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Title: The Uncommercial Traveller

Author: Charles Dickens

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<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p>
<p>Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
<h1>THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER</h1>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER I&mdash;HIS GENERAL LINE OF BUSINESS</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>Allow me to introduce myself&mdash;first negatively.</p>
<p>No landlord is my friend and brother, no chambermaid loves me, no
waiter worships me, no boots admires and envies me.&nbsp; No round of
beef or tongue or ham is expressly cooked for me, no pigeon-pie is especially
made for me, no hotel-advertisement is personally addressed to me, no
hotel-room tapestried with great-coats and railway wrappers is set apart
for me, no house of public entertainment in the United Kingdom greatly
cares for my opinion of its brandy or sherry.&nbsp; When I go upon my
journeys, I am not usually rated at a low figure in the bill; when I
come home from my journeys, I never get any commission.&nbsp; I know
nothing about prices, and should have no idea, if I were put to it,
how to wheedle a man into ordering something he doesn&rsquo;t want.&nbsp;
As a town traveller, I am never to be seen driving a vehicle externally
like a young and volatile pianoforte van, and internally like an oven
in which a number of flat boxes are baking in layers.&nbsp; As a country
traveller, I am rarely to be found in a gig, and am never to be encountered
by a pleasure train, waiting on the platform of a branch station, quite
a Druid in the midst of a light Stonehenge of samples.</p>
<p>And yet&mdash;proceeding now, to introduce myself positively&mdash;I
am both a town traveller and a country traveller, and am always on the
road.&nbsp; Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of Human
Interest Brothers, and have rather a large connection in the fancy goods
way.&nbsp; Literally speaking, I am always wandering here and there
from my rooms in Covent-garden, London&mdash;now about the city streets:
now, about the country by-roads&mdash;seeing many little things, and
some great things, which, because they interest me, I think may interest
others.</p>
<p>These are my chief credentials as the Uncommercial Traveller.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER II&mdash;THE SHIPWRECK</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>Never had I seen a year going out, or going on, under quieter circumstances.&nbsp;
Eighteen hundred and fifty-nine had but another day to live, and truly
its end was Peace on that sea-shore that morning.</p>
<p>So settled and orderly was everything seaward, in the bright light
of the sun and under the transparent shadows of the clouds, that it
was hard to imagine the bay otherwise, for years past or to come, than
it was that very day.&nbsp; The Tug-steamer lying a little off the shore,
the Lighter lying still nearer to the shore, the boat alongside the
Lighter, the regularly-turning windlass aboard the Lighter, the methodical
figures at work, all slowly and regularly heaving up and down with the
breathing of the sea, all seemed as much a part of the nature of the
place as the tide itself.&nbsp; The tide was on the flow, and had been
for some two hours and a half; there was a slight obstruction in the
sea within a few yards of my feet: as if the stump of a tree, with earth
enough about it to keep it from lying horizontally on the water, had
slipped a little from the land&mdash;and as I stood upon the beach and
observed it dimpling the light swell that was coming in, I cast a stone
over it.</p>
<p>So orderly, so quiet, so regular&mdash;the rising and falling of
the Tug-steamer, the Lighter, and the boat&mdash;the turning of the
windlass&mdash;the coming in of the tide&mdash;that I myself seemed,
to my own thinking, anything but new to the spot.&nbsp; Yet, I had never
seen it in my life, a minute before, and had traversed two hundred miles
to get at it.&nbsp; That very morning I had come bowling down, and struggling
up, hill-country roads; looking back at snowy summits; meeting courteous
peasants well to do, driving fat pigs and cattle to market: noting the
neat and thrifty dwellings, with their unusual quantity of clean white
linen, drying on the bushes; having windy weather suggested by every
cotter&rsquo;s little rick, with its thatch straw-ridged and extra straw-ridged
into overlapping compartments like the back of a rhinoceros.&nbsp; Had
I not given a lift of fourteen miles to the Coast-guardsman (kit and
all), who was coming to his spell of duty there, and had we not just
now parted company?&nbsp; So it was; but the journey seemed to glide
down into the placid sea, with other chafe and trouble, and for the
moment nothing was so calmly and monotonously real under the sunlight
as the gentle rising and falling of the water with its freight, the
regular turning of the windlass aboard the Lighter, and the slight obstruction
so very near my feet.</p>
<p>O reader, haply turning this page by the fireside at Home, and hearing
the night wind rumble in the chimney, that slight obstruction was the
uppermost fragment of the Wreck of the Royal Charter, Australian trader
and passenger ship, Homeward bound, that struck here on the terrible
morning of the twenty-sixth of this October, broke into three parts,
went down with her treasure of at least five hundred human lives, and
has never stirred since!</p>
<p>From which point, or from which, she drove ashore, stern foremost;
on which side, or on which, she passed the little Island in the bay,
for ages henceforth to be aground certain yards outside her; these are
rendered bootless questions by the darkness of that night and the darkness
of death.&nbsp; Here she went down.</p>
<p>Even as I stood on the beach with the words &lsquo;Here she went
down!&rsquo; in my ears, a diver in his grotesque dress, dipped heavily
over the side of the boat alongside the Lighter, and dropped to the
bottom.&nbsp; On the shore by the water&rsquo;s edge, was a rough tent,
made of fragments of wreck, where other divers and workmen sheltered
themselves, and where they had kept Christmas-day with rum and roast
beef, to the destruction of their frail chimney.&nbsp; Cast up among
the stones and boulders of the beach, were great spars of the lost vessel,
and masses of iron twisted by the fury of the sea into the strangest
forms.&nbsp; The timber was already bleached and iron rusted, and even
these objects did no violence to the prevailing air the whole scene
wore, of having been exactly the same for years and years.</p>
<p>Yet, only two short months had gone, since a man, living on the nearest
hill-top overlooking the sea, being blown out of bed at about daybreak
by the wind that had begun to strip his roof off, and getting upon a
ladder with his nearest neighbour to construct some temporary device
for keeping his house over his head, saw from the ladder&rsquo;s elevation
as he looked down by chance towards the shore, some dark troubled object
close in with the land.&nbsp; And he and the other, descending to the
beach, and finding the sea mercilessly beating over a great broken ship,
had clambered up the stony ways, like staircases without stairs, on
which the wild village hangs in little clusters, as fruit hangs on boughs,
and had given the alarm.&nbsp; And so, over the hill-slopes, and past
the waterfall, and down the gullies where the land drains off into the
ocean, the scattered quarrymen and fishermen inhabiting that part of
Wales had come running to the dismal sight&mdash;their clergyman among
them.&nbsp; And as they stood in the leaden morning, stricken with pity,
leaning hard against the wind, their breath and vision often failing
as the sleet and spray rushed at them from the ever forming and dissolving
mountains of sea, and as the wool which was a part of the vessel&rsquo;s
cargo blew in with the salt foam and remained upon the land when the
foam melted, they saw the ship&rsquo;s life-boat put off from one of
the heaps of wreck; and first, there were three men in her, and in a
moment she capsized, and there were but two; and again, she was struck
by a vast mass of water, and there was but one; and again, she was thrown
bottom upward, and that one, with his arm struck through the broken
planks and waving as if for the help that could never reach him, went
down into the deep.</p>
<p>It was the clergyman himself from whom I heard this, while I stood
on the shore, looking in his kind wholesome face as it turned to the
spot where the boat had been.&nbsp; The divers were down then, and busy.&nbsp;
They were &lsquo;lifting&rsquo; to-day the gold found yesterday&mdash;some
five-and-twenty thousand pounds.&nbsp; Of three hundred and fifty thousand
pounds&rsquo; worth of gold, three hundred thousand pounds&rsquo; worth,
in round numbers, was at that time recovered.&nbsp; The great bulk of
the remainder was surely and steadily coming up.&nbsp; Some loss of
sovereigns there would be, of course; indeed, at first sovereigns had
drifted in with the sand, and been scattered far and wide over the beach,
like sea-shells; but most other golden treasure would be found.&nbsp;
As it was brought up, it went aboard the Tug-steamer, where good account
was taken of it.&nbsp; So tremendous had the force of the sea been when
it broke the ship, that it had beaten one great ingot of gold, deep
into a strong and heavy piece of her solid iron-work: in which, also,
several loose sovereigns that the ingot had swept in before it, had
been found, as firmly embedded as though the iron had been liquid when
they were forced there.&nbsp; It had been remarked of such bodies come
ashore, too, as had been seen by scientific men, that they had been
stunned to death, and not suffocated.&nbsp; Observation, both of the
internal change that had been wrought in them, and of their external
expression, showed death to have been thus merciful and easy.&nbsp;
The report was brought, while I was holding such discourse on the beach,
that no more bodies had come ashore since last night.&nbsp; It began
to be very doubtful whether many more would be thrown up, until the
north-east winds of the early spring set in.&nbsp; Moreover, a great
number of the passengers, and particularly the second-class women-passengers,
were known to have been in the middle of the ship when she parted, and
thus the collapsing wreck would have fallen upon them after yawning
open, and would keep them down.&nbsp; A diver made known, even then,
that he had come upon the body of a man, and had sought to release it
from a great superincumbent weight; but that, finding he could not do
so without mutilating the remains, he had left it where it was.</p>
<p>It was the kind and wholesome face I have made mention of as being
then beside me, that I had purposed to myself to see, when I left home
for Wales.&nbsp; I had heard of that clergyman, as having buried many
scores of the shipwrecked people; of his having opened his house and
heart to their agonised friends; of his having used a most sweet and
patient diligence for weeks and weeks, in the performance of the forlornest
offices that Man can render to his kind; of his having most tenderly
and thoroughly devoted himself to the dead, and to those who were sorrowing
for the dead.&nbsp; I had said to myself, &lsquo;In the Christmas season
of the year, I should like to see that man!&rsquo;&nbsp; And he had
swung the gate of his little garden in coming out to meet me, not half
an hour ago.</p>
<p>So cheerful of spirit and guiltless of affectation, as true practical
Christianity ever is!&nbsp; I read more of the New Testament in the
fresh frank face going up the village beside me, in five minutes, than
I have read in anathematising discourses (albeit put to press with enormous
flourishing of trumpets), in all my life.&nbsp; I heard more of the
Sacred Book in the cordial voice that had nothing to say about its owner,
than in all the would-be celestial pairs of bellows that have ever blown
conceit at me.</p>
<p>We climbed towards the little church, at a cheery pace, among the
loose stones, the deep mud, the wet coarse grass, the outlying water,
and other obstructions from which frost and snow had lately thawed.&nbsp;
It was a mistake (my friend was glad to tell me, on the way) to suppose
that the peasantry had shown any superstitious avoidance of the drowned;
on the whole, they had done very well, and had assisted readily.&nbsp;
Ten shillings had been paid for the bringing of each body up to the
church, but the way was steep, and a horse and cart (in which it was
wrapped in a sheet) were necessary, and three or four men, and, all
things considered, it was not a great price.&nbsp; The people were none
the richer for the wreck, for it was the season of the herring-shoal&mdash;and
who could cast nets for fish, and find dead men and women in the draught?</p>
<p>He had the church keys in his hand, and opened the churchyard gate,
and opened the church door; and we went in.</p>
<p>It is a little church of great antiquity; there is reason to believe
that some church has occupied the spot, these thousand years or more.&nbsp;
The pulpit was gone, and other things usually belonging to the church
were gone, owing to its living congregation having deserted it for the
neighbouring school-room, and yielded it up to the dead.&nbsp; The very
Commandments had been shouldered out of their places, in the bringing
in of the dead; the black wooden tables on which they were painted,
were askew, and on the stone pavement below them, and on the stone pavement
all over the church, were the marks and stains where the drowned had
been laid down.&nbsp; The eye, with little or no aid from the imagination,
could yet see how the bodies had been turned, and where the head had
been and where the feet.&nbsp; Some faded traces of the wreck of the
Australian ship may be discernible on the stone pavement of this little
church, hundreds of years hence, when the digging for gold in Australia
shall have long and long ceased out of the land.</p>
<p>Forty-four shipwrecked men and women lay here at one time, awaiting
burial.&nbsp; Here, with weeping and wailing in every room of his house,
my companion worked alone for hours, solemnly surrounded by eyes that
could not see him, and by lips that could not speak to him, patiently
examining the tattered clothing, cutting off buttons, hair, marks from
linen, anything that might lead to subsequent identification, studying
faces, looking for a scar, a bent finger, a crooked toe, comparing letters
sent to him with the ruin about him.&nbsp; &lsquo;My dearest brother
had bright grey eyes and a pleasant smile,&rsquo; one sister wrote.&nbsp;
O poor sister! well for you to be far from here, and keep that as your
last remembrance of him!</p>
<p>The ladies of the clergyman&rsquo;s family, his wife and two sisters-in-law,
came in among the bodies often.&nbsp; It grew to be the business of
their lives to do so.&nbsp; Any new arrival of a bereaved woman would
stimulate their pity to compare the description brought, with the dread
realities.&nbsp; Sometimes, they would go back able to say, &lsquo;I
have found him,&rsquo; or, &lsquo;I think she lies there.&rsquo;&nbsp;
Perhaps, the mourner, unable to bear the sight of all that lay in the
church, would be led in blindfold.&nbsp; Conducted to the spot with
many compassionate words, and encouraged to look, she would say, with
a piercing cry, &lsquo;This is my boy!&rsquo; and drop insensible on
the insensible figure.</p>
<p>He soon observed that in some cases of women, the identification
of persons, though complete, was quite at variance with the marks upon
the linen; this led him to notice that even the marks upon the linen
were sometimes inconsistent with one another; and thus he came to understand
that they had dressed in great haste and agitation, and that their clothes
had become mixed together.&nbsp; The identification of men by their
dress, was rendered extremely difficult, in consequence of a large proportion
of them being dressed alike&mdash;in clothes of one kind, that is to
say, supplied by slopsellers and outfitters, and not made by single
garments but by hundreds.&nbsp; Many of the men were bringing over parrots,
and had receipts upon them for the price of the birds; others had bills
of exchange in their pockets, or in belts.&nbsp; Some of these documents,
carefully unwrinkled and dried, were little less fresh in appearance
that day, than the present page will be under ordinary circumstances,
after having been opened three or four times.</p>
<p>In that lonely place, it had not been easy to obtain even such common
commodities in towns, as ordinary disinfectants.&nbsp; Pitch had been
burnt in the church, as the readiest thing at hand, and the frying-pan
in which it had bubbled over a brazier of coals was still there, with
its ashes.&nbsp; Hard by the Communion-Table, were some boots that had
been taken off the drowned and preserved&mdash;a gold-digger&rsquo;s
boot, cut down the leg for its removal&mdash;a trodden-down man&rsquo;s
ankle-boot with a buff cloth top&mdash;and others&mdash;soaked and sandy,
weedy and salt.</p>
<p>From the church, we passed out into the churchyard.&nbsp; Here, there
lay, at that time, one hundred and forty-five bodies, that had come
ashore from the wreck.&nbsp; He had buried them, when not identified,
in graves containing four each.&nbsp; He had numbered each body in a
register describing it, and had placed a corresponding number on each
coffin, and over each grave.&nbsp; Identified bodies he had buried singly,
in private graves, in another part of the church-yard.&nbsp; Several
bodies had been exhumed from the graves of four, as relatives had come
from a distance and seen his register; and, when recognised, these have
been reburied in private graves, so that the mourners might erect separate
headstones over the remains.&nbsp; In all such cases he had performed
the funeral service a second time, and the ladies of his house had attended.&nbsp;
There had been no offence in the poor ashes when they were brought again
to the light of day; the beneficent Earth had already absorbed it.&nbsp;
The drowned were buried in their clothes.&nbsp; To supply the great
sudden demand for coffins, he had got all the neighbouring people handy
at tools, to work the livelong day, and Sunday likewise.&nbsp; The coffins
were neatly formed;&mdash;I had seen two, waiting for occupants, under
the lee of the ruined walls of a stone hut on the beach, within call
of the tent where the Christmas Feast was held.&nbsp; Similarly, one
of the graves for four was lying open and ready, here, in the churchyard.&nbsp;
So much of the scanty space was already devoted to the wrecked people,
that the villagers had begun to express uneasy doubts whether they themselves
could lie in their own ground, with their forefathers and descendants,
by-and-by.&nbsp; The churchyard being but a step from the clergyman&rsquo;s
dwelling-house, we crossed to the latter; the white surplice was hanging
up near the door ready to be put on at any time, for a funeral service.</p>
<p>The cheerful earnestness of this good Christian minister was as consolatory,
as the circumstances out of which it shone were sad.&nbsp; I never have
seen anything more delightfully genuine than the calm dismissal by himself
and his household of all they had undergone, as a simple duty that was
quietly done and ended.&nbsp; In speaking of it, they spoke of it with
great compassion for the bereaved; but laid no stress upon their own
hard share in those weary weeks, except as it had attached many people
to them as friends, and elicited many touching expressions of gratitude.&nbsp;
This clergyman&rsquo;s brother&mdash;himself the clergyman of two adjoining
parishes, who had buried thirty-four of the bodies in his own churchyard,
and who had done to them all that his brother had done as to the larger
number&mdash;must be understood as included in the family.&nbsp; He
was there, with his neatly arranged papers, and made no more account
of his trouble than anybody else did.&nbsp; Down to yesterday&rsquo;s
post outward, my clergyman alone had written one thousand and seventy-five
letters to relatives and friends of the lost people.&nbsp; In the absence
of self-assertion, it was only through my now and then delicately putting
a question as the occasion arose, that I became informed of these things.&nbsp;
It was only when I had remarked again and again, in the church, on the
awful nature of the scene of death he had been required so closely to
familiarise himself with for the soothing of the living, that he had
casually said, without the least abatement of his cheerfulness, &lsquo;indeed,
it had rendered him unable for a time to eat or drink more than a little
coffee now and then, and a piece of bread.&rsquo;</p>
<p>In this noble modesty, in this beautiful simplicity, in this serene
avoidance of the least attempt to &lsquo;improve&rsquo; an occasion
which might be supposed to have sunk of its own weight into my heart,
I seemed to have happily come, in a few steps, from the churchyard with
its open grave, which was the type of Death, to the Christian dwelling
side by side with it, which was the type of Resurrection.&nbsp; I never
shall think of the former, without the latter.&nbsp; The two will always
rest side by side in my memory.&nbsp; If I had lost any one dear to
me in this unfortunate ship, if I had made a voyage from Australia to
look at the grave in the churchyard, I should go away, thankful to GOD
that that house was so close to it, and that its shadow by day and its
domestic lights by night fell upon the earth in which its Master had
so tenderly laid my dear one&rsquo;s head.</p>
<p>The references that naturally arose out of our conversation, to the
descriptions sent down of shipwrecked persons, and to the gratitude
of relations and friends, made me very anxious to see some of those
letters.&nbsp; I was presently seated before a shipwreck of papers,
all bordered with black, and from them I made the following few extracts.</p>
<p>A mother writes:</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>REVEREND SIR.&nbsp; Amongst the many who perished on your shore was
numbered my beloved son.&nbsp; I was only just recovering from a severe
illness, and this fearful affliction has caused a relapse, so that I
am unable at present to go to identify the remains of the loved and
lost.&nbsp; My darling son would have been sixteen on Christmas-day
next.&nbsp; He was a most amiable and obedient child, early taught the
way of salvation.&nbsp; We fondly hoped that as a British seaman he
might be an ornament to his profession, but, &lsquo;it is well;&rsquo;
I feel assured my dear boy is now with the redeemed.&nbsp; Oh, he did
not wish to go this last voyage!&nbsp; On the fifteenth of October,
I received a letter from him from Melbourne, date August twelfth; he
wrote in high spirits, and in conclusion he says: &lsquo;Pray for a
fair breeze, dear mamma, and I&rsquo;ll not forget to whistle for it!
and, God permitting, I shall see you and all my little pets again.&nbsp;
Good-bye, dear mother&mdash;good-bye, dearest parents.&nbsp; Good-bye,
dear brother.&rsquo;&nbsp; Oh, it was indeed an eternal farewell.&nbsp;
I do not apologise for thus writing you, for oh, my heart is so very
sorrowful.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>A husband writes:</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>MY DEAR KIND SIR.&nbsp; Will you kindly inform me whether there are
any initials upon the ring and guard you have in possession, found,
as the Standard says, last Tuesday?&nbsp; Believe me, my dear sir, when
I say that I cannot express my deep gratitude in words sufficiently
for your kindness to me on that fearful and appalling day.&nbsp; Will
you tell me what I can do for you, and will you write me a consoling
letter to prevent my mind from going astray?</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>A widow writes:</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>Left in such a state as I am, my friends and I thought it best that
my dear husband should be buried where he lies, and, much as I should
have liked to have had it otherwise, I must submit.&nbsp; I feel, from
all I have heard of you, that you will see it done decently and in order.&nbsp;
Little does it signify to us, when the soul has departed, where this
poor body lies, but we who are left behind would do all we can to show
how we loved them.&nbsp; This is denied me, but it is God&rsquo;s hand
that afflicts us, and I try to submit.&nbsp; Some day I may be able
to visit the spot, and see where he lies, and erect a simple stone to
his memory.&nbsp; Oh! it will be long, long before I forget that dreadful
night!&nbsp; Is there such a thing in the vicinity, or any shop in Bangor,
to which I could send for a small picture of Moelfra or Llanallgo church,
a spot now sacred to me?</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>Another widow writes:</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>I have received your letter this morning, and do thank you most kindly
for the interest you have taken about my dear husband, as well for the
sentiments yours contains, evincing the spirit of a Christian who can
sympathise with those who, like myself, are broken down with grief.</p>
<p>May God bless and sustain you, and all in connection with you, in
this great trial.&nbsp; Time may roll on and bear all its sons away,
but your name as a disinterested person will stand in history, and,
as successive years pass, many a widow will think of your noble conduct,
and the tears of gratitude flow down many a cheek, the tribute of a
thankful heart, when other things are forgotten for ever.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>A father writes:</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>I am at a loss to find words to sufficiently express my gratitude
to you for your kindness to my son Richard upon the melancholy occasion
of his visit to his dear brother&rsquo;s body, and also for your ready
attention in pronouncing our beautiful burial service over my poor unfortunate
son&rsquo;s remains.&nbsp; God grant that your prayers over him may
reach the Mercy Seat, and that his soul may be received (through Christ&rsquo;s
intercession) into heaven!</p>
<p>His dear mother begs me to convey to you her heartfelt thanks.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>Those who were received at the clergyman&rsquo;s house, write thus,
after leaving it:</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>DEAR AND NEVER-TO-BE-FORGOTTEN FRIENDS.&nbsp; I arrived here yesterday
morning without accident, and am about to proceed to my home by railway.</p>
<p>I am overpowered when I think of you and your hospitable home.&nbsp;
No words could speak language suited to my heart.&nbsp; I refrain.&nbsp;
God reward you with the same measure you have meted with!</p>
<p>I enumerate no names, but embrace you all.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>MY BELOVED FRIENDS.&nbsp; This is the first day that I have been
able to leave my bedroom since I returned, which will explain the reason
of my not writing sooner.</p>
<p>If I could only have had my last melancholy hope realised in recovering
the body of my beloved and lamented son, I should have returned home
somewhat comforted, and I think I could then have been comparatively
resigned.</p>
<p>I fear now there is but little prospect, and I mourn as one without
hope.</p>
<p>The only consolation to my distressed mind is in having been so feelingly
allowed by you to leave the matter in your hands, by whom I well know
that everything will be done that can be, according to arrangements
made before I left the scene of the awful catastrophe, both as to the
identification of my dear son, and also his interment.</p>
<p>I feel most anxious to hear whether anything fresh has transpired
since I left you; will you add another to the many deep obligations
I am under to you by writing to me?&nbsp; And should the body of my
dear and unfortunate son be identified, let me hear from you immediately,
and I will come again.</p>
<p>Words cannot express the gratitude I feel I owe to you all for your
benevolent aid, your kindness, and your sympathy.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>MY DEARLY BELOVED FRIENDS.&nbsp; I arrived in safety at my house
yesterday, and a night&rsquo;s rest has restored and tranquillised me.&nbsp;
I must again repeat, that language has no words by which I can express
my sense of obligation to you.&nbsp; You are enshrined in my heart of
hearts.</p>
<p>I have seen him! and can now realise my misfortune more than I have
hitherto been able to do.&nbsp; Oh, the bitterness of the cup I drink!&nbsp;
But I bow submissive.&nbsp; God <i>must</i> have done right.&nbsp; I
do not want to feel less, but to acquiesce more simply.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>There were some Jewish passengers on board the Royal Charter, and
the gratitude of the Jewish people is feelingly expressed in the following
letter bearing date from &lsquo;the office of the Chief Rabbi:&rsquo;</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>REVEREND SIR.&nbsp; I cannot refrain from expressing to you my heartfelt
thanks on behalf of those of my flock whose relatives have unfortunately
been among those who perished at the late wreck of the Royal Charter.&nbsp;
You have, indeed, like Boaz, &lsquo;not left off your kindness to the
living and the dead.&rsquo;</p>
<p>You have not alone acted kindly towards the living by receiving them
hospitably at your house, and energetically assisting them in their
mournful duty, but also towards the dead, by exerting yourself to have
our co-religionists buried in our ground, and according to our rites.&nbsp;
May our heavenly Father reward you for your acts of humanity and true
philanthropy!</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>The &lsquo;Old Hebrew congregation of Liverpool&rsquo; thus express
themselves through their secretary:</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>REVEREND SIR.&nbsp; The wardens of this congregation have learned
with great pleasure that, in addition to those indefatigable exertions,
at the scene of the late disaster to the Royal Charter, which have received
universal recognition, you have very benevolently employed your valuable
efforts to assist such members of our faith as have sought the bodies
of lost friends to give them burial in our consecrated grounds, with
the observances and rites prescribed by the ordinances of our religion.</p>
<p>The wardens desire me to take the earliest available opportunity
to offer to you, on behalf of our community, the expression of their
warm acknowledgments and grateful thanks, and their sincere wishes for
your continued welfare and prosperity.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>A Jewish gentleman writes:</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>REVEREND AND DEAR SIR.&nbsp; I take the opportunity of thanking you
right earnestly for the promptness you displayed in answering my note
with full particulars concerning my much lamented brother, and I also
herein beg to express my sincere regard for the willingness you displayed
and for the facility you afforded for getting the remains of my poor
brother exhumed.&nbsp; It has been to us a most sorrowful and painful
event, but when we meet with such friends as yourself, it in a measure,
somehow or other, abates that mental anguish, and makes the suffering
so much easier to be borne.&nbsp; Considering the circumstances connected
with my poor brother&rsquo;s fate, it does, indeed, appear a hard one.&nbsp;
He had been away in all seven years; he returned four years ago to see
his family.&nbsp; He was then engaged to a very amiable young lady.&nbsp;
He had been very successful abroad, and was now returning to fulfil
his sacred vow; he brought all his property with him in gold uninsured.&nbsp;
We heard from him when the ship stopped at Queenstown, when he was in
the highest of hope, and in a few short hours afterwards all was washed
away.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>Mournful in the deepest degree, but too sacred for quotation here,
were the numerous references to those miniatures of women worn round
the necks of rough men (and found there after death), those locks of
hair, those scraps of letters, those many many slight memorials of hidden
tenderness.&nbsp; One man cast up by the sea bore about him, printed
on a perforated lace card, the following singular (and unavailing) charm:</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>A BLESSING.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>May the blessing of God await thee.&nbsp; May the sun of glory shine
around thy bed; and may the gates of plenty, honour, and happiness be
ever open to thee.&nbsp; May no sorrow distress thy days; may no grief
disturb thy nights.&nbsp; May the pillow of peace kiss thy cheek, and
the pleasures of imagination attend thy dreams; and when length of years
makes thee tired of earthly joys, and the curtain of death gently closes
around thy last sleep of human existence, may the Angel of God attend
thy bed, and take care that the expiring lamp of life shall not receive
one rude blast to hasten on its extinction.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>A sailor had these devices on his right arm.&nbsp; &lsquo;Our Saviour
on the Cross, the forehead of the Crucifix and the vesture stained red;
on the lower part of the arm, a man and woman; on one side of the Cross,
the appearance of a half moon, with a face; on the other side, the sun;
on the top of the Cross, the letters I.H.S.; on the left arm, a man
and woman dancing, with an effort to delineate the female&rsquo;s dress;
under which, initials.&rsquo;&nbsp; Another seaman &lsquo;had, on the
lower part of the right arm, the device of a sailor and a female; the
man holding the Union Jack with a streamer, the folds of which waved
over her head, and the end of it was held in her hand.&nbsp; On the
upper part of the arm, a device of Our Lord on the Cross, with stars
surrounding the head of the Cross, and one large star on the side in
Indian Ink.&nbsp; On the left arm, a flag, a true lover&rsquo;s knot,
a face, and initials.&rsquo;&nbsp; This tattooing was found still plain,
below the discoloured outer surface of a mutilated arm, when such surface
was carefully scraped away with a knife.&nbsp; It is not improbable
that the perpetuation of this marking custom among seamen, may be referred
back to their desire to be identified, if drowned and flung ashore.</p>
<p>It was some time before I could sever myself from the many interesting
papers on the table, and then I broke bread and drank wine with the
kind family before I left them.&nbsp; As I brought the Coast-guard down,
so I took the Postman back, with his leathern wallet, walking-stick,
bugle, and terrier dog.&nbsp; Many a heart-broken letter had he brought
to the Rectory House within two months many; a benignantly painstaking
answer had he carried back.</p>
<p>As I rode along, I thought of the many people, inhabitants of this
mother country, who would make pilgrimages to the little churchyard
in the years to come; I thought of the many people in Australia, who
would have an interest in such a shipwreck, and would find their way
here when they visit the Old World; I thought of the writers of all
the wreck of letters I had left upon the table; and I resolved to place
this little record where it stands.&nbsp; Convocations, Conferences,
Diocesan Epistles, and the like, will do a great deal for Religion,
I dare say, and Heaven send they may! but I doubt if they will ever
do their Master&rsquo;s service half so well, in all the time they last,
as the Heavens have seen it done in this bleak spot upon the rugged
coast of Wales.</p>
<p>Had I lost the friend of my life, in the wreck of the Royal Charter;
had I lost my betrothed, the more than friend of my life; had I lost
my maiden daughter, had I lost my hopeful boy, had I lost my little
child; I would kiss the hands that worked so busily and gently in the
church, and say, &lsquo;None better could have touched the form, though
it had lain at home.&rsquo;&nbsp; I could be sure of it, I could be
thankful for it: I could be content to leave the grave near the house
the good family pass in and out of every day, undisturbed, in the little
churchyard where so many are so strangely brought together.</p>
<p>Without the name of the clergyman to whom&mdash;I hope, not without
carrying comfort to some heart at some time&mdash;I have referred, my
reference would be as nothing.&nbsp; He is the Reverend Stephen Roose
Hughes, of Llanallgo, near Moelfra, Anglesey.&nbsp; His brother is the
Reverend Hugh Robert Hughes, of Penrhos, Alligwy.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER III&mdash;WAPPING WORKHOUSE</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>My day&rsquo;s no-business beckoning me to the East-end of London,
I had turned my face to that point of the metropolitan compass on leaving
Covent-garden, and had got past the India House, thinking in my idle
manner of Tippoo-Sahib and Charles Lamb, and had got past my little
wooden midshipman, after affectionately patting him on one leg of his
knee-shorts for old acquaintance&rsquo; sake, and had got past Aldgate
Pump, and had got past the Saracen&rsquo;s Head (with an ignominious
rash of posting bills disfiguring his swarthy countenance), and had
strolled up the empty yard of his ancient neighbour the Black or Blue
Boar, or Bull, who departed this life I don&rsquo;t know when, and whose
coaches are all gone I don&rsquo;t know where; and I had come out again
into the age of railways, and I had got past Whitechapel Church, and
was&mdash;rather inappropriately for an Uncommercial Traveller&mdash;in
the Commercial Road.&nbsp; Pleasantly wallowing in the abundant mud
of that thoroughfare, and greatly enjoying the huge piles of building
belonging to the sugar refiners, the little masts and vanes in small
back gardens in back streets, the neighbouring canals and docks, the
India vans lumbering along their stone tramway, and the pawnbrokers&rsquo;
shops where hard-up Mates had pawned so many sextants and quadrants,
that I should have bought a few cheap if I had the least notion how
to use them, I at last began to file off to the right, towards Wapping.</p>
<p>Not that I intended to take boat at Wapping Old Stairs, or that I
was going to look at the locality, because I believe (for I don&rsquo;t)
in the constancy of the young woman who told her sea-going lover, to
such a beautiful old tune, that she had ever continued the same, since
she gave him the &lsquo;baccer-box marked with his name; I am afraid
he usually got the worst of those transactions, and was frightfully
taken in.&nbsp; No, I was going to Wapping, because an Eastern police
magistrate had said, through the morning papers, that there was no classification
at the Wapping workhouse for women, and that it was a disgrace and a
shame, and divers other hard names, and because I wished to see how
the fact really stood.&nbsp; For, that Eastern police magistrates are
not always the wisest men of the East, may be inferred from their course
of procedure respecting the fancy-dressing and pantomime-posturing at
St. George&rsquo;s in that quarter: which is usually, to discuss the
matter at issue, in a state of mind betokening the weakest perplexity,
with all parties concerned and unconcerned, and, for a final expedient,
to consult the complainant as to what he thinks ought to be done with
the defendant, and take the defendant&rsquo;s opinion as to what he
would recommend to be done with himself.</p>
<p>Long before I reached Wapping, I gave myself up as having lost my
way, and, abandoning myself to the narrow streets in a Turkish frame
of mind, relied on predestination to bring me somehow or other to the
place I wanted if I were ever to get there.&nbsp; When I had ceased
for an hour or so to take any trouble about the matter, I found myself
on a swing-bridge looking down at some dark locks in some dirty water.&nbsp;
Over against me, stood a creature remotely in the likeness of a young
man, with a puffed sallow face, and a figure all dirty and shiny and
slimy, who may have been the youngest son of his filthy old father,
Thames, or the drowned man about whom there was a placard on the granite
post like a large thimble, that stood between us.</p>
<p>I asked this apparition what it called the place?&nbsp; Unto which,
it replied, with a ghastly grin and a sound like gurgling water in its
throat:</p>
<p>&lsquo;Mr. Baker&rsquo;s trap.&rsquo;</p>
<p>As it is a point of great sensitiveness with me on such occasions
to be equal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation, I deeply
considered the meaning of this speech, while I eyed the apparition&mdash;then
engaged in hugging and sucking a horizontal iron bar at the top of the
locks.&nbsp; Inspiration suggested to me that Mr. Baker was the acting
coroner of that neighbourhood.</p>
<p>&lsquo;A common place for suicide,&rsquo; said I, looking down at
the locks.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Sue?&rsquo; returned the ghost, with a stare.&nbsp; &lsquo;Yes!&nbsp;
And Poll.&nbsp; Likewise Emily.&nbsp; And Nancy.&nbsp; And Jane;&rsquo;
he sucked the iron between each name; &lsquo;and all the bileing.&nbsp;
Ketches off their bonnets or shorls, takes a run, and headers down here,
they doos.&nbsp; Always a headerin&rsquo; down here, they is.&nbsp;
Like one o&rsquo;clock.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;And at about that hour of the morning, I suppose?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; said the apparition.&nbsp; &lsquo;<i>They</i> an&rsquo;t
partickler.&nbsp; Two &rsquo;ull do for <i>them</i>.&nbsp; Three.&nbsp;
All times o&rsquo; night.&nbsp; On&rsquo;y mind you!&rsquo;&nbsp; Here
the apparition rested his profile on the bar, and gurgled in a sarcastic
manner.&nbsp; &lsquo;There must be somebody comin&rsquo;.&nbsp; They
don&rsquo;t go a headerin&rsquo; down here, wen there an&rsquo;t no
Bobby nor gen&rsquo;ral Cove, fur to hear the splash.&rsquo;</p>
<p>According to my interpretation of these words, I was myself a General
Cove, or member of the miscellaneous public.&nbsp; In which modest character
I remarked:</p>
<p>&lsquo;They are often taken out, are they, and restored?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I dunno about restored,&rsquo; said the apparition, who, for
some occult reason, very much objected to that word; &lsquo;they&rsquo;re
