common cash-bag, and on the table is a heap of such
+bags.&nbsp; Witch Two laughs at us.&nbsp; Witch Three scowls at us.&nbsp;
+Witch sisterhood all, stitch, stitch.&nbsp; First Witch has a circle
+round each eye.&nbsp; I fancy it like the beginning of the development
+of a perverted diabolical halo, and that when it spreads all round her
+head, she will die in the odour of devilry.</p>
+<p>Trampfoot wishes to be informed what First Witch has got behind the
+table, down by the side of her, there?&nbsp; Witches Two and Three croak
+angrily, &lsquo;Show him the child!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She drags out a skinny little arm from a brown dustheap on the ground.&nbsp;
+Adjured not to disturb the child, she lets it drop again.&nbsp; Thus
+we find at last that there is one child in the world of Entries who
+goes to bed&mdash;if this be bed.</p>
+<p>Mr. Superintendent asks how long are they going to work at those
+bags?</p>
+<p>How long?&nbsp; First Witch repeats.&nbsp; Going to have supper presently.&nbsp;
+See the cups and saucers, and the plates.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Late?&nbsp; Ay!&nbsp; But we has to &rsquo;arn our supper
+afore we eats it!&rsquo;&nbsp; Both the other witches repeat this after
+First Witch, and take the Uncommercial measurement with their eyes,
+as for a charmed winding-sheet.&nbsp; Some grim discourse ensues, referring
+to the mistress of the cave, who will be released from jail to-morrow.&nbsp;
+Witches pronounce Trampfoot &lsquo;right there,&rsquo; when he deems
+it a trying distance for the old lady to walk; she shall be fetched
+by niece in a spring-cart.</p>
+<p>As I took a parting look at First Witch in turning away, the red
+marks round her eyes seemed to have already grown larger, and she hungrily
+and thirstily looked out beyond me into the dark doorway, to see if
+Jack was there.&nbsp; For, Jack came even here, and the mistress had
+got into jail through deluding Jack.</p>
+<p>When I at last ended this night of travel and got to bed, I failed
+to keep my mind on comfortable thoughts of Seaman&rsquo;s Homes (not
+overdone with strictness), and improved dock regulations giving Jack
+greater benefit of fire and candle aboard ship, through my mind&rsquo;s
+wandering among the vermin I had seen.&nbsp; Afterwards the same vermin
+ran all over my sleep.&nbsp; Evermore, when on a breezy day I see Poor
+Mercantile Jack running into port with a fair wind under all sail, I
+shall think of the unsleeping host of devourers who never go to bed,
+and are always in their set traps waiting for him.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI&mdash;REFRESHMENTS FOR TRAVELLERS</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>In the late high winds I was blown to a great many places&mdash;and
+indeed, wind or no wind, I generally have extensive transactions on
+hand in the article of Air&mdash;but I have not been blown to any English
+place lately, and I very seldom have blown to any English place in my
+life, where I could get anything good to eat and drink in five minutes,
+or where, if I sought it, I was received with a welcome.</p>
+<p>This is a curious thing to consider.&nbsp; But before (stimulated
+by my own experiences and the representations of many fellow-travellers
+of every uncommercial and commercial degree) I consider it further,
+I must utter a passing word of wonder concerning high winds.</p>
+<p>I wonder why metropolitan gales always blow so hard at Walworth.&nbsp;
+I cannot imagine what Walworth has done, to bring such windy punishment
+upon itself, as I never fail to find recorded in the newspapers when
+the wind has blown at all hard.&nbsp; Brixton seems to have something
+on its conscience; Peckham suffers more than a virtuous Peckham might
+be supposed to deserve; the howling neighbourhood of Deptford figures
+largely in the accounts of the ingenious gentlemen who are out in every
+wind that blows, and to whom it is an ill high wind that blows no good;
+but, there can hardly be any Walworth left by this time.&nbsp; It must
+surely be blown away.&nbsp; I have read of more chimney-stacks and house-copings
+coming down with terrific smashes at Walworth, and of more sacred edifices
+being nearly (not quite) blown out to sea from the same accursed locality,
+than I have read of practised thieves with the appearance and manners
+of gentlemen&mdash;a popular phenomenon which never existed on earth
+out of fiction and a police report.&nbsp; Again: I wonder why people
+are always blown into the Surrey Canal, and into no other piece of water!&nbsp;
+Why do people get up early and go out in groups, to be blown into the
+Surrey Canal?&nbsp; Do they say to one another, &lsquo;Welcome death,
+so that we get into the newspapers&rsquo;?&nbsp; Even that would be
+an insufficient explanation, because even then they might sometimes
+put themselves in the way of being blown into the Regent&rsquo;s Canal,
+instead of always saddling Surrey for the field.&nbsp; Some nameless
+policeman, too, is constantly, on the slightest provocation, getting
+himself blown into this same Surrey Canal.&nbsp; Will SIR RICHARD MAYNE
+see to it, and restrain that weak-minded and feeble-bodied constable?</p>
+<p>To resume the consideration of the curious question of Refreshment.&nbsp;
+I am a Briton, and, as such, I am aware that I never will be a slave&mdash;and
+yet I have latent suspicion that there must be some slavery of wrong
+custom in this matter.</p>
+<p>I travel by railroad.&nbsp; I start from home at seven or eight in
+the morning, after breakfasting hurriedly.&nbsp; What with skimming
+over the open landscape, what with mining in the damp bowels of the
+earth, what with banging, booming and shrieking the scores of miles
+away, I am hungry when I arrive at the &lsquo;Refreshment&rsquo; station
+where I am expected.&nbsp; Please to observe, expected.&nbsp; I have
+said, I am hungry; perhaps I might say, with greater point and force,
+that I am to some extent exhausted, and that I need&mdash;in the expressive
+French sense of the word&mdash;to be restored.&nbsp; What is provided
+for my restoration?&nbsp; The apartment that is to restore me is a wind-trap,
+cunningly set to inveigle all the draughts in that country-side, and
+to communicate a special intensity and velocity to them as they rotate
+in two hurricanes: one, about my wretched head: one, about my wretched
+legs.&nbsp; The training of the young ladies behind the counter who
+are to restore me, has been from their infancy directed to the assumption
+of a defiant dramatic show that I am <i>not</i> expected.&nbsp; It is
+in vain for me to represent to them by my humble and conciliatory manners,
+that I wish to be liberal.&nbsp; It is in vain for me to represent to
+myself, for the encouragement of my sinking soul, that the young ladies
+have a pecuniary interest in my arrival.&nbsp; Neither my reason nor
+my feelings can make head against the cold glazed glare of eye with
+which I am assured that I am not expected, and not wanted.&nbsp; The
+solitary man among the bottles would sometimes take pity on me, if he
+dared, but he is powerless against the rights and mights of Woman.&nbsp;
+(Of the page I make no account, for, he is a boy, and therefore the
+natural enemy of Creation.)&nbsp; Chilling fast, in the deadly tornadoes
+to which my upper and lower extremities are exposed, and subdued by
+the moral disadvantage at which I stand, I turn my disconsolate eyes
+on the refreshments that are to restore me.&nbsp; I find that I must
+either scald my throat by insanely ladling into it, against time and
+for no wager, brown hot water stiffened with flour; or I must make myself
+flaky and sick with Banbury cake; or, I must stuff into my delicate
+organisation, a currant pincushion which I know will swell into immeasurable
+dimensions when it has got there; or, I must extort from an iron-bound
+quarry, with a fork, as if I were farming an inhospitable soil, some
+glutinous lumps of gristle and grease, called pork-pie.&nbsp; While
+thus forlornly occupied, I find that the depressing banquet on the table
+is, in every phase of its profoundly unsatisfactory character, so like
+the banquet at the meanest and shabbiest of evening parties, that I
+begin to think I must have &lsquo;brought down&rsquo; to supper, the
+old lady unknown, blue with cold, who is setting her teeth on edge with
+a cool orange at my elbow&mdash;that the pastrycook who has compounded
+for the company on the lowest terms per head, is a fraudulent bankrupt,
+redeeming his contract with the stale stock from his window&mdash;that,
+for some unexplained reason, the family giving the party have become
+my mortal foes, and have given it on purpose to affront me.&nbsp; Or,
+I fancy that I am &lsquo;breaking up&rsquo; again, at the evening conversazione
+at school, charged two-and-sixpence in the half-year&rsquo;s bill; or
+breaking down again at that celebrated evening party given at Mrs. Bogles&rsquo;s
+boarding-house when I was a boarder there, on which occasion Mrs. Bogles
+was taken in execution by a branch of the legal profession who got in
+as the harp, and was removed (with the keys and subscribed capital)
+to a place of durance, half an hour prior to the commencement of the
+festivities.</p>
+<p>Take another case.</p>
+<p>Mr. Grazinglands, of the Midland Counties, came to London by railroad
+one morning last week, accompanied by the amiable and fascinating Mrs.
+Grazinglands.&nbsp; Mr. G. is a gentleman of a comfortable property,
+and had a little business to transact at the Bank of England, which
+required the concurrence and signature of Mrs. G.&nbsp; Their business
+disposed of, Mr. and Mrs. Grazinglands viewed the Royal Exchange, and
+the exterior of St. Paul&rsquo;s Cathedral.&nbsp; The spirits of Mrs.
+Grazinglands then gradually beginning to flag, Mr. Grazinglands (who
+is the tenderest of husbands) remarked with sympathy, &lsquo;Arabella&rsquo;,
+my dear, &lsquo;fear you are faint.&rsquo;&nbsp; Mrs. Grazing-lands
+replied, &lsquo;Alexander, I am rather faint; but don&rsquo;t mind me,
+I shall be better presently.&rsquo;&nbsp; Touched by the feminine meekness
+of this answer, Mr. Grazinglands looked in at a pastrycook&rsquo;s window,
+hesitating as to the expediency of lunching at that establishment.&nbsp;
+He beheld nothing to eat, but butter in various forms, slightly charged
+with jam, and languidly frizzling over tepid water.&nbsp; Two ancient
+turtle-shells, on which was inscribed the legend, &lsquo;SOUPS,&rsquo;
+decorated a glass partition within, enclosing a stuffy alcove, from
+which a ghastly mockery of a marriage-breakfast spread on a rickety
+table, warned the terrified traveller.&nbsp; An oblong box of stale
+and broken pastry at reduced prices, mounted on a stool, ornamented
+the doorway; and two high chairs that looked as if they were performing
+on stilts, embellished the counter.&nbsp; Over the whole, a young lady
+presided, whose gloomy haughtiness as she surveyed the street, announced
+a deep-seated grievance against society, and an implacable determination
+to be avenged.&nbsp; From a beetle-haunted kitchen below this institution,
+fumes arose, suggestive of a class of soup which Mr. Grazinglands knew,
+from painful experience, enfeebles the mind, distends the stomach, forces
+itself into the complexion, and tries to ooze out at the eyes.&nbsp;
+As he decided against entering, and turned away, Mrs. Grazinglands becoming
+perceptibly weaker, repeated, &lsquo;I am rather faint, Alexander, but
+don&rsquo;t mind me.&rsquo;&nbsp; Urged to new efforts by these words
+of resignation, Mr. Grazinglands looked in at a cold and floury baker&rsquo;s
+shop, where utilitarian buns unrelieved by a currant, consorted with
+hard biscuits, a stone filter of cold water, a hard pale clock, and
+a hard little old woman with flaxen hair, of an undeveloped-farinaceous
+aspect, as if she had been fed upon seeds.&nbsp; He might have entered
+even here, but for the timely remembrance coming upon him that Jairing&rsquo;s
+was but round the corner.</p>
+<p>Now, Jairing&rsquo;s being an hotel for families and gentlemen, in
+high repute among the midland counties, Mr. Grazinglands plucked up
+a great spirit when he told Mrs. Grazinglands she should have a chop
+there.&nbsp; That lady, likewise felt that she was going to see Life.&nbsp;
+Arriving on that gay and festive scene, they found the second waiter,
+in a flabby undress, cleaning the windows of the empty coffee-room;
+and the first waiter, denuded of his white tie, making up his cruets
+behind the Post-Office Directory.&nbsp; The latter (who took them in
+hand) was greatly put out by their patronage, and showed his mind to
+be troubled by a sense of the pressing necessity of instantly smuggling
+Mrs. Grazinglands into the obscurest corner of the building.&nbsp; This
+slighted lady (who is the pride of her division of the county) was immediately
+conveyed, by several dark passages, and up and down several steps, into
+a penitential apartment at the back of the house, where five invalided
+old plate-warmers leaned up against one another under a discarded old
+melancholy sideboard, and where the wintry leaves of all the dining-tables
+in the house lay thick.&nbsp; Also, a sofa, of incomprehensible form
+regarded from any sofane point of view, murmured &lsquo;Bed;&rsquo;
+while an air of mingled fluffiness and heeltaps, added, &lsquo;Second
+Waiter&rsquo;s.&rsquo;&nbsp; Secreted in this dismal hold, objects of
+a mysterious distrust and suspicion, Mr. Grazinglands and his charming
+partner waited twenty minutes for the smoke (for it never came to a
+fire), twenty-five minutes for the sherry, half an hour for the tablecloth,
+forty minutes for the knives and forks, three-quarters of an hour for
+the chops, and an hour for the potatoes.&nbsp; On settling the little
+bill&mdash;which was not much more than the day&rsquo;s pay of a Lieutenant
+in the navy&mdash;Mr.&nbsp; Grazinglands took heart to remonstrate against
+the general quality and cost of his reception.&nbsp; To whom the waiter
+replied, substantially, that Jairing&rsquo;s made it a merit to have
+accepted him on any terms: &lsquo;for,&rsquo; added the waiter (unmistakably
+coughing at Mrs. Grazinglands, the pride of her division of the county),
+&lsquo;when indiwiduals is not staying in the &lsquo;Ouse, their favours
+is not as a rule looked upon as making it worth Mr. Jairing&rsquo;s
+while; nor is it, indeed, a style of business Mr. Jairing wishes.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Grazinglands passed out of Jairing&rsquo;s hotel
+for Families and Gentlemen, in a state of the greatest depression, scorned
+by the bar; and did not recover their self-respect for several days.</p>
+<p>Or take another case.&nbsp; Take your own case.</p>
+<p>You are going off by railway, from any Terminus.&nbsp; You have twenty
+minutes for dinner, before you go.&nbsp; You want your dinner, and like
+Dr. Johnson, Sir, you like to dine.&nbsp; You present to your mind,
+a picture of the refreshment-table at that terminus.&nbsp; The conventional
+shabby evening-party supper&mdash;accepted as the model for all termini
+and all refreshment stations, because it is the last repast known to
+this state of existence of which any human creature would partake, but
+in the direst extremity&mdash;sickens your contemplation, and your words
+are these: &lsquo;I cannot dine on stale sponge-cakes that turn to sand
+in the mouth.&nbsp; I cannot dine on shining brown patties, composed
+of unknown animals within, and offering to my view the device of an
+indigestible star-fish in leaden pie-crust without.&nbsp; I cannot dine
+on a sandwich that has long been pining under an exhausted receiver.&nbsp;
+I cannot dine on barley-sugar.&nbsp; I cannot dine on Toffee.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+You repair to the nearest hotel, and arrive, agitated, in the coffee-room.</p>
+<p>It is a most astonishing fact that the waiter is very cold to you.&nbsp;
+Account for it how you may, smooth it over how you will, you cannot
+deny that he is cold to you.&nbsp; He is not glad to see you, he does
+not want you, he would much rather you hadn&rsquo;t come.&nbsp; He opposes
+to your flushed condition, an immovable composure.&nbsp; As if this
+were not enough, another waiter, born, as it would seem, expressly to
+look at you in this passage of your life, stands at a little distance,
+with his napkin under his arm and his hands folded, looking at you with
+all his might.&nbsp; You impress on your waiter that you have ten minutes
+for dinner, and he proposes that you shall begin with a bit of fish
+which will be ready in twenty.&nbsp; That proposal declined, he suggests&mdash;as
+a neat originality&mdash;&lsquo;a weal or mutton cutlet.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+You close with either cutlet, any cutlet, anything.&nbsp; He goes, leisurely,
+behind a door and calls down some unseen shaft.&nbsp; A ventriloquial
+dialogue ensues, tending finally to the effect that weal only, is available
+on the spur of the moment.&nbsp; You anxiously call out, &lsquo;Veal,
+then!&rsquo;&nbsp; Your waiter having settled that point, returns to
+array your tablecloth, with a table napkin folded cocked-hat-wise (slowly,
+for something out of window engages his eye), a white wine-glass, a
+green wine-glass, a blue finger-glass, a tumbler, and a powerful field
+battery of fourteen casters with nothing in them; or at all events&mdash;which
+is enough for your purpose&mdash;with nothing in them that will come
+out.&nbsp; All this time, the other waiter looks at you&mdash;with an
+air of mental comparison and curiosity, now, as if it had occurred to
+him that you are rather like his brother.&nbsp; Half your time gone,
+and nothing come but the jug of ale and the bread, you implore your
+waiter to &lsquo;see after that cutlet, waiter; pray do!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+He cannot go at once, for he is carrying in seventeen pounds of American
+cheese for you to finish with, and a small Landed Estate of celery and
+water-cresses.&nbsp; The other waiter changes his leg, and takes a new
+view of you, doubtfully, now, as if he had rejected the resemblance
+to his brother, and had begun to think you more like his aunt or his
+grandmother.&nbsp; Again you beseech your waiter with pathetic indignation,
+to &lsquo;see after that cutlet!&rsquo;&nbsp; He steps out to see after
+it, and by-and-by, when you are going away without it, comes back with
+it.&nbsp; Even then, he will not take the sham silver cover off, without
+a pause for a flourish, and a look at the musty cutlet as if he were
+surprised to see it&mdash;which cannot possibly be the case, he must
+have seen it so often before.&nbsp; A sort of fur has been produced
+upon its surface by the cook&rsquo;s art, and in a sham silver vessel
+staggering on two feet instead of three, is a cutaneous kind of sauce
+of brown pimples and pickled cucumber.&nbsp; You order the bill, but
+your waiter cannot bring your bill yet, because he is bringing, instead,
+three flinty-hearted potatoes and two grim head of broccoli, like the
+occasional ornaments on area railings, badly boiled.&nbsp; You know
+that you will never come to this pass, any more than to the cheese and
+celery, and you imperatively demand your bill; but, it takes time to
+get, even when gone for, because your waiter has to communicate with
+a lady who lives behind a sash-window in a corner, and who appears to
+have to refer to several Ledgers before she can make it out&mdash;as
+if you had been staying there a year.&nbsp; You become distracted to
+get away, and the other waiter, once more changing his leg, still looks
+at you&mdash;but suspiciously, now, as if you had begun to remind him
+of the party who took the great-coats last winter.&nbsp; Your bill at
+last brought and paid, at the rate of sixpence a mouthful, your waiter
+reproachfully reminds you that &lsquo;attendance is not charged for
+a single meal,&rsquo; and you have to search in all your pockets for
+sixpence more.&nbsp; He has a worse opinion of you than ever, when you
+have given it to him, and lets you out into the street with the air
+of one saying to himself, as you cannot again doubt he is, &lsquo;I
+hope we shall never see <i>you</i> here again!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Or, take any other of the numerous travelling instances in which,
+with more time at your disposal, you are, have been, or may be, equally
+ill served.&nbsp; Take the old-established Bull&rsquo;s Head with its
+old-established knife-boxes on its old-established sideboards, its old-established
+flue under its old-established four-post bedsteads in its old-established
+airless rooms, its old-established frouziness up-stairs and down-stairs,
+its old-established cookery, and its old-established principles of plunder.&nbsp;
+Count up your injuries, in its side-dishes of ailing sweetbreads in
+white poultices, of apothecaries&rsquo; powders in rice for curry, of
+pale stewed bits of calf ineffectually relying for an adventitious interest
+on forcemeat balls.&nbsp; You have had experience of the old-established
+Bull&rsquo;s Head stringy fowls, with lower extremities like wooden
+legs, sticking up out of the dish; of its cannibalic boiled mutton,
+gushing horribly among its capers, when carved; of its little dishes
+of pastry&mdash;roofs of spermaceti ointment, erected over half an apple
+or four gooseberries.&nbsp; Well for you if you have yet forgotten the
+old-established Bull&rsquo;s Head fruity port: whose reputation was
+gained solely by the old-established price the Bull&rsquo;s Head put
+upon it, and by the old-established air with which the Bull&rsquo;s
+Head set the glasses and D&rsquo;Oyleys on, and held that Liquid Gout
+to the three-and-sixpenny wax-candle, as if its old-established colour
+hadn&rsquo;t come from the dyer&rsquo;s.</p>
+<p>Or lastly, take to finish with, two cases that we all know, every
+day.</p>
+<p>We all know the new hotel near the station, where it is always gusty,
+going up the lane which is always muddy, where we are sure to arrive
+at night, and where we make the gas start awfully when we open the front
+door.&nbsp; We all know the flooring of the passages and staircases
+that is too new, and the walls that are too new, and the house that
+is haunted by the ghost of mortar.&nbsp; We all know the doors that
+have cracked, and the cracked shutters through which we get a glimpse
+of the disconsolate moon.&nbsp; We all know the new people, who have
+come to keep the new hotel, and who wish they had never come, and who
+(inevitable result) wish <i>we</i> had never come.&nbsp; We all know
+how much too scant and smooth and bright the new furniture is, and how
+it has never settled down, and cannot fit itself into right places,
+and will get into wrong places.&nbsp; We all know how the gas, being
+lighted, shows maps of Damp upon the walls.&nbsp; We all know how the
+ghost of mortar passes into our sandwich, stirs our negus, goes up to
+bed with us, ascends the pale bedroom chimney, and prevents the smoke
+from following.&nbsp; We all know how a leg of our chair comes off at
+breakfast in the morning, and how the dejected waiter attributes the
+accident to a general greenness pervading the establishment, and informs
+us, in reply to a local inquiry, that he is thankful to say he is an
+entire stranger in that part of the country and is going back to his
+own connexion on Saturday.</p>
+<p>We all know, on the other hand, the great station hotel belonging
+to the company of proprietors, which has suddenly sprung up in the back
+outskirts of any place we like to name, and where we look out of our
+palatial windows at little back yards and gardens, old summer-houses,
+fowl-houses, pigeon-traps, and pigsties.&nbsp; We all know this hotel
+in which we can get anything we want, after its kind, for money; but
+where nobody is glad to see us, or sorry to see us, or minds (our bill
+paid) whether we come or go, or how, or when, or why, or cares about
+us.&nbsp; We all know this hotel, where we have no individuality, but
+put ourselves into the general post, as it were, and are sorted and
+disposed of according to our division.&nbsp; We all know that we can
+get on very well indeed at such a place, but still not perfectly well;
+and this may be, because the place is largely wholesale, and there is
+a lingering personal retail interest within us that asks to be satisfied.</p>
+<p>To sum up.&nbsp; My uncommercial travelling has not yet brought me
+to the conclusion that we are close to perfection in these matters.&nbsp;
+And just as I do not believe that the end of the world will ever be
+near at hand, so long as any of the very tiresome and arrogant people
+who constantly predict that catastrophe are left in it, so, I shall
+have small faith in the Hotel Millennium, while any of the uncomfortable
+superstitions I have glanced at remain in existence.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII&mdash;TRAVELLING ABROAD</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>I got into the travelling chariot&mdash;it was of German make, roomy,
+heavy, and unvarnished&mdash;I got into the travelling chariot, pulled
+up the steps after me, shut myself in with a smart bang of the door,
+and gave the word, &lsquo;Go on!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Immediately, all that W. and S.W. division of London began to slide
+away at a pace so lively, that I was over the river, and past the Old
+Kent Road, and out on Blackheath, and even ascending Shooter&rsquo;s
+Hill, before I had had time to look about me in the carriage, like a
+collected traveller.</p>
+<p>I had two ample Imperials on the roof, other fitted storage for luggage
+in front, and other up behind; I had a net for books overhead, great
+pockets to all the windows, a leathern pouch or two hung up for odds
+and ends, and a reading lamp fixed in the back of the chariot, in case
+I should be benighted.&nbsp; I was amply provided in all respects, and
+had no idea where I was going (which was delightful), except that I
+was going abroad.</p>
+<p>So smooth was the old high road, and so fresh were the horses, and
+so fast went I, that it was midway between Gravesend and Rochester,
+and the widening river was bearing the ships, white sailed or black-smoked,
+out to sea, when I noticed by the wayside a very queer small boy.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Holloa!&rsquo; said I, to the very queer small boy, &lsquo;where
+do you live?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;At Chatham,&rsquo; says he.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What do you do there?&rsquo; says I.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I go to school,&rsquo; says he.</p>
+<p>I took him up in a moment, and we went on.&nbsp; Presently, the very
+queer small boy says, &lsquo;This is Gads-hill we are coming to, where
+Falstaff went out to rob those travellers, and ran away.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You know something about Falstaff, eh?&rsquo; said I.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;All about him,&rsquo; said the very queer small boy.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I am old (I am nine), and I read all sorts of books.&nbsp; But
+<i>do</i> let us stop at the top of the hill, and look at the house
+there, if you please!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You admire that house?&rsquo; said I.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Bless you, sir,&rsquo; said the very queer small boy, &lsquo;when
+I was not more than half as old as nine, it used to be a treat for me
+to be brought to look at it.&nbsp; And now, I am nine, I come by myself
+to look at it.&nbsp; And ever since I can recollect, my father, seeing
+me so fond of it, has often said to me, &ldquo;If you were to be very
+persevering and were to work hard, you might some day come to live in
+it.&rdquo;&nbsp; Though that&rsquo;s impossible!&rsquo; said the very
+queer small boy, drawing a low breath, and now staring at the house
+out of window with all his might.</p>
+<p>I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer small boy;
+for that house happens to be <i>my</i> house, and I have reason to believe
+that what he said was true.</p>
+<p>Well!&nbsp; I made no halt there, and I soon dropped the very queer
+small boy and went on.&nbsp; Over the road where the old Romans used
+to march, over the road where the old Canterbury pilgrims used to go,
+over the road where the travelling trains of the old imperious priests
+and princes used to jingle on horseback between the continent and this
+Island through the mud and water, over the road where Shakespeare hummed
+to himself, &lsquo;Blow, blow, thou winter wind,&rsquo; as he sat in
+the saddle at the gate of the inn yard noticing the carriers; all among
+the cherry orchards, apple orchards, corn-fields, and hop-gardens; so
+went I, by Canterbury to Dover.&nbsp; There, the sea was tumbling in,
+with deep sounds, after dark, and the revolving French light on Cape
+Grinez was seen regularly bursting out and becoming obscured, as if
+the head of a gigantic light-keeper in an anxious state of mind were
+interposed every half-minute, to look how it was burning.</p>
+<p>Early in the morning I was on the deck of the steam-packet, and we
+were aiming at the bar in the usual intolerable manner, and the bar
+was aiming at us in the usual intolerable manner, and the bar got by
+far the best of it, and we got by far the worst&mdash;all in the usual
+intolerable manner.</p>
+<p>But, when I was clear of the Custom House on the other side, and
+when I began to make the dust fly on the thirsty French roads, and when
+the twigsome trees by the wayside (which, I suppose, never will grow
+leafy, for they never did) guarded here and there a dusty soldier, or
+field labourer, baking on a heap of broken stones, sound asleep in a
+fiction of shade, I began to recover my travelling spirits.&nbsp; Coming
+upon the breaker of the broken stones, in a hard, hot, shining hat,
+on which the sun played at a distance as on a burning-glass, I felt
+that now, indeed, I was in the dear old France of my affections.&nbsp;
+I should have known it, without the well-remembered bottle of rough
+ordinary wine, the cold roast fowl, the loaf, and the pinch of salt,
+on which I lunched with unspeakable satisfaction, from one of the stuffed
+pockets of the chariot.</p>
+<p>I must have fallen asleep after lunch, for when a bright face looked
+in at the window, I started, and said:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Good God, Louis, I dreamed you were dead!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>My cheerful servant laughed, and answered:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Me?&nbsp; Not at all, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How glad I am to wake!&nbsp; What are we doing Louis?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;We go to take relay of horses.&nbsp; Will you walk up the
+hill?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Certainly.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Welcome the old French hill, with the old French lunatic (not in
+the most distant degree related to Sterne&rsquo;s Maria) living in a
+thatched dog-kennel half-way up, and flying out with his crutch and
+his big head and extended nightcap, to be beforehand with the old men
+and women exhibiting crippled children, and with the children exhibiting
+old men and women, ugly and blind, who always seemed by resurrectionary
+process to be recalled out of the elements for the sudden peopling of
+the solitude!</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is well,&rsquo; said I, scattering among them what small
+coin I had; &lsquo;here comes Louis, and I am quite roused from my nap.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>We journeyed on again, and I welcomed every new assurance that France
+stood where I had left it.&nbsp; There were the posting-houses, with
+their archways, dirty stable-yards, and clean post-masters&rsquo; wives,
+bright women of business, looking on at the putting-to of the horses;
+there were the postilions counting what money they got, into their hats,
+and never making enough of it; there were the standard population of
+grey horses of Flanders descent, invariably biting one another when
+they got a chance; there were the fleecy sheepskins, looped on over
+their uniforms by the postilions, like bibbed aprons when it blew and
+rained; there were their Jack-boots, and their cracking whips; there
+were the cathedrals that I got out to see, as under some cruel bondage,
+in no wise desiring to see them; there were the little towns that appeared
+to have no reason for being towns, since most of their houses were to
+let and nobody could be induced to look at them, except the people who
+couldn&rsquo;t let them and had nothing else to do but look at them
+all day.&nbsp; I lay a night upon the road and enjoyed delectable cookery
+of potatoes, and some other sensible things, adoption of which at home
+would inevitably be shown to be fraught with ruin, somehow or other,
+to that rickety national blessing, the British farmer; and at last I
+was rattled, like a single pill in a box, over leagues of stones, until&mdash;madly
+cracking, plunging, and flourishing two grey tails about&mdash;I made
+my triumphal entry into Paris.</p>
+<p>At Paris, I took an upper apartment for a few days in one of the
+hotels of the Rue de Rivoli; my front windows looking into the garden
+of the Tuileries (where the principal difference between the nursemaids
+and the flowers seemed to be that the former were locomotive and the
+latter not): my back windows looking at all the other back windows in
+the hotel, and deep down into a paved yard, where my German chariot
+had retired under a tight-fitting archway, to all appearance for life,
+and where bells rang all day without anybody&rsquo;s minding them but
+certain chamberlains with feather brooms and green baize caps, who here
+and there leaned out of some high window placidly looking down, and
+where neat waiters with trays on their left shoulders passed and repassed
+from morning to night.</p>
+<p>Whenever I am at Paris, I am dragged by invisible force into the
+Morgue.&nbsp; I never want to go there, but am always pulled there.&nbsp;
+One Christmas Day, when I would rather have been anywhere else, I was
+attracted in, to see an old grey man lying all alone on his cold bed,
+with a tap of water turned on over his grey hair, and running, drip,
+drip, drip, down his wretched face until it got to the corner of his
+mouth, where it took a turn, and made him look sly.&nbsp; One New Year&rsquo;s
+Morning (by the same token, the sun was shining outside, and there was
+a mountebank balancing a feather on his nose, within a yard of the gate),
+I was pulled in again to look at a flaxen-haired boy of eighteen, with
+a heart hanging on his breast&mdash;&lsquo;from his mother,&rsquo; was
+engraven on it&mdash;who had come into the net across the river, with
+a bullet wound in his fair forehead and his hands cut with a knife,
+but whence or how was a blank mystery.&nbsp; This time, I was forced
+into the same dread place, to see a large dark man whose disfigurement
+by water was in a frightful manner comic, and whose expression was that
+of a prize-fighter who had closed his eyelids under a heavy blow, but
+was going immediately to open them, shake his head, and &lsquo;come
+up smiling.&rsquo;&nbsp; Oh what this large dark man cost me in that
+bright city!</p>
+<p>It was very hot weather, and he was none the better for that, and
+I was much the worse.&nbsp; Indeed, a very neat and pleasant little
+woman with the key of her lodging on her forefinger, who had been showing
+him to her little girl while she and the child ate sweetmeats, observed
+monsieur looking poorly as we came out together, and asked monsieur,
+with her wondering little eyebrows prettily raised, if there were anything
+the matter?&nbsp; Faintly replying in the negative, monsieur crossed
+the road to a wine-shop, got some brandy, and resolved to freshen himself
+with a dip in the great floating bath on the river.</p>
+<p>The bath was crowded in the usual airy manner, by a male population
+in striped drawers of various gay colours, who walked up and down arm
+in arm, drank coffee, smoked cigars, sat at little tables, conversed
+politely with the damsels who dispensed the towels, and every now and
+then pitched themselves into the river head foremost, and came out again
+to repeat this social routine.&nbsp; I made haste to participate in
+the water part of the entertainments, and was in the full enjoyment
+of a delightful bath, when all in a moment I was seized with an unreasonable
+idea that the large dark body was floating straight at me.</p>
+<p>I was out of the river, and dressing instantly.&nbsp; In the shock
+I had taken some water into my mouth, and it turned me sick, for I fancied
+that the contamination of the creature was in it.&nbsp; I had got back
+to my cool darkened room in the hotel, and was lying on a sofa there,
+before I began to reason with myself.</p>
+<p>Of course, I knew perfectly well that the large dark creature was
+stone dead, and that I should no more come upon him out of the place
+where I had seen him dead, than I should come upon the cathedral of
+Notre-Dame in an entirely new situation.&nbsp; What troubled me was
+the picture of the creature; and that had so curiously and strongly
+painted itself upon my brain, that I could not get rid of it until it
+was worn out.</p>
+<p>I noticed the peculiarities of this possession, while it was a real
+discomfort to me.&nbsp; That very day, at dinner, some morsel on my
+plate looked like a piece of him, and I was glad to get up and go out.&nbsp;
+Later in the evening, I was walking along the Rue St. Honor&eacute;,
+when I saw a bill at a public room there, announcing small-sword exercise,
+broad-sword exercise, wrestling, and other such feats.&nbsp; I went
+in, and some of the sword-play being very skilful, remained.&nbsp; A
+specimen of our own national sport, The British Boaxe, was announced
+to be given at the close of the evening.&nbsp; In an evil hour, I determined
+to wait for this Boaxe, as became a Briton.&nbsp; It was a clumsy specimen
+(executed by two English grooms out of place), but one of the combatants,
+receiving a straight right-hander with the glove between his eyes, did
+exactly what the large dark creature in the Morgue had seemed going
+to do&mdash;and finished me for that night.</p>
+<p>There was rather a sickly smell (not at all an unusual fragrance
+in Paris) in the little ante-room of my apartment at the hotel.&nbsp;
+The large dark creature in the Morgue was by no direct experience associated
+with my sense of smell, because, when I came to the knowledge of him,
+he lay behind a wall of thick plate-glass as good as a wall of steel
+or marble for that matter.&nbsp; Yet the whiff of the room never failed
+to reproduce him.&nbsp; What was more curious, was the capriciousness
+with which his portrait seemed to light itself up in my mind, elsewhere.&nbsp;
+I might be walking in the Palais Royal, lazily enjoying the shop windows,
+and might be regaling myself with one of the ready-made clothes shops
+that are set out there.&nbsp; My eyes, wandering over impossible-waisted
+dressing-gowns and luminous waistcoats, would fall upon the master,
+or the shopman, or even the very dummy at the door, and would suggest
+to me, &lsquo;Something like him!&rsquo;&mdash;and instantly I was sickened
+again.</p>
+<p>This would happen at the theatre, in the same manner.&nbsp; Often
+it would happen in the street, when I certainly was not looking for
+the likeness, and when probably there was no likeness there.&nbsp; It
+was not because the creature was dead that I was so haunted, because
+I know that I might have been (and I know it because I have been) equally
+attended by the image of a living aversion.&nbsp; This lasted about
+a week.&nbsp; The picture did not fade by degrees, in the sense that
+it became a whit less forcible and distinct, but in the sense that it
+obtruded itself less and less frequently.&nbsp; The experience may be
+worth considering by some who have the care of children.&nbsp; It would
+be difficult to overstate the intensity and accuracy of an intelligent
+child&rsquo;s observation.&nbsp; At that impressible time of life, it
+must sometimes produce a fixed impression.&nbsp; If the fixed impression
+be of an object terrible to the child, it will be (for want of reasoning
+upon) inseparable from great fear.&nbsp; Force the child at such a time,
+be Spartan with it, send it into the dark against its will, leave it
+in a lonely bedroom against its will, and you had better murder it.</p>
+<p>On a bright morning I rattled away from Paris, in the German chariot,
+and left the large dark creature behind me for good.&nbsp; I ought to
+confess, though, that I had been drawn back to the Morgue, after he
+was put underground, to look at his clothes, and that I found them frightfully
+like him&mdash;particularly his boots.&nbsp; However, I rattled away
+for Switzerland, looking forward and not backward, and so we parted
+company.</p>
+<p>Welcome again, the long, long spell of France, with the queer country
+inns, full of vases of flowers and clocks, in the dull little town,
+and with the little population not at all dull on the little Boulevard
+in the evening, under the little trees!&nbsp; Welcome Monsieur the Cur&eacute;,
+walking alone in the early morning a short way out of the town, reading
+that eternal Breviary of yours, which surely might be almost read, without
+book, by this time!&nbsp; Welcome Monsieur the Cur&eacute;, later in
+the day, jolting through the highway dust (as if you had already ascended
+to the cloudy region), in a very big-headed cabriolet, with the dried
+mud of a dozen winters on it.&nbsp; Welcome again Monsieur the Cur&eacute;,
+as we exchange salutations; you, straightening your back to look at
+the German chariot, while picking in your little village garden a vegetable
+or two for the day&rsquo;s soup: I, looking out of the German chariot
+window in that delicious traveller&rsquo;s trance which knows no cares,
+no yesterdays, no to-morrows, nothing but the passing objects and the
+passing scents and sounds!&nbsp; And so I came, in due course of delight,
+to Strasbourg, where I passed a wet Sunday evening at a window, while
+an idle trifle of a vaudeville was played for me at the opposite house.</p>
+<p>How such a large house came to have only three people living in it,
+was its own affair.&nbsp; There were at least a score of windows in
+its high roof alone; how many in its grotesque front, I soon gave up
+counting.&nbsp; The owner was a shopkeeper, by name Straudenheim; by
+trade&mdash;I couldn&rsquo;t make out what by trade, for he had forborne
+to write that up, and his shop was shut.</p>
+<p>At first, as I looked at Straudenheim&rsquo;s, through the steadily
+falling rain, I set him up in business in the goose-liver line.&nbsp;
+But, inspection of Straudenheim, who became visible at a window on the
+second floor, convinced me that there was something more precious than
+liver in the case.&nbsp; He wore a black velvet skull-cap, and looked
+usurious and rich.&nbsp; A large-lipped, pear-nosed old man, with white
+hair, and keen eyes, though near-sighted.&nbsp; He was writing at a
+desk, was Straudenheim, and ever and again left off writing, put his
+pen in his mouth, and went through actions with his right hand, like
+a man steadying piles of cash.&nbsp; Five-franc pieces, Straudenheim,
+or golden Napoleons?&nbsp; A jeweller, Straudenheim, a dealer in money,
+a diamond merchant, or what?</p>
+<p>Below Straudenheim, at a window on the first floor, sat his housekeeper&mdash;far
+from young, but of a comely presence, suggestive of a well-matured foot
+and ankle.&nbsp; She was cheerily dressed, had a fan in her hand, and
+wore large gold earrings and a large gold cross.&nbsp; She would have
+been out holiday-making (as I settled it) but for the pestilent rain.&nbsp;
+Strasbourg had given up holiday-making for that once, as a bad job,
+because the rain was jerking in gushes out of the old roof-spouts, and
+running in a brook down the middle of the street.&nbsp; The housekeeper,
+her arms folded on her bosom and her fan tapping her chin, was bright
+and smiling at her open window, but otherwise Straudenheim&rsquo;s house
+front was very dreary.&nbsp; The housekeeper&rsquo;s was the only open
+window in it; Straudenheim kept himself close, though it was a sultry
+evening when air is pleasant, and though the rain had brought into the
+town that vague refreshing smell of grass which rain does bring in the
+summer-time.</p>
+<p>The dim appearance of a man at Straudenheim&rsquo;s shoulder, inspired
+me with a misgiving that somebody had come to murder that flourishing
+merchant for the wealth with which I had handsomely endowed him: the
+rather, as it was an excited man, lean and long of figure, and evidently
+stealthy of foot.&nbsp; But, he conferred with Straudenheim instead
+of doing him a mortal injury, and then they both softly opened the other
+window of that room&mdash;which was immediately over the housekeeper&rsquo;s&mdash;and
+tried to see her by looking down.&nbsp; And my opinion of Straudenheim
+was much lowered when I saw that eminent citizen spit out of window,
+clearly with the hope of spitting on the housekeeper.</p>
+<p>The unconscious housekeeper fanned herself, tossed her head, and
+laughed.&nbsp; Though unconscious of Straudenheim, she was conscious
+of somebody else&mdash;of me?&mdash;there was nobody else.</p>
+<p>After leaning so far out of the window, that I confidently expected
+to see their heels tilt up, Straudenheim and the lean man drew their
+heads in and shut the window.&nbsp; Presently, the house door secretly
+opened, and they slowly and spitefully crept forth into the pouring
+rain.&nbsp; They were coming over to me (I thought) to demand satisfaction
+for my looking at the housekeeper, when they plunged into a recess in
+the architecture under my window and dragged out the puniest of little
+soldiers, begirt with the most innocent of little swords.&nbsp; The
+tall glazed head-dress of this warrior, Straudenheim instantly knocked
+off, and out of it fell two sugar-sticks, and three or four large lumps
+of sugar.</p>
+<p>The warrior made no effort to recover his property or to pick up
+his shako, but looked with an expression of attention at Straudenheim
+when he kicked him five times, and also at the lean man when <i>he</i>
+kicked him five times, and again at Straudenheim when he tore the breast
+of his (the warrior&rsquo;s) little coat open, and shook all his ten
+fingers in his face, as if they were ten thousand.&nbsp; When these
+outrages had been committed, Straudenheim and his man went into the
+house again and barred the door.&nbsp; A wonderful circumstance was,
+that the housekeeper who saw it all (and who could have taken six such
+warriors to her buxom bosom at once), only fanned herself and laughed
+as she had laughed before, and seemed to have no opinion about it, one
+way or other.</p>
+<p>But, the chief effect of the drama was the remarkable vengeance taken
+by the little warrior.&nbsp; Left alone in the rain, he picked up his
+shako; put it on, all wet and dirty as it was; retired into a court,
+of which Straudenheim&rsquo;s house formed the corner; wheeled about;
+and bringing his two forefingers close to the top of his nose, rubbed
+them over one another, cross-wise, in derision, defiance, and contempt
+of Straudenheim.&nbsp; Although Straudenheim could not possibly be supposed
+to be conscious of this strange proceeding, it so inflated and comforted
+the little warrior&rsquo;s soul, that twice he went away, and twice
+came back into the court to repeat it, as though it must goad his enemy
+to madness.&nbsp; Not only that, but he afterwards came back with two
+other small warriors, and they all three did it together.&nbsp; Not
+only that&mdash;as I live to tell the tale!&mdash;but just as it was
+falling quite dark, the three came back, bringing with them a huge bearded
+Sapper, whom they moved, by recital of the original wrong, to go through
+the same performance, with the same complete absence of all possible
+knowledge of it on the part of Straudenheim.&nbsp; And then they all
+went away, arm in arm, singing.</p>
+<p>I went away too, in the German chariot at sunrise, and rattled on,
+day after day, like one in a sweet dream; with so many clear little
+bells on the harness of the horses, that the nursery rhyme about Banbury
+Cross and the venerable lady who rode in state there, was always in
+my ears.&nbsp; And now I came to the land of wooden houses, innocent
+cakes, thin butter soup, and spotless little inn bedrooms with a family
+likeness to Dairies.&nbsp; And now the Swiss marksmen were for ever
+rifle-shooting at marks across gorges, so exceedingly near my ear, that
+I felt like a new Gesler in a Canton of Tells, and went in highly-deserved
+danger of my tyrannical life.&nbsp; The prizes at these shootings, were
+watches, smart handkerchiefs, hats, spoons, and (above all) tea-trays;
+and at these contests I came upon a more than usually accomplished and
+amiable countryman of my own, who had shot himself deaf in whole years
+of competition, and had won so many tea-trays that he went about the
+country with his carriage full of them, like a glorified Cheap-Jack.</p>
+<p>In the mountain-country into which I had now travelled, a yoke of
+oxen were sometimes hooked on before the post-horses, and I went lumbering
+up, up, up, through mist and rain, with the roar of falling water for
+change of music.&nbsp; Of a sudden, mist and rain would clear away,
+and I would come down into picturesque little towns with gleaming spires
+and odd towers; and would stroll afoot into market-places in steep winding
+streets, where a hundred women in bodices, sold eggs and honey, butter
+and fruit, and suckled their children as they sat by their clean baskets,
+and had such enormous go&icirc;tres (or glandular swellings in the throat)
+that it became a science to know where the nurse ended and the child
+began.&nbsp; About this time, I deserted my German chariot for the back
+of a mule (in colour and consistency so very like a dusty old hair trunk
+I once had at school, that I half expected to see my initials in brass-headed
+nails on his backbone), and went up a thousand rugged ways, and looked
+down at a thousand woods of fir and pine, and would on the whole have
+preferred my mule&rsquo;s keeping a little nearer to the inside, and
+not usually travelling with a hoof or two over the precipice&mdash;though
+much consoled by explanation that this was to be attributed to his great
+sagacity, by reason of his carrying broad loads of wood at other times,
+and not being clear but that I myself belonged to that station of life,
+and required as much room as they.&nbsp; He brought me safely, in his
+own wise way, among the passes of the Alps, and here I enjoyed a dozen
+climates a day; being now (like Don Quixote on the back of the wooden
+horse) in the region of wind, now in the region of fire, now in the
+region of unmelting ice and snow.&nbsp; Here, I passed over trembling
+domes of ice, beneath which the cataract was roaring; and here was received
+under arches of icicles, of unspeakable beauty; and here the sweet air
+was so bracing and so light, that at halting-times I rolled in the snow
+when I saw my mule do it, thinking that he must know best.&nbsp; At
+this part of the journey we would come, at mid-day, into half an hour&rsquo;s
+thaw: when the rough mountain inn would be found on an island of deep
+mud in a sea of snow, while the baiting strings of mules, and the carts
+full of casks and bales, which had been in an Arctic condition a mile
+off, would steam again.&nbsp; By such ways and means, I would come to
+the cluster of ch&acirc;lets where I had to turn out of the track to
+see the waterfall; and then, uttering a howl like a young giant, on
+espying a traveller&mdash;in other words, something to eat&mdash;coming
+up the steep, the idiot lying on the wood-pile who sunned himself and
+nursed his go&icirc;tre, would rouse the woman-guide within the hut,
+who would stream out hastily, throwing her child over one of her shoulders
+and her go&icirc;tre over the other, as she came along.&nbsp; I slept
+at religious houses, and bleak refuges of many kinds, on this journey,
+and by the stove at night heard stories of travellers who had perished
+within call, in wreaths and drifts of snow.&nbsp; One night the stove
+within, and the cold outside, awakened childish associations long forgotten,
+and I dreamed I was in Russia&mdash;the identical serf out of a picture-book
+I had, before I could read it for myself&mdash;and that I was going
+to be knouted by a noble personage in a fur cap, boots, and earrings,
+who, I think, must have come out of some melodrama.</p>
+<p>Commend me to the beautiful waters among these mountains!&nbsp; Though
+I was not of their mind: they, being inveterately bent on getting down
+into the level country, and I ardently desiring to linger where I was.&nbsp;
+What desperate leaps they took, what dark abysses they plunged into,
+what rocks they wore away, what echoes they invoked!&nbsp; In one part
+where I went, they were pressed into the service of carrying wood down,
+to be burnt next winter, as costly fuel, in Italy.&nbsp; But, their
+fierce savage nature was not to be easily constrained, and they fought
+with every limb of the wood; whirling it round and round, stripping
+its bark away, dashing it against pointed corners, driving it out of
+the course, and roaring and flying at the peasants who steered it back
+again from the bank with long stout poles.&nbsp; Alas! concurrent streams
+of time and water carried <i>me</i> down fast, and I came, on an exquisitely
+clear day, to the Lausanne shore of the Lake of Geneva, where I stood
+looking at the bright blue water, the flushed white mountains opposite,
+and the boats at my feet with their furled Mediterranean sails, showing
+like enormous magnifications of this goose-quill pen that is now in
+my hand.</p>
+<p>- The sky became overcast without any notice; a wind very like the
+March east wind of England, blew across me; and a voice said, &lsquo;How
+do you like it?&nbsp; Will it do?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I had merely shut myself, for half a minute, in a German travelling
+chariot that stood for sale in the Carriage Department of the London
+Pantechnicon.&nbsp; I had a commission to buy it, for a friend who was
+going abroad; and the look and manner of the chariot, as I tried the
+cushions and the springs, brought all these hints of travelling remembrance
+before me.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It will do very well,&rsquo; said I, rather sorrowfully, as
+I got out at the other door, and shut the carriage up.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII&mdash;THE GREAT TASMANIA&rsquo;S CARGO</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>I travel constantly, up and down a certain line of railway that has
+a terminus in London.&nbsp; It is the railway for a large military dep&ocirc;t,
+and for other large barracks.&nbsp; To the best of my serious belief,
+I have never been on that railway by daylight, without seeing some handcuffed
+deserters in the train.</p>
+<p>It is in the nature of things that such an institution as our English
+army should have many bad and troublesome characters in it.&nbsp; But,
+this is a reason for, and not against, its being made as acceptable
+as possible to well-disposed men of decent behaviour.&nbsp; Such men
+are assuredly not tempted into the ranks, by the beastly inversion of
+natural laws, and the compulsion to live in worse than swinish foulness.&nbsp;
+Accordingly, when any such Circumlocutional embellishments of the soldier&rsquo;s
+condition have of late been brought to notice, we civilians, seated
+in outer darkness cheerfully meditating on an Income Tax, have considered
+the matter as being our business, and have shown a tendency to declare
+that we would rather not have it misregulated, if such declaration may,
+without violence to the Church Catechism, be hinted to those who are
+put in authority over us.</p>
+<p>Any animated description of a modern battle, any private soldier&rsquo;s
+letter published in the newspapers, any page of the records of the Victoria
+Cross, will show that in the ranks of the army, there exists under all
+disadvantages as fine a sense of duty as is to be found in any station
+on earth.&nbsp; Who doubts that if we all did our duty as faithfully
+as the soldier does his, this world would be a better place?&nbsp; There
+may be greater difficulties in our way than in the soldier&rsquo;s.&nbsp;
+Not disputed.&nbsp; But, let us at least do our duty towards <i>him.</i></p>
+<p>I had got back again to that rich and beautiful port where I had
+looked after Mercantile Jack, and I was walking up a hill there, on
+a wild March morning.&nbsp; My conversation with my official friend
+Pangloss, by whom I was accidentally accompanied, took this direction
+as we took the up-hill direction, because the object of my uncommercial
+journey was to see some discharged soldiers who had recently come home
+from India.&nbsp; There were men of HAVELOCK&rsquo;s among them; there
+were men who had been in many of the great battles of the great Indian
+campaign, among them; and I was curious to note what our discharged
+soldiers looked like, when they were done with.</p>
+<p>I was not the less interested (as I mentioned to my official friend
+Pangloss) because these men had claimed to be discharged, when their
+right to be discharged was not admitted.&nbsp; They had behaved with
+unblemished fidelity and bravery; but, a change of circumstances had
+arisen, which, as they considered, put an end to their compact and entitled
+them to enter on a new one.&nbsp; Their demand had been blunderingly
+resisted by the authorities in India: but, it is to be presumed that
+the men were not far wrong, inasmuch as the bungle had ended in their
+being sent home discharged, in pursuance of orders from home.&nbsp;
+(There was an immense waste of money, of course.)</p>
+<p>Under these circumstances&mdash;thought I, as I walked up the hill,
+on which I accidentally encountered my official friend&mdash;under these
+circumstances of the men having successfully opposed themselves to the
+Pagoda Department of that great Circumlocution Office on which the sun
+never sets and the light of reason never rises, the Pagoda Department
+will have been particularly careful of the national honour.&nbsp; It
+will have shown these men, in the scrupulous good faith, not to say
+the generosity, of its dealing with them, that great national authorities
+can have no small retaliations and revenges.&nbsp; It will have made
+every provision for their health on the passage home, and will have
+landed them, restored from their campaigning fatigues by a sea-voyage,
+pure air, sound food, and good medicines.&nbsp; And I pleased myself
+with dwelling beforehand, on the great accounts of their personal treatment
+which these men would carry into their various towns and villages, and
+on the increasing popularity of the service that would insensibly follow.&nbsp;
+I almost began to hope that the hitherto-never-failing deserters on
+my railroad would by-and-by become a phenomenon.</p>
+<p>In this agreeable frame of mind I entered the workhouse of Liverpool.&mdash;For,
+the cultivation of laurels in a sandy soil, had brought the soldiers
+in question to <i>that</i> abode of Glory.</p>
+<p>Before going into their wards to visit them, I inquired how they
+had made their triumphant entry there?&nbsp; They had been brought through
+the rain in carts it seemed, from the landing-place to the gate, and
+had then been carried up-stairs on the backs of paupers.&nbsp; Their
+groans and pains during the performance of this glorious pageant, had
+been so distressing, as to bring tears into the eyes of spectators but
+too well accustomed to scenes of suffering.&nbsp; The men were so dreadfully
+cold, that those who could get near the fires were hard to be restrained
+from thrusting their feet in among the blazing coals.&nbsp; They were
+so horribly reduced, that they were awful to look upon.&nbsp; Racked
+with dysentery and blackened with scurvy, one hundred and forty wretched
+soldiers had been revived with brandy and laid in bed.</p>
+<p>My official friend Pangloss is lineally descended from a learned
+doctor of that name, who was once tutor to Candide, an ingenious young
+gentleman of some celebrity.&nbsp; In his personal character, he is
+as humane and worthy a gentleman as any I know; in his official capacity,
+he unfortunately preaches the doctrines of his renowned ancestor, by
+demonstrating on all occasions that we live in the best of all possible
+official worlds.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;In the name of Humanity,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;how did the
+men fall into this deplorable state?&nbsp; Was the ship well found in
+stores?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am not here to asseverate that I know the fact, of my own
+knowledge,&rsquo; answered Pangloss, &lsquo;but I have grounds for asserting
+that the stores were the best of all possible stores.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A medical officer laid before us, a handful of rotten biscuit, and
+a handful of split peas.&nbsp; The biscuit was a honeycombed heap of
+maggots, and the excrement of maggots.&nbsp; The peas were even harder
+than this filth.&nbsp; A similar handful had been experimentally boiled
+six hours, and had shown no signs of softening.&nbsp; These were the
+stores on which the soldiers had been fed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The beef&mdash;&rsquo; I began, when Pangloss cut me short.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Was the best of all possible beef,&rsquo; said he.</p>
+<p>But, behold, there was laid before us certain evidence given at the
+Coroner&rsquo;s Inquest, holden on some of the men (who had obstinately
+died of their treatment), and from that evidence it appeared that the
+beef was the worst of possible beef!</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Then I lay my hand upon my heart, and take my stand,&rsquo;
+said Pangloss, &lsquo;by the pork, which was the best of all possible
+pork.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But look at this food before our eyes, if one may so misuse
+the word,&rsquo; said I.&nbsp; &lsquo;Would any Inspector who did his
+duty, pass such abomination?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It ought not to have been passed,&rsquo; Pangloss admitted.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Then the authorities out there&mdash;&rsquo; I began, when
+Pangloss cut me short again.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There would certainly seem to have been something wrong somewhere,&rsquo;
+said he; &lsquo;but I am prepared to prove that the authorities out
+there, are the best of all possible authorities.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I never heard of any impeached public authority in my life, who was
+not the best public authority in existence.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;We are told of these unfortunate men being laid low by scurvy,&rsquo;
+said I.&nbsp; &lsquo;Since lime-juice has been regularly stored and
+served out in our navy, surely that disease, which used to devastate
+it, has almost disappeared?&nbsp; Was there lime-juice aboard this transport?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>My official friend was beginning &lsquo;the best of all possible&mdash;&rsquo;
+when an inconvenient medical forefinger pointed out another passage
+in the evidence, from which it appeared that the lime-juice had been
+bad too.&nbsp; Not to mention that the vinegar had been bad too, the
+vegetables bad too, the cooking accommodation insufficient (if there
+had been anything worth mentioning to cook), the water supply exceedingly
+inadequate, and the beer sour.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Then the men,&rsquo; said Pangloss, a little irritated, &lsquo;Were
+the worst of all possible men.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;In what respect?&rsquo; I asked.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh!&nbsp; Habitual drunkards,&rsquo; said Pangloss.</p>
+<p>But, again the same incorrigible medical forefinger pointed out another
+passage in the evidence, showing that the dead men had been examined
+after death, and that they, at least, could not possibly have been habitual
+drunkards, because the organs within them which must have shown traces
+of that habit, were perfectly sound.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And besides,&rsquo; said the three doctors present, &lsquo;one
+and all, habitual drunkards brought as low as these men have been, could
+not recover under care and food, as the great majority of these men
+are recovering.&nbsp; They would not have strength of constitution to
+do it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Reckless and improvident dogs, then,&rsquo; said Pangloss.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Always are&mdash;nine times out of ten.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I turned to the master of the workhouse, and asked him whether the
+men had any money?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Money?&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;I have in my iron safe,
+nearly four hundred pounds of theirs; the agents have nearly a hundred
+pounds more and many of them have left money in Indian banks besides.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Hah!&rsquo; said I to myself, as we went up-stairs, &lsquo;this
+is not the best of all possible stories, I doubt!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>We went into a large ward, containing some twenty or five-and-twenty
+beds.&nbsp; We went into several such wards, one after another.&nbsp;
+I find it very difficult to indicate what a shocking sight I saw in
+them, without frightening the reader from the perusal of these lines,
+and defeating my object of making it known.</p>
+<p>O the sunken eyes that turned to me as I walked between the rows
+of beds, or&mdash;worse still&mdash;that glazedly looked at the white
+ceiling, and saw nothing and cared for nothing!&nbsp; Here, lay the
+skeleton of a man, so lightly covered with a thin unwholesome skin,
+that not a bone in the anatomy was clothed, and I could clasp the arm
+above the elbow, in my finger and thumb.&nbsp; Here, lay a man with
+the black scurvy eating his legs away, his gums gone, and his teeth
+all gaunt and bare.&nbsp; This bed was empty, because gangrene had set
+in, and the patient had died but yesterday.&nbsp; That bed was a hopeless
+one, because its occupant was sinking fast, and could only be roused
+to turn the poor pinched mask of face upon the pillow, with a feeble
+moan.&nbsp; The awful thinness of the fallen cheeks, the awful brightness
+of the deep set eyes, the lips of lead, the hands of ivory, the recumbent
+human images lying in the shadow of death with a kind of solemn twilight
+on them, like the sixty who had died aboard the ship and were lying
+at the bottom of the sea, O Pangloss, GOD forgive you!</p>
+<p>In one bed, lay a man whose life had been saved (as it was hoped)
+by deep incisions in the feet and legs.&nbsp; While I was speaking to
+him, a nurse came up to change the poultices which this operation had
+rendered necessary, and I had an instinctive feeling that it was not
+well to turn away, merely to spare myself.&nbsp; He was sorely wasted
+and keenly susceptible, but the efforts he made to subdue any expression
+of impatience or suffering, were quite heroic.&nbsp; It was easy to
+see, in the shrinking of the figure, and the drawing of the bed-clothes
+over the head, how acute the endurance was, and it made me shrink too,
+as if I were in pain; but, when the new bandages were on, and the poor
+feet were composed again, he made an apology for himself (though he
+had not uttered a word), and said plaintively, &lsquo;I am so tender
+and weak, you see, sir!&rsquo;&nbsp; Neither from him nor from any one
+sufferer of the whole ghastly number, did I hear a complaint.&nbsp;
+Of thankfulness for present solicitude and care, I heard much; of complaint,
+not a word.</p>
+<p>I think I could have recognised in the dismalest skeleton there,
+the ghost of a soldier.&nbsp; Something of the old air was still latent
+in the palest shadow of life I talked to.&nbsp; One emaciated creature,
+in the strictest literality worn to the bone, lay stretched on his back,
+looking so like death that I asked one of the doctors if he were not
+dying, or dead?&nbsp; A few kind words from the doctor, in his ear,
+and he opened his eyes, and smiled&mdash;looked, in a moment, as if
+he would have made a salute, if he could.&nbsp; &lsquo;We shall pull
+him through, please God,&rsquo; said the Doctor.&nbsp; &lsquo;Plase
+God, surr, and thankye,&rsquo; said the patient.&nbsp; &lsquo;You are
+much better to-day; are you not?&rsquo; said the Doctor.&nbsp; &lsquo;Plase
+God, surr; &rsquo;tis the slape I want, surr; &rsquo;tis my breathin&rsquo;
+makes the nights so long.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;He is a careful fellow
+this, you must know,&rsquo; said the Doctor, cheerfully; &lsquo;it was
+raining hard when they put him in the open cart to bring him here, and
+he had the presence of mind to ask to have a sovereign taken out of
+his pocket that he had there, and a cab engaged.&nbsp; Probably it saved
+his life.&rsquo;&nbsp; The patient rattled out the skeleton of a laugh,
+and said, proud of the story, &lsquo;&rsquo;Deed, surr, an open cairt
+was a comical means o&rsquo; bringin&rsquo; a dyin&rsquo; man here,
+and a clever way to kill him.&rsquo;&nbsp; You might have sworn to him
+for a soldier when he said it.</p>
+<p>One thing had perplexed me very much in going from bed to bed.&nbsp;
+A very significant and cruel thing.&nbsp; I could find no young man
+but one.&nbsp; He had attracted my notice, by having got up and dressed
+himself in his soldier&rsquo;s jacket and trousers, with the intention
+of sitting by the fire; but he had found himself too weak, and had crept
+back to his bed and laid himself down on the outside of it.&nbsp; I
+could have pronounced him, alone, to be a young man aged by famine and
+sickness.&nbsp; As we were standing by the Irish soldier&rsquo;s bed,
+I mentioned my perplexity to the Doctor.&nbsp; He took a board with
+an inscription on it from the head of the Irishman&rsquo;s bed, and
+asked me what age I supposed that man to be?&nbsp; I had observed him
+with attention while talking to him, and answered, confidently, &lsquo;Fifty.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+The Doctor, with a pitying glance at the patient, who had dropped into
+a stupor again, put the board back, and said, &lsquo;Twenty-four.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>All the arrangements of the wards were excellent.&nbsp; They could
+not have been more humane, sympathising, gentle, attentive, or wholesome.&nbsp;
+The owners of the ship, too, had done all they could, liberally.&nbsp;
+There were bright fires in every room, and the convalescent men were
+sitting round them, reading various papers and periodicals.&nbsp; I
+took the liberty of inviting my official friend Pangloss to look at
+those convalescent men, and to tell me whether their faces and bearing
+were or were not, generally, the faces and bearing of steady respectable
+soldiers?&nbsp; The master of the workhouse, overhearing me, said he
+had had a pretty large experience of troops, and that better conducted
+men than these, he had never had to do with.&nbsp; They were always
+(he added) as we saw them.&nbsp; And of us visitors (I add) they knew
+nothing whatever, except that we were there.</p>
+<p>It was audacious in me, but I took another liberty with Pangloss.&nbsp;
+Prefacing it with the observation that, of course, I knew beforehand
+that there was not the faintest desire, anywhere, to hush up any part
+of this dreadful business, and that the Inquest was the fairest of all
+possible Inquests, I besought four things of Pangloss.&nbsp; Firstly,
+to observe that the Inquest <i>was not held in that place</i>, but at
+some distance off.&nbsp; Secondly, to look round upon those helpless
+spectres in their beds.&nbsp; Thirdly, to remember that the witnesses
+produced from among them before that Inquest, could not have been selected
+because they were the men who had the most to tell it, but because they
+happened to be in a state admitting of their safe removal.&nbsp; Fourthly,
+to say whether the coroner and jury could have come there, to those
+pillows, and taken a little evidence?&nbsp; My official friend declined
+to commit himself to a reply.</p>
+<p>There was a sergeant, reading, in one of the fireside groups.&nbsp;
+As he was a man of very intelligent countenance, and as I have a great
+respect for non-commissioned officers as a class, I sat down on the
+nearest bed, to have some talk with him.&nbsp; (It was the bed of one
+of the grisliest of the poor skeletons, and he died soon afterwards.)</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I was glad to see, in the evidence of an officer at the Inquest,
+sergeant, that he never saw men behave better on board ship than these
+men.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;They did behave very well, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I was glad to see, too, that every man had a hammock.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+The sergeant gravely shook his head.&nbsp; &lsquo;There must be some
+mistake, sir.&nbsp; The men of my own mess had no hammocks.&nbsp; There
+were not hammocks enough on board, and the men of the two next messes
+laid hold of hammocks for themselves as soon as they got on board, and
+squeezed my men out, as I may say.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Had the squeezed-out men none then?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;None, sir.&nbsp; As men died, their hammocks were used by
+other men, who wanted hammocks; but many men had none at all.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Then you don&rsquo;t agree with the evidence on that point?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Certainly not, sir.&nbsp; A man can&rsquo;t, when he knows
+to the contrary.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Did any of the men sell their bedding for drink?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There is some mistake on that point too, sir.&nbsp; Men were
+under the impression&mdash;I knew it for a fact at the time&mdash;that
+it was not allowed to take blankets or bedding on board, and so men
+who had things of that sort came to sell them purposely.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Did any of the men sell their clothes for drink?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;They did, sir.&rsquo;&nbsp; (I believe there never was a more
+truthful witness than the sergeant.&nbsp; He had no inclination to make
+out a case.)</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Many?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Some, sir&rsquo; (considering the question).&nbsp; &lsquo;Soldier-like.&nbsp;
+They had been long marching in the rainy season, by bad roads&mdash;no
+roads at all, in short&mdash;and when they got to Calcutta, men turned
+to and drank, before taking a last look at it.&nbsp; Soldier-like.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do you see any men in this ward, for example, who sold clothes
+for drink at that time?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The sergeant&rsquo;s wan eye, happily just beginning to rekindle
+with health, travelled round the place and came back to me.&nbsp; &lsquo;Certainly,
+sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The marching to Calcutta in the rainy season must have been
+severe?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It was very severe, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yet what with the rest and the sea air, I should have thought
+that the men (even the men who got drunk) would have soon begun to recover
+on board ship?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;So they might; but the bad food told upon them, and when we
+got into a cold latitude, it began to tell more, and the men dropped.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The sick had a general disinclination for food, I am told,
+sergeant?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Have you seen the food, sir?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Some of it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Have you seen the state of their mouths, sir?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>If the sergeant, who was a man of a few orderly words, had spoken
+the amount of this volume, he could not have settled that question better.&nbsp;
+I believe the sick could as soon have eaten the ship, as the ship&rsquo;s
+provisions.</p>
+<p>I took the additional liberty with my friend Pangloss, when I had
+left the sergeant with good wishes, of asking Pangloss whether he had
+ever heard of biscuit getting drunk and bartering its nutritious qualities
+for putrefaction and vermin; of peas becoming hardened in liquor; of
+hammocks drinking themselves off the face of the earth; of lime-juice,
+vegetables, vinegar, cooking accommodation, water supply, and beer,
+all taking to drinking together and going to ruin?&nbsp; &lsquo;If not
+(I asked him), what did he say in defence of the officers condemned
+by the Coroner&rsquo;s jury, who, by signing the General Inspection
+report relative to the ship Great Tasmania, chartered for these troops,
+had deliberately asserted all that bad and poisonous dunghill refuse,
+to be good and wholesome food?&rsquo;&nbsp; My official friend replied
+that it was a remarkable fact, that whereas some officers were only
+positively good, and other officers only comparatively better, those
+particular officers were superlatively the very best of all possible
+officers.</p>
+<p>My hand and my heart fail me, in writing my record of this journey.&nbsp;
+The spectacle of the soldiers in the hospital-beds of that Liverpool
+workhouse (a very good workhouse, indeed, be it understood), was so
+shocking and so shameful, that as an Englishman I blush to remember
+it.&nbsp; It would have been simply unbearable at the time, but for
+the consideration and pity with which they were soothed in their sufferings.</p>
+<p>No punishment that our inefficient laws provide, is worthy of the
+name when set against the guilt of this transaction.&nbsp; But, if the
+memory of it die out unavenged, and if it do not result in the inexorable
+dismissal and disgrace of those who are responsible for it, their escape
+will be infamous to the Government (no matter of what party) that so
+neglects its duty, and infamous to the nation that tamely suffers such
+intolerable wrong to be done in its name.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX&mdash;CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>If the confession that I have often travelled from this Covent Garden
+lodging of mine on Sundays, should give offence to those who never travel
+on Sundays, they will be satisfied (I hope) by my adding that the journeys
+in question were made to churches.</p>
+<p>Not that I have any curiosity to hear powerful preachers.&nbsp; Time
+was, when I was dragged by the hair of my head, as one may say, to hear
+too many.&nbsp; On summer evenings, when every flower, and tree, and
+bird, might have better addressed my soft young heart, I have in my
+day been caught in the palm of a female hand by the crown, have been
+violently scrubbed from the neck to the roots of the hair as a purification
+for the Temple, and have then been carried off highly charged with saponaceous
+electricity, to be steamed like a potato in the unventilated breath
+of the powerful Boanerges Boiler and his congregation, until what small
+mind I had, was quite steamed out of me.&nbsp; In which pitiable plight
+I have been haled out of the place of meeting, at the conclusion of
+the exercises, and catechised respecting Boanerges Boiler, his fifthly,
+his sixthly, and his seventhly, until I have regarded that reverend
+person in the light of a most dismal and oppressive Charade.&nbsp; Time
+was, when I was carried off to platform assemblages at which no human
+child, whether of wrath or grace, could possibly keep its eyes open,
+and when I felt the fatal sleep stealing, stealing over me, and when
+I gradually heard the orator in possession, spinning and humming like
+a great top, until he rolled, collapsed, and tumbled over, and I discovered
+to my burning shame and fear, that as to that last stage it was not
+he, but I.&nbsp; I have sat under Boanerges when he has specifically
+addressed himself to us&mdash;us, the infants&mdash;and at this present
+writing I hear his lumbering jocularity (which never amused us, though
+we basely pretended that it did), and I behold his big round face, and
+I look up the inside of his outstretched coat-sleeve as if it were a
+telescope with the stopper on, and I hate him with an unwholesome hatred
+for two hours.&nbsp; Through such means did it come to pass that I knew
+the powerful preacher from beginning to end, all over and all through,
+while I was very young, and that I left him behind at an early period
+of life.&nbsp; Peace be with him!&nbsp; More peace than he brought to
+me!</p>
+<p>Now, I have heard many preachers since that time&mdash;not powerful;
+merely Christian, unaffected, and reverential&mdash;and I have had many
+such preachers on my roll of friends.&nbsp; But, it was not to hear
+these, any more than the powerful class, that I made my Sunday journeys.&nbsp;
+They were journeys of curiosity to the numerous churches in the City
+of London.&nbsp; It came into my head one day, here had I been cultivating
+a familiarity with all the churches of Rome, and I knew nothing of the
+insides of the old churches of London!&nbsp; This befell on a Sunday
+morning.&nbsp; I began my expeditions that very same day, and they lasted
+me a year.</p>
+<p>I never wanted to know the names of the churches to which I went,
+and to this hour I am profoundly ignorant in that particular of at least
+nine-tenths of them.&nbsp; Indeed, saying that I know the church of
+old GOWER&rsquo;S tomb (he lies in effigy with his head upon his books)
+to be the church of Saint Saviour&rsquo;s, Southwark; and the church
+of MILTON&rsquo;S tomb to be the church of Cripplegate; and the church
+on Cornhill with the great golden keys to be the church of Saint Peter;
+I doubt if I could pass a competitive examination in any of the names.&nbsp;
+No question did I ever ask of living creature concerning these churches,
+and no answer to any antiquarian question on the subject that I ever
+put to books, shall harass the reader&rsquo;s soul.&nbsp; A full half
+of my pleasure in them arose out of their mystery; mysterious I found
+them; mysterious they shall remain for me.</p>
+<p>Where shall I begin my round of hidden and forgotten old churches
+in the City of London?</p>
+<p>It is twenty minutes short of eleven on a Sunday morning, when I
+stroll down one of the many narrow hilly streets in the City that tend
+due south to the Thames.&nbsp; It is my first experiment, and I have
+come to the region of Whittington in an omnibus, and we have put down
+a fierce-eyed, spare old woman, whose slate-coloured gown smells of
+herbs, and who walked up Aldersgate-street to some chapel where she
+comforts herself with brimstone doctrine, I warrant.&nbsp; We have also
+put down a stouter and sweeter old lady, with a pretty large prayer-book
+in an unfolded pocket-handkerchief, who got out at a corner of a court
+near Stationers&rsquo; Hall, and who I think must go to church there,
+because she is the widow of some deceased old Company&rsquo;s Beadle.&nbsp;
+The rest of our freight were mere chance pleasure-seekers and rural
+walkers, and went on to the Blackwall railway.&nbsp; So many bells are
+ringing, when I stand undecided at a street corner, that every sheep
+in the ecclesiastical fold might be a bell-wether.&nbsp; The discordance
+is fearful.&nbsp; My state of indecision is referable to, and about
+equally divisible among, four great churches, which are all within sight
+and sound, all within the space of a few square yards.</p>
+<p>As I stand at the street corner, I don&rsquo;t see as many as four
+people at once going to church, though I see as many as four churches
+with their steeples clamouring for people.&nbsp; I choose my church,
+and go up the flight of steps to the great entrance in the tower.&nbsp;
+A mouldy tower within, and like a neglected washhouse.&nbsp; A rope
+comes through the beamed roof, and a man in the corner pulls it and
+clashes the bell&mdash;a whity-brown man, whose clothes were once black&mdash;a
+man with flue on him, and cobweb.&nbsp; He stares at me, wondering how
+I come there, and I stare at him, wondering how he comes there.&nbsp;
+Through a screen of wood and glass, I peep into the dim church.&nbsp;
+About twenty people are discernible, waiting to begin.&nbsp; Christening
+would seem to have faded out of this church long ago, for the font has
+the dust of desuetude thick upon it, and its wooden cover (shaped like
+an old-fashioned tureen-cover) looks as if it wouldn&rsquo;t come off,
+upon requirement.&nbsp; I perceive the altar to be rickety and the Commandments
+damp.&nbsp; Entering after this survey, I jostle the clergyman in his
+canonicals, who is entering too from a dark lane behind a pew of state
+with curtains, where nobody sits.&nbsp; The pew is ornamented with four
+blue wands, once carried by four somebodys, I suppose, before somebody
+else, but which there is nobody now to hold or receive honour from.&nbsp;
+I open the door of a family pew, and shut myself in; if I could occupy
+twenty family pews at once I might have them.&nbsp; The clerk, a brisk
+young man (how does <i>he</i> come here?), glances at me knowingly,
+as who should say, &lsquo;You have done it now; you must stop.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Organ plays.&nbsp; Organ-loft is in a small gallery across the church;
+gallery congregation, two girls.&nbsp; I wonder within myself what will
+happen when we are required to sing.</p>
+<p>There is a pale heap of books in the corner of my pew, and while
+the organ, which is hoarse and sleepy, plays in such fashion that I
+can hear more of the rusty working of the stops than of any music, I
+look at the books, which are mostly bound in faded baize and stuff.&nbsp;
+They belonged in 1754, to the Dowgate family; and who were they?&nbsp;
+Jane Comport must have married Young Dowgate, and come into the family
+that way; Young Dowgate was courting Jane Comport when he gave her her
+prayer-book, and recorded the presentation in the fly-leaf; if Jane
+were fond of Young Dowgate, why did she die and leave the book here?&nbsp;
+Perhaps at the rickety altar, and before the damp Commandments, she,
+Comport, had taken him, Dowgate, in a flush of youthful hope and joy,
+and perhaps it had not turned out in the long run as great a success
+as was expected?</p>
+<p>The opening of the service recalls my wandering thoughts.&nbsp; I
+then find, to my astonishment, that I have been, and still am, taking
+a strong kind of invisible snuff, up my nose, into my eyes, and down
+my throat.&nbsp; I wink, sneeze, and cough.&nbsp; The clerk sneezes;
+the clergyman winks; the unseen organist sneezes and coughs (and probably
+winks); all our little party wink, sneeze, and cough.&nbsp; The snuff
+seems to be made of the decay of matting, wood, cloth, stone, iron,
+earth, and something else.&nbsp; Is the something else, the decay of
+dead citizens in the vaults below?&nbsp; As sure as Death it is!&nbsp;
+Not only in the cold, damp February day, do we cough and sneeze dead
+citizens, all through the service, but dead citizens have got into the
+very bellows of the organ, and half choked the same.&nbsp; We stamp
+our feet to warm them, and dead citizens arise in heavy clouds.&nbsp;
+Dead citizens stick upon the walls, and lie pulverised on the sounding-board
+over the clergyman&rsquo;s head, and, when a gust of air comes, tumble
+down upon him.</p>
+<p>In this first experience I was so nauseated by too much snuff, made
+of the Dowgate family, the Comport branch, and other families and branches,
+that I gave but little heed to our dull manner of ambling through the
+service; to the brisk clerk&rsquo;s manner of encouraging us to try
+a note or two at psalm time; to the gallery-congregation&rsquo;s manner
+of enjoying a shrill duet, without a notion of time or tune; to the
+whity-brown man&rsquo;s manner of shutting the minister into the pulpit,
+and being very particular with the lock of the door, as if he were a
+dangerous animal.&nbsp; But, I tried again next Sunday, and soon accustomed
+myself to the dead citizens when I found that I could not possibly get
+on without them among the City churches.</p>
+<p>Another Sunday.</p>
+<p>After being again rung for by conflicting bells, like a leg of mutton
+or a laced hat a hundred years ago, I make selection of a church oddly
+put away in a corner among a number of lanes&mdash;a smaller church
+than the last, and an ugly: of about the date of Queen Anne.&nbsp; As
+a congregation, we are fourteen strong: not counting an exhausted charity
+school in a gallery, which has dwindled away to four boys, and two girls.&nbsp;
+In the porch, is a benefaction of loaves of bread, which there would
+seem to be nobody left in the exhausted congregation to claim, and which
+I saw an exhausted beadle, long faded out of uniform, eating with his
+eyes for self and family when I passed in.&nbsp; There is also an exhausted
+clerk in a brown wig, and two or three exhausted doors and windows have
+been bricked up, and the service books are musty, and the pulpit cushions
+are threadbare, and the whole of the church furniture is in a very advanced
+stage of exhaustion.&nbsp; We are three old women (habitual), two young
+lovers (accidental), two tradesmen, one with a wife and one alone, an
+aunt and nephew, again two girls (these two girls dressed out for church
+with everything about them limp that should be stiff, and <i>vice vers&acirc;</i>,
+are an invariable experience), and three sniggering boys.&nbsp; The
+clergyman is, perhaps, the chaplain of a civic company; he has the moist
+and vinous look, and eke the bulbous boots, of one acquainted with &lsquo;Twenty
+port, and comet vintages.</p>
+<p>We are so quiet in our dulness that the three sniggering boys, who
+have got away into a corner by the altar-railing, give us a start, like
+crackers, whenever they laugh.&nbsp; And this reminds me of my own village
+church where, during sermon-time on bright Sundays when the birds are
+very musical indeed, farmers&rsquo; boys patter out over the stone pavement,
+and the clerk steps out from his desk after them, and is distinctly
+heard in the summer repose to pursue and punch them in the churchyard,
+and is seen to return with a meditative countenance, making believe
+that nothing of the sort has happened.&nbsp; The aunt and nephew in
+this City church are much disturbed by the sniggering boys.&nbsp; The
+nephew is himself a boy, and the sniggerers tempt him to secular thoughts
+of marbles and string, by secretly offering such commodities to his
+distant contemplation.&nbsp; This young Saint Anthony for a while resists,
+but presently becomes a backslider, and in dumb show defies the sniggerers
+to &lsquo;heave&rsquo; a marble or two in his direction.&nbsp; Here
+in he is detected by the aunt (a rigorous reduced gentlewoman who has
+the charge of offices), and I perceive that worthy relative to poke
+him in the side, with the corrugated hooked handle of an ancient umbrella.&nbsp;
+The nephew revenges himself for this, by holding his breath and terrifying
+his kinswoman with the dread belief that he has made up his mind to
+burst.&nbsp; Regardless of whispers and shakes, he swells and becomes
+discoloured, and yet again swells and becomes discoloured, until the
+aunt can bear it no longer, but leads him out, with no visible neck,
+and with his eyes going before him like a prawn&rsquo;s.&nbsp; This
+causes the sniggerers to regard flight as an eligible move, and I know
+which of them will go out first, because of the over-devout attention
+that he suddenly concentrates on the clergyman.&nbsp; In a little while,
+this hypocrite, with an elaborate demonstration of hushing his footsteps,
+and with a face generally expressive of having until now forgotten a
+religious appointment elsewhere, is gone.&nbsp; Number two gets out
+in the same way, but rather quicker.&nbsp; Number three getting safely
+to the door, there turns reckless, and banging it open, flies forth
+with a Whoop! that vibrates to the top of the tower above us.</p>
+<p>The clergyman, who is of a prandial presence and a muffled voice,
+may be scant of hearing as well as of breath, but he only glances up,
+as having an idea that somebody has said Amen in a wrong place, and
+continues his steady jog-trot, like a farmer&rsquo;s wife going to market.&nbsp;
+He does all he has to do, in the same easy way, and gives us a concise
+sermon, still like the jog-trot of the farmer&rsquo;s wife on a level
+road.&nbsp; Its drowsy cadence soon lulls the three old women asleep,
+and the unmarried tradesman sits looking out at window, and the married
+tradesman sits looking at his wife&rsquo;s bonnet, and the lovers sit
+looking at one another, so superlatively happy, that I mind when I,
+turned of eighteen, went with my Angelica to a City church on account
+of a shower (by this special coincidence that it was in Huggin-lane),
+and when I said to my Angelica, &lsquo;Let the blessed event, Angelica,
+occur at no altar but this!&rsquo; and when my Angelica consented that
+it should occur at no other&mdash;which it certainly never did, for
+it never occurred anywhere.&nbsp; And O, Angelica, what has become of
+you, this present Sunday morning when I can&rsquo;t attend to the sermon;
+and, more difficult question than that, what has become of Me as I was
+when I sat by your side!</p>
+<p>But, we receive the signal to make that unanimous dive which surely
+is a little conventional&mdash;like the strange rustlings and settlings
+and clearings of throats and noses, which are never dispensed with,
+at certain points of the Church service, and are never held to be necessary
+under any other circumstances.&nbsp; In a minute more it is all over,
+and the organ expresses itself to be as glad of it as it can be of anything
+in its rheumatic state, and in another minute we are all of us out of
+the church, and Whity-brown has locked it up.&nbsp; Another minute or
+little more, and, in the neighbouring churchyard&mdash;not the yard
+of that church, but of another&mdash;a churchyard like a great shabby
+old mignonette box, with two trees in it and one tomb&mdash;I meet Whity-brown,
+in his private capacity, fetching a pint of beer for his dinner from
+the public-house in the corner, where the keys of the rotting fire-ladders
+are kept and were never asked for, and where there is a ragged, white-seamed,
+out-at-elbowed bagatelle board on the first floor.</p>
+<p>In one of these City churches, and only in one, I found an individual
+who might have been claimed as expressly a City personage.&nbsp; I remember
+the church, by the feature that the clergyman couldn&rsquo;t get to
+his own desk without going through the clerk&rsquo;s, or couldn&rsquo;t
+get to the pulpit without going through the reading-desk&mdash;I forget
+which, and it is no matter&mdash;and by the presence of this personage
+among the exceedingly sparse congregation.&nbsp; I doubt if we were
+a dozen, and we had no exhausted charity school to help us out.&nbsp;
+The personage was dressed in black of square cut, and was stricken in
+years, and wore a black velvet cap, and cloth shoes.&nbsp; He was of
+a staid, wealthy, and dissatisfied aspect.&nbsp; In his hand, he conducted
+to church a mysterious child: a child of the feminine gender.&nbsp;
+The child had a beaver hat, with a stiff drab plume that surely never
+belonged to any bird of the air.&nbsp; The child was further attired
+in a nankeen frock and spencer, brown boxing-gloves, and a veil.&nbsp;
+It had a blemish, in the nature of currant jelly, on its chin; and was
+a thirsty child.&nbsp; Insomuch that the personage carried in his pocket
+a green bottle, from which, when the first psalm was given out, the
+child was openly refreshed.&nbsp; At all other times throughout the
+service it was motionless, and stood on the seat of the large pew, closely
+fitted into the corner, like a rain-water pipe.</p>
+<p>The personage never opened his book, and never looked at the clergyman.&nbsp;
+He never sat down either, but stood with his arms leaning on the top
+of the pew, and his forehead sometimes shaded with his right hand, always
+looking at the church door.&nbsp; It was a long church for a church
+of its size, and he was at the upper end, but he always looked at the
+door.&nbsp; That he was an old bookkeeper, or an old trader who had
+kept his own books, and that he might be seen at the Bank of England
+about Dividend times, no doubt.&nbsp; That he had lived in the City
+all his life and was disdainful of other localities, no doubt.&nbsp;
+Why he looked at the door, I never absolutely proved, but it is my belief
+that he lived in expectation of the time when the citizens would come
+back to live in the City, and its ancient glories would be renewed.&nbsp;
+He appeared to expect that this would occur on a Sunday, and that the
+wanderers would first appear, in the deserted churches, penitent and
+humbled.&nbsp; Hence, he looked at the door which they never darkened.&nbsp;
+Whose child the child was, whether the child of a disinherited daughter,
+or some parish orphan whom the personage had adopted, there was nothing
+to lead up to.&nbsp; It never played, or skipped, or smiled.&nbsp; Once,
+the idea occurred to me that it was an automaton, and that the personage
+had made it; but following the strange couple out one Sunday, I heard
+the personage say to it, &lsquo;Thirteen thousand pounds;&rsquo; to
+which it added in a weak human voice, &lsquo;Seventeen and fourpence.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Four Sundays I followed them out, and this is all I ever heard or saw
+them say.&nbsp; One Sunday, I followed them home.&nbsp; They lived behind
+a pump, and the personage opened their abode with an exceeding large
+key.&nbsp; The one solitary inscription on their house related to a
+fire-plug.&nbsp; The house was partly undermined by a deserted and closed
+gateway; its windows were blind with dirt; and it stood with its face
+disconsolately turned to a wall.&nbsp; Five great churches and two small
+ones rang their Sunday bells between this house and the church the couple
+frequented, so they must have had some special reason for going a quarter
+of a mile to it.&nbsp; The last time I saw them, was on this wise.&nbsp;
+I had been to explore another church at a distance, and happened to
+pass the church they frequented, at about two of the afternoon when
+that edifice was closed.&nbsp; But, a little side-door, which I had
+never observed before, stood open, and disclosed certain cellarous steps.&nbsp;
+Methought &lsquo;They are airing the vaults to-day,&rsquo; when the
+personage and the child silently arrived at the steps, and silently
+descended.&nbsp; Of course, I came to the conclusion that the personage
+had at last despaired of the looked-for return of the penitent citizens,
+and that he and the child went down to get themselves buried.</p>
+<p>In the course of my pilgrimages I came upon one obscure church which
+had broken out in the melodramatic style, and was got up with various
+tawdry decorations, much after the manner of the extinct London may-poles.&nbsp;
+These attractions had induced several young priests or deacons in black
+bibs for waistcoats, and several young ladies interested in that holy
+order (the proportion being, as I estimated, seventeen young ladies
+to a deacon), to come into the City as a new and odd excitement.&nbsp;
+It was wonderful to see how these young people played out their little
+play in the heart of the City, all among themselves, without the deserted
+City&rsquo;s knowing anything about it.&nbsp; It was as if you should
+take an empty counting-house on a Sunday, and act one of the old Mysteries
+there.&nbsp; They had impressed a small school (from what neighbourhood
+I don&rsquo;t know) to assist in the performances, and it was pleasant
+to notice frantic garlands of inscription on the walls, especially addressing
+those poor innocents in characters impossible for them to decipher.&nbsp;
+There was a remarkably agreeable smell of pomatum in this congregation.</p>
+<p>But, in other cases, rot and mildew and dead citizens formed the
+uppermost scent, while, infused into it in a dreamy way not at all displeasing,
+was the staple character of the neighbourhood.&nbsp; In the churches
+about Mark-lane, for example, there was a dry whiff of wheat; and I
+accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of an aged hassock
+in one of them.&nbsp; From Rood-lane to Tower-street, and thereabouts,
+there was often a subtle flavour of wine: sometimes, of tea.&nbsp; One
+church near Mincing-lane smelt like a druggist&rsquo;s drawer.&nbsp;
+Behind the Monument the service had a flavour of damaged oranges, which,
+a little further down towards the river, tempered into herrings, and
+gradually toned into a cosmopolitan blast of fish.&nbsp; In one church,
+the exact counterpart of the church in the Rake&rsquo;s Progress where
+the hero is being married to the horrible old lady, there was no speciality
+of atmosphere, until the organ shook a perfume of hides all over us
+from some adjacent warehouse.</p>
+<p>Be the scent what it would, however, there was no speciality in the
+people.&nbsp; There were never enough of them to represent any calling
+or neighbourhood.&nbsp; They had all gone elsewhere over-night, and
+the few stragglers in the many churches languished there inexpressively.</p>
+<p>Among the Uncommercial travels in which I have engaged, this year
+of Sunday travel occupies its own place, apart from all the rest.&nbsp;
+Whether I think of the church where the sails of the oyster-boats in
+the river almost flapped against the windows, or of the church where
+the railroad made the bells hum as the train rushed by above the roof,
+I recall a curious experience.&nbsp; On summer Sundays, in the gentle
+rain or the bright sunshine&mdash;either, deepening the idleness of
+the idle City&mdash;I have sat, in that singular silence which belongs
+to resting-places usually astir, in scores of buildings at the heart
+of the world&rsquo;s metropolis, unknown to far greater numbers of people
+speaking the English tongue, than the ancient edifices of the Eternal
+City, or the Pyramids of Egypt.&nbsp; The dark vestries and registries
+into which I have peeped, and the little hemmed-in churchyards that
+have echoed to my feet, have left impressions on my memory as distinct
+and quaint as any it has in that way received.&nbsp; In all those dusty
+registers that the worms are eating, there is not a line but made some
+hearts leap, or some tears flow, in their day.&nbsp; Still and dry now,
+still and dry! and the old tree at the window with no room for its branches,
+has seen them all out.&nbsp; So with the tomb of the old Master of the
+old Company, on which it drips.&nbsp; His son restored it and died,
+his daughter restored it and died, and then he had been remembered long
+enough, and the tree took possession of him, and his name cracked out.</p>
+<p>There are few more striking indications of the changes of manners
+and customs that two or three hundred years have brought about, than
+these deserted churches.&nbsp; Many of them are handsome and costly
+structures, several of them were designed by WREN, many of them arose
+from the ashes of the great fire, others of them outlived the plague
+and the fire too, to die a slow death in these later days.&nbsp; No
+one can be sure of the coming time; but it is not too much to say of
+it that it has no sign in its outsetting tides, of the reflux to these
+churches of their congregations and uses.&nbsp; They remain like the
+tombs of the old citizens who lie beneath them and around them, Monuments
+of another age.&nbsp; They are worth a Sunday-exploration, now and then,
+for they yet echo, not unharmoniously, to the time when the City of
+London really was London; when the &rsquo;Prentices and Trained Bands
+were of mark in the state; when even the Lord Mayor himself was a Reality&mdash;not
+a Fiction conventionally be-puffed on one day in the year by illustrious
+friends, who no less conventionally laugh at him on the remaining three
+hundred and sixty-four days.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER X&mdash;SHY NEIGHBOURHOODS</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>So much of my travelling is done on foot, that if I cherished betting
+propensities, I should probably be found registered in sporting newspapers
+under some such title as the Elastic Novice, challenging all eleven
+stone mankind to competition in walking.&nbsp; My last special feat
+was turning out of bed at two, after a hard day, pedestrian and otherwise,
+and walking thirty miles into the country to breakfast.&nbsp; The road
+was so lonely in the night, that I fell asleep to the monotonous sound
+of my own feet, doing their regular four miles an hour.&nbsp; Mile after
+mile I walked, without the slightest sense of exertion, dozing heavily
+and dreaming constantly.&nbsp; It was only when I made a stumble like
+a drunken man, or struck out into the road to avoid a horseman close
+upon me on the path&mdash;who had no existence&mdash;that I came to
+myself and looked about.&nbsp; The day broke mistily (it was autumn
+time), and I could not disembarrass myself of the idea that I had to
+climb those heights and banks of cloud, and that there was an Alpine
+Convent somewhere behind the sun, where I was going to breakfast.&nbsp;
+This sleepy notion was so much stronger than such substantial objects
+as villages and haystacks, that, after the sun was up and bright, and
+when I was sufficiently awake to have a sense of pleasure in the prospect,
+I still occasionally caught myself looking about for wooden arms to
+point the right track up the mountain, and wondering there was no snow
+yet.&nbsp; It is a curiosity of broken sleep that I made immense quantities
+of verses on that pedestrian occasion (of course I never make any when
+I am in my right senses), and that I spoke a certain language once pretty
+familiar to me, but which I have nearly forgotten from disuse, with
+fluency.&nbsp; Of both these phenomena I have such frequent experience
+in the state between sleeping and waking, that I sometimes argue with
+myself that I know I cannot be awake, for, if I were, I should not be
+half so ready.&nbsp; The readiness is not imaginary, because I often
+recall long strings of the verses, and many turns of the fluent speech,
+after I am broad awake.</p>
+<p>My walking is of two kinds: one, straight on end to a definite goal
+at a round pace; one, objectless, loitering, and purely vagabond.&nbsp;
+In the latter state, no gipsy on earth is a greater vagabond than myself;
+it is so natural to me, and strong with me, that I think I must be the
+descendant, at no great distance, of some irreclaimable tramp.</p>
+<p>One of the pleasantest things I have lately met with, in a vagabond
+course of shy metropolitan neighbourhoods and small shops, is the fancy
+of a humble artist, as exemplified in two portraits representing Mr.
