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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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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
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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
+
+*** 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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