carried into the werkiss and put into a &rsquo;ot bath, and brought
round.&nbsp; But I dunno about restored,&rsquo; said the apparition;
&lsquo;blow <i>that</i>!&rsquo;&mdash;and vanished.</p>
<p>As it had shown a desire to become offensive, I was not sorry to
find myself alone, especially as the &lsquo;werkiss&rsquo; it had indicated
with a twist of its matted head, was close at hand.&nbsp; So I left
Mr. Baker&rsquo;s terrible trap (baited with a scum that was like the
soapy rinsing of sooty chimneys), and made bold to ring at the workhouse
gate, where I was wholly unexpected and quite unknown.</p>
<p>A very bright and nimble little matron, with a bunch of keys in her
hand, responded to my request to see the House.&nbsp; I began to doubt
whether the police magistrate was quite right in his facts, when I noticed
her quick, active little figure and her intelligent eyes.</p>
<p>The Traveller (the matron intimated) should see the worst first.&nbsp;
He was welcome to see everything.&nbsp; Such as it was, there it all
was.</p>
<p>This was the only preparation for our entering &lsquo;the Foul wards.&rsquo;&nbsp;
They were in an old building squeezed away in a corner of a paved yard,
quite detached from the more modern and spacious main body of the workhouse.&nbsp;
They were in a building most monstrously behind the time&mdash;a mere
series of garrets or lofts, with every inconvenient and objectionable
circumstance in their construction, and only accessible by steep and
narrow staircases, infamously ill-adapted for the passage up-stairs
of the sick or down-stairs of the dead.</p>
<p>A-bed in these miserable rooms, here on bedsteads, there (for a change,
as I understood it) on the floor, were women in every stage of distress
and disease.&nbsp; None but those who have attentively observed such
scenes, can conceive the extraordinary variety of expression still latent
under the general monotony and uniformity of colour, attitude, and condition.&nbsp;
The form a little coiled up and turned away, as though it had turned
its back on this world for ever; the uninterested face at once lead-coloured
and yellow, looking passively upward from the pillow; the haggard mouth
a little dropped, the hand outside the coverlet, so dull and indifferent,
so light, and yet so heavy; these were on every pallet; but when I stopped
beside a bed, and said ever so slight a word to the figure lying there,
the ghost of the old character came into the face, and made the Foul
ward as various as the fair world.&nbsp; No one appeared to care to
live, but no one complained; all who could speak, said that as much
was done for them as could be done there, that the attendance was kind
and patient, that their suffering was very heavy, but they had nothing
to ask for.&nbsp; The wretched rooms were as clean and sweet as it is
possible for such rooms to be; they would become a pest-house in a single
week, if they were ill-kept.</p>
<p>I accompanied the brisk matron up another barbarous staircase, into
a better kind of loft devoted to the idiotic and imbecile.&nbsp; There
was at least Light in it, whereas the windows in the former wards had
been like sides of school-boys&rsquo; bird-cages.&nbsp; There was a
strong grating over the fire here, and, holding a kind of state on either
side of the hearth, separated by the breadth of this grating, were two
old ladies in a condition of feeble dignity, which was surely the very
last and lowest reduction of self-complacency to be found in this wonderful
humanity of ours.&nbsp; They were evidently jealous of each other, and
passed their whole time (as some people do, whose fires are not grated)
in mentally disparaging each other, and contemptuously watching their
neighbours.&nbsp; One of these parodies on provincial gentlewomen was
extremely talkative, and expressed a strong desire to attend the service
on Sundays, from which she represented herself to have derived the greatest
interest and consolation when allowed that privilege.&nbsp; She gossiped
so well, and looked altogether so cheery and harmless, that I began
to think this a case for the Eastern magistrate, until I found that
on the last occasion of her attending chapel she had secreted a small
stick, and had caused some confusion in the responses by suddenly producing
it and belabouring the congregation.</p>
<p>So, these two old ladies, separated by the breadth of the grating&mdash;otherwise
they would fly at one another&rsquo;s caps&mdash;sat all day long, suspecting
one another, and contemplating a world of fits.&nbsp; For everybody
else in the room had fits, except the wards-woman; an elderly, able-bodied
pauperess, with a large upper lip, and an air of repressing and saving
her strength, as she stood with her hands folded before her, and her
eyes slowly rolling, biding her time for catching or holding somebody.&nbsp;
This civil personage (in whom I regretted to identify a reduced member
of my honourable friend Mrs. Gamp&rsquo;s family) said, &lsquo;They
has &rsquo;em continiwal, sir.&nbsp; They drops without no more notice
than if they was coach-horses dropped from the moon, sir.&nbsp; And
when one drops, another drops, and sometimes there&rsquo;ll be as many
as four or five on &rsquo;em at once, dear me, a rolling and a tearin&rsquo;,
bless you!&mdash;this young woman, now, has &rsquo;em dreadful bad.&rsquo;</p>
<p>She turned up this young woman&rsquo;s face with her hand as she
said it.&nbsp; This young woman was seated on the floor, pondering in
the foreground of the afflicted.&nbsp; There was nothing repellent either
in her face or head.&nbsp; Many, apparently worse, varieties of epilepsy
and hysteria were about her, but she was said to be the worst here.&nbsp;
When I had spoken to her a little, she still sat with her face turned
up, pondering, and a gleam of the mid-day sun shone in upon her.</p>
<p>- Whether this young woman, and the rest of these so sorely troubled,
as they sit or lie pondering in their confused dull way, ever get mental
glimpses among the motes in the sunlight, of healthy people and healthy
things?&nbsp; Whether this young woman, brooding like this in the summer
season, ever thinks that somewhere there are trees and flowers, even
mountains and the great sea?&nbsp; Whether, not to go so far, this young
woman ever has any dim revelation of that young woman&mdash;that young
woman who is not here and never will come here; who is courted, and
caressed, and loved, and has a husband, and bears children, and lives
in a home, and who never knows what it is to have this lashing and tearing
coming upon her?&nbsp; And whether this young woman, God help her, gives
herself up then and drops like a coach-horse from the moon?</p>
<p>I hardly knew whether the voices of infant children, penetrating
into so hopeless a place, made a sound that was pleasant or painful
to me.&nbsp; It was something to be reminded that the weary world was
not all aweary, and was ever renewing itself; but, this young woman
was a child not long ago, and a child not long hence might be such as
she.&nbsp; Howbeit, the active step and eye of the vigilant matron conducted
me past the two provincial gentlewomen (whose dignity was ruffled by
the children), and into the adjacent nursery.</p>
<p>There were many babies here, and more than one handsome young mother.&nbsp;
There were ugly young mothers also, and sullen young mothers, and callous
young mothers.&nbsp; But, the babies had not appropriated to themselves
any bad expression yet, and might have been, for anything that appeared
to the contrary in their soft faces, Princes Imperial, and Princesses
Royal.&nbsp; I had the pleasure of giving a poetical commission to the
baker&rsquo;s man to make a cake with all despatch and toss it into
the oven for one red-headed young pauper and myself, and felt much the
better for it.&nbsp; Without that refreshment, I doubt if I should have
been in a condition for &lsquo;the Refractories,&rsquo; towards whom
my quick little matron&mdash;for whose adaptation to her office I had
by this time conceived a genuine respect&mdash;drew me next, and marshalled
me the way that I was going.</p>
<p>The Refractories were picking oakum, in a small room giving on a
yard.&nbsp; They sat in line on a form, with their backs to a window;
before them, a table, and their work.&nbsp; The oldest Refractory was,
say twenty; youngest Refractory, say sixteen.&nbsp; I have never yet
ascertained in the course of my uncommercial travels, why a Refractory
habit should affect the tonsils and uvula; but, I have always observed
that Refractories of both sexes and every grade, between a Ragged School
and the Old Bailey, have one voice, in which the tonsils and uvula gain
a diseased ascendency.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Five pound indeed!&nbsp; I hain&rsquo;t a going fur to pick
five pound,&rsquo; said the Chief of the Refractories, keeping time
to herself with her head and chin.&nbsp; &lsquo;More than enough to
pick what we picks now, in sich a place as this, and on wot we gets
here!&rsquo;</p>
<p>(This was in acknowledgment of a delicate intimation that the amount
of work was likely to be increased.&nbsp; It certainly was not heavy
then, for one Refractory had already done her day&rsquo;s task&mdash;it
was barely two o&rsquo;clock&mdash;and was sitting behind it, with a
head exactly matching it.)</p>
<p>&lsquo;A pretty Ouse this is, matron, ain&rsquo;t it?&rsquo; said
Refractory Two, &lsquo;where a pleeseman&rsquo;s called in, if a gal
says a word!&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;And wen you&rsquo;re sent to prison for nothink or less!&rsquo;
said the Chief, tugging at her oakum as if it were the matron&rsquo;s
hair.&nbsp; &lsquo;But any place is better than this; that&rsquo;s one
thing, and be thankful!&rsquo;</p>
<p>A laugh of Refractories led by Oakum Head with folded arms&mdash;who
originated nothing, but who was in command of the skirmishers outside
the conversation.</p>
<p>&lsquo;If any place is better than this,&rsquo; said my brisk guide,
in the calmest manner, &lsquo;it is a pity you left a good place when
you had one.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Ho, no, I didn&rsquo;t, matron,&rsquo; returned the Chief,
with another pull at her oakum, and a very expressive look at the enemy&rsquo;s
forehead.&nbsp; &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t say that, matron, cos it&rsquo;s
lies!&rsquo;</p>
<p>Oakum Head brought up the skirmishers again, skirmished, and retired.</p>
<p>&lsquo;And <i>I</i> warn&rsquo;t a going,&rsquo; exclaimed Refractory
Two, &lsquo;though I was in one place for as long as four year&mdash;<i>I</i>
warn&rsquo;t a going fur to stop in a place that warn&rsquo;t fit for
me&mdash;there!&nbsp; And where the family warn&rsquo;t &rsquo;spectable
characters&mdash;there!&nbsp; And where I fortunately or hunfort&rsquo;nately,
found that the people warn&rsquo;t what they pretended to make theirselves
out to be&mdash;there!&nbsp; And where it wasn&rsquo;t their faults,
by chalks, if I warn&rsquo;t made bad and ruinated&mdash;Hah!&rsquo;</p>
<p>During this speech, Oakum Head had again made a diversion with the
skirmishers, and had again withdrawn.</p>
<p>The Uncommercial Traveller ventured to remark that he supposed Chief
Refractory and Number One, to be the two young women who had been taken
before the magistrate?</p>
<p>&lsquo;Yes!&rsquo; said the Chief, &lsquo;we har! and the wonder
is, that a pleeseman an&rsquo;t &rsquo;ad in now, and we took off agen.&nbsp;
You can&rsquo;t open your lips here, without a pleeseman.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Number Two laughed (very uvularly), and the skirmishers followed
suit.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I&rsquo;m sure I&rsquo;d be thankful,&rsquo; protested the
Chief, looking sideways at the Uncommercial, &lsquo;if I could be got
into a place, or got abroad.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m sick and tired of this
precious Ouse, I am, with reason.&rsquo;</p>
<p>So would be, and so was, Number Two.&nbsp; So would be, and so was,
Oakum Head.&nbsp; So would be, and so were, Skirmishers.</p>
<p>The Uncommercial took the liberty of hinting that he hardly thought
it probable that any lady or gentleman in want of a likely young domestic
of retiring manners, would be tempted into the engagement of either
of the two leading Refractories, on her own presentation of herself
as per sample.</p>
<p>&lsquo;It ain&rsquo;t no good being nothink else here,&rsquo; said
the Chief.</p>
<p>The Uncommercial thought it might be worth trying.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Oh no it ain&rsquo;t,&rsquo; said the Chief.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Not a bit of good,&rsquo; said Number Two.</p>
<p>&lsquo;And I&rsquo;m sure I&rsquo;d be very thankful to be got into
a place, or got abroad,&rsquo; said the Chief.</p>
<p>&lsquo;And so should I,&rsquo; said Number Two.&nbsp; &lsquo;Truly
thankful, I should.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Oakum Head then rose, and announced as an entirely new idea, the
mention of which profound novelty might be naturally expected to startle
her unprepared hearers, that she would be very thankful to be got into
a place, or got abroad.&nbsp; And, as if she had then said, &lsquo;Chorus,
ladies!&rsquo; all the Skirmishers struck up to the same purpose.&nbsp;
We left them, thereupon, and began a long walk among the women who were
simply old and infirm; but whenever, in the course of this same walk,
I looked out of any high window that commanded the yard, I saw Oakum
Head and all the other Refractories looking out at their low window
for me, and never failing to catch me, the moment I showed my head.</p>
<p>In ten minutes I had ceased to believe in such fables of a golden
time as youth, the prime of life, or a hale old age.&nbsp; In ten minutes,
all the lights of womankind seemed to have been blown out, and nothing
in that way to be left this vault to brag of, but the flickering and
expiring snuffs.</p>
<p>And what was very curious, was, that these dim old women had one
company notion which was the fashion of the place.&nbsp; Every old woman
who became aware of a visitor and was not in bed hobbled over a form
into her accustomed seat, and became one of a line of dim old women
confronting another line of dim old women across a narrow table.&nbsp;
There was no obligation whatever upon them to range themselves in this
way; it was their manner of &lsquo;receiving.&rsquo;&nbsp; As a rule,
they made no attempt to talk to one another, or to look at the visitor,
or to look at anything, but sat silently working their mouths, like
a sort of poor old Cows.&nbsp; In some of these wards, it was good to
see a few green plants; in others, an isolated Refractory acting as
nurse, who did well enough in that capacity, when separated from her
compeers; every one of these wards, day room, night room, or both combined,
was scrupulously clean and fresh.&nbsp; I have seen as many such places
as most travellers in my line, and I never saw one such, better kept.</p>
<p>Among the bedridden there was great patience, great reliance on the
books under the pillow, great faith in GOD.&nbsp; All cared for sympathy,
but none much cared to be encouraged with hope of recovery; on the whole,
I should say, it was considered rather a distinction to have a complication
of disorders, and to be in a worse way than the rest.&nbsp; From some
of the windows, the river could be seen with all its life and movement;
the day was bright, but I came upon no one who was looking out.</p>
<p>In one large ward, sitting by the fire in arm-chairs of distinction,
like the President and Vice of the good company, were two old women,
upwards of ninety years of age.&nbsp; The younger of the two, just turned
ninety, was deaf, but not very, and could easily be made to hear.&nbsp;
In her early time she had nursed a child, who was now another old woman,
more infirm than herself, inhabiting the very same chamber.&nbsp; She
perfectly understood this when the matron told it, and, with sundry
nods and motions of her forefinger, pointed out the woman in question.&nbsp;
The elder of this pair, ninety-three, seated before an illustrated newspaper
(but not reading it), was a bright-eyed old soul, really not deaf, wonderfully
preserved, and amazingly conversational.&nbsp; She had not long lost
her husband, and had been in that place little more than a year.&nbsp;
At Boston, in the State of Massachusetts, this poor creature would have
been individually addressed, would have been tended in her own room,
and would have had her life gently assimilated to a comfortable life
out of doors.&nbsp; Would that be much to do in England for a woman
who has kept herself out of a workhouse more than ninety rough long
years?&nbsp; When Britain first, at Heaven&rsquo;s command, arose, with
a great deal of allegorical confusion, from out the azure main, did
her guardian angels positively forbid it in the Charter which has been
so much besung?</p>
<p>The object of my journey was accomplished when the nimble matron
had no more to show me.&nbsp; As I shook hands with her at the gate,
I told her that I thought justice had not used her very well, and that
the wise men of the East were not infallible.</p>
<p>Now, I reasoned with myself, as I made my journey home again, concerning
those Foul wards.&nbsp; They ought not to exist; no person of common
decency and humanity can see them and doubt it.&nbsp; But what is this
Union to do?&nbsp; The necessary alteration would cost several thousands
of pounds; it has already to support three workhouses; its inhabitants
work hard for their bare lives, and are already rated for the relief
of the Poor to the utmost extent of reasonable endurance.&nbsp; One
poor parish in this very Union is rated to the amount of FIVE AND SIXPENCE
in the pound, at the very same time when the rich parish of Saint George&rsquo;s,
Hanover-square, is rated at about SEVENPENCE in the pound, Paddington
at about FOURPENCE, Saint James&rsquo;s, Westminster, at about TENPENCE!&nbsp;
It is only through the equalisation of Poor Rates that what is left
undone in this wise, can be done.&nbsp; Much more is left undone, or
is ill-done, than I have space to suggest in these notes of a single
uncommercial journey; but, the wise men of the East, before they can
reasonably hold forth about it, must look to the North and South and
West; let them also, any morning before taking the seat of Solomon,
look into the shops and dwellings all around the Temple, and first ask
themselves &lsquo;how much more can these poor people&mdash;many of
whom keep themselves with difficulty enough out of the workhouse&mdash;bear?&rsquo;</p>
<p>I had yet other matter for reflection as I journeyed home, inasmuch
as, before I altogether departed from the neighbourhood of Mr. Baker&rsquo;s
trap, I had knocked at the gate of the workhouse of St. George&rsquo;s-in-the-East,
and had found it to be an establishment highly creditable to those parts,
and thoroughly well administered by a most intelligent master.&nbsp;
I remarked in it, an instance of the collateral harm that obstinate
vanity and folly can do.&nbsp; &lsquo;This was the Hall where those
old paupers, male and female, whom I had just seen, met for the Church
service, was it?&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Yes.&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Did they
sing the Psalms to any instrument?&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;They would like
to, very much; they would have an extraordinary interest in doing so.&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;And
could none be got?&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Well, a piano could even have
been got for nothing, but these unfortunate dissensions&mdash;&rsquo;&nbsp;
Ah! better, far better, my Christian friend in the beautiful garment,
to have let the singing boys alone, and left the multitude to sing for
themselves!&nbsp; You should know better than I, but I think I have
read that they did so, once upon a time, and that &lsquo;when they had
sung an hymn,&rsquo; Some one (not in a beautiful garment) went up into
the Mount of Olives.</p>
<p>It made my heart ache to think of this miserable trifling, in the
streets of a city where every stone seemed to call to me, as I walked
along, &lsquo;Turn this way, man, and see what waits to be done!&rsquo;&nbsp;
So I decoyed myself into another train of thought to ease my heart.&nbsp;
But, I don&rsquo;t know that I did it, for I was so full of paupers,
that it was, after all, only a change to a single pauper, who took possession
of my remembrance instead of a thousand.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I beg your pardon, sir,&rsquo; he had said, in a confidential
manner, on another occasion, taking me aside; &lsquo;but I have seen
better days.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I am very sorry to hear it.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Sir, I have a complaint to make against the master.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I have no power here, I assure you.&nbsp; And if I had&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;But, allow me, sir, to mention it, as between yourself and
a man who has seen better days, sir.&nbsp; The master and myself are
both masons, sir, and I make him the sign continually; but, because
I am in this unfortunate position, sir, he won&rsquo;t give me the counter-sign!&rsquo;</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER IV&mdash;TWO VIEWS OF A CHEAP THEATRE</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>As I shut the door of my lodging behind me, and came out into the
streets at six on a drizzling Saturday evening in the last past month
of January, all that neighbourhood of Covent-garden looked very desolate.&nbsp;
It is so essentially a neighbourhood which has seen better days, that
bad weather affects it sooner than another place which has not come
down in the World.&nbsp; In its present reduced condition it bears a
thaw almost worse than any place I know.&nbsp; It gets so dreadfully
low-spirited when damp breaks forth.&nbsp; Those wonderful houses about
Drury-lane Theatre, which in the palmy days of theatres were prosperous
and long-settled places of business, and which now change hands every
week, but never change their character of being divided and sub-divided
on the ground floor into mouldy dens of shops where an orange and half-a-dozen
nuts, or a pomatum-pot, one cake of fancy soap, and a cigar box, are
offered for sale and never sold, were most ruefully contemplated that
evening, by the statue of Shakespeare, with the rain-drops coursing
one another down its innocent nose.&nbsp; Those inscrutable pigeon-hole
offices, with nothing in them (not so much as an inkstand) but a model
of a theatre before the curtain, where, in the Italian Opera season,
tickets at reduced prices are kept on sale by nomadic gentlemen in smeary
hats too tall for them, whom one occasionally seems to have seen on
race-courses, not wholly unconnected with strips of cloth of various
colours and a rolling ball&mdash;those Bedouin establishments, deserted
by the tribe, and tenantless, except when sheltering in one corner an
irregular row of ginger-beer bottles, which would have made one shudder
on such a night, but for its being plain that they had nothing in them,
shrunk from the shrill cries of the news-boys at their Exchange in the
kennel of Catherine-street, like guilty things upon a fearful summons.&nbsp;
At the pipe-shop in Great Russell-street, the Death&rsquo;s-head pipes
were like theatrical memento mori, admonishing beholders of the decline
of the playhouse as an Institution.&nbsp; I walked up Bow-street, disposed
to be angry with the shops there, that were letting out theatrical secrets
by exhibiting to work-a-day humanity the stuff of which diadems and
robes of kings are made.&nbsp; I noticed that some shops which had once
been in the dramatic line, and had struggled out of it, were not getting
on prosperously&mdash;like some actors I have known, who took to business
and failed to make it answer.&nbsp; In a word, those streets looked
so dull, and, considered as theatrical streets, so broken and bankrupt,
that the FOUND DEAD on the black board at the police station might have
announced the decease of the Drama, and the pools of water outside the
fire-engine maker&rsquo;s at the corner of Long-acre might have been
occasioned by his having brought out the whole of his stock to play
upon its last smouldering ashes.</p>
<p>And yet, on such a night in so degenerate a time, the object of my
journey was theatrical.&nbsp; And yet within half an hour I was in an
immense theatre, capable of holding nearly five thousand people.</p>
<p>What Theatre?&nbsp; Her Majesty&rsquo;s?&nbsp; Far better.&nbsp;
Royal Italian Opera?&nbsp; Far better.&nbsp; Infinitely superior to
the latter for hearing in; infinitely superior to both, for seeing in.&nbsp;
To every part of this Theatre, spacious fire-proof ways of ingress and
egress.&nbsp; For every part of it, convenient places of refreshment
and retiring rooms.&nbsp; Everything to eat and drink carefully supervised
as to quality, and sold at an appointed price; respectable female attendants
ready for the commonest women in the audience; a general air of consideration,
decorum, and supervision, most commendable; an unquestionably humanising
influence in all the social arrangements of the place.</p>
<p>Surely a dear Theatre, then?&nbsp; Because there were in London (not
very long ago) Theatres with entrance-prices up to half-a-guinea a head,
whose arrangements were not half so civilised.&nbsp; Surely, therefore,
a dear Theatre?&nbsp; Not very dear.&nbsp; A gallery at three-pence,
another gallery at fourpence, a pit at sixpence, boxes and pit-stalls
at a shilling, and a few private boxes at half-a-crown.</p>
<p>My uncommercial curiosity induced me to go into every nook of this
great place, and among every class of the audience assembled in it&mdash;amounting
that evening, as I calculated, to about two thousand and odd hundreds.&nbsp;
Magnificently lighted by a firmament of sparkling chandeliers, the building
was ventilated to perfection.&nbsp; My sense of smell, without being
particularly delicate, has been so offended in some of the commoner
places of public resort, that I have often been obliged to leave them
when I have made an uncommercial journey expressly to look on.&nbsp;
The air of this Theatre was fresh, cool, and wholesome.&nbsp; To help
towards this end, very sensible precautions had been used, ingeniously
combining the experience of hospitals and railway stations.&nbsp; Asphalt
pavements substituted for wooden floors, honest bare walls of glazed
brick and tile&mdash;even at the back of the boxes&mdash;for plaster
and paper, no benches stuffed, and no carpeting or baize used; a cool
material with a light glazed surface, being the covering of the seats.</p>
<p>These various contrivances are as well considered in the place in
question as if it were a Fever Hospital; the result is, that it is sweet
and healthful.&nbsp; It has been constructed from the ground to the
roof, with a careful reference to sight and sound in every corner; the
result is, that its form is beautiful, and that the appearance of the
audience, as seen from the proscenium&mdash;with every face in it commanding
the stage, and the whole so admirably raked and turned to that centre,
that a hand can scarcely move in the great assemblage without the movement
being seen from thence&mdash;is highly remarkable in its union of vastness
with compactness.&nbsp; The stage itself, and all its appurtenances
of machinery, cellarage, height and breadth, are on a scale more like
the Scala at Milan, or the San Carlo at Naples, or the Grand Opera at
Paris, than any notion a stranger would be likely to form of the Britannia
Theatre at Hoxton, a mile north of St. Luke&rsquo;s Hospital in the
Old-street-road, London.&nbsp; The Forty Thieves might be played here,
and every thief ride his real horse, and the disguised captain bring
in his oil jars on a train of real camels, and nobody be put out of
the way.&nbsp; This really extraordinary place is the achievement of
one man&rsquo;s enterprise, and was erected on the ruins of an inconvenient
old building in less than five months, at a round cost of five-and-twenty
thousand pounds.&nbsp; To dismiss this part of my subject, and still
to render to the proprietor the credit that is strictly his due, I must
add that his sense of the responsibility upon him to make the best of
his audience, and to do his best for them, is a highly agreeable sign
of these times.</p>
<p>As the spectators at this theatre, for a reason I will presently
show, were the object of my journey, I entered on the play of the night
as one of the two thousand and odd hundreds, by looking about me at
my neighbours.&nbsp; We were a motley assemblage of people, and we had
a good many boys and young men among us; we had also many girls and
young women.&nbsp; To represent, however, that we did not include a
very great number, and a very fair proportion of family groups, would
be to make a gross mis-statement.&nbsp; Such groups were to be seen
in all parts of the house; in the boxes and stalls particularly, they
were composed of persons of very decent appearance, who had many children
with them.&nbsp; Among our dresses there were most kinds of shabby and
greasy wear, and much fustian and corduroy that was neither sound nor
fragrant.&nbsp; The caps of our young men were mostly of a limp character,
and we who wore them, slouched, high-shouldered, into our places with
our hands in our pockets, and occasionally twisted our cravats about
our necks like eels, and occasionally tied them down our breasts like
links of sausages, and occasionally had a screw in our hair over each
cheek-bone with a slight Thief-flavour in it.&nbsp; Besides prowlers
and idlers, we were mechanics, dock-labourers, costermongers, petty
tradesmen, small clerks, milliners, stay-makers, shoe-binders, slop-workers,
poor workers in a hundred highways and byways.&nbsp; Many of us&mdash;on
the whole, the majority&mdash;were not at all clean, and not at all
choice in our lives or conversation.&nbsp; But we had all come together
in a place where our convenience was well consulted, and where we were
well looked after, to enjoy an evening&rsquo;s entertainment in common.&nbsp;
We were not going to lose any part of what we had paid for through anybody&rsquo;s
caprice, and as a community we had a character to lose.&nbsp; So, we
were closely attentive, and kept excellent order; and let the man or
boy who did otherwise instantly get out from this place, or we would
put him out with the greatest expedition.</p>
<p>We began at half-past six with a pantomime&mdash;with a pantomime
so long, that before it was over I felt as if I had been travelling
for six weeks&mdash;going to India, say, by the Overland Mail.&nbsp;
The Spirit of Liberty was the principal personage in the Introduction,
and the Four Quarters of the World came out of the globe, glittering,
and discoursed with the Spirit, who sang charmingly.&nbsp; We were delighted
to understand that there was no liberty anywhere but among ourselves,
and we highly applauded the agreeable fact.&nbsp; In an allegorical
way, which did as well as any other way, we and the Spirit of Liberty
got into a kingdom of Needles and Pins, and found them at war with a
potentate who called in to his aid their old arch enemy Rust, and who
would have got the better of them if the Spirit of Liberty had not in
the nick of time transformed the leaders into Clown, Pantaloon, Harlequin,
Columbine, Harlequina, and a whole family of Sprites, consisting of
a remarkably stout father and three spineless sons.&nbsp; We all knew
what was coming when the Spirit of Liberty addressed the king with a
big face, and His Majesty backed to the side-scenes and began untying
himself behind, with his big face all on one side.&nbsp; Our excitement
at that crisis was great, and our delight unbounded.&nbsp; After this
era in our existence, we went through all the incidents of a pantomime;
it was not by any means a savage pantomime, in the way of burning or
boiling people, or throwing them out of window, or cutting them up;
was often very droll; was always liberally got up, and cleverly presented.&nbsp;
I noticed that the people who kept the shops, and who represented the
passengers in the thoroughfares, and so forth, had no conventionality
in them, but were unusually like the real thing&mdash;from which I infer
that you may take that audience in (if you wish to) concerning Knights
and Ladies, Fairies, Angels, or such like, but they are not to be done
as to anything in the streets.&nbsp; I noticed, also, that when two
young men, dressed in exact imitation of the eel-and-sausage-cravated
portion of the audience, were chased by policemen, and, finding themselves
in danger of being caught, dropped so suddenly as to oblige the policemen
to tumble over them, there was great rejoicing among the caps&mdash;as
though it were a delicate reference to something they had heard of before.</p>
<p>The Pantomime was succeeded by a Melo-Drama.&nbsp; Throughout the
evening I was pleased to observe Virtue quite as triumphant as she usually
is out of doors, and indeed I thought rather more so.&nbsp; We all agreed
(for the time) that honesty was the best policy, and we were as hard
as iron upon Vice, and we wouldn&rsquo;t hear of Villainy getting on
in the world&mdash;no, not on any consideration whatever.</p>
<p>Between the pieces, we almost all of us went out and refreshed.&nbsp;
Many of us went the length of drinking beer at the bar of the neighbouring
public-house, some of us drank spirits, crowds of us had sandwiches
and ginger-beer at the refreshment-bars established for us in the Theatre.&nbsp;
The sandwich&mdash;as substantial as was consistent with portability,
and as cheap as possible&mdash;we hailed as one of our greatest institutions.&nbsp;
It forced its way among us at all stages of the entertainment, and we
were always delighted to see it; its adaptability to the varying moods
of our nature was surprising; we could never weep so comfortably as
when our tears fell on our sandwich; we could never laugh so heartily
as when we choked with sandwich; Virtue never looked so beautiful or
Vice so deformed as when we paused, sandwich in hand, to consider what
would come of that resolution of Wickedness in boots, to sever Innocence
in flowered chintz from Honest Industry in striped stockings.&nbsp;
When the curtain fell for the night, we still fell back upon sandwich,
to help us through the rain and mire, and home to bed.</p>
<p>This, as I have mentioned, was Saturday night.&nbsp; Being Saturday
night, I had accomplished but the half of my uncommercial journey; for,
its object was to compare the play on Saturday evening with the preaching
in the same Theatre on Sunday evening.</p>
<p>Therefore, at the same hour of half-past six on the similarly damp
and muddy Sunday evening, I returned to this Theatre.&nbsp; I drove
up to the entrance (fearful of being late, or I should have come on
foot), and found myself in a large crowd of people who, I am happy to
state, were put into excellent spirits by my arrival.&nbsp; Having nothing
to look at but the mud and the closed doors, they looked at me, and
highly enjoyed the comic spectacle.&nbsp; My modesty inducing me to
draw off, some hundreds of yards, into a dark corner, they at once forgot
me, and applied themselves to their former occupation of looking at
the mud and looking in at the closed doors: which, being of grated ironwork,
allowed the lighted passage within to be seen.&nbsp; They were chiefly
people of respectable appearance, odd and impulsive as most crowds are,
and making a joke of being there as most crowds do.</p>
<p>In the dark corner I might have sat a long while, but that a very
obliging passer-by informed me that the Theatre was already full, and
that the people whom I saw in the street were all shut out for want
of room.&nbsp; After that, I lost no time in worming myself into the
building, and creeping to a place in a Proscenium box that had been
kept for me.</p>
<p>There must have been full four thousand people present.&nbsp; Carefully
estimating the pit alone, I could bring it out as holding little less
than fourteen hundred.&nbsp; Every part of the house was well filled,
and I had not found it easy to make my way along the back of the boxes
to where I sat.&nbsp; The chandeliers in the ceiling were lighted; there
was no light on the stage; the orchestra was empty.&nbsp; The green
curtain was down, and, packed pretty closely on chairs on the small
space of stage before it, were some thirty gentlemen, and two or three
ladies.&nbsp; In the centre of these, in a desk or pulpit covered with
red baize, was the presiding minister.&nbsp; The kind of rostrum he
occupied will be very well understood, if I liken it to a boarded-up
fireplace turned towards the audience, with a gentleman in a black surtout
standing in the stove and leaning forward over the mantelpiece.</p>
<p>A portion of Scripture was being read when I went in.&nbsp; It was
followed by a discourse, to which the congregation listened with most
exemplary attention and uninterrupted silence and decorum.&nbsp; My
own attention comprehended both the auditory and the speaker, and shall
turn to both in this recalling of the scene, exactly as it did at the
time.</p>
<p>&lsquo;A very difficult thing,&rsquo; I thought, when the discourse
began, &lsquo;to speak appropriately to so large an audience, and to
speak with tact.&nbsp; Without it, better not to speak at all.&nbsp;
Infinitely better, to read the New Testament well, and to let <i>that</i>
speak.&nbsp; In this congregation there is indubitably one pulse; but
I doubt if any power short of genius can touch it as one, and make it
answer as one.&rsquo;</p>
<p>I could not possibly say to myself as the discourse proceeded, that
the minister was a good speaker.&nbsp; I could not possibly say to myself
that he expressed an understanding of the general mind and character
of his audience.&nbsp; There was a supposititious working-man introduced
into the homily, to make supposititious objections to our Christian
religion and be reasoned down, who was not only a very disagreeable
person, but remarkably unlike life&mdash;very much more unlike it than
anything I had seen in the pantomime.&nbsp; The native independence
of character this artisan was supposed to possess, was represented by
a suggestion of a dialect that I certainly never heard in my uncommercial
travels, and with a coarse swing of voice and manner anything but agreeable
to his feelings, I should conceive, considered in the light of a portrait,
and as far away from the fact as a Chinese Tartar.&nbsp; There was a
model pauper introduced in like manner, who appeared to me to be the
most intolerably arrogant pauper ever relieved, and to show himself
in absolute want and dire necessity of a course of Stone Yard.&nbsp;
For, how did this pauper testify to his having received the gospel of
humility?&nbsp; A gentleman met him in the workhouse, and said (which
I myself really thought good-natured of him), &lsquo;Ah, John?&nbsp;
I am sorry to see you here.&nbsp; I am sorry to see you so poor.&rsquo;&nbsp;
&lsquo;Poor, sir!&rsquo; replied that man, drawing himself up, &lsquo;I
am the son of a Prince!&nbsp; <i>My</i> father is the King of Kings.&nbsp;
<i>My</i> father is the Lord of Lords.&nbsp; <i>My</i> father is the
ruler of all the Princes of the Earth!&rsquo; &amp;c.&nbsp; And this
was what all the preacher&rsquo;s fellow-sinners might come to, if they
would embrace this blessed book&mdash;which I must say it did some violence
to my own feelings of reverence, to see held out at arm&rsquo;s length
at frequent intervals and soundingly slapped, like a slow lot at a sale.&nbsp;
Now, could I help asking myself the question, whether the mechanic before
me, who must detect the preacher as being wrong about the visible manner
of himself and the like of himself, and about such a noisy lip-server
as that pauper, might not, most unhappily for the usefulness of the
occasion, doubt that preacher&rsquo;s being right about things not visible
to human senses?</p>
<p>Again.&nbsp; Is it necessary or advisable to address such an audience
continually as &lsquo;fellow-sinners&rsquo;?&nbsp; Is it not enough
to be fellow-creatures, born yesterday, suffering and striving to-day,
dying to-morrow?&nbsp; By our common humanity, my brothers and sisters,
by our common capacities for pain and pleasure, by our common laughter
and our common tears, by our common aspiration to reach something better
than ourselves, by our common tendency to believe in something good,
and to invest whatever we love or whatever we lose with some qualities
that are superior to our own failings and weaknesses as we know them
in our own poor hearts&mdash;by these, Hear me!&mdash;Surely, it is
enough to be fellow-creatures.&nbsp; Surely, it includes the other designation,
and some touching meanings over and above.</p>
<p>Again.&nbsp; There was a personage introduced into the discourse
(not an absolute novelty, to the best of my remembrance of my reading),
who had been personally known to the preacher, and had been quite a
Crichton in all the ways of philosophy, but had been an infidel.&nbsp;
Many a time had the preacher talked with him on that subject, and many
a time had he failed to convince that intelligent man.&nbsp; But he
fell ill, and died, and before he died he recorded his conversion&mdash;in
words which the preacher had taken down, my fellow-sinners, and would
read to you from this piece of paper.&nbsp; I must confess that to me,
as one of an uninstructed audience, they did not appear particularly
edifying.&nbsp; I thought their tone extremely selfish, and I thought
they had a spiritual vanity in them which was of the before-mentioned
refractory pauper&rsquo;s family.</p>
<p>All slangs and twangs are objectionable everywhere, but the slang
and twang of the conventicle&mdash;as bad in its way as that of the
House of Commons, and nothing worse can be said of it&mdash;should be
studiously avoided under such circumstances as I describe.&nbsp; The
avoidance was not complete on this occasion.&nbsp; Nor was it quite
agreeable to see the preacher addressing his pet &lsquo;points&rsquo;
to his backers on the stage, as if appealing to those disciples to show
him up, and testify to the multitude that each of those points was a
clincher.</p>
<p>But, in respect of the large Christianity of his general tone; of