+Thomas Sayers, of Great Britain, and Mr. John Heenan, of the United
+States of America.&nbsp; These illustrious men are highly coloured in
+fighting trim, and fighting attitude.&nbsp; To suggest the pastoral
+and meditative nature of their peaceful calling, Mr. Heenan is represented
+on emerald sward, with primroses and other modest flowers springing
+up under the heels of his half-boots; while Mr. Sayers is impelled to
+the administration of his favourite blow, the Auctioneer, by the silent
+eloquence of a village church.&nbsp; The humble homes of England, with
+their domestic virtues and honeysuckle porches, urge both heroes to
+go in and win; and the lark and other singing birds are observable in
+the upper air, ecstatically carolling their thanks to Heaven for a fight.&nbsp;
+On the whole, the associations entwined with the pugilistic art by this
+artist are much in the manner of Izaak Walton.</p>
+<p>But, it is with the lower animals of back streets and by-ways that
+my present purpose rests.&nbsp; For human notes we may return to such
+neighbourhoods when leisure and opportunity serve.</p>
+<p>Nothing in shy neighbourhoods perplexes my mind more, than the bad
+company birds keep.&nbsp; Foreign birds often get into good society,
+but British birds are inseparable from low associates.&nbsp; There is
+a whole street of them in St. Giles&rsquo;s; and I always find them
+in poor and immoral neighbourhoods, convenient to the public-house and
+the pawnbroker&rsquo;s.&nbsp; They seem to lead people into drinking,
+and even the man who makes their cages usually gets into a chronic state
+of black eye.&nbsp; Why is this?&nbsp; Also, they will do things for
+people in short-skirted velveteen coats with bone buttons, or in sleeved
+waistcoats and fur caps, which they cannot be persuaded by the respectable
+orders of society to undertake.&nbsp; In a dirty court in Spitalfields,
+once, I found a goldfinch drawing his own water, and drawing as much
+of it as if he were in a consuming fever.&nbsp; That goldfinch lived
+at a bird-shop, and offered, in writing, to barter himself against old
+clothes, empty bottles, or even kitchen stuff.&nbsp; Surely a low thing
+and a depraved taste in any finch!&nbsp; I bought that goldfinch for
+money.&nbsp; He was sent home, and hung upon a nail over against my
+table.&nbsp; He lived outside a counterfeit dwelling-house, supposed
+(as I argued) to be a dyer&rsquo;s; otherwise it would have been impossible
+to account for his perch sticking out of the garret window.&nbsp; From
+the time of his appearance in my room, either he left off being thirsty&mdash;which
+was not in the bond&mdash;or he could not make up his mind to hear his
+little bucket drop back into his well when he let it go: a shock which
+in the best of times had made him tremble.&nbsp; He drew no water but
+by stealth and under the cloak of night.&nbsp; After an interval of
+futile and at length hopeless expectation, the merchant who had educated
+him was appealed to.&nbsp; The merchant was a bow-legged character,
+with a flat and cushiony nose, like the last new strawberry.&nbsp; He
+wore a fur cap, and shorts, and was of the velveteen race, velveteeny.&nbsp;
+He sent word that he would &lsquo;look round.&rsquo;&nbsp; He looked
+round, appeared in the doorway of the room, and slightly cocked up his
+evil eye at the goldfinch.&nbsp; Instantly a raging thirst beset that
+bird; when it was appeased, he still drew several unnecessary buckets
+of water; and finally, leaped about his perch and sharpened his bill,
+as if he had been to the nearest wine vaults and got drunk.</p>
+<p>Donkeys again.&nbsp; I know shy neighbourhoods where the Donkey goes
+in at the street door, and appears to live up-stairs, for I have examined
+the back-yard from over the palings, and have been unable to make him
+out.&nbsp; Gentility, nobility, Royalty, would appeal to that donkey
+in vain to do what he does for a costermonger.&nbsp; Feed him with oats
+at the highest price, put an infant prince and princess in a pair of
+panniers on his back, adjust his delicate trappings to a nicety, take
+him to the softest slopes at Windsor, and try what pace you can get
+out of him.&nbsp; Then, starve him, harness him anyhow to a truck with
+a flat tray on it, and see him bowl from Whitechapel to Bayswater.&nbsp;
+There appears to be no particular private understanding between birds
+and donkeys, in a state of nature; but in the shy neighbourhood state,
+you shall see them always in the same hands and always developing their
+very best energies for the very worst company.&nbsp; I have known a
+donkey&mdash;by sight; we were not on speaking terms&mdash;who lived
+over on the Surrey side of London-bridge, among the fastnesses of Jacob&rsquo;s
+Island and Dockhead.&nbsp; It was the habit of that animal, when his
+services were not in immediate requisition, to go out alone, idling.&nbsp;
+I have met him a mile from his place of residence, loitering about the
+streets; and the expression of his countenance at such times was most
+degraded.&nbsp; He was attached to the establishment of an elderly lady
+who sold periwinkles, and he used to stand on Saturday nights with a
+cartful of those delicacies outside a gin-shop, pricking up his ears
+when a customer came to the cart, and too evidently deriving satisfaction
+from the knowledge that they got bad measure.&nbsp; His mistress was
+sometimes overtaken by inebriety.&nbsp; The last time I ever saw him
+(about five years ago) he was in circumstances of difficulty, caused
+by this failing.&nbsp; Having been left alone with the cart of periwinkles,
+and forgotten, he went off idling.&nbsp; He prowled among his usual
+low haunts for some time, gratifying his depraved tastes, until, not
+taking the cart into his calculations, he endeavoured to turn up a narrow
+alley, and became greatly involved.&nbsp; He was taken into custody
+by the police, and, the Green Yard of the district being near at hand,
+was backed into that place of durance.&nbsp; At that crisis, I encountered
+him; the stubborn sense he evinced of being&mdash;not to compromise
+the expression&mdash;a blackguard, I never saw exceeded in the human
+subject.&nbsp; A flaring candle in a paper shade, stuck in among his
+periwinkles, showed him, with his ragged harness broken and his cart
+extensively shattered, twitching his mouth and shaking his hanging head,
+a picture of disgrace and obduracy.&nbsp; I have seen boys being taken
+to station-houses, who were as like him as his own brother.</p>
+<p>The dogs of shy neighbourhoods, I observe to avoid play, and to be
+conscious of poverty.&nbsp; They avoid work, too, if they can, of course;
+that is in the nature of all animals.&nbsp; I have the pleasure to know
+a dog in a back street in the neighbourhood of Walworth, who has greatly
+distinguished himself in the minor drama, and who takes his portrait
+with him when he makes an engagement, for the illustration of the play-bill.&nbsp;
+His portrait (which is not at all like him) represents him in the act
+of dragging to the earth a recreant Indian, who is supposed to have
+tomahawked, or essayed to tomahawk, a British officer.&nbsp; The design
+is pure poetry, for there is no such Indian in the piece, and no such
+incident.&nbsp; He is a dog of the Newfoundland breed, for whose honesty
+I would be bail to any amount; but whose intellectual qualities in association
+with dramatic fiction, I cannot rate high.&nbsp; Indeed, he is too honest
+for the profession he has entered.&nbsp; Being at a town in Yorkshire
+last summer, and seeing him posted in the bill of the night, I attended
+the performance.&nbsp; His first scene was eminently successful; but,
+as it occupied a second in its representation (and five lines in the
+bill), it scarcely afforded ground for a cool and deliberate judgment
+of his powers.&nbsp; He had merely to bark, run on, and jump through
+an inn window, after a comic fugitive.&nbsp; The next scene of importance
+to the fable was a little marred in its interest by his over-anxiety;
+forasmuch as while his master (a belated soldier in a den of robbers
+on a tempestuous night) was feelingly lamenting the absence of his faithful
+dog, and laying great stress on the fact that he was thirty leagues
+away, the faithful dog was barking furiously in the prompter&rsquo;s
+box, and clearly choking himself against his collar.&nbsp; But it was
+in his greatest scene of all, that his honesty got the better of him.&nbsp;
+He had to enter a dense and trackless forest, on the trail of the murderer,
+and there to fly at the murderer when he found him resting at the foot
+of a tree, with his victim bound ready for slaughter.&nbsp; It was a
+hot night, and he came into the forest from an altogether unexpected
+direction, in the sweetest temper, at a very deliberate trot, not in
+the least excited; trotted to the foot-lights with his tongue out; and
+there sat down, panting, and amiably surveying the audience, with his
+tail beating on the boards, like a Dutch clock.&nbsp; Meanwhile the
+murderer, impatient to receive his doom, was audibly calling to him
+&lsquo;CO-O-OME here!&rsquo; while the victim, struggling with his bonds,
+assailed him with the most injurious expressions.&nbsp; It happened
+through these means, that when he was in course of time persuaded to
+trot up and rend the murderer limb from limb, he made it (for dramatic
+purposes) a little too obvious that he worked out that awful retribution
+by licking butter off his blood-stained hands.</p>
+<p>In a shy street, behind Long-acre, two honest dogs live, who perform
+in Punch&rsquo;s shows.&nbsp; I may venture to say that I am on terms
+of intimacy with both, and that I never saw either guilty of the falsehood
+of failing to look down at the man inside the show, during the whole
+performance.&nbsp; The difficulty other dogs have in satisfying their
+minds about these dogs, appears to be never overcome by time.&nbsp;
+The same dogs must encounter them over and over again, as they trudge
+along in their off-minutes behind the legs of the show and beside the
+drum; but all dogs seem to suspect their frills and jackets, and to
+sniff at them as if they thought those articles of personal adornment,
+an eruption&mdash;a something in the nature of mange, perhaps.&nbsp;
+From this Covent-garden window of mine I noticed a country dog, only
+the other day, who had come up to Covent-garden Market under a cart,
+and had broken his cord, an end of which he still trailed along with
+him.&nbsp; He loitered about the corners of the four streets commanded
+by my window; and bad London dogs came up, and told him lies that he
+didn&rsquo;t believe; and worse London dogs came up, and made proposals
+to him to go and steal in the market, which his principles rejected;
+and the ways of the town confused him, and he crept aside and lay down
+in a doorway.&nbsp; He had scarcely got a wink of sleep, when up comes
+Punch with Toby.&nbsp; He was darting to Toby for consolation and advice,
+when he saw the frill, and stopped, in the middle of the street, appalled.&nbsp;
+The show was pitched, Toby retired behind the drapery, the audience
+formed, the drum and pipes struck up.&nbsp; My country dog remained
+immovable, intently staring at these strange appearances, until Toby
+opened the drama by appearing on his ledge, and to him entered Punch,
+who put a tobacco-pipe into Toby&rsquo;s mouth.&nbsp; At this spectacle,
+the country dog threw up his head, gave one terrible howl, and fled
+due west.</p>
+<p>We talk of men keeping dogs, but we might often talk more expressively
+of dogs keeping men.&nbsp; I know a bull-dog in a shy corner of Hammersmith
+who keeps a man.&nbsp; He keeps him up a yard, and makes him go to public-houses
+and lay wagers on him, and obliges him to lean against posts and look
+at him, and forces him to neglect work for him, and keeps him under
+rigid coercion.&nbsp; I once knew a fancy terrier who kept a gentleman&mdash;a
+gentleman who had been brought up at Oxford, too.&nbsp; The dog kept
+the gentleman entirely for his glorification, and the gentleman never
+talked about anything but the terrier.&nbsp; This, however, was not
+in a shy neighbourhood, and is a digression consequently.</p>
+<p>There are a great many dogs in shy neighbourhoods, who keep boys.&nbsp;
+I have my eye on a mongrel in Somerstown who keeps three boys.&nbsp;
+He feigns that he can bring down sparrows, and unburrow rats (he can
+do neither), and he takes the boys out on sporting pretences into all
+sorts of suburban fields.&nbsp; He has likewise made them believe that
+he possesses some mysterious knowledge of the art of fishing, and they
+consider themselves incompletely equipped for the Hampstead ponds, with
+a pickle-jar and wide-mouthed bottle, unless he is with them and barking
+tremendously.&nbsp; There is a dog residing in the Borough of Southwark
+who keeps a blind man.&nbsp; He may be seen, most days, in Oxford-street,
+haling the blind man away on expeditions wholly uncontemplated by, and
+unintelligible to, the man: wholly of the dog&rsquo;s conception and
+execution.&nbsp; Contrariwise, when the man has projects, the dog will
+sit down in a crowded thoroughfare and meditate.&nbsp; I saw him yesterday,
+wearing the money-tray like an easy collar, instead of offering it to
+the public, taking the man against his will, on the invitation of a
+disreputable cur, apparently to visit a dog at Harrow&mdash;he was so
+intent on that direction.&nbsp; The north wall of Burlington House Gardens,
+between the Arcade and the Albany, offers a shy spot for appointments
+among blind men at about two or three o&rsquo;clock in the afternoon.&nbsp;
+They sit (very uncomfortably) on a sloping stone there, and compare
+notes.&nbsp; Their dogs may always be observed at the same time, openly
+disparaging the men they keep, to one another, and settling where they
+shall respectively take their men when they begin to move again.&nbsp;
+At a small butcher&rsquo;s, in a shy neighbourhood (there is no reason
+for suppressing the name; it is by Notting-hill, and gives upon the
+district called the Potteries), I know a shaggy black and white dog
+who keeps a drover.&nbsp; He is a dog of an easy disposition, and too
+frequently allows this drover to get drunk.&nbsp; On these occasions,
+it is the dog&rsquo;s custom to sit outside the public-house, keeping
+his eye on a few sheep, and thinking.&nbsp; I have seen him with six
+sheep, plainly casting up in his mind how many he began with when he
+left the market, and at what places he has left the rest.&nbsp; I have
+seen him perplexed by not being able to account to himself for certain
+particular sheep.&nbsp; A light has gradually broken on him, he has
+remembered at what butcher&rsquo;s he left them, and in a burst of grave
+satisfaction has caught a fly off his nose, and shown himself much relieved.&nbsp;
+If I could at any time have doubted the fact that it was he who kept
+the drover, and not the drover who kept him, it would have been abundantly
+proved by his way of taking undivided charge of the six sheep, when
+the drover came out besmeared with red ochre and beer, and gave him
+wrong directions, which he calmly disregarded.&nbsp; He has taken the
+sheep entirely into his own hands, has merely remarked with respectful
+firmness, &lsquo;That instruction would place them under an omnibus;
+you had better confine your attention to yourself&mdash;you will want
+it all;&rsquo; and has driven his charge away, with an intelligence
+of ears and tail, and a knowledge of business, that has left his lout
+of a man very, very far behind.</p>
+<p>As the dogs of shy neighbourhoods usually betray a slinking consciousness
+of being in poor circumstances&mdash;for the most part manifested in
+an aspect of anxiety, an awkwardness in their play, and a misgiving
+that somebody is going to harness them to something, to pick up a living&mdash;so
+the cats of shy neighbourhoods exhibit a strong tendency to relapse
+into barbarism.&nbsp; Not only are they made selfishly ferocious by
+ruminating on the surplus population around them, and on the densely
+crowded state of all the avenues to cat&rsquo;s meat; not only is there
+a moral and politico-economical haggardness in them, traceable to these
+reflections; but they evince a physical deterioration.&nbsp; Their linen
+is not clean, and is wretchedly got up; their black turns rusty, like
+old mourning; they wear very indifferent fur; and take to the shabbiest
+cotton velvet, instead of silk velvet.&nbsp; I am on terms of recognition
+with several small streets of cats, about the Obelisk in Saint George&rsquo;s
+Fields, and also in the vicinity of Clerkenwell-green, and also in the
+back settlements of Drury-lane.&nbsp; In appearance, they are very like
+the women among whom they live.&nbsp; They seem to turn out of their
+unwholesome beds into the street, without any preparation.&nbsp; They
+leave their young families to stagger about the gutters, unassisted,
+while they frouzily quarrel and swear and scratch and spit, at street
+corners.&nbsp; In particular, I remark that when they are about to increase
+their families (an event of frequent recurrence) the resemblance is
+strongly expressed in a certain dusty dowdiness, down-at-heel self-neglect,
+and general giving up of things.&nbsp; I cannot honestly report that
+I have ever seen a feline matron of this class washing her face when
+in an interesting condition.</p>
+<p>Not to prolong these notes of uncommercial travel among the lower
+animals of shy neighbourhoods, by dwelling at length upon the exasperated
+moodiness of the tom-cats, and their resemblance in many respects to
+a man and a brother, I will come to a close with a word on the fowls
+of the same localities.</p>
+<p>That anything born of an egg and invested with wings, should have
+got to the pass that it hops contentedly down a ladder into a cellar,
+and calls <i>that</i> going home, is a circumstance so amazing as to
+leave one nothing more in this connexion to wonder at.&nbsp; Otherwise
+I might wonder at the completeness with which these fowls have become
+separated from all the birds of the air&mdash;have taken to grovelling
+in bricks and mortar and mud&mdash;have forgotten all about live trees,
+and make roosting-places of shop-boards, barrows, oyster-tubs, bulk-heads,
+and door-scrapers.&nbsp; I wonder at nothing concerning them, and take
+them as they are.&nbsp; I accept as products of Nature and things of
+course, a reduced Bantam family of my acquaintance in the Hackney-road,
+who are incessantly at the pawnbroker&rsquo;s.&nbsp; I cannot say that
+they enjoy themselves, for they are of a melancholy temperament; but
+what enjoyment they are capable of, they derive from crowding together
+in the pawnbroker&rsquo;s side-entry.&nbsp; Here, they are always to
+be found in a feeble flutter, as if they were newly come down in the
+world, and were afraid of being identified.&nbsp; I know a low fellow,
+originally of a good family from Dorking, who takes his whole establishment
+of wives, in single file, in at the door of the jug Department of a
+disorderly tavern near the Haymarket, manoeuvres them among the company&rsquo;s
+legs, emerges with them at the Bottle Entrance, and so passes his life:
+seldom, in the season, going to bed before two in the morning.&nbsp;
+Over Waterloo-bridge, there is a shabby old speckled couple (they belong
+to the wooden French-bedstead, washing-stand, and towel-horse-making
+trade), who are always trying to get in at the door of a chapel.&nbsp;
+Whether the old lady, under a delusion reminding one of Mrs. Southcott,
+has an idea of entrusting an egg to that particular denomination, or
+merely understands that she has no business in the building and is consequently
+frantic to enter it, I cannot determine; but she is constantly endeavouring
+to undermine the principal door: while her partner, who is infirm upon
+his legs, walks up and down, encouraging her and defying the Universe.&nbsp;
+But, the family I have been best acquainted with, since the removal
+from this trying sphere of a Chinese circle at Brentford, reside in
+the densest part of Bethnal-green.&nbsp; Their abstraction from the
+objects among which they live, or rather their conviction that those
+objects have all come into existence in express subservience to fowls,
+has so enchanted me, that I have made them the subject of many journeys
+at divers hours.&nbsp; After careful observation of the two lords and
+the ten ladies of whom this family consists, I have come to the conclusion
+that their opinions are represented by the leading lord and leading
+lady: the latter, as I judge, an aged personage, afflicted with a paucity
+of feather and visibility of quill, that gives her the appearance of
+a bundle of office pens.&nbsp; When a railway goods van that would crush
+an elephant comes round the corner, tearing over these fowls, they emerge
+unharmed from under the horses, perfectly satisfied that the whole rush
+was a passing property in the air, which may have left something to
+eat behind it.&nbsp; They look upon old shoes, wrecks of kettles and
+saucepans, and fragments of bonnets, as a kind of meteoric discharge,
+for fowls to peck at.&nbsp; Peg-tops and hoops they account, I think,
+as a sort of hail; shuttlecocks, as rain, or dew.&nbsp; Gaslight comes
+quite as natural to them as any other light; and I have more than a
+suspicion that, in the minds of the two lords, the early public-house
+at the corner has superseded the sun.&nbsp; I have established it as
+a certain fact, that they always begin to crow when the public-house
+shutters begin to be taken down, and that they salute the potboy, the
+instant he appears to perform that duty, as if he were Phoebus in person.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI&mdash;TRAMPS</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The chance use of the word &lsquo;Tramp&rsquo; in my last paper,
+brought that numerous fraternity so vividly before my mind&rsquo;s eye,
+that I had no sooner laid down my pen than a compulsion was upon me
+to take it up again, and make notes of the Tramps whom I perceived on
+all the summer roads in all directions.</p>
+<p>Whenever a tramp sits down to rest by the wayside, he sits with his
+legs in a dry ditch; and whenever he goes to sleep (which is very often
+indeed), he goes to sleep on his back.&nbsp; Yonder, by the high road,
+glaring white in the bright sunshine, lies, on the dusty bit of turf
+under the bramble-bush that fences the coppice from the highway, the
+tramp of the order savage, fast asleep.&nbsp; He lies on the broad of
+his back, with his face turned up to the sky, and one of his ragged
+arms loosely thrown across his face.&nbsp; His bundle (what can be the
+contents of that mysterious bundle, to make it worth his while to carry
+it about?) is thrown down beside him, and the waking woman with him
+sits with her legs in the ditch, and her back to the road.&nbsp; She
+wears her bonnet rakishly perched on the front of her head, to shade
+her face from the sun in walking, and she ties her skirts round her
+in conventionally tight tramp-fashion with a sort of apron.&nbsp; You
+can seldom catch sight of her, resting thus, without seeing her in a
+despondently defiant manner doing something to her hair or her bonnet,
+and glancing at you between her fingers.&nbsp; She does not often go
+to sleep herself in the daytime, but will sit for any length of time
+beside the man.&nbsp; And his slumberous propensities would not seem
+to be referable to the fatigue of carrying the bundle, for she carries
+it much oftener and further than he.&nbsp; When they are afoot, you
+will mostly find him slouching on ahead, in a gruff temper, while she
+lags heavily behind with the burden.&nbsp; He is given to personally
+correcting her, too&mdash;which phase of his character develops itself
+oftenest, on benches outside alehouse doors&mdash;and she appears to
+become strongly attached to him for these reasons; it may usually be
+noticed that when the poor creature has a bruised face, she is the most
+affectionate.&nbsp; He has no occupation whatever, this order of tramp,
+and has no object whatever in going anywhere.&nbsp; He will sometimes
+call himself a brickmaker, or a sawyer, but only when he takes an imaginary
+flight.&nbsp; He generally represents himself, in a vague way, as looking
+out for a job of work; but he never did work, he never does, and he
+never will.&nbsp; It is a favourite fiction with him, however (as if
+he were the most industrious character on earth), that <i>you</i> never
+work; and as he goes past your garden and sees you looking at your flowers,
+you will overhear him growl with a strong sense of contrast, &lsquo;<i>You</i>
+are a lucky hidle devil, <i>you</i> are!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The slinking tramp is of the same hopeless order, and has the same
+injured conviction on him that you were born to whatever you possess,
+and never did anything to get it: but he is of a less audacious disposition.&nbsp;
+He will stop before your gate, and say to his female companion with
+an air of constitutional humility and propitiation&mdash;to edify any
+one who may be within hearing behind a blind or a bush&mdash;&lsquo;This
+is a sweet spot, ain&rsquo;t it?&nbsp; A lovelly spot!&nbsp; And I wonder
+if they&rsquo;d give two poor footsore travellers like me and you, a
+drop of fresh water out of such a pretty gen-teel crib?&nbsp; We&rsquo;d
+take it wery koind on &rsquo;em, wouldn&rsquo;t us?&nbsp; Wery koind,
+upon my word, us would?&rsquo;&nbsp; He has a quick sense of a dog in
+the vicinity, and will extend his modestly-injured propitiation to the
+dog chained up in your yard; remarking, as he slinks at the yard gate,
+&lsquo;Ah!&nbsp; You are a foine breed o&rsquo; dog, too, and <i>you</i>
+ain&rsquo;t kep for nothink!&nbsp; I&rsquo;d take it wery koind o&rsquo;
+your master if he&rsquo;d elp a traveller and his woife as envies no
+gentlefolk their good fortun, wi&rsquo; a bit o&rsquo; your broken wittles.&nbsp;
+He&rsquo;d never know the want of it, nor more would you.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t
+bark like that, at poor persons as never done you no arm; the poor is
+down-trodden and broke enough without that; O DON&rsquo;T!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+He generally heaves a prodigious sigh in moving away, and always looks
+up the lane and down the lane, and up the road and down the road, before
+going on.</p>
+<p>Both of these orders of tramp are of a very robust habit; let the
+hard-working labourer at whose cottage-door they prowl and beg, have
+the ague never so badly, these tramps are sure to be in good health.</p>
+<p>There is another kind of tramp, whom you encounter this bright summer
+day&mdash;say, on a road with the sea-breeze making its dust lively,
+and sails of ships in the blue distance beyond the slope of Down.&nbsp;
+As you walk enjoyingly on, you descry in the perspective at the bottom
+of a steep hill up which your way lies, a figure that appears to be
+sitting airily on a gate, whistling in a cheerful and disengaged manner.&nbsp;
+As you approach nearer to it, you observe the figure to slide down from
+the gate, to desist from whistling, to uncock its hat, to become tender
+of foot, to depress its head and elevate its shoulders, and to present
+all the characteristics of profound despondency.&nbsp; Arriving at the
+bottom of the hill and coming close to the figure, you observe it to
+be the figure of a shabby young man.&nbsp; He is moving painfully forward,
+in the direction in which you are going, and his mind is so preoccupied
+with his misfortunes that he is not aware of your approach until you
+are close upon him at the hill-foot.&nbsp; When he is aware of you,
+you discover him to be a remarkably well-behaved young man, and a remarkably
+well-spoken young man.&nbsp; You know him to be well-behaved, by his
+respectful manner of touching his hat: you know him to be well-spoken,
+by his smooth manner of expressing himself.&nbsp; He says in a flowing
+confidential voice, and without punctuation, &lsquo;I ask your pardon
+sir but if you would excuse the liberty of being so addressed upon the
+public Iway by one who is almost reduced to rags though it as not always
+been so and by no fault of his own but through ill elth in his family
+and many unmerited sufferings it would be a great obligation sir to
+know the time.&rsquo;&nbsp; You give the well-spoken young man the time.&nbsp;
+The well-spoken young man, keeping well up with you, resumes: &lsquo;I
+am aware sir that it is a liberty to intrude a further question on a
+gentleman walking for his entertainment but might I make so bold as
+ask the favour of the way to Dover sir and about the distance?&rsquo;&nbsp;
+You inform the well-spoken young man that the way to Dover is straight
+on, and the distance some eighteen miles.&nbsp; The well-spoken young
+man becomes greatly agitated.&nbsp; &lsquo;In the condition to which
+I am reduced,&rsquo; says he, &lsquo;I could not ope to reach Dover
+before dark even if my shoes were in a state to take me there or my
+feet were in a state to old out over the flinty road and were not on
+the bare ground of which any gentleman has the means to satisfy himself
+by looking Sir may I take the liberty of speaking to you?&rsquo;&nbsp;
+As the well-spoken young man keeps so well up with you that you can&rsquo;t
+prevent his taking the liberty of speaking to you, he goes on, with
+fluency: &lsquo;Sir it is not begging that is my intention for I was
+brought up by the best of mothers and begging is not my trade I should
+not know sir how to follow it as a trade if such were my shameful wishes
+for the best of mothers long taught otherwise and in the best of omes
+though now reduced to take the present liberty on the Iway Sir my business
+was the law-stationering and I was favourably known to the Solicitor-General
+the Attorney-General the majority of the judges and the ole of the legal
+profession but through ill elth in my family and the treachery of a
+friend for whom I became security and he no other than my own wife&rsquo;s
+brother the brother of my own wife I was cast forth with my tender partner
+and three young children not to beg for I will sooner die of deprivation
+but to make my way to the sea-port town of Dover where I have a relative
+i in respect not only that will assist me but that would trust me with
+untold gold Sir in appier times and hare this calamity fell upon me
+I made for my amusement when I little thought that I should ever need
+it excepting for my air this&rsquo;&mdash;here the well-spoken young
+man put his hand into his breast&mdash;&lsquo;this comb!&nbsp; Sir I
+implore you in the name of charity to purchase a tortoiseshell comb
+which is a genuine article at any price that your humanity may put upon
+it and may the blessings of a ouseless family awaiting with beating
+arts the return of a husband and a father from Dover upon the cold stone
+seats of London-bridge ever attend you Sir may I take the liberty of
+speaking to you I implore you to buy this comb!&rsquo;&nbsp; By this
+time, being a reasonably good walker, you will have been too much for
+the well-spoken young man, who will stop short and express his disgust
+and his want of breath, in a long expectoration, as you leave him behind.</p>
+<p>Towards the end of the same walk, on the same bright summer day,
+at the corner of the next little town or village, you may find another
+kind of tramp, embodied in the persons of a most exemplary couple whose
+only improvidence appears to have been, that they spent the last of
+their little All on soap.&nbsp; They are a man and woman, spotless to
+behold&mdash;John Anderson, with the frost on his short smock-frock
+instead of his &lsquo;pow,&rsquo; attended by Mrs. Anderson.&nbsp; John
+is over-ostentatious of the frost upon his raiment, and wears a curious
+and, you would say, an almost unnecessary demonstration of girdle of
+white linen wound about his waist&mdash;a girdle, snowy as Mrs. Anderson&rsquo;s
+apron.&nbsp; This cleanliness was the expiring effort of the respectable
+couple, and nothing then remained to Mr. Anderson but to get chalked
+upon his spade in snow-white copy-book characters, HUNGRY! and to sit
+down here.&nbsp; Yes; one thing more remained to Mr. Anderson&mdash;his
+character; Monarchs could not deprive him of his hard-earned character.&nbsp;
+Accordingly, as you come up with this spectacle of virtue in distress,
+Mrs. Anderson rises, and with a decent curtsey presents for your consideration
+a certificate from a Doctor of Divinity, the reverend the Vicar of Upper
+Dodgington, who informs his Christian friends and all whom it may concern
+that the bearers, John Anderson and lawful wife, are persons to whom
+you cannot be too liberal.&nbsp; This benevolent pastor omitted no work
+of his hands to fit the good couple out, for with half an eye you can
+recognise his autograph on the spade.</p>
+<p>Another class of tramp is a man, the most valuable part of whose
+stock-in-trade is a highly perplexed demeanour.&nbsp; He is got up like
+a countryman, and you will often come upon the poor fellow, while he
+is endeavouring to decipher the inscription on a milestone&mdash;quite
+a fruitless endeavour, for he cannot read.&nbsp; He asks your pardon,
+he truly does (he is very slow of speech, this tramp, and he looks in
+a bewildered way all round the prospect while he talks to you), but
+all of us shold do as we wold be done by, and he&rsquo;ll take it kind,
+if you&rsquo;ll put a power man in the right road fur to jine his eldest
+son as has broke his leg bad in the masoning, and is in this heere Orspit&rsquo;l
+as is wrote down by Squire Pouncerby&rsquo;s own hand as wold not tell
+a lie fur no man.&nbsp; He then produces from under his dark frock (being
+always very slow and perplexed) a neat but worn old leathern purse,
+from which he takes a scrap of paper.&nbsp; On this scrap of paper is
+written, by Squire Pouncerby, of The Grove, &lsquo;Please to direct
+the Bearer, a poor but very worthy man, to the Sussex County Hospital,
+near Brighton&rsquo;&mdash;a matter of some difficulty at the moment,
+seeing that the request comes suddenly upon you in the depths of Hertfordshire.&nbsp;
+The more you endeavour to indicate where Brighton is&mdash;when you
+have with the greatest difficulty remembered&mdash;the less the devoted
+father can be made to comprehend, and the more obtusely he stares at
+the prospect; whereby, being reduced to extremity, you recommend the
+faithful parent to begin by going to St. Albans, and present him with
+half-a-crown.&nbsp; It does him good, no doubt, but scarcely helps him
+forward, since you find him lying drunk that same evening in the wheelwright&rsquo;s
+sawpit under the shed where the felled trees are, opposite the sign
+of the Three Jolly Hedgers.</p>
+<p>But, the most vicious, by far, of all the idle tramps, is the tramp
+who pretends to have been a gentleman.&nbsp; &lsquo;Educated,&rsquo;
+he writes, from the village beer-shop in pale ink of a ferruginous complexion;
+&lsquo;educated at Trin. Coll. Cam.&mdash;nursed in the lap of affluence&mdash;once
+in my small way the pattron of the Muses,&rsquo; &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c.&mdash;surely
+a sympathetic mind will not withhold a trifle, to help him on to the
+market-town where he thinks of giving a Lecture to the <i>fruges consumere
+nati</i>, on things in general?&nbsp; This shameful creature lolling
+about hedge tap-rooms in his ragged clothes, now so far from being black
+that they look as if they never can have been black, is more selfish
+and insolent than even the savage tramp.&nbsp; He would sponge on the
+poorest boy for a farthing, and spurn him when he had got it; he would
+interpose (if he could get anything by it) between the baby and the
+mother&rsquo;s breast.&nbsp; So much lower than the company he keeps,
+for his maudlin assumption of being higher, this pitiless rascal blights
+the summer road as he maunders on between the luxuriant hedges; where
+(to my thinking) even the wild convolvulus and rose and sweet-briar,
+are the worse for his going by, and need time to recover from the taint
+of him in the air.</p>
+<p>The young fellows who trudge along barefoot, five or six together,
+their boots slung over their shoulders, their shabby bundles under their
+arms, their sticks newly cut from some roadside wood, are not eminently
+prepossessing, but are much less objectionable.&nbsp; There is a tramp-fellowship
+among them.&nbsp; They pick one another up at resting stations, and
+go on in companies.&nbsp; They always go at a fast swing&mdash;though
+they generally limp too&mdash;and there is invariably one of the company
+who has much ado to keep up with the rest.&nbsp; They generally talk
+about horses, and any other means of locomotion than walking: or, one
+of the company relates some recent experiences of the road&mdash;which
+are always disputes and difficulties.&nbsp; As for example.&nbsp; &lsquo;So
+as I&rsquo;m a standing at the pump in the market, blest if there don&rsquo;t
+come up a Beadle, and he ses, &ldquo;Mustn&rsquo;t stand here,&rdquo;
+he ses.&nbsp; &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; I ses.&nbsp; &ldquo;No beggars
+allowed in this town,&rdquo; he ses.&nbsp; &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s a beggar?&rdquo;
+I ses.&nbsp; &ldquo;You are,&rdquo; he ses.&nbsp; &ldquo;Who ever see
+<i>me</i> beg?&nbsp; Did <i>you</i>?&rdquo; I ses.&nbsp; &ldquo;Then
+you&rsquo;re a tramp,&rdquo; he ses.&nbsp; &ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather be
+that than a Beadle,&rdquo; I ses.&rsquo;&nbsp; (The company express
+great approval.)&nbsp; &lsquo;&ldquo;Would you?&rdquo; he ses to me.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Yes, I would,&rdquo; I ses to him.&nbsp; &ldquo;Well,&rdquo;
+he ses, &ldquo;anyhow, get out of this town.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Why,
+blow your little town!&rdquo; I ses, &ldquo;who wants to be in it?&nbsp;
+Wot does your dirty little town mean by comin&rsquo; and stickin&rsquo;
+itself in the road to anywhere?&nbsp; Why don&rsquo;t you get a shovel
+and a barrer, and clear your town out o&rsquo; people&rsquo;s way?&rdquo;&rsquo;&nbsp;
+(The company expressing the highest approval and laughing aloud, they
+all go down the hill.)</p>
+<p>Then, there are the tramp handicraft men.&nbsp; Are they not all
+over England, in this Midsummer time?&nbsp; Where does the lark sing,
+the corn grow, the mill turn, the river run, and they are not among
+the lights and shadows, tinkering, chair-mending, umbrella-mending,
+clock-mending, knife-grinding?&nbsp; Surely, a pleasant thing, if we
+were in that condition of life, to grind our way through Kent, Sussex,
+and Surrey.&nbsp; For the worst six weeks or so, we should see the sparks
+we ground off, fiery bright against a background of green wheat and
+green leaves.&nbsp; A little later, and the ripe harvest would pale
+our sparks from red to yellow, until we got the dark newly-turned land
+for a background again, and they were red once more.&nbsp; By that time,
+we should have ground our way to the sea cliffs, and the whirr of our
+wheel would be lost in the breaking of the waves.&nbsp; Our next variety
+in sparks would be derived from contrast with the gorgeous medley of
+colours in the autumn woods, and, by the time we had ground our way
+round to the heathy lands between Reigate and Croydon, doing a prosperous
+stroke of business all along, we should show like a little firework
+in the light frosty air, and be the next best thing to the blacksmith&rsquo;s
+forge.&nbsp; Very agreeable, too, to go on a chair-mending tour.&nbsp;
+What judges we should be of rushes, and how knowingly (with a sheaf
+and a bottomless chair at our back) we should lounge on bridges, looking
+over at osier-beds!&nbsp; Among all the innumerable occupations that
+cannot possibly be transacted without the assistance of lookers-on,
+chair-mending may take a station in the first rank.&nbsp; When we sat
+down with our backs against the barn or the public-house, and began
+to mend, what a sense of popularity would grow upon us!&nbsp; When all
+the children came to look at us, and the tailor, and the general dealer,
+and the farmer who had been giving a small order at the little saddler&rsquo;s,
+and the groom from the great house, and the publican, and even the two
+skittle-players (and here note that, howsoever busy all the rest of
+village human-kind may be, there will always be two people with leisure
+to play at skittles, wherever village skittles are), what encouragement
+would be on us to plait and weave!&nbsp; No one looks at us while we
+plait and weave these words.&nbsp; Clock-mending again.&nbsp; Except
+for the slight inconvenience of carrying a clock under our arm, and
+the monotony of making the bell go, whenever we came to a human habitation,
+what a pleasant privilege to give a voice to the dumb cottage-clock,
+and set it talking to the cottage family again!&nbsp; Likewise we foresee
+great interest in going round by the park plantations, under the overhanging
+boughs (hares, rabbits, partridges, and pheasants, scudding like mad
+across and across the chequered ground before us), and so over the park
+ladder, and through the wood, until we came to the Keeper&rsquo;s lodge.&nbsp;
+Then, would, the Keeper be discoverable at his door, in a deep nest
+of leaves, smoking his pipe.&nbsp; Then, on our accosting him in the
+way of our trade, would he call to Mrs. Keeper, respecting &lsquo;t&rsquo;ould
+clock&rsquo; in the kitchen.&nbsp; Then, would Mrs. Keeper ask us into
+the lodge, and on due examination we should offer to make a good job
+of it for eighteenpence; which offer, being accepted, would set us tinkling
+and clinking among the chubby, awe-struck little Keepers for an hour
+and more.&nbsp; So completely to the family&rsquo;s satisfaction would
+we achieve our work, that the Keeper would mention how that there was
+something wrong with the bell of the turret stable-clock up at the Hall,
+and that if we thought good of going up to the housekeeper on the chance
+of that job too, why he would take us.&nbsp; Then, should we go, among
+the branching oaks and the deep fern, by silent ways of mystery known
+to the Keeper, seeing the herd glancing here and there as we went along,
+until we came to the old Hall, solemn and grand.&nbsp; Under the Terrace
+Flower Garden, and round by the stables, would the Keeper take us in,
+and as we passed we should observe how spacious and stately the stables,
+and how fine the painting of the horses&rsquo; names over their stalls,
+and how solitary all: the family being in London.&nbsp; Then, should
+we find ourselves presented to the housekeeper, sitting, in hushed state,
+at needlework, in a bay-window looking out upon a mighty grim red-brick
+quadrangle, guarded by stone lions disrespectfully throwing somersaults
+over the escutcheons of the noble family.&nbsp; Then, our services accepted
+and we insinuated with a candle into the stable-turret, we should find
+it to be a mere question of pendulum, but one that would hold us until
+dark.&nbsp; Then, should we fall to work, with a general impression
+of Ghosts being about, and of pictures indoors that of a certainty came
+out of their frames and &lsquo;walked,&rsquo; if the family would only
+own it.&nbsp; Then, should we work and work, until the day gradually
+turned to dusk, and even until the dusk gradually turned to dark.&nbsp;
+Our task at length accomplished, we should be taken into an enormous
+servants&rsquo; hall, and there regaled with beef and bread, and powerful
+ale.&nbsp; Then, paid freely, we should be at liberty to go, and should
+be told by a pointing helper to keep round over yinder by the blasted
+ash, and so straight through the woods, till we should see the town-lights
+right afore us.&nbsp; Then, feeling lonesome, should we desire upon
+the whole, that the ash had not been blasted, or that the helper had
+had the manners not to mention it.&nbsp; However, we should keep on,
+all right, till suddenly the stable bell would strike ten in the dolefullest
+way, quite chilling our blood, though we had so lately taught him how
+to acquit himself.&nbsp; Then, as we went on, should we recall old stories,
+and dimly consider what it would be most advisable to do, in the event
+of a tall figure, all in white, with saucer eyes, coming up and saying,
+&lsquo;I want you to come to a churchyard and mend a church clock.&nbsp;
+Follow me!&rsquo;&nbsp; Then, should we make a burst to get clear of
+the trees, and should soon find ourselves in the open, with the town-lights
+bright ahead of us.&nbsp; So should we lie that night at the ancient
+sign of the Crispin and Crispanus, and rise early next morning to be
+betimes on tramp again.</p>
+<p>Bricklayers often tramp, in twos and threes, lying by night at their
+&lsquo;lodges,&rsquo; which are scattered all over the country.&nbsp;
+Bricklaying is another of the occupations that can by no means be transacted
+in rural parts, without the assistance of spectators&mdash;of as many
+as can be convened.&nbsp; In thinly-peopled spots, I have known brick-layers
+on tramp, coming up with bricklayers at work, to be so sensible of the
+indispensability of lookers-on, that they themselves have sat up in
+that capacity, and have been unable to subside into the acceptance of
+a proffered share in the job, for two or three days together.&nbsp;
+Sometimes, the &lsquo;navvy,&rsquo; on tramp, with an extra pair of
+half-boots over his shoulder, a bag, a bottle, and a can, will take
+a similar part in a job of excavation, and will look at it without engaging
+in it, until all his money is gone.&nbsp; The current of my uncommercial
+pursuits caused me only last summer to want a little body of workmen
+for a certain spell of work in a pleasant part of the country; and I
+was at one time honoured with the attendance of as many as seven-and-twenty,
+who were looking at six.</p>
+<p>Who can be familiar with any rustic highway in summer-time, without
+storing up knowledge of the many tramps who go from one oasis of town
+or village to another, to sell a stock in trade, apparently not worth
+a shilling when sold?&nbsp; Shrimps are a favourite commodity for this
+kind of speculation, and so are cakes of a soft and spongy character,
+coupled with Spanish nuts and brandy balls.&nbsp; The stock is carried
+on the head in a basket, and, between the head and the basket, are the
+trestles on which the stock is displayed at trading times.&nbsp; Fleet
+of foot, but a careworn class of tramp this, mostly; with a certain
+stiffness of neck, occasioned by much anxious balancing of baskets;
+and also with a long, Chinese sort of eye, which an overweighted forehead
+would seem to have squeezed into that form.</p>
+<p>On the hot dusty roads near seaport towns and great rivers, behold
+the tramping Soldier.&nbsp; And if you should happen never to have asked
+yourself whether his uniform is suited to his work, perhaps the poor
+fellow&rsquo;s appearance as he comes distressfully towards you, with
+his absurdly tight jacket unbuttoned, his neck-gear in his hand, and
+his legs well chafed by his trousers of baize, may suggest the personal
+inquiry, how you think <i>you</i> would like it.&nbsp; Much better the
+tramping Sailor, although his cloth is somewhat too thick for land service.&nbsp;
+But, why the tramping merchant-mate should put on a black velvet waistcoat,
+for a chalky country in the dog-days, is one of the great secrets of
+nature that will never be discovered.</p>
+<p>I have my eye upon a piece of Kentish road, bordered on either side
+by a wood, and having on one hand, between the road-dust and the trees,
+a skirting patch of grass.&nbsp; Wild flowers grow in abundance on this
+spot, and it lies high and airy, with a distant river stealing steadily
+away to the ocean, like a man&rsquo;s life.&nbsp; To gain the milestone
+here, which the moss, primroses, violets, blue-bells, and wild roses,
+would soon render illegible but for peering travellers pushing them
+aside with their sticks, you must come up a steep hill, come which way
+you may.&nbsp; So, all the tramps with carts or caravans&mdash;the Gipsy-tramp,
+the Show-tramp, the Cheap Jack&mdash;find it impossible to resist the
+temptations of the place, and all turn the horse loose when they come
+to it, and boil the pot.&nbsp; Bless the place, I love the ashes of
+the vagabond fires that have scorched its grass!&nbsp; What tramp children
+do I see here, attired in a handful of rags, making a gymnasium of the
+shafts of the cart, making a feather-bed of the flints and brambles,
+making a toy of the hobbled old horse who is not much more like a horse
+than any cheap toy would be!&nbsp; Here, do I encounter the cart of
+mats and brooms and baskets&mdash;with all thoughts of business given
+to the evening wind&mdash;with the stew made and being served out&mdash;with
+Cheap Jack and Dear Jill striking soft music out of the plates that
+are rattled like warlike cymbals when put up for auction at fairs and
+markets&mdash;their minds so influenced (no doubt) by the melody of
+the nightingales as they begin to sing in the woods behind them, that
+if I were to propose to deal, they would sell me anything at cost price.&nbsp;
+On this hallowed ground has it been my happy privilege (let me whisper
+it), to behold the White-haired Lady with the pink eyes, eating meat-pie
+with the Giant: while, by the hedge-side, on the box of blankets which
+I knew contained the snakes, were set forth the cups and saucers and
+the teapot.&nbsp; It was on an evening in August, that I chanced upon
+this ravishing spectacle, and I noticed that, whereas the Giant reclined
+half concealed beneath the overhanging boughs and seemed indifferent
+to Nature, the white hair of the gracious Lady streamed free in the
+breath of evening, and her pink eyes found pleasure in the landscape.&nbsp;
+I heard only a single sentence of her uttering, yet it bespoke a talent
+for modest repartee.&nbsp; The ill-mannered Giant&mdash;accursed be
+his evil race!&mdash;had interrupted the Lady in some remark, and, as
+I passed that enchanted corner of the wood, she gently reproved him,
+with the words, &lsquo;Now, Cobby;&rsquo;&mdash;Cobby! so short a name!&mdash;&lsquo;ain&rsquo;t
+one fool enough to talk at a time?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Within appropriate distance of this magic ground, though not so near
+it as that the song trolled from tap or bench at door, can invade its
+woodland silence, is a little hostelry which no man possessed of a penny
+was ever known to pass in warm weather.&nbsp; Before its entrance, are
+certain pleasant, trimmed limes; likewise, a cool well, with so musical
+a bucket-handle that its fall upon the bucket rim will make a horse
+prick up his ears and neigh, upon the droughty road half a mile off.&nbsp;
+This is a house of great resort for haymaking tramps and harvest tramps,
+insomuch that as they sit within, drinking their mugs of beer, their
+relinquished scythes and reaping-hooks glare out of the open windows,
+as if the whole establishment were a family war-coach of Ancient Britons.&nbsp;
+Later in the season, the whole country-side, for miles and miles, will
+swarm with hopping tramps.&nbsp; They come in families, men, women,
+and children, every family provided with a bundle of bedding, an iron
+pot, a number of babies, and too often with some poor sick creature
+quite unfit for the rough life, for whom they suppose the smell of the
+fresh hop to be a sovereign remedy.&nbsp; Many of these hoppers are
+Irish, but many come from London.&nbsp; They crowd all the roads, and
+camp under all the hedges and on all the scraps of common-land, and
+live among and upon the hops until they are all picked, and the hop-gardens,
+so beautiful through the summer, look as if they had been laid waste
+by an invading army.&nbsp; Then, there is a vast exodus of tramps out
+of the country; and if you ride or drive round any turn of any road,
+at more than a foot pace, you will be bewildered to find that you have
+charged into the bosom of fifty families, and that there are splashing
+up all around you, in the utmost prodigality of confusion, bundles of
+bedding, babies, iron pots, and a good-humoured multitude of both sexes
+and all ages, equally divided between perspiration and intoxication.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII&mdash;DULLBOROUGH TOWN</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>It lately happened that I found myself rambling about the scenes
+among which my earliest days were passed; scenes from which I departed
+when I was a child, and which I did not revisit until I was a man.&nbsp;
+This is no uncommon chance, but one that befalls some of us any day;
+perhaps it may not be quite uninteresting to compare notes with the
+reader respecting an experience so familiar and a journey so uncommercial.</p>
+<p>I call my boyhood&rsquo;s home (and I feel like a Tenor in an English
+Opera when I mention it) Dullborough.&nbsp; Most of us come from Dullborough
+who come from a country town.</p>
+<p>As I left Dullborough in the days when there were no railroads in
+the land, I left it in a stage-coach.&nbsp; Through all the years that
+have since passed, have I ever lost the smell of the damp straw in which
+I was packed&mdash;like game&mdash;and forwarded, carriage paid, to
+the Cross Keys, Wood-street, Cheapside, London?&nbsp; There was no other
+inside passenger, and I consumed my sandwiches in solitude and dreariness,
+and it rained hard all the way, and I thought life sloppier than I had
+expected to find it.</p>
+<p>With this tender remembrance upon me, I was cavalierly shunted back
+into Dullborough the other day, by train.&nbsp; My ticket had been previously
+collected, like my taxes, and my shining new portmanteau had had a great
+plaster stuck upon it, and I had been defied by Act of Parliament to
+offer an objection to anything that was done to it, or me, under a penalty
+of not less than forty shillings or more than five pounds, compoundable
+for a term of imprisonment.&nbsp; When I had sent my disfigured property
+on to the hotel, I began to look about me; and the first discovery I
+made, was, that the Station had swallowed up the playing-field.</p>
+<p>It was gone.&nbsp; The two beautiful hawthorn-trees, the hedge, the
+turf, and all those buttercups and daisies, had given place to the stoniest
+of jolting roads: while, beyond the Station, an ugly dark monster of
+a tunnel kept its jaws open, as if it had swallowed them and were ravenous
+for more destruction.&nbsp; The coach that had carried me away, was
+melodiously called Timpson&rsquo;s Blue-Eyed Maid, and belonged to Timpson,
+at the coach-office up-street; the locomotive engine that had brought
+me back, was called severely No. 97, and belonged to S.E.R., and was
+spitting ashes and hot water over the blighted ground.</p>
+<p>When I had been let out at the platform-door, like a prisoner whom
+his turnkey grudgingly released, I looked in again over the low wall,
+at the scene of departed glories.&nbsp; Here, in the haymaking time,
+had I been delivered from the dungeons of Seringapatam, an immense pile
+(of haycock), by my own countrymen, the victorious British (boy next
+door and his two cousins), and had been recognised with ecstasy by my
+affianced one (Miss Green), who had come all the way from England (second
+house in the terrace) to ransom me, and marry me.&nbsp; Here, had I
+first heard in confidence, from one whose father was greatly connected,
+being under Government, of the existence of a terrible banditti, called
+&lsquo;The Radicals,&rsquo; whose principles were, that the Prince Regent
+wore stays, and that nobody had a right to any salary, and that the
+army and navy ought to be put down&mdash;horrors at which I trembled
+in my bed, after supplicating that the Radicals might be speedily taken
+and hanged.&nbsp; Here, too, had we, the small boys of Boles&rsquo;s,
+had that cricket match against the small boys of Coles&rsquo;s, when
+Boles and Coles had actually met upon the ground, and when, instead
+of instantly hitting out at one another with the utmost fury, as we
+had all hoped and expected, those sneaks had said respectively, &lsquo;I
+hope Mrs. Boles is well,&rsquo; and &lsquo;I hope Mrs. Coles and the
+baby are doing charmingly.&rsquo;&nbsp; Could it be that, after all
+this, and much more, the Playing-field was a Station, and No. 97 expectorated
+boiling water and redhot cinders on it, and the whole belonged by Act
+of Parliament to S.E.R.?</p>
+<p>As it could be, and was, I left the place with a heavy heart for
+a walk all over the town.&nbsp; And first of Timpson&rsquo;s up-street.&nbsp;
+When I departed from Dullborough in the strawy arms of Timpson&rsquo;s
+Blue-Eyed Maid, Timpson&rsquo;s was a moderate-sized coach-office (in
+fact, a little coach-office), with an oval transparency in the window,
+which looked beautiful by night, representing one of Timpson&rsquo;s
+coaches in the act of passing a milestone on the London road with great
+velocity, completely full inside and out, and all the passengers dressed
+in the first style of fashion, and enjoying themselves tremendously.&nbsp;
+I found no such place as Timpson&rsquo;s now&mdash;no such bricks and
+rafters, not to mention the name&mdash;no such edifice on the teeming
+earth.&nbsp; Pickford had come and knocked Timpson&rsquo;s down.&nbsp;
+Pickford had not only knocked Timpson&rsquo;s down, but had knocked
+two or three houses down on each side of Timpson&rsquo;s, and then had
+knocked the whole into one great establishment with a pair of big gates,
+in and out of which, his (Pickford&rsquo;s) waggons are, in these days,
+always rattling, with their drivers sitting up so high, that they look
+in at the second-floor windows of the old-fashioned houses in the High-street
+as they shake the town.&nbsp; I have not the honour of Pickford&rsquo;s
+acquaintance, but I felt that he had done me an injury, not to say committed
+an act of boyslaughter, in running over my Childhood in this rough manner;
+and if ever I meet Pickford driving one of his own monsters, and smoking
+a pipe the while (which is the custom of his men), he shall know by
+the expression of my eye, if it catches his, that there is something
+wrong between us.</p>
+<p>Moreover, I felt that Pickford had no right to come rushing into
+Dullborough and deprive the town of a public picture.&nbsp; He is not
+Napoleon Bonaparte.&nbsp; When he took down the transparent stage-coach,
+he ought to have given the town a transparent van.&nbsp; With a gloomy
+conviction that Pickford is wholly utilitarian and unimaginative, I
+proceeded on my way.</p>
+<p>It is a mercy I have not a red and green lamp and a night-bell at
+my door, for in my very young days I was taken to so many lyings-in
+that I wonder I escaped becoming a professional martyr to them in after-life.&nbsp;
+I suppose I had a very sympathetic nurse, with a large circle of married
+acquaintance.&nbsp; However that was, as I continued my walk through
+Dullborough, I found many houses to be solely associated in my mind
+with this particular interest.&nbsp; At one little greengrocer&rsquo;s
+shop, down certain steps from the street, I remember to have waited
+on a lady who had had four children (I am afraid to write five, though
+I fully believe it was five) at a birth.&nbsp; This meritorious woman
+held quite a reception in her room on the morning when I was introduced
+there, and the sight of the house brought vividly to my mind how the
+four (five) deceased young people lay, side by side, on a clean cloth
+on a chest of drawers; reminding me by a homely association, which I
+suspect their complexion to have assisted, of pigs&rsquo; feet as they
+are usually displayed at a neat tripe-shop.&nbsp; Hot candle was handed
+round on the occasion, and I further remembered as I stood contemplating
+the greengrocer&rsquo;s, that a subscription was entered into among
+the company, which became extremely alarming to my consciousness of
+having pocket-money on my person.&nbsp; This fact being known to my
+conductress, whoever she was, I was earnestly exhorted to contribute,
+but resolutely declined: therein disgusting the company, who gave me
+to understand that I must dismiss all expectations of going to Heaven.</p>
+<p>How does it happen that when all else is change wherever one goes,
+there yet seem, in every place, to be some few people who never alter?&nbsp;
+As the sight of the greengrocer&rsquo;s house recalled these trivial
+incidents of long ago, the identical greengrocer appeared on the steps,
+with his hands in his pockets, and leaning his shoulder against the
+door-post, as my childish eyes had seen him many a time; indeed, there
+was his old mark on the door-post yet, as if his shadow had become a
+fixture there.&nbsp; It was he himself; he might formerly have been
+an old-looking young man, or he might now be a young-looking old man,
+but there he was.&nbsp; In walking along the street, I had as yet looked
+in vain for a familiar face, or even a transmitted face; here was the
+very greengrocer who had been weighing and handling baskets on the morning
+of the reception.&nbsp; As he brought with him a dawning remembrance
+that he had had no proprietary interest in those babies, I crossed the
+road, and accosted him on the subject.&nbsp; He was not in the least
+excited or gratified, or in any way roused, by the accuracy of my recollection,
+but said, Yes, summut out of the common&mdash;he didn&rsquo;t remember
+how many it was (as if half-a-dozen babes either way made no difference)&mdash;had
+happened to a Mrs. What&rsquo;s-her-name, as once lodged there&mdash;but
+he didn&rsquo;t call it to mind, particular.&nbsp; Nettled by this phlegmatic
+conduct, I informed him that I had left the town when I was a child.&nbsp;
+He slowly returned, quite unsoftened, and not without a sarcastic kind
+of complacency, <i>Had</i> I?&nbsp; Ah!&nbsp; And did I find it had
+got on tolerably well without me?&nbsp; Such is the difference (I thought,
+when I had left him a few hundred yards behind, and was by so much in
+a better temper) between going away from a place and remaining in it.&nbsp;
+I had no right, I reflected, to be angry with the greengrocer for his
+want of interest, I was nothing to him: whereas he was the town, the
+cathedral, the bridge, the river, my childhood, and a large slice of
+my life, to me.</p>
+<p>Of course the town had shrunk fearfully, since I was a child there.&nbsp;
+I had entertained the impression that the High-street was at least as
+wide as Regent-street, London, or the Italian Boulevard at Paris.&nbsp;
+I found it little better than a lane.&nbsp; There was a public clock
+in it, which I had supposed to be the finest clock in the world: whereas
+it now turned out to be as inexpressive, moon-faced, and weak a clock
+as ever I saw.&nbsp; It belonged to a Town Hall, where I had seen an
+Indian (who I now suppose wasn&rsquo;t an Indian) swallow a sword (which
+I now suppose he didn&rsquo;t).&nbsp; The edifice had appeared to me
+in those days so glorious a structure, that I had set it up in my mind
+as the model on which the Genie of the Lamp built the palace for Aladdin.&nbsp;
+A mean little brick heap, like a demented chapel, with a few yawning
+persons in leather gaiters, and in the last extremity for something
+to do, lounging at the door with their hands in their pockets, and calling
+themselves a Corn Exchange!</p>
+<p>The Theatre was in existence, I found, on asking the fishmonger,
+who had a compact show of stock in his window, consisting of a sole
+and a quart of shrimps&mdash;and I resolved to comfort my mind by going
+to look at it.&nbsp; Richard the Third, in a very uncomfortable cloak,
+had first appeared to me there, and had made my heart leap with terror
+by backing up against the stage-box in which I was posted, while struggling
+for life against the virtuous Richmond.&nbsp; It was within those walls
+that I had learnt as from a page of English history, how that wicked
+King slept in war-time on a sofa much too short for him, and how fearfully
+his conscience troubled his boots.&nbsp; There, too, had I first seen
+the funny countryman, but countryman of noble principles, in a flowered
+waistcoat, crunch up his little hat and throw it on the ground, and
+pull off his coat, saying, &lsquo;Dom thee, squire, coom on with thy
+fistes then!&rsquo;&nbsp; At which the lovely young woman who kept company
+with him (and who went out gleaning, in a narrow white muslin apron
+with five beautiful bars of five different-coloured ribbons across it)
+was so frightened for his sake, that she fainted away.&nbsp; Many wondrous
+secrets of Nature had I come to the knowledge of in that sanctuary:
+of which not the least terrific were, that the witches in Macbeth bore
+an awful resemblance to the Thanes and other proper inhabitants of Scotland;
+and that the good King Duncan couldn&rsquo;t rest in his grave, but
+was constantly coming out of it and calling himself somebody else.&nbsp;
+To the Theatre, therefore, I repaired for consolation.&nbsp; But I found
+very little, for it was in a bad and declining way.&nbsp; A dealer in
+wine and bottled beer had already squeezed his trade into the box-office,
+and the theatrical money was taken&mdash;when it came&mdash;in a kind
+of meat-safe in the passage.&nbsp; The dealer in wine and bottled beer
+must have insinuated himself under the stage too; for he announced that
+he had various descriptions of alcoholic drinks &lsquo;in the wood,&rsquo;
+and there was no possible stowage for the wood anywhere else.&nbsp;
+Evidently, he was by degrees eating the establishment away to the core,
+and would soon have sole possession of it.&nbsp; It was To Let, and
+hopelessly so, for its old purposes; and there had been no entertainment
+within its walls for a long time except a Panorama; and even that had
+been announced as &lsquo;pleasingly instructive,&rsquo; and I know too
+well the fatal meaning and the leaden import of those terrible expressions.&nbsp;
+No, there was no comfort in the Theatre.&nbsp; It was mysteriously gone,
+like my own youth.&nbsp; Unlike my own youth, it might be coming back
+some day; but there was little promise of it.</p>
+<p>As the town was placarded with references to the Dullborough Mechanics&rsquo;
+Institution, I thought I would go and look at that establishment next.&nbsp;
+There had been no such thing in the town, in my young day, and it occurred
+to me that its extreme prosperity might have brought adversity upon
+the Drama.&nbsp; I found the Institution with some difficulty, and should
+scarcely have known that I had found it if I had judged from its external
+appearance only; but this was attributable to its never having been
+finished, and having no front: consequently, it led a modest and retired
+existence up a stable-yard.&nbsp; It was (as I learnt, on inquiry) a
+most flourishing Institution, and of the highest benefit to the town:
+two triumphs which I was glad to understand were not at all impaired
+by the seeming drawbacks that no mechanics belonged to it, and that
+it was steeped in debt to the chimney-pots.&nbsp; It had a large room,
+which was approached by an infirm step-ladder: the builder having declined
+to construct the intended staircase, without a present payment in cash,
+which Dullborough (though profoundly appreciative of the Institution)
+seemed unaccountably bashful about subscribing.&nbsp; The large room
+had cost&mdash;or would, when paid for&mdash;five hundred pounds; and
+it had more mortar in it and more echoes, than one might have expected
+to get for the money.&nbsp; It was fitted up with a platform, and the
+usual lecturing tools, including a large black board of a menacing appearance.&nbsp;
+On referring to lists of the courses of lectures that had been given
+in this thriving Hall, I fancied I detected a shyness in admitting that
+human nature when at leisure has any desire whatever to be relieved
+and diverted; and a furtive sliding in of any poor make-weight piece
+of amusement, shame-facedly and edgewise.&nbsp; Thus, I observed that
+it was necessary for the members to be knocked on the head with Gas,
+Air, Water, Food, the Solar System, the Geological periods, Criticism
+on Milton, the Steam-engine, John Bunyan, and Arrow-Headed Inscriptions,
+before they might be tickled by those unaccountable choristers, the
+negro singers in the court costume of the reign of George the Second.&nbsp;
+Likewise, that they must be stunned by a weighty inquiry whether there
+was internal evidence in Shakespeare&rsquo;s works, to prove that his
+uncle by the mother&rsquo;s side lived for some years at Stoke Newington,
+before they were brought-to by a Miscellaneous Concert.&nbsp; But, indeed,
+the masking of entertainment, and pretending it was something else&mdash;as
+people mask bedsteads when they are obliged to have them in sitting-rooms,
+and make believe that they are book-cases, sofas, chests of drawers,
+anything rather than bedsteads&mdash;was manifest even in the pretence
+of dreariness that the unfortunate entertainers themselves felt obliged
+in decency to put forth when they came here.&nbsp; One very agreeable
+professional singer, who travelled with two professional ladies, knew
+better than to introduce either of those ladies to sing the ballad &lsquo;Comin&rsquo;
+through the Rye&rsquo; without prefacing it himself, with some general
+remarks on wheat and clover; and even then, he dared not for his life
+call the song, a song, but disguised it in the bill as an &lsquo;Illustration.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+In the library, also&mdash;fitted with shelves for three thousand books,
+and containing upwards of one hundred and seventy (presented copies
+mostly), seething their edges in damp plaster&mdash;there was such a
+painfully apologetic return of 62 offenders who had read Travels, Popular
+Biography, and mere Fiction descriptive of the aspirations of the hearts
+and souls of mere human creatures like themselves; and such an elaborate
+parade of 2 bright examples who had had down Euclid after the day&rsquo;s
+occupation and confinement; and 3 who had had down Metaphysics after
+ditto; and 1 who had had down Theology after ditto; and 4 who had worried
+Grammar, Political Economy, Botany, and Logarithms all at once after
+ditto; that I suspected the boasted class to be one man, who had been
+hired to do it.</p>
+<p>Emerging from the Mechanics&rsquo; Institution and continuing my
+walk about the town, I still noticed everywhere the prevalence, to an
+extraordinary degree, of this custom of putting the natural demand for
+amusement out of sight, as some untidy housekeepers put dust, and pretending
+that it was swept away.&nbsp; And yet it was ministered to, in a dull
+and abortive manner, by all who made this feint.&nbsp; Looking in at
+what is called in Dullborough &lsquo;the serious bookseller&rsquo;s,&rsquo;
+where, in my childhood, I had studied the faces of numbers of gentlemen
+depicted in rostrums with a gaslight on each side of them, and casting
+my eyes over the open pages of certain printed discourses there, I found
+a vast deal of aiming at jocosity and dramatic effect, even in them&mdash;yes,
+verily, even on the part of one very wrathful expounder who bitterly
+anathematised a poor little Circus.&nbsp; Similarly, in the reading
+provided for the young people enrolled in the Lasso of Love, and other
+excellent unions, I found the writers generally under a distressing
+sense that they must start (at all events) like story-tellers, and delude
+the young persons into the belief that they were going to be interesting.&nbsp;
+As I looked in at this window for twenty minutes by the clock, I am
+in a position to offer a friendly remonstrance&mdash;not bearing on
+this particular point&mdash;to the designers and engravers of the pictures
+in those publications.&nbsp; Have they considered the awful consequences
+likely to flow from their representations of Virtue?&nbsp; Have they
+asked themselves the question, whether the terrific prospect of acquiring
+that fearful chubbiness of head, unwieldiness of arm, feeble dislocation
+of leg, crispiness of hair, and enormity of shirt-collar, which they
+represent as inseparable from Goodness, may not tend to confirm sensitive
+waverers, in Evil?&nbsp; A most impressive example (if I had believed
+it) of what a Dustman and a Sailor may come to, when they mend their
+ways, was presented to me in this same shop-window.&nbsp; When they
+were leaning (they were intimate friends) against a post, drunk and
+reckless, with surpassingly bad hats on, and their hair over their foreheads,
+they were rather picturesque, and looked as if they might be agreeable
+men, if they would not be beasts.&nbsp; But, when they had got over
+their bad propensities, and when, as a consequence, their heads had
+swelled alarmingly, their hair had got so curly that it lifted their
+blown-out cheeks up, their coat-cuffs were so long that they never could
+do any work, and their eyes were so wide open that they never could
+do any sleep, they presented a spectacle calculated to plunge a timid
+nature into the depths of Infamy.</p>
+<p>But, the clock that had so degenerated since I saw it last, admonished
+me that I had stayed here long enough; and I resumed my walk.</p>
+<p>I had not gone fifty paces along the street when I was suddenly brought
+up by the sight of a man who got out of a little phaeton at the doctor&rsquo;s
+door, and went into the doctor&rsquo;s house.&nbsp; Immediately, the
+air was filled with the scent of trodden grass, and the perspective
+of years opened, and at the end of it was a little likeness of this
+man keeping a wicket, and I said, &lsquo;God bless my soul!&nbsp; Joe
+Specks!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Through many changes and much work, I had preserved a tenderness
+for the memory of Joe, forasmuch as we had made the acquaintance of
+Roderick Random together, and had believed him to be no ruffian, but
+an ingenuous and engaging hero.&nbsp; Scorning to ask the boy left in
+the phaeton whether it was really Joe, and scorning even to read the
+brass plate on the door&mdash;so sure was I&mdash;I rang the bell and
+informed the servant maid that a stranger sought audience of Mr. Specks.&nbsp;
+Into a room, half surgery, half study, I was shown to await his coming,
+and I found it, by a series of elaborate accidents, bestrewn with testimonies
+to Joe.&nbsp; Portrait of Mr. Specks, bust of Mr. Specks, silver cup
+from grateful patient to Mr. Specks, presentation sermon from local
+clergyman, dedication poem from local poet, dinner-card from local nobleman,
+tract on balance of power from local refugee, inscribed <i>Hommage de
+l&rsquo;auteur</i> <i>&agrave; Specks.</i></p>
+<p>When my old schoolfellow came in, and I informed him with a smile
+that I was not a patient, he seemed rather at a loss to perceive any
+reason for smiling in connexion with that fact, and inquired to what
+was he to attribute the honour?&nbsp; I asked him with another smile,
+could he remember me at all?&nbsp; He had not (he said) that pleasure.&nbsp;
+I was beginning to have but a poor opinion of Mr. Specks, when he said
+reflectively, &lsquo;And yet there&rsquo;s a something too.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Upon that, I saw a boyish light in his eyes that looked well, and I
+asked him if he could inform me, as a stranger who desired to know and
+had not the means of reference at hand, what the name of the young lady
+was, who married Mr. Random?&nbsp; Upon that, he said &lsquo;Narcissa,&rsquo;
+and, after staring for a moment, called me by my name, shook me by the
+hand, and melted into a roar of laughter.&nbsp; &lsquo;Why, of course,
+you&rsquo;ll remember Lucy Green,&rsquo; he said, after we had talked
+a little.&nbsp; &lsquo;Of course,&rsquo; said I.&nbsp; &lsquo;Whom do
+you think she married?&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;You?&rsquo; I hazarded.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Me,&rsquo; said Specks, &lsquo;and you shall see her.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+So I saw her, and she was fat, and if all the hay in the world had been
+heaped upon her, it could scarcely have altered her face more than Time
+had altered it from my remembrance of the face that had once looked
+down upon me into the fragrant dungeons of Seringapatam.&nbsp; But when
+her youngest child came in after dinner (for I dined with them, and
+we had no other company than Specks, Junior, Barrister-at-law, who went
+away as soon as the cloth was removed, to look after the young lady
+to whom he was going to be married next week), I saw again, in that
+little daughter, the little face of the hayfield, unchanged, and it
+quite touched my foolish heart.&nbsp; We talked immensely, Specks and
+Mrs. Specks, and I, and we spoke of our old selves as though our old
+selves were dead and gone, and indeed, indeed they were&mdash;dead and
+gone as the playing-field that had become a wilderness of rusty iron,
+and the property of S.E.R.</p>
+<p>Specks, however, illuminated Dullborough with the rays of interest
+that I wanted and should otherwise have missed in it, and linked its
+present to its past, with a highly agreeable chain.&nbsp; And in Specks&rsquo;s
+society I had new occasion to observe what I had before noticed in similar
+communications among other men.&nbsp; All the schoolfellows and others
+of old, whom I inquired about, had either done superlatively well or
+superlatively ill&mdash;had either become uncertificated bankrupts,
+or been felonious and got themselves transported; or had made great
+hits in life, and done wonders.&nbsp; And this is so commonly the case,
+that I never can imagine what becomes of all the mediocre people of
+people&rsquo;s youth&mdash;especially considering that we find no lack
+of the species in our maturity.&nbsp; But, I did not propound this difficulty
+to Specks, for no pause in the conversation gave me an occasion.&nbsp;
+Nor, could I discover one single flaw in the good doctor&mdash;when
+he reads this, he will receive in a friendly spirit the pleasantly meant
+record&mdash;except that he had forgotten his Roderick Random, and that
+he confounded Strap with Lieutenant Hatchway; who never knew Random,
+howsoever intimate with Pickle.</p>
+<p>When I went alone to the Railway to catch my train at night (Specks
+had meant to go with me, but was inopportunely called out), I was in
+a more charitable mood with Dullborough than I had been all day; and
+yet in my heart I had loved it all day too.&nbsp; Ah! who was I that
+I should quarrel with the town for being changed to me, when I myself
+had come back, so changed, to it!&nbsp; All my early readings and early
+imaginations dated from this place, and I took them away so full of
+innocent construction and guileless belief, and I brought them back
+so worn and torn, so much the wiser and so much the worse!</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII&mdash;NIGHT WALKS</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Some years ago, a temporary inability to sleep, referable to a distressing
+impression, caused me to walk about the streets all night, for a series
+of several nights.&nbsp; The disorder might have taken a long time to
+conquer, if it had been faintly experimented on in bed; but, it was
+soon defeated by the brisk treatment of getting up directly after lying
+down, and going out, and coming home tired at sunrise.</p>
+<p>In the course of those nights, I finished my education in a fair
+amateur experience of houselessness.&nbsp; My principal object being
+to get through the night, the pursuit of it brought me into sympathetic
+relations with people who have no other object every night in the year.</p>
+<p>The month was March, and the weather damp, cloudy, and cold.&nbsp;
+The sun not rising before half-past five, the night perspective looked
+sufficiently long at half-past twelve: which was about my time for confronting
+it.</p>
+<p>The restlessness of a great city, and the way in which it tumbles
+and tosses before it can get to sleep, formed one of the first entertainments
+offered to the contemplation of us houseless people.&nbsp; It lasted
+about two hours.&nbsp; We lost a great deal of companionship when the
+late public-houses turned their lamps out, and when the potmen thrust
+the last brawling drunkards into the street; but stray vehicles and
+stray people were left us, after that.&nbsp; If we were very lucky,
+a policeman&rsquo;s rattle sprang and a fray turned up; but, in general,
+surprisingly little of this diversion was provided.&nbsp; Except in
+the Haymarket, which is the worst kept part of London, and about Kent-street
+in the Borough, and along a portion of the line of the Old Kent-road,
+the peace was seldom violently broken.&nbsp; But, it was always the
+case that London, as if in imitation of individual citizens belonging
+to it, had expiring fits and starts of restlessness.&nbsp; After all
+seemed quiet, if one cab rattled by, half-a-dozen would surely follow;
+and Houselessness even observed that intoxicated people appeared to
+be magnetically attracted towards each other; so that we knew when we
+saw one drunken object staggering against the shutters of a shop, that
+another drunken object would stagger up before five minutes were out,
+to fraternise or fight with it.&nbsp; When we made a divergence from
+the regular species of drunkard, the thin-armed, puff-faced, leaden-lipped
+gin-drinker, and encountered a rarer specimen of a more decent appearance,
+fifty to one but that specimen was dressed in soiled mourning.&nbsp;
+As the street experience in the night, so the street experience in the
+day; the common folk who come unexpectedly into a little property, come
+unexpectedly into a deal of liquor.</p>
+<p>At length these flickering sparks would die away, worn out&mdash;the
+last veritable sparks of waking life trailed from some late pieman or
+hot-potato man&mdash;and London would sink to rest.&nbsp; And then the
+yearning of the houseless mind would be for any sign of company, any
+lighted place, any movement, anything suggestive of any one being up&mdash;nay,
+even so much as awake, for the houseless eye looked out for lights in
+windows.</p>
+<p>Walking the streets under the pattering rain, Houselessness would
+walk and walk and walk, seeing nothing but the interminable tangle of
+streets, save at a corner, here and there, two policemen in conversation,
+or the sergeant or inspector looking after his men.&nbsp; Now and then
+in the night&mdash;but rarely&mdash;Houselessness would become aware
+of a furtive head peering out of a doorway a few yards before him, and,
+coming up with the head, would find a man standing bolt upright to keep
+within the doorway&rsquo;s shadow, and evidently intent upon no particular
+service to society.&nbsp; Under a kind of fascination, and in a ghostly
+silence suitable to the time, Houselessness and this gentleman would
+eye one another from head to foot, and so, without exchange of speech,
+part, mutually suspicious.&nbsp; Drip, drip, drip, from ledge and coping,
+splash from pipes and water-spouts, and by-and-by the houseless shadow
+would fall upon the stones that pave the way to Waterloo-bridge; it
+being in the houseless mind to have a halfpenny worth of excuse for
+saying &lsquo;Good-night&rsquo; to the toll-keeper, and catching a glimpse
+of his fire.&nbsp; A good fire and a good great-coat and a good woollen
+neck-shawl, were comfortable things to see in conjunction with the toll-keeper;
+also his brisk wakefulness was excellent company when he rattled the
+change of halfpence down upon that metal table of his, like a man who
+defied the night, with all its sorrowful thoughts, and didn&rsquo;t
+care for the coming of dawn.&nbsp; There was need of encouragement on
+the threshold of the bridge, for the bridge was dreary.&nbsp; The chopped-up
+murdered man, had not been lowered with a rope over the parapet when
+those nights were; he was alive, and slept then quietly enough most
+likely, and undisturbed by any dream of where he was to come.&nbsp;
+But the river had an awful look, the buildings on the banks were muffled
+in black shrouds, and the reflected lights seemed to originate deep
+in the water, as if the spectres of suicides were holding them to show
+where they went down.&nbsp; The wild moon and clouds were as restless
+as an evil conscience in a tumbled bed, and the very shadow of the immensity
+of London seemed to lie oppressively upon the river.</p>
+<p>Between the bridge and the two great theatres, there was but the
+distance of a few hundred paces, so the theatres came next.&nbsp; Grim
+and black within, at night, those great dry Wells, and lonesome to imagine,
+with the rows of faces faded out, the lights extinguished, and the seats
+all empty.&nbsp; One would think that nothing in them knew itself at
+such a time but Yorick&rsquo;s skull.&nbsp; In one of my night walks,
+as the church steeples were shaking the March winds and rain with the
+strokes of Four, I passed the outer boundary of one of these great deserts,
+and entered it.&nbsp; With a dim lantern in my hand, I groped my well-known
+way to the stage and looked over the orchestra&mdash;which was like
+a great grave dug for a time of pestilence&mdash;into the void beyond.&nbsp;
+A dismal cavern of an immense aspect, with the chandelier gone dead
+like everything else, and nothing visible through mist and fog and space,
+but tiers of winding-sheets.&nbsp; The ground at my feet where, when
+last there, I had seen the peasantry of Naples dancing among the vines,
+reckless of the burning mountain which threatened to overwhelm them,
+was now in possession of a strong serpent of engine-hose, watchfully
+lying in wait for the serpent Fire, and ready to fly at it if it showed
+its forked tongue.&nbsp; A ghost of a watchman, carrying a faint corpse
+candle, haunted the distant upper gallery and flitted away.&nbsp; Retiring
+within the proscenium, and holding my light above my head towards the
+rolled-up curtain&mdash;green no more, but black as ebony&mdash;my sight
+lost itself in a gloomy vault, showing faint indications in it of a
+shipwreck of canvas and cordage.&nbsp; Methought I felt much as a diver
+might, at the bottom of the sea.</p>
+<p>In those small hours when there was no movement in the streets, it
+afforded matter for reflection to take Newgate in the way, and, touching
+its rough stone, to think of the prisoners in their sleep, and then
+to glance in at the lodge over the spiked wicket, and see the fire and
+light of the watching turnkeys, on the white wall.&nbsp; Not an inappropriate
+time either, to linger by that wicked little Debtors&rsquo; Door&mdash;shutting
+tighter than any other door one ever saw&mdash;which has been Death&rsquo;s
+Door to so many.&nbsp; In the days of the uttering of forged one-pound
+notes by people tempted up from the country, how many hundreds of wretched
+creatures of both sexes&mdash;many quite innocent&mdash;swung out of
+a pitiless and inconsistent world, with the tower of yonder Christian
+church of Saint Sepulchre monstrously before their eyes!&nbsp; Is there
+any haunting of the Bank Parlour, by the remorseful souls of old directors,
+in the nights of these later days, I wonder, or is it as quiet as this
+degenerate Aceldama of an Old Bailey?</p>
+<p>To walk on to the Bank, lamenting the good old times and bemoaning
+the present evil period, would be an easy next step, so I would take
+it, and would make my houseless circuit of the Bank, and give a thought
+to the treasure within; likewise to the guard of soldiers passing the
+night there, and nodding over the fire.&nbsp; Next, I went to Billingsgate,
+in some hope of market-people, but it proving as yet too early, crossed
+London-bridge and got down by the water-side on the Surrey shore among
+the buildings of the great brewery.&nbsp; There was plenty going on
+at the brewery; and the reek, and the smell of grains, and the rattling
+of the plump dray horses at their mangers, were capital company.&nbsp;
+Quite refreshed by having mingled with this good society, I made a new
+start with a new heart, setting the old King&rsquo;s Bench prison before
+me for my next object, and resolving, when I should come to the wall,
+to think of poor Horace Kinch, and the Dry Rot in men.</p>
+<p>A very curious disease the Dry Rot in men, and difficult to detect
+the beginning of.&nbsp; It had carried Horace Kinch inside the wall
+of the old King&rsquo;s Bench prison, and it had carried him out with
+his feet foremost.&nbsp; He was a likely man to look at, in the prime
+of life, well to do, as clever as he needed to be, and popular among
+many friends.&nbsp; He was suitably married, and had healthy and pretty
+children.&nbsp; But, like some fair-looking houses or fair-looking ships,
+he took the Dry Rot.&nbsp; The first strong external revelation of the
+Dry Rot in men, is a tendency to lurk and lounge; to be at street-corners
+without intelligible reason; to be going anywhere when met; to be about
+many places rather than at any; to do nothing tangible, but to have
+an intention of performing a variety of intangible duties to-morrow
+or the day after.&nbsp; When this manifestation of the disease is observed,
+the observer will usually connect it with a vague impression once formed
+or received, that the patient was living a little too hard.&nbsp; He
+will scarcely have had leisure to turn it over in his mind and form
+the terrible suspicion &lsquo;Dry Rot,&rsquo; when he will notice a
+change for the worse in the patient&rsquo;s appearance: a certain slovenliness
+and deterioration, which is not poverty, nor dirt, nor intoxication,
+nor ill-health, but simply Dry Rot.&nbsp; To this, succeeds a smell
+as of strong waters, in the morning; to that, a looseness respecting
+money; to that, a stronger smell as of strong waters, at all times;
+to that, a looseness respecting everything; to that, a trembling of
+the limbs, somnolency, misery, and crumbling to pieces.&nbsp; As it
+is in wood, so it is in men.&nbsp; Dry Rot advances at a compound usury
+quite incalculable.&nbsp; A plank is found infected with it, and the
+whole structure is devoted.&nbsp; Thus it had been with the unhappy
+Horace Kinch, lately buried by a small subscription.&nbsp; Those who
+knew him had not nigh done saying, &lsquo;So well off, so comfortably
+established, with such hope before him&mdash;and yet, it is feared,
+with a slight touch of Dry Rot!&rsquo; when lo! the man was all Dry
+Rot and dust.</p>
+<p>From the dead wall associated on those houseless nights with this
+too common story, I chose next to wander by Bethlehem Hospital; partly,
+because it lay on my road round to Westminster; partly, because I had
+a night fancy in my head which could be best pursued within sight of
+its walls and dome.&nbsp; And the fancy was this: Are not the sane and
+the insane equal at night as the sane lie a dreaming?&nbsp; Are not
+all of us outside this hospital, who dream, more or less in the condition
+of those inside it, every night of our lives?&nbsp; Are we not nightly
+persuaded, as they daily are, that we associate preposterously with
+kings and queens, emperors and empresses, and notabilities of all sorts?&nbsp;
+Do we not nightly jumble events and personages and times and places,
+as these do daily?&nbsp; Are we not sometimes troubled by our own sleeping
+inconsistencies, and do we not vexedly try to account for them or excuse
+them, just as these do sometimes in respect of their waking delusions?&nbsp;
+Said an afflicted man to me, when I was last in a hospital like this,
+&lsquo;Sir, I can frequently fly.&rsquo;&nbsp; I was half ashamed to
+reflect that so could I&mdash;by night.&nbsp; Said a woman to me on
+the same occasion, &lsquo;Queen Victoria frequently comes to dine with
+me, and her Majesty and I dine off peaches and maccaroni in our night-gowns,
+and his Royal Highness the Prince Consort does us the honour to make
+a third on horseback in a Field-Marshal&rsquo;s uniform.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Could I refrain from reddening with consciousness when I remembered
+the amazing royal parties I myself had given (at night), the unaccountable
+viands I had put on table, and my extraordinary manner of conducting
+myself on those distinguished occasions?&nbsp; I wonder that the great
+master who knew everything, when he called Sleep the death of each day&rsquo;s
+life, did not call Dreams the insanity of each day&rsquo;s sanity.</p>
+<p>By this time I had left the Hospital behind me, and was again setting
+towards the river; and in a short breathing space I was on Westminster-bridge,
+regaling my houseless eyes with the external walls of the British Parliament&mdash;the
+perfection of a stupendous institution, I know, and the admiration of
+all surrounding nations and succeeding ages, I do not doubt, but perhaps
+a little the better now and then for being pricked up to its work.&nbsp;
+Turning off into Old Palace-yard, the Courts of Law kept me company
+for a quarter of an hour; hinting in low whispers what numbers of people
+they were keeping awake, and how intensely wretched and horrible they
+were rendering the small hours to unfortunate suitors.&nbsp; Westminster
+Abbey was fine gloomy society for another quarter of an hour; suggesting
+a wonderful procession of its dead among the dark arches and pillars,
+each century more amazed by the century following it than by all the
+centuries going before.&nbsp; And indeed in those houseless night walks&mdash;which
+even included cemeteries where watchmen went round among the graves
+at stated times, and moved the tell-tale handle of an index which recorded
+that they had touched it at such an hour&mdash;it was a solemn consideration
+what enormous hosts of dead belong to one old great city, and how, if
+they were raised while the living slept, there would not be the space
+of a pin&rsquo;s point in all the streets and ways for the living to
+come out into.&nbsp; Not only that, but the vast armies of dead would
+overflow the hills and valleys beyond the city, and would stretch away
+all round it, God knows how far.</p>
+<p>When a church clock strikes, on houseless ears in the dead of the
+night, it may be at first mistaken for company and hailed as such.&nbsp;
+But, as the spreading circles of vibration, which you may perceive at
+such a time with great clearness, go opening out, for ever and ever
+afterwards widening perhaps (as the philosopher has suggested) in eternal
+space, the mistake is rectified and the sense of loneliness is profounder.&nbsp;
+Once&mdash;it was after leaving the Abbey and turning my face north&mdash;I
+came to the great steps of St. Martin&rsquo;s church as the clock was
+striking Three.&nbsp; Suddenly, a thing that in a moment more I should
+have trodden upon without seeing, rose up at my feet with a cry of loneliness
+and houselessness, struck out of it by the bell, the like of which I
+never heard.&nbsp; We then stood face to face looking at one another,
+frightened by one another.&nbsp; The creature was like a beetle-browed
+hair-lipped youth of twenty, and it had a loose bundle of rags on, which
+it held together with one of its hands.&nbsp; It shivered from head
+to foot, and its teeth chattered, and as it stared at me&mdash;persecutor,
+devil, ghost, whatever it thought me&mdash;it made with its whining
+mouth as if it were snapping at me, like a worried dog.&nbsp; Intending
+to give this ugly object money, I put out my hand to stay it&mdash;for
+it recoiled as it whined and snapped&mdash;and laid my hand upon its
+shoulder.&nbsp; Instantly, it twisted out of its garment, like the young
+man in the New Testament, and left me standing alone with its rags in
+my hands.</p>
+<p>Covent-garden Market, when it was market morning, was wonderful company.&nbsp;
+The great waggons of cabbages, with growers&rsquo; men and boys lying
+asleep under them, and with sharp dogs from market-garden neighbourhoods
+looking after the whole, were as good as a party.&nbsp; But one of the
+worst night sights I know in London, is to be found in the children
+who prowl about this place; who sleep in the baskets, fight for the
+offal, dart at any object they think they can lay their their thieving
+hands on, dive under the carts and barrows, dodge the constables, and
+are perpetually making a blunt pattering on the pavement of the Piazza
+with the rain of their naked feet.&nbsp; A painful and unnatural result
+comes of the comparison one is forced to institute between the growth
+of corruption as displayed in the so much improved and cared for fruits
+of the earth, and the growth of corruption as displayed in these all
+uncared for (except inasmuch as ever-hunted) savages.</p>
+<p>There was early coffee to be got about Covent-garden Market, and
+that was more company&mdash;warm company, too, which was better.&nbsp;
+Toast of a very substantial quality, was likewise procurable: though
+the towzled-headed man who made it, in an inner chamber within the coffee-room,
+hadn&rsquo;t got his coat on yet, and was so heavy with sleep that in
+every interval of toast and coffee he went off anew behind the partition
+into complicated cross-roads of choke and snore, and lost his way directly.&nbsp;
+Into one of these establishments (among the earliest) near Bow-street,
+there came one morning as I sat over my houseless cup, pondering where
+to go next, a man in a high and long snuff-coloured coat, and shoes,
+and, to the best of my belief, nothing else but a hat, who took out
+of his hat a large cold meat pudding; a meat pudding so large that it
+was a very tight fit, and brought the lining of the hat out with it.&nbsp;
+This mysterious man was known by his pudding, for on his entering, the
+man of sleep brought him a pint of hot tea, a small loaf, and a large
+knife and fork and plate.&nbsp; Left to himself in his box, he stood
+the pudding on the bare table, and, instead of cutting it, stabbed it,
+overhand, with the knife, like a mortal enemy; then took the knife out,
+wiped it on his sleeve, tore the pudding asunder with his fingers, and
+ate it all up.&nbsp; The remembrance of this man with the pudding remains
+with me as the remembrance of the most spectral person my houselessness
+encountered.&nbsp; Twice only was I in that establishment, and twice
+I saw him stalk in (as I should say, just out of bed, and presently
+going back to bed), take out his pudding, stab his pudding, wipe the
+dagger, and eat his pudding all up.&nbsp; He was a man whose figure
+promised cadaverousness, but who had an excessively red face, though
+shaped like a horse&rsquo;s.&nbsp; On the second occasion of my seeing
+him, he said huskily to the man of sleep, &lsquo;Am I red to-night?&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;You are,&rsquo; he uncompromisingly answered.&nbsp; &lsquo;My
+mother,&rsquo; said the spectre, &lsquo;was a red-faced woman that liked
+drink, and I looked at her hard when she laid in her coffin, and I took
+the complexion.&rsquo;&nbsp; Somehow, the pudding seemed an unwholesome
+pudding after that, and I put myself in its way no more.</p>
+<p>When there was no market, or when I wanted variety, a railway terminus
+with the morning mails coming in, was remunerative company.&nbsp; But
+like most of the company to be had in this world, it lasted only a very
+short time.&nbsp; The station lamps would burst out ablaze, the porters
+would emerge from places of concealment, the cabs and trucks would rattle
+to their places (the post-office carts were already in theirs), and,
+finally, the bell would strike up, and the train would come banging
+in.&nbsp; But there were few passengers and little luggage, and everything
+scuttled away with the greatest expedition.&nbsp; The locomotive post-offices,
+with their great nets&mdash;as if they had been dragging the country
+for bodies&mdash;would fly open as to their doors, and would disgorge
+a smell of lamp, an exhausted clerk, a guard in a red coat, and their
+bags of letters; the engine would blow and heave and perspire, like
+an engine wiping its forehead and saying what a run it had had; and
+within ten minutes the lamps were out, and I was houseless and alone
+again.</p>
+<p>But now, there were driven cattle on the high road near, wanting
+(as cattle always do) to turn into the midst of stone walls, and squeeze
+themselves through six inches&rsquo; width of iron railing, and getting
+their heads down (also as cattle always do) for tossing-purchase at
+quite imaginary dogs, and giving themselves and every devoted creature
+associated with them a most extraordinary amount of unnecessary trouble.&nbsp;
+Now, too, the conscious gas began to grow pale with the knowledge that
+daylight was coming, and straggling workpeople were already in the streets,
+and, as waking life had become extinguished with the last pieman&rsquo;s
+sparks, so it began to be rekindled with the fires of the first street-corner
+breakfast-sellers.&nbsp; And so by faster and faster degrees, until
+the last degrees were very fast, the day came, and I was tired and could
+sleep.&nbsp; And it is not, as I used to think, going home at such times,
+the least wonderful thing in London, that in the real desert region
+of the night, the houseless wanderer is alone there.&nbsp; I knew well
+enough where to find Vice and Misfortune of all kinds, if I had chosen;
+but they were put out of sight, and my houselessness had many miles
+upon miles of streets in which it could, and did, have its own solitary
+way.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV&mdash;CHAMBERS</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Having occasion to transact some business with a solicitor who occupies
+a highly suicidal set of chambers in Gray&rsquo;s Inn, I afterwards
+took a turn in the large square of that stronghold of Melancholy, reviewing,
+with congenial surroundings, my experiences of Chambers.</p>
+<p>I began, as was natural, with the Chambers I had just left.&nbsp;
+They were an upper set on a rotten staircase, with a mysterious bunk
+or bulkhead on the landing outside them, of a rather nautical and Screw
+Collier-like appearance than otherwise, and painted an intense black.&nbsp;
+Many dusty years have passed since the appropriation of this Davy Jones&rsquo;s
+locker to any purpose, and during the whole period within the memory
+of living man, it has been hasped and padlocked.&nbsp; I cannot quite
+satisfy my mind whether it was originally meant for the reception of
+coals, or bodies, or as a place of temporary security for the plunder
+&lsquo;looted&rsquo; by laundresses; but I incline to the last opinion.&nbsp;
+It is about breast high, and usually serves as a bulk for defendants
+in reduced circumstances to lean against and ponder at, when they come
+on the hopeful errand of trying to make an arrangement without money&mdash;under
+which auspicious circumstances it mostly happens that the legal gentleman
+they want to see, is much engaged, and they pervade the staircase for
+a considerable period.&nbsp; Against this opposing bulk, in the absurdest
+manner, the tomb-like outer door of the solicitor&rsquo;s chambers (which
+is also of an intense black) stands in dark ambush, half open, and half
+shut, all day.&nbsp; The solicitor&rsquo;s apartments are three in number;
+consisting of a slice, a cell, and a wedge.&nbsp; The slice is assigned
+to the two clerks, the cell is occupied by the principal, and the wedge
+is devoted to stray papers, old game baskets from the country, a washing-stand,
+and a model of a patent Ship&rsquo;s Caboose which was exhibited in
+Chancery at the commencement of the present century on an application
+for an injunction to restrain infringement.&nbsp; At about half-past
+nine on every week-day morning, the younger of the two clerks (who,
+I have reason to believe, leads the fashion at Pentonville in the articles
+of pipes and shirts) may be found knocking the dust out of his official
+door-key on the bunk or locker before mentioned; and so exceedingly
+subject to dust is his key, and so very retentive of that superfluity,
+that in exceptional summer weather when a ray of sunlight has fallen
+on the locker in my presence, I have noticed its inexpressive countenance
+to be deeply marked by a kind of Bramah erysipelas or small-pox.</p>
+<p>This set of chambers (as I have gradually discovered, when I have
+had restless occasion to make inquiries or leave messages, after office
+hours) is under the charge of a lady named Sweeney, in figure extremely
+like an old family-umbrella: whose dwelling confronts a dead wall in
+a court off Gray&rsquo;s Inn-lane, and who is usually fetched into the
+passage of that bower, when wanted, from some neighbouring home of industry,
+which has the curious property of imparting an inflammatory appearance
+to her visage.&nbsp; Mrs. Sweeney is one of the race of professed laundresses,
+and is the compiler of a remarkable manuscript volume entitled &lsquo;Mrs.
+Sweeney&rsquo;s Book,&rsquo; from which much curious statistical information
+may be gathered respecting the high prices and small uses of soda, soap,
+sand, firewood, and other such articles.&nbsp; I have created a legend
+in my mind&mdash;and consequently I believe it with the utmost pertinacity&mdash;that
+the late Mr. Sweeney was a ticket-porter under the Honourable Society
+of Gray&rsquo;s Inn, and that, in consideration of his long and valuable
+services, Mrs. Sweeney was appointed to her present post.&nbsp; For,
+though devoid of personal charms, I have observed this lady to exercise
+a fascination over the elderly ticker-porter mind (particularly under
+the gateway, and in corners and entries), which I can only refer to
+her being one of the fraternity, yet not competing with it.&nbsp; All
+that need be said concerning this set of chambers, is said, when I have
+added that it is in a large double house in Gray&rsquo;s Inn-square,
+very much out of repair, and that the outer portal is ornamented in
+a hideous manner with certain stone remains, which have the appearance
+of the dismembered bust, torso, and limbs of a petrified bencher.</p>
+<p>Indeed, I look upon Gray&rsquo;s Inn generally as one of the most
+depressing institutions in brick and mortar, known to the children of
+men.&nbsp; Can anything be more dreary than its arid Square, Sahara
+Desert of the law, with the ugly old tiled-topped tenements, the dirty
+windows, the bills To Let, To Let, the door-posts inscribed like gravestones,
+the crazy gateway giving upon the filthy Lane, the scowling, iron-barred
+prison-like passage into Verulam-buildings, the mouldy red-nosed ticket-porters
+with little coffin plates, and why with aprons, the dry, hard, atomy-like
+appearance of the whole dust-heap?&nbsp; When my uncommercial travels
+tend to this dismal spot, my comfort is its rickety state.&nbsp; Imagination
+gloats over the fulness of time when the staircases shall have quite
+tumbled down&mdash;they are daily wearing into an ill-savoured powder,
+but have not quite tumbled down yet&mdash;when the last old prolix bencher
+all of the olden time, shall have been got out of an upper window by
+means of a Fire Ladder, and carried off to the Holborn Union; when the
+last clerk shall have engrossed the last parchment behind the last splash
+on the last of the mud-stained windows, which, all through the miry
+year, are pilloried out of recognition in Gray&rsquo;s Inn-lane.&nbsp;
+Then, shall a squalid little trench, with rank grass and a pump in it,
+lying between the coffee-house and South-square, be wholly given up
+to cats and rats, and not, as now, have its empire divided between those
+animals and a few briefless bipeds&mdash;surely called to the Bar by
+voices of deceiving spirits, seeing that they are wanted there by no
+mortal&mdash;who glance down, with eyes better glazed than their casements,
+from their dreary and lacklustre rooms.&nbsp; Then shall the way Nor&rsquo;
+Westward, now lying under a short grim colonnade where in summer-time
+pounce flies from law-stationering windows into the eyes of laymen,
+be choked with rubbish and happily become impassable.&nbsp; Then shall
+the gardens where turf, trees, and gravel wear a legal livery of black,
+run rank, and pilgrims go to Gorhambury to see Bacon&rsquo;s effigy
+as he sat, and not come here (which in truth they seldom do) to see
+where he walked.&nbsp; Then, in a word, shall the old-established vendor
+of periodicals sit alone in his little crib of a shop behind the Holborn
+Gate, like that lumbering Marius among the ruins of Carthage, who has
+sat heavy on a thousand million of similes.</p>
+<p>At one period of my uncommercial career I much frequented another
+set of chambers in Gray&rsquo;s Inn-square.&nbsp; They were what is
+familiarly called &lsquo;a top set,&rsquo; and all the eatables and
+drinkables introduced into them acquired a flavour of Cockloft.&nbsp;
+I have known an unopened Strasbourg p&acirc;t&eacute; fresh from Fortnum
+and Mason&rsquo;s, to draw in this cockloft tone through its crockery
+dish, and become penetrated with cockloft to the core of its inmost
+truffle in three-quarters of an hour.&nbsp; This, however, was not the
+most curious feature of those chambers; that, consisted in the profound
+conviction entertained by my esteemed friend Parkle (their tenant) that
+they were clean.&nbsp; Whether it was an inborn hallucination, or whether
+it was imparted to him by Mrs. Miggot the laundress, I never could ascertain.&nbsp;
+But, I believe he would have gone to the stake upon the question.&nbsp;
+Now, they were so dirty that I could take off the distinctest impression
+of my figure on any article of furniture by merely lounging upon it
+for a few moments; and it used to be a private amusement of mine to
+print myself off&mdash;if I may use the expression&mdash;all over the
+rooms.&nbsp; It was the first large circulation I had.&nbsp; At other
+times I have accidentally shaken a window curtain while in animated
+conversation with Parkle, and struggling insects which were certainly
+red, and were certainly not ladybirds, have dropped on the back of my
+hand.&nbsp; Yet Parkle lived in that top set years, bound body and soul
+to the superstition that they were clean.&nbsp; He used to say, when
+congratulated upon them, &lsquo;Well, they are not like chambers in
+one respect, you know; they are clean.&rsquo;&nbsp; Concurrently, he
+had an idea which he could never explain, that Mrs. Miggot was in some
+way connected with the Church.&nbsp; When he was in particularly good
+spirits, he used to believe that a deceased uncle of hers had been a
+Dean; when he was poorly and low, he believed that her brother had been
+a Curate.&nbsp; I and Mrs. Miggot (she was a genteel woman) were on
+confidential terms, but I never knew her to commit herself to any distinct
+assertion on the subject; she merely claimed a proprietorship in the
+Church, by looking when it was mentioned, as if the reference awakened
+the slumbering Past, and were personal.&nbsp; It may have been his amiable
+confidence in Mrs. Miggot&rsquo;s better days that inspired my friend
+with his delusion respecting the chambers, but he never wavered in his
+fidelity to it for a moment, though he wallowed in dirt seven years.</p>
+<p>Two of the windows of these chambers looked down into the garden;
+and we have sat up there together many a summer evening, saying how
+pleasant it was, and talking of many things.&nbsp; To my intimacy with
+that top set, I am indebted for three of my liveliest personal impressions
+of the loneliness of life in chambers.&nbsp; They shall follow here,
+in order; first, second, and third.</p>
+<p>First.&nbsp; My Gray&rsquo;s Inn friend, on a time, hurt one of his
+legs, and it became seriously inflamed.&nbsp; Not knowing of his indisposition,
+I was on my way to visit him as usual, one summer evening, when I was
+much surprised by meeting a lively leech in Field-court, Gray&rsquo;s
+Inn, seemingly on his way to the West End of London.&nbsp; As the leech
+was alone, and was of course unable to explain his position, even if
+he had been inclined to do so (which he had not the appearance of being),
+I passed him and went on.&nbsp; Turning the corner of Gray&rsquo;s Inn-square,
+I was beyond expression amazed by meeting another leech&mdash;also entirely
+alone, and also proceeding in a westerly direction, though with less
+decision of purpose.&nbsp; Ruminating on this extraordinary circumstance,
+and endeavouring to remember whether I had ever read, in the Philosophical
+Transactions or any work on Natural History, of a migration of Leeches,
+I ascended to the top set, past the dreary series of closed outer doors
+of offices and an empty set or two, which intervened between that lofty
+region and the surface.&nbsp; Entering my friend&rsquo;s rooms, I found
+him stretched upon his back, like Prometheus Bound, with a perfectly
+demented ticket-porter in attendance on him instead of the Vulture:
+which helpless individual, who was feeble and frightened, and had (my
+friend explained to me, in great choler) been endeavouring for some
+hours to apply leeches to his leg, and as yet had only got on two out
+of twenty.&nbsp; To this Unfortunate&rsquo;s distraction between a damp
+cloth on which he had placed the leeches to freshen them, and the wrathful
+adjurations of my friend to &lsquo;Stick &rsquo;em on, sir!&rsquo; I
+referred the phenomenon I had encountered: the rather as two fine specimens
+were at that moment going out at the door, while a general insurrection
+of the rest was in progress on the table.&nbsp; After a while our united
+efforts prevailed, and, when the leeches came off and had recovered
+their spirits, we carefully tied them up in a decanter.&nbsp; But I
+never heard more of them than that they were all gone next morning,
+and that the Out-of-door young man of Bickle, Bush and Bodger, on the
+ground floor, had been bitten and blooded by some creature not identified.&nbsp;
+They never &lsquo;took&rsquo; on Mrs. Miggot, the laundress; but, I
+have always preserved fresh, the belief that she unconsciously carried
+several about her, until they gradually found openings in life.</p>
+<p>Second.&nbsp; On the same staircase with my friend Parkle, and on
+the same floor, there lived a man of law who pursued his business elsewhere,
+and used those chambers as his place of residence.&nbsp; For three or
+four years, Parkle rather knew of him than knew him, but after that&mdash;for
+Englishmen&mdash;short pause of consideration, they began to speak.&nbsp;
+Parkle exchanged words with him in his private character only, and knew
+nothing of his business ways, or means.&nbsp; He was a man a good deal
+about town, but always alone.&nbsp; We used to remark to one another,
+that although we often encountered him in theatres, concert-rooms, and
+similar public places, he was always alone.&nbsp; Yet he was not a gloomy
+man, and was of a decidedly conversational turn; insomuch that he would
+sometimes of an evening lounge with a cigar in his mouth, half in and
+half out of Parkle&rsquo;s rooms, and discuss the topics of the day
+by the hour.&nbsp; He used to hint on these occasions that he had four
+faults to find with life; firstly, that it obliged a man to be always
+winding up his watch; secondly, that London was too small; thirdly,
+that it therefore wanted variety; fourthly, that there was too much
+dust in it.&nbsp; There was so much dust in his own faded chambers,
+certainly, that they reminded me of a sepulchre, furnished in prophetic
+anticipation of the present time, which had newly been brought to light,
+after having remained buried a few thousand years.&nbsp; One dry, hot
+autumn evening at twilight, this man, being then five years turned of
+fifty, looked in upon Parkle in his usual lounging way, with his cigar
+in his mouth as usual, and said, &lsquo;I am going out of town.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+As he never went out of town, Parkle said, &lsquo;Oh indeed!&nbsp; At
+last?&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; says he, &lsquo;at last.&nbsp;
+For what is a man to do?&nbsp; London is so small!&nbsp; If you go West,
+you come to Hounslow.&nbsp; If you go East, you come to Bow.&nbsp; If
+you go South, there&rsquo;s Brixton or Norwood.&nbsp; If you go North,
+you can&rsquo;t get rid of Barnet.&nbsp; Then, the monotony of all the
+streets, streets, streets&mdash;and of all the roads, roads, roads&mdash;and
+the dust, dust, dust!&rsquo;&nbsp; When he had said this, he wished
+Parkle a good evening, but came back again and said, with his watch
+in his hand, &lsquo;Oh, I really cannot go on winding up this watch
+over and over again; I wish you would take care of it.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+So, Parkle laughed and consented, and the man went out of town.&nbsp;
+The man remained out of town so long, that his letter-box became choked,
+and no more letters could be got into it, and they began to be left
+at the lodge and to accumulate there.&nbsp; At last the head-porter
+decided, on conference with the steward, to use his master-key and look
+into the chambers, and give them the benefit of a whiff of air.&nbsp;
+Then, it was found that he had hanged himself to his bedstead, and had
+left this written memorandum: &lsquo;I should prefer to be cut down
+by my neighbour and friend (if he will allow me to call him so), H.
+Parkle, Esq.&rsquo;&nbsp; This was an end of Parkle&rsquo;s occupancy
+of chambers.&nbsp; He went into lodgings immediately.</p>
+<p>Third.&nbsp; While Parkle lived in Gray&rsquo;s Inn, and I myself
+was uncommercially preparing for the Bar&mdash;which is done, as everybody
+knows, by having a frayed old gown put on in a pantry by an old woman
+in a chronic state of Saint Anthony&rsquo;s fire and dropsy, and, so
+decorated, bolting a bad dinner in a party of four, whereof each individual
+mistrusts the other three&mdash;I say, while these things were, there
+was a certain elderly gentleman who lived in a court of the Temple,
+and was a great judge and lover of port wine.&nbsp; Every day he dined
+at his club and drank his bottle or two of port wine, and every night
+came home to the Temple and went to bed in his lonely chambers.&nbsp;
+This had gone on many years without variation, when one night he had
+a fit on coming home, and fell and cut his head deep, but partly recovered
+and groped about in the dark to find the door.&nbsp; When he was afterwards
+discovered, dead, it was clearly established by the marks of his hands
+about the room that he must have done so.&nbsp; Now, this chanced on
+the night of Christmas Eve, and over him lived a young fellow who had
+sisters and young country friends, and who gave them a little party
+that night, in the course of which they played at Blindman&rsquo;s Buff.&nbsp;
+They played that game, for their greater sport, by the light of the
+fire only; and once, when they were all quietly rustling and stealing
+about, and the blindman was trying to pick out the prettiest sister
+(for which I am far from blaming him), somebody cried, Hark!&nbsp; The
+man below must be playing Blindman&rsquo;s Buff by himself to-night!&nbsp;
+They listened, and they heard sounds of some one falling about and stumbling
+against furniture, and they all laughed at the conceit, and went on
+with their play, more light-hearted and merry than ever.&nbsp; Thus,
+those two so different games of life and death were played out together,
+blindfolded, in the two sets of chambers.</p>
+<p>Such are the occurrences, which, coming to my knowledge, imbued me
+long ago with a strong sense of the loneliness of chambers.&nbsp; There
+was a fantastic illustration to much the same purpose implicitly believed
+by a strange sort of man now dead, whom I knew when I had not quite
+arrived at legal years of discretion, though I was already in the uncommercial
+line.</p>
+<p>This was a man who, though not more than thirty, had seen the world
+in divers irreconcilable capacities&mdash;had been an officer in a South
+American regiment among other odd things&mdash;but had not achieved
+much in any way of life, and was in debt, and in hiding.&nbsp; He occupied
+chambers of the dreariest nature in Lyons Inn; his name, however, was
+not up on the door, or door-post, but in lieu of it stood the name of
+a friend who had died in the chambers, and had given him the furniture.&nbsp;
+The story arose out of the furniture, and was to this effect:- Let the
+former holder of the chambers, whose name was still upon the door and
+door-post, be Mr. Testator.</p>
+<p>Mr. Testator took a set of chambers in Lyons Inn when he had but
+very scanty furniture for his bedroom, and none for his sitting-room.&nbsp;
+He had lived some wintry months in this condition, and had found it
+very bare and cold.&nbsp; One night, past midnight, when he sat writing
+and still had writing to do that must be done before he went to bed,
+he found himself out of coals.&nbsp; He had coals down-stairs, but had
+never been to his cellar; however the cellar-key was on his mantelshelf,
+and if he went down and opened the cellar it fitted, he might fairly
+assume the coals in that cellar to be his.&nbsp; As to his laundress,
+she lived among the coal-waggons and Thames watermen&mdash;for there
+were Thames watermen at that time&mdash;in some unknown rat-hole by
+the river, down lanes and alleys on the other side of the Strand.&nbsp;
+As to any other person to meet him or obstruct him, Lyons Inn was dreaming,
+drunk, maudlin, moody, betting, brooding over bill-discounting or renewing&mdash;asleep
+or awake, minding its own affairs.&nbsp; Mr. Testator took his coal-scuttle
+in one hand, his candle and key in the other, and descended to the dismallest
+underground dens of Lyons Inn, where the late vehicles in the streets
+became thunderous, and all the water-pipes in the neighbourhood seemed
+to have Macbeth&rsquo;s Amen sticking in their throats, and to be trying
+to get it out.&nbsp; After groping here and there among low doors to
+no purpose, Mr. Testator at length came to a door with a rusty padlock
+which his key fitted.&nbsp; Getting the door open with much trouble,
+and looking in, he found, no coals, but a confused pile of furniture.&nbsp;
+Alarmed by this intrusion on another man&rsquo;s property, he locked
+the door again, found his own cellar, filled his scuttle, and returned
+up-stairs.</p>
+<p>But the furniture he had seen, ran on castors across and across Mr.
+Testator&rsquo;s mind incessantly, when, in the chill hour of five in
+the morning, he got to bed.&nbsp; He particularly wanted a table to
+write at, and a table expressly made to be written at, had been the
+piece of furniture in the foreground of the heap.&nbsp; When his laundress
+emerged from her burrow in the morning to make his kettle boil, he artfully
+led up to the subject of cellars and furniture; but the two ideas had
+evidently no connexion in her mind.&nbsp; When she left him, and he
+sat at his breakfast, thinking about the furniture, he recalled the
+rusty state of the padlock, and inferred that the furniture must have
+been stored in the cellars for a long time&mdash;was perhaps forgotten&mdash;owner
+dead, perhaps?&nbsp; After thinking it over, a few days, in the course
+of which he could pump nothing out of Lyons Inn about the furniture,
+he became desperate, and resolved to borrow that table.&nbsp; He did
+so, that night.&nbsp; He had not had the table long, when he determined
+to borrow an easy-chair; he had not had that long, when he made up his
+mind to borrow a bookcase; then, a couch; then, a carpet and rug.&nbsp;
+By that time, he felt he was &lsquo;in furniture stepped in so far,&rsquo;
+as that it could be no worse to borrow it all.&nbsp; Consequently, he
+borrowed it all, and locked up the cellar for good.&nbsp; He had always
+locked it, after every visit.&nbsp; He had carried up every separate
+article in the dead of the night, and, at the best, had felt as wicked
+as a Resurrection Man.&nbsp; Every article was blue and furry when brought
+into his rooms, and he had had, in a murderous and guilty sort of way,
+to polish it up while London slept.</p>
+<p>Mr. Testator lived in his furnished chambers two or three years,
+or more, and gradually lulled himself into the opinion that the furniture
+was his own.&nbsp; This was his convenient state of mind when, late
+one night, a step came up the stairs, and a hand passed over his door
+feeling for his knocker, and then one deep and solemn rap was rapped
+that might have been a spring in Mr. Testator&rsquo;s easy-chair to
+shoot him out of it; so promptly was it attended with that effect.</p>
+<p>With a candle in his hand, Mr. Testator went to the door, and found
+there, a very pale and very tall man; a man who stooped; a man with
+very high shoulders, a very narrow chest, and a very red nose; a shabby-genteel
+man.&nbsp; He was wrapped in a long thread-bare black coat, fastened
+up the front with more pins than buttons, and under his arm he squeezed
+an umbrella without a handle, as if he were playing bagpipes.&nbsp;
+He said, &lsquo;I ask your pardon, but can you tell me&mdash;&rsquo;
+and stopped; his eyes resting on some object within the chambers.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Can I tell you what?&rsquo; asked Mr. Testator, noting his
+stoppage with quick alarm.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I ask your pardon,&rsquo; said the stranger, &lsquo;but&mdash;this
+is not the inquiry I was going to make&mdash;<i>do</i> I see in there,
+any small article of property belonging to <i>me</i>?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Testator was beginning to stammer that he was not aware&mdash;when
+the visitor slipped past him, into the chambers.&nbsp; There, in a goblin
+way which froze Mr. Testator to the marrow, he examined, first, the
+writing-table, and said, &lsquo;Mine;&rsquo; then, the easy-chair, and
+said, &lsquo;Mine;&rsquo; then, the bookcase, and said, &lsquo;Mine;&rsquo;
+then, turned up a corner of the carpet, and said, &lsquo;Mine!&rsquo;
+in a word, inspected every item of furniture from the cellar, in succession,
+and said, &lsquo;Mine!&rsquo;&nbsp; Towards the end of this investigation,
+Mr. Testator perceived that he was sodden with liquor, and that the
+liquor was gin.&nbsp; He was not unsteady with gin, either in his speech
+or carriage; but he was stiff with gin in both particulars.</p>
+<p>Mr. Testator was in a dreadful state, for (according to his making
+out of the story) the possible consequences of what he had done in recklessness
+and hardihood, flashed upon him in their fulness for the first time.&nbsp;
+When they had stood gazing at one another for a little while, he tremulously
+began:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir, I am conscious that the fullest explanation, compensation,
+and restitution, are your due.&nbsp; They shall be yours.&nbsp; Allow
+me to entreat that, without temper, without even natural irritation
+on your part, we may have a little&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Drop of something to drink,&rsquo; interposed the stranger.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I am agreeable.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Testator had intended to say, &lsquo;a little quiet conversation,&rsquo;
+but with great relief of mind adopted the amendment.&nbsp; He produced
+a decanter of gin, and was bustling about for hot water and sugar, when
+he found that his visitor had already drunk half of the decanter&rsquo;s
+contents.&nbsp; With hot water and sugar the visitor drank the remainder
+before he had been an hour in the chambers by the chimes of the church
+of St. Mary in the Strand; and during the process he frequently whispered
+to himself, &lsquo;Mine!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The gin gone, and Mr. Testator wondering what was to follow it, the
+visitor rose and said, with increased stiffness, &lsquo;At what hour
+of the morning, sir, will it be convenient?&rsquo;&nbsp; Mr. Testator
+hazarded, &lsquo;At ten?&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; said the visitor,
+&lsquo;at ten, to the moment, I shall be here.&rsquo;&nbsp; He then
+contemplated Mr. Testator somewhat at leisure, and said, &lsquo;God
+bless you!&nbsp; How is your wife?&rsquo;&nbsp; Mr. Testator (who never
+had a wife) replied with much feeling, &lsquo;Deeply anxious, poor soul,
+but otherwise well.&rsquo;&nbsp; The visitor thereupon turned and went
+away, and fell twice in going down-stairs.&nbsp; From that hour he was
+never heard of.&nbsp; Whether he was a ghost, or a spectral illusion
+of conscience, or a drunken man who had no business there, or the drunken
+rightful owner of the furniture, with a transitory gleam of memory;
+whether he got safe home, or had no time to get to; whether he died
+of liquor on the way, or lived in liquor ever afterwards; he never was
+heard of more.&nbsp; This was the story, received with the furniture
+and held to be as substantial, by its second possessor in an upper set
+of chambers in grim Lyons Inn.</p>
+<p>It is to be remarked of chambers in general, that they must have
+been built for chambers, to have the right kind of loneliness.&nbsp;
+You may make a great dwelling-house very lonely, but isolating suites
+of rooms and calling them chambers, but you cannot make the true kind
+of loneliness.&nbsp; In dwelling-houses, there have been family festivals;
+children have grown in them, girls have bloomed into women in them,
+courtships and marriages have taken place in them.&nbsp; True chambers
+never were young, childish, maidenly; never had dolls in them, or rocking-horses,
+or christenings, or betrothals, or little coffins.&nbsp; Let Gray&rsquo;s
+Inn identify the child who first touched hands and hearts with Robinson
+Crusoe, in any one of its many &lsquo;sets,&rsquo; and that child&rsquo;s
+little statue, in white marble with a golden inscription, shall be at
+its service, at my cost and charge, as a drinking fountain for the spirit,
+to freshen its thirsty square.&nbsp; Let Lincoln&rsquo;s produce from
+all its houses, a twentieth of the procession derivable from any dwelling-house
+one-twentieth of its age, of fair young brides who married for love
+and hope, not settlements, and all the Vice-Chancellors shall thenceforward
+be kept in nosegays for nothing, on application to the writer hereof.&nbsp;
+It is not denied that on the terrace of the Adelphi, or in any of the
+streets of that subterranean-stable-haunted spot, or about Bedford-row,
+or James-street of that ilk (a grewsome place), or anywhere among the
+neighbourhoods that have done flowering and have run to seed, you may
+find Chambers replete with the accommodations of Solitude, Closeness,
+and Darkness, where you may be as low-spirited as in the genuine article,
+and might be as easily murdered, with the placid reputation of having
+merely gone down to the sea-side.&nbsp; But, the many waters of life
+did run musical in those dry channels once;&mdash;among the Inns, never.&nbsp;
+The only popular legend known in relation to any one of the dull family
+of Inns, is a dark Old Bailey whisper concerning Clement&rsquo;s, and
+importing how the black creature who holds the sun-dial there, was a
+negro who slew his master and built the dismal pile out of the contents
+of his strong box&mdash;for which architectural offence alone he ought
+to have been condemned to live in it.&nbsp; But, what populace would
+waste fancy upon such a place, or on New Inn, Staple Inn, Barnard&rsquo;s
+Inn, or any of the shabby crew?</p>
+<p>The genuine laundress, too, is an institution not to be had in its
+entirety out of and away from the genuine Chambers.&nbsp; Again, it
+is not denied that you may be robbed elsewhere.&nbsp; Elsewhere you
+may have&mdash;for money&mdash;dishonesty, drunkenness, dirt, laziness,
+and profound incapacity.&nbsp; But the veritable shining-red-faced shameless
+laundress; the true Mrs. Sweeney&mdash;in figure, colour, texture, and
+smell, like the old damp family umbrella; the tip-top complicated abomination
+of stockings, spirits, bonnet, limpness, looseness, and larceny; is
+only to be drawn at the fountain-head.&nbsp; Mrs. Sweeney is beyond
+the reach of individual art.&nbsp; It requires the united efforts of
+several men to ensure that great result, and it is only developed in
+perfection under an Honourable Society and in an Inn of Court.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XV&mdash;NURSE&rsquo;S STORIES</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>There are not many places that I find it more agreeable to revisit
+when I am in an idle mood, than some places to which I have never been.&nbsp;
+For, my acquaintance with those spots is of such long standing, and
+has ripened into an intimacy of so affectionate a nature, that I take
+a particular interest in assuring myself that they are unchanged.</p>
+<p>I never was in Robinson Crusoe&rsquo;s Island, yet I frequently return
+there.&nbsp; The colony he established on it soon faded away, and it
+is uninhabited by any descendants of the grave and courteous Spaniards,
+or of Will Atkins and the other mutineers, and has relapsed into its
+original condition.&nbsp; Not a twig of its wicker houses remains, its
+goats have long run wild again, its screaming parrots would darken the
+sun with a cloud of many flaming colours if a gun were fired there,
+no face is ever reflected in the waters of the little creek which Friday
+swam across when pursued by his two brother cannibals with sharpened
+stomachs.&nbsp; After comparing notes with other travellers who have
+similarly revisited the Island and conscientiously inspected it, I have
+satisfied myself that it contains no vestige of Mr. Atkins&rsquo;s domesticity
+or theology, though his track on the memorable evening of his landing
+to set his captain ashore, when he was decoyed about and round about
+until it was dark, and his boat was stove, and his strength and spirits
+failed him, is yet plainly to be traced.&nbsp; So is the hill-top on
+which Robinson was struck dumb with joy when the reinstated captain
+pointed to the ship, riding within half a mile of the shore, that was
+to bear him away, in the nine-and-twentieth year of his seclusion in
+that lonely place.&nbsp; So is the sandy beach on which the memorable
+footstep was impressed, and where the savages hauled up their canoes
+when they came ashore for those dreadful public dinners, which led to
+a dancing worse than speech-making.&nbsp; So is the cave where the flaring
+eyes of the old goat made such a goblin appearance in the dark.&nbsp;
+So is the site of the hut where Robinson lived with the dog and the
+parrot and the cat, and where he endured those first agonies of solitude,
+which&mdash;strange to say&mdash;never involved any ghostly fancies;
+a circumstance so very remarkable, that perhaps he left out something
+in writing his record?&nbsp; Round hundreds of such objects, hidden
+in the dense tropical foliage, the tropical sea breaks evermore; and
+over them the tropical sky, saving in the short rainy season, shines
+bright and cloudless.</p>
+<p>Neither, was I ever belated among wolves, on the borders of France
+and Spain; nor, did I ever, when night was closing in and the ground
+was covered with snow, draw up my little company among some felled trees
+which served as a breastwork, and there fire a train of gunpowder so
+dexterously that suddenly we had three or four score blazing wolves
+illuminating the darkness around us.&nbsp; Nevertheless, I occasionally
+go back to that dismal region and perform the feat again; when indeed
+to smell the singeing and the frying of the wolves afire, and to see
+them setting one another alight as they rush and tumble, and to behold
+them rolling in the snow vainly attempting to put themselves out, and
+to hear their howlings taken up by all the echoes as well as by all
+the unseen wolves within the woods, makes me tremble.</p>
+<p>I was never in the robbers&rsquo; cave, where Gil Blas lived, but
+I often go back there and find the trap-door just as heavy to raise
+as it used to be, while that wicked old disabled Black lies everlastingly
+cursing in bed.&nbsp; I was never in Don Quixote&rsquo;s study, where
+he read his books of chivalry until he rose and hacked at imaginary
+giants, and then refreshed himself with great draughts of water, yet
+you couldn&rsquo;t move a book in it without my knowledge, or with my
+consent.&nbsp; I was never (thank Heaven) in company with the little
+old woman who hobbled out of the chest and told the merchant Abudah
+to go in search of the Talisman of Oromanes, yet I make it my business
+to know that she is well preserved and as intolerable as ever.&nbsp;
+I was never at the school where the boy Horatio Nelson got out of bed
+to steal the pears: not because he wanted any, but because every other
+boy was afraid: yet I have several times been back to this Academy,
+to see him let down out of window with a sheet.&nbsp; So with Damascus,
+and Bagdad, and Brobingnag (which has the curious fate of being usually
+misspelt when written), and Lilliput, and Laputa, and the Nile, and
+Abyssinia, and the Ganges, and the North Pole, and many hundreds of
+places&mdash;I was never at them, yet it is an affair of my life to
+keep them intact, and I am always going back to them.</p>
+<p>But, when I was in Dullborough one day, revisiting the associations
+of my childhood as recorded in previous pages of these notes, my experience
+in this wise was made quite inconsiderable and of no account, by the
+quantity of places and people&mdash;utterly impossible places and people,
+but none the less alarmingly real&mdash;that I found I had been introduced
+to by my nurse before I was six years old, and used to be forced to
+go back to at night without at all wanting to go.&nbsp; If we all knew
+our own minds (in a more enlarged sense than the popular acceptation
+of that phrase), I suspect we should find our nurses responsible for
+most of the dark corners we are forced to go back to, against our wills.</p>
+<p>The first diabolical character who intruded himself on my peaceful
+youth (as I called to mind that day at Dullborough), was a certain Captain
+Murderer.&nbsp; This wretch must have been an off-shoot of the Blue
+Beard family, but I had no suspicion of the consanguinity in those times.&nbsp;
+His warning name would seem to have awakened no general prejudice against
+him, for he was admitted into the best society and possessed immense
+wealth.&nbsp; Captain Murderer&rsquo;s mission was matrimony, and the
+gratification of a cannibal appetite with tender brides.&nbsp; On his
+marriage morning, he always caused both sides of the way to church to
+be planted with curious flowers; and when his bride said, &lsquo;Dear
+Captain Murderer, I ever saw flowers like these before: what are they
+called?&rsquo; he answered, &lsquo;They are called Garnish for house-lamb,&rsquo;
+and laughed at his ferocious practical joke in a horrid manner, disquieting
+the minds of the noble bridal company, with a very sharp show of teeth,
+then displayed for the first time.&nbsp; He made love in a coach and
+six, and married in a coach and twelve, and all his horses were milk-white
+horses with one red spot on the back which he caused to be hidden by
+the harness.&nbsp; For, the spot <i>would</i> come there, though every
+horse was milk-white when Captain Murderer bought him.&nbsp; And the
+spot was young bride&rsquo;s blood.&nbsp; (To this terrific point I
+am indebted for my first personal experience of a shudder and cold beads
+on the forehead.)&nbsp; When Captain Murderer had made an end of feasting
+and revelry, and had dismissed the noble guests, and was alone with
+his wife on the day month after their marriage, it was his whimsical
+custom to produce a golden rolling-pin and a silver pie-board.&nbsp;
+Now, there was this special feature in the Captain&rsquo;s courtships,
+that he always asked if the young lady could make pie-crust; and if
+she couldn&rsquo;t by nature or education, she was taught.&nbsp; Well.&nbsp;
+When the bride saw Captain Murderer produce the golden rolling-pin and
+silver pie-board, she remembered this, and turned up her laced-silk
+sleeves to make a pie.&nbsp; The Captain brought out a silver pie-dish
+of immense capacity, and the Captain brought out flour and butter and
+eggs and all things needful, except the inside of the pie; of materials
+for the staple of the pie itself, the Captain brought out none.&nbsp;
+Then said the lovely bride, &lsquo;Dear Captain Murderer, what pie is
+this to be?&rsquo;&nbsp; He replied, &lsquo;A meat pie.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Then said the lovely bride, &lsquo;Dear Captain Murderer, I see no meat.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+The Captain humorously retorted, &lsquo;Look in the glass.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+She looked in the glass, but still she saw no meat, and then the Captain
+roared with laughter, and suddenly frowning and drawing his sword, bade
+her roll out the crust.&nbsp; So she rolled out the crust, dropping
+large tears upon it all the time because he was so cross, and when she
+had lined the dish with crust and had cut the crust all ready to fit
+the top, the Captain called out, &lsquo;I see the meat in the glass!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And the bride looked up at the glass, just in time to see the Captain
+cutting her head off; and he chopped her in pieces, and peppered her,
+and salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent it to the baker&rsquo;s,
+and ate it all, and picked the bones.</p>
+<p>Captain Murderer went on in this way, prospering exceedingly, until
+he came to choose a bride from two twin sisters, and at first didn&rsquo;t
+know which to choose.&nbsp; For, though one was fair and the other dark,
+they were both equally beautiful.&nbsp; But the fair twin loved him,
+and the dark twin hated him, so he chose the fair one.&nbsp; The dark
+twin would have prevented the marriage if she could, but she couldn&rsquo;t;
+however, on the night before it, much suspecting Captain Murderer, she
+stole out and climbed his garden wall, and looked in at his window through
+a chink in the shutter, and saw him having his teeth filed sharp.&nbsp;
+Next day she listened all day, and heard him make his joke about the
+house-lamb.&nbsp; And that day month, he had the paste rolled out, and
+cut the fair twin&rsquo;s head off, and chopped her in pieces, and peppered
+her, and salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent it to the baker&rsquo;s,
+and ate it all, and picked the bones.</p>
+<p>Now, the dark twin had had her suspicions much increased by the filing
+of the Captain&rsquo;s teeth, and again by the house-lamb joke.&nbsp;
+Putting all things together when he gave out that her sister was dead,
+she divined the truth, and determined to be revenged.&nbsp; So, she
+went up to Captain Murderer&rsquo;s house, and knocked at the knocker
+and pulled at the bell, and when the Captain came to the door, said:
+&lsquo;Dear Captain Murderer, marry me next, for I always loved you
+and was jealous of my sister.&rsquo;&nbsp; The Captain took it as a
+compliment, and made a polite answer, and the marriage was quickly arranged.&nbsp;
+On the night before it, the bride again climbed to his window, and again
+saw him having his teeth filed sharp.&nbsp; At this sight she laughed
+such a terrible laugh at the chink in the shutter, that the Captain&rsquo;s
+blood curdled, and he said: &lsquo;I hope nothing has disagreed with
+me!&rsquo;&nbsp; At that, she laughed again, a still more terrible laugh,
+and the shutter was opened and search made, but she was nimbly gone,
+and there was no one.&nbsp; Next day they went to church in a coach
+and twelve, and were married.&nbsp; And that day month, she rolled the
+pie-crust out, and Captain Murderer cut her head off, and chopped her
+in pieces, and peppered her, and salted her, and put her in the pie,
+and sent it to the baker&rsquo;s, and ate it all, and picked the bones.</p>
+<p>But before she began to roll out the paste she had taken a deadly
+poison of a most awful character, distilled from toads&rsquo; eyes and
+spiders&rsquo; knees; and Captain Murderer had hardly picked her last
+bone, when he began to swell, and to turn blue, and to be all over spots,
+and to scream.&nbsp; And he went on swelling and turning bluer, and
+being more all over spots and screaming, until he reached from floor
+to ceiling and from wall to wall; and then, at one o&rsquo;clock in
+the morning, he blew up with a loud explosion.&nbsp; At the sound of
+it, all the milk-white horses in the stables broke their halters and
+went mad, and then they galloped over everybody in Captain Murderer&rsquo;s
+house (beginning with the family blacksmith who had filed his teeth)
+until the whole were dead, and then they galloped away.</p>
+<p>Hundreds of times did I hear this legend of Captain Murderer, in
+my early youth, and added hundreds of times was there a mental compulsion
+upon me in bed, to peep in at his window as the dark twin peeped, and
+to revisit his horrible house, and look at him in his blue and spotty
+and screaming stage, as he reached from floor to ceiling and from wall
+to wall.&nbsp; The young woman who brought me acquainted with Captain
+Murderer had a fiendish enjoyment of my terrors, and used to begin,
+I remember&mdash;as a sort of introductory overture&mdash;by clawing
+the air with both hands, and uttering a long low hollow groan.&nbsp;
+So acutely did I suffer from this ceremony in combination with this
+infernal Captain, that I sometimes used to plead I thought I was hardly
+strong enough and old enough to hear the story again just yet.&nbsp;
+But, she never spared me one word of it, and indeed commanded the awful
+chalice to my lips as the only preservative known to science against
+&lsquo;The Black Cat&rsquo;&mdash;a weird and glaring-eyed supernatural
+Tom, who was reputed to prowl about the world by night, sucking the
+breath of infancy, and who was endowed with a special thirst (as I was
+given to understand) for mine.</p>
+<p>This female bard&mdash;may she have been repaid my debt of obligation
+to her in the matter of nightmares and perspirations!&mdash;reappears
+in my memory as the daughter of a shipwright.&nbsp; Her name was Mercy,
+though she had none on me.&nbsp; There was something of a shipbuilding
+flavour in the following story.&nbsp; As it always recurs to me in a
+vague association with calomel pills, I believe it to have been reserved
+for dull nights when I was low with medicine.</p>
+<p>There was once a shipwright, and he wrought in a Government Yard,
+and his name was Chips.&nbsp; And his father&rsquo;s name before him
+was Chips, and <i>his</i> father&rsquo;s name before <i>him</i> was
+Chips, and they were all Chipses.&nbsp; And Chips the father had sold
+himself to the Devil for an iron pot and a bushel of tenpenny nails
+and half a ton of copper and a rat that could speak; and Chips the grandfather
+had sold himself to the Devil for an iron pot and a bushel of tenpenny
+nails and half a ton of copper and a rat that could speak; and Chips
+the great-grandfather had disposed of himself in the same direction
+on the same terms; and the bargain had run in the family for a long,
+long time.&nbsp; So, one day, when young Chips was at work in the Dock
+Slip all alone, down in the dark hold of an old Seventy-four that was
+haled up for repairs, the Devil presented himself, and remarked:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&lsquo;A Lemon has pips,<br />And a Yard has ships,<br />And <i>I</i>&rsquo;ll
+have Chips!&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>(I don&rsquo;t know why, but this fact of the Devil&rsquo;s expressing
+himself in rhyme was peculiarly trying to me.)&nbsp; Chips looked up
+when he heard the words, and there he saw the Devil with saucer eyes
+that squinted on a terrible great scale, and that struck out sparks
+of blue fire continually.&nbsp; And whenever he winked his eyes, showers
+of blue sparks came out, and his eyelashes made a clattering like flints
+and steels striking lights.&nbsp; And hanging over one of his arms by
+the handle was an iron pot, and under that arm was a bushel of tenpenny
+nails, and under his other arm was half a ton of copper, and sitting
+on one of his shoulders was a rat that could speak.&nbsp; So, the Devil
+said again:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&lsquo;A Lemon has pips,<br />And a Yard has ships,<br />And <i>I</i>&rsquo;ll
+have Chips!&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>(The invariable effect of this alarming tautology on the part of
+the Evil Spirit was to deprive me of my senses for some moments.)&nbsp;
+So, Chips answered never a word, but went on with his work.&nbsp; &lsquo;What
+are you doing, Chips?&rsquo; said the rat that could speak.&nbsp; &lsquo;I
+am putting in new planks where you and your gang have eaten old away,&rsquo;
+said Chips.&nbsp; &lsquo;But we&rsquo;ll eat them too,&rsquo; said the
+rat that could speak; &lsquo;and we&rsquo;ll let in the water and drown
+the crew, and we&rsquo;ll eat them too.&rsquo;&nbsp; Chips, being only
+a shipwright, and not a Man-of-war&rsquo;s man, said, &lsquo;You are
+welcome to it.&rsquo;&nbsp; But he couldn&rsquo;t keep his eyes off
+the half a ton of copper or the bushel of tenpenny nails; for nails
+and copper are a shipwright&rsquo;s sweethearts, and shipwrights will
+run away with them whenever they can.&nbsp; So, the Devil said, &lsquo;I
+see what you are looking at, Chips.&nbsp; You had better strike the
+bargain.&nbsp; You know the terms.&nbsp; Your father before you was
+well acquainted with them, and so were your grandfather and great-grandfather
+before him.&rsquo;&nbsp; Says Chips, &lsquo;I like the copper, and I
+like the nails, and I don&rsquo;t mind the pot, but I don&rsquo;t like
+the rat.&rsquo;&nbsp; Says the Devil, fiercely, &lsquo;You can&rsquo;t
+have the metal without him&mdash;and <i>he&rsquo;s</i> a curiosity.&nbsp;
+I&rsquo;m going.&rsquo;&nbsp; Chips, afraid of losing the half a ton
+of copper and the bushel of nails, then said, &lsquo;Give us hold!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+So, he got the copper and the nails and the pot and the rat that could
+speak, and the Devil vanished.&nbsp; Chips sold the copper, and he sold
+the nails, and he would have sold the pot; but whenever he offered it
+for sale, the rat was in it, and the dealers dropped it, and would have
+nothing to say to the bargain.&nbsp; So, Chips resolved to kill the
+rat, and, being at work in the Yard one day with a great kettle of hot
+pitch on one side of him and the iron pot with the rat in it on the
+other, he turned the scalding pitch into the pot, and filled it full.&nbsp;
+Then, he kept his eye upon it till it cooled and hardened, and then
+he let it stand for twenty days, and then he heated the pitch again
+and turned it back into the kettle, and then he sank the pot in water
+for twenty days more, and then he got the smelters to put it in the
+furnace for twenty days more, and then they gave it him out, red hot,
+and looking like red-hot glass instead of iron-yet there was the rat
+in it, just the same as ever!&nbsp; And the moment it caught his eye,
+it said with a jeer:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&lsquo;A Lemon has pips,<br />And a Yard has ships,<br />And <i>I</i>&rsquo;ll
+have Chips!&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>(For this Refrain I had waited since its last appearance, with inexpressible
+horror, which now culminated.)&nbsp; Chips now felt certain in his own
+mind that the rat would stick to him; the rat, answering his thought,
+said, &lsquo;I will&mdash;like pitch!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Now, as the rat leaped out of the pot when it had spoken, and made
+off, Chips began to hope that it wouldn&rsquo;t keep its word.&nbsp;
+But, a terrible thing happened next day.&nbsp; For, when dinner-time
+came, and the Dock-bell rang to strike work, he put his rule into the
+long pocket at the side of his trousers, and there he found a rat&mdash;not
+that rat, but another rat.&nbsp; And in his hat, he found another; and
+in his pocket-handkerchief, another; and in the sleeves of his coat,
+when he pulled it on to go to dinner, two more.&nbsp; And from that
+time he found himself so frightfully intimate with all the rats in the
+Yard, that they climbed up his legs when he was at work, and sat on
+his tools while he used them.&nbsp; And they could all speak to one
+another, and he understood what they said.&nbsp; And they got into his
+lodging, and into his bed, and into his teapot, and into his beer, and
+into his boots.&nbsp; And he was going to be married to a corn-chandler&rsquo;s
+daughter; and when he gave her a workbox he had himself made for her,
+a rat jumped out of it; and when he put his arm round her waist, a rat
+clung about her; so the marriage was broken off, though the banns were
+already twice put up&mdash;which the parish clerk well remembers, for,
+as he handed the book to the clergyman for the second time of asking,
+a large fat rat ran over the leaf.&nbsp; (By this time a special cascade
+of rats was rolling down my back, and the whole of my small listening
+person was overrun with them.&nbsp; At intervals ever since, I have
+been morbidly afraid of my own pocket, lest my exploring hand should
+find a specimen or two of those vermin in it.)</p>
+<p>You may believe that all this was very terrible to Chips; but even
+all this was not the worst.&nbsp; He knew besides, what the rats were
+doing, wherever they were.&nbsp; So, sometimes he would cry aloud, when
+he was at his club at night, &lsquo;Oh!&nbsp; Keep the rats out of the
+convicts&rsquo; burying-ground!&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t let them do that!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Or, &lsquo;There&rsquo;s one of them at the cheese down-stairs!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Or, &lsquo;There&rsquo;s two of them smelling at the baby in the garret!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Or, other things of that sort.&nbsp; At last, he was voted mad, and
+lost his work in the Yard, and could get no other work.&nbsp; But, King
+George wanted men, so before very long he got pressed for a sailor.&nbsp;
+And so he was taken off in a boat one evening to his ship, lying at
+Spithead, ready to sail.&nbsp; And so the first thing he made out in
+her as he got near her, was the figure-head of the old Seventy-four,
+where he had seen the Devil.&nbsp; She was called the Argonaut, and
+they rowed right under the bowsprit where the figure-head of the Argonaut,
+with a sheepskin in his hand and a blue gown on, was looking out to
+sea; and sitting staring on his forehead was the rat who could speak,
+and his exact words were these: &lsquo;Chips ahoy!&nbsp; Old boy!&nbsp;
+We&rsquo;ve pretty well eat them too, and we&rsquo;ll drown the crew,
+and will eat them too!&rsquo;&nbsp; (Here I always became exceedingly
+faint, and would have asked for water, but that I was speechless.)</p>
+<p>The ship was bound for the Indies; and if you don&rsquo;t know where
+that is, you ought to it, and angels will never love you.&nbsp; (Here
+I felt myself an outcast from a future state.)&nbsp; The ship set sail
+that very night, and she sailed, and sailed, and sailed.&nbsp; Chips&rsquo;s
+feelings were dreadful.&nbsp; Nothing ever equalled his terrors.&nbsp;
+No wonder.&nbsp; At last, one day he asked leave to speak to the Admiral.&nbsp;
+The Admiral giv&rsquo; leave.&nbsp; Chips went down on his knees in
+the Great State Cabin.&nbsp; &lsquo;Your Honour, unless your Honour,
+without a moment&rsquo;s loss of time, makes sail for the nearest shore,
+this is a doomed ship, and her name is the Coffin!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Young
+man, your words are a madman&rsquo;s words.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Your
+Honour no; they are nibbling us away.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;They?&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Your Honour, them dreadful rats.&nbsp; Dust and hollowness where
+solid oak ought to be!&nbsp; Rats nibbling a grave for every man on
+board!&nbsp; Oh!&nbsp; Does your Honour love your Lady and your pretty
+children?&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Yes, my man, to be sure.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Then, for God&rsquo;s sake, make for the nearest shore, for at
+this present moment the rats are all stopping in their work, and are
+all looking straight towards you with bare teeth, and are all saying
+to one another that you shall never, never, never, never, see your Lady
+and your children more.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;My poor fellow, you are
+a case for the doctor.&nbsp; Sentry, take care of this man!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>So, he was bled and he was blistered, and he was this and that, for
+six whole days and nights.&nbsp; So, then he again asked leave to speak
+to the Admiral.&nbsp; The Admiral giv&rsquo; leave.&nbsp; He went down
+on his knees in the Great State Cabin.&nbsp; &lsquo;Now, Admiral, you
+must die!&nbsp; You took no warning; you must die!&nbsp; The rats are
+never wrong in their calculations, and they make out that they&rsquo;ll
+be through, at twelve to-night.&nbsp; So, you must die!&mdash;With me
+and all the rest!&rsquo;&nbsp; And so at twelve o&rsquo;clock there
+was a great leak reported in the ship, and a torrent of water rushed
+in and nothing could stop it, and they all went down, every living soul.&nbsp;
+And what the rats&mdash;being water-rats&mdash;left of Chips, at last
+floated to shore, and sitting on him was an immense overgrown rat, laughing,
+that dived when the corpse touched the beach and never came up.&nbsp;
+And there was a deal of seaweed on the remains.&nbsp; And if you get
+thirteen bits of seaweed, and dry them and burn them in the fire, they
+will go off like in these thirteen words as plain as plain can be:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&lsquo;A Lemon has pips,<br />And a Yard has ships,<br />And <i>I</i>&rsquo;ve
+got Chips!&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The same female bard&mdash;descended, possibly, from those terrible
+old Scalds who seem to have existed for the express purpose of addling
+the brains of mankind when they begin to investigate languages&mdash;made
+a standing pretence which greatly assisted in forcing me back to a number
+of hideous places that I would by all means have avoided.&nbsp; This
+pretence was, that all her ghost stories had occurred to her own relations.&nbsp;
+Politeness towards a meritorious family, therefore, forbade my doubting
+them, and they acquired an air of authentication that impaired my digestive
+powers for life.&nbsp; There was a narrative concerning an unearthly
+animal foreboding death, which appeared in the open street to a parlour-maid
+who &lsquo;went to fetch the beer&rsquo; for supper: first (as I now
+recall it) assuming the likeness of a black dog, and gradually rising
+on its hind-legs and swelling into the semblance of some quadruped greatly
+surpassing a hippopotamus: which apparition&mdash;not because I deemed
+it in the least improbable, but because I felt it to be really too large
+to bear&mdash;I feebly endeavoured to explain away.&nbsp; But, on Mercy&rsquo;s
+retorting with wounded dignity that the parlour-maid was her own sister-in-law,
+I perceived there was no hope, and resigned myself to this zoological
+phenomenon as one of my many pursuers.&nbsp; There was another narrative
+describing the apparition of a young woman who came out of a glass-case
+and haunted another young woman until the other young woman questioned
+it and elicited that its bones (Lord!&nbsp; To think of its being so
+particular about its bones!) were buried under the glass-case, whereas
+she required them to be interred, with every Undertaking solemnity up
+to twenty-four pound ten, in another particular place.&nbsp; This narrative
+I considered&mdash;I had a personal interest in disproving, because
+we had glass-cases at home, and how, otherwise, was I to be guaranteed
+from the intrusion of young women requiring <i>me to</i> bury them up
+to twenty-four pound ten, when I had only twopence a week?&nbsp; But
+my remorseless nurse cut the ground from under my tender feet, by informing
+me that She was the other young woman; and I couldn&rsquo;t say &lsquo;I
+don&rsquo;t believe you;&rsquo; it was not possible.</p>
+<p>Such are a few of the uncommercial journeys that I was forced to
+make, against my will, when I was very young and unreasoning.&nbsp;
+And really, as to the latter part of them, it is not so very long ago&mdash;now
+I come to think of it&mdash;that I was asked to undertake them once
+again, with a steady countenance.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI&mdash;ARCADIAN LONDON</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Being in a humour for complete solitude and uninterrupted meditation
+this autumn, I have taken a lodging for six weeks in the most unfrequented
+part of England&mdash;in a word, in London.</p>
+<p>The retreat into which I have withdrawn myself, is Bond-street.&nbsp;
+From this lonely spot I make pilgrimages into the surrounding wilderness,
+and traverse extensive tracts of the Great Desert.&nbsp; The first solemn
+feeling of isolation overcome, the first oppressive consciousness of
+profound retirement conquered, I enjoy that sense of freedom, and feel
+reviving within me that latent wildness of the original savage, which
+has been (upon the whole somewhat frequently) noticed by Travellers.</p>
+<p>My lodgings are at a hatter&rsquo;s&mdash;my own hatter&rsquo;s.&nbsp;
+After exhibiting no articles in his window for some weeks, but sea-side
+wide-awakes, shooting-caps, and a choice of rough waterproof head-gear
+for the moors and mountains, he has put upon the heads of his family
+as much of this stock as they could carry, and has taken them off to
+the Isle of Thanet.&nbsp; His young man alone remains&mdash;and remains
+alone in the shop.&nbsp; The young man has let out the fire at which
+the irons are heated, and, saving his strong sense of duty, I see no
+reason why he should take the shutters down.</p>
+<p>Happily for himself and for his country the young man is a Volunteer;
+most happily for himself, or I think he would become the prey of a settled
+melancholy.&nbsp; For, to live surrounded by human hats, and alienated
+from human heads to fit them on, is surely a great endurance.&nbsp;
+But, the young man, sustained by practising his exercise, and by constantly
+furbishing up his regulation plume (it is unnecessary to observe that,
+as a hatter, he is in a cock&rsquo;s-feather corps), is resigned, and
+uncomplaining.&nbsp; On a Saturday, when he closes early and gets his
+Knickerbockers on, he is even cheerful.&nbsp; I am gratefully particular
+in this reference to him, because he is my companion through many peaceful
+hours.</p>
+<p>My hatter has a desk up certain steps behind his counter, enclosed
+like the clerk&rsquo;s desk at Church.&nbsp; I shut myself into this
+place of seclusion, after breakfast, and meditate.&nbsp; At such times,
+I observe the young man loading an imaginary rifle with the greatest
+precision, and maintaining a most galling and destructive fire upon
+the national enemy.&nbsp; I thank him publicly for his companionship
+and his patriotism.</p>
+<p>The simple character of my life, and the calm nature of the scenes
+by which I am surrounded, occasion me to rise early.&nbsp; I go forth
+in my slippers, and promenade the pavement.&nbsp; It is pastoral to
+feel the freshness of the air in the uninhabited town, and to appreciate
+the shepherdess character of the few milkwomen who purvey so little
+milk that it would be worth nobody&rsquo;s while to adulterate it, if
+anybody were left to undertake the task.&nbsp; On the crowded sea-shore,
+the great demand for milk, combined with the strong local temptation
+of chalk, would betray itself in the lowered quality of the article.&nbsp;
+In Arcadian London I derive it from the cow.</p>
+<p>The Arcadian simplicity of the metropolis altogether, and the primitive
+ways into which it has fallen in this autumnal Golden Age, make it entirely
+new to me.&nbsp; Within a few hundred yards of my retreat, is the house
+of a friend who maintains a most sumptuous butler.&nbsp; I never, until
+yesterday, saw that butler out of superfine black broadcloth.&nbsp;
+Until yesterday, I never saw him off duty, never saw him (he is the
+best of butlers) with the appearance of having any mind for anything
+but the glory of his master and his master&rsquo;s friends.&nbsp; Yesterday
+morning, walking in my slippers near the house of which he is the prop
+and ornament&mdash;a house now a waste of shutters&mdash;I encountered
+that butler, also in his slippers, and in a shooting suit of one colour,
+and in a low-crowned straw-hat, smoking an early cigar.&nbsp; He felt
+that we had formerly met in another state of existence, and that we
+were translated into a new sphere.&nbsp; Wisely and well, he passed
+me without recognition.&nbsp; Under his arm he carried the morning paper,
+and shortly afterwards I saw him sitting on a rail in the pleasant open
+landscape of Regent-street, perusing it at his ease under the ripening
+sun.</p>
+<p>My landlord having taken his whole establishment to be salted down,
+I am waited on by an elderly woman labouring under a chronic sniff,
+who, at the shadowy hour of half-past nine o&rsquo;clock of every evening,
+gives admittance at the street door to a meagre and mouldy old man whom
+I have never yet seen detached from a flat pint of beer in a pewter
+pot.&nbsp; The meagre and mouldy old man is her husband, and the pair
+have a dejected consciousness that they are not justified in appearing
+on the surface of the earth.&nbsp; They come out of some hole when London
+empties itself, and go in again when it fills.&nbsp; I saw them arrive
+on the evening when I myself took possession, and they arrived with
+the flat pint of beer, and their bed in a bundle.&nbsp; The old man
+is a weak old man, and appeared to me to get the bed down the kitchen
+stairs by tumbling down with and upon it.&nbsp; They make their bed
+in the lowest and remotest corner of the basement, and they smell of
+bed, and have no possession but bed: unless it be (which I rather infer
+from an under-current of flavour in them) cheese.&nbsp; I know their
+name, through the chance of having called the wife&rsquo;s attention,
+at half-past nine on the second evening of our acquaintance, to the
+circumstance of there being some one at the house door; when she apologetically
+explained, &lsquo;It&rsquo;s only Mr. Klem.&rsquo;&nbsp; What becomes
+of Mr. Klem all day, or when he goes out, or why, is a mystery I cannot
+penetrate; but at half-past nine he never fails to turn up on the door-step
+with the flat pint of beer.&nbsp; And the pint of beer, flat as it is,
+is so much more important than himself, that it always seems to my fancy
+as if it had found him drivelling in the street and had humanely brought
+him home.&nbsp; In making his way below, Mr. Klem never goes down the
+middle of the passage, like another Christian, but shuffles against
+the wall as if entreating me to take notice that he is occupying as
+little space as possible in the house; and whenever I come upon him
+face to face, he backs from me in fascinated confusion.&nbsp; The most
+extraordinary circumstance I have traced in connexion with this aged
+couple, is, that there is a Miss Klem, their daughter, apparently ten
+years older than either of them, who has also a bed and smells of it,
+and carries it about the earth at dusk and hides it in deserted houses.&nbsp;
+I came into this piece of knowledge through Mrs. Klem&rsquo;s beseeching
+me to sanction the sheltering of Miss Klem under that roof for a single
+night, &lsquo;between her takin&rsquo; care of the upper part in Pall
+Mall which the family of his back, and a &rsquo;ouse in Serjameses-street,
+which the family of leaves towng ter-morrer.&rsquo;&nbsp; I gave my
+gracious consent (having nothing that I know of to do with it), and
+in the shadowy hours Miss Klem became perceptible on the door-step,
+wrestling with a bed in a bundle.&nbsp; Where she made it up for the
+night I cannot positively state, but, I think, in a sink.&nbsp; I know
+that with the instinct of a reptile or an insect, she stowed it and
+herself away in deep obscurity.&nbsp; In the Klem family, I have noticed
+another remarkable gift of nature, and that is a power they possess
+of converting everything into flue.&nbsp; Such broken victuals as they
+take by stealth, appear (whatever the nature of the viands) invariably
+to generate flue; and even the nightly pint of beer, instead of assimilating
+naturally, strikes me as breaking out in that form, equally on the shabby
+gown of Mrs. Klem, and the threadbare coat of her husband.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Klem has no idea of my name&mdash;as to Mr. Klem he has no idea
+of anything&mdash;and only knows me as her good gentleman.&nbsp; Thus,
+if doubtful whether I am in my room or no, Mrs. Klem taps at the door
+and says, &lsquo;Is my good gentleman here?&rsquo;&nbsp; Or, if a messenger
+desiring to see me were consistent with my solitude, she would show
+him in with &lsquo;Here is my good gentleman.&rsquo;&nbsp; I find this
+to be a generic custom.&nbsp; For, I meant to have observed before now,
+that in its Arcadian time all my part of London is indistinctly pervaded
+by the Klem species.&nbsp; They creep about with beds, and go to bed
+in miles of deserted houses.&nbsp; They hold no companionship except
+that sometimes, after dark, two of them will emerge from opposite houses,
+and meet in the middle of the road as on neutral ground, or will peep
+from adjoining houses over an interposing barrier of area railings,
+and compare a few reserved mistrustful notes respecting their good ladies
+or good gentlemen.&nbsp; This I have discovered in the course of various
+solitary rambles I have taken Northward from my retirement, along the
+awful perspectives of Wimpole-street, Harley-street, and similar frowning
+regions.&nbsp; Their effect would be scarcely distinguishable from that
+of the primeval forests, but for the Klem stragglers; these may be dimly
+observed, when the heavy shadows fall, flitting to and fro, putting
+up the door-chain, taking in the pint of beer, lowering like phantoms
+at the dark parlour windows, or secretly consorting underground with
+the dust-bin and the water-cistern.</p>
+<p>In the Burlington Arcade, I observe, with peculiar pleasure, a primitive
+state of manners to have superseded the baneful influences of ultra
+civilisation.&nbsp; Nothing can surpass the innocence of the ladies&rsquo;
+shoe-shops, the artificial-flower repositories, and the head-dress depots.&nbsp;
+They are in strange hands at this time of year&mdash;hands of unaccustomed
+persons, who are imperfectly acquainted with the prices of the goods,
+and contemplate them with unsophisticated delight and wonder.&nbsp;
+The children of these virtuous people exchange familiarities in the
+Arcade, and temper the asperity of the two tall beadles.&nbsp; Their
+youthful prattle blends in an unwonted manner with the harmonious shade
+of the scene, and the general effect is, as of the voices of birds in
+a grove.&nbsp; In this happy restoration of the golden time, it has
+been my privilege even to see the bigger beadle&rsquo;s wife.&nbsp;
+She brought him his dinner in a basin, and he ate it in his arm-chair,
+and afterwards fell asleep like a satiated child.&nbsp; At Mr. Truefitt&rsquo;s,
+the excellent hairdresser&rsquo;s, they are learning French to beguile
+the time; and even the few solitaries left on guard at Mr. Atkinson&rsquo;s,
+the perfumer&rsquo;s round the corner (generally the most inexorable
+gentleman in London, and the most scornful of three-and-sixpence), condescend
+a little, as they drowsily bide or recall their turn for chasing the
+ebbing Neptune on the ribbed sea-sand.&nbsp; From Messrs. Hunt and Roskell&rsquo;s,
+the jewellers, all things are absent but the precious stones, and the
+gold and silver, and the soldierly pensioner at the door with his decorated
+breast.&nbsp; I might stand night and day for a month to come, in Saville-row,
+with my tongue out, yet not find a doctor to look at it for love or
+money.&nbsp; The dentists&rsquo; instruments are rusting in their drawers,
+and their horrible cool parlours, where people pretend to read the Every-Day
+Book and not to be afraid, are doing penance for their grimness in white
+sheets.&nbsp; The light-weight of shrewd appearance, with one eye always
+shut up, as if he were eating a sharp gooseberry in all seasons, who
+usually stands at the gateway of the livery-stables on very little legs
+under a very large waistcoat, has gone to Doncaster.&nbsp; Of such undesigning
+aspect is his guileless yard now, with its gravel and scarlet beans,
+and the yellow Break housed under a glass roof in a corner, that I almost
+believe I could not be taken in there, if I tried.&nbsp; In the places
+of business of the great tailors, the cheval-glasses are dim and dusty
+for lack of being looked into.&nbsp; Ranges of brown paper coat and
+waistcoat bodies look as funereal as if they were the hatchments of
+the customers with whose names they are inscribed; the measuring tapes
+hang idle on the wall; the order-taker, left on the hopeless chance
+of some one looking in, yawns in the last extremity over the book of
+patterns, as if he were trying to read that entertaining library.&nbsp;
+The hotels in Brook-street have no one in them, and the staffs of servants
+stare disconsolately for next season out of all the windows.&nbsp; The
+very man who goes about like an erect Turtle, between two boards recommendatory
+of the Sixteen Shilling Trousers, is aware of himself as a hollow mockery,
+and eats filberts while he leans his hinder shell against a wall.</p>
+<p>Among these tranquillising objects, it is my delight to walk and
+meditate.&nbsp; Soothed by the repose around me, I wander insensibly
+to considerable distances, and guide myself back by the stars.&nbsp;
+Thus, I enjoy the contrast of a few still partially inhabited and busy
+spots where all the lights are not fled, where all the garlands are
+not dead, whence all but I have not departed.&nbsp; Then, does it appear
+to me that in this age three things are clamorously required of Man
+in the miscellaneous thoroughfares of the metropolis.&nbsp; Firstly,
+that he have his boots cleaned.&nbsp; Secondly, that he eat a penny
+ice.&nbsp; Thirdly, that he get himself photographed.&nbsp; Then do
+I speculate, What have those seam-worn artists been who stand at the
+photograph doors in Greek caps, sample in hand, and mysteriously salute
+the public&mdash;the female public with a pressing tenderness&mdash;to
+come in and be &lsquo;took&rsquo;?&nbsp; What did they do with their
+greasy blandishments, before the era of cheap photography?&nbsp; Of
+what class were their previous victims, and how victimised?&nbsp; And
+how did they get, and how did they pay for, that large collection of
+likenesses, all purporting to have been taken inside, with the taking
+of none of which had that establishment any more to do than with the
+taking of Delhi?</p>
+<p>But, these are small oases, and I am soon back again in metropolitan
+Arcadia.&nbsp; It is my impression that much of its serene and peaceful
+character is attributable to the absence of customary Talk.&nbsp; How
+do I know but there may be subtle influences in Talk, to vex the souls
+of men who don&rsquo;t hear it?&nbsp; How do I know but that Talk, five,
+ten, twenty miles off, may get into the air and disagree with me?&nbsp;
+If I rise from my bed, vaguely troubled and wearied and sick of my life,
+in the session of Parliament, who shall say that my noble friend, my
+right reverend friend, my right honourable friend, my honourable friend,
+my honourable and learned friend, or my honourable and gallant friend,
+may not be responsible for that effect upon my nervous system?&nbsp;
+Too much Ozone in the air, I am informed and fully believe (though I
+have no idea what it is), would affect me in a marvellously disagreeable
+way; why may not too much Talk?&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t see or hear the
+Ozone; I don&rsquo;t see or hear the Talk.&nbsp; And there is so much
+Talk; so much too much; such loud cry, and such scant supply of wool;
+such a deal of fleecing, and so little fleece!&nbsp; Hence, in the Arcadian
+season, I find it a delicious triumph to walk down to deserted Westminster,
+and see the Courts shut up; to walk a little further and see the Two
+Houses shut up; to stand in the Abbey Yard, like the New Zealander of
+the grand English History (concerning which unfortunate man, a whole
+rookery of mares&rsquo; nests is generally being discovered), and gloat
+upon the ruins of Talk.&nbsp; Returning to my primitive solitude and
+lying down to sleep, my grateful heart expands with the consciousness
+that there is no adjourned Debate, no ministerial explanation, nobody
+to give notice of intention to ask the noble Lord at the head of her
+Majesty&rsquo;s Government five-and-twenty bootless questions in one,
+no term time with legal argument, no Nisi Prius with eloquent appeal
+to British Jury; that the air will to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
+remain untroubled by this superabundant generating of Talk.&nbsp; In
+a minor degree it is a delicious triumph to me to go into the club,
+and see the carpets up, and the Bores and the other dust dispersed to
+the four winds.&nbsp; Again, New Zealander-like, I stand on the cold
+hearth, and say in the solitude, &lsquo;Here I watched Bore A 1, with
+voice always mysteriously low and head always mysteriously drooped,
+whispering political secrets into the ears of Adam&rsquo;s confiding
+children.&nbsp; Accursed be his memory for ever and a day!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>But, I have all this time been coming to the point, that the happy
+nature of my retirement is most sweetly expressed in its being the abode
+of Love.&nbsp; It is, as it were, an inexpensive Agapemone: nobody&rsquo;s
+speculation: everybody&rsquo;s profit.&nbsp; The one great result of
+the resumption of primitive habits, and (convertible terms) the not
+having much to do, is, the abounding of Love.</p>
+<p>The Klem species are incapable of the softer emotions; probably,
+in that low nomadic race, the softer emotions have all degenerated into
+flue.&nbsp; But, with this exception, all the sharers of my retreat
+make love.</p>
+<p>I have mentioned Saville-row.&nbsp; We all know the Doctor&rsquo;s
+servant.&nbsp; We all know what a respectable man he is, what a hard
+dry man, what a firm man, what a confidential man: how he lets us into
+the waiting-room, like a man who knows minutely what is the matter with
+us, but from whom the rack should not wring the secret.&nbsp; In the
+prosaic &ldquo;season,&rdquo; he has distinctly the appearance of a
+man conscious of money in the savings bank, and taking his stand on
+his respectability with both feet.&nbsp; At that time it is as impossible
+to associate him with relaxation, or any human weakness, as it is to
+meet his eye without feeling guilty of indisposition.&nbsp; In the blest
+Arcadian time, how changed!&nbsp; I have seen him, in a pepper-and-salt
+jacket&mdash;jacket&mdash;and drab trousers, with his arm round the
+waist of a bootmaker&rsquo;s housemaid, smiling in open day.&nbsp; I
+have seen him at the pump by the Albany, unsolicitedly pumping for two
+fair young creatures, whose figures as they bent over their cans, were&mdash;if
+I may be allowed an original expression&mdash;a model for the sculptor.&nbsp;
+I have seen him trying the piano in the Doctor&rsquo;s drawing-room
+with his forefinger, and have heard him humming tunes in praise of lovely
+woman.&nbsp; I have seen him seated on a fire-engine, and going (obviously
+in search of excitement) to a fire.&nbsp; I saw him, one moonlight evening
+when the peace and purity of our Arcadian west were at their height,
+polk with the lovely daughter of a cleaner of gloves, from the door-steps
+of his own residence, across Saville-row, round by Clifford-street and
+Old Burlington-street, back to Burlington-gardens.&nbsp; Is this the
+Golden Age revived, or Iron London?</p>
+<p>The Dentist&rsquo;s servant.&nbsp; Is that man no mystery to us,
+no type of invisible power?&nbsp; The tremendous individual knows (who
+else does?) what is done with the extracted teeth; he knows what goes
+on in the little room where something is always being washed or filed;
+he knows what warm spicy infusion is put into the comfortable tumbler
+from which we rinse our wounded mouth, with a gap in it that feels a
+foot wide; he knows whether the thing we spit into is a fixture communicating
+with the Thames, or could be cleared away for a dance; he sees the horrible
+parlour where there are no patients in it, and he could reveal, if he
+would, what becomes of the Every-Day Book then.&nbsp; The conviction
+of my coward conscience when I see that man in a professional light,
+is, that he knows all the statistics of my teeth and gums, my double
+teeth, my single teeth, my stopped teeth, and my sound.&nbsp; In this
+Arcadian rest, I am fearless of him as of a harmless, powerless creature
+in a Scotch cap, who adores a young lady in a voluminous crinoline,
+at a neighbouring billiard-room, and whose passion would be uninfluenced
+if every one of her teeth were false.&nbsp; They may be.&nbsp; He takes
+them all on trust.</p>
+<p>In secluded corners of the place of my seclusion, there are little
+shops withdrawn from public curiosity, and never two together, where
+servants&rsquo; perquisites are bought.&nbsp; The cook may dispose of
+grease at these modest and convenient marts; the butler, of bottles;
+the valet and lady&rsquo;s maid, of clothes; most servants, indeed,
+of most things they may happen to lay hold of.&nbsp; I have been told
+that in sterner times loving correspondence, otherwise interdicted,
+may be maintained by letter through the agency of some of these useful
+establishments.&nbsp; In the Arcadian autumn, no such device is necessary.&nbsp;
+Everybody loves, and openly and blamelessly loves.&nbsp; My landlord&rsquo;s
+young man loves the whole of one side of the way of Old Bond-street,
+and is beloved several doors up New Bond-street besides.&nbsp; I never
+look out of window but I see kissing of hands going on all around me.&nbsp;
+It is the morning custom to glide from shop to shop and exchange tender
+sentiments; it is the evening custom for couples to stand hand in hand
+at house doors, or roam, linked in that flowery manner, through the
+unpeopled streets.&nbsp; There is nothing else to do but love; and what
+there is to do, is done.</p>
+<p>In unison with this pursuit, a chaste simplicity obtains in the domestic
+habits of Arcadia.&nbsp; Its few scattered people dine early, live moderately,
+sup socially, and sleep soundly.&nbsp; It is rumoured that the Beadles
+of the Arcade, from being the mortal enemies of boys, have signed with
+tears an address to Lord Shaftesbury, and subscribed to a ragged school.&nbsp;
+No wonder!&nbsp; For, they might turn their heavy maces into crooks
+and tend sheep in the Arcade, to the purling of the water-carts as they
+give the thirsty streets much more to drink than they can carry.</p>
+<p>A happy Golden Age, and a serene tranquillity.&nbsp; Charming picture,
+but it will fade.&nbsp; The iron age will return, London will come back
+to town, if I show my tongue then in Saville-row for half a minute I
+shall be prescribed for, the Doctor&rsquo;s man and the Dentist&rsquo;s
+man will then pretend that these days of unprofessional innocence never
+existed.&nbsp; Where Mr. and Mrs. Klem and their bed will be at that
+time, passes human knowledge; but my hatter hermitage will then know
+them no more, nor will it then know me.&nbsp; The desk at which I have
+written these meditations will retributively assist at the making out
+of my account, and the wheels of gorgeous carriages and the hoofs of
+high-stepping horses will crush the silence out of Bond-street&mdash;will
+grind Arcadia away, and give it to the elements in granite powder.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII&mdash;THE ITALIAN PRISONER</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The rising of the Italian people from under their unutterable wrongs,
+and the tardy burst of day upon them after the long long night of oppression
+that has darkened their beautiful country, have naturally caused my
+mind to dwell often of late on my own small wanderings in Italy.&nbsp;
+Connected with them, is a curious little drama, in which the character
+I myself sustained was so very subordinate that I may relate its story
+without any fear of being suspected of self-display.&nbsp; It is strictly
+a true story.</p>
+<p>I am newly arrived one summer evening, in a certain small town on
+the Mediterranean.&nbsp; I have had my dinner at the inn, and I and
+the mosquitoes are coming out into the streets together.&nbsp; It is
+far from Naples; but a bright, brown, plump little woman-servant at
+the inn, is a Neapolitan, and is so vivaciously expert in panto-mimic
+action, that in the single moment of answering my request to have a
+pair of shoes cleaned which I have left up-stairs, she plies imaginary
+brushes, and goes completely through the motions of polishing the shoes
+up, and laying them at my feet.&nbsp; I smile at the brisk little woman
+in perfect satisfaction with her briskness; and the brisk little woman,
+amiably pleased with me because I am pleased with her, claps her hands
+and laughs delightfully.&nbsp; We are in the inn yard.&nbsp; As the
+little woman&rsquo;s bright eyes sparkle on the cigarette I am smoking,
+I make bold to offer her one; she accepts it none the less merrily,
+because I touch a most charming little dimple in her fat cheek, with
+its light paper end.&nbsp; Glancing up at the many green lattices to
+assure herself that the mistress is not looking on, the little woman
+then puts her two little dimple arms a-kimbo, and stands on tiptoe to
+light her cigarette at mine.&nbsp; &lsquo;And now, dear little sir,&rsquo;
+says she, puffing out smoke in a most innocent and cherubic manner,
+&lsquo;keep quite straight on, take the first to the right and probably
+you will see him standing at his door.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I gave a commission to &lsquo;him,&rsquo; and I have been inquiring
+about him.&nbsp; I have carried the commission about Italy several months.&nbsp;
+Before I left England, there came to me one night a certain generous
+and gentle English nobleman (he is dead in these days when I relate
+the story, and exiles have lost their best British friend), with this
+request: &lsquo;Whenever you come to such a town, will you seek out
+one Giovanni Carlavero, who keeps a little wine-shop there, mention
+my name to him suddenly, and observe how it affects him?&rsquo;&nbsp;
+I accepted the trust, and am on my way to discharge it.</p>
+<p>The sirocco has been blowing all day, and it is a hot unwholesome
+evening with no cool sea-breeze.&nbsp; Mosquitoes and fire-flies are
+lively enough, but most other creatures are faint.&nbsp; The coquettish
+airs of pretty young women in the tiniest and wickedest of dolls&rsquo;
+straw hats, who lean out at opened lattice blinds, are almost the only
+airs stirring.&nbsp; Very ugly and haggard old women with distaffs,
+and with a grey tow upon them that looks as if they were spinning out
+their own hair (I suppose they were once pretty, too, but it is very
+difficult to believe so), sit on the footway leaning against house walls.&nbsp;
+Everybody who has come for water to the fountain, stays there, and seems
+incapable of any such energetic idea as going home.&nbsp; Vespers are
+over, though not so long but that I can smell the heavy resinous incense
+as I pass the church.&nbsp; No man seems to be at work, save the coppersmith.&nbsp;
+In an Italian town he is always at work, and always thumping in the
+deadliest manner.</p>
+<p>I keep straight on, and come in due time to the first on the right:
+a narrow dull street, where I see a well-favoured man of good stature
+and military bearing, in a great cloak, standing at a door.&nbsp; Drawing
+nearer to this threshold, I see it is the threshold of a small wine-shop;
+and I can just make out, in the dim light, the inscription that it is
+kept by Giovanni Carlavero.</p>
+<p>I touch my hat to the figure in the cloak, and pass in, and draw
+a stool to a little table.&nbsp; The lamp (just such another as they
+dig out of Pompeii) is lighted, but the place is empty.&nbsp; The figure
+in the cloak has followed me in, and stands before me.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The master?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;At your service, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Please to give me a glass of the wine of the country.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He turns to a little counter, to get it.&nbsp; As his striking face
+is pale, and his action is evidently that of an enfeebled man, I remark
+that I fear he has been ill.&nbsp; It is not much, he courteously and
+gravely answers, though bad while it lasts: the fever.</p>
+<p>As he sets the wine on the little table, to his manifest surprise
+I lay my hand on the back of his, look him in the face, and say in a
+low voice: &lsquo;I am an Englishman, and you are acquainted with a
+friend of mine.&nbsp; Do you recollect&mdash;?&rsquo; and I mentioned
+the name of my generous countryman.</p>
+<p>Instantly, he utters a loud cry, bursts into tears, and falls on
+his knees at my feet, clasping my legs in both his arms and bowing his
+head to the ground.</p>
+<p>Some years ago, this man at my feet, whose over-fraught heart is
+heaving as if it would burst from his breast, and whose tears are wet
+upon the dress I wear, was a galley-slave in the North of Italy.&nbsp;
+He was a political offender, having been concerned in the then last
+rising, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life.&nbsp; That he would
+have died in his chains, is certain, but for the circumstance that the
+Englishman happened to visit his prison.</p>
+<p>It was one of the vile old prisons of Italy, and a part of it was
+below the waters of the harbour.&nbsp; The place of his confinement
+was an arched under-ground and under-water gallery, with a grill-gate
+at the entrance, through which it received such light and air as it
+got.&nbsp; Its condition was insufferably foul, and a stranger could
+hardly breathe in it, or see in it with the aid of a torch.&nbsp; At
+the upper end of this dungeon, and consequently in the worst position,
+as being the furthest removed from light and air, the Englishman first
+beheld him, sitting on an iron bedstead to which he was chained by a
+heavy chain.&nbsp; His countenance impressed the Englishmen as having
+nothing in common with the faces of the malefactors with whom he was
+associated, and he talked with him, and learnt how he came to be there.</p>
+<p>When the Englishman emerged from the dreadful den into the light
+of day, he asked his conductor, the governor of the jail, why Giovanni
+Carlavero was put into the worst place?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Because he is particularly recommended,&rsquo; was the stringent
+answer.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Recommended, that is to say, for death?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Excuse me; particularly recommended,&rsquo; was again the
+answer.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He has a bad tumour in his neck, no doubt occasioned by the
+hardship of his miserable life.&nbsp; If he continues to be neglected,
+and he remains where he is, it will kill him.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Excuse me, I can do nothing.&nbsp; He is particularly recommended.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+The Englishman was staying in that town, and he went to his home there;
+but the figure of this man chained to the bedstead made it no home,
+and destroyed his rest and peace.&nbsp; He was an Englishman of an extraordinarily
+tender heart, and he could not bear the picture.&nbsp; He went back
+to the prison grate; went back again and again, and talked to the man
+and cheered him.&nbsp; He used his utmost influence to get the man unchained
+from the bedstead, were it only for ever so short a time in the day,
+and permitted to come to the grate.&nbsp; It look a long time, but the
+Englishman&rsquo;s station, personal character, and steadiness of purpose,
+wore out opposition so far, and that grace was at last accorded.&nbsp;
+Through the bars, when he could thus get light upon the tumour, the
+Englishman lanced it, and it did well, and healed.&nbsp; His strong
+interest in the prisoner had greatly increased by this time, and he
+formed the desperate resolution that he would exert his utmost self-devotion
+and use his utmost efforts, to get Carlavero pardoned.</p>
+<p>If the prisoner had been a brigand and a murderer, if he had committed
+every non-political crime in the Newgate Calendar and out of it, nothing
+would have been easier than for a man of any court or priestly influence
+to obtain his release.&nbsp; As it was, nothing could have been more
+difficult.&nbsp; Italian authorities, and English authorities who had
+interest with them, alike assured the Englishman that his object was
+hopeless.&nbsp; He met with nothing but evasion, refusal, and ridicule.&nbsp;
+His political prisoner became a joke in the place.&nbsp; It was especially
+observable that English Circumlocution, and English Society on its travels,
+were as humorous on the subject as Circumlocution and Society may be
+on any subject without loss of caste.&nbsp; But, the Englishman possessed
+(and proved it well in his life) a courage very uncommon among us: he
+had not the least fear of being considered a bore, in a good humane
+cause.&nbsp; So he went on persistently trying, and trying, and trying,
+to get Giovanni Carlavero out.&nbsp; That prisoner had been rigorously
+re-chained, after the tumour operation, and it was not likely that his
+miserable life could last very long.</p>
+<p>One day, when all the town knew about the Englishman and his political
+prisoner, there came to the Englishman, a certain sprightly Italian
+Advocate of whom he had some knowledge; and he made this strange proposal.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Give me a hundred pounds to obtain Carlavero&rsquo;s release.&nbsp;
+I think I can get him a pardon, with that money.&nbsp; But I cannot
+tell you what I am going to do with the money, nor must you ever ask
+me the question if I succeed, nor must you ever ask me for an account
+of the money if I fail.&rsquo;&nbsp; The Englishman decided to hazard
+the hundred pounds.&nbsp; He did so, and heard not another word of the
+matter.&nbsp; For half a year and more, the Advocate made no sign, and
+never once &lsquo;took on&rsquo; in any way, to have the subject on
+his mind.&nbsp; The Englishman was then obliged to change his residence
+to another and more famous town in the North of Italy.&nbsp; He parted
+from the poor prisoner with a sorrowful heart, as from a doomed man
+for whom there was no release but Death.</p>
+<p>The Englishman lived in his new place of abode another half-year
+and more, and had no tidings of the wretched prisoner.&nbsp; At length,
+one day, he received from the Advocate a cool, concise, mysterious note,
+to this effect.&nbsp; &lsquo;If you still wish to bestow that benefit
+upon the man in whom you were once interested, send me fifty pounds
+more, and I think it can be ensured.&rsquo;&nbsp; Now, the Englishman
+had long settled in his mind that the Advocate was a heartless sharper,
+who had preyed upon his credulity and his interest in an unfortunate
+sufferer.&nbsp; So, he sat down and wrote a dry answer, giving the Advocate
+to understand that he was wiser now than he had been formerly, and that
+no more money was extractable from his pocket.</p>
+<p>He lived outside the city gates, some mile or two from the post-office,
+and was accustomed to walk into the city with his letters and post them
+himself.&nbsp; On a lovely spring day, when the sky was exquisitely
+blue, and the sea Divinely beautiful, he took his usual walk, carrying
+this letter to the Advocate in his pocket.&nbsp; As he went along, his
+gentle heart was much moved by the loveliness of the prospect, and by
+the thought of the slowly dying prisoner chained to the bedstead, for
+whom the universe had no delights.&nbsp; As he drew nearer and nearer
+to the city where he was to post the letter, he became very uneasy in
+his mind.&nbsp; He debated with himself, was it remotely possible, after
+all, that this sum of fifty pounds could restore the fellow-creature
+whom he pitied so much, and for whom he had striven so hard, to liberty?&nbsp;
+He was not a conventionally rich Englishman&mdash;very far from that&mdash;but,
+he had a spare fifty pounds at the banker&rsquo;s.&nbsp; He resolved
+to risk it.&nbsp; Without doubt, GOD has recompensed him for the resolution.</p>
+<p>He went to the banker&rsquo;s, and got a bill for the amount, and
+enclosed it in a letter to the Advocate that I wish I could have seen.&nbsp;
+He simply told the Advocate that he was quite a poor man, and that he
+was sensible it might be a great weakness in him to part with so much
+money on the faith of so vague a communication; but, that there it was,
+and that he prayed the Advocate to make a good use of it.&nbsp; If he
+did otherwise no good could ever come of it, and it would lie heavy
+on his soul one day.</p>
+<p>Within a week, the Englishman was sitting at his breakfast, when
+he heard some suppressed sounds of agitation on the staircase, and Giovanni
+Carlavero leaped into the room and fell upon his breast, a free man!</p>
+<p>Conscious of having wronged the Advocate in his own thoughts, the
+Englishman wrote him an earnest and grateful letter, avowing the fact,
+and entreating him to confide by what means and through what agency
+he had succeeded so well.&nbsp; The Advocate returned for answer through
+the post, &lsquo;There are many things, as you know, in this Italy of
+ours, that are safest and best not even spoken of&mdash;far less written
+of.&nbsp; We may meet some day, and then I may tell you what you want
+to know; not here, and now.&rsquo;&nbsp; But, the two never did meet
+again.&nbsp; The Advocate was dead when the Englishman gave me my trust;
+and how the man had been set free, remained as great a mystery to the
+Englishman, and to the man himself, as it was to me.</p>
+<p>But, I knew this:- here was the man, this sultry night, on his knees
+at my feet, because I was the Englishman&rsquo;s friend; here were his
+tears upon my dress; here were his sobs choking his utterance; here
+were his kisses on my hands, because they had touched the hands that
+had worked out his release.&nbsp; He had no need to tell me it would
+be happiness to him to die for his benefactor; I doubt if I ever saw
+real, sterling, fervent gratitude of soul, before or since.</p>
+<p>He was much watched and suspected, he said, and had had enough to
+do to keep himself out of trouble.&nbsp; This, and his not having prospered
+in his worldly affairs, had led to his having failed in his usual communications
+to the Englishman for&mdash;as I now remember the period&mdash;some
+two or three years.&nbsp; But, his prospects were brighter, and his
+wife who had been very ill had recovered, and his fever had left him,
+and he had bought a little vineyard, and would I carry to his benefactor
+the first of its wine?&nbsp; Ay, that I would (I told him with enthusiasm),
+and not a drop of it should be spilled or lost!</p>
+<p>He had cautiously closed the door before speaking of himself, and
+had talked with such excess of emotion, and in a provincial Italian
+so difficult to understand, that I had more than once been obliged to
+stop him, and beg him to have compassion on me and be slower and calmer.&nbsp;
+By degrees he became so, and tranquilly walked back with me to the hotel.&nbsp;
+There, I sat down before I went to bed and wrote a faithful account
+of him to the Englishman: which I concluded by saying that I would bring
+the wine home, against any difficulties, every drop.</p>
+<p>Early next morning, when I came out at the hotel door to pursue my
+journey, I found my friend waiting with one of those immense bottles
+in which the Italian peasants store their wine&mdash;a bottle holding
+some half-dozen gallons&mdash;bound round with basket-work for greater
+safety on the journey.&nbsp; I see him now, in the bright sunshine,
+tears of gratitude in his eyes, proudly inviting my attention to this
+corpulent bottle.&nbsp; (At the street-comer hard by, two high-flavoured,
+able-bodied monks&mdash;pretending to talk together, but keeping their
+four evil eyes upon us.)</p>
+<p>How the bottle had been got there, did not appear; but the difficulty
+of getting it into the ramshackle vetturino carriage in which I was
+departing, was so great, and it took up so much room when it was got
+in, that I elected to sit outside.&nbsp; The last I saw of Giovanni
+Carlavero was his running through the town by the side of the jingling
+wheels, clasping my hand as I stretched it down from the box, charging
+me with a thousand last loving and dutiful messages to his dear patron,
+and finally looking in at the bottle as it reposed inside, with an admiration
+of its honourable way of travelling that was beyond measure delightful.</p>
+<p>And now, what disquiet of mind this dearly-beloved and highly-treasured
+Bottle began to cost me, no man knows.&nbsp; It was my precious charge
+through a long tour, and, for hundreds of miles, I never had it off
+my mind by day or by night.&nbsp; Over bad roads&mdash;and they were
+many&mdash;I clung to it with affectionate desperation.&nbsp; Up mountains,
+I looked in at it and saw it helplessly tilting over on its back, with
+terror.&nbsp; At innumerable inn doors when the weather was bad, I was
+obliged to be put into my vehicle before the Bottle could be got in,
+and was obliged to have the Bottle lifted out before human aid could
+come near me.&nbsp; The Imp of the same name, except that his associations
+were all evil and these associations were all good, would have been
+a less troublesome travelling companion.&nbsp; I might have served Mr.