his renunciation of all priestly authority; of his earnest and reiterated
assurance to the people that the commonest among them could work out
their own salvation if they would, by simply, lovingly, and dutifully
following Our Saviour, and that they needed the mediation of no erring
man; in these particulars, this gentleman deserved all praise.&nbsp;
Nothing could be better than the spirit, or the plain emphatic words
of his discourse in these respects.&nbsp; And it was a most significant
and encouraging circumstance that whenever he struck that chord, or
whenever he described anything which Christ himself had done, the array
of faces before him was very much more earnest, and very much more expressive
of emotion, than at any other time.</p>
<p>And now, I am brought to the fact, that the lowest part of the audience
of the previous night, <i>was not there</i>.&nbsp; There is no doubt
about it.&nbsp; There was no such thing in that building, that Sunday
evening.&nbsp; I have been told since, that the lowest part of the audience
of the Victoria Theatre has been attracted to its Sunday services.&nbsp;
I have been very glad to hear it, but on this occasion of which I write,
the lowest part of the usual audience of the Britannia Theatre, decidedly
and unquestionably stayed away.&nbsp; When I first took my seat and
looked at the house, my surprise at the change in its occupants was
as great as my disappointment.&nbsp; To the most respectable class of
the previous evening, was added a great number of respectable strangers
attracted by curiosity, and drafts from the regular congregations of
various chapels.&nbsp; It was impossible to fail in identifying the
character of these last, and they were very numerous.&nbsp; I came out
in a strong, slow tide of them setting from the boxes.&nbsp; Indeed,
while the discourse was in progress, the respectable character of the
auditory was so manifest in their appearance, that when the minister
addressed a supposititious &lsquo;outcast,&rsquo; one really felt a
little impatient of it, as a figure of speech not justified by anything
the eye could discover.</p>
<p>The time appointed for the conclusion of the proceedings was eight
o&rsquo;clock.&nbsp; The address having lasted until full that time,
and it being the custom to conclude with a hymn, the preacher intimated
in a few sensible words that the clock had struck the hour, and that
those who desired to go before the hymn was sung, could go now, without
giving offence.&nbsp; No one stirred.&nbsp; The hymn was then sung,
in good time and tune and unison, and its effect was very striking.&nbsp;
A comprehensive benevolent prayer dismissed the throng, and in seven
or eight minutes there was nothing left in the Theatre but a light cloud
of dust.</p>
<p>That these Sunday meetings in Theatres are good things, I do not
doubt.&nbsp; Nor do I doubt that they will work lower and lower down
in the social scale, if those who preside over them will be very careful
on two heads: firstly, not to disparage the places in which they speak,
or the intelligence of their hearers; secondly, not to set themselves
in antagonism to the natural inborn desire of the mass of mankind to
recreate themselves and to be amused.</p>
<p>There is a third head, taking precedence of all others, to which
my remarks on the discourse I heard, have tended.&nbsp; In the New Testament
there is the most beautiful and affecting history conceivable by man,
and there are the terse models for all prayer and for all preaching.&nbsp;
As to the models, imitate them, Sunday preachers&mdash;else why are
they there, consider?&nbsp; As to the history, tell it.&nbsp; Some people
cannot read, some people will not read, many people (this especially
holds among the young and ignorant) find it hard to pursue the verse-form
in which the book is presented to them, and imagine that those breaks
imply gaps and want of continuity.&nbsp; Help them over that first stumbling-block,
by setting forth the history in narrative, with no fear of exhausting
it.&nbsp; You will never preach so well, you will never move them so
profoundly, you will never send them away with half so much to think
of.&nbsp; Which is the better interest: Christ&rsquo;s choice of twelve
poor men to help in those merciful wonders among the poor and rejected;
or the pious bullying of a whole Union-full of paupers?&nbsp; What is
your changed philosopher to wretched me, peeping in at the door out
of the mud of the streets and of my life, when you have the widow&rsquo;s
son to tell me about, the ruler&rsquo;s daughter, the other figure at
the door when the brother of the two sisters was dead, and one of the
two ran to the mourner, crying, &lsquo;The Master is come and calleth
for thee&rsquo;?&mdash;Let the preacher who will thoroughly forget himself
and remember no individuality but one, and no eloquence but one, stand
up before four thousand men and women at the Britannia Theatre any Sunday
night, recounting that narrative to them as fellow creatures, and he
shall see a sight!</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER V&mdash;POOR MERCANTILE JACK</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>Is the sweet little cherub who sits smiling aloft and keeps watch
on life of poor Jack, commissioned to take charge of Mercantile Jack,
as well as Jack of the national navy?&nbsp; If not, who is?&nbsp; What
is the cherub about, and what are we all about, when poor</p>
<p>Mercantile Jack is having his brains slowly knocked out by penny-weights,
aboard the brig Beelzebub, or the barque Bowie-knife&mdash;when he looks
his last at that infernal craft, with the first officer&rsquo;s iron
boot-heel in his remaining eye, or with his dying body towed overboard
in the ship&rsquo;s wake, while the cruel wounds in it do &lsquo;the
multitudinous seas incarnadine&rsquo;?</p>
<p>Is it unreasonable to entertain a belief that if, aboard the brig
Beelzebub or the barque Bowie-knife, the first officer did half the
damage to cotton that he does to men, there would presently arise from
both sides of the Atlantic so vociferous an invocation of the sweet
little cherub who sits calculating aloft, keeping watch on the markets
that pay, that such vigilant cherub would, with a winged sword, have
that gallant officer&rsquo;s organ of destructiveness out of his head
in the space of a flash of lightning?</p>
<p>If it be unreasonable, then am I the most unreasonable of men, for
I believe it with all my soul.</p>
<p>This was my thought as I walked the dock-quays at Liverpool, keeping
watch on poor Mercantile Jack.&nbsp; Alas for me!&nbsp; I have long
outgrown the state of sweet little cherub; but there I was, and there
Mercantile Jack was, and very busy he was, and very cold he was: the
snow yet lying in the frozen furrows of the land, and the north-east
winds snipping off the tops of the little waves in the Mersey, and rolling
them into hailstones to pelt him with.&nbsp; Mercantile Jack was hard
at it, in the hard weather: as he mostly is in all weathers, poor Jack.&nbsp;
He was girded to ships&rsquo; masts and funnels of steamers, like a
forester to a great oak, scraping and painting; he was lying out on
yards, furling sails that tried to beat him off; he was dimly discernible
up in a world of giant cobwebs, reefing and splicing; he was faintly
audible down in holds, stowing and unshipping cargo; he was winding
round and round at capstans melodious, monotonous, and drunk; he was
of a diabolical aspect, with coaling for the Antipodes; he was washing
decks barefoot, with the breast of his red shirt open to the blast,
though it was sharper than the knife in his leathern girdle; he was
looking over bulwarks, all eyes and hair; he was standing by at the
shoot of the Cunard steamer, off to-morrow, as the stocks in trade of
several butchers, poulterers, and fishmongers, poured down into the
ice-house; he was coming aboard of other vessels, with his kit in a
tarpaulin bag, attended by plunderers to the very last moment of his
shore-going existence.&nbsp; As though his senses, when released from
the uproar of the elements, were under obligation to be confused by
other turmoil, there was a rattling of wheels, a clattering of hoofs,
a clashing of iron, a jolting of cotton and hides and casks and timber,
an incessant deafening disturbance on the quays, that was the very madness
of sound.&nbsp; And as, in the midst of it, he stood swaying about,
with his hair blown all manner of wild ways, rather crazedly taking
leave of his plunderers, all the rigging in the docks was shrill in
the wind, and every little steamer coming and going across the Mersey
was sharp in its blowing off, and every buoy in the river bobbed spitefully
up and down, as if there were a general taunting chorus of &lsquo;Come
along, Mercantile Jack!&nbsp; Ill-lodged, ill-fed, ill-used, hocussed,
entrapped, anticipated, cleaned out.&nbsp; Come along, Poor Mercantile
Jack, and be tempest-tossed till you are drowned!&rsquo;</p>
<p>The uncommercial transaction which had brought me and Jack together,
was this:- I had entered the Liverpool police force, that I might have
a look at the various unlawful traps which are every night set for Jack.&nbsp;
As my term of service in that distinguished corps was short, and as
my personal bias in the capacity of one of its members has ceased, no
suspicion will attach to my evidence that it is an admirable force.&nbsp;
Besides that it is composed, without favour, of the best men that can
be picked, it is directed by an unusual intelligence.&nbsp; Its organisation
against Fires, I take to be much better than the metropolitan system,
and in all respects it tempers its remarkable vigilance with a still
more remarkable discretion.</p>
<p>Jack had knocked off work in the docks some hours, and I had taken,
for purposes of identification, a photograph-likeness of a thief, in
the portrait-room at our head police office (on the whole, he seemed
rather complimented by the proceeding), and I had been on police parade,
and the small hand of the clock was moving on to ten, when I took up
my lantern to follow Mr. Superintendent to the traps that were set for
Jack.&nbsp; In Mr. Superintendent I saw, as anybody might, a tall, well-looking,
well-set-up man of a soldierly bearing, with a cavalry air, a good chest,
and a resolute but not by any means ungentle face.&nbsp; He carried
in his hand a plain black walking-stick of hard wood; and whenever and
wherever, at any after-time of the night, he struck it on the pavement
with a ringing sound, it instantly produced a whistle out of the darkness,
and a policeman.&nbsp; To this remarkable stick, I refer an air of mystery
and magic which pervaded the whole of my perquisition among the traps
that were set for Jack.</p>
<p>We began by diving into the obscurest streets and lanes of the port.&nbsp;
Suddenly pausing in a flow of cheerful discourse, before a dead wall,
apparently some ten miles long, Mr. Superintendent struck upon the ground,
and the wall opened and shot out, with military salute of hand to temple,
two policemen&mdash;not in the least surprised themselves, not in the
least surprising Mr. Superintendent.</p>
<p>&lsquo;All right, Sharpeye?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;All right, sir.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;All right, Trampfoot?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;All right, sir.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Is Quickear there?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Here am I, sir.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Come with us.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Yes, sir.&rsquo;</p>
<p>So, Sharpeye went before, and Mr. Superintendent and I went next,
and Trampfoot and Quickear marched as rear-guard.&nbsp; Sharp-eye, I
soon had occasion to remark, had a skilful and quite professional way
of opening doors&mdash;touched latches delicately, as if they were keys
of musical instruments&mdash;opened every door he touched, as if he
were perfectly confident that there was stolen property behind it&mdash;instantly
insinuated himself, to prevent its being shut.</p>
<p>Sharpeye opened several doors of traps that were set for Jack, but
Jack did not happen to be in any of them.&nbsp; They were all such miserable
places that really, Jack, if I were you, I would give them a wider berth.&nbsp;
In every trap, somebody was sitting over a fire, waiting for Jack.&nbsp;
Now, it was a crouching old woman, like the picture of the Norwood Gipsy
in the old sixpenny dream-books; now, it was a crimp of the male sex,
in a checked shirt and without a coat, reading a newspaper; now, it
was a man crimp and a woman crimp, who always introduced themselves
as united in holy matrimony; now, it was Jack&rsquo;s delight, his (un)lovely
Nan; but they were all waiting for Jack, and were all frightfully disappointed
to see us.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Who have you got up-stairs here?&rsquo; says Sharpeye, generally.&nbsp;
(In the Move-on tone.)</p>
<p>&lsquo;Nobody, surr; sure not a blessed sowl!&rsquo;&nbsp; (Irish
feminine reply.)</p>
<p>&lsquo;What do you mean by nobody?&nbsp; Didn&rsquo;t I hear a woman&rsquo;s
step go up-stairs when my hand was on the latch?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Ah! sure thin you&rsquo;re right, surr, I forgot her!&nbsp;
&rsquo;Tis on&rsquo;y Betsy White, surr.&nbsp; Ah! you know Betsy, surr.&nbsp;
Come down, Betsy darlin&rsquo;, and say the gintlemin.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Generally, Betsy looks over the banisters (the steep staircase is
in the room) with a forcible expression in her protesting face, of an
intention to compensate herself for the present trial by grinding Jack
finer than usual when he does come.&nbsp; Generally, Sharpeye turns
to Mr. Superintendent, and says, as if the subjects of his remarks were
wax-work:</p>
<p>&lsquo;One of the worst, sir, this house is.&nbsp; This woman has
been indicted three times.&nbsp; This man&rsquo;s a regular bad one
likewise.&nbsp; His real name is Pegg.&nbsp; Gives himself out as Waterhouse.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Never had sitch a name as Pegg near me back, thin, since I
was in this house, bee the good Lard!&rsquo; says the woman.</p>
<p>Generally, the man says nothing at all, but becomes exceedingly round-shouldered,
and pretends to read his paper with rapt attention.&nbsp; Generally,
Sharpeye directs our observation with a look, to the prints and pictures
that are invariably numerous on the walls.&nbsp; Always, Trampfoot and
Quickear are taking notice on the doorstep.&nbsp; In default of Sharpeye
being acquainted with the exact individuality of any gentleman encountered,
one of these two is sure to proclaim from the outer air, like a gruff
spectre, that Jackson is not Jackson, but knows himself to be Fogle;
or that Canlon is Walker&rsquo;s brother, against whom there was not
sufficient evidence; or that the man who says he never was at sea since
he was a boy, came ashore from a voyage last Thursday, or sails tomorrow
morning.&nbsp; &lsquo;And that is a bad class of man, you see,&rsquo;
says Mr. Superintendent, when he got out into the dark again, &lsquo;and
very difficult to deal with, who, when he has made this place too hot
to hold him, enters himself for a voyage as steward or cook, and is
out of knowledge for months, and then turns up again worse than ever.&rsquo;</p>
<p>When we had gone into many such houses, and had come out (always
leaving everybody relapsing into waiting for Jack), we started off to
a singing-house where Jack was expected to muster strong.</p>
<p>The vocalisation was taking place in a long low room up-stairs; at
one end, an orchestra of two performers, and a small platform; across
the room, a series of open pews for Jack, with an aisle down the middle;
at the other end a larger pew than the rest, entitled SNUG, and reserved
for mates and similar good company.&nbsp; About the room, some amazing
coffee-coloured pictures varnished an inch deep, and some stuffed creatures
in cases; dotted among the audience, in Sung and out of Snug, the &lsquo;Professionals;&rsquo;
among them, the celebrated comic favourite Mr. Banjo Bones, looking
very hideous with his blackened face and limp sugar-loaf hat; beside
him, sipping rum-and-water, Mrs. Banjo Bones, in her natural colours&mdash;a
little heightened.</p>
<p>It was a Friday night, and Friday night was considered not a good
night for Jack.&nbsp; At any rate, Jack did not show in very great force
even here, though the house was one to which he much resorts, and where
a good deal of money is taken.&nbsp; There was British Jack, a little
maudlin and sleepy, lolling over his empty glass, as if he were trying
to read his fortune at the bottom; there was Loafing Jack of the Stars
and Stripes, rather an unpromising customer, with his long nose, lank
cheek, high cheek-bones, and nothing soft about him but his cabbage-leaf
hat; there was Spanish Jack, with curls of black hair, rings in his
ears, and a knife not far from his hand, if you got into trouble with
him; there were Maltese Jack, and Jack of Sweden, and Jack the Finn,
looming through the smoke of their pipes, and turning faces that looked
as if they were carved out of dark wood, towards the young lady dancing
the hornpipe: who found the platform so exceedingly small for it, that
I had a nervous expectation of seeing her, in the backward steps, disappear
through the window.&nbsp; Still, if all hands had been got together,
they would not have more than half-filled the room.&nbsp; Observe, however,
said Mr. Licensed Victualler, the host, that it was Friday night, and,
besides, it was getting on for twelve, and Jack had gone aboard.&nbsp;
A sharp and watchful man, Mr. Licensed Victualler, the host, with tight
lips and a complete edition of Cocker&rsquo;s arithmetic in each eye.&nbsp;
Attended to his business himself, he said.&nbsp; Always on the spot.&nbsp;
When he heard of talent, trusted nobody&rsquo;s account of it, but went
off by rail to see it.&nbsp; If true talent, engaged it.&nbsp; Pounds
a week for talent&mdash;four pound&mdash;five pound.&nbsp; Banjo Bones
was undoubted talent.&nbsp; Hear this instrument that was going to play&mdash;it
was real talent!&nbsp; In truth it was very good; a kind of piano-accordion,
played by a young girl of a delicate prettiness of face, figure, and
dress, that made the audience look coarser.&nbsp; She sang to the instrument,
too; first, a song about village bells, and how they chimed; then a
song about how I went to sea; winding up with an imitation of the bagpipes,
which Mercantile Jack seemed to understand much the best.&nbsp; A good
girl, said Mr. Licensed Victualler.&nbsp; Kept herself select.&nbsp;
Sat in Snug, not listening to the blandishments of Mates.&nbsp; Lived
with mother.&nbsp; Father dead.&nbsp; Once a merchant well to do, but
over-speculated himself.&nbsp; On delicate inquiry as to salary paid
for item of talent under consideration, Mr. Victualler&rsquo;s pounds
dropped suddenly to shillings&mdash;still it was a very comfortable
thing for a young person like that, you know; she only went on six times
a night, and was only required to be there from six at night to twelve.&nbsp;
What was more conclusive was, Mr. Victualler&rsquo;s assurance that
he &lsquo;never allowed any language, and never suffered any disturbance.&rsquo;&nbsp;
Sharpeye confirmed the statement, and the order that prevailed was the
best proof of it that could have been cited.&nbsp; So, I came to the
conclusion that poor Mercantile Jack might do (as I am afraid he does)
much worse than trust himself to Mr. Victualler, and pass his evenings
here.</p>
<p>But we had not yet looked, Mr. Superintendent&mdash;said Trampfoot,
receiving us in the street again with military salute&mdash;for Dark
Jack.&nbsp; True, Trampfoot.&nbsp; Ring the wonderful stick, rub the
wonderful lantern, and cause the spirits of the stick and lantern to
convey us to the Darkies.</p>
<p>There was no disappointment in the matter of Dark Jack; <i>he</i>
was producible.&nbsp; The Genii set us down in the little first floor
of a little public-house, and there, in a stiflingly close atmosphere,
were Dark Jack, and Dark Jack&rsquo;s delight, his <i>white</i> unlovely
Nan, sitting against the wall all round the room.&nbsp; More than that:
Dark Jack&rsquo;s delight was the least unlovely Nan, both morally and
physically, that I saw that night.</p>
<p>As a fiddle and tambourine band were sitting among the company, Quickear
suggested why not strike up?&nbsp; &lsquo;Ah, la&rsquo;ads!&rsquo; said
a negro sitting by the door, &lsquo;gib the jebblem a darnse.&nbsp;
Tak&rsquo; yah pardlers, jebblem, for &rsquo;um QUAD-rill.&rsquo;</p>
<p>This was the landlord, in a Greek cap, and a dress half Greek and
half English.&nbsp; As master of the ceremonies, he called all the figures,
and occasionally addressed himself parenthetically&mdash;after this
manner.&nbsp; When he was very loud, I use capitals.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Now den!&nbsp; Hoy!&nbsp; ONE.&nbsp; Right and left.&nbsp;
(Put a steam on, gib &rsquo;um powder.)&nbsp; LA-dies&rsquo; chail.&nbsp;
BAL-loon say.&nbsp; Lemonade!&nbsp; TWO.&nbsp; AD-warnse and go back
(gib &rsquo;ell a breakdown, shake it out o&rsquo; yerselbs, keep a
movil).&nbsp; SWING-corners, BAL-loon say, and Lemonade!&nbsp; (Hoy!)&nbsp;
THREE.&nbsp; GENT come for&rsquo;ard with a lady and go back, hoppersite
come for&rsquo;ard and do what yer can.&nbsp; (Aeiohoy!)&nbsp; BAL-loon
say, and leetle lemonade.&nbsp; (Dat hair nigger by &rsquo;um fireplace
&rsquo;hind a&rsquo; time, shake it out o&rsquo; yerselbs, gib &rsquo;ell
a breakdown.)&nbsp; Now den!&nbsp; Hoy!&nbsp; FOUR!&nbsp; Lemonade.&nbsp;
BAL-loon say, and swing.&nbsp; FOUR ladies meet in &rsquo;um middle,
FOUR gents goes round &rsquo;um ladies, FOUR gents passes out under
&rsquo;um ladies&rsquo; arms, SWING&mdash;and Lemonade till &lsquo;a
moosic can&rsquo;t play no more!&nbsp; (Hoy, Hoy!)&rsquo;</p>
<p>The male dancers were all blacks, and one was an unusually powerful
man of six feet three or four.&nbsp; The sound of their flat feet on
the floor was as unlike the sound of white feet as their faces were
unlike white faces.&nbsp; They toed and heeled, shuffled, double-shuffled,
double-double-shuffled, covered the buckle, and beat the time out, rarely,
dancing with a great show of teeth, and with a childish good-humoured
enjoyment that was very prepossessing.&nbsp; They generally kept together,
these poor fellows, said Mr. Superintendent, because they were at a
disadvantage singly, and liable to slights in the neighbouring streets.&nbsp;
But, if I were Light Jack, I should be very slow to interfere oppressively
with Dark Jack, for, whenever I have had to do with him I have found
him a simple and a gentle fellow.&nbsp; Bearing this in mind, I asked
his friendly permission to leave him restoration of beer, in wishing
him good night, and thus it fell out that the last words I heard him
say as I blundered down the worn stairs, were, &lsquo;Jebblem&rsquo;s
elth!&nbsp; Ladies drinks fust!&rsquo;</p>
<p>The night was now well on into the morning, but, for miles and hours
we explored a strange world, where nobody ever goes to bed, but everybody
is eternally sitting up, waiting for Jack.&nbsp; This exploration was
among a labyrinth of dismal courts and blind alleys, called Entries,
kept in wonderful order by the police, and in much better order than
by the corporation: the want of gaslight in the most dangerous and infamous
of these places being quite unworthy of so spirited a town.&nbsp; I
need describe but two or three of the houses in which Jack was waited
for as specimens of the rest.&nbsp; Many we attained by noisome passages
so profoundly dark that we felt our way with our hands.&nbsp; Not one
of the whole number we visited, was without its show of prints and ornamental
crockery; the quantity of the latter set forth on little shelves and
in little cases, in otherwise wretched rooms, indicating that Mercantile
Jack must have an extraordinary fondness for crockery, to necessitate
so much of that bait in his traps.</p>
<p>Among such garniture, in one front parlour in the dead of the night,
four women were sitting by a fire.&nbsp; One of them had a male child
in her arms.&nbsp; On a stool among them was a swarthy youth with a
guitar, who had evidently stopped playing when our footsteps were heard.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Well I how do <i>you</i> do?&rsquo; says Mr. Superintendent,
looking about him.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Pretty well, sir, and hope you gentlemen are going to treat
us ladies, now you have come to see us.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Order there!&rsquo; says Sharpeye.</p>
<p>&lsquo;None of that!&rsquo; says Quickear.</p>
<p>Trampfoot, outside, is heard to confide to himself, &lsquo;Meggisson&rsquo;s
lot this is.&nbsp; And a bad &rsquo;un!&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Well!&rsquo; says Mr. Superintendent, laying his hand on the
shoulder of the swarthy youth, &lsquo;and who&rsquo;s this?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Antonio, sir.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;And what does <i>he</i> do here?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Come to give us a bit of music.&nbsp; No harm in that, I suppose?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;A young foreign sailor?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Yes.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s a Spaniard.&nbsp; You&rsquo;re a Spaniard,
ain&rsquo;t you, Antonio?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Me Spanish.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;And he don&rsquo;t know a word you say, not he; not if you
was to talk to him till doomsday.&rsquo;&nbsp; (Triumphantly, as if
it redounded to the credit of the house.)</p>
<p>&lsquo;Will he play something?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Oh, yes, if you like.&nbsp; Play something, Antonio.&nbsp;
<i>You</i> ain&rsquo;t ashamed to play something; are you?&rsquo;</p>
<p>The cracked guitar raises the feeblest ghost of a tune, and three
of the women keep time to it with their heads, and the fourth with the
child.&nbsp; If Antonio has brought any money in with him, I am afraid
he will never take it out, and it even strikes me that his jacket and
guitar may be in a bad way.&nbsp; But, the look of the young man and
the tinkling of the instrument so change the place in a moment to a
leaf out of Don Quixote, that I wonder where his mule is stabled, until
he leaves off.</p>
<p>I am bound to acknowledge (as it tends rather to my uncommercial
confusion), that I occasioned a difficulty in this establishment, by
having taken the child in my arms.&nbsp; For, on my offering to restore
it to a ferocious joker not unstimulated by rum, who claimed to be its
mother, that unnatural parent put her hands behind her, and declined
to accept it; backing into the fireplace, and very shrilly declaring,
regardless of remonstrance from her friends, that she knowed it to be
Law, that whoever took a child from its mother of his own will, was
bound to stick to it.&nbsp; The uncommercial sense of being in a rather
ridiculous position with the poor little child beginning to be frightened,
was relieved by my worthy friend and fellow-constable, Trampfoot; who,
laying hands on the article as if it were a Bottle, passed it on to
the nearest woman, and bade her &lsquo;take hold of that.&rsquo;&nbsp;
As we came out the Bottle was passed to the ferocious joker, and they
all sat down as before, including Antonio and the guitar.&nbsp; It was
clear that there was no such thing as a nightcap to this baby&rsquo;s
head, and that even he never went to bed, but was always kept up&mdash;and
would grow up, kept up&mdash;waiting for Jack.</p>
<p>Later still in the night, we came (by the court &lsquo;where the
man was murdered,&rsquo; and by the other court across the street, into
which his body was dragged) to another parlour in another Entry, where
several people were sitting round a fire in just the same way.&nbsp;
It was a dirty and offensive place, with some ragged clothes drying
in it; but there was a high shelf over the entrance-door (to be out
of the reach of marauding hands, possibly) with two large white loaves
on it, and a great piece of Cheshire cheese.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Well!&rsquo; says Mr. Superintendent, with a comprehensive
look all round.&nbsp; &lsquo;How do <i>you</i> do?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Not much to boast of, sir.&rsquo;&nbsp; From the curtseying
woman of the house.&nbsp; &lsquo;This is my good man, sir.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;You are not registered as a common Lodging House?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;No, sir.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Sharpeye (in the Move-on tone) puts in the pertinent inquiry, &lsquo;Then
why ain&rsquo;t you?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Ain&rsquo;t got no one here, Mr. Sharpeye,&rsquo; rejoin the
woman and my good man together, &lsquo;but our own family.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;How many are you in family?&rsquo;</p>
<p>The woman takes time to count, under pretence of coughing, and adds,
as one scant of breath, &lsquo;Seven, sir.&rsquo;</p>
<p>But she has missed one, so Sharpeye, who knows all about it, says:</p>
<p>&lsquo;Here&rsquo;s a young man here makes eight, who ain&rsquo;t
of your family?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;No, Mr. Sharpeye, he&rsquo;s a weekly lodger.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;What does he do for a living?&rsquo;</p>
<p>The young man here, takes the reply upon himself, and shortly answers,
&lsquo;Ain&rsquo;t got nothing to do.&rsquo;</p>
<p>The young man here, is modestly brooding behind a damp apron pendent
from a clothes-line.&nbsp; As I glance at him I become&mdash;but I don&rsquo;t
know why&mdash;vaguely reminded of Woolwich, Chatham, Portsmouth, and
Dover.&nbsp; When we get out, my respected fellow-constable Sharpeye,
addressing Mr. Superintendent, says:</p>
<p>&lsquo;You noticed that young man, sir, in at Darby&rsquo;s?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Yes.&nbsp; What is he?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Deserter, sir.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Mr. Sharpeye further intimates that when we have done with his services,
he will step back and take that young man.&nbsp; Which in course of
time he does: feeling at perfect ease about finding him, and knowing
for a moral certainty that nobody in that region will be gone to bed.</p>
<p>Later still in the night, we came to another parlour up a step or
two from the street, which was very cleanly, neatly, even tastefully,
kept, and in which, set forth on a draped chest of drawers masking the
staircase, was such a profusion of ornamental crockery, that it would
have furnished forth a handsome sale-booth at a fair.&nbsp; It backed
up a stout old lady&mdash;HOGARTH drew her exact likeness more than
once&mdash;and a boy who was carefully writing a copy in a copy-book.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Well, ma&rsquo;am, how do <i>you</i> do?&rsquo;</p>
<p>Sweetly, she can assure the dear gentlemen, sweetly.&nbsp; Charmingly,
charmingly.&nbsp; And overjoyed to see us!</p>
<p>&lsquo;Why, this is a strange time for this boy to be writing his
copy.&nbsp; In the middle of the night!&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;So it is, dear gentlemen, Heaven bless your welcome faces
and send ye prosperous, but he has been to the Play with a young friend
for his diversion, and he combinates his improvement with entertainment,
by doing his school-writing afterwards, God be good to ye!&rsquo;</p>
<p>The copy admonished human nature to subjugate the fire of every fierce
desire.&nbsp; One might have thought it recommended stirring the fire,
the old lady so approved it.&nbsp; There she sat, rosily beaming at
the copy-book and the boy, and invoking showers of blessings on our
heads, when we left her in the middle of the night, waiting for Jack.</p>
<p>Later still in the night, we came to a nauseous room with an earth
floor, into which the refuse scum of an alley trickled.&nbsp; The stench
of this habitation was abominable; the seeming poverty of it, diseased
and dire.&nbsp; Yet, here again, was visitor or lodger&mdash;a man sitting
before the fire, like the rest of them elsewhere, and apparently not
distasteful to the mistress&rsquo;s niece, who was also before the fire.&nbsp;
The mistress herself had the misfortune of being in jail.</p>
<p>Three weird old women of transcendent ghastliness, were at needlework
at a table in this room.&nbsp; Says Trampfoot to First Witch, &lsquo;What
are you making?&rsquo;&nbsp; Says she, &lsquo;Money-bags.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;<i>What</i> are you making?&rsquo; retorts Trampfoot, a little
off his balance.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Bags to hold your money,&rsquo; says the witch, shaking her
head, and setting her teeth; &lsquo;you as has got it.&rsquo;</p>
<p>She holds up a common cash-bag, and on the table is a heap of such
bags.&nbsp; Witch Two laughs at us.&nbsp; Witch Three scowls at us.&nbsp;
Witch sisterhood all, stitch, stitch.&nbsp; First Witch has a circle
round each eye.&nbsp; I fancy it like the beginning of the development
of a perverted diabolical halo, and that when it spreads all round her
head, she will die in the odour of devilry.</p>
<p>Trampfoot wishes to be informed what First Witch has got behind the
table, down by the side of her, there?&nbsp; Witches Two and Three croak
angrily, &lsquo;Show him the child!&rsquo;</p>
<p>She drags out a skinny little arm from a brown dustheap on the ground.&nbsp;
Adjured not to disturb the child, she lets it drop again.&nbsp; Thus
we find at last that there is one child in the world of Entries who
goes to bed&mdash;if this be bed.</p>
<p>Mr. Superintendent asks how long are they going to work at those
bags?</p>
<p>How long?&nbsp; First Witch repeats.&nbsp; Going to have supper presently.&nbsp;
See the cups and saucers, and the plates.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Late?&nbsp; Ay!&nbsp; But we has to &rsquo;arn our supper
afore we eats it!&rsquo;&nbsp; Both the other witches repeat this after
First Witch, and take the Uncommercial measurement with their eyes,
as for a charmed winding-sheet.&nbsp; Some grim discourse ensues, referring
to the mistress of the cave, who will be released from jail to-morrow.&nbsp;
Witches pronounce Trampfoot &lsquo;right there,&rsquo; when he deems
it a trying distance for the old lady to walk; she shall be fetched
by niece in a spring-cart.</p>
<p>As I took a parting look at First Witch in turning away, the red
marks round her eyes seemed to have already grown larger, and she hungrily
and thirstily looked out beyond me into the dark doorway, to see if
Jack was there.&nbsp; For, Jack came even here, and the mistress had
got into jail through deluding Jack.</p>
<p>When I at last ended this night of travel and got to bed, I failed
to keep my mind on comfortable thoughts of Seaman&rsquo;s Homes (not
overdone with strictness), and improved dock regulations giving Jack
greater benefit of fire and candle aboard ship, through my mind&rsquo;s
wandering among the vermin I had seen.&nbsp; Afterwards the same vermin
ran all over my sleep.&nbsp; Evermore, when on a breezy day I see Poor
Mercantile Jack running into port with a fair wind under all sail, I
shall think of the unsleeping host of devourers who never go to bed,
and are always in their set traps waiting for him.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER VI&mdash;REFRESHMENTS FOR TRAVELLERS</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>In the late high winds I was blown to a great many places&mdash;and
indeed, wind or no wind, I generally have extensive transactions on
hand in the article of Air&mdash;but I have not been blown to any English
place lately, and I very seldom have blown to any English place in my
life, where I could get anything good to eat and drink in five minutes,
or where, if I sought it, I was received with a welcome.</p>
<p>This is a curious thing to consider.&nbsp; But before (stimulated
by my own experiences and the representations of many fellow-travellers
of every uncommercial and commercial degree) I consider it further,
I must utter a passing word of wonder concerning high winds.</p>
<p>I wonder why metropolitan gales always blow so hard at Walworth.&nbsp;
I cannot imagine what Walworth has done, to bring such windy punishment
upon itself, as I never fail to find recorded in the newspapers when
the wind has blown at all hard.&nbsp; Brixton seems to have something
on its conscience; Peckham suffers more than a virtuous Peckham might
be supposed to deserve; the howling neighbourhood of Deptford figures
largely in the accounts of the ingenious gentlemen who are out in every
wind that blows, and to whom it is an ill high wind that blows no good;
but, there can hardly be any Walworth left by this time.&nbsp; It must
surely be blown away.&nbsp; I have read of more chimney-stacks and house-copings
coming down with terrific smashes at Walworth, and of more sacred edifices
being nearly (not quite) blown out to sea from the same accursed locality,
than I have read of practised thieves with the appearance and manners
of gentlemen&mdash;a popular phenomenon which never existed on earth
out of fiction and a police report.&nbsp; Again: I wonder why people
are always blown into the Surrey Canal, and into no other piece of water!&nbsp;
Why do people get up early and go out in groups, to be blown into the
Surrey Canal?&nbsp; Do they say to one another, &lsquo;Welcome death,
so that we get into the newspapers&rsquo;?&nbsp; Even that would be
an insufficient explanation, because even then they might sometimes
put themselves in the way of being blown into the Regent&rsquo;s Canal,
instead of always saddling Surrey for the field.&nbsp; Some nameless
policeman, too, is constantly, on the slightest provocation, getting
himself blown into this same Surrey Canal.&nbsp; Will SIR RICHARD MAYNE
see to it, and restrain that weak-minded and feeble-bodied constable?</p>
<p>To resume the consideration of the curious question of Refreshment.&nbsp;
I am a Briton, and, as such, I am aware that I never will be a slave&mdash;and
yet I have latent suspicion that there must be some slavery of wrong
custom in this matter.</p>
<p>I travel by railroad.&nbsp; I start from home at seven or eight in
the morning, after breakfasting hurriedly.&nbsp; What with skimming
over the open landscape, what with mining in the damp bowels of the
earth, what with banging, booming and shrieking the scores of miles
away, I am hungry when I arrive at the &lsquo;Refreshment&rsquo; station
where I am expected.&nbsp; Please to observe, expected.&nbsp; I have
said, I am hungry; perhaps I might say, with greater point and force,
that I am to some extent exhausted, and that I need&mdash;in the expressive
French sense of the word&mdash;to be restored.&nbsp; What is provided
for my restoration?&nbsp; The apartment that is to restore me is a wind-trap,
cunningly set to inveigle all the draughts in that country-side, and
to communicate a special intensity and velocity to them as they rotate
in two hurricanes: one, about my wretched head: one, about my wretched
legs.&nbsp; The training of the young ladies behind the counter who
are to restore me, has been from their infancy directed to the assumption
of a defiant dramatic show that I am <i>not</i> expected.&nbsp; It is
in vain for me to represent to them by my humble and conciliatory manners,
that I wish to be liberal.&nbsp; It is in vain for me to represent to
myself, for the encouragement of my sinking soul, that the young ladies
have a pecuniary interest in my arrival.&nbsp; Neither my reason nor
my feelings can make head against the cold glazed glare of eye with
which I am assured that I am not expected, and not wanted.&nbsp; The
solitary man among the bottles would sometimes take pity on me, if he
dared, but he is powerless against the rights and mights of Woman.&nbsp;
(Of the page I make no account, for, he is a boy, and therefore the
natural enemy of Creation.)&nbsp; Chilling fast, in the deadly tornadoes
to which my upper and lower extremities are exposed, and subdued by
the moral disadvantage at which I stand, I turn my disconsolate eyes
on the refreshments that are to restore me.&nbsp; I find that I must
either scald my throat by insanely ladling into it, against time and
for no wager, brown hot water stiffened with flour; or I must make myself
flaky and sick with Banbury cake; or, I must stuff into my delicate
organisation, a currant pincushion which I know will swell into immeasurable
dimensions when it has got there; or, I must extort from an iron-bound
quarry, with a fork, as if I were farming an inhospitable soil, some
glutinous lumps of gristle and grease, called pork-pie.&nbsp; While
thus forlornly occupied, I find that the depressing banquet on the table
is, in every phase of its profoundly unsatisfactory character, so like
the banquet at the meanest and shabbiest of evening parties, that I
begin to think I must have &lsquo;brought down&rsquo; to supper, the
old lady unknown, blue with cold, who is setting her teeth on edge with
a cool orange at my elbow&mdash;that the pastrycook who has compounded
for the company on the lowest terms per head, is a fraudulent bankrupt,
redeeming his contract with the stale stock from his window&mdash;that,
for some unexplained reason, the family giving the party have become
my mortal foes, and have given it on purpose to affront me.&nbsp; Or,
I fancy that I am &lsquo;breaking up&rsquo; again, at the evening conversazione
at school, charged two-and-sixpence in the half-year&rsquo;s bill; or
breaking down again at that celebrated evening party given at Mrs. Bogles&rsquo;s
boarding-house when I was a boarder there, on which occasion Mrs. Bogles
was taken in execution by a branch of the legal profession who got in
as the harp, and was removed (with the keys and subscribed capital)
to a place of durance, half an hour prior to the commencement of the
festivities.</p>
<p>Take another case.</p>
<p>Mr. Grazinglands, of the Midland Counties, came to London by railroad
one morning last week, accompanied by the amiable and fascinating Mrs.