+Cruikshank as a subject for a new illustration of the miseries of the
+Bottle.&nbsp; The National Temperance Society might have made a powerful
+Tract of me.</p>
+<p>The suspicions that attached to this innocent Bottle, greatly aggravated
+my difficulties.&nbsp; It was like the apple-pie in the child&rsquo;s
+book.&nbsp; Parma pouted at it, Modena mocked it, Tuscany tackled it,
+Naples nibbled it, Rome refused it, Austria accused it, Soldiers suspected
+it, Jesuits jobbed it.&nbsp; I composed a neat Oration, developing my
+inoffensive intentions in connexion with this Bottle, and delivered
+it in an infinity of guard-houses, at a multitude of town gates, and
+on every drawbridge, angle, and rampart, of a complete system of fortifications.&nbsp;
+Fifty times a day, I got down to harangue an infuriated soldiery about
+the Bottle.&nbsp; Through the filthy degradation of the abject and vile
+Roman States, I had as much difficulty in working my way with the Bottle,
+as if it had bottled up a complete system of heretical theology.&nbsp;
+In the Neapolitan country, where everybody was a spy, a soldier, a priest,
+or a lazzarone, the shameless beggars of all four denominations incessantly
+pounced on the Bottle and made it a pretext for extorting money from
+me.&nbsp; Quires&mdash;quires do I say?&nbsp; Reams&mdash;of forms illegibly
+printed on whity-brown paper were filled up about the Bottle, and it
+was the subject of more stamping and sanding than I had ever seen before.&nbsp;
+In consequence of which haze of sand, perhaps, it was always irregular,
+and always latent with dismal penalties of going back or not going forward,
+which were only to be abated by the silver crossing of a base hand,
+poked shirtless out of a ragged uniform sleeve.&nbsp; Under all discouragements,
+however, I stuck to my Bottle, and held firm to my resolution that every
+drop of its contents should reach the Bottle&rsquo;s destination.</p>
+<p>The latter refinement cost me a separate heap of troubles on its
+own separate account.&nbsp; What corkscrews did I see the military power
+bring out against that Bottle; what gimlets, spikes, divining rods,
+gauges, and unknown tests and instruments!&nbsp; At some places, they
+persisted in declaring that the wine must not be passed, without being
+opened and tasted; I, pleading to the contrary, used then to argue the
+question seated on the Bottle lest they should open it in spite of me.&nbsp;
+In the southern parts of Italy more violent shrieking, face-making,
+and gesticulating, greater vehemence of speech and countenance and action,
+went on about that Bottle than would attend fifty murders in a northern
+latitude.&nbsp; It raised important functionaries out of their beds,
+in the dead of night.&nbsp; I have known half-a-dozen military lanterns
+to disperse themselves at all points of a great sleeping Piazza, each
+lantern summoning some official creature to get up, put on his cocked-hat
+instantly, and come and stop the Bottle.&nbsp; It was characteristic
+that while this innocent Bottle had such immense difficulty in getting
+from little town to town, Signor Mazzini and the fiery cross were traversing
+Italy from end to end.</p>
+<p>Still, I stuck to my Bottle, like any fine old English gentleman
+all of the olden time.&nbsp; The more the Bottle was interfered with,
+the stauncher I became (if possible) in my first determination that
+my countryman should have it delivered to him intact, as the man whom
+he had so nobly restored to life and liberty had delivered it to me.&nbsp;
+If ever I had been obstinate in my days&mdash;and I may have been, say,
+once or twice&mdash;I was obstinate about the Bottle.&nbsp; But, I made
+it a rule always to keep a pocket full of small coin at its service,
+and never to be out of temper in its cause.&nbsp; Thus, I and the Bottle
+made our way.&nbsp; Once we had a break-down; rather a bad break-down,
+on a steep high place with the sea below us, on a tempestuous evening
+when it blew great guns.&nbsp; We were driving four wild horses abreast,
+Southern fashion, and there was some little difficulty in stopping them.&nbsp;
+I was outside, and not thrown off; but no words can describe my feelings
+when I saw the Bottle&mdash;travelling inside, as usual&mdash;burst
+the door open, and roll obesely out into the road.&nbsp; A blessed Bottle
+with a charmed existence, he took no hurt, and we repaired damage, and
+went on triumphant.</p>
+<p>A thousand representations were made to me that the Bottle must be
+left at this place, or that, and called for again.&nbsp; I never yielded
+to one of them, and never parted from the Bottle, on any pretence, consideration,
+threat, or entreaty.&nbsp; I had no faith in any official receipt for
+the Bottle, and nothing would induce me to accept one.&nbsp; These unmanageable
+politics at last brought me and the Bottle, still triumphant, to Genoa.&nbsp;
+There, I took a tender and reluctant leave of him for a few weeks, and
+consigned him to a trusty English captain, to be conveyed to the Port
+of London by sea.</p>
+<p>While the Bottle was on his voyage to England, I read the Shipping
+Intelligence as anxiously as if I had been an underwriter.&nbsp; There
+was some stormy weather after I myself had got to England by way of
+Switzerland and France, and my mind greatly misgave me that the Bottle
+might be wrecked.&nbsp; At last to my great joy, I received notice of
+his safe arrival, and immediately went down to Saint Katharine&rsquo;s
+Docks, and found him in a state of honourable captivity in the Custom
+House.</p>
+<p>The wine was mere vinegar when I set it down before the generous
+Englishman&mdash;probably it had been something like vinegar when I
+took it up from Giovanni Carlavero&mdash;but not a drop of it was spilled
+or gone.&nbsp; And the Englishman told me, with much emotion in his
+face and voice, that he had never tasted wine that seemed to him so
+sweet and sound.&nbsp; And long afterwards, the Bottle graced his table.&nbsp;
+And the last time I saw him in this world that misses him, he took me
+aside in a crowd, to say, with his amiable smile: &lsquo;We were talking
+of you only to-day at dinner, and I wished you had been there, for I
+had some Claret up in Carlavero&rsquo;s Bottle.&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII&mdash;THE CALAIS NIGHT MAIL</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>It is an unsettled question with me whether I shall leave Calais
+something handsome in my will, or whether I shall leave it my malediction.&nbsp;
+I hate it so much, and yet I am always so very glad to see it, that
+I am in a state of constant indecision on this subject.&nbsp; When I
+first made acquaintance with Calais, it was as a maundering young wretch
+in a clammy perspiration and dripping saline particles, who was conscious
+of no extremities but the one great extremity, sea-sickness&mdash;who
+was a mere bilious torso, with a mislaid headache somewhere in its stomach&mdash;who
+had been put into a horrible swing in Dover Harbour, and had tumbled
+giddily out of it on the French coast, or the Isle of Man, or anywhere.&nbsp;
+Times have changed, and now I enter Calais self-reliant and rational.&nbsp;
+I know where it is beforehand, I keep a look out for it, I recognise
+its landmarks when I see any of them, I am acquainted with its ways,
+and I know&mdash;and I can bear&mdash;its worst behaviour.</p>
+<p>Malignant Calais!&nbsp; Low-lying alligator, evading the eyesight
+and discouraging hope!&nbsp; Dodging flat streak, now on this bow, now
+on that, now anywhere, now everywhere, now nowhere!&nbsp; In vain Cape
+Grinez, coming frankly forth into the sea, exhorts the failing to be
+stout of heart and stomach: sneaking Calais, prone behind its bar, invites
+emetically to despair.&nbsp; Even when it can no longer quite conceal
+itself in its muddy dock, it has an evil way of falling off, has Calais,
+which is more hopeless than its invisibility.&nbsp; The pier is all
+but on the bowsprit, and you think you are there&mdash;roll, roar, wash!&mdash;Calais
+has retired miles inland, and Dover has burst out to look for it.&nbsp;
+It has a last dip and slide in its character, has Calais, to be especially
+commanded to the infernal gods.&nbsp; Thrice accursed be that garrison-town,
+when it dives under the boat&rsquo;s keel, and comes up a league or
+two to the right, with the packet shivering and spluttering and staring
+about for it!</p>
+<p>Not but what I have my animosities towards Dover.&nbsp; I particularly
+detest Dover for the self-complacency with which it goes to bed.&nbsp;
+It always goes to bed (when I am going to Calais) with a more brilliant
+display of lamp and candle than any other town.&nbsp; Mr. and Mrs. Birmingham,
+host and hostess of the Lord Warden Hotel, are my much esteemed friends,
+but they are too conceited about the comforts of that establishment
+when the Night Mail is starting.&nbsp; I know it is a good house to
+stay at, and I don&rsquo;t want the fact insisted upon in all its warm
+bright windows at such an hour.&nbsp; I know the Warden is a stationary
+edifice that never rolls or pitches, and I object to its big outline
+seeming to insist upon that circumstance, and, as it were, to come over
+me with it, when I am reeling on the deck of the boat.&nbsp; Beshrew
+the Warden likewise, for obstructing that corner, and making the wind
+so angry as it rushes round.&nbsp; Shall I not know that it blows quite
+soon enough, without the officious Warden&rsquo;s interference?</p>
+<p>As I wait here on board the night packet, for the South-Eastern Train
+to come down with the Mail, Dover appears to me to be illuminated for
+some intensely aggravating festivity in my personal dishonour.&nbsp;
+All its noises smack of taunting praises of the land, and dispraises
+of the gloomy sea, and of me for going on it.&nbsp; The drums upon the
+heights have gone to bed, or I know they would rattle taunts against
+me for having my unsteady footing on this slippery deck.&nbsp; The many
+gas eyes of the Marine Parade twinkle in an offensive manner, as if
+with derision.&nbsp; The distant dogs of Dover bark at me in my misshapen
+wrappers, as if I were Richard the Third.</p>
+<p>A screech, a bell, and two red eyes come gliding down the Admiralty
+Pier with a smoothness of motion rendered more smooth by the heaving
+of the boat.&nbsp; The sea makes noises against the pier, as if several
+hippopotami were lapping at it, and were prevented by circumstances
+over which they had no control from drinking peaceably.&nbsp; We, the
+boat, become violently agitated&mdash;rumble, hum, scream, roar, and
+establish an immense family washing-day at each paddle-box.&nbsp; Bright
+patches break out in the train as the doors of the post-office vans
+are opened, and instantly stooping figures with sacks upon their backs
+begin to be beheld among the piles, descending as it would seem in ghostly
+procession to Davy Jones&rsquo;s Locker.&nbsp; The passengers come on
+board; a few shadowy Frenchmen, with hatboxes shaped like the stoppers
+of gigantic case-bottles; a few shadowy Germans in immense fur coats
+and boots; a few shadowy Englishmen prepared for the worst and pretending
+not to expect it.&nbsp; I cannot disguise from my uncommercial mind
+the miserable fact that we are a body of outcasts; that the attendants
+on us are as scant in number as may serve to get rid of us with the
+least possible delay; that there are no night-loungers interested in
+us; that the unwilling lamps shiver and shudder at us; that the sole
+object is to commit us to the deep and abandon us.&nbsp; Lo, the two
+red eyes glaring in increasing distance, and then the very train itself
+has gone to bed before we are off!</p>
+<p>What is the moral support derived by some sea-going amateurs from
+an umbrella?&nbsp; Why do certain voyagers across the Channel always
+put up that article, and hold it up with a grim and fierce tenacity?&nbsp;
+A fellow-creature near me&mdash;whom I only know to <i>be</i> a fellow-creature,
+because of his umbrella: without which he might be a dark bit of cliff,
+pier, or bulkbead&mdash;clutches that instrument with a desperate grasp,
+that will not relax until he lands at Calais.&nbsp; Is there any analogy,
+in certain constitutions, between keeping an umbrella up, and keeping
+the spirits up?&nbsp; A hawser thrown on board with a flop replies &lsquo;Stand
+by!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Stand by, below!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Half a
+turn a head!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Half a turn a head!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Half
+speed!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Half speed!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Port!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Port!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Steady!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Steady!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Go on!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Go on!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A stout wooden wedge driven in at my right temple and out at my left,
+a floating deposit of lukewarm oil in my throat, and a compression of
+the bridge of my nose in a blunt pair of pincers,&mdash;these are the
+personal sensations by which I know we are off, and by which I shall
+continue to know it until I am on the soil of France.&nbsp; My symptoms
+have scarcely established themselves comfortably, when two or three
+skating shadows that have been trying to walk or stand, get flung together,
+and other two or three shadows in tarpaulin slide with them into corners
+and cover them up.&nbsp; Then the South Foreland lights begin to hiccup
+at us in a way that bodes no good.</p>
+<p>It is at about this period that my detestation of Calais knows no
+bounds.&nbsp; Inwardly I resolve afresh that I never will forgive that
+hated town.&nbsp; I have done so before, many times, but that is past.&nbsp;
+Let me register a vow.&nbsp; Implacable animosity to Calais everm- that
+was an awkward sea, and the funnel seems of my opinion, for it gives
+a complaining roar.</p>
+<p>The wind blows stiffly from the Nor-East, the sea runs high, we ship
+a deal of water, the night is dark and cold, and the shapeless passengers
+lie about in melancholy bundles, as if they were sorted out for the
+laundress; but for my own uncommercial part I cannot pretend that I
+am much inconvenienced by any of these things.&nbsp; A general howling,
+whistling, flopping, gurgling, and scooping, I am aware of, and a general
+knocking about of Nature; but the impressions I receive are very vague.&nbsp;
+In a sweet faint temper, something like the smell of damaged oranges,
+I think I should feel languidly benevolent if I had time.&nbsp; I have
+not time, because I am under a curious compulsion to occupy myself with
+the Irish melodies.&nbsp; &lsquo;Rich and rare were the gems she wore,&rsquo;
+is the particular melody to which I find myself devoted.&nbsp; I sing
+it to myself in the most charming manner and with the greatest expression.&nbsp;
+Now and then, I raise my head (I am sitting on the hardest of wet seats,
+in the most uncomfortable of wet attitudes, but I don&rsquo;t mind it,)
+and notice that I am a whirling shuttlecock between a fiery battledore
+of a lighthouse on the French coast and a fiery battledore of a lighthouse
+on the English coast; but I don&rsquo;t notice it particularly, except
+to feel envenomed in my hatred of Calais.&nbsp; Then I go on again,
+&lsquo;Rich and rare were the ge-ems she-e-e-e wore, And a bright gold
+ring on her wa-and she bo-ore, But O her beauty was fa-a-a-a-r beyond&rsquo;&mdash;I
+am particularly proud of my execution here, when I become aware of another
+awkward shock from the sea, and another protest from the funnel, and
+a fellow-creature at the paddle-box more audibly indisposed than I think
+he need be&mdash;&lsquo;Her sparkling gems, or snow-white wand, But
+O her beauty was fa-a-a-a-a-r beyond&rsquo;&mdash;another awkward one
+here, and the fellow-creature with the umbrella down and picked up&mdash;&lsquo;Her
+spa-a-rkling ge-ems, or her Port! port! steady! steady! snow-white fellow-creature
+at the paddle-box very selfishly audible, bump, roar, wash, white wand.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>As my execution of the Irish melodies partakes of my imperfect perceptions
+of what is going on around me, so what is going on around me becomes
+something else than what it is.&nbsp; The stokers open the furnace doors
+below, to feed the fires, and I am again on the box of the old Exeter
+Telegraph fast coach, and that is the light of the for ever extinguished
+coach-lamps, and the gleam on the hatches and paddle-boxes is <i>their</i>
+gleam on cottages and haystacks, and the monotonous noise of the engines
+is the steady jingle of the splendid team.&nbsp; Anon, the intermittent
+funnel roar of protest at every violent roll, becomes the regular blast
+of a high pressure engine, and I recognise the exceedingly explosive
+steamer in which I ascended the Mississippi when the American civil
+war was not, and when only its causes were.&nbsp; A fragment of mast
+on which the light of a lantern falls, an end of rope, and a jerking
+block or so, become suggestive of Franconi&rsquo;s Circus at Paris where
+I shall be this very night mayhap (for it must be morning now), and
+they dance to the self-same time and tune as the trained steed, Black
+Raven.&nbsp; What may be the speciality of these waves as they come
+rushing on, I cannot desert the pressing demands made upon me by the
+gems she wore, to inquire, but they are charged with something about
+Robinson Crusoe, and I think it was in Yarmouth Roads that he first
+went a seafaring and was near foundering (what a terrific sound that
+word had for me when I was a boy!) in his first gale of wind.&nbsp;
+Still, through all this, I must ask her (who <i>was</i> she I wonder!)
+for the fiftieth time, and without ever stopping, Does she not fear
+to stray, So lone and lovely through this bleak way, And are Erin&rsquo;s
+sons so good or so cold, As not to be tempted by more fellow-creatures
+at the paddle-box or gold?&nbsp; Sir Knight I feel not the least alarm,
+No son of Erin will offer me harm, For though they love fellow-creature
+with umbrella down again and golden store, Sir Knight they what a tremendous
+one love honour and virtue more: For though they love Stewards with
+a bull&rsquo;s eye bright, they&rsquo;ll trouble you for your ticket,
+sir-rough passage to-night!</p>
+<p>I freely admit it to be a miserable piece of human weakness and inconsistency,
+but I no sooner become conscious of those last words from the steward
+than I begin to soften towards Calais.&nbsp; Whereas I have been vindictively
+wishing that those Calais burghers who came out of their town by a short
+cut into the History of England, with those fatal ropes round their
+necks by which they have since been towed into so many cartoons, had
+all been hanged on the spot, I now begin to regard them as highly respectable
+and virtuous tradesmen.&nbsp; Looking about me, I see the light of Cape
+Grinez well astern of the boat on the davits to leeward, and the light
+of Calais Harbour undeniably at its old tricks, but still ahead and
+shining.&nbsp; Sentiments of forgiveness of Calais, not to say of attachment
+to Calais, begin to expand my bosom.&nbsp; I have weak notions that
+I will stay there a day or two on my way back.&nbsp; A faded and recumbent
+stranger pausing in a profound reverie over the rim of a basin, asks
+me what kind of place Calais is?&nbsp; I tell him (Heaven forgive me!)
+a very agreeable place indeed&mdash;rather hilly than otherwise.</p>
+<p>So strangely goes the time, and on the whole so quickly&mdash;though
+still I seem to have been on board a week&mdash;that I am bumped, rolled,
+gurgled, washed and pitched into Calais Harbour before her maiden smile
+has finally lighted her through the Green Isle, When blest for ever
+is she who relied, On entering Calais at the top of the tide.&nbsp;
+For we have not to land to-night down among those slimy timbers&mdash;covered
+with green hair as if it were the mermaids&rsquo; favourite combing-place&mdash;where
+one crawls to the surface of the jetty, like a stranded shrimp, but
+we go steaming up the harbour to the Railway Station Quay.&nbsp; And
+as we go, the sea washes in and out among piles and planks, with dead
+heavy beats and in quite a furious manner (whereof we are proud), and
+the lamps shake in the wind, and the bells of Calais striking One seem
+to send their vibrations struggling against troubled air, as we have
+come struggling against troubled water.&nbsp; And now, in the sudden
+relief and wiping of faces, everybody on board seems to have had a prodigious
+double-tooth out, and to be this very instant free of the Dentist&rsquo;s
+hands.&nbsp; And now we all know for the first time how wet and cold
+we are, and how salt we are; and now I love Calais with my heart of
+hearts!</p>
+<p>&lsquo;H&ocirc;tel Dessin!&rsquo; (but in this one case it is not
+a vocal cry; it is but a bright lustre in the eyes of the cheery representative
+of that best of inns).&nbsp; &lsquo;H&ocirc;tel Meurice!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;H&ocirc;tel de France!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;H&ocirc;tel de Calais!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;The Royal Hotel, Sir, Angaishe ouse!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;You
+going to Parry, Sir?&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Your baggage, registair froo,
+Sir?&rsquo;&nbsp; Bless ye, my Touters, bless ye, my commissionaires,
+bless ye, my hungry-eyed mysteries in caps of a military form, who are
+always here, day or night, fair weather or foul, seeking inscrutable
+jobs which I never see you get!&nbsp; Bless ye, my Custom House officers
+in green and grey; permit me to grasp the welcome hands that descend
+into my travelling-bag, one on each side, and meet at the bottom to
+give my change of linen a peculiar shake up, as if it were a measure
+of chaff or grain!&nbsp; I have nothing to declare, Monsieur le Douanier,
+except that when I cease to breathe, Calais will be found written on
+my heart.&nbsp; No article liable to local duty have I with me, Monsieur
+l&rsquo;Officier de l&rsquo;Octroi, unless the overflowing of a breast
+devoted to your charming town should be in that wise chargeable.&nbsp;
+Ah! see at the gangway by the twinkling lantern, my dearest brother
+and friend, he once of the Passport Office, he who collects the names!&nbsp;
+May he be for ever changeless in his buttoned black surtout, with his
+note-book in his hand, and his tall black hat, surmounting his round,
+smiling, patient face!&nbsp; Let us embrace, my dearest brother.&nbsp;
+I am yours &agrave; tout jamais&mdash;for the whole of ever.</p>
+<p>Calais up and doing at the railway station, and Calais down and dreaming
+in its bed; Calais with something of &lsquo;an ancient and fish-like
+smell&rsquo; about it, and Calais blown and sea-washed pure; Calais
+represented at the Buffet by savoury roast fowls, hot coffee, cognac,
+and Bordeaux; and Calais represented everywhere by flitting persons
+with a monomania for changing money&mdash;though I never shall be able
+to understand in my present state of existence how they live by it,
+but I suppose I should, if I understood the currency question&mdash;Calais
+<i>en gros</i>, and Calais <i>en d&eacute;tail</i>, forgive one who
+has deeply wronged you.&mdash;I was not fully aware of it on the other
+side, but I meant Dover.</p>
+<p>Ding, ding!&nbsp; To the carriages, gentlemen the travellers.&nbsp;
+Ascend then, gentlemen the travellers, for Hazebroucke, Lille, Douai,
+Bruxelles, Arras, Amiens, and Paris!&nbsp; I, humble representative
+of the uncommercial interest, ascend with the rest.&nbsp; The train
+is light to-night, and I share my compartment with but two fellow-travellers;
+one, a compatriot in an obsolete cravat, who thinks it a quite unaccountable
+thing that they don&rsquo;t keep &lsquo;London time&rsquo; on a French
+railway, and who is made angry by my modestly suggesting the possibility
+of Paris time being more in their way; the other, a young priest, with
+a very small bird in a very small cage, who feeds the small bird with
+a quill, and then puts him up in the network above his head, where he
+advances twittering, to his front wires, and seems to address me in
+an electioneering manner.&nbsp; The compatriot (who crossed in the boat,
+and whom I judge to be some person of distinction, as he was shut up,
+like a stately species of rabbit, in a private hutch on deck) and the
+young priest (who joined us at Calais) are soon asleep, and then the
+bird and I have it all to ourselves.</p>
+<p>A stormy night still; a night that sweeps the wires of the electric
+telegraph with a wild and fitful hand; a night so very stormy, with
+the added storm of the train-progress through it, that when the Guard
+comes clambering round to mark the tickets while we are at full speed
+(a really horrible performance in an express train, though he holds
+on to the open window by his elbows in the most deliberate manner),
+he stands in such a whirlwind that I grip him fast by the collar, and
+feel it next to manslaughter to let him go.&nbsp; Still, when he is
+gone, the small, small bird remains at his front wires feebly twittering
+to me&mdash;twittering and twittering, until, leaning back in my place
+and looking at him in drowsy fascination, I find that he seems to jog
+my memory as we rush along.</p>
+<p>Uncommercial travels (thus the small, small bird) have lain in their
+idle thriftless way through all this range of swamp and dyke, as through
+many other odd places; and about here, as you very well know, are the
+queer old stone farm-houses, approached by drawbridges, and the windmills
+that you get at by boats.&nbsp; Here, are the lands where the women
+hoe and dig, paddling canoe-wise from field to field, and here are the
+cabarets and other peasant-houses where the stone dove-cotes in the
+littered yards are as strong as warders&rsquo; towers in old castles.&nbsp;
+Here, are the long monotonous miles of canal, with the great Dutch-built
+barges garishly painted, and the towing girls, sometimes harnessed by
+the forehead, sometimes by the girdle and the shoulders, not a pleasant
+sight to see.&nbsp; Scattered through this country are mighty works
+of VAUBAN, whom you know about, and regiments of such corporals as you
+heard of once upon a time, and many a blue-eyed Bebelle.&nbsp; Through
+these flat districts, in the shining summer days, walk those long, grotesque
+files of young novices in enormous shovel-hats, whom you remember blackening
+the ground checkered by the avenues of leafy trees.&nbsp; And now that
+Hazebroucke slumbers certain kilometres ahead, recall the summer evening
+when your dusty feet strolling up from the station tended hap-hazard
+to a Fair there, where the oldest inhabitants were circling round and
+round a barrel-organ on hobby-horses, with the greatest gravity, and
+where the principal show in the Fair was a Religious Richardson&rsquo;s&mdash;literally,
+on its own announcement in great letters, THEATRE RELIGIEUX.&nbsp; In
+which improving Temple, the dramatic representation was of &lsquo;all
+the interesting events in the life of our Lord, from the Manger to the
+Tomb;&rsquo; the principal female character, without any reservation
+or exception, being at the moment of your arrival, engaged in trimming
+the external Moderators (as it was growing dusk), while the next principal
+female character took the money, and the Young Saint John disported
+himself upside down on the platform.</p>
+<p>Looking up at this point to confirm the small, small bird in every
+particular he has mentioned, I find he has ceased to twitter, and has
+put his head under his wing.&nbsp; Therefore, in my different way I
+follow the good example.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX&mdash;SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF MORTALITY</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>I had parted from the small bird at somewhere about four o&rsquo;clock
+in the morning, when he had got out at Arras, and had been received
+by two shovel-hats in waiting at the station, who presented an appropriately
+ornithological and crow-like appearance.&nbsp; My compatriot and I had
+gone on to Paris; my compatriot enlightening me occasionally with a
+long list of the enormous grievances of French railway travelling: every
+one of which, as I am a sinner, was perfectly new to me, though I have
+as much experience of French railways as most uncommercials.&nbsp; I
+had left him at the terminus (through his conviction, against all explanation
+and remonstrance, that his baggage-ticket was his passenger-ticket),
+insisting in a very high temper to the functionary on duty, that in
+his own personal identity he was four packages weighing so many kilogrammes&mdash;as
+if he had been Cassim Baba!&nbsp; I had bathed and breakfasted, and
+was strolling on the bright quays.&nbsp; The subject of my meditations
+was the question whether it is positively in the essence and nature
+of things, as a certain school of Britons would seem to think it, that
+a Capital must be ensnared and enslaved before it can be made beautiful:
+when I lifted up my eyes and found that my feet, straying like my mind,
+had brought me to Notre-Dame.</p>
+<p>That is to say, Notre-Dame was before me, but there was a large open
+space between us.&nbsp; A very little while gone, I had left that space
+covered with buildings densely crowded; and now it was cleared for some
+new wonder in the way of public Street, Place, Garden, Fountain, or
+all four.&nbsp; Only the obscene little Morgue, slinking on the brink
+of the river and soon to come down, was left there, looking mortally
+ashamed of itself, and supremely wicked.&nbsp; I had but glanced at
+this old acquaintance, when I beheld an airy procession coming round
+in front of Notre-Dame, past the great hospital.&nbsp; It had something
+of a Masaniello look, with fluttering striped curtains in the midst
+of it, and it came dancing round the cathedral in the liveliest manner.</p>
+<p>I was speculating on a marriage in Blouse-life, or a Christening,
+or some other domestic festivity which I would see out, when I found,
+from the talk of a quick rush of Blouses past me, that it was a Body
+coming to the Morgue.&nbsp; Having never before chanced upon this initiation,
+I constituted myself a Blouse likewise, and ran into the Morgue with
+the rest.&nbsp; It was a very muddy day, and we took in a quantity of
+mire with us, and the procession coming in upon our heels brought a
+quantity more.&nbsp; The procession was in the highest spirits, and
+consisted of idlers who had come with the curtained litter from its
+starting-place, and of all the reinforcements it had picked up by the
+way.&nbsp; It set the litter down in the midst of the Morgue, and then
+two Custodians proclaimed aloud that we were all &lsquo;invited&rsquo;
+to go out.&nbsp; This invitation was rendered the more pressing, if
+not the more flattering, by our being shoved out, and the folding-gates
+being barred upon us.</p>
+<p>Those who have never seen the Morgue, may see it perfectly, by presenting
+to themselves on indifferently paved coach-house accessible from the
+street by a pair of folding-gates; on the left of the coach-house, occupying
+its width, any large London tailor&rsquo;s or linendraper&rsquo;s plate-glass
+window reaching to the ground; within the window, on two rows of inclined
+plane, what the coach-house has to show; hanging above, like irregular
+stalactites from the roof of a cave, a quantity of clothes&mdash;the
+clothes of the dead and buried shows of the coach-house.</p>
+<p>We had been excited in the highest degree by seeing the Custodians
+pull off their coats and tuck up their shirt-sleeves, as the procession
+came along.&nbsp; It looked so interestingly like business.&nbsp; Shut
+out in the muddy street, we now became quite ravenous to know all about
+it.&nbsp; Was it river, pistol, knife, love, gambling, robbery, hatred,
+how many stabs, how many bullets, fresh or decomposed, suicide or murder?&nbsp;
+All wedged together, and all staring at one another with our heads thrust
+forward, we propounded these inquiries and a hundred more such.&nbsp;
+Imperceptibly, it came to be known that Monsieur the tall and sallow
+mason yonder, was acquainted with the facts.&nbsp; Would Monsieur the
+tall and sallow mason, surged at by a new wave of us, have the goodness
+to impart?&nbsp; It was but a poor old man, passing along the street
+under one of the new buildings, on whom a stone had fallen, and who
+had tumbled dead.&nbsp; His age?&nbsp; Another wave surged up against
+the tall and sallow mason, and our wave swept on and broke, and he was
+any age from sixty-five to ninety.</p>
+<p>An old man was not much: moreover, we could have wished he had been
+killed by human agency&mdash;his own, or somebody else&rsquo;s: the
+latter, preferable&mdash;but our comfort was, that he had nothing about
+him to lead to his identification, and that his people must seek him
+here.&nbsp; Perhaps they were waiting dinner for him even now?&nbsp;
+We liked that.&nbsp; Such of us as had pocket-handkerchiefs took a slow,
+intense, protracted wipe at our noses, and then crammed our handkerchiefs
+into the breast of our blouses.&nbsp; Others of us who had no handkerchiefs
+administered a similar relief to our overwrought minds, by means of
+prolonged smears or wipes of our mouths on our sleeves.&nbsp; One man
+with a gloomy malformation of brow&mdash;a homicidal worker in white-lead,
+to judge from his blue tone of colour, and a certain flavour of paralysis
+pervading him&mdash;got his coat-collar between his teeth, and bit at
+it with an appetite.&nbsp; Several decent women arrived upon the outskirts
+of the crowd, and prepared to launch themselves into the dismal coach-house
+when opportunity should come; among them, a pretty young mother, pretending
+to bite the forefinger of her baby-boy, kept it between her rosy lips
+that it might be handy for guiding to point at the show.&nbsp; Meantime,
+all faces were turned towards the building, and we men waited with a
+fixed and stern resolution:- for the most part with folded arms.&nbsp;
+Surely, it was the only public French sight these uncommercial eyes
+had seen, at which the expectant people did not form <i>en queue</i>.&nbsp;
+But there was no such order of arrangement here; nothing but a general
+determination to make a rush for it, and a disposition to object to
+some boys who had mounted on the two stone posts by the hinges of the
+gates, with the design of swooping in when the hinges should turn.</p>
+<p>Now, they turned, and we rushed!&nbsp; Great pressure, and a scream
+or two from the front.&nbsp; Then a laugh or two, some expressions of
+disappointment, and a slackening of the pressure and subsidence of the
+struggle.&mdash;Old man not there.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But what would you have?&rsquo; the Custodian reasonably argues,
+as he looks out at his little door.&nbsp; &lsquo;Patience, patience!&nbsp;
+We make his toilette, gentlemen.&nbsp; He will be exposed presently.&nbsp;
+It is necessary to proceed according to rule.&nbsp; His toilette is
+not made all at a blow.&nbsp; He will be exposed in good time, gentlemen,
+in good time.&rsquo;&nbsp; And so retires, smoking, with a wave of his
+sleeveless arm towards the window, importing, &lsquo;Entertain yourselves
+in the meanwhile with the other curiosities.&nbsp; Fortunately the Museum
+is not empty to-day.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Who would have thought of public fickleness even at the Morgue?&nbsp;
+But there it was, on that occasion.&nbsp; Three lately popular articles
+that had been attracting greatly when the litter was first descried
+coming dancing round the corner by the great cathedral, were so completely
+deposed now, that nobody save two little girls (one showing them to
+a doll) would look at them.&nbsp; Yet the chief of the three, the article
+in the front row, had received jagged injury of the left temple; and
+the other two in the back row, the drowned two lying side by side with
+their heads very slightly turned towards each other, seemed to be comparing
+notes about it.&nbsp; Indeed, those two of the back row were so furtive
+of appearance, and so (in their puffed way) assassinatingly knowing
+as to the one of the front, that it was hard to think the three had
+never come together in their lives, and were only chance companions
+after death.&nbsp; Whether or no this was the general, as it was the
+uncommercial, fancy, it is not to be disputed that the group had drawn
+exceedingly within ten minutes.&nbsp; Yet now, the inconstant public
+turned its back upon them, and even leaned its elbows carelessly against
+the bar outside the window and shook off the mud from its shoes, and
+also lent and borrowed fire for pipes.</p>
+<p>Custodian re-enters from his door.&nbsp; &lsquo;Again once, gentlemen,
+you are invited&mdash;&rsquo;&nbsp; No further invitation necessary.&nbsp;
+Ready dash into the street.&nbsp; Toilette finished.&nbsp; Old man coming
+out.</p>
+<p>This time, the interest was grown too hot to admit of toleration
+of the boys on the stone posts.&nbsp; The homicidal white-lead worker
+made a pounce upon one boy who was hoisting himself up, and brought
+him to earth amidst general commendation.&nbsp; Closely stowed as we
+were, we yet formed into groups&mdash;groups of conversation, without
+separation from the mass&mdash;to discuss the old man.&nbsp; Rivals
+of the tall and sallow mason sprang into being, and here again was popular
+inconstancy.&nbsp; These rivals attracted audiences, and were greedily
+listened to; and whereas they had derived their information solely from
+the tall and sallow one, officious members of the crowd now sought to
+enlighten <i>him</i> on their authority.&nbsp; Changed by this social
+experience into an iron-visaged and inveterate misanthrope, the mason
+glared at mankind, and evidently cherished in his breast the wish that
+the whole of the present company could change places with the deceased
+old man.&nbsp; And now listeners became inattentive, and people made
+a start forward at a slight sound, and an unholy fire kindled in the
+public eye, and those next the gates beat at them impatiently, as if
+they were of the cannibal species and hungry.</p>
+<p>Again the hinges creaked, and we rushed.&nbsp; Disorderly pressure
+for some time ensued before the uncommercial unit got figured into the
+front row of the sum.&nbsp; It was strange to see so much heat and uproar
+seething about one poor spare, white-haired old man, quiet for evermore.&nbsp;
+He was calm of feature and undisfigured, as he lay on his back&mdash;having
+been struck upon the hinder part of his head, and thrown forward&mdash;and
+something like a tear or two had started from the closed eyes, and lay
+wet upon the face.&nbsp; The uncommercial interest, sated at a glance,
+directed itself upon the striving crowd on either side and behind: wondering
+whether one might have guessed, from the expression of those faces merely,
+what kind of sight they were looking at.&nbsp; The differences of expression
+were not many.&nbsp; There was a little pity, but not much, and that
+mostly with a selfish touch in it&mdash;as who would say, &lsquo;Shall
+I, poor I, look like that, when the time comes!&rsquo;&nbsp; There was
+more of a secretly brooding contemplation and curiosity, as &lsquo;That
+man I don&rsquo;t like, and have the grudge against; would such be his
+appearance, if some one&mdash;not to mention names&mdash;by any chance
+gave him an knock?&rsquo;&nbsp; There was a wolfish stare at the object,
+in which homicidal white-lead worker shone conspicuous.&nbsp; And there
+was a much more general, purposeless, vacant staring at it&mdash;like
+looking at waxwork, without a catalogue, and not knowing what to make
+of it.&nbsp; But all these expressions concurred in possessing the one
+underlying expression of <i>looking at something that could not</i>
+<i>return a look</i>.&nbsp; The uncommercial notice had established
+this as very remarkable, when a new pressure all at once coming up from
+the street pinioned him ignominiously, and hurried him into the arms
+(now sleeved again) of the Custodian smoking at his door, and answering
+questions, between puffs, with a certain placid meritorious air of not
+being proud, though high in office.&nbsp; And mentioning pride, it may
+be observed, by the way, that one could not well help investing the
+original sole occupant of the front row with an air depreciatory of
+the legitimate attraction of the poor old man: while the two in the
+second row seemed to exult at this superseded popularity.</p>
+<p>Pacing presently round the garden of the Tower of St. Jacques de
+la Boucherie, and presently again in front of the H&ocirc;tel de Ville,
+I called to mind a certain desolate open-air Morgue that I happened
+to light upon in London, one day in the hard winter of 1861, and which
+seemed as strange to me, at the time of seeing it, as if I had found
+it in China.&nbsp; Towards that hour of a winter&rsquo;s afternoon when
+the lamp-lighters are beginning to light the lamps in the streets a
+little before they are wanted, because the darkness thickens fast and
+soon, I was walking in from the country on the northern side of the
+Regent&rsquo;s Park&mdash;hard frozen and deserted&mdash;when I saw
+an empty Hansom cab drive up to the lodge at Gloucester-gate, and the
+driver with great agitation call to the man there: who quickly reached
+a long pole from a tree, and, deftly collared by the driver, jumped
+to the step of his little seat, and so the Hansom rattled out at the
+gate, galloping over the iron-bound road.&nbsp; I followed running,
+though not so fast but that when I came to the right-hand Canal Bridge,
+near the cross-path to Chalk Farm, the Hansom was stationary, the horse
+was smoking hot, the long pole was idle on the ground, and the driver
+and the park-keeper were looking over the bridge parapet.&nbsp; Looking
+over too, I saw, lying on the towing-path with her face turned up towards
+us, a woman, dead a day or two, and under thirty, as I guessed, poorly
+dressed in black.&nbsp; The feet were lightly crossed at the ankles,
+and the dark hair, all pushed back from the face, as though that had
+been the last action of her desperate hands, streamed over the ground.&nbsp;
+Dabbled all about her, was the water and the broken ice that had dropped
+from her dress, and had splashed as she was got out.&nbsp; The policeman
+who had just got her out, and the passing costermonger who had helped
+him, were standing near the body; the latter with that stare at it which
+I have likened to being at a waxwork exhibition without a catalogue;
+the former, looking over his stock, with professional stiffness and
+coolness, in the direction in which the bearers he had sent for were
+expected.&nbsp; So dreadfully forlorn, so dreadfully sad, so dreadfully
+mysterious, this spectacle of our dear sister here departed!&nbsp; A
+barge came up, breaking the floating ice and the silence, and a woman
+steered it.&nbsp; The man with the horse that towed it, cared so little
+for the body, that the stumbling hoofs had been among the hair, and
+the tow-rope had caught and turned the head, before our cry of horror
+took him to the bridle.&nbsp; At which sound the steering woman looked
+up at us on the bridge, with contempt unutterable, and then looking
+down at the body with a similar expression&mdash;as if it were made
+in another likeness from herself, had been informed with other passions,
+had been lost by other chances, had had another nature dragged down
+to perdition&mdash;steered a spurning streak of mud at it, and passed
+on.</p>
+<p>A better experience, but also of the Morgue kind, in which chance
+happily made me useful in a slight degree, arose to my remembrance as
+I took my way by the Boulevard de S&eacute;bastopol to the brighter
+scenes of Paris.</p>
+<p>The thing happened, say five-and-twenty years ago.&nbsp; I was a
+modest young uncommercial then, and timid and inexperienced.&nbsp; Many
+suns and winds have browned me in the line, but those were my pale days.&nbsp;
+Having newly taken the lease of a house in a certain distinguished metropolitan
+parish&mdash;a house which then appeared to me to be a frightfully first-class
+Family Mansion, involving awful responsibilities&mdash;I became the
+prey of a Beadle.&nbsp; I think the Beadle must have seen me going in
+or coming out, and must have observed that I tottered under the weight
+of my grandeur.&nbsp; Or he may have been in hiding under straw when
+I bought my first horse (in the desirable stable-yard attached to the
+first-class Family Mansion), and when the vendor remarked to me, in
+an original manner, on bringing him for approval, taking his cloth off
+and smacking him, &lsquo;There, Sir!<i>&nbsp; There&rsquo;s</i> a Orse!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And when I said gallantly, &lsquo;How much do you want for him?&rsquo;
+and when the vendor said, &lsquo;No more than sixty guineas, from you,&rsquo;
+and when I said smartly, &lsquo;Why not more than sixty from <i>me</i>?&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And when he said crushingly, &lsquo;Because upon my soul and body he&rsquo;d
+be considered cheap at seventy, by one who understood the subject&mdash;but
+you don&rsquo;t.&rsquo;&mdash;I say, the Beadle may have been in hiding
+under straw, when this disgrace befell me, or he may have noted that
+I was too raw and young an Atlas to carry the first-class Family Mansion
+in a knowing manner.&nbsp; Be this as it may, the Beadle did what Melancholy
+did to the youth in Gray&rsquo;s Elegy&mdash;he marked me for his own.&nbsp;
+And the way in which the Beadle did it, was this: he summoned me as
+a Juryman on his Coroner&rsquo;s Inquests.</p>
+<p>In my first feverish alarm I repaired &lsquo;for safety and for succour&rsquo;&mdash;like
+those sagacious Northern shepherds who, having had no previous reason
+whatever to believe in young Norval, very prudently did not originate
+the hazardous idea of believing in him&mdash;to a deep householder.&nbsp;
+This profound man informed me that the Beadle counted on my buying him
+off; on my bribing him not to summon me; and that if I would attend
+an Inquest with a cheerful countenance, and profess alacrity in that
+branch of my country&rsquo;s service, the Beadle would be disheartened,
+and would give up the game.</p>
+<p>I roused my energies, and the next time the wily Beadle summoned
+me, I went.&nbsp; The Beadle was the blankest Beadle I have ever looked
+on when I answered to my name; and his discomfiture gave me courage
+to go through with it.</p>
+<p>We were impanelled to inquire concerning the death of a very little
+mite of a child.&nbsp; It was the old miserable story.&nbsp; Whether
+the mother had committed the minor offence of concealing the birth,
+or whether she had committed the major offence of killing the child,
+was the question on which we were wanted.&nbsp; We must commit her on
+one of the two issues.</p>
+<p>The Inquest came off in the parish workhouse, and I have yet a lively
+impression that I was unanimously received by my brother Jurymen as
+a brother of the utmost conceivable insignificance.&nbsp; Also, that
+before we began, a broker who had lately cheated me fearfully in the
+matter of a pair of card-tables, was for the utmost rigour of the law.&nbsp;
+I remember that we sat in a sort of board-room, on such very large square
+horse-hair chairs that I wondered what race of Patagonians they were
+made for; and further, that an undertaker gave me his card when we were
+in the full moral freshness of having just been sworn, as &lsquo;an
+inhabitant that was newly come into the parish, and was likely to have
+a young family.&rsquo;&nbsp; The case was then stated to us by the Coroner,
+and then we went down-stairs&mdash;led by the plotting Beadle&mdash;to
+view the body.&nbsp; From that day to this, the poor little figure,
+on which that sounding legal appellation was bestowed, has lain in the
+same place and with the same surroundings, to my thinking.&nbsp; In
+a kind of crypt devoted to the warehousing of the parochial coffins,
+and in the midst of a perfect Panorama of coffins of all sizes, it was
+stretched on a box; the mother had put it in her box&mdash;this box&mdash;almost
+as soon as it was born, and it had been presently found there.&nbsp;
+It had been opened, and neatly sewn up, and regarded from that point
+of view, it looked like a stuffed creature.&nbsp; It rested on a clean
+white cloth, with a surgical instrument or so at hand, and regarded
+from that point of view, it looked as if the cloth were &lsquo;laid,&rsquo;
+and the Giant were coming to dinner.&nbsp; There was nothing repellent
+about the poor piece of innocence, and it demanded a mere form of looking
+at.&nbsp; So, we looked at an old pauper who was going about among the
+coffins with a foot rule, as if he were a case of Self-Measurement;
+and we looked at one another; and we said the place was well whitewashed
+anyhow; and then our conversational powers as a British Jury flagged,
+and the foreman said, &lsquo;All right, gentlemen?&nbsp; Back again,
+Mr. Beadle!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The miserable young creature who had given birth to this child within
+a very few days, and who had cleaned the cold wet door-steps immediately
+afterwards, was brought before us when we resumed our horse-hair chairs,
+and was present during the proceedings.&nbsp; She had a horse-hair chair
+herself, being very weak and ill; and I remember how she turned to the
+unsympathetic nurse who attended her, and who might have been the figure-head
+of a pauper-ship, and how she hid her face and sobs and tears upon that
+wooden shoulder.&nbsp; I remember, too, how hard her mistress was upon
+her (she was a servant-of-all-work), and with what a cruel pertinacity
+that piece of Virtue spun her thread of evidence double, by intertwisting
+it with the sternest thread of construction.&nbsp; Smitten hard by the
+terrible low wail from the utterly friendless orphan girl, which never
+ceased during the whole inquiry, I took heart to ask this witness a
+question or two, which hopefully admitted of an answer that might give
+a favourable turn to the case.&nbsp; She made the turn as little favourable
+as it could be, but it did some good, and the Coroner, who was nobly
+patient and humane (he was the late Mr. Wakley), cast a look of strong
+encouragement in my direction.&nbsp; Then, we had the doctor who had
+made the examination, and the usual tests as to whether the child was
+born alive; but he was a timid, muddle-headed doctor, and got confused
+and contradictory, and wouldn&rsquo;t say this, and couldn&rsquo;t answer
+for that, and the immaculate broker was too much for him, and our side
+slid back again.&nbsp; However, I tried again, and the Coroner backed
+me again, for which I ever afterwards felt grateful to him as I do now
+to his memory; and we got another favourable turn, out of some other
+witness, some member of the family with a strong prepossession against
+the sinner; and I think we had the doctor back again; and I know that
+the Coroner summed up for our side, and that I and my British brothers
+turned round to discuss our verdict, and get ourselves into great difficulties
+with our large chairs and the broker.&nbsp; At that stage of the case
+I tried hard again, being convinced that I had cause for it; and at
+last we found for the minor offence of only concealing the birth; and
+the poor desolate creature, who had been taken out during our deliberation,
+being brought in again to be told of the verdict, then dropped upon
+her knees before us, with protestations that we were right&mdash;protestations
+among the most affecting that I have ever heard in my life&mdash;and
+was carried away insensible.</p>
+<p>(In private conversation after this was all over, the Coroner showed
+me his reasons as a trained surgeon, for perceiving it to be impossible
+that the child could, under the most favourable circumstances, have
+drawn many breaths, in the very doubtful case of its having ever breathed
+at all; this, owing to the discovery of some foreign matter in the windpipe,
+quite irreconcilable with many moments of life.)</p>
+<p>When the agonised girl had made those final protestations, I had
+seen her face, and it was in unison with her distracted heartbroken
+voice, and it was very moving.&nbsp; It certainly did not impress me
+by any beauty that it had, and if I ever see it again in another world
+I shall only know it by the help of some new sense or intelligence.&nbsp;
+But it came to me in my sleep that night, and I selfishly dismissed
+it in the most efficient way I could think of.&nbsp; I caused some extra
+care to be taken of her in the prison, and counsel to be retained for
+her defence when she was tried at the Old Bailey; and her sentence was
+lenient, and her history and conduct proved that it was right.&nbsp;
+In doing the little I did for her, I remember to have had the kind help
+of some gentle-hearted functionary to whom I addressed myself&mdash;but
+what functionary I have long forgotten&mdash;who I suppose was officially
+present at the Inquest.</p>
+<p>I regard this as a very notable uncommercial experience, because
+this good came of a Beadle.&nbsp; And to the best of my knowledge, information,
+and belief, it is the only good that ever did come of a Beadle since
+the first Beadle put on his cocked-hat.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XX&mdash;BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>It came into my mind that I would recall in these notes a few of
+the many hostelries I have rested at in the course of my journeys; and,
+indeed, I had taken up my pen for the purpose, when I was baffled by
+an accidental circumstance.&nbsp; It was the having to leave off, to
+wish the owner of a certain bright face that looked in at my door, &lsquo;many
+happy returns of the day.&rsquo;&nbsp; Thereupon a new thought came
+into my mind, driving its predecessor out, and I began to recall&mdash;instead
+of Inns&mdash;the birthdays that I have put up at, on my way to this
+present sheet of paper.</p>
+<p>I can very well remember being taken out to visit some peach-faced
+creature in a blue sash, and shoes to correspond, whose life I supposed
+to consist entirely of birthdays.&nbsp; Upon seed-cake, sweet wine,
+and shining presents, that glorified young person seemed to me to be
+exclusively reared.&nbsp; At so early a stage of my travels did I assist
+at the anniversary of her nativity (and become enamoured of her), that
+I had not yet acquired the recondite knowledge that a birthday is the
+common property of all who are born, but supposed it to be a special
+gift bestowed by the favouring Heavens on that one distinguished infant.&nbsp;
+There was no other company, and we sat in a shady bower&mdash;under
+a table, as my better (or worse) knowledge leads me to believe&mdash;and
+were regaled with saccharine substances and liquids, until it was time
+to part.&nbsp; A bitter powder was administered to me next morning,
+and I was wretched.&nbsp; On the whole, a pretty accurate foreshadowing
+of my more mature experiences in such wise!</p>
+<p>Then came the time when, inseparable from one&rsquo;s own birthday,
+was a certain sense of merit, a consciousness of well-earned distinction.&nbsp;
+When I regarded my birthday as a graceful achievement of my own, a monument
+of my perseverance, independence, and good sense, redounding greatly
+to my honour.&nbsp; This was at about the period when Olympia Squires
+became involved in the anniversary.&nbsp; Olympia was most beautiful
+(of course), and I loved her to that degree, that I used to be obliged
+to get out of my little bed in the night, expressly to exclaim to Solitude,
+&lsquo;O, Olympia Squires!&rsquo;&nbsp; Visions of Olympia, clothed
+entirely in sage-green, from which I infer a defectively educated taste
+on the part of her respected parents, who were necessarily unacquainted
+with the South Kensington Museum, still arise before me.&nbsp; Truth
+is sacred, and the visions are crowned by a shining white beaver bonnet,
+impossibly suggestive of a little feminine postboy.&nbsp; My memory
+presents a birthday when Olympia and I were taken by an unfeeling relative&mdash;some
+cruel uncle, or the like&mdash;to a slow torture called an Orrery.&nbsp;
+The terrible instrument was set up at the local Theatre, and I had expressed
+a profane wish in the morning that it was a Play: for which a serious
+aunt had probed my conscience deep, and my pocket deeper, by reclaiming
+a bestowed half-crown.&nbsp; It was a venerable and a shabby Orrery,
+at least one thousand stars and twenty-five comets behind the age.&nbsp;
+Nevertheless, it was awful.&nbsp; When the low-spirited gentleman with
+a wand said, &lsquo;Ladies and gentlemen&rsquo; (meaning particularly
+Olympia and me), &lsquo;the lights are about to be put out, but there
+is not the slightest cause for alarm,&rsquo; it was very alarming.&nbsp;
+Then the planets and stars began.&nbsp; Sometimes they wouldn&rsquo;t
+come on, sometimes they wouldn&rsquo;t go off, sometimes they had holes
+in them, and mostly they didn&rsquo;t seem to be good likenesses.&nbsp;
+All this time the gentleman with the wand was going on in the dark (tapping
+away at the heavenly bodies between whiles, like a wearisome woodpecker),
+about a sphere revolving on its own axis eight hundred and ninety-seven
+thousand millions of times&mdash;or miles&mdash;in two hundred and sixty-three
+thousand five hundred and twenty-four millions of something elses, until
+I thought if this was a birthday it were better never to have been born.&nbsp;
+Olympia, also, became much depressed, and we both slumbered and woke
+cross, and still the gentleman was going on in the dark&mdash;whether
+up in the stars, or down on the stage, it would have been hard to make
+out, if it had been worth trying&mdash;cyphering away about planes of
+orbits, to such an infamous extent that Olympia, stung to madness, actually
+kicked me.&nbsp; A pretty birthday spectacle, when the lights were turned
+up again, and all the schools in the town (including the National, who
+had come in for nothing, and serve them right, for they were always
+throwing stones) were discovered with exhausted countenances, screwing
+their knuckles into their eyes, or clutching their heads of hair.&nbsp;
+A pretty birthday speech when Dr. Sleek of the City-Free bobbed up his
+powdered head in the stage-box, and said that before this assembly dispersed
+he really must beg to express his entire approval of a lecture as improving,
+as informing, as devoid of anything that could call a blush into the
+cheek of youth, as any it had ever been his lot to hear delivered.&nbsp;
+A pretty birthday altogether, when Astronomy couldn&rsquo;t leave poor
+Small Olympia Squires and me alone, but must put an end to our loves!&nbsp;
+For, we never got over it; the threadbare Orrery outwore our mutual
+tenderness; the man with the wand was too much for the boy with the
+bow.</p>
+<p>When shall I disconnect the combined smells of oranges, brown paper,
+and straw, from those other birthdays at school, when the coming hamper
+casts its shadow before, and when a week of social harmony&mdash;shall
+I add of admiring and affectionate popularity&mdash;led up to that Institution?&nbsp;
+What noble sentiments were expressed to me in the days before the hamper,
+what vows of friendship were sworn to me, what exceedingly old knives
+were given me, what generous avowals of having been in the wrong emanated
+from else obstinate spirits once enrolled among my enemies!&nbsp; The
+birthday of the potted game and guava jelly, is still made special to
+me by the noble conduct of Bully Globson.&nbsp; Letters from home had
+mysteriously inquired whether I should be much surprised and disappointed
+if among the treasures in the coming hamper I discovered potted game,
+and guava jelly from the Western Indies.&nbsp; I had mentioned those
+hints in confidence to a few friends, and had promised to give away,
+as I now see reason to believe, a handsome covey of partridges potted,
+and about a hundredweight of guava jelly.&nbsp; It was now that Globson,
+Bully no more, sought me out in the playground.&nbsp; He was a big fat
+boy, with a big fat head and a big fat fist, and at the beginning of
+that Half had raised such a bump on my forehead that I couldn&rsquo;t
+get my hat of state on, to go to church.&nbsp; He said that after an
+interval of cool reflection (four months) he now felt this blow to have
+been an error of judgment, and that he wished to apologise for the same.&nbsp;
+Not only that, but holding down his big head between his two big hands
+in order that I might reach it conveniently, he requested me, as an
+act of justice which would appease his awakened conscience, to raise
+a retributive bump upon it, in the presence of witnesses.&nbsp; This
+handsome proposal I modestly declined, and he then embraced me, and
+we walked away conversing.&nbsp; We conversed respecting the West India
+Islands, and, in the pursuit of knowledge he asked me with much interest
+whether in the course of my reading I had met with any reliable description
+of the mode of manufacturing guava jelly; or whether I had ever happened
+to taste that conserve, which he had been given to understand was of
+rare excellence.</p>
+<p>Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty; and then with the waning months
+came an ever augmenting sense of the dignity of twenty-one.&nbsp; Heaven
+knows I had nothing to &lsquo;come into,&rsquo; save the bare birthday,
+and yet I esteemed it as a great possession.&nbsp; I now and then paved
+the way to my state of dignity, by beginning a proposition with the
+casual words, &lsquo;say that a man of twenty-one,&rsquo; or by the
+incidental assumption of a fact that could not sanely be disputed, as,
+&lsquo;for when a fellow comes to be a man of twenty-one.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+I gave a party on the occasion.&nbsp; She was there.&nbsp; It is unnecessary
+to name Her, more particularly; She was older than I, and had pervaded
+every chink and crevice of my mind for three or four years.&nbsp; I
+had held volumes of Imaginary Conversations with her mother on the subject
+of our union, and I had written letters more in number than Horace Walpole&rsquo;s,
+to that discreet woman, soliciting her daughter&rsquo;s hand in marriage.&nbsp;
+I had never had the remotest intention of sending any of those letters;
+but to write them, and after a few days tear them up, had been a sublime
+occupation.&nbsp; Sometimes, I had begun &lsquo;Honoured Madam.&nbsp;
+I think that a lady gifted with those powers of observation which I
+know you to possess, and endowed with those womanly sympathies with
+the young and ardent which it were more than heresy to doubt, can scarcely
+have failed to discover that I love your adorable daughter, deeply,
+devotedly.&rsquo;&nbsp; In less buoyant states of mind I had begun,
+&lsquo;Bear with me, Dear Madam, bear with a daring wretch who is about
+to make a surprising confession to you, wholly unanticipated by yourself,
+and which he beseeches you to commit to the flames as soon as you have
+become aware to what a towering height his mad ambition soars.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+At other times&mdash;periods of profound mental depression, when She
+had gone out to balls where I was not&mdash;the draft took the affecting
+form of a paper to be left on my table after my departure to the confines
+of the globe.&nbsp; As thus: &lsquo;For Mrs. Onowenever, these lines
+when the hand that traces them shall be far away.&nbsp; I could not
+bear the daily torture of hopelessly loving the dear one whom I will
+not name.&nbsp; Broiling on the coast of Africa, or congealing on the
+shores of Greenland, I am far far better there than here.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+(In this sentiment my cooler judgment perceives that the family of the
+beloved object would have most completely concurred.)&nbsp; &lsquo;If
+I ever emerge from obscurity, and my name is ever heralded by Fame,
+it will be for her dear sake.&nbsp; If I ever amass Gold, it will be
+to pour it at her feet.&nbsp; Should I on the other hand become the
+prey of Ravens&mdash;&rsquo;&nbsp; I doubt if I ever quite made up my
+mind what was to be done in that affecting case; I tried &lsquo;then
+it is better so;&rsquo; but not feeling convinced that it would be better
+so, I vacillated between leaving all else blank, which looked expressive
+and bleak, or winding up with &lsquo;Farewell!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>This fictitious correspondence of mine is to blame for the foregoing
+digression.&nbsp; I was about to pursue the statement that on my twenty-first
+birthday I gave a party, and She was there.&nbsp; It was a beautiful
+party.&nbsp; There was not a single animate or inanimate object connected
+with it (except the company and myself) that I had ever seen before.&nbsp;
+Everything was hired, and the mercenaries in attendance were profound
+strangers to me.&nbsp; Behind a door, in the crumby part of the night
+when wine-glasses were to be found in unexpected spots, I spoke to Her&mdash;spoke
+out to Her.&nbsp; What passed, I cannot as a man of honour reveal.&nbsp;
+She was all angelical gentleness, but a word was mentioned&mdash;a short
+and dreadful word of three letters, beginning with a B- which, as I
+remarked at the moment, &lsquo;scorched my brain.&rsquo;&nbsp; She went
+away soon afterwards, and when the hollow throng (though to be sure
+it was no fault of theirs) dispersed, I issued forth, with a dissipated
+scorner, and, as I mentioned expressly to him, &lsquo;sought oblivion.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+It was found, with a dreadful headache in it, but it didn&rsquo;t last;
+for, in the shaming light of next day&rsquo;s noon, I raised my heavy
+head in bed, looking back to the birthdays behind me, and tracking the
+circle by which I had got round, after all, to the bitter powder and
+the wretchedness again.</p>
+<p>This reactionary powder (taken so largely by the human race I am
+inclined to regard it as the Universal Medicine once sought for in Laboratories)
+is capable of being made up in another form for birthday use.&nbsp;
+Anybody&rsquo;s long-lost brother will do ill to turn up on a birthday.&nbsp;
+If I had a long-lost brother I should know beforehand that he would
+prove a tremendous fraternal failure if he appointed to rush into my
+arms on my birthday.&nbsp; The first Magic Lantern I ever saw, was secretly
+and elaborately planned to be the great effect of a very juvenile birthday;
+but it wouldn&rsquo;t act, and its images were dim.&nbsp; My experience
+of adult birthday Magic Lanterns may possibly have been unfortunate,
+but has certainly been similar.&nbsp; I have an illustrative birthday
+in my eye: a birthday of my friend Flipfield, whose birthdays had long
+been remarkable as social successes.&nbsp; There had been nothing set
+or formal about them; Flipfield having been accustomed merely to say,
+two or three days before, &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t forget to come and dine,
+old boy, according to custom;&rsquo;&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know what he
+said to the ladies he invited, but I may safely assume it <i>not</i>
+to have been &lsquo;old girl.&rsquo;&nbsp; Those were delightful gatherings,
+and were enjoyed by all participators.&nbsp; In an evil hour, a long-lost
+brother of Flipfield&rsquo;s came to light in foreign parts.&nbsp; Where
+he had been hidden, or what he had been doing, I don&rsquo;t know, for
+Flipfield vaguely informed me that he had turned up &lsquo;on the banks
+of the Ganges&rsquo;&mdash;speaking of him as if he had been washed
+ashore.&nbsp; The Long-lost was coming home, and Flipfield made an unfortunate
+calculation, based on the well-known regularity of the P. and O. Steamers,
+that matters might be so contrived as that the Long-lost should appear
+in the nick of time on his (Flipfield&rsquo;s) birthday.&nbsp; Delicacy
+commanded that I should repress the gloomy anticipations with which
+my soul became fraught when I heard of this plan.&nbsp; The fatal day
+arrived, and we assembled in force.&nbsp; Mrs. Flipfield senior formed
+an interesting feature in the group, with a blue-veined miniature of
+the late Mr. Flipfield round her neck, in an oval, resembling a tart
+from the pastrycook&rsquo;s: his hair powdered, and the bright buttons
+on his coat, evidently very like.&nbsp; She was accompanied by Miss
+Flipfield, the eldest of her numerous family, who held her pocket-handkerchief
+to her bosom in a majestic manner, and spoke to all of us (none of us
+had ever seen her before), in pious and condoning tones, of all the
+quarrels that had taken place in the family, from her infancy&mdash;which
+must have been a long time ago&mdash;down to that hour.&nbsp; The Long-lost
+did not appear.&nbsp; Dinner, half an hour later than usual, was announced,
+and still no Long-lost.&nbsp; We sat down to table.&nbsp; The knife
+and fork of the Long-lost made a vacuum in Nature, and when the champagne
+came round for the first time, Flipfield gave him up for the day, and
+had them removed.&nbsp; It was then that the Long-lost gained the height
+of his popularity with the company; for my own part, I felt convinced
+that I loved him dearly.&nbsp; Flipfield&rsquo;s dinners are perfect,
+and he is the easiest and best of entertainers.&nbsp; Dinner went on
+brilliantly, and the more the Long-lost didn&rsquo;t come, the more
+comfortable we grew, and the more highly we thought of him.&nbsp; Flipfield&rsquo;s
+own man (who has a regard for me) was in the act of struggling with
+an ignorant stipendiary, to wrest from him the wooden leg of a Guinea-fowl
+which he was pressing on my acceptance, and to substitute a slice of
+the breast, when a ringing at the door-bell suspended the strife.&nbsp;
+I looked round me, and perceived the sudden pallor which I knew my own
+visage revealed, reflected in the faces of the company.&nbsp; Flipfield
+hurriedly excused himself, went out, was absent for about a minute or
+two, and then re-entered with the Long-lost.</p>
+<p>I beg to say distinctly that if the stranger had brought Mont Blanc
+with him, or had come attended by a retinue of eternal snows, he could
+not have chilled the circle to the marrow in a more efficient manner.&nbsp;
+Embodied Failure sat enthroned upon the Long-lost&rsquo;s brow, and
+pervaded him to his Long-lost boots.&nbsp; In vain Mrs. Flipfield senior,
+opening her arms, exclaimed, &lsquo;My Tom!&rsquo; and pressed his nose
+against the counterfeit presentment of his other parent.&nbsp; In vain
+Miss Flipfield, in the first transports of this re-union, showed him
+a dint upon her maidenly cheek, and asked him if he remembered when
+he did that with the bellows?&nbsp; We, the bystanders, were overcome,
+but overcome by the palpable, undisguisable, utter, and total break-down
+of the Long-lost.&nbsp; Nothing he could have done would have set him
+right with us but his instant return to the Ganges.&nbsp; In the very
+same moments it became established that the feeling was reciprocal,
+and that the Long-lost detested us.&nbsp; When a friend of the family
+(not myself, upon my honour), wishing to set things going again, asked
+him, while he partook of soup&mdash;asked him with an amiability of
+intention beyond all praise, but with a weakness of execution open to
+defeat&mdash;what kind of river he considered the Ganges, the Long-lost,
+scowling at the friend of the family over his spoon, as one of an abhorrent
+race, replied, &lsquo;Why, a river of water, I suppose,&rsquo; and spooned
+his soup into himself with a malignancy of hand and eye that blighted
+the amiable questioner.&nbsp; Not an opinion could be elicited from
+the Long-lost, in unison with the sentiments of any individual present.&nbsp;
+He contradicted Flipfield dead, before he had eaten his salmon.&nbsp;
+He had no idea&mdash;or affected to have no idea&mdash;that it was his
+brother&rsquo;s birthday, and on the communication of that interesting
+fact to him, merely wanted to make him out four years older than he
+was.&nbsp; He was an antipathetical being, with a peculiar power and
+gift of treading on everybody&rsquo;s tenderest place.&nbsp; They talk
+in America of a man&rsquo;s &lsquo;Platform.&rsquo;&nbsp; I should describe
+the Platform of the Long-lost as a Platform composed of other people&rsquo;s
+corns, on which he had stumped his way, with all his might and main,
+to his present position.&nbsp; It is needless to add that Flipfield&rsquo;s
+great birthday went by the board, and that he was a wreck when I pretended
+at parting to wish him many happy returns of it.</p>
+<p>There is another class of birthdays at which I have so frequently
+assisted, that I may assume such birthdays to be pretty well known to
+the human race.&nbsp; My friend Mayday&rsquo;s birthday is an example.&nbsp;
+The guests have no knowledge of one another except on that one day in
+the year, and are annually terrified for a week by the prospect of meeting
+one another again.&nbsp; There is a fiction among us that we have uncommon
+reasons for being particularly lively and spirited on the occasion,
+whereas deep despondency is no phrase for the expression of our feelings.&nbsp;
+But the wonderful feature of the case is, that we are in tacit accordance
+to avoid the subject&mdash;to keep it as far off as possible, as long
+as possible&mdash;and to talk about anything else, rather than the joyful
+event.&nbsp; I may even go so far as to assert that there is a dumb
+compact among us that we will pretend that it is NOT Mayday&rsquo;s
+birthday.&nbsp; A mysterious and gloomy Being, who is said to have gone
+to school with Mayday, and who is so lank and lean that he seriously
+impugns the Dietary of the establishment at which they were jointly
+educated, always leads us, as I may say, to the block, by laying his
+grisly hand on a decanter and begging us to fill our glasses.&nbsp;
+The devices and pretences that I have seen put in practice to defer
+the fatal moment, and to interpose between this man and his purpose,
+are innumerable.&nbsp; I have known desperate guests, when they saw
+the grisly hand approaching the decanter, wildly to begin, without any
+antecedent whatsoever, &lsquo;That reminds me&mdash;&rsquo; and to plunge
+into long stories.&nbsp; When at last the hand and the decanter come
+together, a shudder, a palpable perceptible shudder, goes round the
+table.&nbsp; We receive the reminder that it is Mayday&rsquo;s birthday,
+as if it were the anniversary of some profound disgrace he had undergone,
+and we sought to comfort him.&nbsp; And when we have drunk Mayday&rsquo;s
+health, and wished him many happy returns, we are seized for some moments
+with a ghastly blitheness, an unnatural levity, as if we were in the
+first flushed reaction of having undergone a surgical operation.</p>
+<p>Birthdays of this species have a public as well as a private phase.&nbsp;
+My &lsquo;boyhood&rsquo;s home,&rsquo; Dullborough, presents a case
+in point.&nbsp; An Immortal Somebody was wanted in Dullborough, to dimple
+for a day the stagnant face of the waters; he was rather wanted by Dullborough
+generally, and much wanted by the principal hotel-keeper.&nbsp; The
+County history was looked up for a locally Immortal Somebody, but the
+registered Dullborough worthies were all Nobodies.&nbsp; In this state
+of things, it is hardly necessary to record that Dullborough did what
+every man does when he wants to write a book or deliver a lecture, and
+is provided with all the materials except a subject.&nbsp; It fell back
+upon Shakespeare.</p>
+<p>No sooner was it resolved to celebrate Shakespeare&rsquo;s birthday
+in Dullborough, than the popularity of the immortal bard became surprising.&nbsp;
+You might have supposed the first edition of his works to have been
+published last week, and enthusiastic Dullborough to have got half through
+them.&nbsp; (I doubt, by the way, whether it had ever done half that,
+but that is a private opinion.)&nbsp; A young gentleman with a sonnet,
+the retention of which for two years had enfeebled his mind and undermined
+his knees, got the sonnet into the Dullborough Warden, and gained flesh.&nbsp;
+Portraits of Shakespeare broke out in the bookshop windows, and our
+principal artist painted a large original portrait in oils for the decoration
+of the dining-room.&nbsp; It was not in the least like any of the other
+Portraits, and was exceedingly admired, the head being much swollen.&nbsp;
+At the Institution, the Debating Society discussed the new question,
+Was there sufficient ground for supposing that the Immortal Shakespeare
+ever stole deer?&nbsp; This was indignantly decided by an overwhelming
+majority in the negative; indeed, there was but one vote on the Poaching
+side, and that was the vote of the orator who had undertaken to advocate
+it, and who became quite an obnoxious character&mdash;particularly to
+the Dullborough &lsquo;roughs,&rsquo; who were about as well informed
+on the matter as most other people.&nbsp; Distinguished speakers were
+invited down, and very nearly came (but not quite).&nbsp; Subscriptions
+were opened, and committees sat, and it would have been far from a popular
+measure in the height of the excitement, to have told Dullborough that
+it wasn&rsquo;t Stratford-upon-Avon.&nbsp; Yet, after all these preparations,
+when the great festivity took place, and the portrait, elevated aloft,
+surveyed the company as if it were in danger of springing a mine of
+intellect and blowing itself up, it did undoubtedly happen, according
+to the inscrutable mysteries of things, that nobody could be induced,
+not to say to touch upon Shakespeare, but to come within a mile of him,
+until the crack speaker of Dullborough rose to propose the immortal
+memory.&nbsp; Which he did with the perplexing and astonishing result
+that before he had repeated the great name half-a-dozen times, or had
+been upon his legs as many minutes, he was assailed with a general shout
+of &lsquo;Question.&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI&mdash;THE SHORT-TIMERS</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>&lsquo;Within so many yards of this Covent-garden lodging of mine,
+as within so many yards of Westminster Abbey, Saint Paul&rsquo;s Cathedral,
+the Houses of Parliament, the Prisons, the Courts of Justice, all the
+Institutions that govern the land, I can find&mdash;<i>must</i> find,
+whether I will or no&mdash;in the open streets, shameful instances of
+neglect of children, intolerable toleration of the engenderment of paupers,
+idlers, thieves, races of wretched and destructive cripples both in
+body and mind, a misery to themselves, a misery to the community, a
+disgrace to civilisation, and an outrage on Christianity.&mdash;I know
+it to be a fact as easy of demonstration as any sum in any of the elementary
+rules of arithmetic, that if the State would begin its work and duty
+at the beginning, and would with the strong hand take those children
+out of the streets, while they are yet children, and wisely train them,
+it would make them a part of England&rsquo;s glory, not its shame&mdash;of
+England&rsquo;s strength, not its weakness&mdash;would raise good soldiers
+and sailors, and good citizens, and many great men, out of the seeds
+of its criminal population.&nbsp; Yet I go on bearing with the enormity
+as if it were nothing, and I go on reading the Parliamentary Debates
+as if they were something, and I concern myself far more about one railway-bridge
+across a public thoroughfare, than about a dozen generations of scrofula,
+ignorance, wickedness, prostitution, poverty, and felony.&nbsp; I can
+slip out at my door, in the small hours after any midnight, and, in
+one circuit of the purlieus of Covent-garden Market, can behold a state
+of infancy and youth, as vile as if a Bourbon sat upon the English throne;
+a great police force looking on with authority to do no more than worry
+and hunt the dreadful vermin into corners, and there leave them.&nbsp;
+Within the length of a few streets I can find a workhouse, mismanaged
+with that dull short-sighted obstinacy that its greatest opportunities
+as to the children it receives are lost, and yet not a farthing saved
+to any one.&nbsp; But the wheel goes round, and round, and round; and
+because it goes round&mdash;so I am told by the politest authorities&mdash;it
+goes well.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Thus I reflected, one day in the Whitsun week last past, as I floated
+down the Thames among the bridges, looking&mdash;not inappropriately&mdash;at
+the drags that were hanging up at certain dirty stairs to hook the drowned
+out, and at the numerous conveniences provided to facilitate their tumbling
+in.&nbsp; My object in that uncommercial journey called up another train
+of thought, and it ran as follows:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;When I was at school, one of seventy boys, I wonder by what
+secret understanding our attention began to wander when we had pored
+over our books for some hours.&nbsp; I wonder by what ingenuity we brought
+on that confused state of mind when sense became nonsense, when figures
+wouldn&rsquo;t work, when dead languages wouldn&rsquo;t construe, when
+live languages wouldn&rsquo;t be spoken, when memory wouldn&rsquo;t
+come, when dulness and vacancy wouldn&rsquo;t go.&nbsp; I cannot remember
+that we ever conspired to be sleepy after dinner, or that we ever particularly
+wanted to be stupid, and to have flushed faces and hot beating heads,
+or to find blank hopelessness and obscurity this afternoon in what would
+become perfectly clear and bright in the freshness of to-morrow morning.&nbsp;
+We suffered for these things, and they made us miserable enough.&nbsp;
+Neither do I remember that we ever bound ourselves by any secret oath
+or other solemn obligation, to find the seats getting too hard to be
+sat upon after a certain time; or to have intolerable twitches in our
+legs, rendering us aggressive and malicious with those members; or to
+be troubled with a similar uneasiness in our elbows, attended with fistic
+consequences to our neighbours; or to carry two pounds of lead in the
+chest, four pounds in the head, and several active blue-bottles in each
+ear.&nbsp; Yet, for certain, we suffered under those distresses, and
+were always charged at for labouring under them, as if we had brought
+them on, of our own deliberate act and deed.&nbsp; As to the mental
+portion of them being my own fault in my own case&mdash;I should like
+to ask any well-trained and experienced teacher, not to say psychologist.&nbsp;
+And as to the physical portion&mdash;I should like to ask PROFESSOR
+OWEN.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>It happened that I had a small bundle of papers with me, on what
+is called &lsquo;The Half-Time System&rsquo; in schools.&nbsp; Referring
+to one of those papers I found that the indefatigable MR. CHADWICK had
+been beforehand with me, and had already asked Professor Owen: who had
+handsomely replied that I was not to blame, but that, being troubled
+with a skeleton, and having been constituted according to certain natural
+laws, I and my skeleton were unfortunately bound by those laws even
+in school&mdash;and had comported ourselves accordingly.&nbsp; Much
+comforted by the good Professor&rsquo;s being on my side, I read on
+to discover whether the indefatigable Mr. Chadwick had taken up the
+mental part of my afflictions.&nbsp; I found that he had, and that he
+had gained on my behalf, SIR BENJAMIN BRODIE, SIR DAVID WILKIE, SIR
+WALTER SCOTT, and the common sense of mankind.&nbsp; For which I beg
+Mr. Chadwick, if this should meet his eye, to accept my warm acknowledgments.</p>
+<p>Up to that time I had retained a misgiving that the seventy unfortunates
+of whom I was one, must have been, without knowing it, leagued together
+by the spirit of evil in a sort of perpetual Guy Fawkes Plot, to grope
+about in vaults with dark lanterns after a certain period of continuous
+study.&nbsp; But now the misgiving vanished, and I floated on with a
+quieted mind to see the Half-Time System in action.&nbsp; For that was
+the purpose of my journey, both by steamboat on the Thames, and by very
+dirty railway on the shore.&nbsp; To which last institution, I beg to
+recommend the legal use of coke as engine-fuel, rather than the illegal
+use of coal; the recommendation is quite disinterested, for I was most
+liberally supplied with small coal on the journey, for which no charge
+was made.&nbsp; I had not only my eyes, nose, and ears filled, but my
+hat, and all my pockets, and my pocket-book, and my watch.</p>
+<p>The V.D.S.C.R.C. (or Very Dirty and Small Coal Railway Company) delivered
+me close to my destination, and I soon found the Half-Time System established
+in spacious premises, and freely placed at my convenience and disposal.</p>
+<p>What would I see first of the Half-Time System?&nbsp; I chose Military
+Drill.&nbsp; &lsquo;Atten-tion!&rsquo;&nbsp; Instantly a hundred boys
+stood forth in the paved yard as one boy; bright, quick, eager, steady,
+watchful for the look of command, instant and ready for the word.&nbsp;
+Not only was there complete precision&mdash;complete accord to the eye
+and to the ear&mdash;but an alertness in the doing of the thing which
+deprived it, curiously, of its monotonous or mechanical character.&nbsp;
+There was perfect uniformity, and yet an individual spirit and emulation.&nbsp;
+No spectator could doubt that the boys liked it.&nbsp; With non-commissioned
+officers varying from a yard to a yard and a half high, the result could
+not possibly have been attained otherwise.&nbsp; They marched, and counter-marched,
+and formed in line and square, and company, and single file and double
+file, and performed a variety of evolutions; all most admirably.&nbsp;
+In respect of an air of enjoyable understanding of what they were about,
+which seems to be forbidden to English soldiers, the boys might have
+been small French troops.&nbsp; When they were dismissed and the broadsword
+exercise, limited to a much smaller number, succeeded, the boys who
+had no part in that new drill, either looked on attentively, or disported
+themselves in a gymnasium hard by.&nbsp; The steadiness of the broadsword
+boys on their short legs, and the firmness with which they sustained
+the different positions, was truly remarkable.</p>
+<p>The broadsword exercise over, suddenly there was great excitement
+and a rush.&nbsp; Naval Drill!</p>