Grazinglands.&nbsp; Mr. G. is a gentleman of a comfortable property,
and had a little business to transact at the Bank of England, which
required the concurrence and signature of Mrs. G.&nbsp; Their business
disposed of, Mr. and Mrs. Grazinglands viewed the Royal Exchange, and
the exterior of St. Paul&rsquo;s Cathedral.&nbsp; The spirits of Mrs.
Grazinglands then gradually beginning to flag, Mr. Grazinglands (who
is the tenderest of husbands) remarked with sympathy, &lsquo;Arabella&rsquo;,
my dear, &lsquo;fear you are faint.&rsquo;&nbsp; Mrs. Grazing-lands
replied, &lsquo;Alexander, I am rather faint; but don&rsquo;t mind me,
I shall be better presently.&rsquo;&nbsp; Touched by the feminine meekness
of this answer, Mr. Grazinglands looked in at a pastrycook&rsquo;s window,
hesitating as to the expediency of lunching at that establishment.&nbsp;
He beheld nothing to eat, but butter in various forms, slightly charged
with jam, and languidly frizzling over tepid water.&nbsp; Two ancient
turtle-shells, on which was inscribed the legend, &lsquo;SOUPS,&rsquo;
decorated a glass partition within, enclosing a stuffy alcove, from
which a ghastly mockery of a marriage-breakfast spread on a rickety
table, warned the terrified traveller.&nbsp; An oblong box of stale
and broken pastry at reduced prices, mounted on a stool, ornamented
the doorway; and two high chairs that looked as if they were performing
on stilts, embellished the counter.&nbsp; Over the whole, a young lady
presided, whose gloomy haughtiness as she surveyed the street, announced
a deep-seated grievance against society, and an implacable determination
to be avenged.&nbsp; From a beetle-haunted kitchen below this institution,
fumes arose, suggestive of a class of soup which Mr. Grazinglands knew,
from painful experience, enfeebles the mind, distends the stomach, forces
itself into the complexion, and tries to ooze out at the eyes.&nbsp;
As he decided against entering, and turned away, Mrs. Grazinglands becoming
perceptibly weaker, repeated, &lsquo;I am rather faint, Alexander, but
don&rsquo;t mind me.&rsquo;&nbsp; Urged to new efforts by these words
of resignation, Mr. Grazinglands looked in at a cold and floury baker&rsquo;s
shop, where utilitarian buns unrelieved by a currant, consorted with
hard biscuits, a stone filter of cold water, a hard pale clock, and
a hard little old woman with flaxen hair, of an undeveloped-farinaceous
aspect, as if she had been fed upon seeds.&nbsp; He might have entered
even here, but for the timely remembrance coming upon him that Jairing&rsquo;s
was but round the corner.</p>
<p>Now, Jairing&rsquo;s being an hotel for families and gentlemen, in
high repute among the midland counties, Mr. Grazinglands plucked up
a great spirit when he told Mrs. Grazinglands she should have a chop
there.&nbsp; That lady, likewise felt that she was going to see Life.&nbsp;
Arriving on that gay and festive scene, they found the second waiter,
in a flabby undress, cleaning the windows of the empty coffee-room;
and the first waiter, denuded of his white tie, making up his cruets
behind the Post-Office Directory.&nbsp; The latter (who took them in
hand) was greatly put out by their patronage, and showed his mind to
be troubled by a sense of the pressing necessity of instantly smuggling
Mrs. Grazinglands into the obscurest corner of the building.&nbsp; This
slighted lady (who is the pride of her division of the county) was immediately
conveyed, by several dark passages, and up and down several steps, into
a penitential apartment at the back of the house, where five invalided
old plate-warmers leaned up against one another under a discarded old
melancholy sideboard, and where the wintry leaves of all the dining-tables
in the house lay thick.&nbsp; Also, a sofa, of incomprehensible form
regarded from any sofane point of view, murmured &lsquo;Bed;&rsquo;
while an air of mingled fluffiness and heeltaps, added, &lsquo;Second
Waiter&rsquo;s.&rsquo;&nbsp; Secreted in this dismal hold, objects of
a mysterious distrust and suspicion, Mr. Grazinglands and his charming
partner waited twenty minutes for the smoke (for it never came to a
fire), twenty-five minutes for the sherry, half an hour for the tablecloth,
forty minutes for the knives and forks, three-quarters of an hour for
the chops, and an hour for the potatoes.&nbsp; On settling the little
bill&mdash;which was not much more than the day&rsquo;s pay of a Lieutenant
in the navy&mdash;Mr.&nbsp; Grazinglands took heart to remonstrate against
the general quality and cost of his reception.&nbsp; To whom the waiter
replied, substantially, that Jairing&rsquo;s made it a merit to have
accepted him on any terms: &lsquo;for,&rsquo; added the waiter (unmistakably
coughing at Mrs. Grazinglands, the pride of her division of the county),
&lsquo;when indiwiduals is not staying in the &lsquo;Ouse, their favours
is not as a rule looked upon as making it worth Mr. Jairing&rsquo;s
while; nor is it, indeed, a style of business Mr. Jairing wishes.&rsquo;&nbsp;
Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Grazinglands passed out of Jairing&rsquo;s hotel
for Families and Gentlemen, in a state of the greatest depression, scorned
by the bar; and did not recover their self-respect for several days.</p>
<p>Or take another case.&nbsp; Take your own case.</p>
<p>You are going off by railway, from any Terminus.&nbsp; You have twenty
minutes for dinner, before you go.&nbsp; You want your dinner, and like
Dr. Johnson, Sir, you like to dine.&nbsp; You present to your mind,
a picture of the refreshment-table at that terminus.&nbsp; The conventional
shabby evening-party supper&mdash;accepted as the model for all termini
and all refreshment stations, because it is the last repast known to
this state of existence of which any human creature would partake, but
in the direst extremity&mdash;sickens your contemplation, and your words
are these: &lsquo;I cannot dine on stale sponge-cakes that turn to sand
in the mouth.&nbsp; I cannot dine on shining brown patties, composed
of unknown animals within, and offering to my view the device of an
indigestible star-fish in leaden pie-crust without.&nbsp; I cannot dine
on a sandwich that has long been pining under an exhausted receiver.&nbsp;
I cannot dine on barley-sugar.&nbsp; I cannot dine on Toffee.&rsquo;&nbsp;
You repair to the nearest hotel, and arrive, agitated, in the coffee-room.</p>
<p>It is a most astonishing fact that the waiter is very cold to you.&nbsp;
Account for it how you may, smooth it over how you will, you cannot
deny that he is cold to you.&nbsp; He is not glad to see you, he does
not want you, he would much rather you hadn&rsquo;t come.&nbsp; He opposes
to your flushed condition, an immovable composure.&nbsp; As if this
were not enough, another waiter, born, as it would seem, expressly to
look at you in this passage of your life, stands at a little distance,
with his napkin under his arm and his hands folded, looking at you with
all his might.&nbsp; You impress on your waiter that you have ten minutes
for dinner, and he proposes that you shall begin with a bit of fish
which will be ready in twenty.&nbsp; That proposal declined, he suggests&mdash;as
a neat originality&mdash;&lsquo;a weal or mutton cutlet.&rsquo;&nbsp;
You close with either cutlet, any cutlet, anything.&nbsp; He goes, leisurely,
behind a door and calls down some unseen shaft.&nbsp; A ventriloquial
dialogue ensues, tending finally to the effect that weal only, is available
on the spur of the moment.&nbsp; You anxiously call out, &lsquo;Veal,
then!&rsquo;&nbsp; Your waiter having settled that point, returns to
array your tablecloth, with a table napkin folded cocked-hat-wise (slowly,
for something out of window engages his eye), a white wine-glass, a
green wine-glass, a blue finger-glass, a tumbler, and a powerful field
battery of fourteen casters with nothing in them; or at all events&mdash;which
is enough for your purpose&mdash;with nothing in them that will come
out.&nbsp; All this time, the other waiter looks at you&mdash;with an
air of mental comparison and curiosity, now, as if it had occurred to
him that you are rather like his brother.&nbsp; Half your time gone,
and nothing come but the jug of ale and the bread, you implore your
waiter to &lsquo;see after that cutlet, waiter; pray do!&rsquo;&nbsp;
He cannot go at once, for he is carrying in seventeen pounds of American
cheese for you to finish with, and a small Landed Estate of celery and
water-cresses.&nbsp; The other waiter changes his leg, and takes a new
view of you, doubtfully, now, as if he had rejected the resemblance
to his brother, and had begun to think you more like his aunt or his
grandmother.&nbsp; Again you beseech your waiter with pathetic indignation,
to &lsquo;see after that cutlet!&rsquo;&nbsp; He steps out to see after
it, and by-and-by, when you are going away without it, comes back with
it.&nbsp; Even then, he will not take the sham silver cover off, without
a pause for a flourish, and a look at the musty cutlet as if he were
surprised to see it&mdash;which cannot possibly be the case, he must
have seen it so often before.&nbsp; A sort of fur has been produced
upon its surface by the cook&rsquo;s art, and in a sham silver vessel
staggering on two feet instead of three, is a cutaneous kind of sauce
of brown pimples and pickled cucumber.&nbsp; You order the bill, but
your waiter cannot bring your bill yet, because he is bringing, instead,
three flinty-hearted potatoes and two grim head of broccoli, like the
occasional ornaments on area railings, badly boiled.&nbsp; You know
that you will never come to this pass, any more than to the cheese and
celery, and you imperatively demand your bill; but, it takes time to
get, even when gone for, because your waiter has to communicate with
a lady who lives behind a sash-window in a corner, and who appears to
have to refer to several Ledgers before she can make it out&mdash;as
if you had been staying there a year.&nbsp; You become distracted to
get away, and the other waiter, once more changing his leg, still looks
at you&mdash;but suspiciously, now, as if you had begun to remind him
of the party who took the great-coats last winter.&nbsp; Your bill at
last brought and paid, at the rate of sixpence a mouthful, your waiter
reproachfully reminds you that &lsquo;attendance is not charged for
a single meal,&rsquo; and you have to search in all your pockets for
sixpence more.&nbsp; He has a worse opinion of you than ever, when you
have given it to him, and lets you out into the street with the air
of one saying to himself, as you cannot again doubt he is, &lsquo;I
hope we shall never see <i>you</i> here again!&rsquo;</p>
<p>Or, take any other of the numerous travelling instances in which,
with more time at your disposal, you are, have been, or may be, equally
ill served.&nbsp; Take the old-established Bull&rsquo;s Head with its
old-established knife-boxes on its old-established sideboards, its old-established
flue under its old-established four-post bedsteads in its old-established
airless rooms, its old-established frouziness up-stairs and down-stairs,
its old-established cookery, and its old-established principles of plunder.&nbsp;
Count up your injuries, in its side-dishes of ailing sweetbreads in
white poultices, of apothecaries&rsquo; powders in rice for curry, of
pale stewed bits of calf ineffectually relying for an adventitious interest
on forcemeat balls.&nbsp; You have had experience of the old-established
Bull&rsquo;s Head stringy fowls, with lower extremities like wooden
legs, sticking up out of the dish; of its cannibalic boiled mutton,
gushing horribly among its capers, when carved; of its little dishes
of pastry&mdash;roofs of spermaceti ointment, erected over half an apple
or four gooseberries.&nbsp; Well for you if you have yet forgotten the
old-established Bull&rsquo;s Head fruity port: whose reputation was
gained solely by the old-established price the Bull&rsquo;s Head put
upon it, and by the old-established air with which the Bull&rsquo;s
Head set the glasses and D&rsquo;Oyleys on, and held that Liquid Gout
to the three-and-sixpenny wax-candle, as if its old-established colour
hadn&rsquo;t come from the dyer&rsquo;s.</p>
<p>Or lastly, take to finish with, two cases that we all know, every
day.</p>
<p>We all know the new hotel near the station, where it is always gusty,
going up the lane which is always muddy, where we are sure to arrive
at night, and where we make the gas start awfully when we open the front
door.&nbsp; We all know the flooring of the passages and staircases
that is too new, and the walls that are too new, and the house that
is haunted by the ghost of mortar.&nbsp; We all know the doors that
have cracked, and the cracked shutters through which we get a glimpse
of the disconsolate moon.&nbsp; We all know the new people, who have
come to keep the new hotel, and who wish they had never come, and who
(inevitable result) wish <i>we</i> had never come.&nbsp; We all know
how much too scant and smooth and bright the new furniture is, and how
it has never settled down, and cannot fit itself into right places,
and will get into wrong places.&nbsp; We all know how the gas, being
lighted, shows maps of Damp upon the walls.&nbsp; We all know how the
ghost of mortar passes into our sandwich, stirs our negus, goes up to
bed with us, ascends the pale bedroom chimney, and prevents the smoke
from following.&nbsp; We all know how a leg of our chair comes off at
breakfast in the morning, and how the dejected waiter attributes the
accident to a general greenness pervading the establishment, and informs
us, in reply to a local inquiry, that he is thankful to say he is an
entire stranger in that part of the country and is going back to his
own connexion on Saturday.</p>
<p>We all know, on the other hand, the great station hotel belonging
to the company of proprietors, which has suddenly sprung up in the back
outskirts of any place we like to name, and where we look out of our
palatial windows at little back yards and gardens, old summer-houses,
fowl-houses, pigeon-traps, and pigsties.&nbsp; We all know this hotel
in which we can get anything we want, after its kind, for money; but
where nobody is glad to see us, or sorry to see us, or minds (our bill
paid) whether we come or go, or how, or when, or why, or cares about
us.&nbsp; We all know this hotel, where we have no individuality, but
put ourselves into the general post, as it were, and are sorted and
disposed of according to our division.&nbsp; We all know that we can
get on very well indeed at such a place, but still not perfectly well;
and this may be, because the place is largely wholesale, and there is
a lingering personal retail interest within us that asks to be satisfied.</p>
<p>To sum up.&nbsp; My uncommercial travelling has not yet brought me
to the conclusion that we are close to perfection in these matters.&nbsp;
And just as I do not believe that the end of the world will ever be
near at hand, so long as any of the very tiresome and arrogant people
who constantly predict that catastrophe are left in it, so, I shall
have small faith in the Hotel Millennium, while any of the uncomfortable
superstitions I have glanced at remain in existence.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER VII&mdash;TRAVELLING ABROAD</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>I got into the travelling chariot&mdash;it was of German make, roomy,
heavy, and unvarnished&mdash;I got into the travelling chariot, pulled
up the steps after me, shut myself in with a smart bang of the door,
and gave the word, &lsquo;Go on!&rsquo;</p>
<p>Immediately, all that W. and S.W. division of London began to slide
away at a pace so lively, that I was over the river, and past the Old
Kent Road, and out on Blackheath, and even ascending Shooter&rsquo;s
Hill, before I had had time to look about me in the carriage, like a
collected traveller.</p>
<p>I had two ample Imperials on the roof, other fitted storage for luggage
in front, and other up behind; I had a net for books overhead, great
pockets to all the windows, a leathern pouch or two hung up for odds
and ends, and a reading lamp fixed in the back of the chariot, in case
I should be benighted.&nbsp; I was amply provided in all respects, and
had no idea where I was going (which was delightful), except that I
was going abroad.</p>
<p>So smooth was the old high road, and so fresh were the horses, and
so fast went I, that it was midway between Gravesend and Rochester,
and the widening river was bearing the ships, white sailed or black-smoked,
out to sea, when I noticed by the wayside a very queer small boy.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Holloa!&rsquo; said I, to the very queer small boy, &lsquo;where
do you live?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;At Chatham,&rsquo; says he.</p>
<p>&lsquo;What do you do there?&rsquo; says I.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I go to school,&rsquo; says he.</p>
<p>I took him up in a moment, and we went on.&nbsp; Presently, the very
queer small boy says, &lsquo;This is Gads-hill we are coming to, where
Falstaff went out to rob those travellers, and ran away.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;You know something about Falstaff, eh?&rsquo; said I.</p>
<p>&lsquo;All about him,&rsquo; said the very queer small boy.&nbsp;
&lsquo;I am old (I am nine), and I read all sorts of books.&nbsp; But
<i>do</i> let us stop at the top of the hill, and look at the house
there, if you please!&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;You admire that house?&rsquo; said I.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Bless you, sir,&rsquo; said the very queer small boy, &lsquo;when
I was not more than half as old as nine, it used to be a treat for me
to be brought to look at it.&nbsp; And now, I am nine, I come by myself
to look at it.&nbsp; And ever since I can recollect, my father, seeing
me so fond of it, has often said to me, &ldquo;If you were to be very
persevering and were to work hard, you might some day come to live in
it.&rdquo;&nbsp; Though that&rsquo;s impossible!&rsquo; said the very
queer small boy, drawing a low breath, and now staring at the house
out of window with all his might.</p>
<p>I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer small boy;
for that house happens to be <i>my</i> house, and I have reason to believe
that what he said was true.</p>
<p>Well!&nbsp; I made no halt there, and I soon dropped the very queer
small boy and went on.&nbsp; Over the road where the old Romans used
to march, over the road where the old Canterbury pilgrims used to go,
over the road where the travelling trains of the old imperious priests
and princes used to jingle on horseback between the continent and this
Island through the mud and water, over the road where Shakespeare hummed
to himself, &lsquo;Blow, blow, thou winter wind,&rsquo; as he sat in
the saddle at the gate of the inn yard noticing the carriers; all among
the cherry orchards, apple orchards, corn-fields, and hop-gardens; so
went I, by Canterbury to Dover.&nbsp; There, the sea was tumbling in,
with deep sounds, after dark, and the revolving French light on Cape
Grinez was seen regularly bursting out and becoming obscured, as if
the head of a gigantic light-keeper in an anxious state of mind were
interposed every half-minute, to look how it was burning.</p>
<p>Early in the morning I was on the deck of the steam-packet, and we
were aiming at the bar in the usual intolerable manner, and the bar
was aiming at us in the usual intolerable manner, and the bar got by
far the best of it, and we got by far the worst&mdash;all in the usual
intolerable manner.</p>
<p>But, when I was clear of the Custom House on the other side, and
when I began to make the dust fly on the thirsty French roads, and when
the twigsome trees by the wayside (which, I suppose, never will grow
leafy, for they never did) guarded here and there a dusty soldier, or
field labourer, baking on a heap of broken stones, sound asleep in a
fiction of shade, I began to recover my travelling spirits.&nbsp; Coming
upon the breaker of the broken stones, in a hard, hot, shining hat,
on which the sun played at a distance as on a burning-glass, I felt
that now, indeed, I was in the dear old France of my affections.&nbsp;
I should have known it, without the well-remembered bottle of rough
ordinary wine, the cold roast fowl, the loaf, and the pinch of salt,
on which I lunched with unspeakable satisfaction, from one of the stuffed
pockets of the chariot.</p>
<p>I must have fallen asleep after lunch, for when a bright face looked
in at the window, I started, and said:</p>
<p>&lsquo;Good God, Louis, I dreamed you were dead!&rsquo;</p>
<p>My cheerful servant laughed, and answered:</p>
<p>&lsquo;Me?&nbsp; Not at all, sir.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;How glad I am to wake!&nbsp; What are we doing Louis?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;We go to take relay of horses.&nbsp; Will you walk up the
hill?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Certainly.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Welcome the old French hill, with the old French lunatic (not in
the most distant degree related to Sterne&rsquo;s Maria) living in a
thatched dog-kennel half-way up, and flying out with his crutch and
his big head and extended nightcap, to be beforehand with the old men
and women exhibiting crippled children, and with the children exhibiting
old men and women, ugly and blind, who always seemed by resurrectionary
process to be recalled out of the elements for the sudden peopling of
the solitude!</p>
<p>&lsquo;It is well,&rsquo; said I, scattering among them what small
coin I had; &lsquo;here comes Louis, and I am quite roused from my nap.&rsquo;</p>
<p>We journeyed on again, and I welcomed every new assurance that France
stood where I had left it.&nbsp; There were the posting-houses, with
their archways, dirty stable-yards, and clean post-masters&rsquo; wives,
bright women of business, looking on at the putting-to of the horses;
there were the postilions counting what money they got, into their hats,
and never making enough of it; there were the standard population of
grey horses of Flanders descent, invariably biting one another when
they got a chance; there were the fleecy sheepskins, looped on over
their uniforms by the postilions, like bibbed aprons when it blew and
rained; there were their Jack-boots, and their cracking whips; there
were the cathedrals that I got out to see, as under some cruel bondage,
in no wise desiring to see them; there were the little towns that appeared
to have no reason for being towns, since most of their houses were to
let and nobody could be induced to look at them, except the people who
couldn&rsquo;t let them and had nothing else to do but look at them
all day.&nbsp; I lay a night upon the road and enjoyed delectable cookery
of potatoes, and some other sensible things, adoption of which at home
would inevitably be shown to be fraught with ruin, somehow or other,
to that rickety national blessing, the British farmer; and at last I
was rattled, like a single pill in a box, over leagues of stones, until&mdash;madly
cracking, plunging, and flourishing two grey tails about&mdash;I made
my triumphal entry into Paris.</p>
<p>At Paris, I took an upper apartment for a few days in one of the
hotels of the Rue de Rivoli; my front windows looking into the garden
of the Tuileries (where the principal difference between the nursemaids
and the flowers seemed to be that the former were locomotive and the
latter not): my back windows looking at all the other back windows in
the hotel, and deep down into a paved yard, where my German chariot
had retired under a tight-fitting archway, to all appearance for life,
and where bells rang all day without anybody&rsquo;s minding them but
certain chamberlains with feather brooms and green baize caps, who here
and there leaned out of some high window placidly looking down, and
where neat waiters with trays on their left shoulders passed and repassed
from morning to night.</p>
<p>Whenever I am at Paris, I am dragged by invisible force into the
Morgue.&nbsp; I never want to go there, but am always pulled there.&nbsp;
One Christmas Day, when I would rather have been anywhere else, I was
attracted in, to see an old grey man lying all alone on his cold bed,
with a tap of water turned on over his grey hair, and running, drip,
drip, drip, down his wretched face until it got to the corner of his
mouth, where it took a turn, and made him look sly.&nbsp; One New Year&rsquo;s
Morning (by the same token, the sun was shining outside, and there was
a mountebank balancing a feather on his nose, within a yard of the gate),
I was pulled in again to look at a flaxen-haired boy of eighteen, with
a heart hanging on his breast&mdash;&lsquo;from his mother,&rsquo; was
engraven on it&mdash;who had come into the net across the river, with
a bullet wound in his fair forehead and his hands cut with a knife,
but whence or how was a blank mystery.&nbsp; This time, I was forced
into the same dread place, to see a large dark man whose disfigurement
by water was in a frightful manner comic, and whose expression was that
of a prize-fighter who had closed his eyelids under a heavy blow, but
was going immediately to open them, shake his head, and &lsquo;come
up smiling.&rsquo;&nbsp; Oh what this large dark man cost me in that
bright city!</p>
<p>It was very hot weather, and he was none the better for that, and
I was much the worse.&nbsp; Indeed, a very neat and pleasant little
woman with the key of her lodging on her forefinger, who had been showing
him to her little girl while she and the child ate sweetmeats, observed
monsieur looking poorly as we came out together, and asked monsieur,
with her wondering little eyebrows prettily raised, if there were anything
the matter?&nbsp; Faintly replying in the negative, monsieur crossed
the road to a wine-shop, got some brandy, and resolved to freshen himself
with a dip in the great floating bath on the river.</p>
<p>The bath was crowded in the usual airy manner, by a male population
in striped drawers of various gay colours, who walked up and down arm
in arm, drank coffee, smoked cigars, sat at little tables, conversed
politely with the damsels who dispensed the towels, and every now and
then pitched themselves into the river head foremost, and came out again
to repeat this social routine.&nbsp; I made haste to participate in
the water part of the entertainments, and was in the full enjoyment
of a delightful bath, when all in a moment I was seized with an unreasonable
idea that the large dark body was floating straight at me.</p>
<p>I was out of the river, and dressing instantly.&nbsp; In the shock
I had taken some water into my mouth, and it turned me sick, for I fancied
that the contamination of the creature was in it.&nbsp; I had got back
to my cool darkened room in the hotel, and was lying on a sofa there,
before I began to reason with myself.</p>
<p>Of course, I knew perfectly well that the large dark creature was
stone dead, and that I should no more come upon him out of the place
where I had seen him dead, than I should come upon the cathedral of
Notre-Dame in an entirely new situation.&nbsp; What troubled me was
the picture of the creature; and that had so curiously and strongly
painted itself upon my brain, that I could not get rid of it until it
was worn out.</p>
<p>I noticed the peculiarities of this possession, while it was a real
discomfort to me.&nbsp; That very day, at dinner, some morsel on my
plate looked like a piece of him, and I was glad to get up and go out.&nbsp;
Later in the evening, I was walking along the Rue St. Honor&eacute;,
when I saw a bill at a public room there, announcing small-sword exercise,
broad-sword exercise, wrestling, and other such feats.&nbsp; I went
in, and some of the sword-play being very skilful, remained.&nbsp; A
specimen of our own national sport, The British Boaxe, was announced
to be given at the close of the evening.&nbsp; In an evil hour, I determined
to wait for this Boaxe, as became a Briton.&nbsp; It was a clumsy specimen
(executed by two English grooms out of place), but one of the combatants,
receiving a straight right-hander with the glove between his eyes, did
exactly what the large dark creature in the Morgue had seemed going
to do&mdash;and finished me for that night.</p>
<p>There was rather a sickly smell (not at all an unusual fragrance
in Paris) in the little ante-room of my apartment at the hotel.&nbsp;
The large dark creature in the Morgue was by no direct experience associated
with my sense of smell, because, when I came to the knowledge of him,
he lay behind a wall of thick plate-glass as good as a wall of steel
or marble for that matter.&nbsp; Yet the whiff of the room never failed
to reproduce him.&nbsp; What was more curious, was the capriciousness
with which his portrait seemed to light itself up in my mind, elsewhere.&nbsp;
I might be walking in the Palais Royal, lazily enjoying the shop windows,
and might be regaling myself with one of the ready-made clothes shops
that are set out there.&nbsp; My eyes, wandering over impossible-waisted
dressing-gowns and luminous waistcoats, would fall upon the master,
or the shopman, or even the very dummy at the door, and would suggest
to me, &lsquo;Something like him!&rsquo;&mdash;and instantly I was sickened
again.</p>
<p>This would happen at the theatre, in the same manner.&nbsp; Often
it would happen in the street, when I certainly was not looking for
the likeness, and when probably there was no likeness there.&nbsp; It
was not because the creature was dead that I was so haunted, because
I know that I might have been (and I know it because I have been) equally
attended by the image of a living aversion.&nbsp; This lasted about
a week.&nbsp; The picture did not fade by degrees, in the sense that
it became a whit less forcible and distinct, but in the sense that it
obtruded itself less and less frequently.&nbsp; The experience may be
worth considering by some who have the care of children.&nbsp; It would
be difficult to overstate the intensity and accuracy of an intelligent
child&rsquo;s observation.&nbsp; At that impressible time of life, it
must sometimes produce a fixed impression.&nbsp; If the fixed impression
be of an object terrible to the child, it will be (for want of reasoning
upon) inseparable from great fear.&nbsp; Force the child at such a time,
be Spartan with it, send it into the dark against its will, leave it
in a lonely bedroom against its will, and you had better murder it.</p>
<p>On a bright morning I rattled away from Paris, in the German chariot,
and left the large dark creature behind me for good.&nbsp; I ought to
confess, though, that I had been drawn back to the Morgue, after he
was put underground, to look at his clothes, and that I found them frightfully
like him&mdash;particularly his boots.&nbsp; However, I rattled away
for Switzerland, looking forward and not backward, and so we parted
company.</p>
<p>Welcome again, the long, long spell of France, with the queer country
inns, full of vases of flowers and clocks, in the dull little town,
and with the little population not at all dull on the little Boulevard
in the evening, under the little trees!&nbsp; Welcome Monsieur the Cur&eacute;,
walking alone in the early morning a short way out of the town, reading
that eternal Breviary of yours, which surely might be almost read, without
book, by this time!&nbsp; Welcome Monsieur the Cur&eacute;, later in
the day, jolting through the highway dust (as if you had already ascended
to the cloudy region), in a very big-headed cabriolet, with the dried
mud of a dozen winters on it.&nbsp; Welcome again Monsieur the Cur&eacute;,
as we exchange salutations; you, straightening your back to look at
the German chariot, while picking in your little village garden a vegetable
or two for the day&rsquo;s soup: I, looking out of the German chariot
window in that delicious traveller&rsquo;s trance which knows no cares,
no yesterdays, no to-morrows, nothing but the passing objects and the
passing scents and sounds!&nbsp; And so I came, in due course of delight,
to Strasbourg, where I passed a wet Sunday evening at a window, while
an idle trifle of a vaudeville was played for me at the opposite house.</p>
<p>How such a large house came to have only three people living in it,
was its own affair.&nbsp; There were at least a score of windows in
its high roof alone; how many in its grotesque front, I soon gave up
counting.&nbsp; The owner was a shopkeeper, by name Straudenheim; by
trade&mdash;I couldn&rsquo;t make out what by trade, for he had forborne
to write that up, and his shop was shut.</p>
<p>At first, as I looked at Straudenheim&rsquo;s, through the steadily
falling rain, I set him up in business in the goose-liver line.&nbsp;
But, inspection of Straudenheim, who became visible at a window on the
second floor, convinced me that there was something more precious than
liver in the case.&nbsp; He wore a black velvet skull-cap, and looked
usurious and rich.&nbsp; A large-lipped, pear-nosed old man, with white
hair, and keen eyes, though near-sighted.&nbsp; He was writing at a
desk, was Straudenheim, and ever and again left off writing, put his
pen in his mouth, and went through actions with his right hand, like
a man steadying piles of cash.&nbsp; Five-franc pieces, Straudenheim,
or golden Napoleons?&nbsp; A jeweller, Straudenheim, a dealer in money,
a diamond merchant, or what?</p>
<p>Below Straudenheim, at a window on the first floor, sat his housekeeper&mdash;far
from young, but of a comely presence, suggestive of a well-matured foot
and ankle.&nbsp; She was cheerily dressed, had a fan in her hand, and
wore large gold earrings and a large gold cross.&nbsp; She would have
been out holiday-making (as I settled it) but for the pestilent rain.&nbsp;
Strasbourg had given up holiday-making for that once, as a bad job,
because the rain was jerking in gushes out of the old roof-spouts, and
running in a brook down the middle of the street.&nbsp; The housekeeper,
her arms folded on her bosom and her fan tapping her chin, was bright
and smiling at her open window, but otherwise Straudenheim&rsquo;s house
front was very dreary.&nbsp; The housekeeper&rsquo;s was the only open
window in it; Straudenheim kept himself close, though it was a sultry
evening when air is pleasant, and though the rain had brought into the
town that vague refreshing smell of grass which rain does bring in the
summer-time.</p>
<p>The dim appearance of a man at Straudenheim&rsquo;s shoulder, inspired
me with a misgiving that somebody had come to murder that flourishing
merchant for the wealth with which I had handsomely endowed him: the
rather, as it was an excited man, lean and long of figure, and evidently
stealthy of foot.&nbsp; But, he conferred with Straudenheim instead
of doing him a mortal injury, and then they both softly opened the other
window of that room&mdash;which was immediately over the housekeeper&rsquo;s&mdash;and
tried to see her by looking down.&nbsp; And my opinion of Straudenheim
was much lowered when I saw that eminent citizen spit out of window,
clearly with the hope of spitting on the housekeeper.</p>
<p>The unconscious housekeeper fanned herself, tossed her head, and
laughed.&nbsp; Though unconscious of Straudenheim, she was conscious
of somebody else&mdash;of me?&mdash;there was nobody else.</p>
<p>After leaning so far out of the window, that I confidently expected
to see their heels tilt up, Straudenheim and the lean man drew their
heads in and shut the window.&nbsp; Presently, the house door secretly
opened, and they slowly and spitefully crept forth into the pouring
rain.&nbsp; They were coming over to me (I thought) to demand satisfaction
for my looking at the housekeeper, when they plunged into a recess in
the architecture under my window and dragged out the puniest of little
soldiers, begirt with the most innocent of little swords.&nbsp; The
tall glazed head-dress of this warrior, Straudenheim instantly knocked
off, and out of it fell two sugar-sticks, and three or four large lumps
of sugar.</p>
<p>The warrior made no effort to recover his property or to pick up
his shako, but looked with an expression of attention at Straudenheim
when he kicked him five times, and also at the lean man when <i>he</i>
kicked him five times, and again at Straudenheim when he tore the breast
of his (the warrior&rsquo;s) little coat open, and shook all his ten
fingers in his face, as if they were ten thousand.&nbsp; When these
outrages had been committed, Straudenheim and his man went into the
house again and barred the door.&nbsp; A wonderful circumstance was,
that the housekeeper who saw it all (and who could have taken six such
warriors to her buxom bosom at once), only fanned herself and laughed
as she had laughed before, and seemed to have no opinion about it, one
way or other.</p>
<p>But, the chief effect of the drama was the remarkable vengeance taken
by the little warrior.&nbsp; Left alone in the rain, he picked up his
shako; put it on, all wet and dirty as it was; retired into a court,
of which Straudenheim&rsquo;s house formed the corner; wheeled about;
and bringing his two forefingers close to the top of his nose, rubbed
them over one another, cross-wise, in derision, defiance, and contempt
of Straudenheim.&nbsp; Although Straudenheim could not possibly be supposed
to be conscious of this strange proceeding, it so inflated and comforted
the little warrior&rsquo;s soul, that twice he went away, and twice
came back into the court to repeat it, as though it must goad his enemy
to madness.&nbsp; Not only that, but he afterwards came back with two
other small warriors, and they all three did it together.&nbsp; Not
only that&mdash;as I live to tell the tale!&mdash;but just as it was
falling quite dark, the three came back, bringing with them a huge bearded
Sapper, whom they moved, by recital of the original wrong, to go through
the same performance, with the same complete absence of all possible
knowledge of it on the part of Straudenheim.&nbsp; And then they all
went away, arm in arm, singing.</p>
<p>I went away too, in the German chariot at sunrise, and rattled on,
day after day, like one in a sweet dream; with so many clear little
bells on the harness of the horses, that the nursery rhyme about Banbury
Cross and the venerable lady who rode in state there, was always in
my ears.&nbsp; And now I came to the land of wooden houses, innocent
cakes, thin butter soup, and spotless little inn bedrooms with a family
likeness to Dairies.&nbsp; And now the Swiss marksmen were for ever
rifle-shooting at marks across gorges, so exceedingly near my ear, that
I felt like a new Gesler in a Canton of Tells, and went in highly-deserved
danger of my tyrannical life.&nbsp; The prizes at these shootings, were
watches, smart handkerchiefs, hats, spoons, and (above all) tea-trays;
and at these contests I came upon a more than usually accomplished and
amiable countryman of my own, who had shot himself deaf in whole years
of competition, and had won so many tea-trays that he went about the
country with his carriage full of them, like a glorified Cheap-Jack.</p>
<p>In the mountain-country into which I had now travelled, a yoke of
oxen were sometimes hooked on before the post-horses, and I went lumbering
up, up, up, through mist and rain, with the roar of falling water for
change of music.&nbsp; Of a sudden, mist and rain would clear away,
and I would come down into picturesque little towns with gleaming spires
and odd towers; and would stroll afoot into market-places in steep winding
streets, where a hundred women in bodices, sold eggs and honey, butter
and fruit, and suckled their children as they sat by their clean baskets,
and had such enormous go&icirc;tres (or glandular swellings in the throat)
that it became a science to know where the nurse ended and the child
began.&nbsp; About this time, I deserted my German chariot for the back
of a mule (in colour and consistency so very like a dusty old hair trunk
I once had at school, that I half expected to see my initials in brass-headed
nails on his backbone), and went up a thousand rugged ways, and looked
down at a thousand woods of fir and pine, and would on the whole have
preferred my mule&rsquo;s keeping a little nearer to the inside, and
not usually travelling with a hoof or two over the precipice&mdash;though
much consoled by explanation that this was to be attributed to his great
sagacity, by reason of his carrying broad loads of wood at other times,
and not being clear but that I myself belonged to that station of life,
and required as much room as they.&nbsp; He brought me safely, in his
own wise way, among the passes of the Alps, and here I enjoyed a dozen
climates a day; being now (like Don Quixote on the back of the wooden
horse) in the region of wind, now in the region of fire, now in the
region of unmelting ice and snow.&nbsp; Here, I passed over trembling
domes of ice, beneath which the cataract was roaring; and here was received
under arches of icicles, of unspeakable beauty; and here the sweet air
was so bracing and so light, that at halting-times I rolled in the snow
when I saw my mule do it, thinking that he must know best.&nbsp; At
this part of the journey we would come, at mid-day, into half an hour&rsquo;s
thaw: when the rough mountain inn would be found on an island of deep
mud in a sea of snow, while the baiting strings of mules, and the carts
full of casks and bales, which had been in an Arctic condition a mile
off, would steam again.&nbsp; By such ways and means, I would come to
the cluster of ch&acirc;lets where I had to turn out of the track to
see the waterfall; and then, uttering a howl like a young giant, on
espying a traveller&mdash;in other words, something to eat&mdash;coming
up the steep, the idiot lying on the wood-pile who sunned himself and
nursed his go&icirc;tre, would rouse the woman-guide within the hut,
who would stream out hastily, throwing her child over one of her shoulders
and her go&icirc;tre over the other, as she came along.&nbsp; I slept
at religious houses, and bleak refuges of many kinds, on this journey,
and by the stove at night heard stories of travellers who had perished
within call, in wreaths and drifts of snow.&nbsp; One night the stove
within, and the cold outside, awakened childish associations long forgotten,
and I dreamed I was in Russia&mdash;the identical serf out of a picture-book
I had, before I could read it for myself&mdash;and that I was going
to be knouted by a noble personage in a fur cap, boots, and earrings,
who, I think, must have come out of some melodrama.</p>
<p>Commend me to the beautiful waters among these mountains!&nbsp; Though
I was not of their mind: they, being inveterately bent on getting down
into the level country, and I ardently desiring to linger where I was.&nbsp;
What desperate leaps they took, what dark abysses they plunged into,
what rocks they wore away, what echoes they invoked!&nbsp; In one part
where I went, they were pressed into the service of carrying wood down,
to be burnt next winter, as costly fuel, in Italy.&nbsp; But, their
fierce savage nature was not to be easily constrained, and they fought
with every limb of the wood; whirling it round and round, stripping
its bark away, dashing it against pointed corners, driving it out of
the course, and roaring and flying at the peasants who steered it back
again from the bank with long stout poles.&nbsp; Alas! concurrent streams
of time and water carried <i>me</i> down fast, and I came, on an exquisitely
clear day, to the Lausanne shore of the Lake of Geneva, where I stood
looking at the bright blue water, the flushed white mountains opposite,
and the boats at my feet with their furled Mediterranean sails, showing
like enormous magnifications of this goose-quill pen that is now in
my hand.</p>
<p>- The sky became overcast without any notice; a wind very like the
March east wind of England, blew across me; and a voice said, &lsquo;How
do you like it?&nbsp; Will it do?&rsquo;</p>
<p>I had merely shut myself, for half a minute, in a German travelling
chariot that stood for sale in the Carriage Department of the London
Pantechnicon.&nbsp; I had a commission to buy it, for a friend who was
going abroad; and the look and manner of the chariot, as I tried the
cushions and the springs, brought all these hints of travelling remembrance
before me.</p>
<p>&lsquo;It will do very well,&rsquo; said I, rather sorrowfully, as
I got out at the other door, and shut the carriage up.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER VIII&mdash;THE GREAT TASMANIA&rsquo;S CARGO</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>I travel constantly, up and down a certain line of railway that has
a terminus in London.&nbsp; It is the railway for a large military dep&ocirc;t,
and for other large barracks.&nbsp; To the best of my serious belief,
I have never been on that railway by daylight, without seeing some handcuffed
deserters in the train.</p>
<p>It is in the nature of things that such an institution as our English
army should have many bad and troublesome characters in it.&nbsp; But,
this is a reason for, and not against, its being made as acceptable
as possible to well-disposed men of decent behaviour.&nbsp; Such men
are assuredly not tempted into the ranks, by the beastly inversion of
natural laws, and the compulsion to live in worse than swinish foulness.&nbsp;
Accordingly, when any such Circumlocutional embellishments of the soldier&rsquo;s
condition have of late been brought to notice, we civilians, seated
in outer darkness cheerfully meditating on an Income Tax, have considered
the matter as being our business, and have shown a tendency to declare
that we would rather not have it misregulated, if such declaration may,
without violence to the Church Catechism, be hinted to those who are
put in authority over us.</p>
<p>Any animated description of a modern battle, any private soldier&rsquo;s
letter published in the newspapers, any page of the records of the Victoria
Cross, will show that in the ranks of the army, there exists under all
disadvantages as fine a sense of duty as is to be found in any station
on earth.&nbsp; Who doubts that if we all did our duty as faithfully
as the soldier does his, this world would be a better place?&nbsp; There
may be greater difficulties in our way than in the soldier&rsquo;s.&nbsp;
Not disputed.&nbsp; But, let us at least do our duty towards <i>him.</i></p>
<p>I had got back again to that rich and beautiful port where I had
looked after Mercantile Jack, and I was walking up a hill there, on
a wild March morning.&nbsp; My conversation with my official friend
Pangloss, by whom I was accidentally accompanied, took this direction
as we took the up-hill direction, because the object of my uncommercial
journey was to see some discharged soldiers who had recently come home
from India.&nbsp; There were men of HAVELOCK&rsquo;s among them; there
were men who had been in many of the great battles of the great Indian
campaign, among them; and I was curious to note what our discharged
soldiers looked like, when they were done with.</p>
<p>I was not the less interested (as I mentioned to my official friend
Pangloss) because these men had claimed to be discharged, when their
right to be discharged was not admitted.&nbsp; They had behaved with
unblemished fidelity and bravery; but, a change of circumstances had
arisen, which, as they considered, put an end to their compact and entitled
them to enter on a new one.&nbsp; Their demand had been blunderingly
resisted by the authorities in India: but, it is to be presumed that
the men were not far wrong, inasmuch as the bungle had ended in their
being sent home discharged, in pursuance of orders from home.&nbsp;
(There was an immense waste of money, of course.)</p>
<p>Under these circumstances&mdash;thought I, as I walked up the hill,
on which I accidentally encountered my official friend&mdash;under these
circumstances of the men having successfully opposed themselves to the
Pagoda Department of that great Circumlocution Office on which the sun
never sets and the light of reason never rises, the Pagoda Department
will have been particularly careful of the national honour.&nbsp; It
will have shown these men, in the scrupulous good faith, not to say
the generosity, of its dealing with them, that great national authorities
can have no small retaliations and revenges.&nbsp; It will have made
every provision for their health on the passage home, and will have
landed them, restored from their campaigning fatigues by a sea-voyage,
pure air, sound food, and good medicines.&nbsp; And I pleased myself
with dwelling beforehand, on the great accounts of their personal treatment
which these men would carry into their various towns and villages, and
on the increasing popularity of the service that would insensibly follow.&nbsp;
I almost began to hope that the hitherto-never-failing deserters on
my railroad would by-and-by become a phenomenon.</p>
<p>In this agreeable frame of mind I entered the workhouse of Liverpool.&mdash;For,
the cultivation of laurels in a sandy soil, had brought the soldiers
in question to <i>that</i> abode of Glory.</p>
<p>Before going into their wards to visit them, I inquired how they
had made their triumphant entry there?&nbsp; They had been brought through
the rain in carts it seemed, from the landing-place to the gate, and
had then been carried up-stairs on the backs of paupers.&nbsp; Their
groans and pains during the performance of this glorious pageant, had
been so distressing, as to bring tears into the eyes of spectators but
too well accustomed to scenes of suffering.&nbsp; The men were so dreadfully
cold, that those who could get near the fires were hard to be restrained
from thrusting their feet in among the blazing coals.&nbsp; They were
so horribly reduced, that they were awful to look upon.&nbsp; Racked
with dysentery and blackened with scurvy, one hundred and forty wretched
soldiers had been revived with brandy and laid in bed.</p>
<p>My official friend Pangloss is lineally descended from a learned
doctor of that name, who was once tutor to Candide, an ingenious young
gentleman of some celebrity.&nbsp; In his personal character, he is
as humane and worthy a gentleman as any I know; in his official capacity,
he unfortunately preaches the doctrines of his renowned ancestor, by
demonstrating on all occasions that we live in the best of all possible
official worlds.</p>
<p>&lsquo;In the name of Humanity,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;how did the
men fall into this deplorable state?&nbsp; Was the ship well found in
stores?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I am not here to asseverate that I know the fact, of my own
knowledge,&rsquo; answered Pangloss, &lsquo;but I have grounds for asserting
that the stores were the best of all possible stores.&rsquo;</p>
<p>A medical officer laid before us, a handful of rotten biscuit, and
a handful of split peas.&nbsp; The biscuit was a honeycombed heap of
maggots, and the excrement of maggots.&nbsp; The peas were even harder
than this filth.&nbsp; A similar handful had been experimentally boiled
six hours, and had shown no signs of softening.&nbsp; These were the
stores on which the soldiers had been fed.</p>
<p>&lsquo;The beef&mdash;&rsquo; I began, when Pangloss cut me short.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Was the best of all possible beef,&rsquo; said he.</p>
<p>But, behold, there was laid before us certain evidence given at the
Coroner&rsquo;s Inquest, holden on some of the men (who had obstinately
died of their treatment), and from that evidence it appeared that the
beef was the worst of possible beef!</p>
<p>&lsquo;Then I lay my hand upon my heart, and take my stand,&rsquo;
said Pangloss, &lsquo;by the pork, which was the best of all possible
pork.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;But look at this food before our eyes, if one may so misuse
the word,&rsquo; said I.&nbsp; &lsquo;Would any Inspector who did his
duty, pass such abomination?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;It ought not to have been passed,&rsquo; Pangloss admitted.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Then the authorities out there&mdash;&rsquo; I began, when
Pangloss cut me short again.</p>
<p>&lsquo;There would certainly seem to have been something wrong somewhere,&rsquo;
said he; &lsquo;but I am prepared to prove that the authorities out
there, are the best of all possible authorities.&rsquo;</p>
<p>I never heard of any impeached public authority in my life, who was
not the best public authority in existence.</p>
<p>&lsquo;We are told of these unfortunate men being laid low by scurvy,&rsquo;
said I.&nbsp; &lsquo;Since lime-juice has been regularly stored and
served out in our navy, surely that disease, which used to devastate
it, has almost disappeared?&nbsp; Was there lime-juice aboard this transport?&rsquo;</p>
<p>My official friend was beginning &lsquo;the best of all possible&mdash;&rsquo;
when an inconvenient medical forefinger pointed out another passage
in the evidence, from which it appeared that the lime-juice had been
bad too.&nbsp; Not to mention that the vinegar had been bad too, the
vegetables bad too, the cooking accommodation insufficient (if there
had been anything worth mentioning to cook), the water supply exceedingly
inadequate, and the beer sour.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Then the men,&rsquo; said Pangloss, a little irritated, &lsquo;Were
the worst of all possible men.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;In what respect?&rsquo; I asked.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Oh!&nbsp; Habitual drunkards,&rsquo; said Pangloss.</p>
<p>But, again the same incorrigible medical forefinger pointed out another
passage in the evidence, showing that the dead men had been examined
after death, and that they, at least, could not possibly have been habitual
drunkards, because the organs within them which must have shown traces
of that habit, were perfectly sound.</p>
<p>&lsquo;And besides,&rsquo; said the three doctors present, &lsquo;one
and all, habitual drunkards brought as low as these men have been, could
not recover under care and food, as the great majority of these men
are recovering.&nbsp; They would not have strength of constitution to
do it.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Reckless and improvident dogs, then,&rsquo; said Pangloss.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Always are&mdash;nine times out of ten.&rsquo;</p>
<p>I turned to the master of the workhouse, and asked him whether the
men had any money?</p>
<p>&lsquo;Money?&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;I have in my iron safe,
nearly four hundred pounds of theirs; the agents have nearly a hundred
pounds more and many of them have left money in Indian banks besides.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Hah!&rsquo; said I to myself, as we went up-stairs, &lsquo;this
is not the best of all possible stories, I doubt!&rsquo;</p>
<p>We went into a large ward, containing some twenty or five-and-twenty
beds.&nbsp; We went into several such wards, one after another.&nbsp;
I find it very difficult to indicate what a shocking sight I saw in
them, without frightening the reader from the perusal of these lines,
and defeating my object of making it known.</p>
<p>O the sunken eyes that turned to me as I walked between the rows
of beds, or&mdash;worse still&mdash;that glazedly looked at the white
ceiling, and saw nothing and cared for nothing!&nbsp; Here, lay the
skeleton of a man, so lightly covered with a thin unwholesome skin,
that not a bone in the anatomy was clothed, and I could clasp the arm
above the elbow, in my finger and thumb.&nbsp; Here, lay a man with
the black scurvy eating his legs away, his gums gone, and his teeth
all gaunt and bare.&nbsp; This bed was empty, because gangrene had set
in, and the patient had died but yesterday.&nbsp; That bed was a hopeless
one, because its occupant was sinking fast, and could only be roused
to turn the poor pinched mask of face upon the pillow, with a feeble
moan.&nbsp; The awful thinness of the fallen cheeks, the awful brightness
of the deep set eyes, the lips of lead, the hands of ivory, the recumbent
human images lying in the shadow of death with a kind of solemn twilight
on them, like the sixty who had died aboard the ship and were lying
at the bottom of the sea, O Pangloss, GOD forgive you!</p>
<p>In one bed, lay a man whose life had been saved (as it was hoped)
by deep incisions in the feet and legs.&nbsp; While I was speaking to
him, a nurse came up to change the poultices which this operation had
rendered necessary, and I had an instinctive feeling that it was not
well to turn away, merely to spare myself.&nbsp; He was sorely wasted
and keenly susceptible, but the efforts he made to subdue any expression
of impatience or suffering, were quite heroic.&nbsp; It was easy to
see, in the shrinking of the figure, and the drawing of the bed-clothes
over the head, how acute the endurance was, and it made me shrink too,
as if I were in pain; but, when the new bandages were on, and the poor
feet were composed again, he made an apology for himself (though he
had not uttered a word), and said plaintively, &lsquo;I am so tender
and weak, you see, sir!&rsquo;&nbsp; Neither from him nor from any one
sufferer of the whole ghastly number, did I hear a complaint.&nbsp;
Of thankfulness for present solicitude and care, I heard much; of complaint,
not a word.</p>
<p>I think I could have recognised in the dismalest skeleton there,
the ghost of a soldier.&nbsp; Something of the old air was still latent
in the palest shadow of life I talked to.&nbsp; One emaciated creature,
in the strictest literality worn to the bone, lay stretched on his back,
looking so like death that I asked one of the doctors if he were not
dying, or dead?&nbsp; A few kind words from the doctor, in his ear,
and he opened his eyes, and smiled&mdash;looked, in a moment, as if
he would have made a salute, if he could.&nbsp; &lsquo;We shall pull
him through, please God,&rsquo; said the Doctor.&nbsp; &lsquo;Plase
God, surr, and thankye,&rsquo; said the patient.&nbsp; &lsquo;You are
much better to-day; are you not?&rsquo; said the Doctor.&nbsp; &lsquo;Plase
God, surr; &rsquo;tis the slape I want, surr; &rsquo;tis my breathin&rsquo;
makes the nights so long.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;He is a careful fellow
this, you must know,&rsquo; said the Doctor, cheerfully; &lsquo;it was
raining hard when they put him in the open cart to bring him here, and
he had the presence of mind to ask to have a sovereign taken out of
his pocket that he had there, and a cab engaged.&nbsp; Probably it saved
his life.&rsquo;&nbsp; The patient rattled out the skeleton of a laugh,
and said, proud of the story, &lsquo;&rsquo;Deed, surr, an open cairt
was a comical means o&rsquo; bringin&rsquo; a dyin&rsquo; man here,
and a clever way to kill him.&rsquo;&nbsp; You might have sworn to him
for a soldier when he said it.</p>
<p>One thing had perplexed me very much in going from bed to bed.&nbsp;
A very significant and cruel thing.&nbsp; I could find no young man
but one.&nbsp; He had attracted my notice, by having got up and dressed
himself in his soldier&rsquo;s jacket and trousers, with the intention
of sitting by the fire; but he had found himself too weak, and had crept
back to his bed and laid himself down on the outside of it.&nbsp; I
could have pronounced him, alone, to be a young man aged by famine and
sickness.&nbsp; As we were standing by the Irish soldier&rsquo;s bed,
I mentioned my perplexity to the Doctor.&nbsp; He took a board with
an inscription on it from the head of the Irishman&rsquo;s bed, and
asked me what age I supposed that man to be?&nbsp; I had observed him
with attention while talking to him, and answered, confidently, &lsquo;Fifty.&rsquo;&nbsp;
The Doctor, with a pitying glance at the patient, who had dropped into
a stupor again, put the board back, and said, &lsquo;Twenty-four.&rsquo;</p>
<p>All the arrangements of the wards were excellent.&nbsp; They could
not have been more humane, sympathising, gentle, attentive, or wholesome.&nbsp;
The owners of the ship, too, had done all they could, liberally.&nbsp;
There were bright fires in every room, and the convalescent men were
sitting round them, reading various papers and periodicals.&nbsp; I
took the liberty of inviting my official friend Pangloss to look at
those convalescent men, and to tell me whether their faces and bearing
were or were not, generally, the faces and bearing of steady respectable
soldiers?&nbsp; The master of the workhouse, overhearing me, said he
had had a pretty large experience of troops, and that better conducted
men than these, he had never had to do with.&nbsp; They were always
(he added) as we saw them.&nbsp; And of us visitors (I add) they knew
nothing whatever, except that we were there.</p>
<p>It was audacious in me, but I took another liberty with Pangloss.&nbsp;
Prefacing it with the observation that, of course, I knew beforehand
that there was not the faintest desire, anywhere, to hush up any part
of this dreadful business, and that the Inquest was the fairest of all
possible Inquests, I besought four things of Pangloss.&nbsp; Firstly,
to observe that the Inquest <i>was not held in that place</i>, but at
some distance off.&nbsp; Secondly, to look round upon those helpless
spectres in their beds.&nbsp; Thirdly, to remember that the witnesses
produced from among them before that Inquest, could not have been selected
because they were the men who had the most to tell it, but because they
happened to be in a state admitting of their safe removal.&nbsp; Fourthly,
to say whether the coroner and jury could have come there, to those
pillows, and taken a little evidence?&nbsp; My official friend declined
to commit himself to a reply.</p>
<p>There was a sergeant, reading, in one of the fireside groups.&nbsp;
As he was a man of very intelligent countenance, and as I have a great
respect for non-commissioned officers as a class, I sat down on the
nearest bed, to have some talk with him.&nbsp; (It was the bed of one
of the grisliest of the poor skeletons, and he died soon afterwards.)</p>
<p>&lsquo;I was glad to see, in the evidence of an officer at the Inquest,
sergeant, that he never saw men behave better on board ship than these
men.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;They did behave very well, sir.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I was glad to see, too, that every man had a hammock.&rsquo;&nbsp;
The sergeant gravely shook his head.&nbsp; &lsquo;There must be some
mistake, sir.&nbsp; The men of my own mess had no hammocks.&nbsp; There
were not hammocks enough on board, and the men of the two next messes
laid hold of hammocks for themselves as soon as they got on board, and
squeezed my men out, as I may say.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Had the squeezed-out men none then?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;None, sir.&nbsp; As men died, their hammocks were used by
other men, who wanted hammocks; but many men had none at all.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Then you don&rsquo;t agree with the evidence on that point?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Certainly not, sir.&nbsp; A man can&rsquo;t, when he knows
to the contrary.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Did any of the men sell their bedding for drink?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;There is some mistake on that point too, sir.&nbsp; Men were
under the impression&mdash;I knew it for a fact at the time&mdash;that
it was not allowed to take blankets or bedding on board, and so men
who had things of that sort came to sell them purposely.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Did any of the men sell their clothes for drink?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;They did, sir.&rsquo;&nbsp; (I believe there never was a more
truthful witness than the sergeant.&nbsp; He had no inclination to make
out a case.)</p>
<p>&lsquo;Many?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Some, sir&rsquo; (considering the question).&nbsp; &lsquo;Soldier-like.&nbsp;
They had been long marching in the rainy season, by bad roads&mdash;no
roads at all, in short&mdash;and when they got to Calcutta, men turned
to and drank, before taking a last look at it.&nbsp; Soldier-like.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Do you see any men in this ward, for example, who sold clothes
for drink at that time?&rsquo;</p>
<p>The sergeant&rsquo;s wan eye, happily just beginning to rekindle
with health, travelled round the place and came back to me.&nbsp; &lsquo;Certainly,
sir.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;The marching to Calcutta in the rainy season must have been
severe?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;It was very severe, sir.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Yet what with the rest and the sea air, I should have thought
that the men (even the men who got drunk) would have soon begun to recover
on board ship?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;So they might; but the bad food told upon them, and when we
got into a cold latitude, it began to tell more, and the men dropped.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;The sick had a general disinclination for food, I am told,
sergeant?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Have you seen the food, sir?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Some of it.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Have you seen the state of their mouths, sir?&rsquo;</p>
<p>If the sergeant, who was a man of a few orderly words, had spoken
the amount of this volume, he could not have settled that question better.&nbsp;
I believe the sick could as soon have eaten the ship, as the ship&rsquo;s
provisions.</p>
<p>I took the additional liberty with my friend Pangloss, when I had
left the sergeant with good wishes, of asking Pangloss whether he had
ever heard of biscuit getting drunk and bartering its nutritious qualities
for putrefaction and vermin; of peas becoming hardened in liquor; of
hammocks drinking themselves off the face of the earth; of lime-juice,
vegetables, vinegar, cooking accommodation, water supply, and beer,
all taking to drinking together and going to ruin?&nbsp; &lsquo;If not
(I asked him), what did he say in defence of the officers condemned
by the Coroner&rsquo;s jury, who, by signing the General Inspection
report relative to the ship Great Tasmania, chartered for these troops,
had deliberately asserted all that bad and poisonous dunghill refuse,
to be good and wholesome food?&rsquo;&nbsp; My official friend replied
that it was a remarkable fact, that whereas some officers were only
positively good, and other officers only comparatively better, those
particular officers were superlatively the very best of all possible
officers.</p>
<p>My hand and my heart fail me, in writing my record of this journey.&nbsp;
The spectacle of the soldiers in the hospital-beds of that Liverpool
workhouse (a very good workhouse, indeed, be it understood), was so
shocking and so shameful, that as an Englishman I blush to remember
it.&nbsp; It would have been simply unbearable at the time, but for
the consideration and pity with which they were soothed in their sufferings.</p>
<p>No punishment that our inefficient laws provide, is worthy of the
name when set against the guilt of this transaction.&nbsp; But, if the
memory of it die out unavenged, and if it do not result in the inexorable
dismissal and disgrace of those who are responsible for it, their escape
will be infamous to the Government (no matter of what party) that so
neglects its duty, and infamous to the nation that tamely suffers such
intolerable wrong to be done in its name.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER IX&mdash;CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>If the confession that I have often travelled from this Covent Garden
lodging of mine on Sundays, should give offence to those who never travel
on Sundays, they will be satisfied (I hope) by my adding that the journeys
in question were made to churches.</p>
<p>Not that I have any curiosity to hear powerful preachers.&nbsp; Time
was, when I was dragged by the hair of my head, as one may say, to hear
too many.&nbsp; On summer evenings, when every flower, and tree, and
bird, might have better addressed my soft young heart, I have in my
day been caught in the palm of a female hand by the crown, have been
violently scrubbed from the neck to the roots of the hair as a purification
for the Temple, and have then been carried off highly charged with saponaceous
electricity, to be steamed like a potato in the unventilated breath
of the powerful Boanerges Boiler and his congregation, until what small
mind I had, was quite steamed out of me.&nbsp; In which pitiable plight
I have been haled out of the place of meeting, at the conclusion of
the exercises, and catechised respecting Boanerges Boiler, his fifthly,
his sixthly, and his seventhly, until I have regarded that reverend
person in the light of a most dismal and oppressive Charade.&nbsp; Time
was, when I was carried off to platform assemblages at which no human
child, whether of wrath or grace, could possibly keep its eyes open,
and when I felt the fatal sleep stealing, stealing over me, and when
I gradually heard the orator in possession, spinning and humming like
a great top, until he rolled, collapsed, and tumbled over, and I discovered
to my burning shame and fear, that as to that last stage it was not
he, but I.&nbsp; I have sat under Boanerges when he has specifically
addressed himself to us&mdash;us, the infants&mdash;and at this present
writing I hear his lumbering jocularity (which never amused us, though
we basely pretended that it did), and I behold his big round face, and
I look up the inside of his outstretched coat-sleeve as if it were a
telescope with the stopper on, and I hate him with an unwholesome hatred
for two hours.&nbsp; Through such means did it come to pass that I knew
the powerful preacher from beginning to end, all over and all through,
while I was very young, and that I left him behind at an early period
of life.&nbsp; Peace be with him!&nbsp; More peace than he brought to
me!</p>
<p>Now, I have heard many preachers since that time&mdash;not powerful;
merely Christian, unaffected, and reverential&mdash;and I have had many
such preachers on my roll of friends.&nbsp; But, it was not to hear
these, any more than the powerful class, that I made my Sunday journeys.&nbsp;
They were journeys of curiosity to the numerous churches in the City
of London.&nbsp; It came into my head one day, here had I been cultivating
a familiarity with all the churches of Rome, and I knew nothing of the
insides of the old churches of London!&nbsp; This befell on a Sunday
morning.&nbsp; I began my expeditions that very same day, and they lasted
me a year.</p>
<p>I never wanted to know the names of the churches to which I went,
and to this hour I am profoundly ignorant in that particular of at least
nine-tenths of them.&nbsp; Indeed, saying that I know the church of
old GOWER&rsquo;S tomb (he lies in effigy with his head upon his books)
to be the church of Saint Saviour&rsquo;s, Southwark; and the church
of MILTON&rsquo;S tomb to be the church of Cripplegate; and the church
on Cornhill with the great golden keys to be the church of Saint Peter;
I doubt if I could pass a competitive examination in any of the names.&nbsp;
No question did I ever ask of living creature concerning these churches,
and no answer to any antiquarian question on the subject that I ever
put to books, shall harass the reader&rsquo;s soul.&nbsp; A full half
of my pleasure in them arose out of their mystery; mysterious I found
them; mysterious they shall remain for me.</p>
<p>Where shall I begin my round of hidden and forgotten old churches
in the City of London?</p>
<p>It is twenty minutes short of eleven on a Sunday morning, when I
stroll down one of the many narrow hilly streets in the City that tend
due south to the Thames.&nbsp; It is my first experiment, and I have
come to the region of Whittington in an omnibus, and we have put down
a fierce-eyed, spare old woman, whose slate-coloured gown smells of
herbs, and who walked up Aldersgate-street to some chapel where she
comforts herself with brimstone doctrine, I warrant.&nbsp; We have also
put down a stouter and sweeter old lady, with a pretty large prayer-book
in an unfolded pocket-handkerchief, who got out at a corner of a court
near Stationers&rsquo; Hall, and who I think must go to church there,
because she is the widow of some deceased old Company&rsquo;s Beadle.&nbsp;
The rest of our freight were mere chance pleasure-seekers and rural
walkers, and went on to the Blackwall railway.&nbsp; So many bells are
ringing, when I stand undecided at a street corner, that every sheep
in the ecclesiastical fold might be a bell-wether.&nbsp; The discordance
is fearful.&nbsp; My state of indecision is referable to, and about
equally divisible among, four great churches, which are all within sight
and sound, all within the space of a few square yards.</p>
<p>As I stand at the street corner, I don&rsquo;t see as many as four
people at once going to church, though I see as many as four churches
with their steeples clamouring for people.&nbsp; I choose my church,
and go up the flight of steps to the great entrance in the tower.&nbsp;
A mouldy tower within, and like a neglected washhouse.&nbsp; A rope
comes through the beamed roof, and a man in the corner pulls it and
clashes the bell&mdash;a whity-brown man, whose clothes were once black&mdash;a
man with flue on him, and cobweb.&nbsp; He stares at me, wondering how
I come there, and I stare at him, wondering how he comes there.&nbsp;
Through a screen of wood and glass, I peep into the dim church.&nbsp;
About twenty people are discernible, waiting to begin.&nbsp; Christening
would seem to have faded out of this church long ago, for the font has
the dust of desuetude thick upon it, and its wooden cover (shaped like
an old-fashioned tureen-cover) looks as if it wouldn&rsquo;t come off,
upon requirement.&nbsp; I perceive the altar to be rickety and the Commandments
damp.&nbsp; Entering after this survey, I jostle the clergyman in his
canonicals, who is entering too from a dark lane behind a pew of state
with curtains, where nobody sits.&nbsp; The pew is ornamented with four
blue wands, once carried by four somebodys, I suppose, before somebody
else, but which there is nobody now to hold or receive honour from.&nbsp;
I open the door of a family pew, and shut myself in; if I could occupy
twenty family pews at once I might have them.&nbsp; The clerk, a brisk
young man (how does <i>he</i> come here?), glances at me knowingly,
as who should say, &lsquo;You have done it now; you must stop.&rsquo;&nbsp;
Organ plays.&nbsp; Organ-loft is in a small gallery across the church;
gallery congregation, two girls.&nbsp; I wonder within myself what will
happen when we are required to sing.</p>
<p>There is a pale heap of books in the corner of my pew, and while
the organ, which is hoarse and sleepy, plays in such fashion that I
can hear more of the rusty working of the stops than of any music, I
look at the books, which are mostly bound in faded baize and stuff.&nbsp;
They belonged in 1754, to the Dowgate family; and who were they?&nbsp;
Jane Comport must have married Young Dowgate, and come into the family
that way; Young Dowgate was courting Jane Comport when he gave her her
prayer-book, and recorded the presentation in the fly-leaf; if Jane
were fond of Young Dowgate, why did she die and leave the book here?&nbsp;
Perhaps at the rickety altar, and before the damp Commandments, she,
Comport, had taken him, Dowgate, in a flush of youthful hope and joy,
and perhaps it had not turned out in the long run as great a success
as was expected?</p>
<p>The opening of the service recalls my wandering thoughts.&nbsp; I
then find, to my astonishment, that I have been, and still am, taking
a strong kind of invisible snuff, up my nose, into my eyes, and down
my throat.&nbsp; I wink, sneeze, and cough.&nbsp; The clerk sneezes;
the clergyman winks; the unseen organist sneezes and coughs (and probably
winks); all our little party wink, sneeze, and cough.&nbsp; The snuff
seems to be made of the decay of matting, wood, cloth, stone, iron,
earth, and something else.&nbsp; Is the something else, the decay of
dead citizens in the vaults below?&nbsp; As sure as Death it is!&nbsp;
Not only in the cold, damp February day, do we cough and sneeze dead
citizens, all through the service, but dead citizens have got into the
very bellows of the organ, and half choked the same.&nbsp; We stamp
our feet to warm them, and dead citizens arise in heavy clouds.&nbsp;
Dead citizens stick upon the walls, and lie pulverised on the sounding-board
over the clergyman&rsquo;s head, and, when a gust of air comes, tumble
down upon him.</p>
<p>In this first experience I was so nauseated by too much snuff, made
of the Dowgate family, the Comport branch, and other families and branches,
that I gave but little heed to our dull manner of ambling through the
service; to the brisk clerk&rsquo;s manner of encouraging us to try
a note or two at psalm time; to the gallery-congregation&rsquo;s manner
of enjoying a shrill duet, without a notion of time or tune; to the
whity-brown man&rsquo;s manner of shutting the minister into the pulpit,
and being very particular with the lock of the door, as if he were a
dangerous animal.&nbsp; But, I tried again next Sunday, and soon accustomed
myself to the dead citizens when I found that I could not possibly get
on without them among the City churches.</p>
<p>Another Sunday.</p>
<p>After being again rung for by conflicting bells, like a leg of mutton
or a laced hat a hundred years ago, I make selection of a church oddly
put away in a corner among a number of lanes&mdash;a smaller church
than the last, and an ugly: of about the date of Queen Anne.&nbsp; As
a congregation, we are fourteen strong: not counting an exhausted charity
school in a gallery, which has dwindled away to four boys, and two girls.&nbsp;
In the porch, is a benefaction of loaves of bread, which there would
seem to be nobody left in the exhausted congregation to claim, and which
I saw an exhausted beadle, long faded out of uniform, eating with his
eyes for self and family when I passed in.&nbsp; There is also an exhausted
clerk in a brown wig, and two or three exhausted doors and windows have
been bricked up, and the service books are musty, and the pulpit cushions
are threadbare, and the whole of the church furniture is in a very advanced
stage of exhaustion.&nbsp; We are three old women (habitual), two young
lovers (accidental), two tradesmen, one with a wife and one alone, an
aunt and nephew, again two girls (these two girls dressed out for church
with everything about them limp that should be stiff, and <i>vice vers&acirc;</i>,
are an invariable experience), and three sniggering boys.&nbsp; The
clergyman is, perhaps, the chaplain of a civic company; he has the moist
and vinous look, and eke the bulbous boots, of one acquainted with &lsquo;Twenty
port, and comet vintages.</p>
<p>We are so quiet in our dulness that the three sniggering boys, who
have got away into a corner by the altar-railing, give us a start, like
crackers, whenever they laugh.&nbsp; And this reminds me of my own village
church where, during sermon-time on bright Sundays when the birds are
very musical indeed, farmers&rsquo; boys patter out over the stone pavement,
and the clerk steps out from his desk after them, and is distinctly
heard in the summer repose to pursue and punch them in the churchyard,
and is seen to return with a meditative countenance, making believe
that nothing of the sort has happened.&nbsp; The aunt and nephew in
this City church are much disturbed by the sniggering boys.&nbsp; The
nephew is himself a boy, and the sniggerers tempt him to secular thoughts
of marbles and string, by secretly offering such commodities to his
distant contemplation.&nbsp; This young Saint Anthony for a while resists,
but presently becomes a backslider, and in dumb show defies the sniggerers
to &lsquo;heave&rsquo; a marble or two in his direction.&nbsp; Here
in he is detected by the aunt (a rigorous reduced gentlewoman who has
the charge of offices), and I perceive that worthy relative to poke
him in the side, with the corrugated hooked handle of an ancient umbrella.&nbsp;
The nephew revenges himself for this, by holding his breath and terrifying
his kinswoman with the dread belief that he has made up his mind to
burst.&nbsp; Regardless of whispers and shakes, he swells and becomes
discoloured, and yet again swells and becomes discoloured, until the
aunt can bear it no longer, but leads him out, with no visible neck,
and with his eyes going before him like a prawn&rsquo;s.&nbsp; This
causes the sniggerers to regard flight as an eligible move, and I know
which of them will go out first, because of the over-devout attention
that he suddenly concentrates on the clergyman.&nbsp; In a little while,
this hypocrite, with an elaborate demonstration of hushing his footsteps,
and with a face generally expressive of having until now forgotten a
religious appointment elsewhere, is gone.&nbsp; Number two gets out
in the same way, but rather quicker.&nbsp; Number three getting safely
to the door, there turns reckless, and banging it open, flies forth
with a Whoop! that vibrates to the top of the tower above us.</p>
<p>The clergyman, who is of a prandial presence and a muffled voice,
may be scant of hearing as well as of breath, but he only glances up,
as having an idea that somebody has said Amen in a wrong place, and
continues his steady jog-trot, like a farmer&rsquo;s wife going to market.&nbsp;
He does all he has to do, in the same easy way, and gives us a concise
sermon, still like the jog-trot of the farmer&rsquo;s wife on a level
road.&nbsp; Its drowsy cadence soon lulls the three old women asleep,
and the unmarried tradesman sits looking out at window, and the married
tradesman sits looking at his wife&rsquo;s bonnet, and the lovers sit
looking at one another, so superlatively happy, that I mind when I,
turned of eighteen, went with my Angelica to a City church on account
of a shower (by this special coincidence that it was in Huggin-lane),
and when I said to my Angelica, &lsquo;Let the blessed event, Angelica,
occur at no altar but this!&rsquo; and when my Angelica consented that
it should occur at no other&mdash;which it certainly never did, for
it never occurred anywhere.&nbsp; And O, Angelica, what has become of
you, this present Sunday morning when I can&rsquo;t attend to the sermon;
and, more difficult question than that, what has become of Me as I was
when I sat by your side!</p>
<p>But, we receive the signal to make that unanimous dive which surely
is a little conventional&mdash;like the strange rustlings and settlings
and clearings of throats and noses, which are never dispensed with,
at certain points of the Church service, and are never held to be necessary
under any other circumstances.&nbsp; In a minute more it is all over,
and the organ expresses itself to be as glad of it as it can be of anything
in its rheumatic state, and in another minute we are all of us out of
the church, and Whity-brown has locked it up.&nbsp; Another minute or
little more, and, in the neighbouring churchyard&mdash;not the yard
of that church, but of another&mdash;a churchyard like a great shabby
old mignonette box, with two trees in it and one tomb&mdash;I meet Whity-brown,
in his private capacity, fetching a pint of beer for his dinner from
the public-house in the corner, where the keys of the rotting fire-ladders
are kept and were never asked for, and where there is a ragged, white-seamed,
out-at-elbowed bagatelle board on the first floor.</p>
<p>In one of these City churches, and only in one, I found an individual
who might have been claimed as expressly a City personage.&nbsp; I remember
the church, by the feature that the clergyman couldn&rsquo;t get to
his own desk without going through the clerk&rsquo;s, or couldn&rsquo;t
get to the pulpit without going through the reading-desk&mdash;I forget
which, and it is no matter&mdash;and by the presence of this personage
among the exceedingly sparse congregation.&nbsp; I doubt if we were
a dozen, and we had no exhausted charity school to help us out.&nbsp;
The personage was dressed in black of square cut, and was stricken in
years, and wore a black velvet cap, and cloth shoes.&nbsp; He was of
a staid, wealthy, and dissatisfied aspect.&nbsp; In his hand, he conducted
to church a mysterious child: a child of the feminine gender.&nbsp;
The child had a beaver hat, with a stiff drab plume that surely never
belonged to any bird of the air.&nbsp; The child was further attired
in a nankeen frock and spencer, brown boxing-gloves, and a veil.&nbsp;
It had a blemish, in the nature of currant jelly, on its chin; and was
a thirsty child.&nbsp; Insomuch that the personage carried in his pocket
a green bottle, from which, when the first psalm was given out, the
child was openly refreshed.&nbsp; At all other times throughout the
service it was motionless, and stood on the seat of the large pew, closely
fitted into the corner, like a rain-water pipe.</p>
<p>The personage never opened his book, and never looked at the clergyman.&nbsp;
He never sat down either, but stood with his arms leaning on the top
of the pew, and his forehead sometimes shaded with his right hand, always
looking at the church door.&nbsp; It was a long church for a church
of its size, and he was at the upper end, but he always looked at the
door.&nbsp; That he was an old bookkeeper, or an old trader who had
kept his own books, and that he might be seen at the Bank of England
about Dividend times, no doubt.&nbsp; That he had lived in the City
all his life and was disdainful of other localities, no doubt.&nbsp;
Why he looked at the door, I never absolutely proved, but it is my belief
that he lived in expectation of the time when the citizens would come
back to live in the City, and its ancient glories would be renewed.&nbsp;
He appeared to expect that this would occur on a Sunday, and that the
wanderers would first appear, in the deserted churches, penitent and
humbled.&nbsp; Hence, he looked at the door which they never darkened.&nbsp;
Whose child the child was, whether the child of a disinherited daughter,
or some parish orphan whom the personage had adopted, there was nothing
to lead up to.&nbsp; It never played, or skipped, or smiled.&nbsp; Once,
the idea occurred to me that it was an automaton, and that the personage
had made it; but following the strange couple out one Sunday, I heard
the personage say to it, &lsquo;Thirteen thousand pounds;&rsquo; to
which it added in a weak human voice, &lsquo;Seventeen and fourpence.&rsquo;&nbsp;
Four Sundays I followed them out, and this is all I ever heard or saw
them say.&nbsp; One Sunday, I followed them home.&nbsp; They lived behind
a pump, and the personage opened their abode with an exceeding large
key.&nbsp; The one solitary inscription on their house related to a
fire-plug.&nbsp; The house was partly undermined by a deserted and closed
gateway; its windows were blind with dirt; and it stood with its face
disconsolately turned to a wall.&nbsp; Five great churches and two small
ones rang their Sunday bells between this house and the church the couple
frequented, so they must have had some special reason for going a quarter
of a mile to it.&nbsp; The last time I saw them, was on this wise.&nbsp;
I had been to explore another church at a distance, and happened to
pass the church they frequented, at about two of the afternoon when
that edifice was closed.&nbsp; But, a little side-door, which I had
never observed before, stood open, and disclosed certain cellarous steps.&nbsp;
Methought &lsquo;They are airing the vaults to-day,&rsquo; when the
personage and the child silently arrived at the steps, and silently
descended.&nbsp; Of course, I came to the conclusion that the personage
had at last despaired of the looked-for return of the penitent citizens,
and that he and the child went down to get themselves buried.</p>
<p>In the course of my pilgrimages I came upon one obscure church which
had broken out in the melodramatic style, and was got up with various
tawdry decorations, much after the manner of the extinct London may-poles.&nbsp;
These attractions had induced several young priests or deacons in black
bibs for waistcoats, and several young ladies interested in that holy
order (the proportion being, as I estimated, seventeen young ladies
to a deacon), to come into the City as a new and odd excitement.&nbsp;
It was wonderful to see how these young people played out their little
play in the heart of the City, all among themselves, without the deserted
City&rsquo;s knowing anything about it.&nbsp; It was as if you should
take an empty counting-house on a Sunday, and act one of the old Mysteries
there.&nbsp; They had impressed a small school (from what neighbourhood
I don&rsquo;t know) to assist in the performances, and it was pleasant
to notice frantic garlands of inscription on the walls, especially addressing
those poor innocents in characters impossible for them to decipher.&nbsp;
There was a remarkably agreeable smell of pomatum in this congregation.</p>
<p>But, in other cases, rot and mildew and dead citizens formed the
uppermost scent, while, infused into it in a dreamy way not at all displeasing,
was the staple character of the neighbourhood.&nbsp; In the churches
about Mark-lane, for example, there was a dry whiff of wheat; and I
accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of an aged hassock
in one of them.&nbsp; From Rood-lane to Tower-street, and thereabouts,
there was often a subtle flavour of wine: sometimes, of tea.&nbsp; One
church near Mincing-lane smelt like a druggist&rsquo;s drawer.&nbsp;
Behind the Monument the service had a flavour of damaged oranges, which,
a little further down towards the river, tempered into herrings, and
gradually toned into a cosmopolitan blast of fish.&nbsp; In one church,
the exact counterpart of the church in the Rake&rsquo;s Progress where
the hero is being married to the horrible old lady, there was no speciality
of atmosphere, until the organ shook a perfume of hides all over us
from some adjacent warehouse.</p>
<p>Be the scent what it would, however, there was no speciality in the
people.&nbsp; There were never enough of them to represent any calling
or neighbourhood.&nbsp; They had all gone elsewhere over-night, and
the few stragglers in the many churches languished there inexpressively.</p>
<p>Among the Uncommercial travels in which I have engaged, this year
of Sunday travel occupies its own place, apart from all the rest.&nbsp;
Whether I think of the church where the sails of the oyster-boats in
the river almost flapped against the windows, or of the church where
the railroad made the bells hum as the train rushed by above the roof,
I recall a curious experience.&nbsp; On summer Sundays, in the gentle
rain or the bright sunshine&mdash;either, deepening the idleness of
the idle City&mdash;I have sat, in that singular silence which belongs
to resting-places usually astir, in scores of buildings at the heart
of the world&rsquo;s metropolis, unknown to far greater numbers of people
speaking the English tongue, than the ancient edifices of the Eternal
City, or the Pyramids of Egypt.&nbsp; The dark vestries and registries
into which I have peeped, and the little hemmed-in churchyards that
have echoed to my feet, have left impressions on my memory as distinct
and quaint as any it has in that way received.&nbsp; In all those dusty
registers that the worms are eating, there is not a line but made some
hearts leap, or some tears flow, in their day.&nbsp; Still and dry now,
still and dry! and the old tree at the window with no room for its branches,
has seen them all out.&nbsp; So with the tomb of the old Master of the
old Company, on which it drips.&nbsp; His son restored it and died,
his daughter restored it and died, and then he had been remembered long
enough, and the tree took possession of him, and his name cracked out.</p>
<p>There are few more striking indications of the changes of manners
and customs that two or three hundred years have brought about, than
these deserted churches.&nbsp; Many of them are handsome and costly
structures, several of them were designed by WREN, many of them arose
from the ashes of the great fire, others of them outlived the plague
and the fire too, to die a slow death in these later days.&nbsp; No
one can be sure of the coming time; but it is not too much to say of
it that it has no sign in its outsetting tides, of the reflux to these
churches of their congregations and uses.&nbsp; They remain like the
tombs of the old citizens who lie beneath them and around them, Monuments
of another age.&nbsp; They are worth a Sunday-exploration, now and then,
for they yet echo, not unharmoniously, to the time when the City of
London really was London; when the &rsquo;Prentices and Trained Bands
were of mark in the state; when even the Lord Mayor himself was a Reality&mdash;not
a Fiction conventionally be-puffed on one day in the year by illustrious
friends, who no less conventionally laugh at him on the remaining three
hundred and sixty-four days.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER X&mdash;SHY NEIGHBOURHOODS</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>So much of my travelling is done on foot, that if I cherished betting
propensities, I should probably be found registered in sporting newspapers
under some such title as the Elastic Novice, challenging all eleven
stone mankind to competition in walking.&nbsp; My last special feat
was turning out of bed at two, after a hard day, pedestrian and otherwise,
and walking thirty miles into the country to breakfast.&nbsp; The road
was so lonely in the night, that I fell asleep to the monotonous sound
of my own feet, doing their regular four miles an hour.&nbsp; Mile after
mile I walked, without the slightest sense of exertion, dozing heavily
and dreaming constantly.&nbsp; It was only when I made a stumble like
a drunken man, or struck out into the road to avoid a horseman close
upon me on the path&mdash;who had no existence&mdash;that I came to
myself and looked about.&nbsp; The day broke mistily (it was autumn
time), and I could not disembarrass myself of the idea that I had to
climb those heights and banks of cloud, and that there was an Alpine
Convent somewhere behind the sun, where I was going to breakfast.&nbsp;
This sleepy notion was so much stronger than such substantial objects
as villages and haystacks, that, after the sun was up and bright, and
when I was sufficiently awake to have a sense of pleasure in the prospect,
I still occasionally caught myself looking about for wooden arms to
point the right track up the mountain, and wondering there was no snow
yet.&nbsp; It is a curiosity of broken sleep that I made immense quantities
of verses on that pedestrian occasion (of course I never make any when
I am in my right senses), and that I spoke a certain language once pretty
familiar to me, but which I have nearly forgotten from disuse, with
fluency.&nbsp; Of both these phenomena I have such frequent experience
in the state between sleeping and waking, that I sometimes argue with
myself that I know I cannot be awake, for, if I were, I should not be
half so ready.&nbsp; The readiness is not imaginary, because I often
recall long strings of the verses, and many turns of the fluent speech,
after I am broad awake.</p>
<p>My walking is of two kinds: one, straight on end to a definite goal
at a round pace; one, objectless, loitering, and purely vagabond.&nbsp;
In the latter state, no gipsy on earth is a greater vagabond than myself;
it is so natural to me, and strong with me, that I think I must be the
descendant, at no great distance, of some irreclaimable tramp.</p>
<p>One of the pleasantest things I have lately met with, in a vagabond
course of shy metropolitan neighbourhoods and small shops, is the fancy
of a humble artist, as exemplified in two portraits representing Mr.