+<p>In the corner of the ground stood a decked mimic ship, with real
+masts, yards, and sails&mdash;mainmast seventy feet high.&nbsp; At the
+word of command from the Skipper of this ship&mdash;a mahogany-faced
+Old Salt, with the indispensable quid in his cheek, the true nautical
+roll, and all wonderfully complete&mdash;the rigging was covered with
+a swarm of boys: one, the first to spring into the shrouds, outstripping
+all the others, and resting on the truck of the main-topmast in no time.</p>
+<p>And now we stood out to sea, in a most amazing manner; the Skipper
+himself, the whole crew, the Uncommercial, and all hands present, implicitly
+believing that there was not a moment to lose, that the wind had that
+instant chopped round and sprung up fair, and that we were away on a
+voyage round the world.&nbsp; Get all sail upon her!&nbsp; With a will,
+my lads!&nbsp; Lay out upon the main-yard there!&nbsp; Look alive at
+the weather earring!&nbsp; Cheery, my boys!&nbsp; Let go the sheet,
+now!&nbsp; Stand by at the braces, you!&nbsp; With a will, aloft there!&nbsp;
+Belay, starboard watch!&nbsp; Fifer!&nbsp; Come aft, fifer, and give
+&rsquo;em a tune!&nbsp; Forthwith, springs up fifer, fife in hand&mdash;smallest
+boy ever seen&mdash;big lump on temple, having lately fallen down on
+a paving-stone&mdash;gives &rsquo;em a tune with all his might and main.&nbsp;
+Hoo-roar, fifer!&nbsp; With a will, my lads!&nbsp; Tip &rsquo;em a livelier
+one, fifer!&nbsp; Fifer tips &rsquo;em a livelier one, and excitement
+increases.&nbsp; Shake &rsquo;em out, my lads!&nbsp; Well done!&nbsp;
+There you have her!&nbsp; Pretty, pretty!&nbsp; Every rag upon her she
+can carry, wind right astarn, and ship cutting through the water fifteen
+knots an hour!</p>
+<p>At this favourable moment of her voyage, I gave the alarm &lsquo;A
+man overboard!&rsquo; (on the gravel), but he was immediately recovered,
+none the worse.&nbsp; Presently, I observed the Skipper overboard, but
+forbore to mention it, as he seemed in no wise disconcerted by the accident.&nbsp;
+Indeed, I soon came to regard the Skipper as an amphibious creature,
+for he was so perpetually plunging overboard to look up at the hands
+aloft, that he was oftener in the bosom of the ocean than on deck.&nbsp;
+His pride in his crew on those occasions was delightful, and the conventional
+unintelligibility of his orders in the ears of uncommercial landlubbers
+and loblolly boys, though they were always intelligible to the crew,
+was hardly less pleasant.&nbsp; But we couldn&rsquo;t expect to go on
+in this way for ever; dirty weather came on, and then worse weather,
+and when we least expected it we got into tremendous difficulties.&nbsp;
+Screw loose in the chart perhaps&mdash;something certainly wrong somewhere&mdash;but
+here we were with breakers ahead, my lads, driving head on, slap on
+a lee shore!&nbsp; The Skipper broached this terrific announcement in
+such great agitation, that the small fifer, not fifeing now, but standing
+looking on near the wheel with his fife under his arm, seemed for the
+moment quite unboyed, though he speedily recovered his presence of mind.&nbsp;
+In the trying circumstances that ensued, the Skipper and the crew proved
+worthy of one another.&nbsp; The Skipper got dreadfully hoarse, but
+otherwise was master of the situation.&nbsp; The man at the wheel did
+wonders; all hands (except the fifer) were turned up to wear ship; and
+I observed the fifer, when we were at our greatest extremity, to refer
+to some document in his waistcoat-pocket, which I conceived to be his
+will.&nbsp; I think she struck.&nbsp; I was not myself conscious of
+any collision, but I saw the Skipper so very often washed overboard
+and back again, that I could only impute it to the beating of the ship.&nbsp;
+I am not enough of a seaman to describe the manoeuvres by which we were
+saved, but they made the Skipper very hot (French polishing his mahogany
+face) and the crew very nimble, and succeeded to a marvel; for, within
+a few minutes of the first alarm, we had wore ship and got her off,
+and were all a-tauto&mdash;which I felt very grateful for: not that
+I knew what it was, but that I perceived that we had not been all a-tauto
+lately.&nbsp; Land now appeared on our weather-bow, and we shaped our
+course for it, having the wind abeam, and frequently changing the man
+at the helm, in order that every man might have his spell.&nbsp; We
+worked into harbour under prosperous circumstances, and furled our sails,
+and squared our yards, and made all ship-shape and handsome, and so
+our voyage ended.&nbsp; When I complimented the Skipper at parting on
+his exertions and those of his gallant crew, he informed me that the
+latter were provided for the worst, all hands being taught to swim and
+dive; and he added that the able seaman at the main-topmast truck especially,
+could dive as deep as he could go high.</p>
+<p>The next adventure that befell me in my visit to the Short-Timers,
+was the sudden apparition of a military band.&nbsp; I had been inspecting
+the hammocks of the crew of the good ship, when I saw with astonishment
+that several musical instruments, brazen and of great size, appeared
+to have suddenly developed two legs each, and to be trotting about a
+yard.&nbsp; And my astonishment was heightened when I observed a large
+drum, that had previously been leaning helpless against a wall, taking
+up a stout position on four legs.&nbsp; Approaching this drum and looking
+over it, I found two boys behind it (it was too much for one), and then
+I found that each of the brazen instruments had brought out a boy, and
+was going to discourse sweet sounds.&nbsp; The boys&mdash;not omitting
+the fifer, now playing a new instrument&mdash;were dressed in neat uniform,
+and stood up in a circle at their music-stands, like any other Military
+Band.&nbsp; They played a march or two, and then we had Cheer boys,
+Cheer, and then we had Yankee Doodle, and we finished, as in loyal duty
+bound, with God save the Queen.&nbsp; The band&rsquo;s proficiency was
+perfectly wonderful, and it was not at all wonderful that the whole
+body corporate of Short-Timers listened with faces of the liveliest
+interest and pleasure.</p>
+<p>What happened next among the Short-Timers?&nbsp; As if the band had
+blown me into a great class-room out of their brazen tubes, <i>in</i>
+a great class-room I found myself now, with the whole choral force of
+Short-Timers singing the praises of a summer&rsquo;s day to the harmonium,
+and my small but highly respected friend the fifer blazing away vocally,
+as if he had been saving up his wind for the last twelvemonth; also
+the whole crew of the good ship Nameless swarming up and down the scale
+as if they had never swarmed up and down the rigging.&nbsp; This done,
+we threw our whole power into God bless the Prince of Wales, and blessed
+his Royal Highness to such an extent that, for my own Uncommercial part,
+I gasped again when it was over.&nbsp; The moment this was done, we
+formed, with surpassing freshness, into hollow squares, and fell to
+work at oral lessons as if we never did, and had never thought of doing,
+anything else.</p>
+<p>Let a veil be drawn over the self-committals into which the Uncommercial
+Traveller would have been betrayed but for a discreet reticence, coupled
+with an air of absolute wisdom on the part of that artful personage.&nbsp;
+Take the square of five, multiply it by fifteen, divide it by three,
+deduct eight from it, add four dozen to it, give me the result in pence,
+and tell me how many eggs I could get for it at three farthings apiece.&nbsp;
+The problem is hardly stated, when a dozen small boys pour out answers.&nbsp;
+Some wide, some very nearly right, some worked as far as they go with
+such accuracy, as at once to show what link of the chain has been dropped
+in the hurry.&nbsp; For the moment, none are quite right; but behold
+a labouring spirit beating the buttons on its corporeal waistcoat, in
+a process of internal calculation, and knitting an accidental bump on
+its corporeal forehead in a concentration of mental arithmetic!&nbsp;
+It is my honourable friend (if he will allow me to call him so) the
+fifer.&nbsp; With right arm eagerly extended in token of being inspired
+with an answer, and with right leg foremost, the fifer solves the mystery:
+then recalls both arm and leg, and with bump in ambush awaits the next
+poser.&nbsp; Take the square of three, multiply it by seven, divide
+it by four, add fifty to it, take thirteen from it, multiply it by two,
+double it, give me the result in pence, and say how many halfpence.&nbsp;
+Wise as the serpent is the four feet of performer on the nearest approach
+to that instrument, whose right arm instantly appears, and quenches
+this arithmetical fire.&nbsp; Tell me something about Great Britain,
+tell me something about its principal productions, tell me something
+about its ports, tell me something about its seas and rivers, tell me
+something about coal, iron, cotton, timber, tin, and turpentine.&nbsp;
+The hollow square bristles with extended right arms; but ever faithful
+to fact is the fifer, ever wise as the serpent is the performer on that
+instrument, ever prominently buoyant and brilliant are all members of
+the band.&nbsp; I observe the player of the cymbals to dash at a sounding
+answer now and then rather than not cut in at all; but I take that to
+be in the way of his instrument.&nbsp; All these questions, and many
+such, are put on the spur of the moment, and by one who has never examined
+these boys.&nbsp; The Uncommercial, invited to add another, falteringly
+demands how many birthdays a man born on the twenty-ninth of February
+will have had on completing his fiftieth year?&nbsp; A general perception
+of trap and pitfall instantly arises, and the fifer is seen to retire
+behind the corduroys of his next neighbours, as perceiving special necessity
+for collecting himself and communing with his mind.&nbsp; Meanwhile,
+the wisdom of the serpent suggests that the man will have had only one
+birthday in all that time, for how can any man have more than one, seeing
+that he is born once and dies once?&nbsp; The blushing Uncommercial
+stands corrected, and amends the formula.&nbsp; Pondering ensues, two
+or three wrong answers are offered, and Cymbals strikes up &lsquo;Six!&rsquo;
+but doesn&rsquo;t know why.&nbsp; Then modestly emerging from his Academic
+Grove of corduroys appears the fifer, right arm extended, right leg
+foremost, bump irradiated.&nbsp; &lsquo;Twelve, and two over!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The feminine Short-Timers passed a similar examination, and very
+creditably too.&nbsp; Would have done better perhaps, with a little
+more geniality on the part of their pupil-teacher; for a cold eye, my
+young friend, and a hard, abrupt manner, are not by any means the powerful
+engines that your innocence supposes them to be.&nbsp; Both girls and
+boys wrote excellently, from copy and dictation; both could cook; both
+could mend their own clothes; both could clean up everything about them
+in an orderly and skilful way, the girls having womanly household knowledge
+superadded.&nbsp; Order and method began in the songs of the Infant
+School which I visited likewise, and they were even in their dwarf degree
+to be found in the Nursery, where the Uncommercial walking-stick was
+carried off with acclamations, and where &lsquo;the Doctor&rsquo;&mdash;a
+medical gentleman of two, who took his degree on the night when he was
+found at an apothecary&rsquo;s door&mdash;did the honours of the establishment
+with great urbanity and gaiety.</p>
+<p>These have long been excellent schools; long before the days of the
+Short-Time.&nbsp; I first saw them, twelve or fifteen years ago.&nbsp;
+But since the introduction of the Short-Time system it has been proved
+here that eighteen hours a week of book-learning are more profitable
+than thirty-six, and that the pupils are far quicker and brighter than
+of yore.&nbsp; The good influences of music on the whole body of children
+have likewise been surprisingly proved.&nbsp; Obviously another of the
+immense advantages of the Short-Time system to the cause of good education
+is the great diminution of its cost, and of the period of time over
+which it extends.&nbsp; The last is a most important consideration,
+as poor parents are always impatient to profit by their children&rsquo;s
+labour.</p>
+<p>It will be objected: Firstly, that this is all very well, but special
+local advantages and special selection of children must be necessary
+to such success.&nbsp; Secondly, that this is all very well, but must
+be very expensive.&nbsp; Thirdly, that this is all very well, but we
+have no proof of the results, sir, no proof.</p>
+<p>On the first head of local advantages and special selection.&nbsp;
+Would Limehouse Hole be picked out for the site of a Children&rsquo;s
+Paradise?&nbsp; Or would the legitimate and illegitimate pauper children
+of the long-shore population of such a riverside district, be regarded
+as unusually favourable specimens to work with?&nbsp; Yet these schools
+are at Limehouse, and are the Pauper Schools of the Stepney Pauper Union.</p>
+<p>On the second head of expense.&nbsp; Would sixpence a week be considered
+a very large cost for the education of each pupil, including all salaries
+of teachers and rations of teachers?&nbsp; But supposing the cost were
+not sixpence a week, not fivepence? it is FOURPENCE-HALFPENNY.</p>
+<p>On the third head of no proof, sir, no proof.&nbsp; Is there any
+proof in the facts that Pupil Teachers more in number, and more highly
+qualified, have been produced here under the Short-Time system than
+under the Long-Time system?&nbsp; That the Short-Timers, in a writing
+competition, beat the Long-Timers of a first-class National School?&nbsp;
+That the sailor-boys are in such demand for merchant ships, that whereas,
+before they were trained, 10<i>l</i>. premium used to be given with
+each boy&mdash;too often to some greedy brute of a drunken skipper,
+who disappeared before the term of apprenticeship was out, if the ill-used
+boy didn&rsquo;t&mdash;captains of the best character now take these
+boys more than willingly, with no premium at all?&nbsp; That they are
+also much esteemed in the Royal Navy, which they prefer, &lsquo;because
+everything is so neat and clean and orderly&rsquo;?&nbsp; Or, is there
+any proof in Naval captains writing &lsquo;Your little fellows are all
+that I can desire&rsquo;?&nbsp; Or, is there any proof in such testimony
+as this: &lsquo;The owner of a vessel called at the school, and said
+that as his ship was going down Channel on her last voyage, with one
+of the boys from the school on board, the pilot said, &ldquo;It would
+be as well if the royal were lowered; I wish it were down.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Without waiting for any orders, and unobserved by the pilot, the lad,
+whom they had taken on board from the school, instantly mounted the
+mast and lowered the royal, and at the next glance of the pilot to the
+masthead, he perceived that the sail had been let down.&nbsp; He exclaimed,
+&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s done that job?&rdquo;&nbsp; The owner, who was on
+board, said, &ldquo;That was the little fellow whom I put on board two
+days ago.&rdquo;&nbsp; The pilot immediately said, &ldquo;Why, where
+could he have been brought up?&rdquo;&nbsp; The boy had never seen the
+sea or been on a real ship before&rsquo;?&nbsp; Or, is there any proof
+in these boys being in greater demand for Regimental Bands than the
+Union can meet?&nbsp; Or, in ninety-eight of them having gone into Regimental
+Bands in three years?&nbsp; Or, in twelve of them being in the band
+of one regiment?&nbsp; Or, in the colonel of that regiment writing,
+&lsquo;We want six more boys; they are excellent lads&rsquo;?&nbsp;
+Or, in one of the boys having risen to be band-corporal in the same
+regiment?&nbsp; Or, in employers of all kinds chorusing, &lsquo;Give
+us drilled boys, for they are prompt, obedient, and punctual&rsquo;?&nbsp;
+Other proofs I have myself beheld with these Uncommercial eyes, though
+I do not regard myself as having a right to relate in what social positions
+they have seen respected men and women who were once pauper children
+of the Stepney Union.</p>
+<p>Into what admirable soldiers others of these boys have the capabilities
+for being turned, I need not point out.&nbsp; Many of them are always
+ambitious of military service; and once upon a time when an old boy
+came back to see the old place, a cavalry soldier all complete, <i>with
+his spurs on</i>, such a yearning broke out to get into cavalry regiments
+and wear those sublime appendages, that it was one of the greatest excitements
+ever known in the school.&nbsp; The girls make excellent domestic servants,
+and at certain periods come back, a score or two at a time, to see the
+old building, and to take tea with the old teachers, and to hear the
+old band, and to see the old ship with her masts towering up above the
+neighbouring roofs and chimneys.&nbsp; As to the physical health of
+these schools, it is so exceptionally remarkable (simply because the
+sanitary regulations are as good as the other educational arrangements),
+that when Mr. TUFNELL, the Inspector, first stated it in a report, he
+was supposed, in spite of his high character, to have been betrayed
+into some extraordinary mistake or exaggeration.&nbsp; In the moral
+health of these schools&mdash;where corporal punishment is unknown&mdash;Truthfulness
+stands high.&nbsp; When the ship was first erected, the boys were forbidden
+to go aloft, until the nets, which are now always there, were stretched
+as a precaution against accidents.&nbsp; Certain boys, in their eagerness,
+disobeyed the injunction, got out of window in the early daylight, and
+climbed to the masthead.&nbsp; One boy unfortunately fell, and was killed.&nbsp;
+There was no clue to the others; but all the boys were assembled, and
+the chairman of the Board addressed them.&nbsp; &lsquo;I promise nothing;
+you see what a dreadful thing has happened; you know what a grave offence
+it is that has led to such a consequence; I cannot say what will be
+done with the offenders; but, boys, you have been trained here, above
+all things, to respect the truth.&nbsp; I want the truth.&nbsp; Who
+are the delinquents?&rsquo;&nbsp; Instantly, the whole number of boys
+concerned, separated from the rest, and stood out.</p>
+<p>Now, the head and heart of that gentleman (it is needless to say,
+a good head and a good heart) have been deeply interested in these schools
+for many years, and are so still; and the establishment is very fortunate
+in a most admirable master, and moreover the schools of the Stepney
+Union cannot have got to be what they are, without the Stepney Board
+of Guardians having been earnest and humane men strongly imbued with
+a sense of their responsibility.&nbsp; But what one set of men can do
+in this wise, another set of men can do; and this is a noble example
+to all other Bodies and Unions, and a noble example to the State.&nbsp;
+Followed, and enlarged upon by its enforcement on bad parents, it would
+clear London streets of the most terrible objects they smite the sight
+with&mdash;myriads of little children who awfully reverse Our Saviour&rsquo;s
+words, and are not of the Kingdom of Heaven, but of the Kingdom of Hell.</p>
+<p>Clear the public streets of such shame, and the public conscience
+of such reproach?&nbsp; Ah!&nbsp; Almost prophetic, surely, the child&rsquo;s
+jingle:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>When will that be,<br />Say the bells of Step-ney!</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXII&mdash;BOUND FOR THE GREAT SALT LAKE</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Behold me on my way to an Emigrant Ship, on a hot morning early in
+June.&nbsp; My road lies through that part of London generally known
+to the initiated as &lsquo;Down by the Docks.&rsquo;&nbsp; Down by the
+Docks, is home to a good many people&mdash;to too many, if I may judge
+from the overflow of local population in the streets&mdash;but my nose
+insinuates that the number to whom it is Sweet Home might be easily
+counted.&nbsp; Down by the Docks, is a region I would choose as my point
+of embarkation aboard ship if I were an emigrant.&nbsp; It would present
+my intention to me in such a sensible light; it would show me so many
+things to be run away from.</p>
+<p>Down by the Docks, they eat the largest oysters and scatter the roughest
+oyster-shells, known to the descendants of Saint George and the Dragon.&nbsp;
+Down by the Docks, they consume the slimiest of shell-fish, which seem
+to have been scraped off the copper bottoms of ships.&nbsp; Down by
+the Docks, the vegetables at green-grocers&rsquo; doors acquire a saline
+and a scaly look, as if they had been crossed with fish and seaweed.&nbsp;
+Down by the Docks, they &lsquo;board seamen&rsquo; at the eating-houses,
+the public-houses, the slop-shops, the coffee-shops, the tally-shops,
+all kinds of shops mentionable and unmentionable&mdash;board them, as
+it were, in the piratical sense, making them bleed terribly, and giving
+no quarter.&nbsp; Down by the Docks, the seamen roam in mid-street and
+mid-day, their pockets inside out, and their heads no better.&nbsp;
+Down by the Docks, the daughters of wave-ruling Britannia also rove,
+clad in silken attire, with uncovered tresses streaming in the breeze,
+bandanna kerchiefs floating from their shoulders, and crinoline not
+wanting.&nbsp; Down by the Docks, you may hear the Incomparable Joe
+Jackson sing the Standard of England, with a hornpipe, any night; or
+any day may see at the waxwork, for a penny and no waiting, him as killed
+the policeman at Acton and suffered for it.&nbsp; Down by the Docks,
+you may buy polonies, saveloys, and sausage preparations various, if
+you are not particular what they are made of besides seasoning.&nbsp;
+Down by the Docks, the children of Israel creep into any gloomy cribs
+and entries they can hire, and hang slops there&mdash;pewter watches,
+sou&rsquo;-wester hats, waterproof overalls&mdash;&lsquo;firtht rate
+articleth, Thjack.&rsquo;&nbsp; Down by the Docks, such dealers exhibiting
+on a frame a complete nautical suit without the refinement of a waxen
+visage in the hat, present the imaginary wearer as drooping at the yard-arm,
+with his seafaring and earthfaring troubles over.&nbsp; Down by the
+Docks, the placards in the shops apostrophise the customer, knowing
+him familiarly beforehand, as, &lsquo;Look here, Jack!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Here&rsquo;s your sort, my lad!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Try our sea-going
+mixed, at two and nine!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;The right kit for the British
+tar!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Ship ahoy!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Splice the main-brace,
+brother!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Come, cheer up, my lads.&nbsp; We&rsquo;ve
+the best liquors here, And you&rsquo;ll find something new In our wonderful
+Beer!&rsquo;&nbsp; Down by the Docks, the pawnbroker lends money on
+Union-Jack pocket-handkerchiefs, on watches with little ships pitching
+fore and aft on the dial, on telescopes, nautical instruments in cases,
+and such-like.&nbsp; Down by the Docks, the apothecary sets up in business
+on the wretchedest scale&mdash;chiefly on lint and plaster for the strapping
+of wounds&mdash;and with no bright bottles, and with no little drawers.&nbsp;
+Down by the Docks, the shabby undertaker&rsquo;s shop will bury you
+for next to nothing, after the Malay or Chinaman has stabbed you for
+nothing at all: so you can hardly hope to make a cheaper end.&nbsp;
+Down by the Docks, anybody drunk will quarrel with anybody drunk or
+sober, and everybody else will have a hand in it, and on the shortest
+notice you may revolve in a whirlpool of red shirts, shaggy beards,
+wild heads of hair, bare tattooed arms, Britannia&rsquo;s daughters,
+malice, mud, maundering, and madness.&nbsp; Down by the Docks, scraping
+fiddles go in the public-houses all day long, and, shrill above their
+din and all the din, rises the screeching of innumerable parrots brought
+from foreign parts, who appear to be very much astonished by what they
+find on these native shores of ours.&nbsp; Possibly the parrots don&rsquo;t
+know, possibly they do, that Down by the Docks is the road to the Pacific
+Ocean, with its lovely islands, where the savage girls plait flowers,
+and the savage boys carve cocoa-nut shells, and the grim blind idols
+muse in their shady groves to exactly the same purpose as the priests
+and chiefs.&nbsp; And possibly the parrots don&rsquo;t know, possibly
+they do, that the noble savage is a wearisome impostor wherever he is,
+and has five hundred thousand volumes of indifferent rhyme, and no reason,
+to answer for.</p>
+<p>Shadwell church!&nbsp; Pleasant whispers of there being a fresher
+air down the river than down by the Docks, go pursuing one another,
+playfully, in and out of the openings in its spire.&nbsp; Gigantic in
+the basin just beyond the church, looms my Emigrant Ship: her name,
+the Amazon.&nbsp; Her figure-head is not disfigured as those beauteous
+founders of the race of strong-minded women are fabled to have been,
+for the convenience of drawing the bow; but I sympathise with the carver:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>A flattering carver who made it his care<br />To carve busts as they
+ought to be&mdash;not as they were.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>My Emigrant Ship lies broadside-on to the wharf.&nbsp; Two great
+gangways made of spars and planks connect her with the wharf; and up
+and down these gangways, perpetually crowding to and fro and in and
+out, like ants, are the Emigrants who are going to sail in my Emigrant
+Ship.&nbsp; Some with cabbages, some with loaves of bread, some with
+cheese and butter, some with milk and beer, some with boxes, beds, and
+bundles, some with babies&mdash;nearly all with children&mdash;nearly
+all with bran-new tin cans for their daily allowance of water, uncomfortably
+suggestive of a tin flavour in the drink.&nbsp; To and fro, up and down,
+aboard and ashore, swarming here and there and everywhere, my Emigrants.&nbsp;
+And still as the Dock-Gate swings upon its hinges, cabs appear, and
+carts appear, and vans appear, bringing more of my Emigrants, with more
+cabbages, more loaves, more cheese and butter, more milk and beer, more
+boxes, beds, and bundles, more tin cans, and on those shipping investments
+accumulated compound interest of children.</p>
+<p>I go aboard my Emigrant Ship.&nbsp; I go first to the great cabin,
+and find it in the usual condition of a Cabin at that pass.&nbsp; Perspiring
+landsmen, with loose papers, and with pens and inkstands, pervade it;
+and the general appearance of things is as if the late Mr. Amazon&rsquo;s
+funeral had just come home from the cemetery, and the disconsolate Mrs.
+Amazon&rsquo;s trustees found the affairs in great disorder, and were
+looking high and low for the will.&nbsp; I go out on the poop-deck,
+for air, and surveying the emigrants on the deck below (indeed they
+are crowded all about me, up there too), find more pens and inkstands
+in action, and more papers, and interminable complication respecting
+accounts with individuals for tin cans and what not.&nbsp; But nobody
+is in an ill-temper, nobody is the worse for drink, nobody swears an
+oath or uses a coarse word, nobody appears depressed, nobody is weeping,
+and down upon the deck in every corner where it is possible to find
+a few square feet to kneel, crouch, or lie in, people, in every unsuitable
+attitude for writing, are writing letters.</p>
+<p>Now, I have seen emigrant ships before this day in June.&nbsp; And
+these people are so strikingly different from all other people in like
+circumstances whom I have ever seen, that I wonder aloud, &lsquo;What
+<i>would</i> a stranger suppose these emigrants to be!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The vigilant, bright face of the weather-browned captain of the Amazon
+is at my shoulder, and he says, &lsquo;What, indeed!&nbsp; The most
+of these came aboard yesterday evening.&nbsp; They came from various
+parts of England in small parties that had never seen one another before.&nbsp;
+Yet they had not been a couple of hours on board, when they established
+their own police, made their own regulations, and set their own watches
+at all the hatchways.&nbsp; Before nine o&rsquo;clock, the ship was
+as orderly and as quiet as a man-of-war.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I looked about me again, and saw the letter-writing going on with
+the most curious composure.&nbsp; Perfectly abstracted in the midst
+of the crowd; while great casks were swinging aloft, and being lowered
+into the hold; while hot agents were hurrying up and down, adjusting
+the interminable accounts; while two hundred strangers were searching
+everywhere for two hundred other strangers, and were asking questions
+about them of two hundred more; while the children played up and down
+all the steps, and in and out among all the people&rsquo;s legs, and
+were beheld, to the general dismay, toppling over all the dangerous
+places; the letter-writers wrote on calmly.&nbsp; On the starboard side
+of the ship, a grizzled man dictated a long letter to another grizzled
+man in an immense fur cap: which letter was of so profound a quality,
+that it became necessary for the amanuensis at intervals to take off
+his fur cap in both his hands, for the ventilation of his brain, and
+stare at him who dictated, as a man of many mysteries who was worth
+looking at.&nbsp; On the lar-board side, a woman had covered a belaying-pin
+with a white cloth to make a neat desk of it, and was sitting on a little
+box, writing with the deliberation of a bookkeeper.&nbsp; Down, upon
+her breast on the planks of the deck at this woman&rsquo;s feet, with
+her head diving in under a beam of the bulwarks on that side, as an
+eligible place of refuge for her sheet of paper, a neat and pretty girl
+wrote for a good hour (she fainted at last), only rising to the surface
+occasionally for a dip of ink.&nbsp; Alongside the boat, close to me
+on the poop-deck, another girl, a fresh, well-grown country girl, was
+writing another letter on the bare deck.&nbsp; Later in the day, when
+this self-same boat was filled with a choir who sang glees and catches
+for a long time, one of the singers, a girl, sang her part mechanically
+all the while, and wrote a letter in the bottom of the boat while doing
+so.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A stranger would be puzzled to guess the right name for these
+people, Mr. Uncommercial,&rsquo; says the captain.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Indeed he would.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If you hadn&rsquo;t known, could you ever have supposed&mdash;?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How could I!&nbsp; I should have said they were in their degree,
+the pick and flower of England.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;So should I,&rsquo; says the captain.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How many are they?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Eight hundred in round numbers.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I went between-decks, where the families with children swarmed in
+the dark, where unavoidable confusion had been caused by the last arrivals,
+and where the confusion was increased by the little preparations for
+dinner that were going on in each group.&nbsp; A few women here and
+there, had got lost, and were laughing at it, and asking their way to
+their own people, or out on deck again.&nbsp; A few of the poor children
+were crying; but otherwise the universal cheerfulness was amazing.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;We shall shake down by to-morrow.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;We shall
+come all right in a day or so.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;We shall have more
+light at sea.&rsquo;&nbsp; Such phrases I heard everywhere, as I groped
+my way among chests and barrels and beams and unstowed cargo and ring-bolts
+and Emigrants, down to the lower-deck, and thence up to the light of
+day again, and to my former station.</p>
+<p>Surely, an extraordinary people in their power of self-abstraction!&nbsp;
+All the former letter-writers were still writing calmly, and many more
+letter-writers had broken out in my absence.&nbsp; A boy with a bag
+of books in his hand and a slate under his arm, emerged from below,
+concentrated himself in my neighbourhood (espying a convenient skylight
+for his purpose), and went to work at a sum as if he were stone deaf.&nbsp;
+A father and mother and several young children, on the main deck below
+me, had formed a family circle close to the foot of the crowded restless
+gangway, where the children made a nest for themselves in a coil of
+rope, and the father and mother, she suckling the youngest, discussed
+family affairs as peaceably as if they were in perfect retirement.&nbsp;
+I think the most noticeable characteristic in the eight hundred as a
+mass, was their exemption from hurry.</p>
+<p>Eight hundred what?&nbsp; &lsquo;Geese, villain?&rsquo;&nbsp; EIGHT
+HUNDRED MORMONS.&nbsp; I, Uncommercial Traveller for the firm of Human
+Interest Brothers, had come aboard this Emigrant Ship to see what Eight
+hundred Latter-day Saints were like, and I found them (to the rout and
+overthrow of all my expectations) like what I now describe with scrupulous
+exactness.</p>
+<p>The Mormon Agent who had been active in getting them together, and
+in making the contract with my friends the owners of the ship to take
+them as far as New York on their way to the Great Salt Lake, was pointed
+out to me.&nbsp; A compactly-made handsome man in black, rather short,
+with rich brown hair and beard, and clear bright eyes.&nbsp; From his
+speech, I should set him down as American.&nbsp; Probably, a man who
+had &lsquo;knocked about the world&rsquo; pretty much.&nbsp; A man with
+a frank open manner, and unshrinking look; withal a man of great quickness.&nbsp;
+I believe he was wholly ignorant of my Uncommercial individuality, and
+consequently of my immense Uncommercial importance.</p>
+<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; These are a very fine set of people you have
+brought together here.</p>
+<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; Yes, sir, they are a <i>very</i> fine set of
+people.</p>
+<p>UNCOMMERCIAL (looking about).&nbsp; Indeed, I think it would be difficult
+to find Eight hundred people together anywhere else, and find so much
+beauty and so much strength and capacity for work among them.</p>
+<p>MORMON AGENT (not looking about, but looking steadily at Uncommercial).&nbsp;
+I think so.&mdash;We sent out about a thousand more, yes&rsquo;day,
+from Liverpool.</p>
+<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; You are not going with these emigrants?</p>
+<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; No, sir.&nbsp; I remain.</p>
+<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; But you have been in the Mormon Territory?</p>
+<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; Yes; I left Utah about three years ago.</p>
+<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; It is surprising to me that these people are
+all so cheery, and make so little of the immense distance before them.</p>
+<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; Well, you see; many of &rsquo;em have friends
+out at Utah, and many of &rsquo;em look forward to meeting friends on
+the way.</p>
+<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; On the way?</p>
+<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; This way &rsquo;tis.&nbsp; This ship lands &rsquo;em
+in New York City.&nbsp; Then they go on by rail right away beyond St.
+Louis, to that part of the Banks of the Missouri where they strike the
+Plains.&nbsp; There, waggons from the settlement meet &rsquo;em to bear
+&rsquo;em company on their journey &rsquo;cross-twelve hundred miles
+about.&nbsp; Industrious people who come out to the settlement soon
+get waggons of their own, and so the friends of some of these will come
+down in their own waggons to meet &rsquo;em.&nbsp; They look forward
+to that, greatly.</p>
+<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; On their long journey across the Desert, do you
+arm them?</p>
+<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; Mostly you would find they have arms of some
+kind or another already with them.&nbsp; Such as had not arms we should
+arm across the Plains, for the general protection and defence.</p>
+<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; Will these waggons bring down any produce to
+the Missouri?</p>
+<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; Well, since the war broke out, we&rsquo;ve taken
+to growing cotton, and they&rsquo;ll likely bring down cotton to be
+exchanged for machinery.&nbsp; We want machinery.&nbsp; Also we have
+taken to growing indigo, which is a fine commodity for profit.&nbsp;
+It has been found that the climate on the further side of the Great
+Salt Lake suits well for raising indigo.</p>
+<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; I am told that these people now on board are
+principally from the South of England?</p>
+<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; And from Wales.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s true.</p>
+<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; Do you get many Scotch?</p>
+<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; Not many.</p>
+<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; Highlanders, for instance?</p>
+<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; No, not Highlanders.&nbsp; They ain&rsquo;t interested
+enough in universal brotherhood and peace and good will.</p>
+<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; The old fighting blood is strong in them?</p>
+<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; Well, yes.&nbsp; And besides; they&rsquo;ve no
+faith.</p>
+<p>UNCOMMERCIAL (who has been burning to get at the Prophet Joe Smith,
+and seems to discover an opening).&nbsp; Faith in&mdash;!</p>
+<p>MORMON AGENT (far too many for Uncommercial).&nbsp; Well.&mdash;In
+anything!</p>
+<p>Similarly on this same head, the Uncommercial underwent discomfiture
+from a Wiltshire labourer: a simple, fresh-coloured farm-labourer, of
+eight-and-thirty, who at one time stood beside him looking on at new
+arrivals, and with whom he held this dialogue:</p>
+<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; Would you mind my asking you what part of the
+country you come from?</p>
+<p>WILTSHIRE.&nbsp; Not a bit.&nbsp; Theer! (exultingly) I&rsquo;ve
+worked all my life o&rsquo; Salisbury Plain, right under the shadder
+o&rsquo; Stonehenge.&nbsp; You mightn&rsquo;t think it, but I haive.</p>
+<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; And a pleasant country too.</p>
+<p>WILTSHIRE.&nbsp; Ah!&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis a pleasant country.</p>
+<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; Have you any family on board?</p>
+<p>WILTSHIRE.&nbsp; Two children, boy and gal.&nbsp; I am a widderer,
+<i>I</i> am, and I&rsquo;m going out alonger my boy and gal.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s
+my gal, and she&rsquo;s a fine gal o&rsquo; sixteen (pointing out the
+girl who is writing by the boat).&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll go and fetch my boy.&nbsp;
+I&rsquo;d like to show you my boy.&nbsp; (Here Wiltshire disappears,
+and presently comes back with a big, shy boy of twelve, in a superabundance
+of boots, who is not at all glad to be presented.)&nbsp; He is a fine
+boy too, and a boy fur to work!&nbsp; (Boy having undutifully bolted,
+Wiltshire drops him.)</p>
+<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; It must cost you a great deal of money to go
+so far, three strong.</p>
+<p>WILTSHIRE.&nbsp; A power of money.&nbsp; Theer!&nbsp; Eight shillen
+a week, eight shillen a week, eight shillen a week, put by out of the
+week&rsquo;s wages for ever so long.</p>
+<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; I wonder how you did it.</p>
+<p>WILTSHIRE (recognising in this a kindred spirit).&nbsp; See theer
+now!&nbsp; I wonder how I done it!&nbsp; But what with a bit o&rsquo;
+subscription heer, and what with a bit o&rsquo; help theer, it were
+done at last, though I don&rsquo;t hardly know how.&nbsp; Then it were
+unfort&rsquo;net for us, you see, as we got kep&rsquo; in Bristol so
+long&mdash;nigh a fortnight, it were&mdash;on accounts of a mistake
+wi&rsquo; Brother Halliday.&nbsp; Swaller&rsquo;d up money, it did,
+when we might have come straight on.</p>
+<p>UNCOMMERCIAL (delicately approaching Joe Smith).&nbsp; You are of
+the Mormon religion, of course?</p>
+<p>WILTSHIRE (confidently).&nbsp; O yes, I&rsquo;m a Mormon.&nbsp; (Then
+reflectively.)&nbsp; I&rsquo;m a Mormon.&nbsp; (Then, looking round
+the ship, feigns to descry a particular friend in an empty spot, and
+evades the Uncommercial for evermore.)</p>
+<p>After a noontide pause for dinner, during which my Emigrants were
+nearly all between-decks, and the Amazon looked deserted, a general
+muster took place.&nbsp; The muster was for the ceremony of passing
+the Government Inspector and the Doctor.&nbsp; Those authorities held
+their temporary state amidships, by a cask or two; and, knowing that
+the whole Eight hundred emigrants must come face to face with them,
+I took my station behind the two.&nbsp; They knew nothing whatever of
+me, I believe, and my testimony to the unpretending gentleness and good
+nature with which they discharged their duty, may be of the greater
+worth.&nbsp; There was not the slightest flavour of the Circumlocution
+Office about their proceedings.</p>
+<p>The emigrants were now all on deck.&nbsp; They were densely crowded
+aft, and swarmed upon the poop-deck like bees.&nbsp; Two or three Mormon
+agents stood ready to hand them on to the Inspector, and to hand them
+forward when they had passed.&nbsp; By what successful means, a special
+aptitude for organisation had been infused into these people, I am,
+of course, unable to report.&nbsp; But I know that, even now, there
+was no disorder, hurry, or difficulty.</p>
+<p>All being ready, the first group are handed on.&nbsp; That member
+of the party who is entrusted with the passenger-ticket for the whole,
+has been warned by one of the agents to have it ready, and here it is
+in his hand.&nbsp; In every instance through the whole eight hundred,
+without an exception, this paper is always ready.</p>
+<p>INSPECTOR (reading the ticket).&nbsp; Jessie Jobson, Sophronia Jobson,
+Jessie Jobson again, Matilda Jobson, William Jobson, Jane Jobson, Matilda
+Jobson again, Brigham Jobson, Leonardo Jobson, and Orson Jobson.&nbsp;
+Are you all here? (glancing at the party, over his spectacles).</p>
+<p>JESSIE JOBSON NUMBER TWO.&nbsp; All here, sir.</p>
+<p>This group is composed of an old grandfather and grandmother, their
+married son and his wife, and <i>their</i> family of children.&nbsp;
+Orson Jobson is a little child asleep in his mother&rsquo;s arms.&nbsp;
+The Doctor, with a kind word or so, lifts up the corner of the mother&rsquo;s
+shawl, looks at the child&rsquo;s face, and touches the little clenched
+hand.&nbsp; If we were all as well as Orson Jobson, doctoring would
+be a poor profession.</p>
+<p>INSPECTOR.&nbsp; Quite right, Jessie Jobson.&nbsp; Take your ticket,
+Jessie, and pass on.</p>
+<p>And away they go.&nbsp; Mormon agent, skilful and quiet, hands them
+on.&nbsp; Mormon agent, skilful and quiet, hands next party up.</p>
+<p>INSPECTOR (reading ticket again).&nbsp; Susannah Cleverly and William
+Cleverly.&nbsp; Brother and sister, eh?</p>
+<p>SISTER (young woman of business, hustling slow brother).&nbsp; Yes,
+sir.</p>
+<p>INSPECTOR.&nbsp; Very good, Susannah Cleverly.&nbsp; Take your ticket,
+Susannah, and take care of it.</p>
+<p>And away they go.</p>
+<p>INSPECTOR (taking ticket again).&nbsp; Sampson Dibble and Dorothy
+Dibble (surveying a very old couple over his spectacles, with some surprise).&nbsp;
+Your husband quite blind, Mrs. Dibble?</p>
+<p>MRS. DIBBLE.&nbsp; Yes, sir, he be stone-blind.</p>
+<p>MR. DIBBLE (addressing the mast).&nbsp; Yes, sir, I be stone-blind.</p>
+<p>INSPECTOR.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s a bad job.&nbsp; Take your ticket,
+Mrs. Dibble, and don&rsquo;t lose it, and pass on.</p>
+<p>Doctor taps Mr. Dibble on the eyebrow with his forefinger, and away
+they go.</p>
+<p>INSPECTOR (taking ticket again).&nbsp; Anastatia Weedle.</p>
+<p>ANASTATIA (a pretty girl, in a bright Garibaldi, this morning elected
+by universal suffrage the Beauty of the Ship).&nbsp; That is me, sir.</p>
+<p>INSPECTOR.&nbsp; Going alone, Anastatia?</p>
+<p>ANASTATIA (shaking her curls).&nbsp; I am with Mrs. Jobson, sir,
+but I&rsquo;ve got separated for the moment.</p>
+<p>INSPECTOR.&nbsp; Oh!&nbsp; You are with the Jobsons?&nbsp; Quite
+right.&nbsp; That&rsquo;ll do, Miss Weedle.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t lose your
+ticket.</p>
+<p>Away she goes, and joins the Jobsons who are waiting for her, and
+stoops and kisses Brigham Jobson&mdash;who appears to be considered
+too young for the purpose, by several Mormons rising twenty, who are
+looking on.&nbsp; Before her extensive skirts have departed from the
+casks, a decent widow stands there with four children, and so the roll
+goes.</p>
+<p>The faces of some of the Welsh people, among whom there were many
+old persons, were certainly the least intelligent.&nbsp; Some of these
+emigrants would have bungled sorely, but for the directing hand that
+was always ready.&nbsp; The intelligence here was unquestionably of
+a low order, and the heads were of a poor type.&nbsp; Generally the
+case was the reverse.&nbsp; There were many worn faces bearing traces
+of patient poverty and hard work, and there was great steadiness of
+purpose and much undemonstrative self-respect among this class.&nbsp;
+A few young men were going singly.&nbsp; Several girls were going, two
+or three together.&nbsp; These latter I found it very difficult to refer
+back, in my mind, to their relinquished homes and pursuits.&nbsp; Perhaps
+they were more like country milliners, and pupil teachers rather tawdrily
+dressed, than any other classes of young women.&nbsp; I noticed, among
+many little ornaments worn, more than one photograph-brooch of the Princess
+of Wales, and also of the late Prince Consort.&nbsp; Some single women
+of from thirty to forty, whom one might suppose to be embroiderers,
+or straw-bonnet-makers, were obviously going out in quest of husbands,
+as finer ladies go to India.&nbsp; That they had any distinct notions
+of a plurality of husbands or wives, I do not believe.&nbsp; To suppose
+the family groups of whom the majority of emigrants were composed, polygamically
+possessed, would be to suppose an absurdity, manifest to any one who
+saw the fathers and mothers.</p>
+<p>I should say (I had no means of ascertaining the fact) that most
+familiar kinds of handicraft trades were represented here.&nbsp; Farm-labourers,
+shepherds, and the like, had their full share of representation, but
+I doubt if they preponderated.&nbsp; It was interesting to see how the
+leading spirit in the family circle never failed to show itself, even
+in the simple process of answering to the names as they were called,
+and checking off the owners of the names.&nbsp; Sometimes it was the
+father, much oftener the mother, sometimes a quick little girl second
+or third in order of seniority.&nbsp; It seemed to occur for the first
+time to some heavy fathers, what large families they had; and their
+eyes rolled about, during the calling of the list, as if they half misdoubted
+some other family to have been smuggled into their own.&nbsp; Among
+all the fine handsome children, I observed but two with marks upon their
+necks that were probably scrofulous.&nbsp; Out of the whole number of
+emigrants, but one old woman was temporarily set aside by the doctor,
+on suspicion of fever; but even she afterwards obtained a clean bill
+of health.</p>
+<p>When all had &lsquo;passed,&rsquo; and the afternoon began to wear
+on, a black box became visible on deck, which box was in charge of certain
+personages also in black, of whom only one had the conventional air
+of an itinerant preacher.&nbsp; This box contained a supply of hymn-books,
+neatly printed and got up, published at Liverpool, and also in London
+at the &lsquo;Latter-Day Saints&rsquo; Book Dep&ocirc;t, 30, Florence-street.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Some copies were handsomely bound; the plainer were the more in request,
+and many were bought.&nbsp; The title ran: &lsquo;Sacred Hymns and Spiritual
+Songs for the Church of Jesus Church of Latter-Day Saints.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+The Preface, dated Manchester, 1840, ran thus:- &lsquo;The Saints in
+this country have been very desirous for a Hymn Book adapted to their
+faith and worship, that they might sing the truth with an understanding
+heart, and express their praise, joy, and gratitude in songs adapted
+to the New and Everlasting Covenant.&nbsp; In accordance with their
+wishes, we have selected the following volume, which we hope will prove
+acceptable until a greater variety can be added.&nbsp; With sentiments
+of high consideration and esteem, we subscribe ourselves your brethren
+in the New and Everlasting Covenant, BRIGHAM YOUNG, PARLEY P. PRATT,
+JOHN TAYLOR.&rsquo;&nbsp; From this book&mdash;by no means explanatory
+to myself of the New and Everlasting Covenant, and not at all making
+my heart an understanding one on the subject of that mystery&mdash;a
+hymn was sung, which did not attract any great amount of attention,
+and was supported by a rather select circle.&nbsp; But the choir in
+the boat was very popular and pleasant; and there was to have been a
+Band, only the Cornet was late in coming on board.&nbsp; In the course
+of the afternoon, a mother appeared from shore, in search of her daughter,
+&lsquo;who had run away with the Mormons.&rsquo;&nbsp; She received
+every assistance from the Inspector, but her daughter was not found
+to be on board.&nbsp; The saints did not seem to me, particularly interested
+in finding her.</p>
+<p>Towards five o&rsquo;clock, the galley became full of tea-kettles,
+and an agreeable fragrance of tea pervaded the ship.&nbsp; There was
+no scrambling or jostling for the hot water, no ill humour, no quarrelling.&nbsp;
+As the Amazon was to sail with the next tide, and as it would not be
+high water before two o&rsquo;clock in the morning, I left her with
+her tea in full action, and her idle Steam Tug lying by, deputing steam
+and smoke for the time being to the Tea-kettles.</p>
+<p>I afterwards learned that a Despatch was sent home by the captain
+before he struck out into the wide Atlantic, highly extolling the behaviour
+of these Emigrants, and the perfect order and propriety of all their
+social arrangements.&nbsp; What is in store for the poor people on the
+shores of the Great Salt Lake, what happy delusions they are labouring
+under now, on what miserable blindness their eyes may be opened then,
+I do not pretend to say.&nbsp; But I went on board their ship to bear
+testimony against them if they deserved it, as I fully believed they
+would; to my great astonishment they did not deserve it; and my predispositions
+and tendencies must not affect me as an honest witness.&nbsp; I went
+over the Amazon&rsquo;s side, feeling it impossible to deny that, so
+far, some remarkable influence had produced a remarkable result, which
+better known influences have often missed. *</p>
+<p>* After this Uncommercial Journey was printed, I happened to mention
+the experience it describes to Lord Houghton.&nbsp; That gentleman then
+showed me an article of his writing, in <i>The Edinburgh Review</i>
+for January, 1862, which is highly remarkable for its philosophical
+and literary research concerning these Latter-Day Saints.&nbsp; I find
+in it the following sentences:- &lsquo;The Select Committee of the House
+of Commons on emigrant ships for 1854 summoned the Mormon agent and
+passenger-broker before it, and came to the conclusion that no ships
+under the provisions of the &ldquo;Passengers Act&rdquo; could be depended
+upon for comfort and security in the same degree as those under his
+administration. The Mormon ship is a Family under strong and accepted
+discipline, with every provision for comfort, decorum and internal peace.&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIII&mdash;THE CITY OF THE ABSENT</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>When I think I deserve particularly well of myself, and have earned
+the right to enjoy a little treat, I stroll from Covent-garden into
+the City of London, after business-hours there, on a Saturday, or&mdash;better
+yet&mdash;on a Sunday, and roam about its deserted nooks and corners.&nbsp;
+It is necessary to the full enjoyment of these journeys that they should
+be made in summer-time, for then the retired spots that I love to haunt,
+are at their idlest and dullest.&nbsp; A gentle fall of rain is not
+objectionable, and a warm mist sets off my favourite retreats to decided
+advantage.</p>
+<p>Among these, City Churchyards hold a high place.&nbsp; Such strange
+churchyards hide in the City of London; churchyards sometimes so entirely
+detached from churches, always so pressed upon by houses; so small,
+so rank, so silent, so forgotten, except by the few people who ever
+look down into them from their smoky windows.&nbsp; As I stand peeping
+in through the iron gates and rails, I can peel the rusty metal off,
+like bark from an old tree.&nbsp; The illegible tombstones are all lop-sided,
+the grave-mounds lost their shape in the rains of a hundred years ago,
+the Lombardy Poplar or Plane-Tree that was once a drysalter&rsquo;s
+daughter and several common-councilmen, has withered like those worthies,
+and its departed leaves are dust beneath it.&nbsp; Contagion of slow
+ruin overhangs the place.&nbsp; The discoloured tiled roofs of the environing
+buildings stand so awry, that they can hardly be proof against any stress
+of weather.&nbsp; Old crazy stacks of chimneys seem to look down as
+they overhang, dubiously calculating how far they will have to fall.&nbsp;
+In an angle of the walls, what was once the tool-house of the grave-digger
+rots away, encrusted with toadstools.&nbsp; Pipes and spouts for carrying
+off the rain from the encompassing gables, broken or feloniously cut
+for old lead long ago, now let the rain drip and splash as it list,
+upon the weedy earth.&nbsp; Sometimes there is a rusty pump somewhere
+near, and, as I look in at the rails and meditate, I hear it working
+under an unknown hand with a creaking protest: as though the departed
+in the churchyard urged, &lsquo;Let us lie here in peace; don&rsquo;t
+suck us up and drink us!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>One of my best beloved churchyards, I call the churchyard of Saint
+Ghastly Grim; touching what men in general call it, I have no information.&nbsp;
+It lies at the heart of the City, and the Blackwall Railway shrieks
+at it daily.&nbsp; It is a small small churchyard, with a ferocious,
+strong, spiked iron gate, like a jail.&nbsp; This gate is ornamented
+with skulls and cross-bones, larger than the life, wrought in stone;
+but it likewise came into the mind of Saint Ghastly Grim, that to stick
+iron spikes a-top of the stone skulls, as though they were impaled,
+would be a pleasant device.&nbsp; Therefore the skulls grin aloft horribly,
+thrust through and through with iron spears.&nbsp; Hence, there is attraction
+of repulsion for me in Saint Ghastly Grim, and, having often contemplated
+it in the daylight and the dark, I once felt drawn towards it in a thunderstorm
+at midnight.&nbsp; &lsquo;Why not?&rsquo; I said, in self-excuse.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I have been to see the Colosseum by the light of the moon; is
+it worse to go to see Saint Ghastly Grim by the light of the lightning?&rsquo;&nbsp;
+I repaired to the Saint in a hackney cab, and found the skulls most
+effective, having the air of a public execution, and seeming, as the
+lightning flashed, to wink and grin with the pain of the spikes.&nbsp;
+Having no other person to whom to impart my satisfaction, I communicated
+it to the driver.&nbsp; So far from being responsive, he surveyed me&mdash;he
+was naturally a bottled-nosed, red-faced man&mdash;with a blanched countenance.&nbsp;
+And as he drove me back, he ever and again glanced in over his shoulder
+through the little front window of his carriage, as mistrusting that
+I was a fare originally from a grave in the churchyard of Saint Ghastly
+Grim, who might have flitted home again without paying.</p>
+<p>Sometimes, the queer Hall of some queer Company gives upon a churchyard
+such as this, and, when the Livery dine, you may hear them (if you are
+looking in through the iron rails, which you never are when I am) toasting
+their own Worshipful prosperity.&nbsp; Sometimes, a wholesale house
+of business, requiring much room for stowage, will occupy one or two
+or even all three sides of the enclosing space, and the backs of bales
+of goods will lumber up the windows, as if they were holding some crowded
+trade-meeting of themselves within.&nbsp; Sometimes, the commanding
+windows are all blank, and show no more sign of life than the graves
+below&mdash;not so much, for <i>they</i> tell of what once upon a time
+was life undoubtedly.&nbsp; Such was the surrounding of one City churchyard
+that I saw last summer, on a Volunteering Saturday evening towards eight
+of the clock, when with astonishment I beheld an old old man and an
+old old woman in it, making hay.&nbsp; Yes, of all occupations in this
+world, making hay!&nbsp; It was a very confined patch of churchyard
+lying between Gracechurch-street and the Tower, capable of yielding,
+say an apronful of hay.&nbsp; By what means the old old man and woman
+had got into it, with an almost toothless hay-making rake, I could not
+fathom.&nbsp; No open window was within view; no window at all was within
+view, sufficiently near the ground to have enabled their old legs to
+descend from it; the rusty churchyard-gate was locked, the mouldy church
+was locked.&nbsp; Gravely among the graves, they made hay, all alone
+by themselves.&nbsp; They looked like Time and his wife.&nbsp; There
+was but the one rake between them, and they both had hold of it in a
+pastorally-loving manner, and there was hay on the old woman&rsquo;s
+black bonnet, as if the old man had recently been playful.&nbsp; The
+old man was quite an obsolete old man, in knee-breeches and coarse grey
+stockings, and the old woman wore mittens like unto his stockings in
+texture and in colour.&nbsp; They took no heed of me as I looked on,
+unable to account for them.&nbsp; The old woman was much too bright
+for a pew-opener, the old man much too meek for a beadle.&nbsp; On an
+old tombstone in the foreground between me and them, were two cherubim;
+but for those celestial embellishments being represented as having no
+possible use for knee-breeches, stockings, or mittens, I should have
+compared them with the hay-makers, and sought a likeness.&nbsp; I coughed
+and awoke the echoes, but the hay-makers never looked at me.&nbsp; They
+used the rake with a measured action, drawing the scanty crop towards
+them; and so I was fain to leave them under three yards and a half of
+darkening sky, gravely making hay among the graves, all alone by themselves.&nbsp;
+Perhaps they were Spectres, and I wanted a Medium.</p>
+<p>In another City churchyard of similar cramped dimensions, I saw,
+that selfsame summer, two comfortable charity children.&nbsp; They were
+making love&mdash;tremendous proof of the vigour of that immortal article,
+for they were in the graceful uniform under which English Charity delights
+to hide herself&mdash;and they were overgrown, and their legs (his legs
+at least, for I am modestly incompetent to speak of hers) were as much
+in the wrong as mere passive weakness of character can render legs.&nbsp;
+O it was a leaden churchyard, but no doubt a golden ground to those
+young persons!&nbsp; I first saw them on a Saturday evening, and, perceiving
+from their occupation that Saturday evening was their trysting-time,
+I returned that evening se&rsquo;nnight, and renewed the contemplation
+of them.&nbsp; They came there to shake the bits of matting which were
+spread in the church aisles, and they afterwards rolled them up, he
+rolling his end, she rolling hers, until they met, and over the two
+once divided now united rolls&mdash;sweet emblem!&mdash;gave and received
+a chaste salute.&nbsp; It was so refreshing to find one of my faded
+churchyards blooming into flower thus, that I returned a second time,
+and a third, and ultimately this befell:- They had left the church door
+open, in their dusting and arranging.&nbsp; Walking in to look at the
+church, I became aware, by the dim light, of him in the pulpit, of her
+in the reading-desk, of him looking down, of her looking up, exchanging
+tender discourse.&nbsp; Immediately both dived, and became as it were
+non-existent on this sphere.&nbsp; With an assumption of innocence I
+turned to leave the sacred edifice, when an obese form stood in the
+portal, puffily demanding Joseph, or in default of Joseph, Celia.&nbsp;
+Taking this monster by the sleeve, and luring him forth on pretence
+of showing him whom he sought, I gave time for the emergence of Joseph
+and Celia, who presently came towards us in the churchyard, bending
+under dusty matting, a picture of thriving and unconscious industry.&nbsp;
+It would be superfluous to hint that I have ever since deemed this the
+proudest passage in my life.</p>
+<p>But such instances, or any tokens of vitality, are rare indeed in
+my City churchyards.&nbsp; A few sparrows occasionally try to raise
+a lively chirrup in their solitary tree&mdash;perhaps, as taking a different
+view of worms from that entertained by humanity&mdash;but they are flat
+and hoarse of voice, like the clerk, the organ, the bell, the clergyman,
+and all the rest of the Church-works when they are wound up for Sunday.&nbsp;
+Caged larks, thrushes, or blackbirds, hanging in neighbouring courts,
+pour forth their strains passionately, as scenting the tree, trying
+to break out, and see leaves again before they die, but their song is
+Willow, Willow&mdash;of a churchyard cast.&nbsp; So little light lives
+inside the churches of my churchyards, when the two are co-existent,
+that it is often only by an accident and after long acquaintance that
+I discover their having stained glass in some odd window.&nbsp; The
+westering sun slants into the churchyard by some unwonted entry, a few
+prismatic tears drop on an old tombstone, and a window that I thought
+was only dirty, is for the moment all bejewelled.&nbsp; Then the light
+passes and the colours die.&nbsp; Though even then, if there be room
+enough for me to fall back so far as that I can gaze up to the top of
+the Church Tower, I see the rusty vane new burnished, and seeming to
+look out with a joyful flash over the sea of smoke at the distant shore
+of country.</p>
+<p>Blinking old men who are let out of workhouses by the hour, have
+a tendency to sit on bits of coping stone in these churchyards, leaning
+with both hands on their sticks and asthmatically gasping.&nbsp; The
+more depressed class of beggars too, bring hither broken meats, and
+munch.&nbsp; I am on nodding terms with a meditative turncock who lingers
+in one of them, and whom I suspect of a turn for poetry; the rather,
+as he looks out of temper when he gives the fire-plug a disparaging
+wrench with that large tuning-fork of his which would wear out the shoulder
+of his coat, but for a precautionary piece of inlaid leather.&nbsp;
+Fire-ladders, which I am satisfied nobody knows anything about, and
+the keys of which were lost in ancient times, moulder away in the larger
+churchyards, under eaves like wooden eyebrows; and so removed are those
+corners from the haunts of men and boys, that once on a fifth of November
+I found a &lsquo;Guy&rsquo; trusted to take care of himself there, while
+his proprietors had gone to dinner.&nbsp; Of the expression of his face
+I cannot report, because it was turned to the wall; but his shrugged
+shoulders and his ten extended fingers, appeared to denote that he had
+moralised in his little straw chair on the mystery of mortality until
+he gave it up as a bad job.</p>
+<p>You do not come upon these churchyards violently; there are shapes
+of transition in the neighbourhood.&nbsp; An antiquated news shop, or
+barber&rsquo;s shop, apparently bereft of customers in the earlier days
+of George the Third, would warn me to look out for one, if any discoveries
+in this respect were left for me to make.&nbsp; A very quiet court,
+in combination with an unaccountable dyer&rsquo;s and scourer&rsquo;s,
+would prepare me for a churchyard.&nbsp; An exceedingly retiring public-house,
+with a bagatelle-board shadily visible in a sawdusty parlour shaped
+like an omnibus, and with a shelf of punch-bowls in the bar, would apprise
+me that I stood near consecrated ground.&nbsp; A &lsquo;Dairy,&rsquo;
+exhibiting in its modest window one very little milk-can and three eggs,
+would suggest to me the certainty of finding the poultry hard by, pecking
+at my forefathers.&nbsp; I first inferred the vicinity of Saint Ghastly
+Grim, from a certain air of extra repose and gloom pervading a vast
+stack of warehouses.</p>
+<p>From the hush of these places, it is congenial to pass into the hushed
+resorts of business.&nbsp; Down the lanes I like to see the carts and
+waggons huddled together in repose, the cranes idle, and the warehouses
+shut.&nbsp; Pausing in the alleys behind the closed Banks of mighty
+Lombard-street, it gives one as good as a rich feeling to think of the
+broad counters with a rim along the edge, made for telling money out
+on, the scales for weighing precious metals, the ponderous ledgers,
+and, above all, the bright copper shovels for shovelling gold.&nbsp;
+When I draw money, it never seems so much money as when it is shovelled
+at me out of a bright copper shovel.&nbsp; I like to say, &lsquo;In
+gold,&rsquo; and to see seven pounds musically pouring out of the shovel,
+like seventy; the Bank appearing to remark to me&mdash;I italicise <i>appearing&mdash;</i>&lsquo;if
+you want more of this yellow earth, we keep it in barrows at your service.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+To think of the banker&rsquo;s clerk with his deft finger turning the
+crisp edges of the Hundred-Pound Notes he has taken in a fat roll out
+of a drawer, is again to hear the rustling of that delicious south-cash
+wind.&nbsp; &lsquo;How will you have it?&rsquo;&nbsp; I once heard this
+usual question asked at a Bank Counter of an elderly female, habited
+in mourning and steeped in simplicity, who answered, open-eyed, crook-fingered,
+laughing with expectation, &lsquo;Anyhow!&rsquo;&nbsp; Calling these
+things to mind as I stroll among the Banks, I wonder whether the other
+solitary Sunday man I pass, has designs upon the Banks.&nbsp; For the
+interest and mystery of the matter, I almost hope he may have, and that
+his confederate may be at this moment taking impressions of the keys
+of the iron closets in wax, and that a delightful robbery may be in
+course of transaction.&nbsp; About College-hill, Mark-lane, and so on
+towards the Tower, and Dockward, the deserted wine-merchants&rsquo;
+cellars are fine subjects for consideration; but the deserted money-cellars
+of the Bankers, and their plate-cellars, and their jewel-cellars, what
+subterranean regions of the Wonderful Lamp are these!&nbsp; And again:
+possibly some shoeless boy in rags, passed through this street yesterday,
+for whom it is reserved to be a Banker in the fulness of time, and to
+be surpassing rich.&nbsp; Such reverses have been, since the days of
+Whittington; and were, long before.&nbsp; I want to know whether the
+boy has any foreglittering of that glittering fortune now, when he treads
+these stones, hungry.&nbsp; Much as I also want to know whether the
+next man to be hanged at Newgate yonder, had any suspicion upon him
+that he was moving steadily towards that fate, when he talked so much
+about the last man who paid the same great debt at the same small Debtors&rsquo;
+Door.</p>
+<p>Where are all the people who on busy working-days pervade these scenes?&nbsp;
+The locomotive banker&rsquo;s clerk, who carries a black portfolio chained
+to him by a chain of steel, where is he?&nbsp; Does he go to bed with
+his chain on&mdash;to church with his chain on&mdash;or does he lay
+it by?&nbsp; And if he lays it by, what becomes of his portfolio when
+he is unchained for a holiday?&nbsp; The wastepaper baskets of these
+closed counting-houses would let me into many hints of business matters
+if I had the exploration of them; and what secrets of the heart should
+I discover on the &lsquo;pads&rsquo; of the young clerks&mdash;the sheets
+of cartridge-paper and blotting-paper interposed between their writing
+and their desks!&nbsp; Pads are taken into confidence on the tenderest
+occasions, and oftentimes when I have made a business visit, and have
+sent in my name from the outer office, have I had it forced on my discursive
+notice that the officiating young gentleman has over and over again
+inscribed AMELIA, in ink of various dates, on corners of his pad.&nbsp;
+Indeed, the pad may be regarded as the legitimate modern successor of
+the old forest-tree: whereon these young knights (having no attainable
+forest nearer than Epping) engrave the names of their mistresses.&nbsp;
+After all, it is a more satisfactory process than carving, and can be
+oftener repeated.&nbsp; So these courts in their Sunday rest are courts
+of Love Omnipotent (I rejoice to bethink myself), dry as they look.&nbsp;
+And here is Garraway&rsquo;s, bolted and shuttered hard and fast!&nbsp;
+It is possible to imagine the man who cuts the sandwiches, on his back
+in a hayfield; it is possible to imagine his desk, like the desk of
+a clerk at church, without him; but imagination is unable to pursue
+the men who wait at Garraway&rsquo;s all the week for the men who never
+come.&nbsp; When they are forcibly put out of Garraway&rsquo;s on Saturday
+night&mdash;which they must be, for they never would go out of their
+own accord&mdash;where do they vanish until Monday morning?&nbsp; On
+the first Sunday that I ever strayed here, I expected to find them hovering
+about these lanes, like restless ghosts, and trying to peep into Garraway&rsquo;s
+through chinks in the shutters, if not endeavouring to turn the lock
+of the door with false keys, picks, and screw-drivers.&nbsp; But the
+wonder is, that they go clean away!&nbsp; And now I think of it, the
+wonder is, that every working-day pervader of these scenes goes clean
+away.&nbsp; The man who sells the dogs&rsquo; collars and the little
+toy coal-scuttles, feels under as great an obligation to go afar off,
+as Glyn and Co., or Smith, Payne, and Smith.&nbsp; There is an old monastery-crypt
+under Garraway&rsquo;s (I have been in it among the port wine), and
+perhaps Garraway&rsquo;s, taking pity on the mouldy men who wait in
+its public-room all their lives, gives them cool house-room down there
+over Sundays; but the catacombs of Paris would not be large enough to
+hold the rest of the missing.&nbsp; This characteristic of London City
+greatly helps its being the quaint place it is in the weekly pause of
+business, and greatly helps my Sunday sensation in it of being the Last
+Man.&nbsp; In my solitude, the ticket-porters being all gone with the
+rest, I venture to breathe to the quiet bricks and stones my confidential
+wonderment why a ticket-porter, who never does any work with his hands,
+is bound to wear a white apron, and why a great Ecclesiastical Dignitary,
+who never does any work with his hands either, is equally bound to wear
+a black one.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIV&mdash;AN OLD STAGE-COACHING HOUSE</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Before the waitress had shut the door, I had forgotten how many stage-coaches
+she said used to change horses in the town every day.&nbsp; But it was
+of little moment; any high number would do as well as another.&nbsp;
+It had been a great stage-coaching town in the great stage-coaching
+times, and the ruthless railways had killed and buried it.</p>
+<p>The sign of the house was the Dolphin&rsquo;s Head.&nbsp; Why only
+head, I don&rsquo;t know; for the Dolphin&rsquo;s effigy at full length,
+and upside down&mdash;as a Dolphin is always bound to be when artistically
+treated, though I suppose he is sometimes right side upward in his natural
+condition&mdash;graced the sign-board.&nbsp; The sign-board chafed its
+rusty hooks outside the bow-window of my room, and was a shabby work.&nbsp;
+No visitor could have denied that the Dolphin was dying by inches, but
+he showed no bright colours.&nbsp; He had once served another master;
+there was a newer streak of paint below him, displaying with inconsistent
+freshness the legend, By J. MELLOWS.</p>
+<p>My door opened again, and J. Mellows&rsquo;s representative came
+back.&nbsp; I had asked her what I could have for dinner, and she now
+returned with the counter question, what would I like?&nbsp; As the
+Dolphin stood possessed of nothing that I do like, I was fain to yield
+to the suggestion of a duck, which I don&rsquo;t like.&nbsp; J. Mellows&rsquo;s
+representative was a mournful young woman with eye susceptible of guidance,
+and one uncontrollable eye; which latter, seeming to wander in quest
+of stage-coaches, deepened the melancholy in which the Dolphin was steeped.</p>
+<p>This young woman had but shut the door on retiring again when I bethought
+me of adding to my order, the words, &lsquo;with nice vegetables.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Looking out at the door to give them emphatic utterance, I found her
+already in a state of pensive catalepsy in the deserted gallery, picking
+her teeth with a pin.</p>
+<p>At the Railway Station seven miles off, I had been the subject of
+wonder when I ordered a fly in which to come here.&nbsp; And when I
+gave the direction &lsquo;To the Dolphin&rsquo;s Head,&rsquo; I had
+observed an ominous stare on the countenance of the strong young man
+in velveteen, who was the platform servant of the Company.&nbsp; He
+had also called to my driver at parting, &lsquo;All ri-ight!&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t
+hang yourself when you get there, Geo-o-rge!&rsquo; in a sarcastic tone,
+for which I had entertained some transitory thoughts of reporting him
+to the General Manager.</p>
+<p>I had no business in the town&mdash;I never have any business in
+any town&mdash;but I had been caught by the fancy that I would come
+and look at it in its degeneracy.&nbsp; My purpose was fitly inaugurated
+by the Dolphin&rsquo;s Head, which everywhere expressed past coachfulness
+and present coachlessness.&nbsp; Coloured prints of coaches, starting,
+arriving, changing horses, coaches in the sunshine, coaches in the snow,
+coaches in the wind, coaches in the mist and rain, coaches on the King&rsquo;s
+birthday, coaches in all circumstances compatible with their triumph
+and victory, but never in the act of breaking down or overturning, pervaded
+the house.&nbsp; Of these works of art, some, framed and not glazed,
+had holes in them; the varnish of others had become so brown and cracked,
+that they looked like overdone pie-crust; the designs of others were
+almost obliterated by the flies of many summers.&nbsp; Broken glasses,
+damaged frames, lop-sided hanging, and consignment of incurable cripples
+to places of refuge in dark corners, attested the desolation of the
+rest.&nbsp; The old room on the ground floor where the passengers of
+the Highflyer used to dine, had nothing in it but a wretched show of
+twigs and flower-pots in the broad window to hide the nakedness of the
+land, and in a corner little Mellows&rsquo;s perambulator, with even
+its parasol-head turned despondently to the wall.&nbsp; The other room,
+where post-horse company used to wait while relays were getting ready
+down the yard, still held its ground, but was as airless as I conceive
+a hearse to be: insomuch that Mr. Pitt, hanging high against the partition
+(with spots on him like port wine, though it is mysterious how port
+wine ever got squirted up there), had good reason for perking his nose
+and sniffing.&nbsp; The stopperless cruets on the spindle-shanked sideboard
+were in a miserably dejected state: the anchovy sauce having turned
+blue some years ago, and the cayenne pepper (with a scoop in it like
+a small model of a wooden leg) having turned solid.&nbsp; The old fraudulent
+candles which were always being paid for and never used, were burnt
+out at last; but their tall stilts of candlesticks still lingered, and
+still outraged the human intellect by pretending to be silver.&nbsp;
+The mouldy old unreformed Borough Member, with his right hand buttoned
+up in the breast of his coat, and his back characteristically turned
+on bales of petitions from his constituents, was there too; and the
+poker which never had been among the fire-irons, lest post-horse company
+should overstir the fire, was <i>not</i> there, as of old.</p>
+<p>Pursuing my researches in the Dolphin&rsquo;s Head, I found it sorely
+shrunken.&nbsp; When J. Mellows came into possession, he had walled
+off half the bar, which was now a tobacco-shop with its own entrance
+in the yard&mdash;the once glorious yard where the postboys, whip in
+hand and always buttoning their waistcoats at the last moment, used
+to come running forth to mount and away.&nbsp; A &lsquo;Scientific Shoeing&mdash;Smith
+and Veterinary Surgeon,&rsquo; had further encroached upon the yard;
+and a grimly satirical jobber, who announced himself as having to Let
+&lsquo;A neat one-horse fly, and a one-horse cart,&rsquo; had established
+his business, himself, and his family, in a part of the extensive stables.&nbsp;
+Another part was lopped clean off from the Dolphin&rsquo;s Head, and
+now comprised a chapel, a wheelwright&rsquo;s, and a Young Men&rsquo;s
+Mutual Improvement and Discussion Society (in a loft): the whole forming
+a back lane.&nbsp; No audacious hand had plucked down the vane from
+the central cupola of the stables, but it had grown rusty and stuck
+at N-Nil: while the score or two of pigeons that remained true to their
+ancestral traditions and the place, had collected in a row on the roof-ridge
+of the only outhouse retained by the Dolphin, where all the inside pigeons
+tried to push the outside pigeon off.&nbsp; This I accepted as emblematical
+of the struggle for post and place in railway times.</p>
+<p>Sauntering forth into the town, by way of the covered and pillared
+entrance to the Dolphin&rsquo;s Yard, once redolent of soup and stable-litter,
+now redolent of musty disuse, I paced the street.&nbsp; It was a hot
+day, and the little sun-blinds of the shops were all drawn down, and
+the more enterprising tradesmen had caused their &rsquo;Prentices to
+trickle water on the pavement appertaining to their frontage.&nbsp;
+It looked as if they had been shedding tears for the stage-coaches,
+and drying their ineffectual pocket-handkerchiefs.&nbsp; Such weakness
+would have been excusable; for business was&mdash;as one dejected porkman
+who kept a shop which refused to reciprocate the compliment by keeping
+him, informed me&mdash;&lsquo;bitter bad.&rsquo;&nbsp; Most of the harness-makers
+and corn-dealers were gone the way of the coaches, but it was a pleasant
+recognition of the eternal procession of Children down that old original
+steep Incline, the Valley of the Shadow, that those tradesmen were mostly
+succeeded by vendors of sweetmeats and cheap toys.&nbsp; The opposition
+house to the Dolphin, once famous as the New White Hart, had long collapsed.&nbsp;
+In a fit of abject depression, it had cast whitewash on its windows,
+and boarded up its front door, and reduced itself to a side entrance;
+but even that had proved a world too wide for the Literary Institution
+which had been its last phase; for the Institution had collapsed too,
+and of the ambitious letters of its inscription on the White Hart&rsquo;s
+front, all had fallen off but these:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>L&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Y&nbsp;  INS&nbsp; &nbsp; T</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>- suggestive of Lamentably Insolvent.&nbsp; As to the neighbouring
+market-place, it seemed to have wholly relinquished marketing, to the
+dealer in crockery whose pots and pans straggled half across it, and
+to the Cheap Jack who sat with folded arms on the shafts of his cart,
+superciliously gazing around; his velveteen waistcoat, evidently harbouring
+grave doubts whether it was worth his while to stay a night in such
+a place.</p>
+<p>The church bells began to ring as I left this spot, but they by no
+means improved the case, for they said, in a petulant way, and speaking
+with some difficulty in their irritation, WHAT&rsquo;S-be-come-of-THE-coach-ES!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Nor would they (I found on listening) ever vary their emphasis, save
+in respect of growing more sharp and vexed, but invariably went on,
+&lsquo;WHAT&rsquo;S-be-come-of-THE-coach-ES!&rsquo;&mdash;always beginning
+the inquiry with an unpolite abruptness.&nbsp; Perhaps from their elevation
+they saw the railway, and it aggravated them.</p>
+<p>Coming upon a coachmaker&rsquo;s workshop, I began to look about
+me with a revived spirit, thinking that perchance I might behold there
+some remains of the old times of the town&rsquo;s greatness.&nbsp; There
+was only one man at work&mdash;a dry man, grizzled, and far advanced
+in years, but tall and upright, who, becoming aware of me looking on,
+straightened his back, pushed up his spectacles against his brown-paper
+cap, and appeared inclined to defy me.&nbsp; To whom I pacifically said:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Good day, sir!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What?&rsquo; said he.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Good day, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He seemed to consider about that, and not to agree with me.&mdash;&lsquo;Was
+you a looking for anything?&rsquo; he then asked, in a pointed manner.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I was wondering whether there happened to be any fragment
+of an old stage-coach here.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is that all?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That&rsquo;s all.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, there ain&rsquo;t.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>It was now my turn to say &lsquo;Oh!&rsquo; and I said it.&nbsp;
+Not another word did the dry and grizzled man say, but bent to his work
+again.&nbsp; In the coach-making days, the coach-painters had tried
+their brushes on a post beside him; and quite a Calendar of departed
+glories was to be read upon it, in blue and yellow and red and green,
+some inches thick.&nbsp; Presently he looked up again.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You seem to have a deal of time on your hands,&rsquo; was
+his querulous remark.</p>
+<p>I admitted the fact.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I think it&rsquo;s a pity you was not brought up to something,&rsquo;
+said he.</p>
+<p>I said I thought so too.</p>
+<p>Appearing to be informed with an idea, he laid down his plane (for
+it was a plane he was at work with), pushed up his spectacles again,
+and came to the door.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Would a po-shay do for you?&rsquo; he asked.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am not sure that I understand what you mean.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Would a po-shay,&rsquo; said the coachmaker, standing close
+before me, and folding his arms in the manner of a cross-examining counsel&mdash;&lsquo;would
+a po-shay meet the views you have expressed?&nbsp; Yes, or no?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Then you keep straight along down there till you see one.&nbsp;
+<i>You&rsquo;ll</i> see one if you go fur enough.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>With that, he turned me by the shoulder in the direction I was to
+take, and went in and resumed his work against a background of leaves
+and grapes.&nbsp; For, although he was a soured man and a discontented,
+his workshop was that agreeable mixture of town and country, street
+and garden, which is often to be seen in a small English town.</p>
+<p>I went the way he had turned me, and I came to the Beer-shop with
+the sign of The First and Last, and was out of the town on the old London
+road.&nbsp; I came to the Turnpike, and I found it, in its silent way,
+eloquent respecting the change that had fallen on the road.&nbsp; The
+Turnpike-house was all overgrown with ivy; and the Turnpike-keeper,
+unable to get a living out of the tolls, plied the trade of a cobbler.&nbsp;
+Not only that, but his wife sold ginger-beer, and, in the very window
+of espial through which the Toll-takers of old times used with awe to
+behold the grand London coaches coming on at a gallop, exhibited for
+sale little barber&rsquo;s-poles of sweetstuff in a sticky lantern.</p>
+<p>The political economy of the master of the turnpike thus expressed
+itself.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How goes turnpike business, master?&rsquo; said I to him,
+as he sat in his little porch, repairing a shoe.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It don&rsquo;t go at all, master,&rsquo; said he to me.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;It&rsquo;s stopped.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That&rsquo;s bad,&rsquo; said I.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Bad?&rsquo; he repeated.&nbsp; And he pointed to one of his
+sunburnt dusty children who was climbing the turnpike-gate, and said,
+extending his open right hand in remonstrance with Universal Nature.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Five on &rsquo;em!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But how to improve Turnpike business?&rsquo; said I.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There&rsquo;s a way, master,&rsquo; said he, with the air