Thomas Sayers, of Great Britain, and Mr. John Heenan, of the United
States of America.&nbsp; These illustrious men are highly coloured in
fighting trim, and fighting attitude.&nbsp; To suggest the pastoral
and meditative nature of their peaceful calling, Mr. Heenan is represented
on emerald sward, with primroses and other modest flowers springing
up under the heels of his half-boots; while Mr. Sayers is impelled to
the administration of his favourite blow, the Auctioneer, by the silent
eloquence of a village church.&nbsp; The humble homes of England, with
their domestic virtues and honeysuckle porches, urge both heroes to
go in and win; and the lark and other singing birds are observable in
the upper air, ecstatically carolling their thanks to Heaven for a fight.&nbsp;
On the whole, the associations entwined with the pugilistic art by this
artist are much in the manner of Izaak Walton.</p>
<p>But, it is with the lower animals of back streets and by-ways that
my present purpose rests.&nbsp; For human notes we may return to such
neighbourhoods when leisure and opportunity serve.</p>
<p>Nothing in shy neighbourhoods perplexes my mind more, than the bad
company birds keep.&nbsp; Foreign birds often get into good society,
but British birds are inseparable from low associates.&nbsp; There is
a whole street of them in St. Giles&rsquo;s; and I always find them
in poor and immoral neighbourhoods, convenient to the public-house and
the pawnbroker&rsquo;s.&nbsp; They seem to lead people into drinking,
and even the man who makes their cages usually gets into a chronic state
of black eye.&nbsp; Why is this?&nbsp; Also, they will do things for
people in short-skirted velveteen coats with bone buttons, or in sleeved
waistcoats and fur caps, which they cannot be persuaded by the respectable
orders of society to undertake.&nbsp; In a dirty court in Spitalfields,
once, I found a goldfinch drawing his own water, and drawing as much
of it as if he were in a consuming fever.&nbsp; That goldfinch lived
at a bird-shop, and offered, in writing, to barter himself against old
clothes, empty bottles, or even kitchen stuff.&nbsp; Surely a low thing
and a depraved taste in any finch!&nbsp; I bought that goldfinch for
money.&nbsp; He was sent home, and hung upon a nail over against my
table.&nbsp; He lived outside a counterfeit dwelling-house, supposed
(as I argued) to be a dyer&rsquo;s; otherwise it would have been impossible
to account for his perch sticking out of the garret window.&nbsp; From
the time of his appearance in my room, either he left off being thirsty&mdash;which
was not in the bond&mdash;or he could not make up his mind to hear his
little bucket drop back into his well when he let it go: a shock which
in the best of times had made him tremble.&nbsp; He drew no water but
by stealth and under the cloak of night.&nbsp; After an interval of
futile and at length hopeless expectation, the merchant who had educated
him was appealed to.&nbsp; The merchant was a bow-legged character,
with a flat and cushiony nose, like the last new strawberry.&nbsp; He
wore a fur cap, and shorts, and was of the velveteen race, velveteeny.&nbsp;
He sent word that he would &lsquo;look round.&rsquo;&nbsp; He looked
round, appeared in the doorway of the room, and slightly cocked up his
evil eye at the goldfinch.&nbsp; Instantly a raging thirst beset that
bird; when it was appeased, he still drew several unnecessary buckets
of water; and finally, leaped about his perch and sharpened his bill,
as if he had been to the nearest wine vaults and got drunk.</p>
<p>Donkeys again.&nbsp; I know shy neighbourhoods where the Donkey goes
in at the street door, and appears to live up-stairs, for I have examined
the back-yard from over the palings, and have been unable to make him
out.&nbsp; Gentility, nobility, Royalty, would appeal to that donkey
in vain to do what he does for a costermonger.&nbsp; Feed him with oats
at the highest price, put an infant prince and princess in a pair of
panniers on his back, adjust his delicate trappings to a nicety, take
him to the softest slopes at Windsor, and try what pace you can get
out of him.&nbsp; Then, starve him, harness him anyhow to a truck with
a flat tray on it, and see him bowl from Whitechapel to Bayswater.&nbsp;
There appears to be no particular private understanding between birds
and donkeys, in a state of nature; but in the shy neighbourhood state,
you shall see them always in the same hands and always developing their
very best energies for the very worst company.&nbsp; I have known a
donkey&mdash;by sight; we were not on speaking terms&mdash;who lived
over on the Surrey side of London-bridge, among the fastnesses of Jacob&rsquo;s
Island and Dockhead.&nbsp; It was the habit of that animal, when his
services were not in immediate requisition, to go out alone, idling.&nbsp;
I have met him a mile from his place of residence, loitering about the
streets; and the expression of his countenance at such times was most
degraded.&nbsp; He was attached to the establishment of an elderly lady
who sold periwinkles, and he used to stand on Saturday nights with a
cartful of those delicacies outside a gin-shop, pricking up his ears
when a customer came to the cart, and too evidently deriving satisfaction
from the knowledge that they got bad measure.&nbsp; His mistress was
sometimes overtaken by inebriety.&nbsp; The last time I ever saw him
(about five years ago) he was in circumstances of difficulty, caused
by this failing.&nbsp; Having been left alone with the cart of periwinkles,
and forgotten, he went off idling.&nbsp; He prowled among his usual
low haunts for some time, gratifying his depraved tastes, until, not
taking the cart into his calculations, he endeavoured to turn up a narrow
alley, and became greatly involved.&nbsp; He was taken into custody
by the police, and, the Green Yard of the district being near at hand,
was backed into that place of durance.&nbsp; At that crisis, I encountered
him; the stubborn sense he evinced of being&mdash;not to compromise
the expression&mdash;a blackguard, I never saw exceeded in the human
subject.&nbsp; A flaring candle in a paper shade, stuck in among his
periwinkles, showed him, with his ragged harness broken and his cart
extensively shattered, twitching his mouth and shaking his hanging head,
a picture of disgrace and obduracy.&nbsp; I have seen boys being taken
to station-houses, who were as like him as his own brother.</p>
<p>The dogs of shy neighbourhoods, I observe to avoid play, and to be
conscious of poverty.&nbsp; They avoid work, too, if they can, of course;
that is in the nature of all animals.&nbsp; I have the pleasure to know
a dog in a back street in the neighbourhood of Walworth, who has greatly
distinguished himself in the minor drama, and who takes his portrait
with him when he makes an engagement, for the illustration of the play-bill.&nbsp;
His portrait (which is not at all like him) represents him in the act
of dragging to the earth a recreant Indian, who is supposed to have
tomahawked, or essayed to tomahawk, a British officer.&nbsp; The design
is pure poetry, for there is no such Indian in the piece, and no such
incident.&nbsp; He is a dog of the Newfoundland breed, for whose honesty
I would be bail to any amount; but whose intellectual qualities in association
with dramatic fiction, I cannot rate high.&nbsp; Indeed, he is too honest
for the profession he has entered.&nbsp; Being at a town in Yorkshire
last summer, and seeing him posted in the bill of the night, I attended
the performance.&nbsp; His first scene was eminently successful; but,
as it occupied a second in its representation (and five lines in the
bill), it scarcely afforded ground for a cool and deliberate judgment
of his powers.&nbsp; He had merely to bark, run on, and jump through
an inn window, after a comic fugitive.&nbsp; The next scene of importance
to the fable was a little marred in its interest by his over-anxiety;
forasmuch as while his master (a belated soldier in a den of robbers
on a tempestuous night) was feelingly lamenting the absence of his faithful
dog, and laying great stress on the fact that he was thirty leagues
away, the faithful dog was barking furiously in the prompter&rsquo;s
box, and clearly choking himself against his collar.&nbsp; But it was
in his greatest scene of all, that his honesty got the better of him.&nbsp;
He had to enter a dense and trackless forest, on the trail of the murderer,
and there to fly at the murderer when he found him resting at the foot
of a tree, with his victim bound ready for slaughter.&nbsp; It was a
hot night, and he came into the forest from an altogether unexpected
direction, in the sweetest temper, at a very deliberate trot, not in
the least excited; trotted to the foot-lights with his tongue out; and
there sat down, panting, and amiably surveying the audience, with his
tail beating on the boards, like a Dutch clock.&nbsp; Meanwhile the
murderer, impatient to receive his doom, was audibly calling to him
&lsquo;CO-O-OME here!&rsquo; while the victim, struggling with his bonds,
assailed him with the most injurious expressions.&nbsp; It happened
through these means, that when he was in course of time persuaded to
trot up and rend the murderer limb from limb, he made it (for dramatic
purposes) a little too obvious that he worked out that awful retribution
by licking butter off his blood-stained hands.</p>
<p>In a shy street, behind Long-acre, two honest dogs live, who perform
in Punch&rsquo;s shows.&nbsp; I may venture to say that I am on terms
of intimacy with both, and that I never saw either guilty of the falsehood
of failing to look down at the man inside the show, during the whole
performance.&nbsp; The difficulty other dogs have in satisfying their
minds about these dogs, appears to be never overcome by time.&nbsp;
The same dogs must encounter them over and over again, as they trudge
along in their off-minutes behind the legs of the show and beside the
drum; but all dogs seem to suspect their frills and jackets, and to
sniff at them as if they thought those articles of personal adornment,
an eruption&mdash;a something in the nature of mange, perhaps.&nbsp;
From this Covent-garden window of mine I noticed a country dog, only
the other day, who had come up to Covent-garden Market under a cart,
and had broken his cord, an end of which he still trailed along with
him.&nbsp; He loitered about the corners of the four streets commanded
by my window; and bad London dogs came up, and told him lies that he
didn&rsquo;t believe; and worse London dogs came up, and made proposals
to him to go and steal in the market, which his principles rejected;
and the ways of the town confused him, and he crept aside and lay down
in a doorway.&nbsp; He had scarcely got a wink of sleep, when up comes
Punch with Toby.&nbsp; He was darting to Toby for consolation and advice,
when he saw the frill, and stopped, in the middle of the street, appalled.&nbsp;
The show was pitched, Toby retired behind the drapery, the audience
formed, the drum and pipes struck up.&nbsp; My country dog remained
immovable, intently staring at these strange appearances, until Toby
opened the drama by appearing on his ledge, and to him entered Punch,
who put a tobacco-pipe into Toby&rsquo;s mouth.&nbsp; At this spectacle,
the country dog threw up his head, gave one terrible howl, and fled
due west.</p>
<p>We talk of men keeping dogs, but we might often talk more expressively
of dogs keeping men.&nbsp; I know a bull-dog in a shy corner of Hammersmith
who keeps a man.&nbsp; He keeps him up a yard, and makes him go to public-houses
and lay wagers on him, and obliges him to lean against posts and look
at him, and forces him to neglect work for him, and keeps him under
rigid coercion.&nbsp; I once knew a fancy terrier who kept a gentleman&mdash;a
gentleman who had been brought up at Oxford, too.&nbsp; The dog kept
the gentleman entirely for his glorification, and the gentleman never
talked about anything but the terrier.&nbsp; This, however, was not
in a shy neighbourhood, and is a digression consequently.</p>
<p>There are a great many dogs in shy neighbourhoods, who keep boys.&nbsp;
I have my eye on a mongrel in Somerstown who keeps three boys.&nbsp;
He feigns that he can bring down sparrows, and unburrow rats (he can
do neither), and he takes the boys out on sporting pretences into all
sorts of suburban fields.&nbsp; He has likewise made them believe that
he possesses some mysterious knowledge of the art of fishing, and they
consider themselves incompletely equipped for the Hampstead ponds, with
a pickle-jar and wide-mouthed bottle, unless he is with them and barking
tremendously.&nbsp; There is a dog residing in the Borough of Southwark
who keeps a blind man.&nbsp; He may be seen, most days, in Oxford-street,
haling the blind man away on expeditions wholly uncontemplated by, and
unintelligible to, the man: wholly of the dog&rsquo;s conception and
execution.&nbsp; Contrariwise, when the man has projects, the dog will
sit down in a crowded thoroughfare and meditate.&nbsp; I saw him yesterday,
wearing the money-tray like an easy collar, instead of offering it to
the public, taking the man against his will, on the invitation of a
disreputable cur, apparently to visit a dog at Harrow&mdash;he was so
intent on that direction.&nbsp; The north wall of Burlington House Gardens,
between the Arcade and the Albany, offers a shy spot for appointments
among blind men at about two or three o&rsquo;clock in the afternoon.&nbsp;
They sit (very uncomfortably) on a sloping stone there, and compare
notes.&nbsp; Their dogs may always be observed at the same time, openly
disparaging the men they keep, to one another, and settling where they
shall respectively take their men when they begin to move again.&nbsp;
At a small butcher&rsquo;s, in a shy neighbourhood (there is no reason
for suppressing the name; it is by Notting-hill, and gives upon the
district called the Potteries), I know a shaggy black and white dog
who keeps a drover.&nbsp; He is a dog of an easy disposition, and too
frequently allows this drover to get drunk.&nbsp; On these occasions,
it is the dog&rsquo;s custom to sit outside the public-house, keeping
his eye on a few sheep, and thinking.&nbsp; I have seen him with six
sheep, plainly casting up in his mind how many he began with when he
left the market, and at what places he has left the rest.&nbsp; I have
seen him perplexed by not being able to account to himself for certain
particular sheep.&nbsp; A light has gradually broken on him, he has
remembered at what butcher&rsquo;s he left them, and in a burst of grave
satisfaction has caught a fly off his nose, and shown himself much relieved.&nbsp;
If I could at any time have doubted the fact that it was he who kept
the drover, and not the drover who kept him, it would have been abundantly
proved by his way of taking undivided charge of the six sheep, when
the drover came out besmeared with red ochre and beer, and gave him
wrong directions, which he calmly disregarded.&nbsp; He has taken the
sheep entirely into his own hands, has merely remarked with respectful
firmness, &lsquo;That instruction would place them under an omnibus;
you had better confine your attention to yourself&mdash;you will want
it all;&rsquo; and has driven his charge away, with an intelligence
of ears and tail, and a knowledge of business, that has left his lout
of a man very, very far behind.</p>
<p>As the dogs of shy neighbourhoods usually betray a slinking consciousness
of being in poor circumstances&mdash;for the most part manifested in
an aspect of anxiety, an awkwardness in their play, and a misgiving
that somebody is going to harness them to something, to pick up a living&mdash;so
the cats of shy neighbourhoods exhibit a strong tendency to relapse
into barbarism.&nbsp; Not only are they made selfishly ferocious by
ruminating on the surplus population around them, and on the densely
crowded state of all the avenues to cat&rsquo;s meat; not only is there
a moral and politico-economical haggardness in them, traceable to these
reflections; but they evince a physical deterioration.&nbsp; Their linen
is not clean, and is wretchedly got up; their black turns rusty, like
old mourning; they wear very indifferent fur; and take to the shabbiest
cotton velvet, instead of silk velvet.&nbsp; I am on terms of recognition
with several small streets of cats, about the Obelisk in Saint George&rsquo;s
Fields, and also in the vicinity of Clerkenwell-green, and also in the
back settlements of Drury-lane.&nbsp; In appearance, they are very like
the women among whom they live.&nbsp; They seem to turn out of their
unwholesome beds into the street, without any preparation.&nbsp; They
leave their young families to stagger about the gutters, unassisted,
while they frouzily quarrel and swear and scratch and spit, at street
corners.&nbsp; In particular, I remark that when they are about to increase
their families (an event of frequent recurrence) the resemblance is
strongly expressed in a certain dusty dowdiness, down-at-heel self-neglect,
and general giving up of things.&nbsp; I cannot honestly report that
I have ever seen a feline matron of this class washing her face when
in an interesting condition.</p>
<p>Not to prolong these notes of uncommercial travel among the lower
animals of shy neighbourhoods, by dwelling at length upon the exasperated
moodiness of the tom-cats, and their resemblance in many respects to
a man and a brother, I will come to a close with a word on the fowls
of the same localities.</p>
<p>That anything born of an egg and invested with wings, should have
got to the pass that it hops contentedly down a ladder into a cellar,
and calls <i>that</i> going home, is a circumstance so amazing as to
leave one nothing more in this connexion to wonder at.&nbsp; Otherwise
I might wonder at the completeness with which these fowls have become
separated from all the birds of the air&mdash;have taken to grovelling
in bricks and mortar and mud&mdash;have forgotten all about live trees,
and make roosting-places of shop-boards, barrows, oyster-tubs, bulk-heads,
and door-scrapers.&nbsp; I wonder at nothing concerning them, and take
them as they are.&nbsp; I accept as products of Nature and things of
course, a reduced Bantam family of my acquaintance in the Hackney-road,
who are incessantly at the pawnbroker&rsquo;s.&nbsp; I cannot say that
they enjoy themselves, for they are of a melancholy temperament; but
what enjoyment they are capable of, they derive from crowding together
in the pawnbroker&rsquo;s side-entry.&nbsp; Here, they are always to
be found in a feeble flutter, as if they were newly come down in the
world, and were afraid of being identified.&nbsp; I know a low fellow,
originally of a good family from Dorking, who takes his whole establishment
of wives, in single file, in at the door of the jug Department of a
disorderly tavern near the Haymarket, manoeuvres them among the company&rsquo;s
legs, emerges with them at the Bottle Entrance, and so passes his life:
seldom, in the season, going to bed before two in the morning.&nbsp;
Over Waterloo-bridge, there is a shabby old speckled couple (they belong
to the wooden French-bedstead, washing-stand, and towel-horse-making
trade), who are always trying to get in at the door of a chapel.&nbsp;
Whether the old lady, under a delusion reminding one of Mrs. Southcott,
has an idea of entrusting an egg to that particular denomination, or
merely understands that she has no business in the building and is consequently
frantic to enter it, I cannot determine; but she is constantly endeavouring
to undermine the principal door: while her partner, who is infirm upon
his legs, walks up and down, encouraging her and defying the Universe.&nbsp;
But, the family I have been best acquainted with, since the removal
from this trying sphere of a Chinese circle at Brentford, reside in
the densest part of Bethnal-green.&nbsp; Their abstraction from the
objects among which they live, or rather their conviction that those
objects have all come into existence in express subservience to fowls,
has so enchanted me, that I have made them the subject of many journeys
at divers hours.&nbsp; After careful observation of the two lords and
the ten ladies of whom this family consists, I have come to the conclusion
that their opinions are represented by the leading lord and leading
lady: the latter, as I judge, an aged personage, afflicted with a paucity
of feather and visibility of quill, that gives her the appearance of
a bundle of office pens.&nbsp; When a railway goods van that would crush
an elephant comes round the corner, tearing over these fowls, they emerge
unharmed from under the horses, perfectly satisfied that the whole rush
was a passing property in the air, which may have left something to
eat behind it.&nbsp; They look upon old shoes, wrecks of kettles and
saucepans, and fragments of bonnets, as a kind of meteoric discharge,
for fowls to peck at.&nbsp; Peg-tops and hoops they account, I think,
as a sort of hail; shuttlecocks, as rain, or dew.&nbsp; Gaslight comes
quite as natural to them as any other light; and I have more than a
suspicion that, in the minds of the two lords, the early public-house
at the corner has superseded the sun.&nbsp; I have established it as
a certain fact, that they always begin to crow when the public-house
shutters begin to be taken down, and that they salute the potboy, the
instant he appears to perform that duty, as if he were Phoebus in person.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XI&mdash;TRAMPS</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>The chance use of the word &lsquo;Tramp&rsquo; in my last paper,
brought that numerous fraternity so vividly before my mind&rsquo;s eye,
that I had no sooner laid down my pen than a compulsion was upon me
to take it up again, and make notes of the Tramps whom I perceived on
all the summer roads in all directions.</p>
<p>Whenever a tramp sits down to rest by the wayside, he sits with his
legs in a dry ditch; and whenever he goes to sleep (which is very often
indeed), he goes to sleep on his back.&nbsp; Yonder, by the high road,
glaring white in the bright sunshine, lies, on the dusty bit of turf
under the bramble-bush that fences the coppice from the highway, the
tramp of the order savage, fast asleep.&nbsp; He lies on the broad of
his back, with his face turned up to the sky, and one of his ragged
arms loosely thrown across his face.&nbsp; His bundle (what can be the
contents of that mysterious bundle, to make it worth his while to carry
it about?) is thrown down beside him, and the waking woman with him
sits with her legs in the ditch, and her back to the road.&nbsp; She
wears her bonnet rakishly perched on the front of her head, to shade
her face from the sun in walking, and she ties her skirts round her
in conventionally tight tramp-fashion with a sort of apron.&nbsp; You
can seldom catch sight of her, resting thus, without seeing her in a
despondently defiant manner doing something to her hair or her bonnet,
and glancing at you between her fingers.&nbsp; She does not often go
to sleep herself in the daytime, but will sit for any length of time
beside the man.&nbsp; And his slumberous propensities would not seem
to be referable to the fatigue of carrying the bundle, for she carries
it much oftener and further than he.&nbsp; When they are afoot, you
will mostly find him slouching on ahead, in a gruff temper, while she
lags heavily behind with the burden.&nbsp; He is given to personally
correcting her, too&mdash;which phase of his character develops itself
oftenest, on benches outside alehouse doors&mdash;and she appears to
become strongly attached to him for these reasons; it may usually be
noticed that when the poor creature has a bruised face, she is the most
affectionate.&nbsp; He has no occupation whatever, this order of tramp,
and has no object whatever in going anywhere.&nbsp; He will sometimes
call himself a brickmaker, or a sawyer, but only when he takes an imaginary
flight.&nbsp; He generally represents himself, in a vague way, as looking
out for a job of work; but he never did work, he never does, and he
never will.&nbsp; It is a favourite fiction with him, however (as if
he were the most industrious character on earth), that <i>you</i> never
work; and as he goes past your garden and sees you looking at your flowers,
you will overhear him growl with a strong sense of contrast, &lsquo;<i>You</i>
are a lucky hidle devil, <i>you</i> are!&rsquo;</p>
<p>The slinking tramp is of the same hopeless order, and has the same
injured conviction on him that you were born to whatever you possess,
and never did anything to get it: but he is of a less audacious disposition.&nbsp;
He will stop before your gate, and say to his female companion with
an air of constitutional humility and propitiation&mdash;to edify any
one who may be within hearing behind a blind or a bush&mdash;&lsquo;This
is a sweet spot, ain&rsquo;t it?&nbsp; A lovelly spot!&nbsp; And I wonder
if they&rsquo;d give two poor footsore travellers like me and you, a
drop of fresh water out of such a pretty gen-teel crib?&nbsp; We&rsquo;d
take it wery koind on &rsquo;em, wouldn&rsquo;t us?&nbsp; Wery koind,
upon my word, us would?&rsquo;&nbsp; He has a quick sense of a dog in
the vicinity, and will extend his modestly-injured propitiation to the
dog chained up in your yard; remarking, as he slinks at the yard gate,
&lsquo;Ah!&nbsp; You are a foine breed o&rsquo; dog, too, and <i>you</i>
ain&rsquo;t kep for nothink!&nbsp; I&rsquo;d take it wery koind o&rsquo;
your master if he&rsquo;d elp a traveller and his woife as envies no
gentlefolk their good fortun, wi&rsquo; a bit o&rsquo; your broken wittles.&nbsp;
He&rsquo;d never know the want of it, nor more would you.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t
bark like that, at poor persons as never done you no arm; the poor is
down-trodden and broke enough without that; O DON&rsquo;T!&rsquo;&nbsp;
He generally heaves a prodigious sigh in moving away, and always looks
up the lane and down the lane, and up the road and down the road, before
going on.</p>
<p>Both of these orders of tramp are of a very robust habit; let the
hard-working labourer at whose cottage-door they prowl and beg, have
the ague never so badly, these tramps are sure to be in good health.</p>
<p>There is another kind of tramp, whom you encounter this bright summer
day&mdash;say, on a road with the sea-breeze making its dust lively,
and sails of ships in the blue distance beyond the slope of Down.&nbsp;
As you walk enjoyingly on, you descry in the perspective at the bottom
of a steep hill up which your way lies, a figure that appears to be
sitting airily on a gate, whistling in a cheerful and disengaged manner.&nbsp;
As you approach nearer to it, you observe the figure to slide down from
the gate, to desist from whistling, to uncock its hat, to become tender
of foot, to depress its head and elevate its shoulders, and to present
all the characteristics of profound despondency.&nbsp; Arriving at the
bottom of the hill and coming close to the figure, you observe it to
be the figure of a shabby young man.&nbsp; He is moving painfully forward,
in the direction in which you are going, and his mind is so preoccupied
with his misfortunes that he is not aware of your approach until you
are close upon him at the hill-foot.&nbsp; When he is aware of you,
you discover him to be a remarkably well-behaved young man, and a remarkably
well-spoken young man.&nbsp; You know him to be well-behaved, by his
respectful manner of touching his hat: you know him to be well-spoken,
by his smooth manner of expressing himself.&nbsp; He says in a flowing
confidential voice, and without punctuation, &lsquo;I ask your pardon
sir but if you would excuse the liberty of being so addressed upon the
public Iway by one who is almost reduced to rags though it as not always
been so and by no fault of his own but through ill elth in his family
and many unmerited sufferings it would be a great obligation sir to
know the time.&rsquo;&nbsp; You give the well-spoken young man the time.&nbsp;
The well-spoken young man, keeping well up with you, resumes: &lsquo;I
am aware sir that it is a liberty to intrude a further question on a
gentleman walking for his entertainment but might I make so bold as
ask the favour of the way to Dover sir and about the distance?&rsquo;&nbsp;
You inform the well-spoken young man that the way to Dover is straight
on, and the distance some eighteen miles.&nbsp; The well-spoken young
man becomes greatly agitated.&nbsp; &lsquo;In the condition to which
I am reduced,&rsquo; says he, &lsquo;I could not ope to reach Dover
before dark even if my shoes were in a state to take me there or my
feet were in a state to old out over the flinty road and were not on
the bare ground of which any gentleman has the means to satisfy himself
by looking Sir may I take the liberty of speaking to you?&rsquo;&nbsp;
As the well-spoken young man keeps so well up with you that you can&rsquo;t
prevent his taking the liberty of speaking to you, he goes on, with
fluency: &lsquo;Sir it is not begging that is my intention for I was
brought up by the best of mothers and begging is not my trade I should
not know sir how to follow it as a trade if such were my shameful wishes
for the best of mothers long taught otherwise and in the best of omes
though now reduced to take the present liberty on the Iway Sir my business
was the law-stationering and I was favourably known to the Solicitor-General
the Attorney-General the majority of the judges and the ole of the legal
profession but through ill elth in my family and the treachery of a
friend for whom I became security and he no other than my own wife&rsquo;s
brother the brother of my own wife I was cast forth with my tender partner
and three young children not to beg for I will sooner die of deprivation
but to make my way to the sea-port town of Dover where I have a relative
i in respect not only that will assist me but that would trust me with
untold gold Sir in appier times and hare this calamity fell upon me
I made for my amusement when I little thought that I should ever need
it excepting for my air this&rsquo;&mdash;here the well-spoken young
man put his hand into his breast&mdash;&lsquo;this comb!&nbsp; Sir I
implore you in the name of charity to purchase a tortoiseshell comb
which is a genuine article at any price that your humanity may put upon
it and may the blessings of a ouseless family awaiting with beating
arts the return of a husband and a father from Dover upon the cold stone
seats of London-bridge ever attend you Sir may I take the liberty of
speaking to you I implore you to buy this comb!&rsquo;&nbsp; By this
time, being a reasonably good walker, you will have been too much for
the well-spoken young man, who will stop short and express his disgust
and his want of breath, in a long expectoration, as you leave him behind.</p>
<p>Towards the end of the same walk, on the same bright summer day,
at the corner of the next little town or village, you may find another
kind of tramp, embodied in the persons of a most exemplary couple whose
only improvidence appears to have been, that they spent the last of
their little All on soap.&nbsp; They are a man and woman, spotless to
behold&mdash;John Anderson, with the frost on his short smock-frock
instead of his &lsquo;pow,&rsquo; attended by Mrs. Anderson.&nbsp; John
is over-ostentatious of the frost upon his raiment, and wears a curious
and, you would say, an almost unnecessary demonstration of girdle of
white linen wound about his waist&mdash;a girdle, snowy as Mrs. Anderson&rsquo;s
apron.&nbsp; This cleanliness was the expiring effort of the respectable
couple, and nothing then remained to Mr. Anderson but to get chalked
upon his spade in snow-white copy-book characters, HUNGRY! and to sit
down here.&nbsp; Yes; one thing more remained to Mr. Anderson&mdash;his
character; Monarchs could not deprive him of his hard-earned character.&nbsp;
Accordingly, as you come up with this spectacle of virtue in distress,
Mrs. Anderson rises, and with a decent curtsey presents for your consideration
a certificate from a Doctor of Divinity, the reverend the Vicar of Upper
Dodgington, who informs his Christian friends and all whom it may concern
that the bearers, John Anderson and lawful wife, are persons to whom
you cannot be too liberal.&nbsp; This benevolent pastor omitted no work
of his hands to fit the good couple out, for with half an eye you can
recognise his autograph on the spade.</p>
<p>Another class of tramp is a man, the most valuable part of whose
stock-in-trade is a highly perplexed demeanour.&nbsp; He is got up like
a countryman, and you will often come upon the poor fellow, while he
is endeavouring to decipher the inscription on a milestone&mdash;quite
a fruitless endeavour, for he cannot read.&nbsp; He asks your pardon,
he truly does (he is very slow of speech, this tramp, and he looks in
a bewildered way all round the prospect while he talks to you), but
all of us shold do as we wold be done by, and he&rsquo;ll take it kind,
if you&rsquo;ll put a power man in the right road fur to jine his eldest
son as has broke his leg bad in the masoning, and is in this heere Orspit&rsquo;l
as is wrote down by Squire Pouncerby&rsquo;s own hand as wold not tell
a lie fur no man.&nbsp; He then produces from under his dark frock (being
always very slow and perplexed) a neat but worn old leathern purse,
from which he takes a scrap of paper.&nbsp; On this scrap of paper is
written, by Squire Pouncerby, of The Grove, &lsquo;Please to direct
the Bearer, a poor but very worthy man, to the Sussex County Hospital,
near Brighton&rsquo;&mdash;a matter of some difficulty at the moment,
seeing that the request comes suddenly upon you in the depths of Hertfordshire.&nbsp;
The more you endeavour to indicate where Brighton is&mdash;when you
have with the greatest difficulty remembered&mdash;the less the devoted
father can be made to comprehend, and the more obtusely he stares at
the prospect; whereby, being reduced to extremity, you recommend the
faithful parent to begin by going to St. Albans, and present him with
half-a-crown.&nbsp; It does him good, no doubt, but scarcely helps him
forward, since you find him lying drunk that same evening in the wheelwright&rsquo;s
sawpit under the shed where the felled trees are, opposite the sign
of the Three Jolly Hedgers.</p>
<p>But, the most vicious, by far, of all the idle tramps, is the tramp
who pretends to have been a gentleman.&nbsp; &lsquo;Educated,&rsquo;
he writes, from the village beer-shop in pale ink of a ferruginous complexion;
&lsquo;educated at Trin. Coll. Cam.&mdash;nursed in the lap of affluence&mdash;once
in my small way the pattron of the Muses,&rsquo; &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c.&mdash;surely
a sympathetic mind will not withhold a trifle, to help him on to the
market-town where he thinks of giving a Lecture to the <i>fruges consumere
nati</i>, on things in general?&nbsp; This shameful creature lolling
about hedge tap-rooms in his ragged clothes, now so far from being black
that they look as if they never can have been black, is more selfish
and insolent than even the savage tramp.&nbsp; He would sponge on the
poorest boy for a farthing, and spurn him when he had got it; he would
interpose (if he could get anything by it) between the baby and the
mother&rsquo;s breast.&nbsp; So much lower than the company he keeps,
for his maudlin assumption of being higher, this pitiless rascal blights
the summer road as he maunders on between the luxuriant hedges; where
(to my thinking) even the wild convolvulus and rose and sweet-briar,
are the worse for his going by, and need time to recover from the taint
of him in the air.</p>
<p>The young fellows who trudge along barefoot, five or six together,
their boots slung over their shoulders, their shabby bundles under their
arms, their sticks newly cut from some roadside wood, are not eminently
prepossessing, but are much less objectionable.&nbsp; There is a tramp-fellowship
among them.&nbsp; They pick one another up at resting stations, and
go on in companies.&nbsp; They always go at a fast swing&mdash;though
they generally limp too&mdash;and there is invariably one of the company
who has much ado to keep up with the rest.&nbsp; They generally talk
about horses, and any other means of locomotion than walking: or, one
of the company relates some recent experiences of the road&mdash;which
are always disputes and difficulties.&nbsp; As for example.&nbsp; &lsquo;So
as I&rsquo;m a standing at the pump in the market, blest if there don&rsquo;t
come up a Beadle, and he ses, &ldquo;Mustn&rsquo;t stand here,&rdquo;
he ses.&nbsp; &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; I ses.&nbsp; &ldquo;No beggars
allowed in this town,&rdquo; he ses.&nbsp; &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s a beggar?&rdquo;
I ses.&nbsp; &ldquo;You are,&rdquo; he ses.&nbsp; &ldquo;Who ever see
<i>me</i> beg?&nbsp; Did <i>you</i>?&rdquo; I ses.&nbsp; &ldquo;Then
you&rsquo;re a tramp,&rdquo; he ses.&nbsp; &ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather be
that than a Beadle,&rdquo; I ses.&rsquo;&nbsp; (The company express
great approval.)&nbsp; &lsquo;&ldquo;Would you?&rdquo; he ses to me.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Yes, I would,&rdquo; I ses to him.&nbsp; &ldquo;Well,&rdquo;
he ses, &ldquo;anyhow, get out of this town.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Why,
blow your little town!&rdquo; I ses, &ldquo;who wants to be in it?&nbsp;
Wot does your dirty little town mean by comin&rsquo; and stickin&rsquo;
itself in the road to anywhere?&nbsp; Why don&rsquo;t you get a shovel
and a barrer, and clear your town out o&rsquo; people&rsquo;s way?&rdquo;&rsquo;&nbsp;
(The company expressing the highest approval and laughing aloud, they
all go down the hill.)</p>
<p>Then, there are the tramp handicraft men.&nbsp; Are they not all
over England, in this Midsummer time?&nbsp; Where does the lark sing,
the corn grow, the mill turn, the river run, and they are not among
the lights and shadows, tinkering, chair-mending, umbrella-mending,
clock-mending, knife-grinding?&nbsp; Surely, a pleasant thing, if we
were in that condition of life, to grind our way through Kent, Sussex,
and Surrey.&nbsp; For the worst six weeks or so, we should see the sparks
we ground off, fiery bright against a background of green wheat and
green leaves.&nbsp; A little later, and the ripe harvest would pale
our sparks from red to yellow, until we got the dark newly-turned land
for a background again, and they were red once more.&nbsp; By that time,
we should have ground our way to the sea cliffs, and the whirr of our
wheel would be lost in the breaking of the waves.&nbsp; Our next variety
in sparks would be derived from contrast with the gorgeous medley of
colours in the autumn woods, and, by the time we had ground our way
round to the heathy lands between Reigate and Croydon, doing a prosperous
stroke of business all along, we should show like a little firework
in the light frosty air, and be the next best thing to the blacksmith&rsquo;s
forge.&nbsp; Very agreeable, too, to go on a chair-mending tour.&nbsp;
What judges we should be of rushes, and how knowingly (with a sheaf
and a bottomless chair at our back) we should lounge on bridges, looking
over at osier-beds!&nbsp; Among all the innumerable occupations that
cannot possibly be transacted without the assistance of lookers-on,
chair-mending may take a station in the first rank.&nbsp; When we sat
down with our backs against the barn or the public-house, and began
to mend, what a sense of popularity would grow upon us!&nbsp; When all
the children came to look at us, and the tailor, and the general dealer,
and the farmer who had been giving a small order at the little saddler&rsquo;s,
and the groom from the great house, and the publican, and even the two
skittle-players (and here note that, howsoever busy all the rest of
village human-kind may be, there will always be two people with leisure
to play at skittles, wherever village skittles are), what encouragement
would be on us to plait and weave!&nbsp; No one looks at us while we
plait and weave these words.&nbsp; Clock-mending again.&nbsp; Except
for the slight inconvenience of carrying a clock under our arm, and
the monotony of making the bell go, whenever we came to a human habitation,
what a pleasant privilege to give a voice to the dumb cottage-clock,
and set it talking to the cottage family again!&nbsp; Likewise we foresee
great interest in going round by the park plantations, under the overhanging
boughs (hares, rabbits, partridges, and pheasants, scudding like mad
across and across the chequered ground before us), and so over the park
ladder, and through the wood, until we came to the Keeper&rsquo;s lodge.&nbsp;
Then, would, the Keeper be discoverable at his door, in a deep nest
of leaves, smoking his pipe.&nbsp; Then, on our accosting him in the
way of our trade, would he call to Mrs. Keeper, respecting &lsquo;t&rsquo;ould
clock&rsquo; in the kitchen.&nbsp; Then, would Mrs. Keeper ask us into
the lodge, and on due examination we should offer to make a good job
of it for eighteenpence; which offer, being accepted, would set us tinkling
and clinking among the chubby, awe-struck little Keepers for an hour
and more.&nbsp; So completely to the family&rsquo;s satisfaction would
we achieve our work, that the Keeper would mention how that there was
something wrong with the bell of the turret stable-clock up at the Hall,
and that if we thought good of going up to the housekeeper on the chance
of that job too, why he would take us.&nbsp; Then, should we go, among
the branching oaks and the deep fern, by silent ways of mystery known
to the Keeper, seeing the herd glancing here and there as we went along,
until we came to the old Hall, solemn and grand.&nbsp; Under the Terrace
Flower Garden, and round by the stables, would the Keeper take us in,
and as we passed we should observe how spacious and stately the stables,
and how fine the painting of the horses&rsquo; names over their stalls,
and how solitary all: the family being in London.&nbsp; Then, should
we find ourselves presented to the housekeeper, sitting, in hushed state,
at needlework, in a bay-window looking out upon a mighty grim red-brick
quadrangle, guarded by stone lions disrespectfully throwing somersaults
over the escutcheons of the noble family.&nbsp; Then, our services accepted
and we insinuated with a candle into the stable-turret, we should find
it to be a mere question of pendulum, but one that would hold us until
dark.&nbsp; Then, should we fall to work, with a general impression
of Ghosts being about, and of pictures indoors that of a certainty came
out of their frames and &lsquo;walked,&rsquo; if the family would only
own it.&nbsp; Then, should we work and work, until the day gradually
turned to dusk, and even until the dusk gradually turned to dark.&nbsp;
Our task at length accomplished, we should be taken into an enormous
servants&rsquo; hall, and there regaled with beef and bread, and powerful
ale.&nbsp; Then, paid freely, we should be at liberty to go, and should
be told by a pointing helper to keep round over yinder by the blasted
ash, and so straight through the woods, till we should see the town-lights
right afore us.&nbsp; Then, feeling lonesome, should we desire upon
the whole, that the ash had not been blasted, or that the helper had
had the manners not to mention it.&nbsp; However, we should keep on,
all right, till suddenly the stable bell would strike ten in the dolefullest
way, quite chilling our blood, though we had so lately taught him how
to acquit himself.&nbsp; Then, as we went on, should we recall old stories,
and dimly consider what it would be most advisable to do, in the event
of a tall figure, all in white, with saucer eyes, coming up and saying,
&lsquo;I want you to come to a churchyard and mend a church clock.&nbsp;
Follow me!&rsquo;&nbsp; Then, should we make a burst to get clear of
the trees, and should soon find ourselves in the open, with the town-lights
bright ahead of us.&nbsp; So should we lie that night at the ancient
sign of the Crispin and Crispanus, and rise early next morning to be
betimes on tramp again.</p>
<p>Bricklayers often tramp, in twos and threes, lying by night at their
&lsquo;lodges,&rsquo; which are scattered all over the country.&nbsp;
Bricklaying is another of the occupations that can by no means be transacted
in rural parts, without the assistance of spectators&mdash;of as many
as can be convened.&nbsp; In thinly-peopled spots, I have known brick-layers
on tramp, coming up with bricklayers at work, to be so sensible of the
indispensability of lookers-on, that they themselves have sat up in
that capacity, and have been unable to subside into the acceptance of
a proffered share in the job, for two or three days together.&nbsp;
Sometimes, the &lsquo;navvy,&rsquo; on tramp, with an extra pair of
half-boots over his shoulder, a bag, a bottle, and a can, will take
a similar part in a job of excavation, and will look at it without engaging
in it, until all his money is gone.&nbsp; The current of my uncommercial
pursuits caused me only last summer to want a little body of workmen
for a certain spell of work in a pleasant part of the country; and I
was at one time honoured with the attendance of as many as seven-and-twenty,
who were looking at six.</p>
<p>Who can be familiar with any rustic highway in summer-time, without
storing up knowledge of the many tramps who go from one oasis of town
or village to another, to sell a stock in trade, apparently not worth
a shilling when sold?&nbsp; Shrimps are a favourite commodity for this
kind of speculation, and so are cakes of a soft and spongy character,
coupled with Spanish nuts and brandy balls.&nbsp; The stock is carried
on the head in a basket, and, between the head and the basket, are the
trestles on which the stock is displayed at trading times.&nbsp; Fleet
of foot, but a careworn class of tramp this, mostly; with a certain
stiffness of neck, occasioned by much anxious balancing of baskets;
and also with a long, Chinese sort of eye, which an overweighted forehead
would seem to have squeezed into that form.</p>
<p>On the hot dusty roads near seaport towns and great rivers, behold
the tramping Soldier.&nbsp; And if you should happen never to have asked
yourself whether his uniform is suited to his work, perhaps the poor
fellow&rsquo;s appearance as he comes distressfully towards you, with
his absurdly tight jacket unbuttoned, his neck-gear in his hand, and
his legs well chafed by his trousers of baize, may suggest the personal
inquiry, how you think <i>you</i> would like it.&nbsp; Much better the
tramping Sailor, although his cloth is somewhat too thick for land service.&nbsp;
But, why the tramping merchant-mate should put on a black velvet waistcoat,
for a chalky country in the dog-days, is one of the great secrets of
nature that will never be discovered.</p>
<p>I have my eye upon a piece of Kentish road, bordered on either side
by a wood, and having on one hand, between the road-dust and the trees,
a skirting patch of grass.&nbsp; Wild flowers grow in abundance on this
spot, and it lies high and airy, with a distant river stealing steadily
away to the ocean, like a man&rsquo;s life.&nbsp; To gain the milestone
here, which the moss, primroses, violets, blue-bells, and wild roses,
would soon render illegible but for peering travellers pushing them
aside with their sticks, you must come up a steep hill, come which way
you may.&nbsp; So, all the tramps with carts or caravans&mdash;the Gipsy-tramp,
the Show-tramp, the Cheap Jack&mdash;find it impossible to resist the
temptations of the place, and all turn the horse loose when they come
to it, and boil the pot.&nbsp; Bless the place, I love the ashes of
the vagabond fires that have scorched its grass!&nbsp; What tramp children
do I see here, attired in a handful of rags, making a gymnasium of the
shafts of the cart, making a feather-bed of the flints and brambles,
making a toy of the hobbled old horse who is not much more like a horse
than any cheap toy would be!&nbsp; Here, do I encounter the cart of
mats and brooms and baskets&mdash;with all thoughts of business given
to the evening wind&mdash;with the stew made and being served out&mdash;with
Cheap Jack and Dear Jill striking soft music out of the plates that
are rattled like warlike cymbals when put up for auction at fairs and
markets&mdash;their minds so influenced (no doubt) by the melody of
the nightingales as they begin to sing in the woods behind them, that
if I were to propose to deal, they would sell me anything at cost price.&nbsp;
On this hallowed ground has it been my happy privilege (let me whisper
it), to behold the White-haired Lady with the pink eyes, eating meat-pie
with the Giant: while, by the hedge-side, on the box of blankets which
I knew contained the snakes, were set forth the cups and saucers and
the teapot.&nbsp; It was on an evening in August, that I chanced upon
this ravishing spectacle, and I noticed that, whereas the Giant reclined
half concealed beneath the overhanging boughs and seemed indifferent
to Nature, the white hair of the gracious Lady streamed free in the
breath of evening, and her pink eyes found pleasure in the landscape.&nbsp;
I heard only a single sentence of her uttering, yet it bespoke a talent
for modest repartee.&nbsp; The ill-mannered Giant&mdash;accursed be
his evil race!&mdash;had interrupted the Lady in some remark, and, as
I passed that enchanted corner of the wood, she gently reproved him,
with the words, &lsquo;Now, Cobby;&rsquo;&mdash;Cobby! so short a name!&mdash;&lsquo;ain&rsquo;t
one fool enough to talk at a time?&rsquo;</p>
<p>Within appropriate distance of this magic ground, though not so near
it as that the song trolled from tap or bench at door, can invade its
woodland silence, is a little hostelry which no man possessed of a penny
was ever known to pass in warm weather.&nbsp; Before its entrance, are
certain pleasant, trimmed limes; likewise, a cool well, with so musical
a bucket-handle that its fall upon the bucket rim will make a horse
prick up his ears and neigh, upon the droughty road half a mile off.&nbsp;
This is a house of great resort for haymaking tramps and harvest tramps,
insomuch that as they sit within, drinking their mugs of beer, their
relinquished scythes and reaping-hooks glare out of the open windows,
as if the whole establishment were a family war-coach of Ancient Britons.&nbsp;
Later in the season, the whole country-side, for miles and miles, will
swarm with hopping tramps.&nbsp; They come in families, men, women,
and children, every family provided with a bundle of bedding, an iron
pot, a number of babies, and too often with some poor sick creature
quite unfit for the rough life, for whom they suppose the smell of the
fresh hop to be a sovereign remedy.&nbsp; Many of these hoppers are
Irish, but many come from London.&nbsp; They crowd all the roads, and
camp under all the hedges and on all the scraps of common-land, and
live among and upon the hops until they are all picked, and the hop-gardens,
so beautiful through the summer, look as if they had been laid waste
by an invading army.&nbsp; Then, there is a vast exodus of tramps out
of the country; and if you ride or drive round any turn of any road,
at more than a foot pace, you will be bewildered to find that you have
charged into the bosom of fifty families, and that there are splashing
up all around you, in the utmost prodigality of confusion, bundles of
bedding, babies, iron pots, and a good-humoured multitude of both sexes
and all ages, equally divided between perspiration and intoxication.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XII&mdash;DULLBOROUGH TOWN</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>It lately happened that I found myself rambling about the scenes
among which my earliest days were passed; scenes from which I departed
when I was a child, and which I did not revisit until I was a man.&nbsp;
This is no uncommon chance, but one that befalls some of us any day;
perhaps it may not be quite uninteresting to compare notes with the
reader respecting an experience so familiar and a journey so uncommercial.</p>
<p>I call my boyhood&rsquo;s home (and I feel like a Tenor in an English
Opera when I mention it) Dullborough.&nbsp; Most of us come from Dullborough
who come from a country town.</p>
<p>As I left Dullborough in the days when there were no railroads in
the land, I left it in a stage-coach.&nbsp; Through all the years that
have since passed, have I ever lost the smell of the damp straw in which
I was packed&mdash;like game&mdash;and forwarded, carriage paid, to
the Cross Keys, Wood-street, Cheapside, London?&nbsp; There was no other
inside passenger, and I consumed my sandwiches in solitude and dreariness,
and it rained hard all the way, and I thought life sloppier than I had
expected to find it.</p>
<p>With this tender remembrance upon me, I was cavalierly shunted back
into Dullborough the other day, by train.&nbsp; My ticket had been previously
collected, like my taxes, and my shining new portmanteau had had a great
plaster stuck upon it, and I had been defied by Act of Parliament to
offer an objection to anything that was done to it, or me, under a penalty
of not less than forty shillings or more than five pounds, compoundable
for a term of imprisonment.&nbsp; When I had sent my disfigured property
on to the hotel, I began to look about me; and the first discovery I
made, was, that the Station had swallowed up the playing-field.</p>
<p>It was gone.&nbsp; The two beautiful hawthorn-trees, the hedge, the
turf, and all those buttercups and daisies, had given place to the stoniest
of jolting roads: while, beyond the Station, an ugly dark monster of
a tunnel kept its jaws open, as if it had swallowed them and were ravenous
for more destruction.&nbsp; The coach that had carried me away, was
melodiously called Timpson&rsquo;s Blue-Eyed Maid, and belonged to Timpson,
at the coach-office up-street; the locomotive engine that had brought
me back, was called severely No. 97, and belonged to S.E.R., and was
spitting ashes and hot water over the blighted ground.</p>
<p>When I had been let out at the platform-door, like a prisoner whom
his turnkey grudgingly released, I looked in again over the low wall,
at the scene of departed glories.&nbsp; Here, in the haymaking time,
had I been delivered from the dungeons of Seringapatam, an immense pile
(of haycock), by my own countrymen, the victorious British (boy next
door and his two cousins), and had been recognised with ecstasy by my
affianced one (Miss Green), who had come all the way from England (second
house in the terrace) to ransom me, and marry me.&nbsp; Here, had I
first heard in confidence, from one whose father was greatly connected,
being under Government, of the existence of a terrible banditti, called
&lsquo;The Radicals,&rsquo; whose principles were, that the Prince Regent
wore stays, and that nobody had a right to any salary, and that the
army and navy ought to be put down&mdash;horrors at which I trembled
in my bed, after supplicating that the Radicals might be speedily taken
and hanged.&nbsp; Here, too, had we, the small boys of Boles&rsquo;s,
had that cricket match against the small boys of Coles&rsquo;s, when
Boles and Coles had actually met upon the ground, and when, instead
of instantly hitting out at one another with the utmost fury, as we
had all hoped and expected, those sneaks had said respectively, &lsquo;I
hope Mrs. Boles is well,&rsquo; and &lsquo;I hope Mrs. Coles and the
baby are doing charmingly.&rsquo;&nbsp; Could it be that, after all
this, and much more, the Playing-field was a Station, and No. 97 expectorated
boiling water and redhot cinders on it, and the whole belonged by Act
of Parliament to S.E.R.?</p>
<p>As it could be, and was, I left the place with a heavy heart for
a walk all over the town.&nbsp; And first of Timpson&rsquo;s up-street.&nbsp;
When I departed from Dullborough in the strawy arms of Timpson&rsquo;s
Blue-Eyed Maid, Timpson&rsquo;s was a moderate-sized coach-office (in
fact, a little coach-office), with an oval transparency in the window,
which looked beautiful by night, representing one of Timpson&rsquo;s
coaches in the act of passing a milestone on the London road with great
velocity, completely full inside and out, and all the passengers dressed
in the first style of fashion, and enjoying themselves tremendously.&nbsp;
I found no such place as Timpson&rsquo;s now&mdash;no such bricks and
rafters, not to mention the name&mdash;no such edifice on the teeming
earth.&nbsp; Pickford had come and knocked Timpson&rsquo;s down.&nbsp;
Pickford had not only knocked Timpson&rsquo;s down, but had knocked
two or three houses down on each side of Timpson&rsquo;s, and then had
knocked the whole into one great establishment with a pair of big gates,
in and out of which, his (Pickford&rsquo;s) waggons are, in these days,
always rattling, with their drivers sitting up so high, that they look
in at the second-floor windows of the old-fashioned houses in the High-street
as they shake the town.&nbsp; I have not the honour of Pickford&rsquo;s
acquaintance, but I felt that he had done me an injury, not to say committed
an act of boyslaughter, in running over my Childhood in this rough manner;
and if ever I meet Pickford driving one of his own monsters, and smoking
a pipe the while (which is the custom of his men), he shall know by
the expression of my eye, if it catches his, that there is something
wrong between us.</p>
<p>Moreover, I felt that Pickford had no right to come rushing into
Dullborough and deprive the town of a public picture.&nbsp; He is not
Napoleon Bonaparte.&nbsp; When he took down the transparent stage-coach,
he ought to have given the town a transparent van.&nbsp; With a gloomy
conviction that Pickford is wholly utilitarian and unimaginative, I
proceeded on my way.</p>
<p>It is a mercy I have not a red and green lamp and a night-bell at
my door, for in my very young days I was taken to so many lyings-in
that I wonder I escaped becoming a professional martyr to them in after-life.&nbsp;
I suppose I had a very sympathetic nurse, with a large circle of married
acquaintance.&nbsp; However that was, as I continued my walk through
Dullborough, I found many houses to be solely associated in my mind
with this particular interest.&nbsp; At one little greengrocer&rsquo;s
shop, down certain steps from the street, I remember to have waited
on a lady who had had four children (I am afraid to write five, though
I fully believe it was five) at a birth.&nbsp; This meritorious woman
held quite a reception in her room on the morning when I was introduced
there, and the sight of the house brought vividly to my mind how the
four (five) deceased young people lay, side by side, on a clean cloth
on a chest of drawers; reminding me by a homely association, which I
suspect their complexion to have assisted, of pigs&rsquo; feet as they
are usually displayed at a neat tripe-shop.&nbsp; Hot candle was handed
round on the occasion, and I further remembered as I stood contemplating
the greengrocer&rsquo;s, that a subscription was entered into among
the company, which became extremely alarming to my consciousness of
having pocket-money on my person.&nbsp; This fact being known to my
conductress, whoever she was, I was earnestly exhorted to contribute,
but resolutely declined: therein disgusting the company, who gave me
to understand that I must dismiss all expectations of going to Heaven.</p>
<p>How does it happen that when all else is change wherever one goes,
there yet seem, in every place, to be some few people who never alter?&nbsp;
As the sight of the greengrocer&rsquo;s house recalled these trivial
incidents of long ago, the identical greengrocer appeared on the steps,
with his hands in his pockets, and leaning his shoulder against the
door-post, as my childish eyes had seen him many a time; indeed, there
was his old mark on the door-post yet, as if his shadow had become a
fixture there.&nbsp; It was he himself; he might formerly have been
an old-looking young man, or he might now be a young-looking old man,
but there he was.&nbsp; In walking along the street, I had as yet looked
in vain for a familiar face, or even a transmitted face; here was the
very greengrocer who had been weighing and handling baskets on the morning
of the reception.&nbsp; As he brought with him a dawning remembrance
that he had had no proprietary interest in those babies, I crossed the
road, and accosted him on the subject.&nbsp; He was not in the least
excited or gratified, or in any way roused, by the accuracy of my recollection,
but said, Yes, summut out of the common&mdash;he didn&rsquo;t remember
how many it was (as if half-a-dozen babes either way made no difference)&mdash;had
happened to a Mrs. What&rsquo;s-her-name, as once lodged there&mdash;but
he didn&rsquo;t call it to mind, particular.&nbsp; Nettled by this phlegmatic
conduct, I informed him that I had left the town when I was a child.&nbsp;
He slowly returned, quite unsoftened, and not without a sarcastic kind
of complacency, <i>Had</i> I?&nbsp; Ah!&nbsp; And did I find it had
got on tolerably well without me?&nbsp; Such is the difference (I thought,
when I had left him a few hundred yards behind, and was by so much in
a better temper) between going away from a place and remaining in it.&nbsp;
I had no right, I reflected, to be angry with the greengrocer for his
want of interest, I was nothing to him: whereas he was the town, the
cathedral, the bridge, the river, my childhood, and a large slice of
my life, to me.</p>
<p>Of course the town had shrunk fearfully, since I was a child there.&nbsp;
I had entertained the impression that the High-street was at least as
wide as Regent-street, London, or the Italian Boulevard at Paris.&nbsp;
I found it little better than a lane.&nbsp; There was a public clock
in it, which I had supposed to be the finest clock in the world: whereas
it now turned out to be as inexpressive, moon-faced, and weak a clock
as ever I saw.&nbsp; It belonged to a Town Hall, where I had seen an
Indian (who I now suppose wasn&rsquo;t an Indian) swallow a sword (which
I now suppose he didn&rsquo;t).&nbsp; The edifice had appeared to me
in those days so glorious a structure, that I had set it up in my mind
as the model on which the Genie of the Lamp built the palace for Aladdin.&nbsp;
A mean little brick heap, like a demented chapel, with a few yawning
persons in leather gaiters, and in the last extremity for something
to do, lounging at the door with their hands in their pockets, and calling
themselves a Corn Exchange!</p>
<p>The Theatre was in existence, I found, on asking the fishmonger,
who had a compact show of stock in his window, consisting of a sole
and a quart of shrimps&mdash;and I resolved to comfort my mind by going
to look at it.&nbsp; Richard the Third, in a very uncomfortable cloak,
had first appeared to me there, and had made my heart leap with terror
by backing up against the stage-box in which I was posted, while struggling
for life against the virtuous Richmond.&nbsp; It was within those walls
that I had learnt as from a page of English history, how that wicked
King slept in war-time on a sofa much too short for him, and how fearfully
his conscience troubled his boots.&nbsp; There, too, had I first seen
the funny countryman, but countryman of noble principles, in a flowered
waistcoat, crunch up his little hat and throw it on the ground, and
pull off his coat, saying, &lsquo;Dom thee, squire, coom on with thy
fistes then!&rsquo;&nbsp; At which the lovely young woman who kept company
with him (and who went out gleaning, in a narrow white muslin apron
with five beautiful bars of five different-coloured ribbons across it)
was so frightened for his sake, that she fainted away.&nbsp; Many wondrous
secrets of Nature had I come to the knowledge of in that sanctuary:
of which not the least terrific were, that the witches in Macbeth bore
an awful resemblance to the Thanes and other proper inhabitants of Scotland;
and that the good King Duncan couldn&rsquo;t rest in his grave, but
was constantly coming out of it and calling himself somebody else.&nbsp;
To the Theatre, therefore, I repaired for consolation.&nbsp; But I found
very little, for it was in a bad and declining way.&nbsp; A dealer in
wine and bottled beer had already squeezed his trade into the box-office,
and the theatrical money was taken&mdash;when it came&mdash;in a kind
of meat-safe in the passage.&nbsp; The dealer in wine and bottled beer
must have insinuated himself under the stage too; for he announced that
he had various descriptions of alcoholic drinks &lsquo;in the wood,&rsquo;
and there was no possible stowage for the wood anywhere else.&nbsp;
Evidently, he was by degrees eating the establishment away to the core,
and would soon have sole possession of it.&nbsp; It was To Let, and
hopelessly so, for its old purposes; and there had been no entertainment
within its walls for a long time except a Panorama; and even that had
been announced as &lsquo;pleasingly instructive,&rsquo; and I know too
well the fatal meaning and the leaden import of those terrible expressions.&nbsp;
No, there was no comfort in the Theatre.&nbsp; It was mysteriously gone,
like my own youth.&nbsp; Unlike my own youth, it might be coming back
some day; but there was little promise of it.</p>
<p>As the town was placarded with references to the Dullborough Mechanics&rsquo;
Institution, I thought I would go and look at that establishment next.&nbsp;
There had been no such thing in the town, in my young day, and it occurred
to me that its extreme prosperity might have brought adversity upon
the Drama.&nbsp; I found the Institution with some difficulty, and should
scarcely have known that I had found it if I had judged from its external
appearance only; but this was attributable to its never having been
finished, and having no front: consequently, it led a modest and retired
existence up a stable-yard.&nbsp; It was (as I learnt, on inquiry) a
most flourishing Institution, and of the highest benefit to the town:
two triumphs which I was glad to understand were not at all impaired
by the seeming drawbacks that no mechanics belonged to it, and that
it was steeped in debt to the chimney-pots.&nbsp; It had a large room,
which was approached by an infirm step-ladder: the builder having declined
to construct the intended staircase, without a present payment in cash,
which Dullborough (though profoundly appreciative of the Institution)
seemed unaccountably bashful about subscribing.&nbsp; The large room
had cost&mdash;or would, when paid for&mdash;five hundred pounds; and
it had more mortar in it and more echoes, than one might have expected
to get for the money.&nbsp; It was fitted up with a platform, and the
usual lecturing tools, including a large black board of a menacing appearance.&nbsp;
On referring to lists of the courses of lectures that had been given
in this thriving Hall, I fancied I detected a shyness in admitting that
human nature when at leisure has any desire whatever to be relieved
and diverted; and a furtive sliding in of any poor make-weight piece
of amusement, shame-facedly and edgewise.&nbsp; Thus, I observed that
it was necessary for the members to be knocked on the head with Gas,
Air, Water, Food, the Solar System, the Geological periods, Criticism
on Milton, the Steam-engine, John Bunyan, and Arrow-Headed Inscriptions,
before they might be tickled by those unaccountable choristers, the
negro singers in the court costume of the reign of George the Second.&nbsp;
Likewise, that they must be stunned by a weighty inquiry whether there
was internal evidence in Shakespeare&rsquo;s works, to prove that his
uncle by the mother&rsquo;s side lived for some years at Stoke Newington,
before they were brought-to by a Miscellaneous Concert.&nbsp; But, indeed,
the masking of entertainment, and pretending it was something else&mdash;as
people mask bedsteads when they are obliged to have them in sitting-rooms,
and make believe that they are book-cases, sofas, chests of drawers,
anything rather than bedsteads&mdash;was manifest even in the pretence
of dreariness that the unfortunate entertainers themselves felt obliged
in decency to put forth when they came here.&nbsp; One very agreeable
professional singer, who travelled with two professional ladies, knew
better than to introduce either of those ladies to sing the ballad &lsquo;Comin&rsquo;
through the Rye&rsquo; without prefacing it himself, with some general
remarks on wheat and clover; and even then, he dared not for his life
call the song, a song, but disguised it in the bill as an &lsquo;Illustration.&rsquo;&nbsp;
In the library, also&mdash;fitted with shelves for three thousand books,
and containing upwards of one hundred and seventy (presented copies
mostly), seething their edges in damp plaster&mdash;there was such a
painfully apologetic return of 62 offenders who had read Travels, Popular
Biography, and mere Fiction descriptive of the aspirations of the hearts
and souls of mere human creatures like themselves; and such an elaborate
parade of 2 bright examples who had had down Euclid after the day&rsquo;s
occupation and confinement; and 3 who had had down Metaphysics after
ditto; and 1 who had had down Theology after ditto; and 4 who had worried
Grammar, Political Economy, Botany, and Logarithms all at once after
ditto; that I suspected the boasted class to be one man, who had been
hired to do it.</p>
<p>Emerging from the Mechanics&rsquo; Institution and continuing my
walk about the town, I still noticed everywhere the prevalence, to an
extraordinary degree, of this custom of putting the natural demand for
amusement out of sight, as some untidy housekeepers put dust, and pretending
that it was swept away.&nbsp; And yet it was ministered to, in a dull
and abortive manner, by all who made this feint.&nbsp; Looking in at
what is called in Dullborough &lsquo;the serious bookseller&rsquo;s,&rsquo;
where, in my childhood, I had studied the faces of numbers of gentlemen
depicted in rostrums with a gaslight on each side of them, and casting
my eyes over the open pages of certain printed discourses there, I found
a vast deal of aiming at jocosity and dramatic effect, even in them&mdash;yes,
verily, even on the part of one very wrathful expounder who bitterly
anathematised a poor little Circus.&nbsp; Similarly, in the reading
provided for the young people enrolled in the Lasso of Love, and other
excellent unions, I found the writers generally under a distressing
sense that they must start (at all events) like story-tellers, and delude
the young persons into the belief that they were going to be interesting.&nbsp;
As I looked in at this window for twenty minutes by the clock, I am
in a position to offer a friendly remonstrance&mdash;not bearing on
this particular point&mdash;to the designers and engravers of the pictures
in those publications.&nbsp; Have they considered the awful consequences
likely to flow from their representations of Virtue?&nbsp; Have they
asked themselves the question, whether the terrific prospect of acquiring
that fearful chubbiness of head, unwieldiness of arm, feeble dislocation
of leg, crispiness of hair, and enormity of shirt-collar, which they
represent as inseparable from Goodness, may not tend to confirm sensitive
waverers, in Evil?&nbsp; A most impressive example (if I had believed
it) of what a Dustman and a Sailor may come to, when they mend their
ways, was presented to me in this same shop-window.&nbsp; When they
were leaning (they were intimate friends) against a post, drunk and
reckless, with surpassingly bad hats on, and their hair over their foreheads,
they were rather picturesque, and looked as if they might be agreeable
men, if they would not be beasts.&nbsp; But, when they had got over
their bad propensities, and when, as a consequence, their heads had
swelled alarmingly, their hair had got so curly that it lifted their
blown-out cheeks up, their coat-cuffs were so long that they never could
do any work, and their eyes were so wide open that they never could
do any sleep, they presented a spectacle calculated to plunge a timid
nature into the depths of Infamy.</p>
<p>But, the clock that had so degenerated since I saw it last, admonished
me that I had stayed here long enough; and I resumed my walk.</p>
<p>I had not gone fifty paces along the street when I was suddenly brought
up by the sight of a man who got out of a little phaeton at the doctor&rsquo;s
door, and went into the doctor&rsquo;s house.&nbsp; Immediately, the
air was filled with the scent of trodden grass, and the perspective
of years opened, and at the end of it was a little likeness of this
man keeping a wicket, and I said, &lsquo;God bless my soul!&nbsp; Joe
Specks!&rsquo;</p>
<p>Through many changes and much work, I had preserved a tenderness
for the memory of Joe, forasmuch as we had made the acquaintance of
Roderick Random together, and had believed him to be no ruffian, but
an ingenuous and engaging hero.&nbsp; Scorning to ask the boy left in
the phaeton whether it was really Joe, and scorning even to read the
brass plate on the door&mdash;so sure was I&mdash;I rang the bell and
informed the servant maid that a stranger sought audience of Mr. Specks.&nbsp;
Into a room, half surgery, half study, I was shown to await his coming,
and I found it, by a series of elaborate accidents, bestrewn with testimonies
to Joe.&nbsp; Portrait of Mr. Specks, bust of Mr. Specks, silver cup
from grateful patient to Mr. Specks, presentation sermon from local
clergyman, dedication poem from local poet, dinner-card from local nobleman,
tract on balance of power from local refugee, inscribed <i>Hommage de
l&rsquo;auteur</i> <i>&agrave; Specks.</i></p>
<p>When my old schoolfellow came in, and I informed him with a smile
that I was not a patient, he seemed rather at a loss to perceive any
reason for smiling in connexion with that fact, and inquired to what
was he to attribute the honour?&nbsp; I asked him with another smile,
could he remember me at all?&nbsp; He had not (he said) that pleasure.&nbsp;
I was beginning to have but a poor opinion of Mr. Specks, when he said
reflectively, &lsquo;And yet there&rsquo;s a something too.&rsquo;&nbsp;
Upon that, I saw a boyish light in his eyes that looked well, and I
asked him if he could inform me, as a stranger who desired to know and
had not the means of reference at hand, what the name of the young lady
was, who married Mr. Random?&nbsp; Upon that, he said &lsquo;Narcissa,&rsquo;
and, after staring for a moment, called me by my name, shook me by the
hand, and melted into a roar of laughter.&nbsp; &lsquo;Why, of course,
you&rsquo;ll remember Lucy Green,&rsquo; he said, after we had talked
a little.&nbsp; &lsquo;Of course,&rsquo; said I.&nbsp; &lsquo;Whom do
you think she married?&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;You?&rsquo; I hazarded.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Me,&rsquo; said Specks, &lsquo;and you shall see her.&rsquo;&nbsp;
So I saw her, and she was fat, and if all the hay in the world had been
heaped upon her, it could scarcely have altered her face more than Time
had altered it from my remembrance of the face that had once looked
down upon me into the fragrant dungeons of Seringapatam.&nbsp; But when
her youngest child came in after dinner (for I dined with them, and
we had no other company than Specks, Junior, Barrister-at-law, who went
away as soon as the cloth was removed, to look after the young lady
to whom he was going to be married next week), I saw again, in that
little daughter, the little face of the hayfield, unchanged, and it
quite touched my foolish heart.&nbsp; We talked immensely, Specks and
Mrs. Specks, and I, and we spoke of our old selves as though our old
selves were dead and gone, and indeed, indeed they were&mdash;dead and
gone as the playing-field that had become a wilderness of rusty iron,
and the property of S.E.R.</p>
<p>Specks, however, illuminated Dullborough with the rays of interest
that I wanted and should otherwise have missed in it, and linked its
present to its past, with a highly agreeable chain.&nbsp; And in Specks&rsquo;s
society I had new occasion to observe what I had before noticed in similar
communications among other men.&nbsp; All the schoolfellows and others
of old, whom I inquired about, had either done superlatively well or