+of one who had thought deeply on the subject.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I should like to know it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Lay a toll on everything as comes through; lay a toll on walkers.&nbsp;
+Lay another toll on everything as don&rsquo;t come through; lay a toll
+on them as stops at home.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Would the last remedy be fair?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Fair?&nbsp; Them as stops at home, could come through if they
+liked; couldn&rsquo;t they?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Say they could.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Toll &rsquo;em.&nbsp; If they don&rsquo;t come through, it&rsquo;s
+<i>their</i> look out.&nbsp; Anyways,&mdash;Toll &rsquo;em!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Finding it was as impossible to argue with this financial genius
+as if he had been Chancellor of the Exchequer, and consequently the
+right man in the right place, I passed on meekly.</p>
+<p>My mind now began to misgive me that the disappointed coach-maker
+had sent me on a wild-goose errand, and that there was no post-chaise
+in those parts.&nbsp; But coming within view of certain allotment-gardens
+by the roadside, I retracted the suspicion, and confessed that I had
+done him an injustice.&nbsp; For, there I saw, surely, the poorest superannuated
+post-chaise left on earth.</p>
+<p>It was a post-chaise taken off its axletree and wheels, and plumped
+down on the clayey soil among a ragged growth of vegetables.&nbsp; It
+was a post-chaise not even set straight upon the ground, but tilted
+over, as if it had fallen out of a balloon.&nbsp; It was a post-chaise
+that had been a long time in those decayed circumstances, and against
+which scarlet beans were trained.&nbsp; It was a post-chaise patched
+and mended with old tea-trays, or with scraps of iron that looked like
+them, and boarded up as to the windows, but having A KNOCKER on the
+off-side door.&nbsp; Whether it was a post-chaise used as tool-house,
+summer-house, or dwelling-house, I could not discover, for there was
+nobody at home at the post-chaise when I knocked, but it was certainly
+used for something, and locked up.&nbsp; In the wonder of this discovery,
+I walked round and round the post-chaise many times, and sat down by
+the post-chaise, waiting for further elucidation.&nbsp; None came.&nbsp;
+At last, I made my way back to the old London road by the further end
+of the allotment-gardens, and consequently at a point beyond that from
+which I had diverged.&nbsp; I had to scramble through a hedge and down
+a steep bank, and I nearly came down a-top of a little spare man who
+sat breaking stones by the roadside.</p>
+<p>He stayed his hammer, and said, regarding me mysteriously through
+his dark goggles of wire:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Are you aware, sir, that you&rsquo;ve been trespassing?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I turned out of the way,&rsquo; said I, in explanation, &lsquo;to
+look at that odd post-chaise.&nbsp; Do you happen to know anything about
+it?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I know it was many a year upon the road,&rsquo; said he.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;So I supposed.&nbsp; Do you know to whom it belongs?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The stone-breaker bent his brows and goggles over his heap of stones,
+as if he were considering whether he should answer the question or not.&nbsp;
+Then, raising his barred eyes to my features as before, he said:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;To me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Being quite unprepared for the reply, I received it with a sufficiently
+awkward &lsquo;Indeed!&nbsp; Dear me!&rsquo;&nbsp; Presently I added,
+&lsquo;Do you&mdash;&rsquo; I was going to say &lsquo;live there,&rsquo;
+but it seemed so absurd a question, that I substituted &lsquo;live near
+here?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The stone-breaker, who had not broken a fragment since we began to
+converse, then did as follows.&nbsp; He raised himself by poising his
+finger on his hammer, and took his coat, on which he had been seated,
+over his arm.&nbsp; He then backed to an easier part of the bank than
+that by which I had come down, keeping his dark goggles silently upon
+me all the time, and then shouldered his hammer, suddenly turned, ascended,
+and was gone.&nbsp; His face was so small, and his goggles were so large,
+that he left me wholly uninformed as to his countenance; but he left
+me a profound impression that the curved legs I had seen from behind
+as he vanished, were the legs of an old postboy.&nbsp; It was not until
+then that I noticed he had been working by a grass-grown milestone,
+which looked like a tombstone erected over the grave of the London road.</p>
+<p>My dinner-hour being close at hand, I had no leisure to pursue the
+goggles or the subject then, but made my way back to the Dolphin&rsquo;s
+Head.&nbsp; In the gateway I found J. Mellows, looking at nothing, and
+apparently experiencing that it failed to raise his spirits.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;<i>I</i> don&rsquo;t care for the town,&rsquo; said J. Mellows,
+when I complimented him on the sanitary advantages it may or may not
+possess; &lsquo;I wish I had never seen the town!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You don&rsquo;t belong to it, Mr. Mellows?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Belong to it!&rsquo; repeated Mellows.&nbsp; &lsquo;If I didn&rsquo;t
+belong to a better style of town than this, I&rsquo;d take and drown
+myself in a pail.&rsquo;&nbsp; It then occurred to me that Mellows,
+having so little to do, was habitually thrown back on his internal resources&mdash;by
+which I mean the Dolphin&rsquo;s cellar.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What we want,&rsquo; said Mellows, pulling off his hat, and
+making as if he emptied it of the last load of Disgust that had exuded
+from his brain, before he put it on again for another load; &lsquo;what
+we want, is a Branch.&nbsp; The Petition for the Branch Bill is in the
+coffee-room.&nbsp; Would you put your name to it?&nbsp; Every little
+helps.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I found the document in question stretched out flat on the coffee-room
+table by the aid of certain weights from the kitchen, and I gave it
+the additional weight of my uncommercial signature.&nbsp; To the best
+of my belief, I bound myself to the modest statement that universal
+traffic, happiness, prosperity, and civilisation, together with unbounded
+national triumph in competition with the foreigner, would infallibly
+flow from the Branch.</p>
+<p>Having achieved this constitutional feat, I asked Mr. Mellows if
+he could grace my dinner with a pint of good wine?&nbsp; Mr. Mellows
+thus replied.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If I couldn&rsquo;t give you a pint of good wine, I&rsquo;d&mdash;there!&mdash;I&rsquo;d
+take and drown myself in a pail.&nbsp; But I was deceived when I bought
+this business, and the stock was higgledy-piggledy, and I haven&rsquo;t
+yet tasted my way quite through it with a view to sorting it.&nbsp;
+Therefore, if you order one kind and get another, change till it comes
+right.&nbsp; For what,&rsquo; said Mellows, unloading his hat as before,
+&lsquo;what would you or any gentleman do, if you ordered one kind of
+wine and was required to drink another?&nbsp; Why, you&rsquo;d (and
+naturally and properly, having the feelings of a gentleman), you&rsquo;d
+take and drown yourself in a pail!&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXV&mdash;THE BOILED BEEF OF NEW ENGLAND</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The shabbiness of our English capital, as compared with Paris, Bordeaux,
+Frankfort, Milan, Geneva&mdash;almost any important town on the continent
+of Europe&mdash;I find very striking after an absence of any duration
+in foreign parts.&nbsp; London is shabby in contrast with Edinburgh,
+with Aberdeen, with Exeter, with Liverpool, with a bright little town
+like Bury St. Edmunds.&nbsp; London is shabby in contrast with New York,
+with Boston, with Philadelphia.&nbsp; In detail, one would say it can
+rarely fail to be a disappointing piece of shabbiness, to a stranger
+from any of those places.&nbsp; There is nothing shabbier than Drury-lane,
+in Rome itself.&nbsp; The meanness of Regent-street, set against the
+great line of Boulevards in Paris, is as striking as the abortive ugliness
+of Trafalgar-square, set against the gallant beauty of the Place de
+la Concorde.&nbsp; London is shabby by daylight, and shabbier by gaslight.&nbsp;
+No Englishman knows what gaslight is, until he sees the Rue de Rivoli
+and the Palais Royal after dark.</p>
+<p>The mass of London people are shabby.&nbsp; The absence of distinctive
+dress has, no doubt, something to do with it.&nbsp; The porters of the
+Vintners&rsquo; Company, the draymen, and the butchers, are about the
+only people who wear distinctive dresses; and even these do not wear
+them on holidays.&nbsp; We have nothing which for cheapness, cleanliness,
+convenience, or picturesqueness, can compare with the belted blouse.&nbsp;
+As to our women;&mdash;next Easter or Whitsuntide, look at the bonnets
+at the British Museum or the National Gallery, and think of the pretty
+white French cap, the Spanish mantilla, or the Genoese mezzero.</p>
+<p>Probably there are not more second-hand clothes sold in London than
+in Paris, and yet the mass of the London population have a second-hand
+look which is not to be detected on the mass of the Parisian population.&nbsp;
+I think this is mainly because a Parisian workman does not in the least
+trouble himself about what is worn by a Parisian idler, but dresses
+in the way of his own class, and for his own comfort.&nbsp; In London,
+on the contrary, the fashions descend; and you never fully know how
+inconvenient or ridiculous a fashion is, until you see it in its last
+descent.&nbsp; It was but the other day, on a race-course, that I observed
+four people in a barouche deriving great entertainment from the contemplation
+of four people on foot.&nbsp; The four people on foot were two young
+men and two young women; the four people in the barouche were two young
+men and two young women.&nbsp; The four young women were dressed in
+exactly the same style; the four young men were dressed in exactly the
+same style.&nbsp; Yet the two couples on wheels were as much amused
+by the two couples on foot, as if they were quite unconscious of having
+themselves set those fashions, or of being at that very moment engaged
+in the display of them.</p>
+<p>Is it only in the matter of clothes that fashion descends here in
+London&mdash;and consequently in England&mdash;and thence shabbiness
+arises?&nbsp; Let us think a little, and be just.&nbsp; The &lsquo;Black
+Country&rsquo; round about Birmingham, is a very black country; but
+is it quite as black as it has been lately painted?&nbsp; An appalling
+accident happened at the People&rsquo;s Park near Birmingham, this last
+July, when it was crowded with people from the Black Country&mdash;an
+appalling accident consequent on a shamefully dangerous exhibition.&nbsp;
+Did the shamefully dangerous exhibition originate in the moral blackness
+of the Black Country, and in the Black People&rsquo;s peculiar love
+of the excitement attendant on great personal hazard, which they looked
+on at, but in which they did not participate?&nbsp; Light is much wanted
+in the Black Country.&nbsp; O we are all agreed on that.&nbsp; But,
+we must not quite forget the crowds of gentlefolks who set the shamefully
+dangerous fashion, either.&nbsp; We must not quite forget the enterprising
+Directors of an Institution vaunting mighty educational pretences, who
+made the low sensation as strong as they possibly could make it, by
+hanging the Blondin rope as high as they possibly could hang it.&nbsp;
+All this must not be eclipsed in the Blackness of the Black Country.&nbsp;
+The reserved seats high up by the rope, the cleared space below it,
+so that no one should be smashed but the performer, the pretence of
+slipping and falling off, the baskets for the feet and the sack for
+the head, the photographs everywhere, and the virtuous indignation nowhere&mdash;all
+this must not be wholly swallowed up in the blackness of the jet-black
+country.</p>
+<p>Whatsoever fashion is set in England, is certain to descend.&nbsp;
+This is a text for a perpetual sermon on care in setting fashions.&nbsp;
+When you find a fashion low down, look back for the time (it will never
+be far off) when it was the fashion high up.&nbsp; This is the text
+for a perpetual sermon on social justice.&nbsp; From imitations of Ethiopian
+Serenaders, to imitations of Prince&rsquo;s coats and waistcoats, you
+will find the original model in St. James&rsquo;s Parish.&nbsp; When
+the Serenaders become tiresome, trace them beyond the Black Country;
+when the coats and waistcoats become insupportable, refer them to their
+source in the Upper Toady Regions.</p>
+<p>Gentlemen&rsquo;s clubs were once maintained for purposes of savage
+party warfare; working men&rsquo;s clubs of the same day assumed the
+same character.&nbsp; Gentlemen&rsquo;s clubs became places of quiet
+inoffensive recreation; working men&rsquo;s clubs began to follow suit.&nbsp;
+If working men have seemed rather slow to appreciate advantages of combination
+which have saved the pockets of gentlemen, and enhanced their comforts,
+it is because working men could scarcely, for want of capital, originate
+such combinations without help; and because help has not been separable
+from that great impertinence, Patronage.&nbsp; The instinctive revolt
+of his spirit against patronage, is a quality much to be respected in
+the English working man.&nbsp; It is the base of the base of his best
+qualities.&nbsp; Nor is it surprising that he should be unduly suspicious
+of patronage, and sometimes resentful of it even where it is not, seeing
+what a flood of washy talk has been let loose on his devoted head, or
+with what complacent condescension the same devoted head has been smoothed
+and patted.&nbsp; It is a proof to me of his self-control that he never
+strikes out pugilistically, right and left, when addressed as one of
+&lsquo;My friends,&rsquo; or &lsquo;My assembled friends;&rsquo; that
+he does not become inappeasable, and run amuck like a Malay, whenever
+he sees a biped in broadcloth getting on a platform to talk to him;
+that any pretence of improving his mind, does not instantly drive him
+out of his mind, and cause him to toss his obliging patron like a mad
+bull.</p>
+<p>For, how often have I heard the unfortunate working man lectured,
+as if he were a little charity-child, humid as to his nasal development,
+strictly literal as to his Catechism, and called by Providence to walk
+all his days in a station in life represented on festive occasions by
+a mug of warm milk-and-water and a bun!&nbsp; What popguns of jokes
+have these ears tingled to hear let off at him, what asinine sentiments,
+what impotent conclusions, what spelling-book moralities, what adaptations
+of the orator&rsquo;s insufferable tediousness to the assumed level
+of his understanding!&nbsp; If his sledge-hammers, his spades and pick-axes,
+his saws and chisels, his paint-pots and brushes, his forges, furnaces,
+and engines, the horses that he drove at his work, and the machines
+that drove him at his work, were all toys in one little paper box, and
+he the baby who played with them, he could not have been discoursed
+to, more impertinently and absurdly than I have heard him discoursed
+to times innumerable.&nbsp; Consequently, not being a fool or a fawner,
+he has come to acknowledge his patronage by virtually saying: &lsquo;Let
+me alone.&nbsp; If you understand me no better than <i>that</i>, sir
+and madam, let me alone.&nbsp; You mean very well, I dare say, but I
+don&rsquo;t like it, and I won&rsquo;t come here again to have any more
+of it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Whatever is done for the comfort and advancement of the working man
+must be so far done by himself as that it is maintained by himself.&nbsp;
+And there must be in it no touch of condescension, no shadow of patronage.&nbsp;
+In the great working districts, this truth is studied and understood.&nbsp;
+When the American civil war rendered it necessary, first in Glasgow,
+and afterwards in Manchester, that the working people should be shown
+how to avail themselves of the advantages derivable from system, and
+from the combination of numbers, in the purchase and the cooking of
+their food, this truth was above all things borne in mind.&nbsp; The
+quick consequence was, that suspicion and reluctance were vanquished,
+and that the effort resulted in an astonishing and a complete success.</p>
+<p>Such thoughts passed through my mind on a July morning of this summer,
+as I walked towards Commercial Street (not Uncommercial Street), Whitechapel.&nbsp;
+The Glasgow and Manchester system had been lately set a-going there,
+by certain gentlemen who felt an interest in its diffusion, and I had
+been attracted by the following hand-bill printed on rose-coloured paper:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>SELF-SUPPORTING<br />COOKING DEP&Ocirc;T<br />FOR THE WORKING CLASSES</p>
+<p>Commercial-street, Whitechapel,<br />Where Accommodation is provided
+for Dining comfortably<br />300 Persons at a time.</p>
+<p>Open from 7 A.M. till 7 P.M.</p>
+<p>PRICES.</p>
+<p>All Articles of the BEST QUALITY.</p>
+<pre>Cup of Tea or Coffee&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  One Penny
+Bread and Butter&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  One Penny
+Bread and Cheese&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  One Penny
+Slice of bread&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  One half-penny or
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;One Penny
+Boiled Egg&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  One Penny
+Ginger Beer&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; One Penny</pre>
+<p>The above Articles always ready.</p>
+<p>Besides the above may be had, from 12 to 3 o&rsquo;clock,</p>
+<pre>Bowl of Scotch Broth&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  One Penny
+Bowl of Soup&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  One Penny
+Plate of Potatoes&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; One Penny
+Plate of Minced Beef&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  Twopence
+Plate of Cold Beef&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  Twopence
+Plate of Cold Ham&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Twopence
+Plate of Plum Pudding or Rice&nbsp; One Penny</pre>
+<p>As the Economy of Cooking depends greatly upon the simplicity of
+the arrangements with which a great number of persons can be served
+at one time, the Upper Room of this Establishment will be especially
+set apart for a</p>
+<p>PUBLIC DINNER EVERY DAY</p>
+<p>From 12 till 3 o&rsquo;clock,</p>
+<p><i>Consisting of the following Dishes:</i></p>
+<p>Bowl of Broth, or Soup,<br />Plate of Cold Beef or Ham,<br />Plate
+of Potatoes,<br />Plum Pudding, or Rice.</p>
+<p>FIXED CHARGE 4.5<i>d</i>.</p>
+<p>THE DAILY PAPERS PROVIDED.</p>
+<p>N.B.&mdash;This Establishment is conducted on the strictest business
+principles, with the full intention of making it self-supporting, so
+that every one may frequent it with a feeling of perfect independence.</p>
+<p>The assistance of all frequenting the Dep&ocirc;t is confidently
+expected in checking anything interfering with the comfort, quiet, and
+regularity of the establishment.</p>
+<p>Please do not destroy this Hand Bill, but hand it to some other person
+whom it may interest.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The Self-Supporting Cooking Dep&ocirc;t (not a very good name, and
+one would rather give it an English one) had hired a newly-built warehouse
+that it found to let; therefore it was not established in premises specially
+designed for the purpose.&nbsp; But, at a small cost they were exceedingly
+well adapted to the purpose: being light, well ventilated, clean, and
+cheerful.&nbsp; They consisted of three large rooms.&nbsp; That on the
+basement story was the kitchen; that on the ground floor was the general
+dining-room; that on the floor above was the Upper Room referred to
+in the hand-bill, where the Public Dinner at fourpence-halfpenny a head
+was provided every day.&nbsp; The cooking was done, with much economy
+of space and fuel, by American cooking-stoves, and by young women not
+previously, brought up as cooks; the walls and pillars of the two dining-rooms
+were agreeably brightened with ornamental colours; the tables were capable
+of accommodating six or eight persons each; the attendants were all
+young women, becomingly and neatly dressed, and dressed alike.&nbsp;
+I think the whole staff was female, with the exception of the steward
+or manager.</p>
+<p>My first inquiries were directed to the wages of this staff; because,
+if any establishment claiming to be self-supporting, live upon the spoliation
+of anybody or anything, or eke out a feeble existence by poor mouths
+and beggarly resources (as too many so-called Mechanics&rsquo; Institutions
+do), I make bold to express my Uncommercial opinion that it has no business
+to live, and had better die.&nbsp; It was made clear to me by the account
+books, that every person employed was properly paid.&nbsp; My next inquiries
+were directed to the quality of the provisions purchased, and to the
+terms on which they were bought.&nbsp; It was made equally clear to
+me that the quality was the very best, and that all bills were paid
+weekly.&nbsp; My next inquiries were directed to the balance-sheet for
+the last two weeks&mdash;only the third and fourth of the establishment&rsquo;s
+career.&nbsp; It was made equally clear to me, that after everything
+bought was paid for, and after each week was charged with its full share
+of wages, rent and taxes, depreciation of plant in use, and interest
+on capital at the rate of four per cent. per annum, the last week had
+yielded a profit of (in round numbers) one pound ten; and the previous
+week a profit of six pounds ten.&nbsp; By this time I felt that I had
+a healthy appetite for the dinners.</p>
+<p>It had just struck twelve, and a quick succession of faces had already
+begun to appear at a little window in the wall of the partitioned space
+where I sat looking over the books.&nbsp; Within this little window,
+like a pay-box at a theatre, a neat and brisk young woman presided to
+take money and issue tickets.&nbsp; Every one coming in must take a
+ticket.&nbsp; Either the fourpence-halfpenny ticket for the upper room
+(the most popular ticket, I think), or a penny ticket for a bowl of
+soup, or as many penny tickets as he or she choose to buy.&nbsp; For
+three penny tickets one had quite a wide range of choice.&nbsp; A plate
+of cold boiled beef and potatoes; or a plate of cold ham and potatoes;
+or a plate of hot minced beef and potatoes; or a bowl of soup, bread
+and cheese, and a plate of plum-pudding.&nbsp; Touching what they should
+have, some customers on taking their seats fell into a reverie&mdash;became
+mildly distracted&mdash;postponed decision, and said in bewilderment,
+they would think of it.&nbsp; One old man I noticed when I sat among
+the tables in the lower room, who was startled by the bill of fare,
+and sat contemplating it as if it were something of a ghostly nature.&nbsp;
+The decision of the boys was as rapid as their execution, and always
+included pudding.</p>
+<p>There were several women among the diners, and several clerks and
+shopmen.&nbsp; There were carpenters and painters from the neighbouring
+buildings under repair, and there were nautical men, and there were,
+as one diner observed to me, &lsquo;some of most sorts.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Some were solitary, some came two together, some dined in parties of
+three or four, or six.&nbsp; The latter talked together, but assuredly
+no one was louder than at my club in Pall-Mall.&nbsp; One young fellow
+whistled in rather a shrill manner while he waited for his dinner, but
+I was gratified to observe that he did so in evident defiance of my
+Uncommercial individuality.&nbsp; Quite agreeing with him, on consideration,
+that I had no business to be there, unless I dined like the rest, &lsquo;I
+went in,&rsquo; as the phrase is, for fourpence-halfpenny.</p>
+<p>The room of the fourpence-halfpenny banquet had, like the lower room,
+a counter in it, on which were ranged a great number of cold portions
+ready for distribution.&nbsp; Behind this counter, the fragrant soup
+was steaming in deep cans, and the best-cooked of potatoes were fished
+out of similar receptacles.&nbsp; Nothing to eat was touched with his
+hand.&nbsp; Every waitress had her own tables to attend to.&nbsp; As
+soon as she saw a new customer seat himself at one of her tables, she
+took from the counter all his dinner&mdash;his soup, potatoes, meat,
+and pudding&mdash;piled it up dexterously in her two hands, set it before
+him, and took his ticket.&nbsp; This serving of the whole dinner at
+once, had been found greatly to simplify the business of attendance,
+and was also popular with the customers: who were thus enabled to vary
+the meal by varying the routine of dishes: beginning with soup-to-day,
+putting soup in the middle to-morrow, putting soup at the end the day
+after to-morrow, and ringing similar changes on meat and pudding.&nbsp;
+The rapidity with which every new-comer got served, was remarkable;
+and the dexterity with which the waitresses (quite new to the art a
+month before) discharged their duty, was as agreeable to see, as the
+neat smartness with which they wore their dress and had dressed their
+hair.</p>
+<p>If I seldom saw better waiting, so I certainly never ate better meat,
+potatoes, or pudding.&nbsp; And the soup was an honest and stout soup,
+with rice and barley in it, and &lsquo;little matters for the teeth
+to touch,&rsquo; as had been observed to me by my friend below stairs
+already quoted.&nbsp; The dinner-service, too, was neither conspicuously
+hideous for High Art nor for Low Art, but was of a pleasant and pure
+appearance.&nbsp; Concerning the viands and their cookery, one last
+remark.&nbsp; I dined at my club in Pall-Mall aforesaid, a few days
+afterwards, for exactly twelve times the money, and not half as well.</p>
+<p>The company thickened after one o&rsquo;clock struck, and changed
+pretty quickly.&nbsp; Although experience of the place had been so recently
+attainable, and although there was still considerable curiosity out
+in the street and about the entrance, the general tone was as good as
+could be, and the customers fell easily into the ways of the place.&nbsp;
+It was clear to me, however, that they were there to have what they
+paid for, and to be on an independent footing.&nbsp; To the best of
+my judgment, they might be patronised out of the building in a month.&nbsp;
+With judicious visiting, and by dint of being questioned, read to, and
+talked at, they might even be got rid of (for the next quarter of a
+century) in half the time.</p>
+<p>This disinterested and wise movement is fraught with so many wholesome
+changes in the lives of the working people, and with so much good in
+the way of overcoming that suspicion which our own unconscious impertinence
+has engendered, that it is scarcely gracious to criticise details as
+yet; the rather, because it is indisputable that the managers of the
+Whitechapel establishment most thoroughly feel that they are upon their
+honour with the customers, as to the minutest points of administration.&nbsp;
+But, although the American stoves cannot roast, they can surely boil
+one kind of meat as well as another, and need not always circumscribe
+their boiling talents within the limits of ham and beef.&nbsp; The most
+enthusiastic admirer of those substantials, would probably not object
+to occasional inconstancy in respect of pork and mutton: or, especially
+in cold weather, to a little innocent trifling with Irish stews, meat
+pies, and toads in holes.&nbsp; Another drawback on the Whitechapel
+establishment, is the absence of beer.&nbsp; Regarded merely as a question
+of policy, it is very impolitic, as having a tendency to send the working
+men to the public-house, where gin is reported to be sold.&nbsp; But,
+there is a much higher ground on which this absence of beer is objectionable.&nbsp;
+It expresses distrust of the working man.&nbsp; It is a fragment of
+that old mantle of patronage in which so many estimable Thugs, so darkly
+wandering up and down the moral world, are sworn to muffle him.&nbsp;
+Good beer is a good thing for him, he says, and he likes it; the Dep&ocirc;t
+could give it him good, and he now gets it bad.&nbsp; Why does the Dep&ocirc;t
+not give it him good?&nbsp; Because he would get drunk.&nbsp; Why does
+the Dep&ocirc;t not let him have a pint with his dinner, which would
+not make him drunk?&nbsp; Because he might have had another pint, or
+another two pints, before he came.&nbsp; Now, this distrust is an affront,
+is exceedingly inconsistent with the confidence the managers express
+in their hand-bills, and is a timid stopping-short upon the straight
+highway.&nbsp; It is unjust and unreasonable, also.&nbsp; It is unjust,
+because it punishes the sober man for the vice of the drunken man.&nbsp;
+It is unreasonable, because any one at all experienced in such things
+knows that the drunken workman does not get drunk where he goes to eat
+and drink, but where he goes to drink&mdash;expressly to drink.&nbsp;
+To suppose that the working man cannot state this question to himself
+quite as plainly as I state it here, is to suppose that he is a baby,
+and is again to tell him in the old wearisome, condescending, patronising
+way that he must be goody-poody, and do as he is toldy-poldy, and not
+be a manny-panny or a voter-poter, but fold his handy-pandys, and be
+a childy-pildy.</p>
+<p>I found from the accounts of the Whitechapel Self-Supporting Cooking
+Dep&ocirc;t, that every article sold in it, even at the prices I have
+quoted, yields a certain small profit!&nbsp; Individual speculators
+are of course already in the field, and are of course already appropriating
+the name.&nbsp; The classes for whose benefit the real dep&ocirc;ts
+are designed, will distinguish between the two kinds of enterprise.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVI&mdash;CHATHAM DOCKYARD</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>There are some small out-of-the-way landing places on the Thames
+and the Medway, where I do much of my summer idling.&nbsp; Running water
+is favourable to day-dreams, and a strong tidal river is the best of
+running water for mine.&nbsp; I like to watch the great ships standing
+out to sea or coming home richly laden, the active little steam-tugs
+confidently puffing with them to and from the sea-horizon, the fleet
+of barges that seem to have plucked their brown and russet sails from
+the ripe trees in the landscape, the heavy old colliers, light in ballast,
+floundering down before the tide, the light screw barks and schooners
+imperiously holding a straight course while the others patiently tack
+and go about, the yachts with their tiny hulls and great white sheets
+of canvas, the little sailing-boats bobbing to and fro on their errands
+of pleasure or business, and&mdash;as it is the nature of little people
+to do&mdash;making a prodigious fuss about their small affairs.&nbsp;
+Watching these objects, I still am under no obligation to think about
+them, or even so much as to see them, unless it perfectly suits my humour.&nbsp;
+As little am I obliged to hear the plash and flop of the tide, the ripple
+at my feet, the clinking windlass afar off, or the humming steam-ship
+paddles further away yet.&nbsp; These, with the creaking little jetty
+on which I sit, and the gaunt high-water marks and low-water marks in
+the mud, and the broken causeway, and the broken bank, and the broken
+stakes and piles leaning forward as if they were vain of their personal
+appearance and looking for their reflection in the water, will melt
+into any train of fancy.&nbsp; Equally adaptable to any purpose or to
+none, are the posturing sheep and kine upon the marshes, the gulls that
+wheel and dip around me, the crows (well out of gunshot) going home
+from the rich harvest-fields, the heron that has been out a-fishing
+and looks as melancholy, up there in the sky, as if it hadn&rsquo;t
+agreed with him.&nbsp; Everything within the range of the senses will,
+by the aid of the running water, lend itself to everything beyond that
+range, and work into a drowsy whole, not unlike a kind of tune, but
+for which there is no exact definition.</p>
+<p>One of these landing-places is near an old fort (I can see the Nore
+Light from it with my pocket-glass), from which fort mysteriously emerges
+a boy, to whom I am much indebted for additions to my scanty stock of
+knowledge.&nbsp; He is a young boy, with an intelligent face burnt to
+a dust colour by the summer sun, and with crisp hair of the same hue.&nbsp;
+He is a boy in whom I have perceived nothing incompatible with habits
+of studious inquiry and meditation, unless an evanescent black eye (I
+was delicate of inquiring how occasioned) should be so considered.&nbsp;
+To him am I indebted for ability to identify a Custom-house boat at
+any distance, and for acquaintance with all the forms and ceremonies
+observed by a homeward-bound Indiaman coming up the river, when the
+Custom-house officers go aboard her.&nbsp; But for him, I might never
+have heard of &lsquo;the dumb-ague,&rsquo; respecting which malady I
+am now learned.&nbsp; Had I never sat at his feet, I might have finished
+my mortal career and never known that when I see a white horse on a
+barge&rsquo;s sail, that barge is a lime barge.&nbsp; For precious secrets
+in reference to beer, am I likewise beholden to him, involving warning
+against the beer of a certain establishment, by reason of its having
+turned sour through failure in point of demand: though my young sage
+is not of opinion that similar deterioration has befallen the ale.&nbsp;
+He has also enlightened me touching the mushrooms of the marshes, and
+has gently reproved my ignorance in having supposed them to be impregnated
+with salt.&nbsp; His manner of imparting information, is thoughtful,
+and appropriate to the scene.&nbsp; As he reclines beside me, he pitches
+into the river, a little stone or piece of grit, and then delivers himself
+oracularly, as though he spoke out of the centre of the spreading circle
+that it makes in the water.&nbsp; He never improves my mind without
+observing this formula.</p>
+<p>With the wise boy&mdash;whom I know by no other name than the Spirit
+of the Fort&mdash;I recently consorted on a breezy day when the river
+leaped about us and was full of life.&nbsp; I had seen the sheaved corn
+carrying in the golden fields as I came down to the river; and the rosy
+farmer, watching his labouring-men in the saddle on his cob, had told
+me how he had reaped his two hundred and sixty acres of long-strawed
+corn last week, and how a better week&rsquo;s work he had never done
+in all his days.&nbsp; Peace and abundance were on the country-side
+in beautiful forms and beautiful colours, and the harvest seemed even
+to be sailing out to grace the never-reaped sea in the yellow-laden
+barges that mellowed the distance.</p>
+<p>It was on this occasion that the Spirit of the Fort, directing his
+remarks to a certain floating iron battery lately lying in that reach
+of the river, enriched my mind with his opinions on naval architecture,
+and informed me that he would like to be an engineer.&nbsp; I found
+him up to everything that is done in the contracting line by Messrs.
+Peto and Brassey&mdash;cunning in the article of concrete&mdash;mellow
+in the matter of iron&mdash;great on the subject of gunnery.&nbsp; When
+he spoke of pile-driving and sluice-making, he left me not a leg to
+stand on, and I can never sufficiently acknowledge his forbearance with
+me in my disabled state.&nbsp; While he thus discoursed, he several
+times directed his eyes to one distant quarter of the landscape, and
+spoke with vague mysterious awe of &lsquo;the Yard.&rsquo;&nbsp; Pondering
+his lessons after we had parted, I bethought me that the Yard was one
+of our large public Dockyards, and that it lay hidden among the crops
+down in the dip behind the windmills, as if it modestly kept itself
+out of view in peaceful times, and sought to trouble no man.&nbsp; Taken
+with this modesty on the part of the Yard, I resolved to improve the
+Yard&rsquo;s acquaintance.</p>
+<p>My good opinion of the Yard&rsquo;s retiring character was not dashed
+by nearer approach.&nbsp; It resounded with the noise of hammers beating
+upon iron; and the great sheds or slips under which the mighty men-of-war
+are built, loomed business-like when contemplated from the opposite
+side of the river.&nbsp; For all that, however, the Yard made no display,
+but kept itself snug under hill-sides of corn-fields, hop-gardens, and
+orchards; its great chimneys smoking with a quiet&mdash;almost a lazy&mdash;air,
+like giants smoking tobacco; and the great Shears moored off it, looking
+meekly and inoffensively out of proportion, like the Giraffe of the
+machinery creation.&nbsp; The store of cannon on the neighbouring gun-wharf,
+had an innocent toy-like appearance, and the one red-coated sentry on
+duty over them was a mere toy figure, with a clock-work movement.&nbsp;
+As the hot sunlight sparkled on him he might have passed for the identical
+little man who had the little gun, and whose bullets they were made
+of lead, lead, lead.</p>
+<p>Crossing the river and landing at the Stairs, where a drift of chips
+and weed had been trying to land before me and had not succeeded, but
+had got into a corner instead, I found the very street posts to be cannon,
+and the architectural ornaments to be shells.&nbsp; And so I came to
+the Yard, which was shut up tight and strong with great folded gates,
+like an enormous patent safe.&nbsp; These gates devouring me, I became
+digested into the Yard; and it had, at first, a clean-swept holiday
+air, as if it had given over work until next war-time.&nbsp; Though
+indeed a quantity of hemp for rope was tumbling out of store-houses,
+even there, which would hardly be lying like so much hay on the white
+stones if the Yard were as placid as it pretended.</p>
+<p>Ding, Clash, Dong, BANG, Boom, Rattle, Clash, BANG, Clink, BANG,
+Dong, BANG, Clatter, BANG BANG BANG!&nbsp; What on earth is this!&nbsp;
+This is, or soon will be, the Achilles, iron armour-plated ship.&nbsp;
+Twelve hundred men are working at her now; twelve hundred men working
+on stages over her sides, over her bows, over her stern, under her keel,
+between her decks, down in her hold, within her and without, crawling
+and creeping into the finest curves of her lines wherever it is possible
+for men to twist.&nbsp; Twelve hundred hammerers, measurers, caulkers,
+armourers, forgers, smiths, shipwrights; twelve hundred dingers, clashers,
+dongers, rattlers, clinkers, bangers bangers bangers!&nbsp; Yet all
+this stupendous uproar around the rising Achilles is as nothing to the
+reverberations with which the perfected Achilles shall resound upon
+the dreadful day when the full work is in hand for which this is but
+note of preparation&mdash;the day when the scuppers that are now fitting
+like great, dry, thirsty conduit-pipes, shall run red.&nbsp; All these
+busy figures between decks, dimly seen bending at their work in smoke
+and fire, are as nothing to the figures that shall do work here of another
+kind in smoke and fire, that day.&nbsp; These steam-worked engines alongside,
+helping the ship by travelling to and fro, and wafting tons of iron
+plates about, as though they were so many leaves of trees, would be
+rent limb from limb if they stood by her for a minute then.&nbsp; To
+think that this Achilles, monstrous compound of iron tank and oaken
+chest, can ever swim or roll!&nbsp; To think that any force of wind
+and wave could ever break her!&nbsp; To think that wherever I see a
+glowing red-hot iron point thrust out of her side from within&mdash;as
+I do now, there, and there, and there!&mdash;and two watching men on
+a stage without, with bared arms and sledge-hammers, strike at it fiercely,
+and repeat their blows until it is black and flat, I see a rivet being
+driven home, of which there are many in every iron plate, and thousands
+upon thousands in the ship!&nbsp; To think that the difficulty I experience
+in appreciating the ship&rsquo;s size when I am on board, arises from
+her being a series of iron tanks and oaken chests, so that internally
+she is ever finishing and ever beginning, and half of her might be smashed,
+and yet the remaining half suffice and be sound.&nbsp; Then, to go over
+the side again and down among the ooze and wet to the bottom of the
+dock, in the depths of the subterranean forest of dog-shores and stays
+that hold her up, and to see the immense mass bulging out against the
+upper light, and tapering down towards me, is, with great pains and
+much clambering, to arrive at an impossibility of realising that this
+is a ship at all, and to become possessed by the fancy that it is an
+enormous immovable edifice set up in an ancient amphitheatre (say, that
+at Verona), and almost filling it! Yet what would even these things
+be, without the tributary workshops and the mechanical powers for piercing
+the iron plates&mdash;four inches and a half thick&mdash;for rivets,
+shaping them under hydraulic pressure to the finest tapering turns of
+the ship&rsquo;s lines, and paring them away, with knives shaped like
+the beaks of strong and cruel birds, to the nicest requirements of the
+design!&nbsp; These machines of tremendous force, so easily directed
+by one attentive face and presiding hand, seem to me to have in them
+something of the retiring character of the Yard.&nbsp; &lsquo;Obedient
+monster, please to bite this mass of iron through and through, at equal
+distances, where these regular chalk-marks are, all round.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Monster looks at its work, and lifting its ponderous head, replies,
+&lsquo;I don&rsquo;t particularly want to do it; but if it must be done&mdash;!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+The solid metal wriggles out, hot from the monster&rsquo;s crunching
+tooth, and it <i>is</i> done.&nbsp; &lsquo;Dutiful monster, observe
+this other mass of iron.&nbsp; It is required to be pared away, according
+to this delicately lessening and arbitrary line, which please to look
+at.&rsquo;&nbsp; Monster (who has been in a reverie) brings down its
+blunt head, and, much in the manner of Doctor Johnson, closely looks
+along the line&mdash;very closely, being somewhat near-sighted.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I don&rsquo;t particularly want to do it; but if it must be done&mdash;!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Monster takes another near-sighted look, takes aim, and the tortured
+piece writhes off, and falls, a hot, tight-twisted snake, among the
+ashes.&nbsp; The making of the rivets is merely a pretty round game,
+played by a man and a boy, who put red-hot barley sugar in a Pope Joan
+board, and immediately rivets fall out of window; but the tone of the
+great machines is the tone of the great Yard and the great country:
+&lsquo;We don&rsquo;t particularly want to do it; but if it must be
+done&mdash;!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>How such a prodigious mass as the Achilles can ever be held by such
+comparatively little anchors as those intended for her and lying near
+her here, is a mystery of seamanship which I will refer to the wise
+boy.&nbsp; For my own part, I should as soon have thought of tethering
+an elephant to a tent-peg, or the larger hippopotamus in the Zoological
+Gardens to my shirt-pin.&nbsp; Yonder in the river, alongside a hulk,
+lie two of this ship&rsquo;s hollow iron masts.&nbsp; <i>They</i> are
+large enough for the eye, I find, and so are all her other appliances.&nbsp;
+I wonder why only her anchors look small.</p>
+<p>I have no present time to think about it, for I am going to see the
+workshops where they make all the oars used in the British Navy.&nbsp;
+A pretty large pile of building, I opine, and a pretty long job!&nbsp;
+As to the building, I am soon disappointed, because the work is all
+done in one loft.&nbsp; And as to a long job&mdash;what is this?&nbsp;
+Two rather large mangles with a swarm of butterflies hovering over them?&nbsp;
+What can there be in the mangles that attracts butterflies?</p>
+<p>Drawing nearer, I discern that these are not mangles, but intricate
+machines, set with knives and saws and planes, which cut smooth and
+straight here, and slantwise there, and now cut such a depth, and now
+miss cutting altogether, according to the predestined requirements of
+the pieces of wood that are pushed on below them: each of which pieces
+is to be an oar, and is roughly adapted to that purpose before it takes
+its final leave of far-off forests, and sails for England.&nbsp; Likewise
+I discern that the butterflies are not true butterflies, but wooden
+shavings, which, being spirted up from the wood by the violence of the
+machinery, and kept in rapid and not equal movement by the impulse of
+its rotation on the air, flutter and play, and rise and fall, and conduct
+themselves as like butterflies as heart could wish.&nbsp; Suddenly the
+noise and motion cease, and the butterflies drop dead.&nbsp; An oar
+has been made since I came in, wanting the shaped handle.&nbsp; As quickly
+as I can follow it with my eye and thought, the same oar is carried
+to a turning lathe.&nbsp; A whirl and a Nick!&nbsp; Handle made.&nbsp;
+Oar finished.</p>
+<p>The exquisite beauty and efficiency of this machinery need no illustration,
+but happen to have a pointed illustration to-day.&nbsp; A pair of oars
+of unusual size chance to be wanted for a special purpose, and they
+have to be made by hand.&nbsp; Side by side with the subtle and facile
+machine, and side by side with the fast-growing pile of oars on the
+floor, a man shapes out these special oars with an axe.&nbsp; Attended
+by no butterflies, and chipping and dinting, by comparison as leisurely
+as if he were a labouring Pagan getting them ready against his decease
+at threescore and ten, to take with him as a present to Charon for his
+boat, the man (aged about thirty) plies his task.&nbsp; The machine
+would make a regulation oar while the man wipes his forehead.&nbsp;
+The man might be buried in a mound made of the strips of thin, broad,
+wooden ribbon torn from the wood whirled into oars as the minutes fall
+from the clock, before he had done a forenoon&rsquo;s work with his
+axe.</p>
+<p>Passing from this wonderful sight to the Ships again&mdash;for my
+heart, as to the Yard, is where the ships are&mdash;I notice certain
+unfinished wooden walls left seasoning on the stocks, pending the solution
+of the merits of the wood and iron question, and having an air of biding
+their time with surly confidence.&nbsp; The names of these worthies
+are set up beside them, together with their capacity in guns&mdash;a
+custom highly conducive to ease and satisfaction in social intercourse,
+if it could be adapted to mankind.&nbsp; By a plank more gracefully
+pendulous than substantial, I make bold to go aboard a transport ship
+(iron screw) just sent in from the contractor&rsquo;s yard to be inspected
+and passed.&nbsp; She is a very gratifying experience, in the simplicity
+and humanity of her arrangements for troops, in her provision for light
+and air and cleanliness, and in her care for women and children.&nbsp;
+It occurs to me, as I explore her, that I would require a handsome sum
+of money to go aboard her, at midnight by the Dockyard bell, and stay
+aboard alone till morning; for surely she must be haunted by a crowd
+of ghosts of obstinate old martinets, mournfully flapping their cherubic
+epaulettes over the changed times.&nbsp; Though still we may learn from
+the astounding ways and means in our Yards now, more highly than ever
+to respect the forefathers who got to sea, and fought the sea, and held
+the sea, without them.&nbsp; This remembrance putting me in the best
+of tempers with an old hulk, very green as to her copper, and generally
+dim and patched, I pull off my hat to her.&nbsp; Which salutation a
+callow and downy-faced young officer of Engineers, going by at the moment,
+perceiving, appropriates&mdash;and to which he is most heartily welcome,
+I am sure.</p>
+<p>Having been torn to pieces (in imagination) by the steam circular
+saws, perpendicular saws, horizontal saws, and saws of eccentric action,
+I come to the sauntering part of my expedition, and consequently to
+the core of my Uncommercial pursuits.</p>
+<p>Everywhere, as I saunter up and down the Yard, I meet with tokens
+of its quiet and retiring character.&nbsp; There is a gravity upon its
+red brick offices and houses, a staid pretence of having nothing worth
+mentioning to do, an avoidance of display, which I never saw out of
+England.&nbsp; The white stones of the pavement present no other trace
+of Achilles and his twelve hundred banging men (not one of whom strikes
+an attitude) than a few occasional echoes.&nbsp; But for a whisper in
+the air suggestive of sawdust and shavings, the oar-making and the saws
+of many movements might be miles away.&nbsp; Down below here, is the
+great reservoir of water where timber is steeped in various temperatures,
+as a part of its seasoning process.&nbsp; Above it, on a tramroad supported
+by pillars, is a Chinese Enchanter&rsquo;s Car, which fishes the logs
+up, when sufficiently steeped, and rolls smoothly away with them to
+stack them.&nbsp; When I was a child (the Yard being then familiar to
+me) I used to think that I should like to play at Chinese Enchanter,
+and to have that apparatus placed at my disposal for the purpose by
+a beneficent country.&nbsp; I still think that I should rather like
+to try the effect of writing a book in it.&nbsp; Its retirement is complete,
+and to go gliding to and fro among the stacks of timber would be a convenient
+kind of travelling in foreign countries&mdash;among the forests of North
+America, the sodden Honduras swamps, the dark pine woods, the Norwegian
+frosts, and the tropical heats, rainy seasons, and thunderstorms.&nbsp;
+The costly store of timber is stacked and stowed away in sequestered
+places, with the pervading avoidance of flourish or effect.&nbsp; It
+makes as little of itself as possible, and calls to no one &lsquo;Come
+and look at me!&rsquo;&nbsp; And yet it is picked out from the trees
+of the world; picked out for length, picked out for breadth, picked
+out for straightness, picked out for crookedness, chosen with an eye
+to every need of ship and boat.&nbsp; Strangely twisted pieces lie about,
+precious in the sight of shipwrights.&nbsp; Sauntering through these
+groves, I come upon an open glade where workmen are examining some timber
+recently delivered.&nbsp; Quite a pastoral scene, with a background
+of river and windmill! and no more like War than the American States
+are at present like an Union.</p>
+<p>Sauntering among the ropemaking, I am spun into a state of blissful
+indolence, wherein my rope of life seems to be so untwisted by the process
+as that I can see back to very early days indeed, when my bad dreams&mdash;they
+were frightful, though my more mature understanding has never made out
+why&mdash;were of an interminable sort of ropemaking, with long minute
+filaments for strands, which, when they were spun home together close
+to my eyes, occasioned screaming.&nbsp; Next, I walk among the quiet
+lofts of stores&mdash;of sails, spars, rigging, ships&rsquo; boats&mdash;determined
+to believe that somebody in authority wears a girdle and bends beneath
+the weight of a massive bunch of keys, and that, when such a thing is
+wanted, he comes telling his keys like Blue Beard, and opens such a
+door.&nbsp; Impassive as the long lofts look, let the electric battery
+send down the word, and the shutters and doors shall fly open, and such
+a fleet of armed ships, under steam and under sail, shall burst forth
+as will charge the old Medway&mdash;where the merry Stuart let the Dutch
+come, while his not so merry sailors starved in the streets&mdash;with
+something worth looking at to carry to the sea.&nbsp; Thus I idle round
+to the Medway again, where it is now flood tide; and I find the river
+evincing a strong solicitude to force a way into the dry dock where
+Achilles is waited on by the twelve hundred bangers, with intent to
+bear the whole away before they are ready.</p>
+<p>To the last, the Yard puts a quiet face upon it; for I make my way
+to the gates through a little quiet grove of trees, shading the quaintest
+of Dutch landing-places, where the leaf-speckled shadow of a shipwright
+just passing away at the further end might be the shadow of Russian
+Peter himself.&nbsp; So, the doors of the great patent safe at last
+close upon me, and I take boat again: somehow, thinking as the oars
+dip, of braggart Pistol and his brood, and of the quiet monsters of
+the Yard, with their &lsquo;We don&rsquo;t particularly want to do it;
+but if it must be done&mdash;!&rsquo;&nbsp; Scrunch.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVII&mdash;IN THE FRENCH-FLEMISH COUNTRY</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>&lsquo;It is neither a bold nor a diversified country,&rsquo; said
+I to myself, &lsquo;this country which is three-quarters Flemish, and
+a quarter French; yet it has its attractions too.&nbsp; Though great
+lines of railway traverse it, the trains leave it behind, and go puffing
+off to Paris and the South, to Belgium and Germany, to the Northern
+Sea-Coast of France, and to England, and merely smoke it a little in
+passing.&nbsp; Then I don&rsquo;t know it, and that is a good reason
+for being here; and I can&rsquo;t pronounce half the long queer names
+I see inscribed over the shops, and that is another good reason for
+being here, since I surely ought to learn how.&rsquo;&nbsp; In short,
+I was &lsquo;here,&rsquo; and I wanted an excuse for not going away
+from here, and I made it to my satisfaction, and stayed here.</p>
+<p>What part in my decision was borne by Monsieur P. Salcy, is of no
+moment, though I own to encountering that gentleman&rsquo;s name on
+a red bill on the wall, before I made up my mind.&nbsp; Monsieur P.
+Salcy, &lsquo;par permission de M. le Maire,&rsquo; had established
+his theatre in the whitewashed H&ocirc;tel de Ville, on the steps of
+which illustrious edifice I stood.&nbsp; And Monsieur P. Salcy, privileged
+director of such theatre, situate in &lsquo;the first theatrical arrondissement
+of the department of the North,&rsquo; invited French-Flemish mankind
+to come and partake of the intellectual banquet provided by his family
+of dramatic artists, fifteen subjects in number.&nbsp; &lsquo;La Famille
+P. SALCY, compos&eacute;e d&rsquo;artistes dramatiques, au nombre de
+15 sujets.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Neither a bold nor a diversified country, I say again, and withal
+an untidy country, but pleasant enough to ride in, when the paved roads
+over the flats and through the hollows, are not too deep in black mud.&nbsp;
+A country so sparely inhabited, that I wonder where the peasants who
+till and sow and reap the ground, can possibly dwell, and also by what
+invisible balloons they are conveyed from their distant homes into the
+fields at sunrise and back again at sunset.&nbsp; The occasional few
+poor cottages and farms in this region, surely cannot afford shelter
+to the numbers necessary to the cultivation, albeit the work is done
+so very deliberately, that on one long harvest day I have seen, in twelve
+miles, about twice as many men and women (all told) reaping and binding.&nbsp;
+Yet have I seen more cattle, more sheep, more pigs, and all in better
+case, than where there is purer French spoken, and also better ricks&mdash;round
+swelling peg-top ricks, well thatched; not a shapeless brown heap, like
+the toast of a Giant&rsquo;s toast-and-water, pinned to the earth with
+one of the skewers out of his kitchen.&nbsp; A good custom they have
+about here, likewise, of prolonging the sloping tiled roof of farm or
+cottage, so that it overhangs three or four feet, carrying off the wet,
+and making a good drying-place wherein to hang up herbs, or implements,
+or what not.&nbsp; A better custom than the popular one of keeping the
+refuse-heap and puddle close before the house door: which, although
+I paint my dwelling never so brightly blue (and it cannot be too blue
+for me, hereabouts), will bring fever inside my door.&nbsp; Wonderful
+poultry of the French-Flemish country, why take the trouble to <i>be</i>
+poultry?&nbsp; Why not stop short at eggs in the rising generation,
+and die out and have done with it?&nbsp; Parents of chickens have I
+seen this day, followed by their wretched young families, scratching
+nothing out of the mud with an air&mdash;tottering about on legs so
+scraggy and weak, that the valiant word drumsticks becomes a mockery
+when applied to them, and the crow of the lord and master has been a
+mere dejected case of croup.&nbsp; Carts have I seen, and other agricultural
+instruments, unwieldy, dislocated, monstrous.&nbsp; Poplar-trees by
+the thousand fringe the fields and fringe the end of the flat landscape,
+so that I feel, looking straight on before me, as if, when I pass the
+extremest fringe on the low horizon, I shall tumble over into space.&nbsp;
+Little whitewashed black holes of chapels, with barred doors and Flemish
+inscriptions, abound at roadside corners, and often they are garnished
+with a sheaf of wooden crosses, like children&rsquo;s swords; or, in
+their default, some hollow old tree with a saint roosting in it, is
+similarly decorated, or a pole with a very diminutive saint enshrined
+aloft in a sort of sacred pigeon-house.&nbsp; Not that we are deficient
+in such decoration in the town here, for, over at the church yonder,
+outside the building, is a scenic representation of the Crucifixion,
+built up with old bricks and stones, and made out with painted canvas
+and wooden figures: the whole surmounting the dusty skull of some holy
+personage (perhaps), shut up behind a little ashy iron grate, as if
+it were originally put there to be cooked, and the fire had long gone
+out.&nbsp; A windmilly country this, though the windmills are so damp
+and rickety, that they nearly knock themselves off their legs at every
+turn of their sails, and creak in loud complaint.&nbsp; A weaving country,
+too, for in the wayside cottages the loom goes wearily&mdash;rattle
+and click, rattle and click&mdash;and, looking in, I see the poor weaving
+peasant, man or woman, bending at the work, while the child, working
+too, turns a little hand-wheel put upon the ground to suit its height.&nbsp;
+An unconscionable monster, the loom in a small dwelling, asserting himself
+ungenerously as the bread-winner, straddling over the children&rsquo;s
+straw beds, cramping the family in space and air, and making himself
+generally objectionable and tyrannical.&nbsp; He is tributary, too,
+to ugly mills and factories and bleaching-grounds, rising out of the
+sluiced fields in an abrupt bare way, disdaining, like himself, to be
+ornamental or accommodating.&nbsp; Surrounded by these things, here
+I stood on the steps of the H&ocirc;tel de Ville, persuaded to remain
+by the P. Salcy family, fifteen dramatic subjects strong.</p>
+<p>There was a Fair besides.&nbsp; The double persuasion being irresistible,
+and my sponge being left behind at the last Hotel, I made the tour of
+the little town to buy another.&nbsp; In the small sunny shops&mdash;mercers,
+opticians, and druggist-grocers, with here and there an emporium of
+religious images&mdash;the gravest of old spectacled Flemish husbands
+and wives sat contemplating one another across bare counters, while
+the wasps, who seemed to have taken military possession of the town,
+and to have placed it under wasp-martial law, executed warlike manoeuvres
+in the windows.&nbsp; Other shops the wasps had entirely to themselves,
+and nobody cared and nobody came when I beat with a five-franc piece
+upon the board of custom.&nbsp; What I sought was no more to be found
+than if I had sought a nugget of Californian gold: so I went, spongeless,
+to pass the evening with the Family P. Salcy.</p>
+<p>The members of the Family P. Salcy were so fat and so like one another&mdash;fathers,
+mothers, sisters, brothers, uncles, and aunts&mdash;that I think the
+local audience were much confused about the plot of the piece under
+representation, and to the last expected that everybody must turn out
+to be the long-lost relative of everybody else.&nbsp; The Theatre was
+established on the top story of the H&ocirc;tel de Ville, and was approached
+by a long bare staircase, whereon, in an airy situation, one of the
+P. Salcy Family&mdash;a stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt&mdash;took
+the money.&nbsp; This occasioned the greatest excitement of the evening;
+for, no sooner did the curtain rise on the introductory Vaudeville,
+and reveal in the person of the young lover (singing a very short song
+with his eyebrows) apparently the very same identical stout gentleman
+imperfectly repressed by a belt, than everybody rushed out to the paying-place,
+to ascertain whether he could possibly have put on that dress-coat,
+that clear complexion, and those arched black vocal eyebrows, in so
+short a space of time.&nbsp; It then became manifest that this was another
+stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt: to whom, before the
+spectators had recovered their presence of mind, entered a third stout
+gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt, exactly like him.&nbsp; These
+two &lsquo;subjects,&rsquo; making with the money-taker three of the
+announced fifteen, fell into conversation touching a charming young
+widow: who, presently appearing, proved to be a stout lady altogether
+irrepressible by any means&mdash;quite a parallel case to the American
+Negro&mdash;fourth of the fifteen subjects, and sister of the fifth
+who presided over the check-department.&nbsp; In good time the whole
+of the fifteen subjects were dramatically presented, and we had the
+inevitable Ma M&egrave;re, Ma M&egrave;re! and also the inevitable mal&eacute;diction
+d&rsquo;un p&egrave;re, and likewise the inevitable Marquis, and also
+the inevitable provincial young man, weak-minded but faithful, who followed
+Julie to Paris, and cried and laughed and choked all at once.&nbsp;
+The story was wrought out with the help of a virtuous spinning-wheel
+in the beginning, a vicious set of diamonds in the middle, and a rheumatic
+blessing (which arrived by post) from Ma M&egrave;re towards the end;
+the whole resulting in a small sword in the body of one of the stout
+gentlemen imperfectly repressed by a belt, fifty thousand francs per
+annum and a decoration to the other stout gentleman imperfectly repressed
+by a belt, and an assurance from everybody to the provincial young man
+that if he were not supremely happy&mdash;which he seemed to have no
+reason whatever for being&mdash;he ought to be.&nbsp; This afforded
+him a final opportunity of crying and laughing and choking all at once,
+and sent the audience home sentimentally delighted.&nbsp; Audience more
+attentive or better behaved there could not possibly be, though the
+places of second rank in the Theatre of the Family P. Salcy were sixpence
+each in English money, and the places of first rank a shilling.&nbsp;
+How the fifteen subjects ever got so fat upon it, the kind Heavens know.</p>
+<p>What gorgeous china figures of knights and ladies, gilded till they
+gleamed again, I might have bought at the Fair for the garniture of
+my home, if I had been a French-Flemish peasant, and had had the money!&nbsp;
+What shining coffee-cups and saucers I might have won at the turntables,
+if I had had the luck!&nbsp; Ravishing perfumery also, and sweetmeats,
+I might have speculated in, or I might have fired for prizes at a multitude
+of little dolls in niches, and might have hit the doll of dolls, and
+won francs and fame.&nbsp; Or, being a French-Flemish youth, I might
+have been drawn in a hand-cart by my compeers, to tilt for municipal
+rewards at the water-quintain; which, unless I sent my lance clean through
+the ring, emptied a full bucket over me; to fend off which, the competitors
+wore grotesque old scarecrow hats.&nbsp; Or, being French-Flemish man
+or woman, boy or girl, I might have circled all night on my hobby-horse
+in a stately cavalcade of hobby-horses four abreast, interspersed with
+triumphal cars, going round and round and round and round, we the goodly
+company singing a ceaseless chorus to the music of the barrel-organ,
+drum, and cymbals.&nbsp; On the whole, not more monotonous than the
+Ring in Hyde Park, London, and much merrier; for when do the circling
+company sing chorus, <i>there</i>, to the barrel-organ, when do the
+ladies embrace their horses round the neck with both arms, when do the
+gentlemen fan the ladies with the tails of their gallant steeds?&nbsp;
+On all these revolving delights, and on their own especial lamps and
+Chinese lanterns revolving with them, the thoughtful weaver-face brightens,
+and the H&ocirc;tel de Ville sheds an illuminated line of gaslight:
+while above it, the Eagle of France, gas-outlined and apparently afflicted
+with the prevailing infirmities that have lighted on the poultry, is
+in a very undecided state of policy, and as a bird moulting.&nbsp; Flags
+flutter all around.&nbsp; Such is the prevailing gaiety that the keeper
+of the prison sits on the stone steps outside the prison-door, to have
+a look at the world that is not locked up; while that agreeable retreat,
+the wine-shop opposite to the prison in the prison-alley (its sign La
+Tranquillit&eacute;, because of its charming situation), resounds with
+the voices of the shepherds and shepherdesses who resort there this
+festive night.&nbsp; And it reminds me that only this afternoon, I saw
+a shepherd in trouble, tending this way, over the jagged stones of a
+neighbouring street.&nbsp; A magnificent sight it was, to behold him
+in his blouse, a feeble little jog-trot rustic, swept along by the wind
+of two immense gendarmes, in cocked-hats for which the street was hardly
+wide enough, each carrying a bundle of stolen property that would not
+have held his shoulder-knot, and clanking a sabre that dwarfed the prisoner.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you at this Fair, as a
+mark of my confidence in the people of this so-renowned town, and as
+an act of homage to their good sense and fine taste, the Ventriloquist,
+the Ventriloquist!&nbsp; Further, Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to
+you the Face-Maker, the Physiognomist, the great Changer of Countenances,
+who transforms the features that Heaven has bestowed upon him into an
+endless succession of surprising and extraordinary visages, comprehending,
+Messieurs et Mesdames, all the contortions, energetic and expressive,
+of which the human face is capable, and all the passions of the human
+heart, as Love, Jealousy, Revenge, Hatred, Avarice, Despair!&nbsp; Hi
+hi!&nbsp; Ho ho!&nbsp; Lu lu!&nbsp; Come in!&rsquo;&nbsp; To this effect,
+with an occasional smite upon a sonorous kind of tambourine&mdash;bestowed
+with a will, as if it represented the people who won&rsquo;t come in&mdash;holds
+forth a man of lofty and severe demeanour; a man in stately uniform,
+gloomy with the knowledge he possesses of the inner secrets of the booth.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Come in, come in!&nbsp; Your opportunity presents itself to-night;
+to-morrow it will be gone for ever.&nbsp; To-morrow morning by the Express
+Train the railroad will reclaim the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker!&nbsp;
+Algeria will reclaim the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker!&nbsp; Yes!&nbsp;
+For the honour of their country they have accepted propositions of a
+magnitude incredible, to appear in Algeria.&nbsp; See them for the last
+time before their departure!&nbsp; We go to commence on the instant.&nbsp;
+Hi hi!&nbsp; Ho ho!&nbsp; Lu lu!&nbsp; Come in!&nbsp; Take the money
+that now ascends, Madame; but after that, no more, for we commence!&nbsp;
+Come in!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Nevertheless, the eyes both of the gloomy Speaker and of Madame receiving
+sous in a muslin bower, survey the crowd pretty sharply after the ascending
+money has ascended, to detect any lingering sous at the turning-point.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Come in, come in!&nbsp; Is there any more money, Madame, on the
+point of ascending?&nbsp; If so, we wait for it.&nbsp; If not, we commence!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+The orator looks back over his shoulder to say it, lashing the spectators
+with the conviction that he beholds through the folds of the drapery
+into which he is about to plunge, the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker.&nbsp;
+Several sous burst out of pockets, and ascend.&nbsp; &lsquo;Come up,
+then, Messieurs!&rsquo; exclaims Madame in a shrill voice, and beckoning
+with a bejewelled finger.&nbsp; &lsquo;Come up!&nbsp; This presses.&nbsp;
+Monsieur has commanded that they commence!&rsquo;&nbsp; Monsieur dives
+into his Interior, and the last half-dozen of us follow.&nbsp; His Interior
+is comparatively severe; his Exterior also.&nbsp; A true Temple of Art
+needs nothing but seats, drapery, a small table with two moderator lamps
+hanging over it, and an ornamental looking-glass let into the wall.&nbsp;
+Monsieur in uniform gets behind the table and surveys us with disdain,
+his forehead becoming diabolically intellectual under the moderators.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you the Ventriloquist.&nbsp;
+He will commence with the celebrated Experience of the bee in the window.&nbsp;
+The bee, apparently the veritable bee of Nature, will hover in the window,
+and about the room.&nbsp; He will be with difficulty caught in the hand
+of Monsieur the Ventriloquist&mdash;he will escape&mdash;he will again
+hover&mdash;at length he will be recaptured by Monsieur the Ventriloquist,
+and will be with difficulty put into a bottle.&nbsp; Achieve then, Monsieur!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Here the proprietor is replaced behind the table by the Ventriloquist,
+who is thin and sallow, and of a weakly aspect.&nbsp; While the bee
+is in progress, Monsieur the Proprietor sits apart on a stool, immersed
+in dark and remote thought.&nbsp; The moment the bee is bottled, he
+stalks forward, eyes us gloomily as we applaud, and then announces,
+sternly waving his hand: &lsquo;The magnificent Experience of the child
+with the whooping-cough!&rsquo;&nbsp; The child disposed of, he starts
+up as before.&nbsp; &lsquo;The superb and extraordinary Experience of
+the dialogue between Monsieur Tatambour in his dining-room, and his
+domestic, Jerome, in the cellar; concluding with the songsters of the
+grove, and the Concert of domestic Farm-yard animals.&rsquo;&nbsp; All
+this done, and well done, Monsieur the Ventriloquist withdraws, and
+Monsieur the Face-Maker bursts in, as if his retiring-room were a mile
+long instead of a yard.&nbsp; A corpulent little man in a large white
+waistcoat, with a comic countenance, and with a wig in his hand.&nbsp;
+Irreverent disposition to laugh, instantly checked by the tremendous
+gravity of the Face-Maker, who intimates in his bow that if we expect
+that sort of thing we are mistaken.&nbsp; A very little shaving-glass
+with a leg behind it is handed in, and placed on the table before the
+Face-Maker.&nbsp; &lsquo;Messieurs et Mesdames, with no other assistance
+than this mirror and this wig, I shall have the honour of showing you
+a thousand characters.&rsquo;&nbsp; As a preparation, the Face-Maker
+with both hands gouges himself, and turns his mouth inside out.&nbsp;
+He then becomes frightfully grave again, and says to the Proprietor,
+&lsquo;I am ready!&rsquo;&nbsp; Proprietor stalks forth from baleful
+reverie, and announces &lsquo;The Young Conscript!&rsquo;&nbsp; Face-Maker
+claps his wig on, hind side before, looks in the glass, and appears
+above it as a conscript so very imbecile, and squinting so extremely
+hard, that I should think the State would never get any good of him.&nbsp;
+Thunders of applause.&nbsp; Face-Maker dips behind the looking-glass,
+brings his own hair forward, is himself again, is awfully grave.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;A distinguished inhabitant of the Faubourg St. Germain.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Face-Maker dips, rises, is supposed to be aged, blear-eyed, toothless,
+slightly palsied, supernaturally polite, evidently of noble birth.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;The oldest member of the Corps of Invalides on the f&ecirc;te-day
+of his master.&rsquo;&nbsp; Face-Maker dips, rises, wears the wig on
+one side, has become the feeblest military bore in existence, and (it
+is clear) would lie frightfully about his past achievements, if he were
+not confined to pantomime.&nbsp; &lsquo;The Miser!&rsquo;&nbsp; Face-Maker
+dips, rises, clutches a bag, and every hair of the wig is on end to
+express that he lives in continual dread of thieves.&nbsp; &lsquo;The
+Genius of France!&rsquo;&nbsp; Face-Maker dips, rises, wig pushed back
+and smoothed flat, little cocked-hat (artfully concealed till now) put
+a-top of it, Face-Maker&rsquo;s white waistcoat much advanced, Face-Maker&rsquo;s
+left hand in bosom of white waistcoat, Face-Maker&rsquo;s right hand
+behind his back.&nbsp; Thunders.&nbsp; This is the first of three positions
+of the Genius of France.&nbsp; In the second position, the Face-Maker
+takes snuff; in the third, rolls up his fight hand, and surveys illimitable
+armies through that pocket-glass.&nbsp; The Face-Maker then, by putting
+out his tongue, and wearing the wig nohow in particular, becomes the
+Village Idiot.&nbsp; The most remarkable feature in the whole of his
+ingenious performance, is, that whatever he does to disguise himself,
+has the effect of rendering him rather more like himself than he was
+at first.</p>
+<p>There were peep-shows in this Fair, and I had the pleasure of recognising
+several fields of glory with which I became well acquainted a year or
+two ago as Crimean battles, now doing duty as Mexican victories.&nbsp;
+The change was neatly effected by some extra smoking of the Russians,
+and by permitting the camp followers free range in the foreground to
+despoil the enemy of their uniforms.&nbsp; As no British troops had
+ever happened to be within sight when the artist took his original sketches,
+it followed fortunately that none were in the way now.</p>
+<p>The Fair wound up with a ball.&nbsp; Respecting the particular night
+of the week on which the ball took place, I decline to commit myself;
+merely mentioning that it was held in a stable-yard so very close to
+the railway, that it was a mercy the locomotive did not set fire to
+it.&nbsp; (In Scotland, I suppose, it would have done so.)&nbsp; There,
+in a tent prettily decorated with looking-glasses and a myriad of toy
+flags, the people danced all night. It was not an expensive recreation,
+the price of a double ticket for a cavalier and lady being one and threepence
+in English money, and even of that small sum fivepence was reclaimable
+for &lsquo;consommation:&rsquo; which word I venture to translate into
+refreshments of no greater strength, at the strongest, than ordinary
+wine made hot, with sugar and lemon in it.&nbsp; It was a ball of great
+good humour and of great enjoyment, though very many of the dancers
+must have been as poor as the fifteen subjects of the P. Salcy Family.</p>
+<p>In short, not having taken my own pet national pint pot with me to
+this Fair, I was very well satisfied with the measure of simple enjoyment
+that it poured into the dull French-Flemish country life.&nbsp; How
+dull that is, I had an opportunity of considering&mdash;when the Fair
+was over&mdash;when the tri-coloured flags were withdrawn from the windows
+of the houses on the Place where the Fair was held&mdash;when the windows
+were close shut, apparently until next Fair-time&mdash;when the H&ocirc;tel
+de Ville had cut off its gas and put away its eagle&mdash;when the two
+paviours, whom I take to form the entire paving population of the town,
+were ramming down the stones which had been pulled up for the erection
+of decorative poles&mdash;when the jailer had slammed his gate, and
+sulkily locked himself in with his charges.&nbsp; But then, as I paced
+the ring which marked the track of the departed hobby-horses on the
+market-place, pondering in my mind how long some hobby-horses do leave
+their tracks in public ways, and how difficult they are to erase, my
+eyes were greeted with a goodly sight.&nbsp; I beheld four male personages
+thoughtfully pacing the Place together, in the sunlight, evidently not
+belonging to the town, and having upon them a certain loose cosmopolitan
+air of not belonging to any town.&nbsp; One was clad in a suit of white
+canvas, another in a cap and blouse, the third in an old military frock,
+the fourth in a shapeless dress that looked as if it had been made out
+of old umbrellas.&nbsp; All wore dust-coloured shoes.&nbsp; My heart
+beat high; for, in those four male personages, although complexionless
+and eyebrowless, I beheld four subjects of the Family P. Salcy.&nbsp;
+Blue-bearded though they were, and bereft of the youthful smoothness
+of cheek which is imparted by what is termed in Albion a &lsquo;Whitechapel
+shave&rsquo; (and which is, in fact, whitening, judiciously applied
+to the jaws with the palm of the hand), I recognised them.&nbsp; As
+I stood admiring, there emerged from the yard of a lowly Cabaret, the
+excellent Ma M&egrave;re, Ma M&egrave;re, with the words, &lsquo;The
+soup is served;&rsquo; words which so elated the subject in the canvas
+suit, that when they all ran in to partake, he went last, dancing with
+his hands stuck angularly into the pockets of his canvas trousers, after
+the Pierrot manner.&nbsp; Glancing down the Yard, the last I saw of
+him was, that he looked in through a window (at the soup, no doubt)
+on one leg.</p>
+<p>Full of this pleasure, I shortly afterwards departed from the town,
+little dreaming of an addition to my good fortune.&nbsp; But more was
+in reserve.&nbsp; I went by a train which was heavy with third-class
+carriages, full of young fellows (well guarded) who had drawn unlucky
+numbers in the last conscription, and were on their way to a famous
+French garrison town where much of the raw military material is worked
+up into soldiery.&nbsp; At the station they had been sitting about,
+in their threadbare homespun blue garments, with their poor little bundles
+under their arms, covered with dust and clay, and the various soils
+of France; sad enough at heart, most of them, but putting a good face
+upon it, and slapping their breasts and singing choruses on the smallest
+provocation; the gayest spirits shouldering half loaves of black bread
+speared upon their walking-sticks.&nbsp; As we went along, they were
+audible at every station, chorusing wildly out of tune, and feigning
+the highest hilarity.&nbsp; After a while, however, they began to leave
+off singing, and to laugh naturally, while at intervals there mingled
+with their laughter the barking of a dog.&nbsp; Now, I had to alight
+short of their destination, and, as that stoppage of the train was attended
+with a quantity of horn blowing, bell ringing, and proclamation of what
+Messieurs les Voyageurs were to do, and were not to do, in order to
+reach their respective destinations, I had ample leisure to go forward
+on the platform to take a parting look at my recruits, whose heads were
+all out at window, and who were laughing like delighted children.&nbsp;
+Then I perceived that a large poodle with a pink nose, who had been
+their travelling companion and the cause of their mirth, stood on his
+hind-legs presenting arms on the extreme verge of the platform, ready
+to salute them as the train went off.&nbsp; This poodle wore a military
+shako (it is unnecessary to add, very much on one side over one eye),
+a little military coat, and the regulation white gaiters.&nbsp; He was
+armed with a little musket and a little sword-bayonet, and he stood
+presenting arms in perfect attitude, with his unobscured eye on his
+master or superior officer, who stood by him.&nbsp; So admirable was
+his discipline, that, when the train moved, and he was greeted with
+the parting cheers of the recruits, and also with a shower of centimes,
+several of which struck his shako, and had a tendency to discompose
+him, he remained staunch on his post, until the train was gone.&nbsp;
+He then resigned his arms to his officer, took off his shako by rubbing
+his paw over it, dropped on four legs, bringing his uniform coat into
+the absurdest relations with the overarching skies, and ran about the
+platform in his white gaiters, waging his tail to an exceeding great
+extent.&nbsp; It struck me that there was more waggery than this in
+the poodle, and that he knew that the recruits would neither get through
+their exercises, nor get rid of their uniforms, as easily as he; revolving
+which in my thoughts, and seeking in my pockets some small money to
+bestow upon him, I casually directed my eyes to the face of his superior
+officer, and in him beheld the Face-Maker!&nbsp; Though it was not the
+way to Algeria, but quite the reverse, the military poodle&rsquo;s Colonel
+was the Face-Maker in a dark blouse, with a small bundle dangling over
+his shoulder at the end of an umbrella, and taking a pipe from his breast
+to smoke as he and the poodle went their mysterious way.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVIII&mdash;MEDICINE MEN OF CIVILISATION</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>My voyages (in paper boats) among savages often yield me matter for
+reflection at home.&nbsp; It is curious to trace the savage in the civilised
+man, and to detect the hold of some savage customs on conditions of
+society rather boastful of being high above them.</p>
+<p>I wonder, is the Medicine Man of the North American Indians never
+to be got rid of, out of the North American country?&nbsp; He comes
+into my Wigwam on all manner of occasions, and with the absurdest &lsquo;Medicine.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+I always find it extremely difficult, and I often find it simply impossible,
+to keep him out of my Wigwam.&nbsp; For his legal &lsquo;Medicine&rsquo;
+he sticks upon his head the hair of quadrupeds, and plasters the same
+with fat, and dirty white powder, and talks a gibberish quite unknown
+to the men and squaws of his tribe.&nbsp; For his religious &lsquo;Medicine&rsquo;
+he puts on puffy white sleeves, little black aprons, large black waistcoats
+of a peculiar cut, collarless coats with Medicine button-holes, Medicine
+stockings and gaiters and shoes, and tops the whole with a highly grotesque
+Medicinal hat.&nbsp; In one respect, to be sure, I am quite free from
+him.&nbsp; On occasions when the Medicine Men in general, together with
+a large number of the miscellaneous inhabitants of his village, both
+male and female, are presented to the principal Chief, his native &lsquo;Medicine&rsquo;
+is a comical mixture of old odds and ends (hired of traders) and new
+things in antiquated shapes, and pieces of red cloth (of which he is
+particularly fond), and white and red and blue paint for the face.&nbsp;
+The irrationality of this particular Medicine culminates in a mock battle-rush,
+from which many of the squaws are borne out, much dilapidated.&nbsp;
+I need not observe how unlike this is to a Drawing Room at St. James&rsquo;s
+Palace.</p>
+<p>The African magician I find it very difficult to exclude from my
+Wigwam too.&nbsp; This creature takes cases of death and mourning under
+his supervision, and will frequently impoverish a whole family by his
+preposterous enchantments.&nbsp; He is a great eater and drinker, and
+always conceals a rejoicing stomach under a grieving exterior.&nbsp;
+His charms consist of an infinite quantity of worthless scraps, for
+which he charges very high.&nbsp; He impresses on the poor bereaved
+natives, that the more of his followers they pay to exhibit such scraps
+on their persons for an hour or two (though they never saw the deceased
+in their lives, and are put in high spirits by his decease), the more
+honourably and piously they grieve for the dead.&nbsp; The poor people
+submitting themselves to this conjurer, an expensive procession is formed,
+in which bits of stick, feathers of birds, and a quantity of other unmeaning
+objects besmeared with black paint, are carried in a certain ghastly
+order of which no one understands the meaning, if it ever had any, to
+the brink of the grave, and are then brought back again.</p>
+<p>In the Tonga Islands everything is supposed to have a soul, so that
+when a hatchet is irreparably broken, they say, &lsquo;His immortal
+part has departed; he is gone to the happy hunting-plains.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+This belief leads to the logical sequence that when a man is buried,
+some of his eating and drinking vessels, and some of his warlike implements,
+must be broken and buried with him.&nbsp; Superstitious and wrong, but
+surely a more respectable superstition than the hire of antic scraps
+for a show that has no meaning based on any sincere belief.</p>
+<p>Let me halt on my Uncommercial road, to throw a passing glance on
+some funeral solemnities that I have seen where North American Indians,
+African Magicians, and Tonga Islanders, are supposed not to be.</p>
+<p>Once, I dwelt in an Italian city, where there dwelt with me for a
+while, an Englishman of an amiable nature, great enthusiasm, and no
+discretion.&nbsp; This friend discovered a desolate stranger, mourning
+over the unexpected death of one very dear to him, in a solitary cottage
+among the vineyards of an outlying village.&nbsp; The circumstances
+of the bereavement were unusually distressing; and the survivor, new
+to the peasants and the country, sorely needed help, being alone with
+the remains.&nbsp; With some difficulty, but with the strong influence
+of a purpose at once gentle, disinterested, and determined, my friend&mdash;Mr.
+Kindheart&mdash;obtained access to the mourner, and undertook to arrange
+the burial.</p>
+<p>There was a small Protestant cemetery near the city walls, and as
+Mr. Kindheart came back to me, he turned into it and chose the spot.&nbsp;
+He was always highly flushed when rendering a service unaided, and I
+knew that to make him happy I must keep aloof from his ministration.&nbsp;
+But when at dinner he warmed with the good action of the day, and conceived
+the brilliant idea of comforting the mourner with &lsquo;an English
+funeral,&rsquo; I ventured to intimate that I thought that institution,
+which was not absolutely sublime at home, might prove a failure in Italian
+hands.&nbsp; However, Mr. Kindheart was so enraptured with his conception,
+that he presently wrote down into the town requesting the attendance
+with to-morrow&rsquo;s earliest light of a certain little upholsterer.&nbsp;
+This upholsterer was famous for speaking the unintelligible local dialect
+(his own) in a far more unintelligible manner than any other man alive.</p>
+<p>When from my bath next morning I overheard Mr. Kindheart and the
+upholsterer in conference on the top of an echoing staircase; and when
+I overheard Mr. Kindheart rendering English Undertaking phrases into
+very choice Italian, and the upholsterer replying in the unknown Tongues;
+and when I furthermore remembered that the local funerals had no resemblance
+to English funerals; I became in my secret bosom apprehensive.&nbsp;
+But Mr. Kindheart informed me at breakfast that measures had been taken
+to ensure a signal success.</p>
+<p>As the funeral was to take place at sunset, and as I knew to which
+of the city gates it must tend, I went out at that gate as the sun descended,
+and walked along the dusty, dusty road.&nbsp; I had not walked far,
+when I encountered this procession:</p>
+<p>1.&nbsp; Mr. Kindheart, much abashed, on an immense grey horse.</p>
+<p>2.&nbsp; A bright yellow coach and pair, driven by a coachman in
+bright red velvet knee-breeches and waistcoat.&nbsp; (This was the established
+local idea of State.)&nbsp; Both coach doors kept open by the coffin,
+which was on its side within, and sticking out at each.</p>
+<p>3.&nbsp; Behind the coach, the mourner, for whom the coach was intended,
+walking in the dust.</p>
+<p>4. Concealed behind a roadside well for the irrigation of a garden,
+the unintelligible Upholsterer, admiring.</p>
+<p>It matters little now.&nbsp; Coaches of all colours are alike to
+poor Kindheart, and he rests far North of the little cemetery with the
+cypress-trees, by the city walls where the Mediterranean is so beautiful.</p>
+<p>My first funeral, a fair representative funeral after its kind, was
+that of the husband of a married servant, once my nurse.&nbsp; She married
+for money.&nbsp; Sally Flanders, after a year or two of matrimony, became
+the relict of Flanders, a small master builder; and either she or Flanders
+had done me the honour to express a desire that I should &lsquo;follow.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+I may have been seven or eight years old;&mdash;young enough, certainly,
+to feel rather alarmed by the expression, as not knowing where the invitation
+was held to terminate, and how far I was expected to follow the deceased
+Flanders.&nbsp; Consent being given by the heads of houses, I was jobbed
+up into what was pronounced at home decent mourning (comprehending somebody
+else&rsquo;s shirt, unless my memory deceives me), and was admonished
+that if, when the funeral was in action, I put my hands in my pockets,
+or took my eyes out of my pocket-handkerchief, I was personally lost,
+and my family disgraced.&nbsp; On the eventful day, having tried to
+get myself into a disastrous frame of mind, and having formed a very
+poor opinion of myself because I couldn&rsquo;t cry, I repaired to Sally&rsquo;s.&nbsp;
+Sally was an excellent creature, and had been a good wife to old Flanders,
+but the moment I saw her I knew that she was not in her own real natural
+state.&nbsp; She formed a sort of Coat of Arms, grouped with a smelling-bottle,
+a handkerchief, an orange, a bottle of vinegar, Flanders&rsquo;s sister,
+her own sister, Flanders&rsquo;s brother&rsquo;s wife, and two neighbouring
+gossips&mdash;all in mourning, and all ready to hold her whenever she
+fainted.&nbsp; At sight of poor little me she became much agitated (agitating
+me much more), and having exclaimed, &lsquo;O here&rsquo;s dear Master
+Uncommercial!&rsquo; became hysterical, and swooned as if I had been
+the death of her.&nbsp; An affecting scene followed, during which I
+was handed about and poked at her by various people, as if I were the
+bottle of salts.&nbsp; Reviving a little, she embraced me, said, &lsquo;You
+knew him well, dear Master Uncommercial, and he knew you!&rsquo; and
+fainted again: which, as the rest of the Coat of Arms soothingly said,
+&lsquo;done her credit.&rsquo;&nbsp; Now, I knew that she needn&rsquo;t
+have fainted unless she liked, and that she wouldn&rsquo;t have fainted
+unless it had been expected of her, quite as well as I know it at this
+day.&nbsp; It made me feel uncomfortable and hypocritical besides.&nbsp;
+I was not sure but that it might be manners in <i>me</i> to faint next,
+and I resolved to keep my eye on Flanders&rsquo;s uncle, and if I saw
+any signs of his going in that direction, to go too, politely.&nbsp;
+But Flanders&rsquo;s uncle (who was a weak little old retail grocer)
+had only one idea, which was that we all wanted tea; and he handed us
+cups of tea all round, incessantly, whether we refused or not.&nbsp;
+There was a young nephew of Flanders&rsquo;s present, to whom Flanders,
+it was rumoured, had left nineteen guineas.&nbsp; He drank all the tea
+that was offered him, this nephew&mdash;amounting, I should say, to
+several quarts&mdash;and ate as much plum-cake as he could possibly
+come by; but he felt it to be decent mourning that he should now and
+then stop in the midst of a lump of cake, and appear to forget that
+his mouth was full, in the contemplation of his uncle&rsquo;s memory.&nbsp;
+I felt all this to be the fault of the undertaker, who was handing us
+gloves on a tea-tray as if they were muffins, and tying us into cloaks
+(mine had to be pinned up all round, it was so long for me), because
+I knew that he was making game.&nbsp; So, when we got out into the streets,
+and I constantly disarranged the procession by tumbling on the people
+before me because my handkerchief blinded my eyes, and tripping up the
+people behind me because my cloak was so long, I felt that we were all
+making game.&nbsp; I was truly sorry for Flanders, but I knew that it
+was no reason why we should be trying (the women with their heads in
+hoods like coal-scuttles with the black side outward) to keep step with
+a man in a scarf, carrying a thing like a mourning spy-glass, which
+he was going to open presently and sweep the horizon with.&nbsp; I knew
+that we should not all have been speaking in one particular key-note
+struck by the undertaker, if we had not been making game.&nbsp; Even
+in our faces we were every one of us as like the undertaker as if we
+had been his own family, and I perceived that this could not have happened
+unless we had been making game.&nbsp; When we returned to Sally&rsquo;s,
+it was all of a piece.&nbsp; The continued impossibility of getting
+on without plum-cake; the ceremonious apparition of a pair of decanters
+containing port and sherry and cork; Sally&rsquo;s sister at the tea-table,
+clinking the best crockery and shaking her head mournfully every time
+she looked down into the teapot, as if it were the tomb; the Coat of
+Arms again, and Sally as before; lastly, the words of consolation administered
+to Sally when it was considered right that she should &lsquo;come round
+nicely:&rsquo; which were, that the deceased had had &lsquo;as com-for-ta-ble
+a fu-ne-ral as comfortable could be!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Other funerals have I seen with grown-up eyes, since that day, of
+which the burden has been the same childish burden.&nbsp; Making game.&nbsp;
+Real affliction, real grief and solemnity, have been outraged, and the
+funeral has been &lsquo;performed.&rsquo;&nbsp; The waste for which
+the funeral customs of many tribes of savages are conspicuous, has attended
+these civilised obsequies; and once, and twice, have I wished in my
+soul that if the waste must be, they would let the undertaker bury the
+money, and let me bury the friend.</p>
+<p>In France, upon the whole, these ceremonies are more sensibly regulated,
+because they are upon the whole less expensively regulated.&nbsp; I
+cannot say that I have ever been much edified by the custom of tying
+a bib and apron on the front of the house of mourning, or that I would
+myself particularly care to be driven to my grave in a nodding and bobbing
+car, like an infirm four-post bedstead, by an inky fellow-creature in
+a cocked-hat.&nbsp; But it may be that I am constitutionally insensible
+to the virtues of a cocked-hat.&nbsp; In provincial France, the solemnities
+are sufficiently hideous, but are few and cheap.&nbsp; The friends and
+townsmen of the departed, in their own dresses and not masquerading
+under the auspices of the African Conjurer, surround the hand-bier,
+and often carry it.&nbsp; It is not considered indispensable to stifle
+the bearers, or even to elevate the burden on their shoulders; consequently
+it is easily taken up, and easily set down, and is carried through the
+streets without the distressing floundering and shuffling that we see
+at home.&nbsp; A dirty priest or two, and a dirtier acolyte or two,
+do not lend any especial grace to the proceedings; and I regard with
+personal animosity the bassoon, which is blown at intervals by the big-legged
+priest (it is always a big-legged priest who blows the bassoon), when
+his fellows combine in a lugubrious stalwart drawl.&nbsp; But there
+is far less of the Conjurer and the Medicine Man in the business than
+under like circumstances here.&nbsp; The grim coaches that we reserve
+expressly for such shows, are non-existent; if the cemetery be far out
+of the town, the coaches that are hired for other purposes of life are
+hired for this purpose; and although the honest vehicles make no pretence
+of being overcome, I have never noticed that the people in them were
+the worse for it.&nbsp; In Italy, the hooded Members of Confraternities
+who attend on funerals, are dismal and ugly to look upon; but the services
+they render are at least voluntarily rendered, and impoverish no one,
+and cost nothing.&nbsp; Why should high civilisation and low savagery
+ever come together on the point of making them a wantonly wasteful and
+contemptible set of forms?</p>
+<p>Once I lost a friend by death, who had been troubled in his time
+by the Medicine Man and the Conjurer, and upon whose limited resources
+there were abundant claims.&nbsp; The Conjurer assured me that I must
+positively &lsquo;follow,&rsquo; and both he and the Medicine Man entertained
+no doubt that I must go in a black carriage, and must wear &lsquo;fittings.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+I objected to fittings as having nothing to do with my friendship, and
+I objected to the black carriage as being in more senses than one a
+job.&nbsp; So, it came into my mind to try what would happen if I quietly
+walked, in my own way, from my own house to my friend&rsquo;s burial-place,
+and stood beside his open grave in my own dress and person, reverently
+listening to the best of Services.&nbsp; It satisfied my mind, I found,
+quite as well as if I had been disguised in a hired hatband and scarf
+both trailing to my very heels, and as if I had cost the orphan children,
+in their greatest need, ten guineas.</p>
+<p>Can any one who ever beheld the stupendous absurdities attendant
+on &lsquo;A message from the Lords&rsquo; in the House of Commons, turn
+upon the Medicine Man of the poor Indians?&nbsp; Has he any &lsquo;Medicine&rsquo;
+in that dried skin pouch of his, so supremely ludicrous as the two Masters
+in Chancery holding up their black petticoats and butting their ridiculous
+wigs at Mr. Speaker?&nbsp; Yet there are authorities innumerable to
+tell me&mdash;as there are authorities innumerable among the Indians
+to tell them&mdash;that the nonsense is indispensable, and that its
+abrogation would involve most awful consequences.&nbsp; What would any
+rational creature who had never heard of judicial and forensic &lsquo;fittings,&rsquo;
+think of the Court of Common Pleas on the first day of Term?&nbsp; Or
+with what an awakened sense of humour would LIVINGSTONE&rsquo;S account
+of a similar scene be perused, if the fur and red cloth and goats&rsquo;
+hair and horse hair and powdered chalk and black patches on the top
+of the head, were all at Tala Mungongo instead of Westminster?&nbsp;
+That model missionary and good brave man found at least one tribe of
+blacks with a very strong sense of the ridiculous, insomuch that although
+an amiable and docile people, they never could see the Missionaries
+dispose of their legs in the attitude of kneeling, or hear them begin
+a hymn in chorus, without bursting into roars of irrepressible laughter.&nbsp;
+It is much to be hoped that no member of this facetious tribe may ever
+find his way to England and get committed for contempt of Court.</p>
+<p>In the Tonga Island already mentioned, there are a set of personages
+called Mataboos&mdash;or some such name&mdash;who are the masters of
+all the public ceremonies, and who know the exact place in which every
+chief must sit down when a solemn public meeting takes place: a meeting
+which bears a family resemblance to our own Public Dinner, in respect
+of its being a main part of the proceedings that every gentleman present
+is required to drink something nasty.&nbsp; These Mataboos are a privileged
+order, so important is their avocation, and they make the most of their
+high functions.&nbsp; A long way out of the Tonga Islands, indeed, rather
+near the British Islands, was there no calling in of the Mataboos the
+other day to settle an earth-convulsing question of precedence; and
+was there no weighty opinion delivered on the part of the Mataboos which,
+being interpreted to that unlucky tribe of blacks with the sense of
+the ridiculous, would infallibly set the whole population screaming
+with laughter?</p>
+<p>My sense of justice demands the admission, however, that this is
+not quite a one-sided question.&nbsp; If we submit ourselves meekly
+to the Medicine Man and the Conjurer, and are not exalted by it, the
+savages may retort upon us that we act more unwisely than they in other
+matters wherein we fail to imitate them.&nbsp; It is a widely diffused
+custom among savage tribes, when they meet to discuss any affair of
+public importance, to sit up all night making a horrible noise, dancing,
+blowing shells, and (in cases where they are familiar with fire-arms)
+flying out into open places and letting off guns.&nbsp; It is questionable
+whether our legislative assemblies might not take a hint from this.&nbsp;
+A shell is not a melodious wind-instrument, and it is monotonous; but
+it is as musical as, and not more monotonous than, my Honourable friend&rsquo;s
+own trumpet, or the trumpet that he blows so hard for the Minister.&nbsp;
+The uselessness of arguing with any supporter of a Government or of
+an Opposition, is well known.&nbsp; Try dancing.&nbsp; It is a better
+exercise, and has the unspeakable recommendation that it couldn&rsquo;t
+be reported.&nbsp; The honourable and savage member who has a loaded
+gun, and has grown impatient of debate, plunges out of doors, fires
+in the air, and returns calm and silent to the Palaver.&nbsp; Let the
+honourable and civilised member similarly charged with a speech, dart
+into the cloisters of Westminster Abbey in the silence of night, let
+his speech off, and come back harmless.&nbsp; It is not at first sight
+a very rational custom to paint a broad blue stripe across one&rsquo;s
+nose and both cheeks, and a broad red stripe from the forehead to the
+chin, to attach a few pounds of wood to one&rsquo;s under lip, to stick
+fish-bones in one&rsquo;s ears and a brass curtain-ring in one&rsquo;s
+nose, and to rub one&rsquo;s body all over with rancid oil, as a preliminary
+to entering on business.&nbsp; But this is a question of taste and ceremony,
+and so is the Windsor Uniform.&nbsp; The manner of entering on the business
+itself is another question.&nbsp; A council of six hundred savage gentlemen
+entirely independent of tailors, sitting on their hams in a ring, smoking,
+and occasionally grunting, seem to me, according to the experience I
+have gathered in my voyages and travels, somehow to do what they come
+together for; whereas that is not at all the general experience of a
+council of six hundred civilised gentlemen very dependent on tailors
+and sitting on mechanical contrivances.&nbsp; It is better that an Assembly
+should do its utmost to envelop itself in smoke, than that it should
+direct its endeavours to enveloping the public in smoke; and I would
+rather it buried half a hundred hatchets than buried one subject demanding
+attention.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIX&mdash;TITBULL&rsquo;S ALMS-HOUSES</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>By the side of most railways out of London, one may see Alms-Houses
+and Retreats (generally with a Wing or a Centre wanting, and ambitious
+of being much bigger than they are), some of which are newly-founded
+Institutions, and some old establishments transplanted.&nbsp; There
+is a tendency in these pieces of architecture to shoot upward unexpectedly,
+like Jack&rsquo;s bean-stalk, and to be ornate in spires of Chapels
+and lanterns of Halls, which might lead to the embellishment of the
+air with many castles of questionable beauty but for the restraining
+consideration of expense.&nbsp; However, the manners, being always of
+a sanguine temperament, comfort themselves with plans and elevations
+of Loomings in the future, and are influenced in the present by philanthropy
+towards the railway passengers.&nbsp; For, the question how prosperous
+and promising the buildings can be made to look in their eyes, usually
+supersedes the lesser question how they can be turned to the best account
+for the inmates.</p>
+<p>Why none of the people who reside in these places ever look out of
+window, or take an airing in the piece of ground which is going to be
+a garden by-and-by, is one of the wonders I have added to my always-lengthening
+list of the wonders of the world.&nbsp; I have got it into my mind that
+they live in a state of chronic injury and resentment, and on that account
+refuse to decorate the building with a human interest.&nbsp; As I have
+known legatees deeply injured by a bequest of five hundred pounds because
+it was not five thousand, and as I was once acquainted with a pensioner
+on the Public to the extent of two hundred a year, who perpetually anathematised
+his Country because he was not in the receipt of four, having no claim
+whatever to sixpence: so perhaps it usually happens, within certain
+limits, that to get a little help is to get a notion of being defrauded
+of more.&nbsp; &lsquo;How do they pass their lives in this beautiful
+and peaceful place!&rsquo; was the subject of my speculation with a
+visitor who once accompanied me to a charming rustic retreat for old
+men and women: a quaint ancient foundation in a pleasant English country,
+behind a picturesque church and among rich old convent gardens.&nbsp;
+There were but some dozen or so of houses, and we agreed that we would
+talk with the inhabitants, as they sat in their groined rooms between
+the light of their fires and the light shining in at their latticed
+windows, and would find out.&nbsp; They passed their lives in considering
+themselves mulcted of certain ounces of tea by a deaf old steward who
+lived among them in the quadrangle.&nbsp; There was no reason to suppose
+that any such ounces of tea had ever been in existence, or that the
+old steward so much as knew what was the matter;&mdash;he passed <i>his</i>
+life in considering himself periodically defrauded of a birch-broom
+by the beadle.</p>
+<p>But it is neither to old Alms-Houses in the country, nor to new Alms-Houses
+by the railroad, that these present Uncommercial notes relate.&nbsp;
+They refer back to journeys made among those common-place, smoky-fronted
+London Alms-Houses, with a little paved court-yard in front enclosed
+by iron railings, which have got snowed up, as it were, by bricks and
+mortar; which were once in a suburb, but are now in the densely populated
+town; gaps in the busy life around them, parentheses in the close and
+blotted texts of the streets.</p>
+<p>Sometimes, these Alms-Houses belong to a Company or Society.&nbsp;
+Sometimes, they were established by individuals, and are maintained
+out of private funds bequeathed in perpetuity long ago.&nbsp; My favourite
+among them is Titbull&rsquo;s, which establishment is a picture of many.&nbsp;
+Of Titbull I know no more than that he deceased in 1723, that his Christian
+name was Sampson, and his social designation Esquire, and that he founded
+these Alms-Houses as Dwellings for Nine Poor Women and Six Poor Men
+by his Will and Testament.&nbsp; I should not know even this much, but
+for its being inscribed on a grim stone very difficult to read, let
+into the front of the centre house of Titbull&rsquo;s Alms-Houses, and
+which stone is ornamented a-top with a piece of sculptured drapery resembling
+the effigy of Titbull&rsquo;s bath-towel.</p>
+<p>Titbull&rsquo;s Alms-Houses are in the east of London, in a great
+highway, in a poor, busy, and thronged neighbourhood.&nbsp; Old iron
+and fried fish, cough drops and artificial flowers, boiled pigs&rsquo;-feet
+and household furniture that looks as if it were polished up with lip-salve,
+umbrellas full of vocal literature and saucers full of shell-fish in
+a green juice which I hope is natural to them when their health is good,
+garnish the paved sideways as you go to Titbull&rsquo;s.&nbsp; I take
+the ground to have risen in those parts since Titbull&rsquo;s time,
+and you drop into his domain by three stone steps.&nbsp; So did I first
+drop into it, very nearly striking my brows against Titbull&rsquo;s
+pump, which stands with its back to the thoroughfare just inside the
+gate, and has a conceited air of reviewing Titbull&rsquo;s pensioners.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And a worse one,&rsquo; said a virulent old man with a pitcher,
+&lsquo;there isn&rsquo;t nowhere.&nbsp; A harder one to work, nor a
+grudginer one to yield, there isn&rsquo;t nowhere!&rsquo;&nbsp; This
+old man wore a long coat, such as we see Hogarth&rsquo;s Chairmen represented
+with, and it was of that peculiar green-pea hue without the green, which
+seems to come of poverty.&nbsp; It had also that peculiar smell of cupboard
+which seems to come of poverty.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The pump is rusty, perhaps,&rsquo; said I.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not <i>it</i>,&rsquo; said the old man, regarding it with
+undiluted virulence in his watery eye.&nbsp; &lsquo;It never were fit
+to be termed a pump.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s the matter with
+<i>it</i>.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Whose fault is that?&rsquo; said I.</p>
+<p>The old man, who had a working mouth which seemed to be trying to
+masticate his anger and to find that it was too hard and there was too
+much of it, replied, &lsquo;Them gentlemen.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What gentlemen?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Maybe you&rsquo;re one of &rsquo;em?&rsquo; said the old man,
+suspiciously.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The trustees?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t trust &rsquo;em myself,&rsquo; said the virulent
+old man.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If you mean the gentlemen who administer this place, no, I
+am not one of them; nor have I ever so much as heard of them.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I wish <i>I</i> never heard of them,&rsquo; gasped the old
+man: &lsquo;at my time of life&mdash;with the rheumatics&mdash;drawing
+water-from that thing!&rsquo;&nbsp; Not to be deluded into calling it
+a Pump, the old man gave it another virulent look, took up his pitcher,
+and carried it into a corner dwelling-house, shutting the door after
+him.</p>
+<p>Looking around and seeing that each little house was a house of two
+little rooms; and seeing that the little oblong court-yard in front
+was like a graveyard for the inhabitants, saving that no word was engraven
+on its flat dry stones; and seeing that the currents of life and noise
+ran to and fro outside, having no more to do with the place than if
+it were a sort of low-water mark on a lively beach; I say, seeing this
+and nothing else, I was going out at the gate when one of the doors
+opened.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Was you looking for anything, sir?&rsquo; asked a tidy, well-favoured
+woman.</p>
+<p>Really, no; I couldn&rsquo;t say I was.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not wanting any one, sir?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No&mdash;at least I&mdash;pray what is the name of the elderly
+gentleman who lives in the corner there?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The tidy woman stepped out to be sure of the door I indicated, and
+she and the pump and I stood all three in a row with our backs to the
+thoroughfare.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh!&nbsp; <i>His</i> name is Mr. Battens,&rsquo; said the
+tidy woman, dropping her voice.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have just been talking with him.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Indeed?&rsquo; said the tidy woman.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ho!&nbsp;
+I wonder Mr. Battens talked!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is he usually so silent?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, Mr. Battens is the oldest here&mdash;that is to say,
+the oldest of the old gentlemen&mdash;in point of residence.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She had a way of passing her hands over and under one another as
+she spoke, that was not only tidy but propitiatory; so I asked her if
+I might look at her little sitting-room?&nbsp; She willingly replied
+Yes, and we went into it together: she leaving the door open, with an
+eye as I understood to the social proprieties.&nbsp; The door opening
+at once into the room without any intervening entry, even scandal must
+have been silenced by the precaution.</p>
+<p>It was a gloomy little chamber, but clean, and with a mug of wallflower
+in the window.&nbsp; On the chimney-piece were two peacock&rsquo;s feathers,
+a carved ship, a few shells, and a black profile with one eyelash; whether
+this portrait purported to be male or female passed my comprehension,
+until my hostess informed me that it was her only son, and &lsquo;quite
+a speaking one.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He is alive, I hope?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, sir,&rsquo; said the widow, &lsquo;he were cast away in
+China.&rsquo;&nbsp; This was said with a modest sense of its reflecting
+a certain geographical distinction on his mother.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If the old gentlemen here are not given to talking,&rsquo;
+said I, &lsquo;I hope the old ladies are?&mdash;not that you are one.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She shook her head.&nbsp; &lsquo;You see they get so cross.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How is that?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, whether the gentlemen really do deprive us of any little
+matters which ought to be ours by rights, I cannot say for certain;
+but the opinion of the old ones is they do.&nbsp; And Mr. Battens he
+do even go so far as to doubt whether credit is due to the Founder.&nbsp;
+For Mr. Battens he do say, anyhow he got his name up by it and he done
+it cheap.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am afraid the pump has soured Mr. Battens.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It may be so,&rsquo; returned the tidy widow, &lsquo;but the
+handle does go very hard.&nbsp; Still, what I say to myself is, the
+gentlemen <i>may</i> not pocket the difference between a good pump and
+a bad one, and I would wish to think well of them.&nbsp; And the dwellings,&rsquo;
+said my hostess, glancing round her room; &lsquo;perhaps they were convenient
+dwellings in the Founder&rsquo;s time, considered <i>as</i> his time,
+and therefore he should not be blamed.&nbsp; But Mrs. Saggers is very
+hard upon them.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mrs. Saggers is the oldest here?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The oldest but one.&nbsp; Mrs. Quinch being the oldest, and
+have totally lost her head.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am the youngest in residence, and consequently am not looked
+up to.&nbsp; But when Mrs. Quinch makes a happy release, there will
+be one below me.&nbsp; Nor is it to be expected that Mrs. Saggers will
+prove herself immortal.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;True.&nbsp; Nor Mr. Battens.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Regarding the old gentlemen,&rsquo; said my widow slightingly,
+&lsquo;they count among themselves.&nbsp; They do not count among us.&nbsp;
+Mr. Battens is that exceptional that he have written to the gentlemen
+many times and have worked the case against them.&nbsp; Therefore he
+have took a higher ground.&nbsp; But we do not, as a rule, greatly reckon
+the old gentlemen.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Pursuing the subject, I found it to be traditionally settled among
+the poor ladies that the poor gentlemen, whatever their ages, were all
+very old indeed, and in a state of dotage.&nbsp; I also discovered that
+the juniors and newcomers preserved, for a time, a waning disposition
+to believe in Titbull and his trustees, but that as they gained social
+standing they lost this faith, and disparaged Titbull and all his works.</p>
+<p>Improving my acquaintance subsequently with this respected lady,
+whose name was Mrs. Mitts, and occasionally dropping in upon her with
+a little offering of sound Family Hyson in my pocket, I gradually became
+familiar with the inner politics and ways of Titbull&rsquo;s Alms-Houses.&nbsp;
+But I never could find out who the trustees were, or where they were:
+it being one of the fixed ideas of the place that those authorities
+must be vaguely and mysteriously mentioned as &lsquo;the gentlemen&rsquo;
+only.&nbsp; The secretary of &lsquo;the gentlemen&rsquo; was once pointed
+out to me, evidently engaged in championing the obnoxious pump against
+the attacks of the discontented Mr. Battens; but I am not in a condition
+to report further of him than that he had the sprightly bearing of a
+lawyer&rsquo;s clerk.&nbsp; I had it from Mrs. Mitts&rsquo;s lips in
+a very confidential moment, that Mr. Battens was once &lsquo;had up
+before the gentlemen&rsquo; to stand or fall by his accusations, and
+that an old shoe was thrown after him on his departure from the building
+on this dread errand;&mdash;not ineffectually, for, the interview resulting
+in a plumber, was considered to have encircled the temples of Mr. Battens
+with the wreath of victory,</p>
+<p>In Titbull&rsquo;s Alms-Houses, the local society is not regarded
+as good society.&nbsp; A gentleman or lady receiving visitors from without,
+or going out to tea, counts, as it were, accordingly; but visitings
+or tea-drinkings interchanged among Titbullians do not score.&nbsp;
+Such interchanges, however, are rare, in consequence of internal dissensions
+occasioned by Mrs. Saggers&rsquo;s pail: which household article has
+split Titbull&rsquo;s into almost as many parties as there are dwellings
+in that precinct.&nbsp; The extremely complicated nature of the conflicting
+articles of belief on the subject prevents my stating them here with
+my usual perspicuity, but I think they have all branched off from the
+root-and-trunk question, Has Mrs. Saggers any right to stand her pail
+outside her dwelling?&nbsp; The question has been much refined upon,
+but roughly stated may be stated in those terms.</p>
+<p>There are two old men in Titbull&rsquo;s Alms-Houses who, I have
+been given to understand, knew each other in the world beyond its pump
+and iron railings, when they were both &lsquo;in trade.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+They make the best of their reverses, and are looked upon with great
+contempt.&nbsp; They are little, stooping, blear-eyed old men of cheerful
+countenance, and they hobble up and down the court-yard wagging their
+chins and talking together quite gaily.&nbsp; This has given offence,
+and has, moreover, raised the question whether they are justified in
+passing any other windows than their own.&nbsp; Mr. Battens, however,
+permitting them to pass <i>his</i> windows, on the disdainful ground
+that their imbecility almost amounts to irresponsibility, they are allowed
+to take their walk in peace.&nbsp; They live next door to one another,
+and take it by turns to read the newspaper aloud (that is to say, the
+newest newspaper they can get), and they play cribbage at night.&nbsp;
+On warm and sunny days they have been known to go so far as to bring
+out two chairs and sit by the iron railings, looking forth; but this
+low conduct, being much remarked upon throughout Titbull&rsquo;s, they
+were deterred by an outraged public opinion from repeating it.&nbsp;
+There is a rumour&mdash;but it may be malicious&mdash;that they hold
+the memory of Titbull in some weak sort of veneration, and that they
+once set off together on a pilgrimage to the parish churchyard to find
+his tomb.&nbsp; To this, perhaps, might be traced a general suspicion
+that they are spies of &lsquo;the gentlemen:&rsquo; to which they were
+supposed to have given colour in my own presence on the occasion of
+the weak attempt at justification of the pump by the gentlemen&rsquo;s
+clerk; when they emerged bare-headed from the doors of their dwellings,
+as if their dwellings and themselves constituted an old-fashioned weather-glass
+of double action with two figures of old ladies inside, and deferentially
+bowed to him at intervals until he took his departure.&nbsp; They are
+understood to be perfectly friendless and relationless.&nbsp; Unquestionably
+the two poor fellows make the very best of their lives in Titbull&rsquo;s
+Alms-Houses, and unquestionably they are (as before mentioned) the subjects
+of unmitigated contempt there.</p>
+<p>On Saturday nights, when there is a greater stir than usual outside,
+and when itinerant vendors of miscellaneous wares even take their stations
+and light up their smoky lamps before the iron railings, Titbull&rsquo;s
+becomes flurried.&nbsp; Mrs. Saggers has her celebrated palpitations
+of the heart, for the most part, on Saturday nights.&nbsp; But Titbull&rsquo;s
+is unfit to strive with the uproar of the streets in any of its phases.&nbsp;
+It is religiously believed at Titbull&rsquo;s that people push more
+than they used, and likewise that the foremost object of the population
+of England and Wales is to get you down and trample on you.&nbsp; Even
+of railroads they know, at Titbull&rsquo;s, little more than the shriek
+(which Mrs. Saggers says goes through her, and ought to be taken up
+by Government); and the penny postage may even yet be unknown there,
+for I have never seen a letter delivered to any inhabitant.&nbsp; But
+there is a tall, straight, sallow lady resident in Number Seven, Titbull&rsquo;s,
+who never speaks to anybody, who is surrounded by a superstitious halo
+of lost wealth, who does her household work in housemaid&rsquo;s gloves,
+and who is secretly much deferred to, though openly cavilled at; and
+it has obscurely leaked out that this old lady has a son, grandson,
+nephew, or other relative, who is &lsquo;a Contractor,&rsquo; and who
+would think it nothing of a job to knock down Titbull&rsquo;s, pack
+it off into Cornwall, and knock it together again.&nbsp; An immense
+sensation was made by a gipsy-party calling in a spring-van, to take
+this old lady up to go for a day&rsquo;s pleasure into Epping Forest,
+and notes were compared as to which of the company was the son, grandson,
+nephew, or other relative, the Contractor.&nbsp; A thick-set personage
+with a white hat and a cigar in his mouth, was the favourite: though
+as Titbull&rsquo;s had no other reason to believe that the Contractor
+was there at all, than that this man was supposed to eye the chimney
+stacks as if he would like to knock them down and cart them off, the
+general mind was much unsettled in arriving at a conclusion.&nbsp; As
+a way out of this difficulty, it concentrated itself on the acknowledged
+Beauty of the party, every stitch in whose dress was verbally unripped
+by the old ladies then and there, and whose &lsquo;goings on&rsquo;
+with another and a thinner personage in a white hat might have suffused
+the pump (where they were principally discussed) with blushes, for months
+afterwards.&nbsp; Herein Titbull&rsquo;s was to Titbull&rsquo;s true,
+for it has a constitutional dislike of all strangers.&nbsp; As concerning
+innovations and improvements, it is always of opinion that what it doesn&rsquo;t
+want itself, nobody ought to want.&nbsp; But I think I have met with
+this opinion outside Titbull&rsquo;s.</p>
+<p>Of the humble treasures of furniture brought into Titbull&rsquo;s
+by the inmates when they establish themselves in that place of contemplation
+for the rest of their days, by far the greater and more valuable part
+belongs to the ladies.&nbsp; I may claim the honour of having either
+crossed the threshold, or looked in at the door, of every one of the
+nine ladies, and I have noticed that they are all particular in the
+article of bedsteads, and maintain favourite and long-established bedsteads
+and bedding as a regular part of their rest.&nbsp; Generally an antiquated
+chest of drawers is among their cherished possessions; a tea-tray always
+is.&nbsp; I know of at least two rooms in which a little tea-kettle
+of genuine burnished copper, vies with the cat in winking at the fire;
+and one old lady has a tea-urn set forth in state on the top of her
+chest of drawers, which urn is used as her library, and contains four
+duodecimo volumes, and a black-bordered newspaper giving an account
+of the funeral of Her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte.&nbsp; Among
+the poor old gentlemen there are no such niceties.&nbsp; Their furniture
+has the air of being contributed, like some obsolete Literary Miscellany,
+&lsquo;by several hands;&rsquo; their few chairs never match; old patchwork
+coverlets linger among them; and they have an untidy habit of keeping
+their wardrobes in hat-boxes.&nbsp; When I recall one old gentleman
+who is rather choice in his shoe-brushes and blacking-bottle, I have
+summed up the domestic elegances of that side of the building.</p>
+<p>On the occurrence of a death in Titbull&rsquo;s, it is invariably
+agreed among the survivors&mdash;and it is the only subject on which
+they do agree&mdash;that the departed did something &lsquo;to bring
+it on.&rsquo;&nbsp; Judging by Titbull&rsquo;s, I should say the human
+race need never die, if they took care.&nbsp; But they don&rsquo;t take
+care, and they do die, and when they die in Titbull&rsquo;s they are
+buried at the cost of the Foundation.&nbsp; Some provision has been
+made for the purpose, in virtue of which (I record this on the strength
+of having seen the funeral of Mrs. Quinch) a lively neighbouring undertaker
+dresses up four of the old men, and four of the old women, hustles them
+into a procession of four couples, and leads off with a large black
+bow at the back of his hat, looking over his shoulder at them airily
+from time to time to see that no member of the party has got lost, or
+has tumbled down; as if they were a company of dim old dolls.</p>
+<p>Resignation of a dwelling is of very rare occurrence in Titbull&rsquo;s.&nbsp;
+A story does obtain there, how an old lady&rsquo;s son once drew a prize
+of Thirty Thousand Pounds in the Lottery, and presently drove to the
+gate in his own carriage, with French Horns playing up behind, and whisked
+his mother away, and left ten guineas for a Feast.&nbsp; But I have
+been unable to substantiate it by any evidence, and regard it as an
+Alms-House Fairy Tale.&nbsp; It is curious that the only proved case
+of resignation happened within my knowledge.</p>
+<p>It happened on this wise.&nbsp; There is a sharp competition among
+the ladies respecting the gentility of their visitors, and I have so
+often observed visitors to be dressed as for a holiday occasion, that
+I suppose the ladies to have besought them to make all possible display
+when they come.&nbsp; In these circumstances much excitement was one
+day occasioned by Mrs. Mitts receiving a visit from a Greenwich Pensioner.&nbsp;
+He was a Pensioner of a bluff and warlike appearance, with an empty
+coat-sleeve, and he was got up with unusual care; his coat-buttons were
+extremely bright, he wore his empty coat-sleeve in a graceful festoon,
+and he had a walking-stick in his hand that must have cost money.&nbsp;
+When, with the head of his walking-stick, he knocked at Mrs. Mitts&rsquo;s
+door&mdash;there are no knockers in Titbull&rsquo;s&mdash;Mrs. Mitts
+was overheard by a next-door neighbour to utter a cry of surprise expressing
+much agitation; and the same neighbour did afterwards solemnly affirm
+that when he was admitted into Mrs. Mitts&rsquo;s room, she heard a
+smack.&nbsp; Heard a smack which was not a blow.</p>
+<p>There was an air about this Greenwich Pensioner when he took his
+departure, which imbued all Titbull&rsquo;s with the conviction that
+he was coming again.&nbsp; He was eagerly looked for, and Mrs. Mitts
+was closely watched.&nbsp; In the meantime, if anything could have placed
+the unfortunate six old gentlemen at a greater disadvantage than that
+at which they chronically stood, it would have been the apparition of
+this Greenwich Pensioner.&nbsp; They were well shrunken already, but
+they shrunk to nothing in comparison with the Pensioner.&nbsp; Even
+the poor old gentlemen themselves seemed conscious of their inferiority,
+and to know submissively that they could never hope to hold their own
+against the Pensioner with his warlike and maritime experience in the
+past, and his tobacco money in the present: his chequered career of
+blue water, black gunpowder, and red bloodshed for England, home, and
+beauty.</p>
+<p>Before three weeks were out, the Pensioner reappeared.&nbsp; Again
+he knocked at Mrs. Mitts&rsquo;s door with the handle of his stick,
+and again was he admitted.&nbsp; But not again did he depart alone;
+for Mrs. Mitts, in a bonnet identified as having been re-embellished,
+went out walking with him, and stayed out till the ten o&rsquo;clock
+beer, Greenwich time.</p>
+<p>There was now a truce, even as to the troubled waters of Mrs. Saggers&rsquo;s
+pail; nothing was spoken of among the ladies but the conduct of Mrs.
+Mitts and its blighting influence on the reputation of Titbull&rsquo;s.&nbsp;
+It was agreed that Mr. Battens &lsquo;ought to take it up,&rsquo; and
+Mr. Battens was communicated with on the subject.&nbsp; That unsatisfactory
+individual replied &lsquo;that he didn&rsquo;t see his way yet,&rsquo;
+and it was unanimously voted by the ladies that aggravation was in his
+nature.</p>
+<p>How it came to pass, with some appearance of inconsistency, that
+Mrs. Mitts was cut by all the ladies and the Pensioner admired by all
+the ladies, matters not.&nbsp; Before another week was out, Titbull&rsquo;s
+was startled by another phenomenon.&nbsp; At ten o&rsquo;clock in the
+forenoon appeared a cab, containing not only the Greenwich Pensioner
+with one arm, but, to boot, a Chelsea Pensioner with one leg.&nbsp;
+Both dismounting to assist Mrs. Mitts into the cab, the Greenwich Pensioner
+bore her company inside, and the Chelsea Pensioner mounted the box by
+the driver: his wooden leg sticking out after the manner of a bowsprit,
+as if in jocular homage to his friend&rsquo;s sea-going career.&nbsp;
+Thus the equipage drove away.&nbsp; No Mrs. Mitts returned that night.</p>
+<p>What Mr. Battens might have done in the matter of taking it up, goaded
+by the infuriated state of public feeling next morning, was anticipated
+by another phenomenon.&nbsp; A Truck, propelled by the Greenwich Pensioner
+and the Chelsea Pensioner, each placidly smoking a pipe, and pushing
+his warrior breast against the handle.</p>
+<p>The display on the part of the Greenwich Pensioner of his &lsquo;marriage-lines,&rsquo;
+and his announcement that himself and friend had looked in for the furniture
+of Mrs. G. Pensioner, late Mitts, by no means reconciled the ladies
+to the conduct of their sister; on the contrary, it is said that they
+appeared more than ever exasperated.&nbsp; Nevertheless, my stray visits
+to Titbull&rsquo;s since the date of this occurrence, have confirmed
+me in an impression that it was a wholesome fillip.&nbsp; The nine ladies
+are smarter, both in mind and dress, than they used to be, though it
+must be admitted that they despise the six gentlemen to the last extent.&nbsp;
+They have a much greater interest in the external thoroughfare too,
+than they had when I first knew Titbull&rsquo;s.&nbsp; And whenever
+I chance to be leaning my back against the pump or the iron railings,
+and to be talking to one of the junior ladies, and to see that a flush
+has passed over her face, I immediately know without looking round that
+a Greenwich Pensioner has gone past.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXX&mdash;THE RUFFIAN</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>I entertain so strong an objection to the euphonious softening of
+Ruffian into Rough, which has lately become popular, that I restore
+the right word to the heading of this paper; the rather, as my object
+is to dwell upon the fact that the Ruffian is tolerated among us to
+an extent that goes beyond all unruffianly endurance.&nbsp; I take the
+liberty to believe that if the Ruffian besets my life, a professional
+Ruffian at large in the open streets of a great city, notoriously having
+no other calling than that of Ruffian, and of disquieting and despoiling
+me as I go peacefully about my lawful business, interfering with no
+one, then the Government under which I have the great constitutional
+privilege, supreme honour and happiness, and all the rest of it, to
+exist, breaks down in the discharge of any Government&rsquo;s most simple
+elementary duty.</p>
+<p>What did I read in the London daily papers, in the early days of
+this last September?&nbsp; That the Police had &lsquo;AT LENGTH SUCCEEDED
+IN CAPTURING TWO OF THE NOTORIOUS GANG THAT HAVE SO LONG INVESTED THE
+WATERLOO ROAD.&rsquo;&nbsp; Is it possible?&nbsp; What a wonderful Police!&nbsp;
+Here is a straight, broad, public thoroughfare of immense resort; half
+a mile long; gas-lighted by night; with a great gas-lighted railway
+station in it, extra the street lamps; full of shops; traversed by two
+popular cross thoroughfares of considerable traffic; itself the main
+road to the South of London; and the admirable Police have, after long
+infestment of this dark and lonely spot by a gang of Ruffians, actually
+got hold of two of them.&nbsp; Why, can it be doubted that any man of
+fair London knowledge and common resolution, armed with the powers of
+the Law, could have captured the whole confederacy in a week?</p>
+<p>It is to the saving up of the Ruffian class by the Magistracy and
+Police&mdash;to the conventional preserving of them, as if they were
+Partridges&mdash;that their number and audacity must be in great part
+referred.&nbsp; Why is a notorious Thief and Ruffian ever left at large?&nbsp;
+He never turns his liberty to any account but violence and plunder,
+he never did a day&rsquo;s work out of gaol, he never will do a day&rsquo;s
+work out of gaol.&nbsp; As a proved notorious Thief he is always consignable
+to prison for three months.&nbsp; When he comes out, he is surely as
+notorious a Thief as he was when he went in.&nbsp; Then send him back
+again.&nbsp; &lsquo;Just Heaven!&rsquo; cries the Society for the protection
+of remonstrant Ruffians.&nbsp; &lsquo;This is equivalent to a sentence
+of perpetual imprisonment!&rsquo;&nbsp; Precisely for that reason it
+has my advocacy.&nbsp; I demand to have the Ruffian kept out of my way,
+and out of the way of all decent people.&nbsp; I demand to have the
+Ruffian employed, perforce, in hewing wood and drawing water somewhere
+for the general service, instead of hewing at her Majesty&rsquo;s subjects
+and drawing their watches out of their pockets.&nbsp; If this be termed
+an unreasonable demand, then the tax-gatherer&rsquo;s demand on me must
+be far more unreasonable, and cannot be otherwise than extortionate
+and unjust.</p>
+<p>It will be seen that I treat of the Thief and Ruffian as one.&nbsp;
+I do so, because I know the two characters to be one, in the vast majority
+of cases, just as well as the Police know it.&nbsp; (As to the Magistracy,
+with a few exceptions, they know nothing about it but what the Police
+choose to tell them.)&nbsp; There are disorderly classes of men who
+are not thieves; as railway-navigators, brickmakers, wood-sawyers, costermongers.&nbsp;
+These classes are often disorderly and troublesome; but it is mostly
+among themselves, and at any rate they have their industrious avocations,
+they work early and late, and work hard.&nbsp; The generic Ruffian&mdash;honourable
+member for what is tenderly called the Rough Element&mdash;is either
+a Thief, or the companion of Thieves.&nbsp; When he infamously molests
+women coming out of chapel on Sunday evenings (for which I would have
+his back scarified often and deep) it is not only for the gratification
+of his pleasant instincts, but that there may be a confusion raised
+by which either he or his friends may profit, in the commission of highway
+robberies or in picking pockets.&nbsp; When he gets a police-constable
+down and kicks him helpless for life, it is because that constable once
+did his duty in bringing him to justice.&nbsp; When he rushes into the
+bar of a public-house and scoops an eye out of one of the company there,
+or bites his ear off, it is because the man he maims gave evidence against
+him.&nbsp; When he and a line of comrades extending across the footway&mdash;say
+of that solitary mountain-spur of the Abruzzi, the Waterloo Road&mdash;advance
+towards me &lsquo;skylarking&rsquo; among themselves, my purse or shirt-pin
+is in predestined peril from his playfulness.&nbsp; Always a Ruffian,
+always a Thief.&nbsp; Always a Thief, always a Ruffian.</p>
+<p>Now, when I, who am not paid to know these things, know them daily
+on the evidence of my senses and experience; when I know that the Ruffian
+never jostles a lady in the streets, or knocks a hat off, but in order
+that the Thief may profit, is it surprising that I should require from
+those who <i>are</i> paid to know these things, prevention of them?</p>
+<p>Look at this group at a street corner.&nbsp; Number one is a shirking
+fellow of five-and-twenty, in an ill-favoured and ill-savoured suit,
+his trousers of corduroy, his coat of some indiscernible groundwork
+for the deposition of grease, his neckerchief like an eel, his complexion
+like dirty dough, his mangy fur cap pulled low upon his beetle brows
+to hide the prison cut of his hair.&nbsp; His hands are in his pockets.&nbsp;
+He puts them there when they are idle, as naturally as in other people&rsquo;s
+pockets when they are busy, for he knows that they are not roughened
+by work, and that they tell a tale.&nbsp; Hence, whenever he takes one
+out to draw a sleeve across his nose&mdash;which is often, for he has
+weak eyes and a constitutional cold in his head&mdash;he restores it
+to its pocket immediately afterwards.&nbsp; Number two is a burly brute
+of five-and-thirty, in a tall stiff hat; is a composite as to his clothes
+of betting-man and fighting-man; is whiskered; has a staring pin in
+his breast, along with his right hand; has insolent and cruel eyes:
+large shoulders; strong legs booted and tipped for kicking.&nbsp; Number
+three is forty years of age; is short, thick-set, strong, and bow-legged;
+wears knee cords and white stockings, a very long-sleeved waistcoat,
+a very large neckerchief doubled or trebled round his throat, and a
+crumpled white hat crowns his ghastly parchment face.&nbsp; This fellow
+looks like an executed postboy of other days, cut down from the gallows
+too soon, and restored and preserved by express diabolical agency.&nbsp;
+Numbers five, six, and seven, are hulking, idle, slouching young men,
+patched and shabby, too short in the sleeves and too tight in the legs,
+slimily clothed, foul-spoken, repulsive wretches inside and out.&nbsp;
+In all the party there obtains a certain twitching character of mouth
+and furtiveness of eye, that hint how the coward is lurking under the
+bully.&nbsp; The hint is quite correct, for they are a slinking sneaking
+set, far more prone to lie down on their backs and kick out, when in
+difficulty, than to make a stand for it.&nbsp; (This may account for
+the street mud on the backs of Numbers five, six, and seven, being much
+fresher than the stale splashes on their legs.)</p>
+<p>These engaging gentry a Police-constable stands contemplating.&nbsp;
+His Station, with a Reserve of assistance, is very near at hand.&nbsp;
+They cannot pretend to any trade, not even to be porters or messengers.&nbsp;
+It would be idle if they did, for he knows them, and they know that
+he knows them, to be nothing but professed Thieves and Ruffians.&nbsp;
+He knows where they resort, knows by what slang names they call one
+another, knows how often they have been in prison, and how long, and
+for what.&nbsp; All this is known at his Station, too, and is (or ought
+to be) known at Scotland Yard, too.&nbsp; But does he know, or does
+his Station know, or does Scotland Yard know, or does anybody know,
+why these fellows should be here at liberty, when, as reputed Thieves
+to whom a whole Division of Police could swear, they might all be under
+lock and key at hard labour?&nbsp; Not he; truly he would be a wise
+man if he did!&nbsp; He only knows that these are members of the &lsquo;notorious
+gang,&rsquo; which, according to the newspaper Police-office reports
+of this last past September, &lsquo;have so long infested&rsquo; the
+awful solitudes of the Waterloo Road, and out of which almost impregnable
+fastnesses the Police have at length dragged Two, to the unspeakable
+admiration of all good civilians.</p>
+<p>The consequences of this contemplative habit on the part of the Executive&mdash;a
+habit to be looked for in a hermit, but not in a Police System&mdash;are
+familiar to us all.&nbsp; The Ruffian becomes one of the established
+orders of the body politic.&nbsp; Under the playful name of Rough (as
+if he were merely a practical joker) his movements and successes are
+recorded on public occasions.&nbsp; Whether he mustered in large numbers,
+or small; whether he was in good spirits, or depressed; whether he turned
+his generous exertions to very prosperous account, or Fortune was against
+him; whether he was in a sanguinary mood, or robbed with amiable horse-play
+and a gracious consideration for life and limb; all this is chronicled
+as if he were an Institution.&nbsp; Is there any city in Europe, out
+of England, in which these terms are held with the pests of Society?&nbsp;
+Or in which, at this day, such violent robberies from the person are
+constantly committed as in London?</p>
+<p>The Preparatory Schools of Ruffianism are similarly borne with.&nbsp;
+The young Ruffians of London&mdash;not Thieves yet, but training for
+scholarships and fellowships in the Criminal Court Universities&mdash;molest
+quiet people and their property, to an extent that is hardly credible.&nbsp;
+The throwing of stones in the streets has become a dangerous and destructive
+offence, which surely could have got to no greater height though we
+had had no Police but our own riding-whips and walking-sticks&mdash;the
+Police to which I myself appeal on these occasions.&nbsp; The throwing
+of stones at the windows of railway carriages in motion&mdash;an act
+of wanton wickedness with the very Arch-Fiend&rsquo;s hand in it&mdash;had
+become a crying evil, when the railway companies forced it on Police
+notice.&nbsp; Constabular contemplation had until then been the order
+of the day.</p>
+<p>Within these twelve months, there arose among the young gentlemen
+of London aspiring to Ruffianism, and cultivating that much-encouraged
+social art, a facetious cry of &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll have this!&rsquo; accompanied
+with a clutch at some article of a passing lady&rsquo;s dress.&nbsp;
+I have known a lady&rsquo;s veil to be thus humorously torn from her
+face and carried off in the open streets at noon; and I have had the
+honour of myself giving chase, on Westminster Bridge, to another young
+Ruffian, who, in full daylight early on a summer evening, had nearly
+thrown a modest young woman into a swoon of indignation and confusion,
+by his shameful manner of attacking her with this cry as she harmlessly
+passed along before me.&nbsp; MR. CARLYLE, some time since, awakened
+a little pleasantry by writing of his own experience of the Ruffian
+of the streets.&nbsp; I have seen the Ruffian act in exact accordance
+with Mr. Carlyle&rsquo;s description, innumerable times, and I never
+saw him checked.</p>
+<p>The blaring use of the very worst language possible, in our public
+thoroughfares&mdash;especially in those set apart for recreation&mdash;is
+another disgrace to us, and another result of constabular contemplation,
+the like of which I have never heard in any other country to which my
+uncommercial travels have extended.&nbsp; Years ago, when I had a near
+interest in certain children who were sent with their nurses, for air
+and exercise, into the Regent&rsquo;s Park, I found this evil to be
+so abhorrent and horrible there, that I called public attention to it,
+and also to its contemplative reception by the Police.&nbsp; Looking
+afterwards into the newest Police Act, and finding that the offence
+was punishable under it, I resolved, when striking occasion should arise,
+to try my hand as prosecutor.&nbsp; The occasion arose soon enough,
+and I ran the following gauntlet.</p>
+<p>The utterer of the base coin in question was a girl of seventeen
+or eighteen, who, with a suitable attendance of blackguards, youths,
+and boys, was flaunting along the streets, returning from an Irish funeral,
+in a Progress interspersed with singing and dancing.&nbsp; She had turned
+round to me and expressed herself in the most audible manner, to the
+great delight of that select circle.&nbsp; I attended the party, on
+the opposite side of the way, for a mile further, and then encountered
+a Police-constable.&nbsp; The party had made themselves merry at my
+expense until now, but seeing me speak to the constable, its male members
+instantly took to their heels, leaving the girl alone.&nbsp; I asked
+the constable did he know my name?&nbsp; Yes, he did.&nbsp; &lsquo;Take
+that girl into custody, on my charge, for using bad language in the
+streets.&rsquo;&nbsp; He had never heard of such a charge.&nbsp; I had.&nbsp;
+Would he take my word that he should get into no trouble?&nbsp; Yes,
+sir, he would do that.&nbsp; So he took the girl, and I went home for
+my Police Act.</p>
+<p>With this potent instrument in my pocket, I literally as well as
+figuratively &lsquo;returned to the charge,&rsquo; and presented myself
+at the Police Station of the district.&nbsp; There, I found on duty
+a very intelligent Inspector (they are all intelligent men), who, likewise,
+had never heard of such a charge.&nbsp; I showed him my clause, and
+we went over it together twice or thrice.&nbsp; It was plain, and I
+engaged to wait upon the suburban Magistrate to-morrow morning at ten
+o&rsquo;clock.</p>
+<p>In the morning I put my Police Act in my pocket again, and waited
+on the suburban Magistrate.&nbsp; I was not quite so courteously received
+by him as I should have been by The Lord Chancellor or The Lord Chief
+Justice, but that was a question of good breeding on the suburban Magistrate&rsquo;s
+part, and I had my clause ready with its leaf turned down.&nbsp; Which
+was enough for <i>me.</i></p>
+<p>Conference took place between the Magistrate and clerk respecting
+the charge.&nbsp; During conference I was evidently regarded as a much
+more objectionable person than the prisoner;&mdash;one giving trouble
+by coming there voluntarily, which the prisoner could not be accused
+of doing.&nbsp; The prisoner had been got up, since I last had the pleasure
+of seeing her, with a great effect of white apron and straw bonnet.&nbsp;
+She reminded me of an elder sister of Red Riding Hood, and I seemed
+to remind the sympathising Chimney Sweep by whom she was attended, of
+the Wolf.</p>
+<p>The Magistrate was doubtful, Mr. Uncommercial Traveller, whether
+this charge could be entertained.&nbsp; It was not known.&nbsp; Mr.
+Uncommercial Traveller replied that he wished it were better known,
+and that, if he could afford the leisure, he would use his endeavours
+to make it so.&nbsp; There was no question about it, however, he contended.&nbsp;
+Here was the clause.</p>
+<p>The clause was handed in, and more conference resulted.&nbsp; After
+which I was asked the extraordinary question: &lsquo;Mr. Uncommercial,
+do you really wish this girl to be sent to prison?&rsquo;&nbsp; To which
+I grimly answered, staring: &lsquo;If I didn&rsquo;t, why should I take
+the trouble to come here?&rsquo;&nbsp; Finally, I was sworn, and gave
+my agreeable evidence in detail, and White Riding Hood was fined ten
+shillings, under the clause, or sent to prison for so many days.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Why, Lord bless you, sir,&rsquo; said the Police-officer, who
+showed me out, with a great enjoyment of the jest of her having been
+got up so effectively, and caused so much hesitation: &lsquo;if she
+goes to prison, that will be nothing new to <i>her</i>.&nbsp; She comes
+from Charles Street, Drury Lane!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The Police, all things considered, are an excellent force, and I
+have borne my small testimony to their merits.&nbsp; Constabular contemplation
+is the result of a bad system; a system which is administered, not invented,
+by the man in constable&rsquo;s uniform, employed at twenty shillings
+a week.&nbsp; He has his orders, and would be marked for discouragement
+if he overstepped them.&nbsp; That the system is bad, there needs no
+lengthened argument to prove, because the fact is self-evident.&nbsp;
+If it were anything else, the results that have attended it could not
+possibly have come to pass.&nbsp; Who will say that under a good system,
+our streets could have got into their present state?</p>
+<p>The objection to the whole Police system, as concerning the Ruffian,
+may be stated, and its failure exemplified, as follows.&nbsp; It is
+well known that on all great occasions, when they come together in numbers,
+the mass of the English people are their own trustworthy Police.&nbsp;
+It is well known that wheresoever there is collected together any fair
+general representation of the people, a respect for law and order, and
+a determination to discountenance lawlessness and disorder, may be relied
+upon.&nbsp; As to one another, the people are a very good Police, and
+yet are quite willing in their good-nature that the stipendiary Police
+should have the credit of the people&rsquo;s moderation.&nbsp; But we
+are all of us powerless against the Ruffian, because we submit to the
+law, and it is his only trade, by superior force and by violence, to
+defy it.&nbsp; Moreover, we are constantly admonished from high places
+(like so many Sunday-school children out for a holiday of buns and milk-and-water)
+that we are not to take the law into our own hands, but are to hand
+our defence over to it.&nbsp; It is clear that the common enemy to be
+punished and exterminated first of all is the Ruffian.&nbsp; It is clear
+that he is, of all others, <i>the</i> offender for whose repressal we
+maintain a costly system of Police.&nbsp; Him, therefore, we expressly
+present to the Police to deal with, conscious that, on the whole, we
+can, and do, deal reasonably well with one another.&nbsp; Him the Police
+deal with so inefficiently and absurdly that he flourishes, and multiplies,
+and, with all his evil deeds upon his head as notoriously as his hat
+is, pervades the streets with no more let or hindrance than ourselves.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXI&mdash;ABOARD SHIP</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>My journeys as Uncommercial Traveller for the firm of Human-Interest
+Brothers have not slackened since I last reported of them, but have
+kept me continually on the move.&nbsp; I remain in the same idle employment.&nbsp;
+I never solicit an order, I never get any commission, I am the rolling
+stone that gathers no moss,&mdash;unless any should by chance be found
+among these samples.</p>
+<p>Some half a year ago, I found myself in my idlest, dreamiest, and
+least accountable condition altogether, on board ship, in the harbour
+of the city of New York, in the United States of America.&nbsp; Of all
+the good ships afloat, mine was the good steamship &lsquo;RUSSIA,&rsquo;
+CAPT. COOK, Cunard Line, bound for Liverpool.&nbsp; What more could
+I wish for?</p>
+<p>I had nothing to wish for but a prosperous passage.&nbsp; My salad-days,
+when I was green of visage and sea-sick, being gone with better things
+(and no worse), no coming event cast its shadow before.</p>
+<p>I might but a few moments previously have imitated Sterne, and said,
+&lsquo;&ldquo;And yet, methinks, Eugenius,&rdquo;&mdash;laying my forefinger
+wistfully on his coat-sleeve, thus,&mdash;&ldquo;and yet, methinks,
+Eugenius, &rsquo;tis but sorry work to part with thee, for what fresh
+fields, . . . my dear Eugenius, . . . can be fresher than thou art,
+and in what pastures new shall I find Eliza, or call her, Eugenius,
+if thou wilt, Annie?&rdquo;&rsquo;&mdash;I say I might have done this;
+but Eugenius was gone, and I hadn&rsquo;t done it.</p>
+<p>I was resting on a skylight on the hurricane-deck, watching the working
+of the ship very slowly about, that she might head for England.&nbsp;
+It was high noon on a most brilliant day in April, and the beautiful
+bay was glorious and glowing.&nbsp; Full many a time, on shore there,
+had I seen the snow come down, down, down (itself like down), until
+it lay deep in all the ways of men, and particularly, as it seemed,
+in my way, for I had not gone dry-shod many hours for months.&nbsp;
+Within two or three days last past had I watched the feathery fall setting
+in with the ardour of a new idea, instead of dragging at the skirts
+of a worn-out winter, and permitting glimpses of a fresh young spring.&nbsp;
+But a bright sun and a clear sky had melted the snow in the great crucible
+of nature; and it had been poured out again that morning over sea and
+land, transformed into myriads of gold and silver sparkles.</p>
+<p>The ship was fragrant with flowers.&nbsp; Something of the old Mexican
+passion for flowers may have gradually passed into North America, where
+flowers are luxuriously grown, and tastefully combined in the richest
+profusion; but, be that as it may, such gorgeous farewells in flowers
+had come on board, that the small officer&rsquo;s cabin on deck, which
+I tenanted, bloomed over into the adjacent scuppers, and banks of other
+flowers that it couldn&rsquo;t hold made a garden of the unoccupied
+tables in the passengers&rsquo; saloon.&nbsp; These delicious scents
+of the shore, mingling with the fresh airs of the sea, made the atmosphere
+a dreamy, an enchanting one.&nbsp; And so, with the watch aloft setting
+all the sails, and with the screw below revolving at a mighty rate,
+and occasionally giving the ship an angry shake for resisting, I fell
+into my idlest ways, and lost myself.</p>
+<p>As, for instance, whether it was I lying there, or some other entity
+even more mysterious, was a matter I was far too lazy to look into.&nbsp;
+What did it signify to me if it were I? or to the more mysterious entity,
+if it were he?&nbsp; Equally as to the remembrances that drowsily floated
+by me, or by him, why ask when or where the things happened?&nbsp; Was
+it not enough that they befell at some time, somewhere?</p>
+<p>There was that assisting at the church service on board another steamship,
+one Sunday, in a stiff breeze.&nbsp; Perhaps on the passage out.&nbsp;
+No matter.&nbsp; Pleasant to hear the ship&rsquo;s bells go as like
+church-bells as they could; pleasant to see the watch off duty mustered
+and come in: best hats, best Guernseys, washed hands and faces, smoothed
+heads.&nbsp; But then arose a set of circumstances so rampantly comical,
+that no check which the gravest intentions could put upon them would
+hold them in hand.&nbsp; Thus the scene.&nbsp; Some seventy passengers
+assembled at the saloon tables.&nbsp; Prayer-books on tables.&nbsp;
+Ship rolling heavily.&nbsp; Pause.&nbsp; No minister.&nbsp; Rumour has
+related that a modest young clergyman on board has responded to the
+captain&rsquo;s request that he will officiate.&nbsp; Pause again, and
+very heavy rolling.</p>
+<p>Closed double doors suddenly burst open, and two strong stewards
+skate in, supporting minister between them.&nbsp; General appearance
+as of somebody picked up drunk and incapable, and under conveyance to
+station-house.&nbsp; Stoppage, pause, and particularly heavy rolling.&nbsp;
+Stewards watch their opportunity, and balance themselves, but cannot
+balance minister; who, struggling with a drooping head and a backward
+tendency, seems determined to return below, while they are as determined
+that he shall be got to the reading-desk in mid-saloon.&nbsp; Desk portable,
+sliding away down a long table, and aiming itself at the breasts of
+various members of the congregation.&nbsp; Here the double doors, which
+have been carefully closed by other stewards, fly open again, and worldly
+passenger tumbles in, seemingly with pale-ale designs: who, seeking
+friend, says &lsquo;Joe!&rsquo;&nbsp; Perceiving incongruity, says,
+&lsquo;Hullo!&nbsp; Beg yer pardon!&rsquo; and tumbles out again.&nbsp;
+All this time the congregation have been breaking up into sects,&mdash;as
+the manner of congregations often is, each sect sliding away by itself,
+and all pounding the weakest sect which slid first into the corner.&nbsp;
+Utmost point of dissent soon attained in every corner, and violent rolling.&nbsp;
+Stewards at length make a dash; conduct minister to the mast in the
+centre of the saloon, which he embraces with both arms; skate out; and
+leave him in that condition to arrange affairs with flock.</p>
+<p>There was another Sunday, when an officer of the ship read the service.&nbsp;
+It was quiet and impressive, until we fell upon the dangerous and perfectly
+unnecessary experiment of striking up a hymn.&nbsp; After it was given
+out, we all rose, but everybody left it to somebody else to begin.&nbsp;
+Silence resulting, the officer (no singer himself) rather reproachfully
+gave us the first line again, upon which a rosy pippin of an old gentleman,
+remarkable throughout the passage for his cheerful politeness, gave
+a little stamp with his boot (as if he were leading off a country dance),
+and blithely warbled us into a show of joining.&nbsp; At the end of
+the first verse we became, through these tactics, so much refreshed
+and encouraged, that none of us, howsoever unmelodious, would submit
+to be left out of the second verse; while as to the third we lifted
+up our voices in a sacred howl that left it doubtful whether we were
+the more boastful of the sentiments we united in professing, or of professing
+them with a most discordant defiance of time and tune.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Lord bless us!&rsquo; thought I, when the fresh remembrance
+of these things made me laugh heartily alone in the dead water-gurgling
+waste of the night, what time I was wedged into my berth by a wooden
+bar, or I must have rolled out of it, &lsquo;what errand was I then
+upon, and to what Abyssinian point had public events then marched?&nbsp;
+No matter as to me.&nbsp; And as to them, if the wonderful popular rage
+for a plaything (utterly confounding in its inscrutable unreason) I
+had not then lighted on a poor young savage boy, and a poor old screw
+of a horse, and hauled the first off by the hair of his princely head
+to &ldquo;inspect&rdquo; the British volunteers, and hauled the second
+off by the hair of his equine tail to the Crystal Palace, why so much
+the better for all of us outside Bedlam!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>So, sticking to the ship, I was at the trouble of asking myself would
+I like to show the grog distribution in &lsquo;the fiddle&rsquo; at
+noon to the Grand United Amalgamated Total Abstinence Society?&nbsp;
+Yes, I think I should.&nbsp; I think it would do them good to smell
+the rum, under the circumstances.&nbsp; Over the grog, mixed in a bucket,
+presides the boatswain&rsquo;s mate, small tin can in hand.&nbsp; Enter
+the crew, the guilty consumers, the grown-up brood of Giant Despair,
+in contradistinction to the band of youthful angel Hope.&nbsp; Some
+in boots, some in leggings, some in tarpaulin overalls, some in frocks,
+some in pea-coats, a very few in jackets, most with sou&rsquo;wester
+hats, all with something rough and rugged round the throat; all, dripping
+salt water where they stand; all pelted by weather, besmeared with grease,
+and blackened by the sooty rigging.</p>
+<p>Each man&rsquo;s knife in its sheath in his girdle, loosened for
+dinner.&nbsp; As the first man, with a knowingly kindled eye, watches
+the filling of the poisoned chalice (truly but a very small tin mug,
+to be prosaic), and, tossing back his head, tosses the contents into
+himself, and passes the empty chalice and passes on, so the second man
+with an anticipatory wipe of his mouth on sleeve or handkerchief, bides
+his turn, and drinks and hands and passes on, in whom, and in each as
+his turn approaches, beams a knowingly kindled eye, a brighter temper,
+and a suddenly awakened tendency to be jocose with some shipmate.&nbsp;
+Nor do I even observe that the man in charge of the ship&rsquo;s lamps,
+who in right of his office has a double allowance of poisoned chalices,
+seems thereby vastly degraded, even though he empties the chalices into
+himself, one after the other, much as if he were delivering their contents
+at some absorbent establishment in which he had no personal interest.&nbsp;
+But vastly comforted, I note them all to be, on deck presently, even
+to the circulation of redder blood in their cold blue knuckles; and
+when I look up at them lying out on the yards, and holding on for life
+among the beating sails, I cannot for <i>my</i> life see the justice
+of visiting on them&mdash;or on me&mdash;the drunken crimes of any number
+of criminals arraigned at the heaviest of assizes.</p>
+<p>Abetting myself in my idle humour, I closed my eyes, and recalled
+life on board of one of those mail-packets, as I lay, part of that day,
+in the Bay of New York, O!&nbsp; The regular life began&mdash;mine always
+did, for I never got to sleep afterwards&mdash;with the rigging of the
+pump while it was yet dark, and washing down of decks.&nbsp; Any enormous
+giant at a prodigious hydropathic establishment, conscientiously undergoing
+the water-cure in all its departments, and extremely particular about
+cleaning his teeth, would make those noises.&nbsp; Swash, splash, scrub,
+rub, toothbrush, bubble, swash, splash, bubble, toothbrush, splash,
+splash, bubble, rub.&nbsp; Then the day would break, and, descending
+from my berth by a graceful ladder composed of half-opened drawers beneath
+it, I would reopen my outer dead-light and my inner sliding window (closed
+by a watchman during the water-cure), and would look out at the long-rolling,
+lead-coloured, white topped waves over which the dawn, on a cold winter
+morning, cast a level, lonely glance, and through which the ship fought
+her melancholy way at a terrific rate.&nbsp; And now, lying down again,
+awaiting the season for broiled ham and tea, I would be compelled to
+listen to the voice of conscience,&mdash;the screw.</p>
+<p>It might be, in some cases, no more than the voice of stomach; but
+I called it in my fancy by the higher name.&nbsp; Because it seemed
+to me that we were all of us, all day long, endeavouring to stifle the
+voice.&nbsp; Because it was under everybody&rsquo;s pillow, everybody&rsquo;s
+plate, everybody&rsquo;s camp-stool, everybody&rsquo;s book, everybody&rsquo;s
+occupation.&nbsp; Because we pretended not to hear it, especially at
+meal-times, evening whist, and morning conversation on deck; but it
+was always among us in an under monotone, not to be drowned in pea-soup,
+not to be shuffled with cards, not to be diverted by books, not to be
+knitted into any pattern, not to be walked away from.&nbsp; It was smoked
+in the weediest cigar, and drunk in the strongest cocktail; it was conveyed
+on deck at noon with limp ladies, who lay there in their wrappers until
+the stars shone; it waited at table with the stewards; nobody could
+put it out with the lights.&nbsp; It was considered (as on shore) ill-bred
+to acknowledge the voice of conscience.&nbsp; It was not polite to mention
+it.&nbsp; One squally day an amiable gentleman in love gave much offence
+to a surrounding circle, including the object of his attachment, by
+saying of it, after it had goaded him over two easy-chairs and a skylight,
+&lsquo;Screw!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Sometimes it would appear subdued.&nbsp; In fleeting moments, when
+bubbles of champagne pervaded the nose, or when there was &lsquo;hot
+pot&rsquo; in the bill of fare, or when an old dish we had had regularly
+every day was described in that official document by a new name,&mdash;under
+such excitements, one would almost believe it hushed.&nbsp; The ceremony
+of washing plates on deck, performed after every meal by a circle as
+of ringers of crockery triple-bob majors for a prize, would keep it
+down.&nbsp; Hauling the reel, taking the sun at noon, posting the twenty-four
+hours&rsquo; run, altering the ship&rsquo;s time by the meridian, casting
+the waste food overboard, and attracting the eager gulls that followed
+in our wake,&mdash;these events would suppress it for a while.&nbsp;
+But the instant any break or pause took place in any such diversion,
+the voice would be at it again, importuning us to the last extent.&nbsp;
+A newly married young pair, who walked the deck affectionately some
+twenty miles per day, would, in the full flush of their exercise, suddenly
+become stricken by it, and stand trembling, but otherwise immovable,
+under its reproaches.</p>
+<p>When this terrible monitor was most severe with us was when the time
+approached for our retiring to our dens for the night; when the lighted
+candles in the saloon grew fewer and fewer; when the deserted glasses
+with spoons in them grew more and more numerous; when waifs of toasted
+cheese and strays of sardines fried in batter slid languidly to and
+fro in the table-racks; when the man who always read had shut up his
+book, and blown out his candle; when the man who always talked had ceased
+from troubling; when the man who was always medically reported as going
+to have delirium tremens had put it off till to-morrow; when the man
+who every night devoted himself to a midnight smoke on deck two hours
+in length, and who every night was in bed within ten minutes afterwards,
+was buttoning himself up in his third coat for his hardy vigil: for
+then, as we fell off one by one, and, entering our several hutches,
+came into a peculiar atmosphere of bilge-water and Windsor soap, the
+voice would shake us to the centre.&nbsp; Woe to us when we sat down
+on our sofa, watching the swinging candle for ever trying and retrying
+to stand upon his head! or our coat upon its peg, imitating us as we
+appeared in our gymnastic days by sustaining itself horizontally from
+the wall, in emulation of the lighter and more facile towels!&nbsp;
+Then would the voice especially claim us for its prey, and rend us all
+to pieces.</p>
+<p>Lights out, we in our berths, and the wind rising, the voice grows
+angrier and deeper.&nbsp; Under the mattress and under the pillow, under
+the sofa and under the washing-stand, under the ship and under the sea,
+seeming to rise from the foundations under the earth with every scoop
+of the great Atlantic (and oh! why scoop so?), always the voice.&nbsp;
+Vain to deny its existence in the night season; impossible to be hard
+of hearing; screw, screw, screw!&nbsp; Sometimes it lifts out of the
+water, and revolves with a whirr, like a ferocious firework,&mdash;except
+that it never expends itself, but is always ready to go off again; sometimes
+it seems to be in anguish, and shivers; sometimes it seems to be terrified
+by its last plunge, and has a fit which causes it to struggle, quiver,
+and for an instant stop.&nbsp; And now the ship sets in rolling, as
+only ships so fiercely screwed through time and space, day and night,
+fair weather and foul, <i>can</i> roll.</p>
+<p>Did she ever take a roll before like that last?&nbsp; Did she ever
+take a roll before like this worse one that is coming now?&nbsp; Here
+is the partition at my ear down in the deep on the lee side.&nbsp; Are
+we ever coming up again together?&nbsp; I think not; the partition and
+I are so long about it that I really do believe we have overdone it
+this time.&nbsp; Heavens, what a scoop!&nbsp; What a deep scoop, what
+a hollow scoop, what a long scoop!&nbsp; Will it ever end, and can we
+bear the heavy mass of water we have taken on board, and which has let
+loose all the table furniture in the officers&rsquo; mess, and has beaten
+open the door of the little passage between the purser and me, and is
+swashing about, even there and even here?&nbsp; The purser snores reassuringly,
+and the ship&rsquo;s bells striking, I hear the cheerful &lsquo;All&rsquo;s
+well!&rsquo; of the watch musically given back the length of the deck,
+as the lately diving partition, now high in air, tries (unsoftened by
+what we have gone through together) to force me out of bed and berth.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;All&rsquo;s well!&rsquo;&nbsp; Comforting to know, though
+surely all might be better.&nbsp; Put aside the rolling and the rush
+of water, and think of darting through such darkness with such velocity.&nbsp;
+Think of any other similar object coming in the opposite direction!</p>
+<p>Whether there may be an attraction in two such moving bodies out
+at sea, which may help accident to bring them into collision?&nbsp;
+Thoughts, too, arise (the voice never silent all the while, but marvellously
+suggestive) of the gulf below; of the strange, unfruitful mountain ranges
+and deep valleys over which we are passing; of monstrous fish midway;
+of the ship&rsquo;s suddenly altering her course on her own account,
+and with a wild plunge settling down, and making <i>that</i> voyage
+with a crew of dead discoverers.&nbsp; Now, too, one recalls an almost
+universal tendency on the part of passengers to stumble, at some time
+or other in the day, on the topic of a certain large steamer making
+this same run, which was lost at sea, and never heard of more.&nbsp;
+Everybody has seemed under a spell, compelling approach to the threshold
+of the grim subject, stoppage, discomfiture, and pretence of never having
+been near it.&nbsp; The boatswain&rsquo;s whistle sounds!&nbsp; A change
+in the wind, hoarse orders issuing, and the watch very busy.&nbsp; Sails
+come crashing home overhead, ropes (that seem all knot) ditto; every
+man engaged appears to have twenty feet, with twenty times the average
+amount of stamping power in each.&nbsp; Gradually the noise slackens,
+the hoarse cries die away, the boatswain&rsquo;s whistle softens into
+the soothing and contented notes, which rather reluctantly admit that
+the job is done for the time, and the voice sets in again.</p>
+<p>Thus come unintelligible dreams of up hill and down, and swinging
+and swaying, until consciousness revives of atmospherical Windsor soap
+and bilge-water, and the voice announces that the giant has come for
+the water-cure again.</p>
+<p>Such were my fanciful reminiscences as I lay, part of that day, in
+the Bay of New York, O!&nbsp; Also as we passed clear of the Narrows,
+and got out to sea; also in many an idle hour at sea in sunny weather!&nbsp;
+At length the observations and computations showed that we should make
+the coast of Ireland to-night.&nbsp; So I stood watch on deck all night
+to-night, to see how we made the coast of Ireland.</p>
+<p>Very dark, and the sea most brilliantly phosphorescent.&nbsp; Great
+way on the ship, and double look-out kept.&nbsp; Vigilant captain on
+the bridge, vigilant first officer looking over the port side, vigilant
+second officer standing by the quarter-master at the compass, vigilant
+third officer posted at the stern rail with a lantern.&nbsp; No passengers
+on the quiet decks, but expectation everywhere nevertheless.&nbsp; The
+two men at the wheel very steady, very serious, and very prompt to answer
+orders.&nbsp; An order issued sharply now and then, and echoed back;
+otherwise the night drags slowly, silently, with no change.</p>
+<p>All of a sudden, at the blank hour of two in the morning, a vague
+movement of relief from a long strain expresses itself in all hands;
+the third officer&rsquo;s lantern tinkles, and he fires a rocket, and
+another rocket.&nbsp; A sullen solitary light is pointed out to me in
+the black sky yonder.&nbsp; A change is expected in the light, but none
+takes place.&nbsp; &lsquo;Give them two more rockets, Mr. Vigilant.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Two more, and a blue-light burnt.&nbsp; All eyes watch the light again.&nbsp;
+At last a little toy sky-rocket is flashed up from it; and, even as
+that small streak in the darkness dies away, we are telegraphed to Queenstown,
+Liverpool, and London, and back again under the ocean to America.</p>
+<p>Then up come the half-dozen passengers who are going ashore at Queenstown
+and up comes the mail-agent in charge of the bags, and up come the men
+who are to carry the bags into the mail-tender that will come off for
+them out of the harbour.&nbsp; Lamps and lanterns gleam here and there
+about the decks, and impeding bulks are knocked away with handspikes;
+and the port-side bulwark, barren but a moment ago, bursts into a crop
+of heads of seamen, stewards, and engineers.</p>
+<p>The light begins to be gained upon, begins to be alongside, begins
+to be left astern.&nbsp; More rockets, and, between us and the land,
+steams beautifully the Inman steamship City of Paris, for New York,
+outward bound.&nbsp; We observe with complacency that the wind is dead
+against her (it being <i>with</i> us), and that she rolls and pitches.&nbsp;
+(The sickest passenger on board is the most delighted by this circumstance.)&nbsp;
+Time rushes by as we rush on; and now we see the light in Queenstown
+Harbour, and now the lights of the mail-tender coming out to us.&nbsp;
+What vagaries the mail-tender performs on the way, in every point of
+the compass, especially in those where she has no business, and why
+she performs them, Heaven only knows!&nbsp; At length she is seen plunging
+within a cable&rsquo;s length of our port broadside, and is being roared
+at through our speaking-trumpets to do this thing, and not to do that,
+and to stand by the other, as if she were a very demented tender indeed.&nbsp;
+Then, we slackening amidst a deafening roar of steam, this much-abused
+tender is made fast to us by hawsers, and the men in readiness carry
+the bags aboard, and return for more, bending under their burdens, and
+looking just like the pasteboard figures of the miller and his men in
+the theatre of our boyhood, and comporting themselves almost as unsteadily.&nbsp;
+All the while the unfortunate tender plunges high and low, and is roared
+at.&nbsp; Then the Queenstown passengers are put on board of her, with
+infinite plunging and roaring, and the tender gets heaved up on the
+sea to that surprising extent that she looks within an ace of washing
+aboard of us, high and dry.&nbsp; Roared at with contumely to the last,
+this wretched tender is at length let go, with a final plunge of great
+ignominy, and falls spinning into our wake.</p>
+<p>The voice of conscience resumed its dominion as the day climbed up
+the sky, and kept by all of us passengers into port; kept by us as we
+passed other lighthouses, and dangerous islands off the coast, where
+some of the officers, with whom I stood my watch, had gone ashore in
+sailing-ships in fogs (and of which by that token they seemed to have
+quite an affectionate remembrance), and past the Welsh coast, and past
+the Cheshire coast, and past everything and everywhere lying between
+our ship and her own special dock in the Mersey.&nbsp; Off which, at
+last, at nine of the clock, on a fair evening early in May, we stopped,
+and the voice ceased.&nbsp; A very curious sensation, not unlike having
+my own ears stopped, ensued upon that silence; and it was with a no
+less curious sensation that I went over the side of the good Cunard
+ship &lsquo;Russia&rsquo; (whom prosperity attend through all her voyages!)
+and surveyed the outer hull of the gracious monster that the voice had
+inhabited.&nbsp; So, perhaps, shall we all, in the spirit, one day survey
+the frame that held the busier voice from which my vagrant fancy derived
+this similitude.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXII&mdash;A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>I had been looking, yesternight, through the famous &lsquo;Dance
+of Death,&rsquo; and to-day the grim old woodcuts arose in my mind with
+the new significance of a ghastly monotony not to be found in the original.&nbsp;
+The weird skeleton rattled along the streets before me, and struck fiercely;
+but it was never at the pains of assuming a disguise.&nbsp; It played
+on no dulcimer here, was crowned with no flowers, waved no plume, minced
+in no flowing robe or train, lifted no wine-cup, sat at no feast, cast
+no dice, counted no gold.&nbsp; It was simply a bare, gaunt, famished
+skeleton, slaying his way along.</p>
+<p>The borders of Ratcliff and Stepney, eastward of London, and giving
+on the impure river, were the scene of this uncompromising dance of
+death, upon a drizzling November day.&nbsp; A squalid maze of streets,
+courts, and alleys of miserable houses let out in single rooms.&nbsp;
+A wilderness of dirt, rags, and hunger.&nbsp; A mud-desert, chiefly
+inhabited by a tribe from whom employment has departed, or to whom it
+comes but fitfully and rarely.&nbsp; They are not skilled mechanics
+in any wise.&nbsp; They are but labourers,&mdash;dock-labourers, water-side
+labourers, coal-porters, ballast-heavers, such-like hewers of wood and
+drawers of water.&nbsp; But they have come into existence, and they
+propagate their wretched race.</p>
+<p>One grisly joke alone, methought, the skeleton seemed to play off
+here.&nbsp; It had stuck election-bills on the walls, which the wind
+and rain had deteriorated into suitable rags.&nbsp; It had even summed
+up the state of the poll, in chalk, on the shutters of one ruined house.&nbsp;
+It adjured the free and independent starvers to vote for Thisman and
+vote for Thatman; not to plump, as they valued the state of parties
+and the national prosperity (both of great importance to them, I think);
+but, by returning Thisman and Thatman, each naught without the other,
+to compound a glorious and immortal whole.&nbsp; Surely the skeleton
+is nowhere more cruelly ironical in the original monkish idea!</p>
+<p>Pondering in my mind the far-seeing schemes of Thisman and Thatman,
+and of the public blessing called Party, for staying the degeneracy,
+physical and moral, of many thousands (who shall say how many?) of the
+English race; for devising employment useful to the community for those
+who want but to work and live; for equalising rates, cultivating waste
+lands, facilitating emigration, and, above all things, saving and utilising
+the oncoming generations, and thereby changing ever-growing national
+weakness into strength: pondering in my mind, I say, these hopeful exertions,
+I turned down a narrow street to look into a house or two.</p>
+<p>It was a dark street with a dead wall on one side.&nbsp; Nearly all
+the outer doors of the houses stood open.&nbsp; I took the first entry,
+and knocked at a parlour-door.&nbsp; Might I come in?&nbsp; I might,
+if I plased, sur.</p>
+<p>The woman of the room (Irish) had picked up some long strips of wood,
+about some wharf or barge; and they had just now been thrust into the
+otherwise empty grate to make two iron pots boil.&nbsp; There was some
+fish in one, and there were some potatoes in the other.&nbsp; The flare
+of the burning wood enabled me to see a table, and a broken chair or
+so, and some old cheap crockery ornaments about the chimney-piece.&nbsp;
+It was not until I had spoken with the woman a few minutes, that I saw
+a horrible brown heap on the floor in a corner, which, but for previous
+experience in this dismal wise, I might not have suspected to be &lsquo;the
+bed.&rsquo;&nbsp; There was something thrown upon it; and I asked what
+that was.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&rsquo;Tis the poor craythur that stays here, sur; and &rsquo;tis
+very bad she is, and &rsquo;tis very bad she&rsquo;s been this long
+time, and &rsquo;tis better she&rsquo;ll never be, and &rsquo;tis slape
+she does all day, and &rsquo;tis wake she does all night, and &rsquo;tis
+the lead, sur.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The what?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The lead, sur.&nbsp; Sure &rsquo;tis the lead-mills, where
+the women gets took on at eighteen-pence a day, sur, when they makes
+application early enough, and is lucky and wanted; and &rsquo;tis lead-pisoned
+she is, sur, and some of them gets lead-pisoned soon, and some of them
+gets lead-pisoned later, and some, but not many, niver; and &rsquo;tis
+all according to the constitooshun, sur, and some constitooshuns is
+strong, and some is weak; and her constitooshun is lead-pisoned, bad
+as can be, sur; and her brain is coming out at her ear, and it hurts
+her dreadful; and that&rsquo;s what it is, and niver no more, and niver
+no less, sur.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The sick young woman moaning here, the speaker bent over her, took
+a bandage from her head, and threw open a back door to let in the daylight
+upon it, from the smallest and most miserable backyard I ever saw.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That&rsquo;s what cooms from her, sur, being lead-pisoned;
+and it cooms from her night and day, the poor, sick craythur; and the
+pain of it is dreadful; and God he knows that my husband has walked
+the sthreets these four days, being a labourer, and is walking them
+now, and is ready to work, and no work for him, and no fire and no food
+but the bit in the pot, and no more than ten shillings in a fortnight;
+God be good to us! and it is poor we are, and dark it is and could it
+is indeed.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Knowing that I could compensate myself thereafter for my self-denial,
+if I saw fit, I had resolved that I would give nothing in the course
+of these visits.&nbsp; I did this to try the people.&nbsp; I may state
+at once that my closest observation could not detect any indication
+whatever of an expectation that I would give money: they were grateful
+to be talked to about their miserable affairs, and sympathy was plainly
+a comfort to them; but they neither asked for money in any case, nor
+showed the least trace of surprise or disappointment or resentment at
+my giving none.</p>
+<p>The woman&rsquo;s married daughter had by this time come down from
+her room on the floor above, to join in the conversation.&nbsp; She
+herself had been to the lead-mills very early that morning to be &lsquo;took
+on,&rsquo; but had not succeeded.&nbsp; She had four children; and her
+husband, also a water-side labourer, and then out seeking work, seemed
+in no better case as to finding it than her father.&nbsp; She was English,
+and by nature, of a buxom figure and cheerful.&nbsp; Both in her poor
+dress and in her mother&rsquo;s there was an effort to keep up some
+appearance of neatness.&nbsp; She knew all about the sufferings of the
+unfortunate invalid, and all about the lead-poisoning, and how the symptoms
+came on, and how they grew,&mdash;having often seen them.&nbsp; The
+very smell when you stood inside the door of the works was enough to
+knock you down, she said: yet she was going back again to get &lsquo;took
+on.&rsquo;&nbsp; What could she do?&nbsp; Better be ulcerated and paralysed
+for eighteen-pence a day, while it lasted, than see the children starve.</p>
+<p>A dark and squalid cupboard in this room, touching the back door
+and all manner of offence, had been for some time the sleeping-place
+of the sick young woman.&nbsp; But the nights being now wintry, and
+the blankets and coverlets &lsquo;gone to the leaving shop,&rsquo; she
+lay all night where she lay all day, and was lying then.&nbsp; The woman
+of the room, her husband, this most miserable patient, and two others,
+lay on the one brown heap together for warmth.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;God bless you, sir, and thank you!&rsquo; were the parting
+words from these people,&mdash;gratefully spoken too,&mdash;with which
+I left this place.</p>
+<p>Some streets away, I tapped at another parlour-door on another ground-floor.&nbsp;
+Looking in, I found a man, his wife, and four children, sitting at a
+washing-stool by way of table, at their dinner of bread and infused
+tea-leaves.&nbsp; There was a very scanty cinderous fire in the grate
+by which they sat; and there was a tent bedstead in the room with a
+bed upon it and a coverlet.&nbsp; The man did not rise when I went in,
+nor during my stay, but civilly inclined his head on my pulling off
+my hat, and, in answer to my inquiry whether I might ask him a question
+or two, said, &lsquo;Certainly.&rsquo;&nbsp; There being a window at
+each end of this room, back and front, it might have been ventilated;
+but it was shut up tight, to keep the cold out, and was very sickening.</p>
+<p>The wife, an intelligent, quick woman, rose and stood at her husband&rsquo;s
+elbow; and he glanced up at her as if for help.&nbsp; It soon appeared
+that he was rather deaf.&nbsp; He was a slow, simple fellow of about
+thirty.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What was he by trade?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Gentleman asks what are you by trade, John?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am a boilermaker;&rsquo; looking about him with an exceedingly
+perplexed air, as if for a boiler that had unaccountably vanished.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He ain&rsquo;t a mechanic, you understand, sir,&rsquo; the
+wife put in: &lsquo;he&rsquo;s only a labourer.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Are you in work?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He looked up at his wife again.&nbsp; &lsquo;Gentleman says are you
+in work, John?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;In work!&rsquo; cried this forlorn boilermaker, staring aghast
+at his wife, and then working his vision&rsquo;s way very slowly round
+to me: &lsquo;Lord, no!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah, he ain&rsquo;t indeed!&rsquo; said the poor woman, shaking
+her head, as she looked at the four children in succession, and then
+at him.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Work!&rsquo; said the boilermaker, still seeking that evaporated
+boiler, first in my countenance, then in the air, and then in the features
+of his second son at his knee: &lsquo;I wish I <i>was</i> in work!&nbsp;
+I haven&rsquo;t had more than a day&rsquo;s work to do this three weeks.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How have you lived?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A faint gleam of admiration lighted up the face of the would-be boilermaker,
+as he stretched out the short sleeve of his thread-bare canvas jacket,
+and replied, pointing her out, &lsquo;On the work of the wife.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I forget where boilermaking had gone to, or where he supposed it
+had gone to; but he added some resigned information on that head, coupled
+with an expression of his belief that it was never coming back.</p>
+<p>The cheery helpfulness of the wife was very remarkable.&nbsp; She
+did slop-work; made pea-jackets.&nbsp; She produced the pea-jacket then
+in hand, and spread it out upon the bed,&mdash;the only piece of furniture
+in the room on which to spread it.&nbsp; She showed how much of it she
+made, and how much was afterwards finished off by the machine.&nbsp;
+According to her calculation at the moment, deducting what her trimming
+cost her, she got for making a pea-jacket tenpence half-penny, and she
+could make one in something less than two days.</p>
+<p>But, you see, it come to her through two hands, and of course it
+didn&rsquo;t come through the second hand for nothing.&nbsp; Why did
+it come through the second hand at all?&nbsp; Why, this way.&nbsp; The
+second hand took the risk of the given-out work, you see.&nbsp; If she
+had money enough to pay the security deposit,&mdash;call it two pound,&mdash;she
+could get the work from the first hand, and so the second would not
+have to be deducted for.&nbsp; But, having no money at all, the second
+hand come in and took its profit, and so the whole worked down to tenpence
+half-penny.&nbsp; Having explained all this with great intelligence,
+even with some little pride, and without a whine or murmur, she folded
+her work again, sat down by her husband&rsquo;s side at the washing-stool,
+and resumed her dinner of dry bread.&nbsp; Mean as the meal was, on
+the bare board, with its old gallipots for cups, and what not other
+sordid makeshifts; shabby as the woman was in dress, and toning done
+towards the Bosjesman colour, with want of nutriment and washing,&mdash;there
+was positively a dignity in her, as the family anchor just holding the
+poor ship-wrecked boilermaker&rsquo;s bark.&nbsp; When I left the room,
+the boiler-maker&rsquo;s eyes were slowly turned towards her, as if
+his last hope of ever again seeing that vanished boiler lay in her direction.</p>
+<p>These people had never applied for parish relief but once; and that
+was when the husband met with a disabling accident at his work.</p>
+<p>Not many doors from here, I went into a room on the first floor.&nbsp;
+The woman apologised for its being in &lsquo;an untidy mess.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+The day was Saturday, and she was boiling the children&rsquo;s clothes
+in a saucepan on the hearth.&nbsp; There was nothing else into which
+she could have put them.&nbsp; There was no crockery, or tinware, or
+tub, or bucket.&nbsp; There was an old gallipot or two, and there was
+a broken bottle or so, and there were some broken boxes for seats.&nbsp;
+The last small scraping of coals left was raked together in a corner
+of the floor.&nbsp; There were some rags in an open cupboard, also on
+the floor.&nbsp; In a corner of the room was a crazy old French bed-stead,
+with a man lying on his back upon it in a ragged pilot jacket, and rough
+oil-skin fantail hat.&nbsp; The room was perfectly black.&nbsp; It was
+difficult to believe, at first, that it was not purposely coloured black,
+the walls were so begrimed.</p>
+<p>As I stood opposite the woman boiling the children&rsquo;s clothes,&mdash;she
+had not even a piece of soap to wash them with,&mdash;and apologising
+for her occupation, I could take in all these things without appearing
+to notice them, and could even correct my inventory.&nbsp; I had missed,
+at the first glance, some half a pound of bread in the otherwise empty
+safe, an old red ragged crinoline hanging on the handle of the door
+by which I had entered, and certain fragments of rusty iron scattered
+on the floor, which looked like broken tools and a piece of stove-pipe.&nbsp;
+A child stood looking on.&nbsp; On the box nearest to the fire sat two
+younger children; one a delicate and pretty little creature, whom the
+other sometimes kissed.</p>
+<p>This woman, like the last, was wofully shabby, and was degenerating
+to the Bosjesman complexion.&nbsp; But her figure, and the ghost of
+a certain vivacity about her, and the spectre of a dimple in her cheek,
+carried my memory strangely back to the old days of the Adelphi Theatre,
+London, when Mrs. Fitzwilliam was the friend of Victorine.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;May I ask you what your husband is?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He&rsquo;s a coal-porter, sir,&rsquo;&mdash;with a glance
+and a sigh towards the bed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is he out of work?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, yes, sir! and work&rsquo;s at all times very, very scanty
+with him; and now he&rsquo;s laid up.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s my legs,&rsquo; said the man upon the bed.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I&rsquo;ll unroll &rsquo;em.&rsquo;&nbsp; And immediately began.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Have you any older children?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have a daughter that does the needle-work, and I have a
+son that does what he can.&nbsp; She&rsquo;s at her work now, and he&rsquo;s
+trying for work.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do they live here?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;They sleep here.&nbsp; They can&rsquo;t afford to pay more
+rent, and so they come here at night.&nbsp; The rent is very hard upon
+us.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s rose upon us too, now,&mdash;sixpence a week,&mdash;on
+account of these new changes in the law, about the rates.&nbsp; We are
+a week behind; the landlord&rsquo;s been shaking and rattling at that
+door frightfully; he says he&rsquo;ll turn us out.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t
+know what&rsquo;s to come of it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The man upon the bed ruefully interposed, &lsquo;Here&rsquo;s my
+legs.&nbsp; The skin&rsquo;s broke, besides the swelling.&nbsp; I have
+had a many kicks, working, one way and another.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He looked at his legs (which were much discoloured and misshapen)
+for a while, and then appearing to remember that they were not popular
+with his family, rolled them up again, as if they were something in
+the nature of maps or plans that were not wanted to be referred to,
+lay hopelessly down on his back once more with his fantail hat over
+his face, and stirred not.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do your eldest son and daughter sleep in that cupboard?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; replied the woman.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;With the children?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes.&nbsp; We have to get together for warmth.&nbsp; We have
+little to cover us.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Have you nothing by you to eat but the piece of bread I see
+there?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Nothing.&nbsp; And we had the rest of the loaf for our breakfast,
+with water.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t know what&rsquo;s to come of it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Have you no prospect of improvement?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If my eldest son earns anything to-day, he&rsquo;ll bring
+it home.&nbsp; Then we shall have something to eat to-night, and may
+be able to do something towards the rent.&nbsp; If not, I don&rsquo;t
+know what&rsquo;s to come of it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;This is a sad state of things.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, sir; it&rsquo;s a hard, hard life.&nbsp; Take care of
+the stairs as you go, sir,&mdash;they&rsquo;re broken,&mdash;and good
+day, sir!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>These people had a mortal dread of entering the workhouse, and received
+no out-of-door relief.</p>
+<p>In another room, in still another tenement, I found a very decent
+woman with five children,&mdash;the last a baby, and she herself a patient
+of the parish doctor,&mdash;to whom, her husband being in the hospital,
+the Union allowed for the support of herself and family, four shillings
+a week and five loaves.&nbsp; I suppose when Thisman, M.P., and Thatman,
+M.P., and the Public-blessing Party, lay their heads together in course
+of time, and come to an equalization of rating, she may go down to the
+dance of death to the tune of sixpence more.</p>
+<p>I could enter no other houses for that one while, for I could not
+bear the contemplation of the children.&nbsp; Such heart as I had summoned
+to sustain me against the miseries of the adults failed me when I looked
+at the children.&nbsp; I saw how young they were, how hungry, how serious
+and still.&nbsp; I thought of them, sick and dying in those lairs.&nbsp;
+I think of them dead without anguish; but to think of them so suffering
+and so dying quite unmanned me.</p>
+<p>Down by the river&rsquo;s bank in Ratcliff, I was turning upward
+by a side-street, therefore, to regain the railway, when my eyes rested
+on the inscription across the road, &lsquo;East London Children&rsquo;s
+Hospital.&rsquo;&nbsp; I could scarcely have seen an inscription better
+suited to my frame of mind; and I went across and went straight in.</p>
+<p>I found the children&rsquo;s hospital established in an old sail-loft
+or storehouse, of the roughest nature, and on the simplest means.&nbsp;
+There were trap-doors in the floors, where goods had been hoisted up
+and down; heavy feet and heavy weights had started every knot in the
+well-trodden planking: inconvenient bulks and beams and awkward staircases
+perplexed my passage through the wards.&nbsp; But I found it airy, sweet,
+and clean.&nbsp; In its seven and thirty beds I saw but little beauty;
+for starvation in the second or third generation takes a pinched look:
+but I saw the sufferings both of infancy and childhood tenderly assuaged;
+I heard the little patients answering to pet playful names, the light
+touch of a delicate lady laid bare the wasted sticks of arms for me
+to pity; and the claw-like little hands, as she did so, twined themselves
+lovingly around her wedding-ring.</p>
+<p>One baby mite there was as pretty as any of Raphael&rsquo;s angels.&nbsp;
+The tiny head was bandaged for water on the brain; and it was suffering
+with acute bronchitis too, and made from time to time a plaintive, though
+not impatient or complaining, little sound.&nbsp; The smooth curve of
+the cheeks and of the chin was faultless in its condensation of infantine
+beauty, and the large bright eyes were most lovely.&nbsp; It happened
+as I stopped at the foot of the bed, that these eyes rested upon mine
+with that wistful expression of wondering thoughtfulness which we all
+know sometimes in very little children.&nbsp; They remained fixed on
+mine, and never turned from me while I stood there.&nbsp; When the utterance
+of that plaintive sound shook the little form, the gaze still remained
+unchanged.&nbsp; I felt as though the child implored me to tell the
+story of the little hospital in which it was sheltered to any gentle
+heart I could address.&nbsp; Laying my world-worn hand upon the little
+unmarked clasped hand at the chin, I gave it a silent promise that I
+would do so.</p>
+<p>A gentleman and lady, a young husband and wife, have bought and fitted
+up this building for its present noble use, and have quietly settled
+themselves in it as its medical officers and directors.&nbsp; Both have
+had considerable practical experience of medicine and surgery; he as
+house-surgeon of a great London hospital; she as a very earnest student,
+tested by severe examination, and also as a nurse of the sick poor during
+the prevalence of cholera.</p>
+<p>With every qualification to lure them away, with youth and accomplishments
+and tastes and habits that can have no response in any breast near them,
+close begirt by every repulsive circumstance inseparable from such a
+neighbourhood, there they dwell.&nbsp; They live in the hospital itself,
+and their rooms are on its first floor.&nbsp; Sitting at their dinner-table,
+they could hear the cry of one of the children in pain.&nbsp; The lady&rsquo;s
+piano, drawing-materials, books, and other such evidences of refinement
+are as much a part of the rough place as the iron bedsteads of the little
+patients.&nbsp; They are put to shifts for room, like passengers on
+board ship.&nbsp; The dispenser of medicines (attracted to them not
+by self-interest, but by their own magnetism and that of their cause)
+sleeps in a recess in the dining-room, and has his washing apparatus
+in the sideboard.</p>
+<p>Their contented manner of making the best of the things around them,
+I found so pleasantly inseparable from their usefulness!&nbsp; Their
+pride in this partition that we put up ourselves, or in that partition
+that we took down, or in that other partition that we moved, or in the
+stove that was given us for the waiting-room, or in our nightly conversion
+of the little consulting-room into a smoking-room!&nbsp; Their admiration
+of the situation, if we could only get rid of its one objectionable
+incident, the coal-yard at the back!&nbsp; &lsquo;Our hospital carriage,
+presented by a friend, and very useful.&rsquo;&nbsp; That was my presentation
+to a perambulator, for which a coach-house had been discovered in a
+corner down-stairs, just large enough to hold it.&nbsp; Coloured prints,
+in all stages of preparation for being added to those already decorating
+the wards, were plentiful; a charming wooden phenomenon of a bird, with
+an impossible top-knot, who ducked his head when you set a counter weight
+going, had been inaugurated as a public statue that very morning; and
+trotting about among the beds, on familiar terms with all the patients,
+was a comical mongrel dog, called Poodles.&nbsp; This comical dog (quite
+a tonic in himself) was found characteristically starving at the door
+of the institution, and was taken in and fed, and has lived here ever
+since.&nbsp; An admirer of his mental endowments has presented him with
+a collar bearing the legend, &lsquo;Judge not Poodles by external appearances.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+He was merrily wagging his tail on a boy&rsquo;s pillow when he made
+this modest appeal to me.</p>
+<p>When this hospital was first opened, in January of the present year,
+the people could not possibly conceive but that somebody paid for the
+services rendered there; and were disposed to claim them as a right,
+and to find fault if out of temper.&nbsp; They soon came to understand
+the case better, and have much increased in gratitude.&nbsp; The mothers
+of the patients avail themselves very freely of the visiting rules;
+the fathers often on Sundays.&nbsp; There is an unreasonable (but still,
+I think, touching and intelligible) tendency in the parents to take
+a child away to its wretched home, if on the point of death.&nbsp; One
+boy who had been thus carried off on a rainy night, when in a violent
+state of inflammation, and who had been afterwards brought back, had
+been recovered with exceeding difficulty; but he was a jolly boy, with
+a specially strong interest in his dinner, when I saw him.</p>
+<p>Insufficient food and unwholesome living are the main causes of disease
+among these small patients.&nbsp; So nourishment, cleanliness, and ventilation
+are the main remedies.&nbsp; Discharged patients are looked after, and
+invited to come and dine now and then; so are certain famishing creatures
+who were never patients.&nbsp; Both the lady and the gentleman are well
+acquainted, not only with the histories of the patients and their families,
+but with the characters and circumstances of great numbers of their
+neighbours&mdash;of these they keep a register.&nbsp; It is their common
+experience, that people, sinking down by inches into deeper and deeper
+poverty, will conceal it, even from them, if possible, unto the very
+last extremity.</p>
+<p>The nurses of this hospital are all young,&mdash;ranging, say, from
+nineteen to four and twenty.&nbsp; They have even within these narrow
+limits, what many well-endowed hospitals would not give them, a comfortable
+room of their own in which to take their meals.&nbsp; It is a beautiful
+truth, that interest in the children and sympathy with their sorrows
+bind these young women to their places far more strongly than any other
+consideration could.&nbsp; The best skilled of the nurses came originally
+from a kindred neighbourhood, almost as poor; and she knew how much
+the work was needed.&nbsp; She is a fair dressmaker.&nbsp; The hospital
+cannot pay her as many pounds in the year as there are months in it;
+and one day the lady regarded it as a duty to speak to her about her
+improving her prospects and following her trade.&nbsp; &lsquo;No,&rsquo;
+she said: she could never be so useful or so happy elsewhere any more;
+she must stay among the children.</p>
+<p>And she stays.&nbsp; One of the nurses, as I passed her, was washing
+a baby-boy.&nbsp; Liking her pleasant face, I stopped to speak to her
+charge,&mdash;a common, bullet-headed, frowning charge enough, laying
+hold of his own nose with a slippery grasp, and staring very solemnly
+out of a blanket.&nbsp; The melting of the pleasant face into delighted
+smiles, as this young gentleman gave an unexpected kick, and laughed
+at me, was almost worth my previous pain.</p>
+<p>An affecting play was acted in Paris years ago, called &lsquo;The
+Children&rsquo;s Doctor.&rsquo;&nbsp; As I parted from my children&rsquo;s
+doctor, now in question, I saw in his easy black necktie, in his loose
+buttoned black frock-coat, in his pensive face, in the flow of his dark
+hair, in his eyelashes, in the very turn of his moustache, the exact
+realisation of the Paris artist&rsquo;s ideal as it was presented on
+the stage.&nbsp; But no romancer that I know of has had the boldness
+to prefigure the life and home of this young husband and young wife
+in the Children&rsquo;s Hospital in the east of London.</p>
+<p>I came away from Ratcliff by the Stepney railway station to the terminus
+at Fenchurch Street.&nbsp; Any one who will reverse that route may retrace
+my steps.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXIII&mdash;A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>It fell out on a day in this last autumn, that I had to go down from
+London to a place of seaside resort, on an hour&rsquo;s business, accompanied
+by my esteemed friend Bullfinch.&nbsp; Let the place of seaside resort
+be, for the nonce, called Namelesston.</p>
+<p>I had been loitering about Paris in very hot weather, pleasantly
+breakfasting in the open air in the garden of the Palais Royal or the
+Tuileries, pleasantly dining in the open air in the Elysian Fields,
+pleasantly taking my cigar and lemonade in the open air on the Italian
+Boulevard towards the small hours after midnight.&nbsp; Bullfinch&mdash;an
+excellent man of business&mdash;has summoned me back across the Channel,
+to transact this said hour&rsquo;s business at Namelesston; and thus
+it fell out that Bullfinch and I were in a railway carriage together
+on our way to Namelesston, each with his return-ticket in his waistcoat-pocket.</p>
+<p>Says Bullfinch, &lsquo;I have a proposal to make.&nbsp; Let us dine
+at the Temeraire.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I asked Bullfinch, did he recommend the Temeraire? inasmuch as I
+had not been rated on the books of the Temeraire for many years.</p>
+<p>Bullfinch declined to accept the responsibility of recommending the
+Temeraire, but on the whole was rather sanguine about it.&nbsp; He &lsquo;seemed
+to remember,&rsquo; Bullfinch said, that he had dined well there.&nbsp;
+A plain dinner, but good.&nbsp; Certainly not like a Parisian dinner
+(here Bullfinch obviously became the prey of want of confidence), but
+of its kind very fair.</p>
+<p>I appeal to Bullfinch&rsquo;s intimate knowledge of my wants and
+ways to decide whether I was usually ready to be pleased with any dinner,
+or&mdash;for the matter of that&mdash;with anything that was fair of
+its kind and really what it claimed to be.&nbsp; Bullfinch doing me
+the honour to respond in the affirmative, I agreed to ship myself as
+an able trencherman on board the Temeraire.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Now, our plan shall be this,&rsquo; says Bullfinch, with his
+forefinger at his nose.&nbsp; &lsquo;As soon as we get to Namelesston,
+we&rsquo;ll drive straight to the Temeraire, and order a little dinner
+in an hour.&nbsp; And as we shall not have more than enough time in
+which to dispose of it comfortably, what do you say to giving the house
+the best opportunities of serving it hot and quickly by dining in the
+coffee-room?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>What I had to say was, Certainly.&nbsp; Bullfinch (who is by nature
+of a hopeful constitution) then began to babble of green geese.&nbsp;
+But I checked him in that Falstaffian vein, urging considerations of
+time and cookery.</p>
+<p>In due sequence of events we drove up to the Temeraire, and alighted.&nbsp;
+A youth in livery received us on the door-step.&nbsp; &lsquo;Looks well,&rsquo;
+said Bullfinch confidentially.&nbsp; And then aloud, &lsquo;Coffee-room!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The youth in livery (now perceived to be mouldy) conducted us to
+the desired haven, and was enjoined by Bullfinch to send the waiter
+at once, as we wished to order a little dinner in an hour.&nbsp; Then
+Bullfinch and I waited for the waiter, until, the waiter continuing
+to wait in some unknown and invisible sphere of action, we rang for
+the waiter; which ring produced the waiter, who announced himself as
+not the waiter who ought to wait upon us, and who didn&rsquo;t wait
+a moment longer.</p>
+<p>So Bullfinch approached the coffee-room door, and melodiously pitching
+his voice into a bar where two young ladies were keeping the books of
+the Temeraire, apologetically explained that we wished to order a little
+dinner in an hour, and that we were debarred from the execution of our
+inoffensive purpose by consignment to solitude.</p>
+<p>Hereupon one of the young ladies ran a bell, which reproduced&mdash;at
+the bar this time&mdash;the waiter who was not the waiter who ought
+to wait upon us; that extraordinary man, whose life seemed consumed
+in waiting upon people to say that he wouldn&rsquo;t wait upon them,
+repeated his former protest with great indignation, and retired.</p>
+<p>Bullfinch, with a fallen countenance, was about to say to me, &lsquo;This
+won&rsquo;t do,&rsquo; when the waiter who ought to wait upon us left
+off keeping us waiting at last.&nbsp; &lsquo;Waiter,&rsquo; said Bullfinch
+piteously, &lsquo;we have been a long time waiting.&rsquo;&nbsp; The
+waiter who ought to wait upon us laid the blame upon the waiter who
+ought not to wait upon us, and said it was all that waiter&rsquo;s fault.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;We wish,&rsquo; said Bullfinch, much depressed, &lsquo;to
+order a little dinner in an hour.&nbsp; What can we have?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What would you like to have, gentlemen?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Bullfinch, with extreme mournfulness of speech and action, and with
+a forlorn old fly-blown bill of fare in his hand which the waiter had
+given him, and which was a sort of general manuscript index to any cookery-book
+you please, moved the previous question.</p>
+<p>We could have mock-turtle soup, a sole, curry, and roast duck.&nbsp;
+Agreed.&nbsp; At this table by this window.&nbsp; Punctually in an hour.</p>
+<p>I had been feigning to look out of this window; but I had been taking
+note of the crumbs on all the tables, the dirty table-cloths, the stuffy,
+soupy, airless atmosphere, the stale leavings everywhere about, the
+deep gloom of the waiter who ought to wait upon us, and the stomach-ache
+with which a lonely traveller at a distant table in a corner was too
+evidently afflicted.&nbsp; I now pointed out to Bullfinch the alarming
+circumstance that this traveller had <i>dined</i>.&nbsp; We hurriedly
+debated whether, without infringement of good breeding, we could ask
+him to disclose if he had partaken of mock-turtle, sole, curry, or roast
+duck?&nbsp; We decided that the thing could not be politely done, and
+we had set our own stomachs on a cast, and they must stand the hazard
+of the die.</p>
+<p>I hold phrenology, within certain limits, to be true; I am much of
+the same mind as to the subtler expressions of the hand; I hold physiognomy
+to be infallible; though all these sciences demand rare qualities in
+the student.&nbsp; But I also hold that there is no more certain index
+to personal character than the condition of a set of casters is to the
+character of any hotel.&nbsp; Knowing, and having often tested this
+theory of mine, Bullfinch resigned himself to the worst, when, laying
+aside any remaining veil of disguise, I held up before him in succession
+the cloudy oil and furry vinegar, the clogged cayenne, the dirty salt,
+the obscene dregs of soy, and the anchovy sauce in a flannel waistcoat
+of decomposition.</p>
+<p>We went out to transact our business.&nbsp; So inspiriting was the
+relief of passing into the clean and windy streets of Namelesston from
+the heavy and vapid closeness of the coffee-room of the Temeraire, that
+hope began to revive within us.&nbsp; We began to consider that perhaps
+the lonely traveller had taken physic, or done something injudicious
+to bring his complaint on.&nbsp; Bullfinch remarked that he thought
+the waiter who ought to wait upon us had brightened a little when suggesting
+curry; and although I knew him to have been at that moment the express
+image of despair, I allowed myself to become elevated in spirits.&nbsp;
+As we walked by the softly-lapping sea, all the notabilities of Namelesston,
+who are for ever going up and down with the changelessness of the tides,
+passed to and fro in procession.&nbsp; Pretty girls on horseback, and
+with detested riding-masters; pretty girls on foot; mature ladies in
+hats,&mdash;spectacled, strong-minded, and glaring at the opposite or
+weaker sex.&nbsp; The Stock Exchange was strongly represented, Jerusalem
+was strongly represented, the bores of the prosier London clubs were
+strongly represented.&nbsp; Fortune-hunters of all denominations were
+there, from hirsute insolvency, in a curricle, to closely-buttoned swindlery
+in doubtful boots, on the sharp look-out for any likely young gentleman
+disposed to play a game at billiards round the corner.&nbsp; Masters
+of languages, their lessons finished for the day, were going to their
+homes out of sight of the sea; mistresses of accomplishments, carrying
+small portfolios, likewise tripped homeward; pairs of scholastic pupils,
+two and two, went languidly along the beach, surveying the face of the
+waters as if waiting for some Ark to come and take them off.&nbsp; Spectres
+of the George the Fourth days flitted unsteadily among the crowd, bearing
+the outward semblance of ancient dandies, of every one of whom it might
+be said, not that he had one leg in the grave, or both legs, but that
+he was steeped in grave to the summit of his high shirt-collar, and
+had nothing real about him but his bones.&nbsp; Alone stationary in
+the midst of all the movements, the Namelesston boatmen leaned against
+the railings and yawned, and looked out to sea, or looked at the moored
+fishing-boats and at nothing.&nbsp; Such is the unchanging manner of
+life with this nursery of our hardy seamen; and very dry nurses they
+are, and always wanting something to drink.&nbsp; The only two nautical
+personages detached from the railing were the two fortunate possessors
+of the celebrated monstrous unknown barking-fish, just caught (frequently
+just caught off Namelesston), who carried him about in a hamper, and
+pressed the scientific to look in at the lid.</p>
+<p>The sands of the hour had all run out when we got back to the Temeraire.&nbsp;
+Says Bullfinch, then, to the youth in livery, with boldness, &lsquo;Lavatory!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>When we arrived at the family vault with a skylight, which the youth
+in livery presented as the institution sought, we had already whisked
+off our cravats and coats; but finding ourselves in the presence of
+an evil smell, and no linen but two crumpled towels newly damp from
+the countenances of two somebody elses, we put on our cravats and coats
+again, and fled unwashed to the coffee-room.</p>
+<p>There the waiter who ought to wait upon us had set forth our knives
+and forks and glasses, on the cloth whose dirty acquaintance we had
+already had the pleasure of making, and which we were pleased to recognise
+by the familiar expression of its stains.&nbsp; And now there occurred
+the truly surprising phenomenon, that the waiter who ought not to wait
+upon us swooped down upon us, clutched our loaf of bread, and vanished
+with the same.</p>
+<p>Bullfinch, with distracted eyes, was following this unaccountable
+figure &lsquo;out at the portal,&rsquo; like the ghost in Hamlet, when
+the waiter who ought to wait upon us jostled against it, carrying a
+tureen.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Waiter!&rsquo; said a severe diner, lately finished, perusing
+his bill fiercely through his eye-glass.</p>
+<p>The waiter put down our tureen on a remote side-table, and went to
+see what was amiss in this new direction.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;This is not right, you know, waiter.&nbsp; Look here! here&rsquo;s
+yesterday&rsquo;s sherry, one and eightpence, and here we are again,
+two shillings.&nbsp; And what does sixpence mean?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>So far from knowing what sixpence meant, the waiter protested that
+he didn&rsquo;t know what anything meant.&nbsp; He wiped the perspiration
+from his clammy brow, and said it was impossible to do it,&mdash;not
+particularising what,&mdash;and the kitchen was so far off.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Take the bill to the bar, and get it altered,&rsquo; said
+Mr. Indignation Cocker, so to call him.</p>
+<p>The waiter took it, looked intensely at it, didn&rsquo;t seem to
+like the idea of taking it to the bar, and submitted, as a new light
+upon the case, that perhaps sixpence meant sixpence.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I tell you again,&rsquo; said Mr. Indignation Cocker, &lsquo;here&rsquo;s
+yesterday&rsquo;s sherry&mdash;can&rsquo;t you see it?&mdash;one and
+eightpence, and here we are again, two shillings.&nbsp; What do you
+make of one and eightpence and two shillings?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Totally unable to make anything of one and eightpence and two shillings,
+the waiter went out to try if anybody else could; merely casting a helpless
+backward glance at Bullfinch, in acknowledgement of his pathetic entreaties
+for our soup-tureen.&nbsp; After a pause, during which Mr. Indignation
+Cocker read a newspaper and coughed defiant coughs, Bullfinch arose
+to get the tureen, when the waiter reappeared and brought it,&mdash;dropping
+Mr. Indignation Cocker&rsquo;s altered bill on Mr. Indignation Cocker&rsquo;s
+table as he came along.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s quite impossible to do it, gentlemen,&rsquo; murmured
+the waiter; &lsquo;and the kitchen is so far off.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, you don&rsquo;t keep the house; it&rsquo;s not your
+fault, we suppose.&nbsp; Bring some sherry.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Waiter!&rsquo; from Mr. Indignation Cocker, with a new and
+burning sense of injury upon him.</p>
+<p>The waiter, arrested on his way to our sherry, stopped short, and
+came back to see what was wrong now.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Will you look here?&nbsp; This is worse than before.&nbsp;
+<i>Do</i> you understand?&nbsp; Here&rsquo;s yesterday&rsquo;s sherry,
+one and eightpence, and here we are again two shillings.&nbsp; And what
+the devil does ninepence mean?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>This new portent utterly confounded the waiter.&nbsp; He wrung his
+napkin, and mutely appealed to the ceiling.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Waiter, fetch that sherry,&rsquo; says Bullfinch, in open
+wrath and revolt.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I want to know,&rsquo; persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker, &lsquo;the
+meaning of ninepence.&nbsp; I want to know the meaning of sherry one
+and eightpence yesterday, and of here we are again two shillings.&nbsp;
+Send somebody.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The distracted waiter got out of the room on pretext of sending somebody,
+and by that means got our wine.&nbsp; But the instant he appeared with
+our decanter, Mr. Indignation Cocker descended on him again.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Waiter!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You will now have the goodness to attend to our dinner, waiter,&rsquo;
+said Bullfinch, sternly.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am very sorry, but it&rsquo;s quite impossible to do it,
+gentlemen,&rsquo; pleaded the waiter; &lsquo;and the kitchen&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Waiter!&rsquo; said Mr. Indignation Cocker.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&mdash;Is,&rsquo; resumed the waiter, &lsquo;so far off, that&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Waiter!&rsquo; persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker, &lsquo;send
+somebody.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>We were not without our fears that the waiter rushed out to hang
+himself; and we were much relieved by his fetching somebody,&mdash;in
+graceful, flowing skirts and with a waist,&mdash;who very soon settled
+Mr. Indignation Cocker&rsquo;s business.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh!&rsquo; said Mr. Cocker, with his fire surprisingly quenched
+by this apparition; &lsquo;I wished to ask about this bill of mine,
+because it appears to me that there&rsquo;s a little mistake here.&nbsp;
+Let me show you.&nbsp; Here&rsquo;s yesterday&rsquo;s sherry one and
+eightpence, and here we are again two shillings.&nbsp; And how do you
+explain ninepence?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>However it was explained, in tones too soft to be overheard.&nbsp;
+Mr. Cocker was heard to say nothing more than &lsquo;Ah-h-h!&nbsp; Indeed;
+thank you!&nbsp; Yes,&rsquo; and shortly afterwards went out, a milder
+man.</p>
+<p>The lonely traveller with the stomach-ache had all this time suffered
+severely, drawing up a leg now and then, and sipping hot brandy-and-water
+with grated ginger in it.&nbsp; When we tasted our (very) mock-turtle
+soup, and were instantly seized with symptoms of some disorder simulating
+apoplexy, and occasioned by the surcharge of nose and brain with lukewarm
+dish-water holding in solution sour flour, poisonous condiments, and
+(say) seventy-five per cent. of miscellaneous kitchen stuff rolled into
+balls, we were inclined to trace his disorder to that source.&nbsp;
+On the other hand, there was a silent anguish upon him too strongly
+resembling the results established within ourselves by the sherry, to
+be discarded from alarmed consideration.&nbsp; Again, we observed him,
+with terror, to be much overcome by our sole&rsquo;s being aired in
+a temporary retreat close to him, while the waiter went out (as we conceived)
+to see his friends.&nbsp; And when the curry made its appearance he
+suddenly retired in great disorder.</p>
+<p>In fine, for the uneatable part of this little dinner (as contradistinguished
+from the undrinkable) we paid only seven shillings and sixpence each.&nbsp;
+And Bullfinch and I agreed unanimously, that no such ill-served, ill-appointed,
+ill-cooked, nasty little dinner could be got for the money anywhere
+else under the sun.&nbsp; With that comfort to our backs, we turned
+them on the dear old Temeraire, the charging Temeraire, and resolved
+(in the Scotch dialect) to gang nae mair to the flabby Temeraire.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXIV&mdash;MR. BARLOW</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>A great reader of good fiction at an unusually early age, it seems
+to me as though I had been born under the superintendence of the estimable
+but terrific gentleman whose name stands at the head of my present reflections.&nbsp;
+The instructive monomaniac, Mr. Barlow, will be remembered as the tutor
+of Master Harry Sandford and Master Tommy Merton.&nbsp; He knew everything,
+and didactically improved all sorts of occasions, from the consumption
+of a plate of cherries to the contemplation of a starlight night.&nbsp;
+What youth came to without Mr. Barlow was displayed in the history of
+Sandford and Merton, by the example of a certain awful Master Mash.&nbsp;
+This young wretch wore buckles and powder, conducted himself with insupportable
+levity at the theatre, had no idea of facing a mad bull single-handed
+(in which I think him less reprehensible, as remotely reflecting my
+own character), and was a frightful instance of the enervating effects
+of luxury upon the human race.</p>
+<p>Strange destiny on the part of Mr. Barlow, to go down to posterity
+as childhood&rsquo;s experience of a bore!&nbsp; Immortal Mr. Barlow,
+boring his way through the verdant freshness of ages!</p>
+<p>My personal indictment against Mr. Barlow is one of many counts.&nbsp;
+I will proceed to set forth a few of the injuries he has done me.</p>
+<p>In the first place, he never made or took a joke.&nbsp; This insensibility
+on Mr. Barlow&rsquo;s part not only cast its own gloom over my boyhood,
+but blighted even the sixpenny jest-books of the time; for, groaning
+under a moral spell constraining me to refer all things to Mr. Barlow,
+I could not choose but ask myself in a whisper when tickled by a printed
+jest, &lsquo;What would <i>he</i> think of it?&nbsp; What would <i>he</i>
+see in it?&rsquo;&nbsp; The point of the jest immediately became a sting,
+and stung my conscience.&nbsp; For my mind&rsquo;s eye saw him stolid,
+frigid, perchance taking from its shelf some dreary Greek book, and
+translating at full length what some dismal sage said (and touched up
+afterwards, perhaps, for publication), when he banished some unlucky
+joker from Athens.</p>
+<p>The incompatibility of Mr. Barlow with all other portions of my young
+life but himself, the adamantine inadaptability of the man to my favourite
+fancies and amusements, is the thing for which I hate him most.&nbsp;
+What right had he to bore his way into my Arabian Nights?&nbsp; Yet
+he did.&nbsp; He was always hinting doubts of the veracity of Sindbad
+the Sailor.&nbsp; If he could have got hold of the Wonderful Lamp, I
+knew he would have trimmed it and lighted it, and delivered a lecture
+over it on the qualities of sperm-oil, with a glance at the whale fisheries.&nbsp;
+He would so soon have found out&mdash;on mechanical principles&mdash;the
+peg in the neck of the Enchanted Horse, and would have turned it the
+right way in so workmanlike a manner, that the horse could never have
+got any height into the air, and the story couldn&rsquo;t have been.&nbsp;
+He would have proved, by map and compass, that there was no such kingdom
+as the delightful kingdom of Casgar, on the frontiers of Tartary.&nbsp;
+He would have caused that hypocritical young prig Harry to make an experiment,&mdash;with
+the aid of a temporary building in the garden and a dummy,&mdash;demonstrating
+that you couldn&rsquo;t let a choked hunchback down an Eastern chimney
+with a cord, and leave him upright on the hearth to terrify the sultan&rsquo;s
+purveyor.</p>
+<p>The golden sounds of the overture to the first metropolitan pantomime,
+I remember, were alloyed by Mr. Barlow.&nbsp; Click click, ting ting,
+bang bang, weedle weedle weedle, bang!&nbsp; I recall the chilling air
+that ran across my frame and cooled my hot delight, as the thought occurred
+to me, &lsquo;This would never do for Mr. Barlow!&rsquo;&nbsp; After
+the curtain drew up, dreadful doubts of Mr. Barlow&rsquo;s considering
+the costumes of the Nymphs of the Nebula as being sufficiently opaque,
+obtruded themselves on my enjoyment.&nbsp; In the clown I perceived
+two persons; one a fascinating unaccountable creature of a hectic complexion,
+joyous in spirits though feeble in intellect, with flashes of brilliancy;
+the other a pupil for Mr. Barlow.&nbsp; I thought how Mr. Barlow would
+secretly rise early in the morning, and butter the pavement for <i>him</i>,
+and, when he had brought him down, would look severely out of his study
+window and ask <i>him</i> how he enjoyed the fun.</p>
+<p>I thought how Mr. Barlow would heat all the pokers in the house,
+and singe him with the whole collection, to bring him better acquainted
+with the properties of incandescent iron, on which he (Barlow) would
+fully expatiate.&nbsp; I pictured Mr. Barlow&rsquo;s instituting a comparison
+between the clown&rsquo;s conduct at his studies,&mdash;drinking up
+the ink, licking his copy-book, and using his head for blotting-paper,&mdash;and
+that of the already mentioned young prig of prigs, Harry, sitting at
+the Barlovian feet, sneakingly pretending to be in a rapture of youthful
+knowledge.&nbsp; I thought how soon Mr. Barlow would smooth the clown&rsquo;s
+hair down, instead of letting it stand erect in three tall tufts; and
+how, after a couple of years or so with Mr. Barlow, he would keep his
+legs close together when he walked, and would take his hands out of
+his big loose pockets, and wouldn&rsquo;t have a jump left in him.</p>
+<p>That I am particularly ignorant what most things in the universe
+are made of, and how they are made, is another of my charges against
+Mr. Barlow.&nbsp; With the dread upon me of developing into a Harry,
+and with a further dread upon me of being Barlowed if I made inquiries,
+by bringing down upon myself a cold shower-bath of explanations and
+experiments, I forbore enlightenment in my youth, and became, as they
+say in melodramas, &lsquo;the wreck you now behold.&rsquo;&nbsp; That
+I consorted with idlers and dunces is another of the melancholy facts
+for which I hold Mr. Barlow responsible.&nbsp; That pragmatical prig,
+Harry, became so detestable in my sight, that, he being reported studious
+in the South, I would have fled idle to the extremest North.&nbsp; Better
+to learn misconduct from a Master Mash than science and statistics from
+a Sandford!&nbsp; So I took the path, which, but for Mr. Barlow, I might
+never have trodden.&nbsp; Thought I, with a shudder, &lsquo;Mr. Barlow
+is a bore, with an immense constructive power of making bores.&nbsp;
+His prize specimen is a bore.&nbsp; He seeks to make a bore of me.&nbsp;
+That knowledge is power I am not prepared to gainsay; but, with Mr.
+Barlow, knowledge is power to bore.&rsquo;&nbsp; Therefore I took refuge
+in the caves of ignorance, wherein I have resided ever since, and which
+are still my private address.</p>
+<p>But the weightiest charge of all my charges against Mr. Barlow is,
+that he still walks the earth in various disguises, seeking to make
+a Tommy of me, even in my maturity.&nbsp; Irrepressible, instructive
+monomaniac, Mr. Barlow fills my life with pitfalls, and lies hiding
+at the bottom to burst out upon me when I least expect him.</p>
+<p>A few of these dismal experiences of mine shall suffice.</p>
+<p>Knowing Mr. Barlow to have invested largely in the moving panorama
+trade, and having on various occasions identified him in the dark with
+a long wand in his hand, holding forth in his old way (made more appalling
+in this connection by his sometimes cracking a piece of Mr. Carlyle&rsquo;s
+own Dead-Sea fruit in mistake for a joke), I systematically shun pictorial
+entertainment on rollers.&nbsp; Similarly, I should demand responsible
+bail and guaranty against the appearance of Mr. Barlow, before committing
+myself to attendance at any assemblage of my fellow-creatures where
+a bottle of water and a note-book were conspicuous objects; for in either
+of those associations, I should expressly expect him.&nbsp; But such
+is the designing nature of the man, that he steals in where no reasoning
+precaution or provision could expect him.&nbsp; As in the following
+case:-</p>
+<p>Adjoining the Caves of Ignorance is a country town.&nbsp; In this
+country town the Mississippi Momuses, nine in number, were announced
+to appear in the town-hall, for the general delectation, this last Christmas
+week.&nbsp; Knowing Mr. Barlow to be unconnected with the Mississippi,
+though holding republican opinions, and deeming myself secure, I took
+a stall.&nbsp; My object was to hear and see the Mississippi Momuses
+in what the bills described as their &lsquo;National ballads, plantation
+break-downs, nigger part-songs, choice conundrums, sparkling repartees,
+&amp;c.&rsquo;&nbsp; I found the nine dressed alike, in the black coat
+and trousers, white waistcoat, very large shirt-front, very large shirt-collar,
+and very large white tie and wristbands, which constitute the dress
+of the mass of the African race, and which has been observed by travellers
+to prevail over a vast number of degrees of latitude.&nbsp; All the
+nine rolled their eyes exceedingly, and had very red lips.&nbsp; At
+the extremities of the curve they formed, seated in their chairs, were
+the performers on the tambourine and bones.&nbsp; The centre Momus,
+a black of melancholy aspect (who inspired me with a vague uneasiness
+for which I could not then account), performed on a Mississippi instrument
+closely resembling what was once called in this island a hurdy-gurdy.&nbsp;
+The Momuses on either side of him had each another instrument peculiar
+to the Father of Waters, which may be likened to a stringed weather-glass
+held upside down.&nbsp; There were likewise a little flute and a violin.&nbsp;
+All went well for awhile, and we had had several sparkling repartees
+exchanged between the performers on the tambourine and bones, when the
+black of melancholy aspect, turning to the latter, and addressing him
+in a deep and improving voice as &lsquo;Bones, sir,&rsquo; delivered
+certain grave remarks to him concerning the juveniles present, and the
+season of the year; whereon I perceived that I was in the presence of
+Mr. Barlow&mdash;corked!</p>
+<p>Another night&mdash;and this was in London&mdash;I attended the representation
+of a little comedy.&nbsp; As the characters were lifelike (and consequently
+not improving), and as they went upon their several ways and designs
+without personally addressing themselves to me, I felt rather confident
+of coming through it without being regarded as Tommy, the more so, as
+we were clearly getting close to the end.&nbsp; But I deceived myself.&nbsp;
+All of a sudden, Apropos of nothing, everybody concerned came to a check
+and halt, advanced to the foot-lights in a general rally to take dead
+aim at me, and brought me down with a moral homily, in which I detected
+the dread hand of Barlow.</p>
+<p>Nay, so intricate and subtle are the toils of this hunter, that on
+the very next night after that, I was again entrapped, where no vestige
+of a spring could have been apprehended by the timidest.&nbsp; It was
+a burlesque that I saw performed; an uncompromising burlesque, where
+everybody concerned, but especially the ladies, carried on at a very
+considerable rate indeed.&nbsp; Most prominent and active among the
+corps of performers was what I took to be (and she really gave me very
+fair opportunities of coming to a right conclusion) a young lady of
+a pretty figure.&nbsp; She was dressed as a picturesque young gentleman,
+whose pantaloons had been cut off in their infancy; and she had very
+neat knees and very neat satin boots.&nbsp; Immediately after singing
+a slang song and dancing a slang dance, this engaging figure approached
+the fatal lamps, and, bending over them, delivered in a thrilling voice
+a random eulogium on, and exhortation to pursue, the virtues.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Great Heaven!&rsquo; was my exclamation; &lsquo;Barlow!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>There is still another aspect in which Mr. Barlow perpetually insists
+on my sustaining the character of Tommy, which is more unendurable yet,
+on account of its extreme aggressiveness.&nbsp; For the purposes of
+a review or newspaper, he will get up an abstruse subject with definite
+pains, will Barlow, utterly regardless of the price of midnight oil,
+and indeed of everything else, save cramming himself to the eyes.</p>
+<p>But mark.&nbsp; When Mr. Barlow blows his information off, he is
+not contented with having rammed it home, and discharged it upon me,
+Tommy, his target, but he pretends that he was always in possession
+of it, and made nothing of it,&mdash;that he imbibed it with mother&rsquo;s
+milk,&mdash;and that I, the wretched Tommy, am most abjectly behindhand
+in not having done the same.&nbsp; I ask, why is Tommy to be always
+the foil of Mr. Barlow to this extent?&nbsp; What Mr. Barlow had not
+the slightest notion of himself, a week ago, it surely cannot be any
+very heavy backsliding in me not to have at my fingers&rsquo; ends to-day!&nbsp;
+And yet Mr. Barlow systematically carries it over me with a high hand,
+and will tauntingly ask me, in his articles, whether it is possible
+that I am not aware that every school-boy knows that the fourteenth
+turning on the left in the steppes of Russia will conduct to such and
+such a wandering tribe? with other disparaging questions of like nature.&nbsp;
+So, when Mr. Barlow addresses a letter to any journal as a volunteer
+correspondent (which I frequently find him doing), he will previously
+have gotten somebody to tell him some tremendous technicality, and will
+write in the coolest manner, &lsquo;Now, sir, I may assume that every
+reader of your columns, possessing average information and intelligence,
+knows as well as I do that&rsquo;&mdash;say that the draught from the
+touch-hole of a cannon of such a calibre bears such a proportion in
+the nicest fractions to the draught from the muzzle; or some equally
+familiar little fact.&nbsp; But whatever it is, be certain that it always
+tends to the exaltation of Mr. Barlow, and the depression of his enforced
+and enslaved pupil.</p>
+<p>Mr. Barlow&rsquo;s knowledge of my own pursuits I find to be so profound,
+that my own knowledge of them becomes as nothing.&nbsp; Mr. Barlow (disguised
+and bearing a feigned name, but detected by me) has occasionally taught
+me, in a sonorous voice, from end to end of a long dinner-table, trifles
+that I took the liberty of teaching him five-and-twenty years ago.&nbsp;
+My closing article of impeachment against Mr. Barlow is, that he goes
+out to breakfast, goes out to dinner, goes out everywhere, high and
+low, and that he WILL preach to me, and that I CAN&rsquo;T get rid of
+him.&nbsp; He makes me a Promethean Tommy, bound; and he is the vulture
+that gorges itself upon the liver of my uninstructed mind.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXV&mdash;ON AN AMATEUR BEAT</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>It is one of my fancies, that even my idlest walk must always have
+its appointed destination.&nbsp; I set myself a task before I leave
+my lodging in Covent-garden on a street expedition, and should no more
+think of altering my route by the way, or turning back and leaving a
+part of it unachieved, than I should think of fraudulently violating
+an agreement entered into with somebody else.&nbsp; The other day, finding
+myself under this kind of obligation to proceed to Limehouse, I started
+punctually at noon, in compliance with the terms of the contract with
+myself to which my good faith was pledged.</p>
+<p>On such an occasion, it is my habit to regard my walk as my beat,
+and myself as a higher sort of police-constable doing duty on the same.&nbsp;
+There is many a ruffian in the streets whom I mentally collar and clear
+out of them, who would see mighty little of London, I can tell him,
+if I could deal with him physically.</p>
+<p>Issuing forth upon this very beat, and following with my eyes three
+hulking garrotters on their way home,&mdash;which home I could confidently
+swear to be within so many yards of Drury-lane, in such a narrow and
+restricted direction (though they live in their lodging quite as undisturbed
+as I in mine),&mdash;I went on duty with a consideration which I respectfully
+offer to the new Chief Commissioner,&mdash;in whom I thoroughly confide
+as a tried and efficient public servant.&nbsp; How often (thought I)
+have I been forced to swallow, in police-reports, the intolerable stereotyped
+pill of nonsense, how that the police-constable informed the worthy
+magistrate how that the associates of the prisoner did, at that present
+speaking, dwell in a street or court which no man dared go down, and
+how that the worthy magistrate had heard of the dark reputation of such
+street or court, and how that our readers would doubtless remember that
+it was always the same street or court which was thus edifyingly discoursed
+about, say once a fortnight.</p>
+<p>Now, suppose that a Chief Commissioner sent round a circular to every
+division of police employed in London, requiring instantly the names
+in all districts of all such much-puffed streets or courts which no
+man durst go down; and suppose that in such circular he gave plain warning,
+&lsquo;If those places really exist, they are a proof of police inefficiency
+which I mean to punish; and if they do not exist, but are a conventional
+fiction, then they are a proof of lazy tacit police connivance with
+professional crime, which I also mean to punish&rsquo;&mdash;what then?&nbsp;
+Fictions or realities, could they survive the touchstone of this atom
+of common sense?&nbsp; To tell us in open court, until it has become
+as trite a feature of news as the great gooseberry, that a costly police-system
+such as was never before heard of, has left in London, in the days of
+steam and gas and photographs of thieves and electric telegraphs, the
+sanctuaries and stews of the Stuarts!&nbsp; Why, a parity of practice,
+in all departments, would bring back the Plague in two summers, and
+the Druids in a century!</p>
+<p>Walking faster under my share of this public injury, I overturned
+a wretched little creature, who, clutching at the rags of a pair of
+trousers with one of its claws, and at its ragged hair with the other,
+pattered with bare feet over the muddy stones.&nbsp; I stopped to raise
+and succour this poor weeping wretch, and fifty like it, but of both
+sexes, were about me in a moment, begging, tumbling, fighting, clamouring,
+yelling, shivering in their nakedness and hunger.&nbsp; The piece of
+money I had put into the claw of the child I had over-turned was clawed
+out of it, and was again clawed out of that wolfish gripe, and again
+out of that, and soon I had no notion in what part of the obscene scuffle
+in the mud, of rags and legs and arms and dirt, the money might be.&nbsp;
+In raising the child, I had drawn it aside out of the main thoroughfare,
+and this took place among some wooden hoardings and barriers and ruins
+of demolished buildings, hard by Temple Bar.</p>
+<p>Unexpectedly, from among them emerged a genuine police-constable,
+before whom the dreadful brood dispersed in various directions, he making
+feints and darts in this direction and in that, and catching nothing.&nbsp;
+When all were frightened away, he took off his hat, pulled out a handkerchief
+from it, wiped his heated brow, and restored the handkerchief and hat
+to their places, with the air of a man who had discharged a great moral
+duty,&mdash;as indeed he had, in doing what was set down for him.&nbsp;
+I looked at him, and I looked about at the disorderly traces in the
+mud, and I thought of the drops of rain and the footprints of an extinct
+creature, hoary ages upon ages old, that geologists have identified
+on the face of a cliff; and this speculation came over me: If this mud
+could petrify at this moment, and could lie concealed here for ten thousand
+years, I wonder whether the race of men then to be our successors on
+the earth could, from these or any marks, by the utmost force of the
+human intellect, unassisted by tradition, deduce such an astounding
+inference as the existence of a polished state of society that bore
+with the public savagery of neglected children in the streets of its
+capital city, and was proud of its power by sea and land, and never
+used its power to seize and save them!</p>
+<p>After this, when I came to the Old Bailey and glanced up it towards
+Newgate, I found that the prison had an inconsistent look.&nbsp; There
+seemed to be some unlucky inconsistency in the atmosphere that day;
+for though the proportions of St. Paul&rsquo;s Cathedral are very beautiful,
+it had an air of being somewhat out of drawing, in my eyes.&nbsp; I
+felt as though the cross were too high up, and perched upon the intervening
+golden ball too far away.</p>
+<p>Facing eastward, I left behind me Smithfield and Old Bailey,&mdash;fire
+and faggot, condemned hold, public hanging, whipping through the city
+at the cart-tail, pillory, branding-iron, and other beautiful ancestral
+landmarks, which rude hands have rooted up, without bringing the stars
+quite down upon us as yet,&mdash;and went my way upon my beat, noting
+how oddly characteristic neighbourhoods are divided from one another,
+hereabout, as though by an invisible line across the way.&nbsp; Here
+shall cease the bankers and the money-changers; here shall begin the
+shipping interest and the nautical-instrument shops; here shall follow
+a scarcely perceptible flavouring of groceries and drugs; here shall
+come a strong infusion of butchers; now, small hosiers shall be in the
+ascendant; henceforth, everything exposed for sale shall have its ticketed
+price attached.&nbsp; All this as if specially ordered and appointed.</p>
+<p>A single stride at Houndsditch Church, no wider than sufficed to
+cross the kennel at the bottom of the Canon-gate, which the debtors
+in Holyrood sanctuary were wont to relieve their minds by skipping over,
+as Scott relates, and standing in delightful daring of catchpoles on
+the free side,&mdash;a single stride, and everything is entirely changed
+in grain and character.&nbsp; West of the stride, a table, or a chest
+of drawers on sale, shall be of mahogany and French-polished; east of
+the stride, it shall be of deal, smeared with a cheap counterfeit resembling
+lip-salve.&nbsp; West of the stride, a penny loaf or bun shall be compact
+and self-contained; east of the stride, it shall be of a sprawling and
+splay-footed character, as seeking to make more of itself for the money.&nbsp;
+My beat lying round by Whitechapel Church, and the adjacent sugar-refineries,&mdash;great
+buildings, tier upon tier, that have the appearance of being nearly
+related to the dock-warehouses at Liverpool,&mdash;I turned off to my
+right, and, passing round the awkward corner on my left, came suddenly
+on an apparition familiar to London streets afar off.</p>
+<p>What London peripatetic of these times has not seen the woman who
+has fallen forward, double, through some affection of the spine, and
+whose head has of late taken a turn to one side, so that it now droops
+over the back of one of her arms at about the wrist?&nbsp; Who does
+not know her staff, and her shawl, and her basket, as she gropes her
+way along, capable of seeing nothing but the pavement, never begging,
+never stopping, for ever going somewhere on no business?&nbsp; How does
+she live, whence does she come, whither does she go, and why?&nbsp;
+I mind the time when her yellow arms were naught but bone and parchment.&nbsp;
+Slight changes steal over her; for there is a shadowy suggestion of
+human skin on them now.&nbsp; The Strand may be taken as the central
+point about which she revolves in a half-mile orbit.&nbsp; How comes
+she so far east as this?&nbsp; And coming back too!&nbsp; Having been
+how much farther?&nbsp; She is a rare spectacle in this neighbourhood.&nbsp;
+I receive intelligent information to this effect from a dog&mdash;a
+lop-sided mongrel with a foolish tail, plodding along with his tail
+up, and his ears pricked, and displaying an amiable interest in the
+ways of his fellow-men,&mdash;if I may be allowed the expression.&nbsp;
+After pausing at a pork-shop, he is jogging eastward like myself, with
+a benevolent countenance and a watery mouth, as though musing on the
+many excellences of pork, when he beholds this doubled-up bundle approaching.&nbsp;
+He is not so much astonished at the bundle (though amazed by that),
+as the circumstance that it has within itself the means of locomotion.&nbsp;
+He stops, pricks his ears higher, makes a slight point, stares, utters
+a short, low growl, and glistens at the nose,&mdash;as I conceive with
+terror.&nbsp; The bundle continuing to approach, he barks, turns tail,
+and is about to fly, when, arguing with himself that flight is not becoming
+in a dog, he turns, and once more faces the advancing heap of clothes.&nbsp;
+After much hesitation, it occurs to him that there may be a face in
+it somewhere.&nbsp; Desperately resolving to undertake the adventure,
+and pursue the inquiry, he goes slowly up to the bundle, goes slowly
+round it, and coming at length upon the human countenance down there
+where never human countenance should be, gives a yelp of horror, and
+flies for the East India Docks.</p>
+<p>Being now in the Commercial Road district of my beat, and bethinking
+myself that Stepney Station is near, I quicken my pace that I may turn
+out of the road at that point, and see how my small eastern star is
+shining.</p>
+<p>The Children&rsquo;s Hospital, to which I gave that name, is in full
+force.&nbsp; All its beds are occupied.&nbsp; There is a new face on
+the bed where my pretty baby lay, and that sweet little child is now
+at rest for ever.&nbsp; Much kind sympathy has been here since my former
+visit, and it is good to see the walls profusely garnished with dolls.&nbsp;
+I wonder what Poodles may think of them, as they stretch out their arms
+above the beds, and stare, and display their splendid dresses.&nbsp;
+Poodles has a greater interest in the patients.&nbsp; I find him making
+the round of the beds, like a house-surgeon, attended by another dog,&mdash;a
+friend,&mdash;who appears to trot about with him in the character of
+his pupil dresser.&nbsp; Poodles is anxious to make me known to a pretty
+little girl looking wonderfully healthy, who had had a leg taken off
+for cancer of the knee.&nbsp; A difficult operation, Poodles intimates,
+wagging his tail on the counterpane, but perfectly successful, as you
+see, dear sir!&nbsp; The patient, patting Poodles, adds with a smile,
+&lsquo;The leg was so much trouble to me, that I am glad it&rsquo;s
+gone.&rsquo;&nbsp; I never saw anything in doggery finer than the deportment
+of Poodles, when another little girl opens her mouth to show a peculiar
+enlargement of the tongue.&nbsp; Poodles (at that time on a table, to
+be on a level with the occasion) looks at the tongue (with his own sympathetically
+out) so very gravely and knowingly, that I feel inclined to put my hand
+in my waistcoat-pocket, and give him a guinea, wrapped in paper.</p>
+<p>On my beat again, and close to Limehouse Church, its termination,
+I found myself near to certain &lsquo;Lead-Mills.&rsquo;&nbsp; Struck
+by the name, which was fresh in my memory, and finding, on inquiry,
+that these same lead-mills were identified with those same lead-mills
+of which I made mention when I first visited the East London Children&rsquo;s
+Hospital and its neighbourhood as Uncommercial Traveller, I resolved
+to have a look at them.</p>
+<p>Received by two very intelligent gentlemen, brothers, and partners
+with their father in the concern, and who testified every desire to
+show their works to me freely, I went over the lead-mills.&nbsp; The
+purport of such works is the conversion of pig-lead into white-lead.&nbsp;
+This conversion is brought about by the slow and gradual effecting of
+certain successive chemical changes in the lead itself.&nbsp; The processes
+are picturesque and interesting,&mdash;the most so, being the burying
+of the lead, at a certain stage of preparation, in pots, each pot containing
+a certain quantity of acid besides, and all the pots being buried in
+vast numbers, in layers, under tan, for some ten weeks.</p>
+<p>Hopping up ladders, and across planks, and on elevated perches, until
+I was uncertain whether to liken myself to a bird or a brick-layer,
+I became conscious of standing on nothing particular, looking down into
+one of a series of large cocklofts, with the outer day peeping in through
+the chinks in the tiled roof above.&nbsp; A number of women were ascending
+to, and descending from, this cockloft, each carrying on the upward
+journey a pot of prepared lead and acid, for deposition under the smoking
+tan.&nbsp; When one layer of pots was completely filled, it was carefully
+covered in with planks, and those were carefully covered with tan again,
+and then another layer of pots was begun above; sufficient means of
+ventilation being preserved through wooden tubes.&nbsp; Going down into
+the cockloft then filling, I found the heat of the tan to be surprisingly
+great, and also the odour of the lead and acid to be not absolutely
+exquisite, though I believe not noxious at that stage.&nbsp; In other
+cocklofts, where the pots were being exhumed, the heat of the steaming
+tan was much greater, and the smell was penetrating and peculiar.&nbsp;
+There were cocklofts in all stages; full and empty, half filled and
+half emptied; strong, active women were clambering about them busily;
+and the whole thing had rather the air of the upper part of the house
+of some immensely rich old Turk, whose faithful seraglio were hiding
+his money because the sultan or the pasha was coming.</p>
+<p>As is the case with most pulps or pigments, so in the instance of
+this white-lead, processes of stirring, separating, washing, grinding,
+rolling, and pressing succeed.&nbsp; Some of these are unquestionably
+inimical to health, the danger arising from inhalation of particles
+of lead, or from contact between the lead and the touch, or both.&nbsp;
+Against these dangers, I found good respirators provided (simply made
+of flannel and muslin, so as to be inexpensively renewed, and in some
+instances washed with scented soap), and gauntlet gloves, and loose
+gowns.&nbsp; Everywhere, there was as much fresh air as windows, well
+placed and opened, could possibly admit.&nbsp; And it was explained
+that the precaution of frequently changing the women employed in the
+worst parts of the work (a precaution originating in their own experience
+or apprehension of its ill effects) was found salutary.&nbsp; They had
+a mysterious and singular appearance, with the mouth and nose covered,
+and the loose gown on, and yet bore out the simile of the old Turk and
+the seraglio all the better for the disguise.</p>
+<p>At last this vexed white-lead, having been buried and resuscitated,
+and heated and cooled and stirred, and separated and washed and ground,
+and rolled and pressed, is subjected to the action of intense fiery
+heat.&nbsp; A row of women, dressed as above described, stood, let us
+say, in a large stone bakehouse, passing on the baking-dishes as they
+were given out by the cooks, from hand to hand, into the ovens.&nbsp;
+The oven, or stove, cold as yet, looked as high as an ordinary house,
+and was full of men and women on temporary footholds, briskly passing
+up and stowing away the dishes.&nbsp; The door of another oven, or stove,
+about to be cooled and emptied, was opened from above, for the uncommercial
+countenance to peer down into.&nbsp; The uncommercial countenance withdrew
+itself, with expedition and a sense of suffocation, from the dull-glowing
+heat and the overpowering smell.&nbsp; On the whole, perhaps the going
+into these stoves to work, when they are freshly opened, may be the
+worst part of the occupation.</p>
+<p>But I made it out to be indubitable that the owners of these lead-mills
+honestly and sedulously try to reduce the dangers of the occupation
+to the lowest point.</p>
+<p>A washing-place is provided for the women (I thought there might
+have been more towels), and a room in which they hang their clothes,
+and take their meals, and where they have a good fire-range and fire,
+and a female attendant to help them, and to watch that they do not neglect
+the cleansing of their hands before touching their food.&nbsp; An experienced
+medical attendant is provided for them, and any premonitory symptoms
+of lead-poisoning are carefully treated.&nbsp; Their teapots and such
+things were set out on tables ready for their afternoon meal, when I
+saw their room; and it had a homely look.&nbsp; It is found that they
+bear the work much better than men: some few of them have been at it
+for years, and the great majority of those I observed were strong and
+active.&nbsp; On the other hand, it should be remembered that most of
+them are very capricious and irregular in their attendance.</p>
+<p>American inventiveness would seem to indicate that before very long
+white-lead may be made entirely by machinery.&nbsp; The sooner, the
+better.&nbsp; In the meantime, I parted from my two frank conductors
+over the mills, by telling them that they had nothing there to be concealed,
+and nothing to be blamed for.&nbsp; As to the rest, the philosophy of
+the matter of lead-poisoning and workpeople seems to me to have been
+pretty fairly summed up by the Irishwoman whom I quoted in my former
+paper: &lsquo;Some of them gets lead-pisoned soon, and some of them
+gets lead-pisoned later, and some, but not many, niver; and &rsquo;tis
+all according to the constitooshun, sur; and some constitooshuns is
+strong and some is weak.&rsquo;&nbsp; Retracing my footsteps over my
+beat, I went off duty.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXVI&mdash;A FLY-LEAF IN A LIFE</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Once upon a time (no matter when), I was engaged in a pursuit (no
+matter what), which could be transacted by myself alone; in which I
+could have no help; which imposed a constant strain on the attention,
+memory, observation, and physical powers; and which involved an almost
+fabulous amount of change of place and rapid railway travelling.&nbsp;
+I had followed this pursuit through an exceptionally trying winter in
+an always trying climate, and had resumed it in England after but a
+brief repose.&nbsp; Thus it came to be prolonged until, at length&mdash;and,
+as it seemed, all of a sudden&mdash;it so wore me out that I could not
+rely, with my usual cheerful confidence, upon myself to achieve the
+constantly recurring task, and began to feel (for the first time in
+my life) giddy, jarred, shaken, faint, uncertain of voice and sight
+and tread and touch, and dull of spirit.&nbsp; The medical advice I
+sought within a few hours, was given in two words: &lsquo;instant rest.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Being accustomed to observe myself as curiously as if I were another
+man, and knowing the advice to meet my only need, I instantly halted
+in the pursuit of which I speak, and rested.</p>
+<p>My intention was, to interpose, as it were, a fly-leaf in the book
+of my life, in which nothing should be written from without for a brief
+season of a few weeks.&nbsp; But some very singular experiences recorded
+themselves on this same fly-leaf, and I am going to relate them literally.&nbsp;
+I repeat the word: literally.</p>
+<p>My first odd experience was of the remarkable coincidence between
+my case, in the general mind, and one Mr. Merdle&rsquo;s as I find it
+recorded in a work of fiction called LITTLE DORRIT.&nbsp; To be sure,
+Mr. Merdle was a swindler, forger, and thief, and my calling had been
+of a less harmful (and less remunerative) nature; but it was all one
+for that.</p>
+<p>Here is Mr. Merdle&rsquo;s case:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;At first, he was dead of all the diseases that ever were known,
+and of several bran-new maladies invented with the speed of Light to
+meet the demand of the occasion.&nbsp; He had concealed a dropsy from
+infancy, he had inherited a large estate of water on the chest from
+his grandfather, he had had an operation performed upon him every morning
+of his life for eighteen years, he had been subject to the explosion
+of important veins in his body after the manner of fireworks, he had
+had something the matter with his lungs, he had had something the matter
+with his heart, he had had something the matter with his brain.&nbsp;
+Five hundred people who sat down to breakfast entirely uninformed on
+the whole subject, believed before they had done breakfast, that they
+privately and personally knew Physician to have said to Mr. Merdle,
+&ldquo;You must expect to go out, some day, like the snuff of a candle;&rdquo;
+and that they knew Mr. Merdle to have said to Physician, &ldquo;A man
+can die but once.&rdquo;&nbsp; By about eleven o&rsquo;clock in the
+forenoon, something the matter with the brain, became the favourite
+theory against the field; and by twelve the something had been distinctly
+ascertained to be &ldquo;Pressure.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Pressure was so entirely satisfactory to the public mind,
+and seemed to make every one so comfortable, that it might have lasted
+all day but for Bar&rsquo;s having taken the real state of the case
+into Court at half-past nine.&nbsp; Pressure, however, so far from being
+overthrown by the discovery, became a greater favourite than ever.&nbsp;
+There was a general moralising upon Pressure, in every street.&nbsp;
+All the people who had tried to make money and had not been able to
+do it, said, There you were!&nbsp; You no sooner began to devote yourself
+to the pursuit of wealth, than you got Pressure.&nbsp; The idle people
+improved the occasion in a similar manner.&nbsp; See, said they, what
+you brought yourself to by work, work, work!&nbsp; You persisted in
+working, you overdid it, Pressure came on, and you were done for!&nbsp;
+This consideration was very potent in many quarters, but nowhere more
+so than among the young clerks and partners who had never been in the
+slightest danger of overdoing it.&nbsp; These, one and all declared,
+quite piously, that they hoped they would never forget the warning as
+long as they lived, and that their conduct might be so regulated as
+to keep off Pressure, and preserve them, a comfort to their friends,
+for many years.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Just my case&mdash;if I had only known it&mdash;when I was quietly
+basking in the sunshine in my Kentish meadow!</p>
+<p>But while I so rested, thankfully recovering every hour, I had experiences
+more odd than this.&nbsp; I had experiences of spiritual conceit, for
+which, as giving me a new warning against that curse of mankind, I shall
+always feel grateful to the supposition that I was too far gone to protest
+against playing sick lion to any stray donkey with an itching hoof.&nbsp;
+All sorts of people seemed to become vicariously religious at my expense.&nbsp;
+I received the most uncompromising warning that I was a Heathen: on
+the conclusive authority of a field preacher, who, like the most of
+his ignorant and vain and daring class, could not construct a tolerable
+sentence in his native tongue or pen a fair letter.&nbsp; This inspired
+individual called me to order roundly, and knew in the freest and easiest
+way where I was going to, and what would become of me if I failed to
+fashion myself on his bright example, and was on terms of blasphemous
+confidence with the Heavenly Host.&nbsp; He was in the secrets of my
+heart, and in the lowest soundings of my soul&mdash;he!&mdash;and could
+read the depths of my nature better than his A B C, and could turn me
+inside out, like his own clammy glove.&nbsp; But what is far more extraordinary
+than this&mdash;for such dirty water as this could alone be drawn from
+such a shallow and muddy source&mdash;I found from the information of
+a beneficed clergyman, of whom I never heard and whom I never saw, that
+I had not, as I rather supposed I had, lived a life of some reading,
+contemplation, and inquiry; that I had not studied, as I rather supposed
+I had, to inculcate some Christian lessons in books; that I had never
+tried, as I rather supposed I had, to turn a child or two tenderly towards
+the knowledge and love of our Saviour; that I had never had, as I rather
+supposed I had had, departed friends, or stood beside open graves; but
+that I had lived a life of &lsquo;uninterrupted prosperity,&rsquo; and
+that I needed this &lsquo;check, overmuch,&rsquo; and that the way to
+turn it to account was to read these sermons and these poems, enclosed,
+and written and issued by my correspondent!&nbsp; I beg it may be understood
+that I relate facts of my own uncommercial experience, and no vain imaginings.&nbsp;
+The documents in proof lie near my hand.</p>
+<p>Another odd entry on the fly-leaf, of a more entertaining character,
+was the wonderful persistency with which kind sympathisers assumed that
+I had injuriously coupled with the so suddenly relinquished pursuit,
+those personal habits of mine most obviously incompatible with it, and
+most plainly impossible of being maintained, along with it.&nbsp; As,
+all that exercise, all that cold bathing, all that wind and weather,
+all that uphill training&mdash;all that everything else, say, which
+is usually carried about by express trains in a portmanteau and hat-box,
+and partaken of under a flaming row of gas-lights in the company of
+two thousand people.&nbsp; This assuming of a whole case against all
+fact and likelihood, struck me as particularly droll, and was an oddity
+of which I certainly had had no adequate experience in life until I
+turned that curious fly-leaf.</p>
+<p>My old acquaintances the begging-letter writers came out on the fly-leaf,
+very piously indeed.&nbsp; They were glad, at such a serious crisis,
+to afford me another opportunity of sending that Post-office order.&nbsp;
+I needn&rsquo;t make it a pound, as previously insisted on; ten shillings
+might ease my mind.&nbsp; And Heaven forbid that they should refuse,
+at such an insignificant figure, to take a weight off the memory of
+an erring fellow-creature!&nbsp; One gentleman, of an artistic turn
+(and copiously illustrating the books of the Mendicity Society), thought
+it might soothe my conscience, in the tender respect of gifts misused,
+if I would immediately cash up in aid of his lowly talent for original
+design&mdash;as a specimen of which he enclosed me a work of art which
+I recognized as a tracing from a woodcut originally published in the
+late Mrs. Trollope&rsquo;s book on America, forty or fifty years ago.&nbsp;
+The number of people who were prepared to live long years after me,
+untiring benefactors to their species, for fifty pounds apiece down,
+was astonishing.&nbsp; Also, of those who wanted bank-notes for stiff
+penitential amounts, to give away:- not to keep, on any account.</p>
+<p>Divers wonderful medicines and machines insinuated recommendations
+of themselves into the fly-leaf that was to have been so blank.&nbsp;
+It was specially observable that every prescriber, whether in a moral
+or physical direction, knew me thoroughly&mdash;knew me from head to
+heel, in and out, through and through, upside down.&nbsp; I was a glass
+piece of general property, and everybody was on the most surprisingly
+intimate terms with me.&nbsp; A few public institutions had complimentary
+perceptions of corners in my mind, of which, after considerable self-examination,
+I have not discovered any indication.&nbsp; Neat little printed forms
+were addressed to those corners, beginning with the words: &lsquo;I
+give and bequeath.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Will it seem exaggerative to state my belief that the most honest,
+the most modest, and the least vain-glorious of all the records upon
+this strange fly-leaf, was a letter from the self-deceived discoverer
+of the recondite secret &lsquo;how to live four or five hundred years&rsquo;?&nbsp;
+Doubtless it will seem so, yet the statement is not exaggerative by
+any means, but is made in my serious and sincere conviction.&nbsp; With
+this, and with a laugh at the rest that shall not be cynical, I turn
+the Fly-leaf, and go on again.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXVII&mdash;A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>One day this last Whitsuntide, at precisely eleven o&rsquo;clock
+in the forenoon, there suddenly rode into the field of view commanded
+by the windows of my lodging an equestrian phenomenon.&nbsp; It was
+a fellow-creature on horseback, dressed in the absurdest manner.&nbsp;
+The fellow-creature wore high boots; some other (and much larger) fellow-creature&rsquo;s
+breeches, of a slack-baked doughy colour and a baggy form; a blue shirt,
+whereof the skirt, or tail, was puffily tucked into the waist-band of
+the said breeches; no coat; a red shoulder-belt; and a demi-semi-military
+scarlet hat, with a feathered ornament in front, which, to the uninstructed
+human vision, had the appearance of a moulting shuttlecock.&nbsp; I
+laid down the newspaper with which I had been occupied, and surveyed
+the fellow-man in question with astonishment.&nbsp; Whether he had been
+sitting to any painter as a frontispiece for a new edition of &lsquo;Sartor
+Resartus;&rsquo; whether &lsquo;the husk or shell of him,&rsquo; as
+the esteemed Herr Teufelsdroch might put it, were founded on a jockey,
+on a circus, on General Garibaldi, on cheap porcelain, on a toy shop,
+on Guy Fawkes, on waxwork, on gold-digging, on Bedlam, or on all,&mdash;were
+doubts that greatly exercised my mind.&nbsp; Meanwhile, my fellow-man
+stumbled and slided, excessively against his will, on the slippery stones
+of my Covent-garden street, and elicited shrieks from several sympathetic
+females, by convulsively restraining himself from pitching over his
+horse&rsquo;s head.&nbsp; In the very crisis of these evolutions, and
+indeed at the trying moment when his charger&rsquo;s tail was in a tobacconist&rsquo;s
+shop, and his head anywhere about town, this cavalier was joined by
+two similar portents, who, likewise stumbling and sliding, caused him
+to stumble and slide the more distressingly.&nbsp; At length this Gilpinian
+triumvirate effected a halt, and, looking northward, waved their three
+right hands as commanding unseen troops, to &lsquo;Up, guards! and at
+&rsquo;em.&rsquo;&nbsp; Hereupon a brazen band burst forth, which caused
+them to be instantly bolted with to some remote spot of earth in the
+direction of the Surrey Hills.</p>
+<p>Judging from these appearances that a procession was under way, I
+threw up my window, and, craning out, had the satisfaction of beholding
+it advancing along the streets.&nbsp; It was a Teetotal procession,
+as I learnt from its banners, and was long enough to consume twenty
+minutes in passing.&nbsp; There were a great number of children in it,
+some of them so very young in their mothers&rsquo; arms as to be in
+the act of practically exemplifying their abstinence from fermented
+liquors, and attachment to an unintoxicating drink, while the procession
+defiled.&nbsp; The display was, on the whole, pleasant to see, as any
+good-humoured holiday assemblage of clean, cheerful, and well-conducted
+people should be.&nbsp; It was bright with ribbons, tinsel, and shoulder-belts,
+and abounded in flowers, as if those latter trophies had come up in
+profusion under much watering.&nbsp; The day being breezy, the insubordination
+of the large banners was very reprehensible.&nbsp; Each of these being
+borne aloft on two poles and stayed with some half-dozen lines, was
+carried, as polite books in the last century used to be written, by
+&lsquo;various hands,&rsquo; and the anxiety expressed in the upturned
+faces of those officers,&mdash;something between the anxiety attendant
+on the balancing art, and that inseparable from the pastime of kite-flying,
+with a touch of the angler&rsquo;s quality in landing his scaly prey,&mdash;much
+impressed me.&nbsp; Suddenly, too, a banner would shiver in the wind,
+and go about in the most inconvenient manner.&nbsp; This always happened
+oftenest with such gorgeous standards as those representing a gentleman
+in black, corpulent with tea and water, in the laudable act of summarily
+reforming a family, feeble and pinched with beer.&nbsp; The gentleman
+in black distended by wind would then conduct himself with the most
+unbecoming levity, while the beery family, growing beerier, would frantically
+try to tear themselves away from his ministration.&nbsp; Some of the
+inscriptions accompanying the banners were of a highly determined character,
+as &lsquo;We never, never will give up the temperance cause,&rsquo;
+with similar sound resolutions rather suggestive to the profane mind
+of Mrs. Micawber&rsquo;s &lsquo;I never will desert Mr. Micawber,&rsquo;
+and of Mr. Micawber&rsquo;s retort, &lsquo;Really, my dear, I am not
+aware that you were ever required by any human being to do anything
+of the sort.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>At intervals, a gloom would fall on the passing members of the procession,
+for which I was at first unable to account.&nbsp; But this I discovered,
+after a little observation, to be occasioned by the coming on of the
+executioners,&mdash;the terrible official beings who were to make the
+speeches by-and-by,&mdash;who were distributed in open carriages at
+various points of the cavalcade.&nbsp; A dark cloud and a sensation
+of dampness, as from many wet blankets, invariably preceded the rolling
+on of the dreadful cars containing these headsmen; and I noticed that
+the wretched people who closely followed them, and who were in a manner
+forced to contemplate their folded arms, complacent countenances, and
+threatening lips, were more overshadowed by the cloud and damp than
+those in front.&nbsp; Indeed, I perceived in some of these so moody
+an implacability towards the magnates of the scaffold, and so plain
+a desire to tear them limb from limb, that I would respectfully suggest
+to the managers the expediency of conveying the executioners to the
+scene of their dismal labours by unfrequented ways, and in closely-tilted
+carts, next Whitsuntide.</p>
+<p>The procession was composed of a series of smaller processions, which
+had come together, each from its own metropolitan district.&nbsp; An
+infusion of allegory became perceptible when patriotic Peckham advanced.&nbsp;
+So I judged, from the circumstance of Peckham&rsquo;s unfurling a silken
+banner that fanned heaven and earth with the words, &lsquo;The Peckham
+Lifeboat.&rsquo;&nbsp; No boat being in attendance, though life, in
+the likeness of &lsquo;a gallant, gallant crew,&rsquo; in nautical uniform,
+followed the flag, I was led to meditate on the fact that Peckham is
+described by geographers as an inland settlement, with no larger or
+nearer shore-line than the towing-path of the Surrey Canal, on which
+stormy station I had been given to understand no lifeboat exists.&nbsp;
+Thus I deduced an allegorical meaning, and came to the conclusion, that
+if patriotic Peckham picked a peck of pickled poetry, this <i>was</i>
+the peck of pickled poetry which patriotic Peckham picked.</p>
+<p>I have observed that the aggregate procession was on the whole pleasant
+to see.&nbsp; I made use of that qualified expression with a direct
+meaning, which I will now explain.&nbsp; It involves the title of this
+paper, and a little fair trying of teetotalism by its own tests.&nbsp;
+There were many people on foot, and many people in vehicles of various
+kinds.&nbsp; The former were pleasant to see, and the latter were not
+pleasant to see; for the reason that I never, on any occasion or under
+any circumstances, have beheld heavier overloading of horses than in
+this public show.&nbsp; Unless the imposition of a great van laden with
+from ten to twenty people on a single horse be a moderate tasking of
+the poor creature, then the temperate use of horses was immoderate and
+cruel.&nbsp; From the smallest and lightest horse to the largest and
+heaviest, there were many instances in which the beast of burden was
+so shamefully overladen, that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
+to Animals have frequently interposed in less gross cases.</p>
+<p>Now, I have always held that there may be, and that there unquestionably
+is, such a thing as use without abuse, and that therefore the total
+abolitionists are irrational and wrong-headed.&nbsp; But the procession
+completely converted me.&nbsp; For so large a number of the people using
+draught-horses in it were so clearly unable to use them without abusing
+them, that I perceived total abstinence from horseflesh to be the only
+remedy of which the case admitted.&nbsp; As it is all one to teetotalers
+whether you take half a pint of beer or half a gallon, so it was all
+one here whether the beast of burden were a pony or a cart-horse.&nbsp;
+Indeed, my case had the special strength that the half-pint quadruped
+underwent as much suffering as the half-gallon quadruped.&nbsp; Moral:
+total abstinence from horseflesh through the whole length and breadth
+of the scale.&nbsp; This pledge will be in course of administration
+to all teetotal processionists, not pedestrians, at the publishing office
+of &lsquo;All the Year Round,&rsquo; on the 1st day of April, 1870.</p>
+<p>Observe a point for consideration.&nbsp; This procession comprised
+many persons in their gigs, broughams, tax-carts, barouches, chaises,
+and what not, who were merciful to the dumb beasts that drew them, and
+did not overcharge their strength.&nbsp; What is to be done with those
+unoffending persons?&nbsp; I will not run amuck and vilify and defame
+them, as teetotal tracts and platforms would most assuredly do, if the
+question were one of drinking instead of driving: I merely ask what
+is to be done with them!&nbsp; The reply admits of no dispute whatever.&nbsp;
+Manifestly, in strict accordance with teetotal doctrines, THEY must
+come in too, and take the total abstinence from horseflesh pledge.&nbsp;
+It is not pretended that those members of the procession misused certain
+auxiliaries which in most countries and all ages have been bestowed
+upon man for his use, but it is undeniable that other members of the
+procession did.&nbsp; Teetotal mathematics demonstrate that the less
+includes the greater; that the guilty include the innocent, the blind
+the seeing, the deaf the hearing, the dumb the speaking, the drunken
+the sober.&nbsp; If any of the moderate users of draught-cattle in question
+should deem that there is any gentle violence done to their reason by
+these elements of logic, they are invited to come out of the procession
+next Whitsuntide, and look at it from my window.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
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+</pre></body>
+</html>
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