superlatively ill&mdash;had either become uncertificated bankrupts,
or been felonious and got themselves transported; or had made great
hits in life, and done wonders.&nbsp; And this is so commonly the case,
that I never can imagine what becomes of all the mediocre people of
people&rsquo;s youth&mdash;especially considering that we find no lack
of the species in our maturity.&nbsp; But, I did not propound this difficulty
to Specks, for no pause in the conversation gave me an occasion.&nbsp;
Nor, could I discover one single flaw in the good doctor&mdash;when
he reads this, he will receive in a friendly spirit the pleasantly meant
record&mdash;except that he had forgotten his Roderick Random, and that
he confounded Strap with Lieutenant Hatchway; who never knew Random,
howsoever intimate with Pickle.</p>
<p>When I went alone to the Railway to catch my train at night (Specks
had meant to go with me, but was inopportunely called out), I was in
a more charitable mood with Dullborough than I had been all day; and
yet in my heart I had loved it all day too.&nbsp; Ah! who was I that
I should quarrel with the town for being changed to me, when I myself
had come back, so changed, to it!&nbsp; All my early readings and early
imaginations dated from this place, and I took them away so full of
innocent construction and guileless belief, and I brought them back
so worn and torn, so much the wiser and so much the worse!</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XIII&mdash;NIGHT WALKS</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>Some years ago, a temporary inability to sleep, referable to a distressing
impression, caused me to walk about the streets all night, for a series
of several nights.&nbsp; The disorder might have taken a long time to
conquer, if it had been faintly experimented on in bed; but, it was
soon defeated by the brisk treatment of getting up directly after lying
down, and going out, and coming home tired at sunrise.</p>
<p>In the course of those nights, I finished my education in a fair
amateur experience of houselessness.&nbsp; My principal object being
to get through the night, the pursuit of it brought me into sympathetic
relations with people who have no other object every night in the year.</p>
<p>The month was March, and the weather damp, cloudy, and cold.&nbsp;
The sun not rising before half-past five, the night perspective looked
sufficiently long at half-past twelve: which was about my time for confronting
it.</p>
<p>The restlessness of a great city, and the way in which it tumbles
and tosses before it can get to sleep, formed one of the first entertainments
offered to the contemplation of us houseless people.&nbsp; It lasted
about two hours.&nbsp; We lost a great deal of companionship when the
late public-houses turned their lamps out, and when the potmen thrust
the last brawling drunkards into the street; but stray vehicles and
stray people were left us, after that.&nbsp; If we were very lucky,
a policeman&rsquo;s rattle sprang and a fray turned up; but, in general,
surprisingly little of this diversion was provided.&nbsp; Except in
the Haymarket, which is the worst kept part of London, and about Kent-street
in the Borough, and along a portion of the line of the Old Kent-road,
the peace was seldom violently broken.&nbsp; But, it was always the
case that London, as if in imitation of individual citizens belonging
to it, had expiring fits and starts of restlessness.&nbsp; After all
seemed quiet, if one cab rattled by, half-a-dozen would surely follow;
and Houselessness even observed that intoxicated people appeared to
be magnetically attracted towards each other; so that we knew when we
saw one drunken object staggering against the shutters of a shop, that
another drunken object would stagger up before five minutes were out,
to fraternise or fight with it.&nbsp; When we made a divergence from
the regular species of drunkard, the thin-armed, puff-faced, leaden-lipped
gin-drinker, and encountered a rarer specimen of a more decent appearance,
fifty to one but that specimen was dressed in soiled mourning.&nbsp;
As the street experience in the night, so the street experience in the
day; the common folk who come unexpectedly into a little property, come
unexpectedly into a deal of liquor.</p>
<p>At length these flickering sparks would die away, worn out&mdash;the
last veritable sparks of waking life trailed from some late pieman or
hot-potato man&mdash;and London would sink to rest.&nbsp; And then the
yearning of the houseless mind would be for any sign of company, any
lighted place, any movement, anything suggestive of any one being up&mdash;nay,
even so much as awake, for the houseless eye looked out for lights in
windows.</p>
<p>Walking the streets under the pattering rain, Houselessness would
walk and walk and walk, seeing nothing but the interminable tangle of
streets, save at a corner, here and there, two policemen in conversation,
or the sergeant or inspector looking after his men.&nbsp; Now and then
in the night&mdash;but rarely&mdash;Houselessness would become aware
of a furtive head peering out of a doorway a few yards before him, and,
coming up with the head, would find a man standing bolt upright to keep
within the doorway&rsquo;s shadow, and evidently intent upon no particular
service to society.&nbsp; Under a kind of fascination, and in a ghostly
silence suitable to the time, Houselessness and this gentleman would
eye one another from head to foot, and so, without exchange of speech,
part, mutually suspicious.&nbsp; Drip, drip, drip, from ledge and coping,
splash from pipes and water-spouts, and by-and-by the houseless shadow
would fall upon the stones that pave the way to Waterloo-bridge; it
being in the houseless mind to have a halfpenny worth of excuse for
saying &lsquo;Good-night&rsquo; to the toll-keeper, and catching a glimpse
of his fire.&nbsp; A good fire and a good great-coat and a good woollen
neck-shawl, were comfortable things to see in conjunction with the toll-keeper;
also his brisk wakefulness was excellent company when he rattled the
change of halfpence down upon that metal table of his, like a man who
defied the night, with all its sorrowful thoughts, and didn&rsquo;t
care for the coming of dawn.&nbsp; There was need of encouragement on
the threshold of the bridge, for the bridge was dreary.&nbsp; The chopped-up
murdered man, had not been lowered with a rope over the parapet when
those nights were; he was alive, and slept then quietly enough most
likely, and undisturbed by any dream of where he was to come.&nbsp;
But the river had an awful look, the buildings on the banks were muffled
in black shrouds, and the reflected lights seemed to originate deep
in the water, as if the spectres of suicides were holding them to show
where they went down.&nbsp; The wild moon and clouds were as restless
as an evil conscience in a tumbled bed, and the very shadow of the immensity
of London seemed to lie oppressively upon the river.</p>
<p>Between the bridge and the two great theatres, there was but the
distance of a few hundred paces, so the theatres came next.&nbsp; Grim
and black within, at night, those great dry Wells, and lonesome to imagine,
with the rows of faces faded out, the lights extinguished, and the seats
all empty.&nbsp; One would think that nothing in them knew itself at
such a time but Yorick&rsquo;s skull.&nbsp; In one of my night walks,
as the church steeples were shaking the March winds and rain with the
strokes of Four, I passed the outer boundary of one of these great deserts,
and entered it.&nbsp; With a dim lantern in my hand, I groped my well-known
way to the stage and looked over the orchestra&mdash;which was like
a great grave dug for a time of pestilence&mdash;into the void beyond.&nbsp;
A dismal cavern of an immense aspect, with the chandelier gone dead
like everything else, and nothing visible through mist and fog and space,
but tiers of winding-sheets.&nbsp; The ground at my feet where, when
last there, I had seen the peasantry of Naples dancing among the vines,
reckless of the burning mountain which threatened to overwhelm them,
was now in possession of a strong serpent of engine-hose, watchfully
lying in wait for the serpent Fire, and ready to fly at it if it showed
its forked tongue.&nbsp; A ghost of a watchman, carrying a faint corpse
candle, haunted the distant upper gallery and flitted away.&nbsp; Retiring
within the proscenium, and holding my light above my head towards the
rolled-up curtain&mdash;green no more, but black as ebony&mdash;my sight
lost itself in a gloomy vault, showing faint indications in it of a
shipwreck of canvas and cordage.&nbsp; Methought I felt much as a diver
might, at the bottom of the sea.</p>
<p>In those small hours when there was no movement in the streets, it
afforded matter for reflection to take Newgate in the way, and, touching
its rough stone, to think of the prisoners in their sleep, and then
to glance in at the lodge over the spiked wicket, and see the fire and
light of the watching turnkeys, on the white wall.&nbsp; Not an inappropriate
time either, to linger by that wicked little Debtors&rsquo; Door&mdash;shutting
tighter than any other door one ever saw&mdash;which has been Death&rsquo;s
Door to so many.&nbsp; In the days of the uttering of forged one-pound
notes by people tempted up from the country, how many hundreds of wretched
creatures of both sexes&mdash;many quite innocent&mdash;swung out of
a pitiless and inconsistent world, with the tower of yonder Christian
church of Saint Sepulchre monstrously before their eyes!&nbsp; Is there
any haunting of the Bank Parlour, by the remorseful souls of old directors,
in the nights of these later days, I wonder, or is it as quiet as this
degenerate Aceldama of an Old Bailey?</p>
<p>To walk on to the Bank, lamenting the good old times and bemoaning
the present evil period, would be an easy next step, so I would take
it, and would make my houseless circuit of the Bank, and give a thought
to the treasure within; likewise to the guard of soldiers passing the
night there, and nodding over the fire.&nbsp; Next, I went to Billingsgate,
in some hope of market-people, but it proving as yet too early, crossed
London-bridge and got down by the water-side on the Surrey shore among
the buildings of the great brewery.&nbsp; There was plenty going on
at the brewery; and the reek, and the smell of grains, and the rattling
of the plump dray horses at their mangers, were capital company.&nbsp;
Quite refreshed by having mingled with this good society, I made a new
start with a new heart, setting the old King&rsquo;s Bench prison before
me for my next object, and resolving, when I should come to the wall,
to think of poor Horace Kinch, and the Dry Rot in men.</p>
<p>A very curious disease the Dry Rot in men, and difficult to detect
the beginning of.&nbsp; It had carried Horace Kinch inside the wall
of the old King&rsquo;s Bench prison, and it had carried him out with
his feet foremost.&nbsp; He was a likely man to look at, in the prime
of life, well to do, as clever as he needed to be, and popular among
many friends.&nbsp; He was suitably married, and had healthy and pretty
children.&nbsp; But, like some fair-looking houses or fair-looking ships,
he took the Dry Rot.&nbsp; The first strong external revelation of the
Dry Rot in men, is a tendency to lurk and lounge; to be at street-corners
without intelligible reason; to be going anywhere when met; to be about
many places rather than at any; to do nothing tangible, but to have
an intention of performing a variety of intangible duties to-morrow
or the day after.&nbsp; When this manifestation of the disease is observed,
the observer will usually connect it with a vague impression once formed
or received, that the patient was living a little too hard.&nbsp; He
will scarcely have had leisure to turn it over in his mind and form
the terrible suspicion &lsquo;Dry Rot,&rsquo; when he will notice a
change for the worse in the patient&rsquo;s appearance: a certain slovenliness
and deterioration, which is not poverty, nor dirt, nor intoxication,
nor ill-health, but simply Dry Rot.&nbsp; To this, succeeds a smell
as of strong waters, in the morning; to that, a looseness respecting
money; to that, a stronger smell as of strong waters, at all times;
to that, a looseness respecting everything; to that, a trembling of
the limbs, somnolency, misery, and crumbling to pieces.&nbsp; As it
is in wood, so it is in men.&nbsp; Dry Rot advances at a compound usury
quite incalculable.&nbsp; A plank is found infected with it, and the
whole structure is devoted.&nbsp; Thus it had been with the unhappy
Horace Kinch, lately buried by a small subscription.&nbsp; Those who
knew him had not nigh done saying, &lsquo;So well off, so comfortably
established, with such hope before him&mdash;and yet, it is feared,
with a slight touch of Dry Rot!&rsquo; when lo! the man was all Dry
Rot and dust.</p>
<p>From the dead wall associated on those houseless nights with this
too common story, I chose next to wander by Bethlehem Hospital; partly,
because it lay on my road round to Westminster; partly, because I had
a night fancy in my head which could be best pursued within sight of
its walls and dome.&nbsp; And the fancy was this: Are not the sane and
the insane equal at night as the sane lie a dreaming?&nbsp; Are not
all of us outside this hospital, who dream, more or less in the condition
of those inside it, every night of our lives?&nbsp; Are we not nightly
persuaded, as they daily are, that we associate preposterously with
kings and queens, emperors and empresses, and notabilities of all sorts?&nbsp;
Do we not nightly jumble events and personages and times and places,
as these do daily?&nbsp; Are we not sometimes troubled by our own sleeping
inconsistencies, and do we not vexedly try to account for them or excuse
them, just as these do sometimes in respect of their waking delusions?&nbsp;
Said an afflicted man to me, when I was last in a hospital like this,
&lsquo;Sir, I can frequently fly.&rsquo;&nbsp; I was half ashamed to
reflect that so could I&mdash;by night.&nbsp; Said a woman to me on
the same occasion, &lsquo;Queen Victoria frequently comes to dine with
me, and her Majesty and I dine off peaches and maccaroni in our night-gowns,
and his Royal Highness the Prince Consort does us the honour to make
a third on horseback in a Field-Marshal&rsquo;s uniform.&rsquo;&nbsp;
Could I refrain from reddening with consciousness when I remembered
the amazing royal parties I myself had given (at night), the unaccountable
viands I had put on table, and my extraordinary manner of conducting
myself on those distinguished occasions?&nbsp; I wonder that the great
master who knew everything, when he called Sleep the death of each day&rsquo;s
life, did not call Dreams the insanity of each day&rsquo;s sanity.</p>
<p>By this time I had left the Hospital behind me, and was again setting
towards the river; and in a short breathing space I was on Westminster-bridge,
regaling my houseless eyes with the external walls of the British Parliament&mdash;the
perfection of a stupendous institution, I know, and the admiration of
all surrounding nations and succeeding ages, I do not doubt, but perhaps
a little the better now and then for being pricked up to its work.&nbsp;
Turning off into Old Palace-yard, the Courts of Law kept me company
for a quarter of an hour; hinting in low whispers what numbers of people
they were keeping awake, and how intensely wretched and horrible they
were rendering the small hours to unfortunate suitors.&nbsp; Westminster
Abbey was fine gloomy society for another quarter of an hour; suggesting
a wonderful procession of its dead among the dark arches and pillars,
each century more amazed by the century following it than by all the
centuries going before.&nbsp; And indeed in those houseless night walks&mdash;which
even included cemeteries where watchmen went round among the graves
at stated times, and moved the tell-tale handle of an index which recorded
that they had touched it at such an hour&mdash;it was a solemn consideration
what enormous hosts of dead belong to one old great city, and how, if
they were raised while the living slept, there would not be the space
of a pin&rsquo;s point in all the streets and ways for the living to
come out into.&nbsp; Not only that, but the vast armies of dead would
overflow the hills and valleys beyond the city, and would stretch away
all round it, God knows how far.</p>
<p>When a church clock strikes, on houseless ears in the dead of the
night, it may be at first mistaken for company and hailed as such.&nbsp;
But, as the spreading circles of vibration, which you may perceive at
such a time with great clearness, go opening out, for ever and ever
afterwards widening perhaps (as the philosopher has suggested) in eternal
space, the mistake is rectified and the sense of loneliness is profounder.&nbsp;
Once&mdash;it was after leaving the Abbey and turning my face north&mdash;I
came to the great steps of St. Martin&rsquo;s church as the clock was
striking Three.&nbsp; Suddenly, a thing that in a moment more I should
have trodden upon without seeing, rose up at my feet with a cry of loneliness
and houselessness, struck out of it by the bell, the like of which I
never heard.&nbsp; We then stood face to face looking at one another,
frightened by one another.&nbsp; The creature was like a beetle-browed
hair-lipped youth of twenty, and it had a loose bundle of rags on, which
it held together with one of its hands.&nbsp; It shivered from head
to foot, and its teeth chattered, and as it stared at me&mdash;persecutor,
devil, ghost, whatever it thought me&mdash;it made with its whining
mouth as if it were snapping at me, like a worried dog.&nbsp; Intending
to give this ugly object money, I put out my hand to stay it&mdash;for
it recoiled as it whined and snapped&mdash;and laid my hand upon its
shoulder.&nbsp; Instantly, it twisted out of its garment, like the young
man in the New Testament, and left me standing alone with its rags in
my hands.</p>
<p>Covent-garden Market, when it was market morning, was wonderful company.&nbsp;
The great waggons of cabbages, with growers&rsquo; men and boys lying
asleep under them, and with sharp dogs from market-garden neighbourhoods
looking after the whole, were as good as a party.&nbsp; But one of the
worst night sights I know in London, is to be found in the children
who prowl about this place; who sleep in the baskets, fight for the
offal, dart at any object they think they can lay their their thieving
hands on, dive under the carts and barrows, dodge the constables, and
are perpetually making a blunt pattering on the pavement of the Piazza
with the rain of their naked feet.&nbsp; A painful and unnatural result
comes of the comparison one is forced to institute between the growth
of corruption as displayed in the so much improved and cared for fruits
of the earth, and the growth of corruption as displayed in these all
uncared for (except inasmuch as ever-hunted) savages.</p>
<p>There was early coffee to be got about Covent-garden Market, and
that was more company&mdash;warm company, too, which was better.&nbsp;
Toast of a very substantial quality, was likewise procurable: though
the towzled-headed man who made it, in an inner chamber within the coffee-room,
hadn&rsquo;t got his coat on yet, and was so heavy with sleep that in
every interval of toast and coffee he went off anew behind the partition
into complicated cross-roads of choke and snore, and lost his way directly.&nbsp;
Into one of these establishments (among the earliest) near Bow-street,
there came one morning as I sat over my houseless cup, pondering where
to go next, a man in a high and long snuff-coloured coat, and shoes,
and, to the best of my belief, nothing else but a hat, who took out
of his hat a large cold meat pudding; a meat pudding so large that it
was a very tight fit, and brought the lining of the hat out with it.&nbsp;
This mysterious man was known by his pudding, for on his entering, the
man of sleep brought him a pint of hot tea, a small loaf, and a large
knife and fork and plate.&nbsp; Left to himself in his box, he stood
the pudding on the bare table, and, instead of cutting it, stabbed it,
overhand, with the knife, like a mortal enemy; then took the knife out,
wiped it on his sleeve, tore the pudding asunder with his fingers, and
ate it all up.&nbsp; The remembrance of this man with the pudding remains
with me as the remembrance of the most spectral person my houselessness
encountered.&nbsp; Twice only was I in that establishment, and twice
I saw him stalk in (as I should say, just out of bed, and presently
going back to bed), take out his pudding, stab his pudding, wipe the
dagger, and eat his pudding all up.&nbsp; He was a man whose figure
promised cadaverousness, but who had an excessively red face, though
shaped like a horse&rsquo;s.&nbsp; On the second occasion of my seeing
him, he said huskily to the man of sleep, &lsquo;Am I red to-night?&rsquo;&nbsp;
&lsquo;You are,&rsquo; he uncompromisingly answered.&nbsp; &lsquo;My
mother,&rsquo; said the spectre, &lsquo;was a red-faced woman that liked
drink, and I looked at her hard when she laid in her coffin, and I took
the complexion.&rsquo;&nbsp; Somehow, the pudding seemed an unwholesome
pudding after that, and I put myself in its way no more.</p>
<p>When there was no market, or when I wanted variety, a railway terminus
with the morning mails coming in, was remunerative company.&nbsp; But
like most of the company to be had in this world, it lasted only a very
short time.&nbsp; The station lamps would burst out ablaze, the porters
would emerge from places of concealment, the cabs and trucks would rattle
to their places (the post-office carts were already in theirs), and,
finally, the bell would strike up, and the train would come banging
in.&nbsp; But there were few passengers and little luggage, and everything
scuttled away with the greatest expedition.&nbsp; The locomotive post-offices,
with their great nets&mdash;as if they had been dragging the country
for bodies&mdash;would fly open as to their doors, and would disgorge
a smell of lamp, an exhausted clerk, a guard in a red coat, and their
bags of letters; the engine would blow and heave and perspire, like
an engine wiping its forehead and saying what a run it had had; and
within ten minutes the lamps were out, and I was houseless and alone
again.</p>
<p>But now, there were driven cattle on the high road near, wanting
(as cattle always do) to turn into the midst of stone walls, and squeeze
themselves through six inches&rsquo; width of iron railing, and getting
their heads down (also as cattle always do) for tossing-purchase at
quite imaginary dogs, and giving themselves and every devoted creature
associated with them a most extraordinary amount of unnecessary trouble.&nbsp;
Now, too, the conscious gas began to grow pale with the knowledge that
daylight was coming, and straggling workpeople were already in the streets,
and, as waking life had become extinguished with the last pieman&rsquo;s
sparks, so it began to be rekindled with the fires of the first street-corner
breakfast-sellers.&nbsp; And so by faster and faster degrees, until
the last degrees were very fast, the day came, and I was tired and could
sleep.&nbsp; And it is not, as I used to think, going home at such times,
the least wonderful thing in London, that in the real desert region
of the night, the houseless wanderer is alone there.&nbsp; I knew well
enough where to find Vice and Misfortune of all kinds, if I had chosen;
but they were put out of sight, and my houselessness had many miles
upon miles of streets in which it could, and did, have its own solitary
way.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XIV&mdash;CHAMBERS</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>Having occasion to transact some business with a solicitor who occupies
a highly suicidal set of chambers in Gray&rsquo;s Inn, I afterwards
took a turn in the large square of that stronghold of Melancholy, reviewing,
with congenial surroundings, my experiences of Chambers.</p>
<p>I began, as was natural, with the Chambers I had just left.&nbsp;
They were an upper set on a rotten staircase, with a mysterious bunk
or bulkhead on the landing outside them, of a rather nautical and Screw
Collier-like appearance than otherwise, and painted an intense black.&nbsp;
Many dusty years have passed since the appropriation of this Davy Jones&rsquo;s
locker to any purpose, and during the whole period within the memory
of living man, it has been hasped and padlocked.&nbsp; I cannot quite
satisfy my mind whether it was originally meant for the reception of
coals, or bodies, or as a place of temporary security for the plunder
&lsquo;looted&rsquo; by laundresses; but I incline to the last opinion.&nbsp;
It is about breast high, and usually serves as a bulk for defendants
in reduced circumstances to lean against and ponder at, when they come
on the hopeful errand of trying to make an arrangement without money&mdash;under
which auspicious circumstances it mostly happens that the legal gentleman
they want to see, is much engaged, and they pervade the staircase for
a considerable period.&nbsp; Against this opposing bulk, in the absurdest
manner, the tomb-like outer door of the solicitor&rsquo;s chambers (which
is also of an intense black) stands in dark ambush, half open, and half
shut, all day.&nbsp; The solicitor&rsquo;s apartments are three in number;
consisting of a slice, a cell, and a wedge.&nbsp; The slice is assigned
to the two clerks, the cell is occupied by the principal, and the wedge
is devoted to stray papers, old game baskets from the country, a washing-stand,
and a model of a patent Ship&rsquo;s Caboose which was exhibited in
Chancery at the commencement of the present century on an application
for an injunction to restrain infringement.&nbsp; At about half-past
nine on every week-day morning, the younger of the two clerks (who,
I have reason to believe, leads the fashion at Pentonville in the articles
of pipes and shirts) may be found knocking the dust out of his official
door-key on the bunk or locker before mentioned; and so exceedingly
subject to dust is his key, and so very retentive of that superfluity,
that in exceptional summer weather when a ray of sunlight has fallen
on the locker in my presence, I have noticed its inexpressive countenance
to be deeply marked by a kind of Bramah erysipelas or small-pox.</p>
<p>This set of chambers (as I have gradually discovered, when I have
had restless occasion to make inquiries or leave messages, after office
hours) is under the charge of a lady named Sweeney, in figure extremely
like an old family-umbrella: whose dwelling confronts a dead wall in
a court off Gray&rsquo;s Inn-lane, and who is usually fetched into the
passage of that bower, when wanted, from some neighbouring home of industry,
which has the curious property of imparting an inflammatory appearance
to her visage.&nbsp; Mrs. Sweeney is one of the race of professed laundresses,
and is the compiler of a remarkable manuscript volume entitled &lsquo;Mrs.
Sweeney&rsquo;s Book,&rsquo; from which much curious statistical information
may be gathered respecting the high prices and small uses of soda, soap,
sand, firewood, and other such articles.&nbsp; I have created a legend
in my mind&mdash;and consequently I believe it with the utmost pertinacity&mdash;that
the late Mr. Sweeney was a ticket-porter under the Honourable Society
of Gray&rsquo;s Inn, and that, in consideration of his long and valuable
services, Mrs. Sweeney was appointed to her present post.&nbsp; For,
though devoid of personal charms, I have observed this lady to exercise
a fascination over the elderly ticker-porter mind (particularly under
the gateway, and in corners and entries), which I can only refer to
her being one of the fraternity, yet not competing with it.&nbsp; All
that need be said concerning this set of chambers, is said, when I have
added that it is in a large double house in Gray&rsquo;s Inn-square,
very much out of repair, and that the outer portal is ornamented in
a hideous manner with certain stone remains, which have the appearance
of the dismembered bust, torso, and limbs of a petrified bencher.</p>
<p>Indeed, I look upon Gray&rsquo;s Inn generally as one of the most
depressing institutions in brick and mortar, known to the children of
men.&nbsp; Can anything be more dreary than its arid Square, Sahara
Desert of the law, with the ugly old tiled-topped tenements, the dirty
windows, the bills To Let, To Let, the door-posts inscribed like gravestones,
the crazy gateway giving upon the filthy Lane, the scowling, iron-barred
prison-like passage into Verulam-buildings, the mouldy red-nosed ticket-porters
with little coffin plates, and why with aprons, the dry, hard, atomy-like
appearance of the whole dust-heap?&nbsp; When my uncommercial travels
tend to this dismal spot, my comfort is its rickety state.&nbsp; Imagination
gloats over the fulness of time when the staircases shall have quite
tumbled down&mdash;they are daily wearing into an ill-savoured powder,
but have not quite tumbled down yet&mdash;when the last old prolix bencher
all of the olden time, shall have been got out of an upper window by
means of a Fire Ladder, and carried off to the Holborn Union; when the
last clerk shall have engrossed the last parchment behind the last splash
on the last of the mud-stained windows, which, all through the miry
year, are pilloried out of recognition in Gray&rsquo;s Inn-lane.&nbsp;
Then, shall a squalid little trench, with rank grass and a pump in it,
lying between the coffee-house and South-square, be wholly given up
to cats and rats, and not, as now, have its empire divided between those
animals and a few briefless bipeds&mdash;surely called to the Bar by
voices of deceiving spirits, seeing that they are wanted there by no
mortal&mdash;who glance down, with eyes better glazed than their casements,
from their dreary and lacklustre rooms.&nbsp; Then shall the way Nor&rsquo;
Westward, now lying under a short grim colonnade where in summer-time
pounce flies from law-stationering windows into the eyes of laymen,
be choked with rubbish and happily become impassable.&nbsp; Then shall
the gardens where turf, trees, and gravel wear a legal livery of black,
run rank, and pilgrims go to Gorhambury to see Bacon&rsquo;s effigy
as he sat, and not come here (which in truth they seldom do) to see
where he walked.&nbsp; Then, in a word, shall the old-established vendor
of periodicals sit alone in his little crib of a shop behind the Holborn
Gate, like that lumbering Marius among the ruins of Carthage, who has
sat heavy on a thousand million of similes.</p>
<p>At one period of my uncommercial career I much frequented another
set of chambers in Gray&rsquo;s Inn-square.&nbsp; They were what is
familiarly called &lsquo;a top set,&rsquo; and all the eatables and
drinkables introduced into them acquired a flavour of Cockloft.&nbsp;
I have known an unopened Strasbourg p&acirc;t&eacute; fresh from Fortnum
and Mason&rsquo;s, to draw in this cockloft tone through its crockery
dish, and become penetrated with cockloft to the core of its inmost
truffle in three-quarters of an hour.&nbsp; This, however, was not the
most curious feature of those chambers; that, consisted in the profound
conviction entertained by my esteemed friend Parkle (their tenant) that
they were clean.&nbsp; Whether it was an inborn hallucination, or whether
it was imparted to him by Mrs. Miggot the laundress, I never could ascertain.&nbsp;
But, I believe he would have gone to the stake upon the question.&nbsp;
Now, they were so dirty that I could take off the distinctest impression
of my figure on any article of furniture by merely lounging upon it
for a few moments; and it used to be a private amusement of mine to
print myself off&mdash;if I may use the expression&mdash;all over the
rooms.&nbsp; It was the first large circulation I had.&nbsp; At other
times I have accidentally shaken a window curtain while in animated
conversation with Parkle, and struggling insects which were certainly
red, and were certainly not ladybirds, have dropped on the back of my
hand.&nbsp; Yet Parkle lived in that top set years, bound body and soul
to the superstition that they were clean.&nbsp; He used to say, when
congratulated upon them, &lsquo;Well, they are not like chambers in
one respect, you know; they are clean.&rsquo;&nbsp; Concurrently, he
had an idea which he could never explain, that Mrs. Miggot was in some
way connected with the Church.&nbsp; When he was in particularly good
spirits, he used to believe that a deceased uncle of hers had been a
Dean; when he was poorly and low, he believed that her brother had been
a Curate.&nbsp; I and Mrs. Miggot (she was a genteel woman) were on
confidential terms, but I never knew her to commit herself to any distinct
assertion on the subject; she merely claimed a proprietorship in the
Church, by looking when it was mentioned, as if the reference awakened
the slumbering Past, and were personal.&nbsp; It may have been his amiable
confidence in Mrs. Miggot&rsquo;s better days that inspired my friend
with his delusion respecting the chambers, but he never wavered in his
fidelity to it for a moment, though he wallowed in dirt seven years.</p>
<p>Two of the windows of these chambers looked down into the garden;
and we have sat up there together many a summer evening, saying how
pleasant it was, and talking of many things.&nbsp; To my intimacy with
that top set, I am indebted for three of my liveliest personal impressions
of the loneliness of life in chambers.&nbsp; They shall follow here,
in order; first, second, and third.</p>
<p>First.&nbsp; My Gray&rsquo;s Inn friend, on a time, hurt one of his
legs, and it became seriously inflamed.&nbsp; Not knowing of his indisposition,
I was on my way to visit him as usual, one summer evening, when I was
much surprised by meeting a lively leech in Field-court, Gray&rsquo;s
Inn, seemingly on his way to the West End of London.&nbsp; As the leech
was alone, and was of course unable to explain his position, even if
he had been inclined to do so (which he had not the appearance of being),
I passed him and went on.&nbsp; Turning the corner of Gray&rsquo;s Inn-square,
I was beyond expression amazed by meeting another leech&mdash;also entirely
alone, and also proceeding in a westerly direction, though with less
decision of purpose.&nbsp; Ruminating on this extraordinary circumstance,
and endeavouring to remember whether I had ever read, in the Philosophical
Transactions or any work on Natural History, of a migration of Leeches,
I ascended to the top set, past the dreary series of closed outer doors
of offices and an empty set or two, which intervened between that lofty
region and the surface.&nbsp; Entering my friend&rsquo;s rooms, I found
him stretched upon his back, like Prometheus Bound, with a perfectly
demented ticket-porter in attendance on him instead of the Vulture:
which helpless individual, who was feeble and frightened, and had (my
friend explained to me, in great choler) been endeavouring for some
hours to apply leeches to his leg, and as yet had only got on two out
of twenty.&nbsp; To this Unfortunate&rsquo;s distraction between a damp
cloth on which he had placed the leeches to freshen them, and the wrathful
adjurations of my friend to &lsquo;Stick &rsquo;em on, sir!&rsquo; I
referred the phenomenon I had encountered: the rather as two fine specimens
were at that moment going out at the door, while a general insurrection
of the rest was in progress on the table.&nbsp; After a while our united
efforts prevailed, and, when the leeches came off and had recovered
their spirits, we carefully tied them up in a decanter.&nbsp; But I
never heard more of them than that they were all gone next morning,
and that the Out-of-door young man of Bickle, Bush and Bodger, on the
ground floor, had been bitten and blooded by some creature not identified.&nbsp;
They never &lsquo;took&rsquo; on Mrs. Miggot, the laundress; but, I
have always preserved fresh, the belief that she unconsciously carried
several about her, until they gradually found openings in life.</p>
<p>Second.&nbsp; On the same staircase with my friend Parkle, and on
the same floor, there lived a man of law who pursued his business elsewhere,
and used those chambers as his place of residence.&nbsp; For three or
four years, Parkle rather knew of him than knew him, but after that&mdash;for
Englishmen&mdash;short pause of consideration, they began to speak.&nbsp;
Parkle exchanged words with him in his private character only, and knew
nothing of his business ways, or means.&nbsp; He was a man a good deal
about town, but always alone.&nbsp; We used to remark to one another,
that although we often encountered him in theatres, concert-rooms, and
similar public places, he was always alone.&nbsp; Yet he was not a gloomy
man, and was of a decidedly conversational turn; insomuch that he would
sometimes of an evening lounge with a cigar in his mouth, half in and
half out of Parkle&rsquo;s rooms, and discuss the topics of the day
by the hour.&nbsp; He used to hint on these occasions that he had four
faults to find with life; firstly, that it obliged a man to be always
winding up his watch; secondly, that London was too small; thirdly,
that it therefore wanted variety; fourthly, that there was too much
dust in it.&nbsp; There was so much dust in his own faded chambers,
certainly, that they reminded me of a sepulchre, furnished in prophetic
anticipation of the present time, which had newly been brought to light,
after having remained buried a few thousand years.&nbsp; One dry, hot
autumn evening at twilight, this man, being then five years turned of
fifty, looked in upon Parkle in his usual lounging way, with his cigar
in his mouth as usual, and said, &lsquo;I am going out of town.&rsquo;&nbsp;
As he never went out of town, Parkle said, &lsquo;Oh indeed!&nbsp; At
last?&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; says he, &lsquo;at last.&nbsp;
For what is a man to do?&nbsp; London is so small!&nbsp; If you go West,
you come to Hounslow.&nbsp; If you go East, you come to Bow.&nbsp; If
you go South, there&rsquo;s Brixton or Norwood.&nbsp; If you go North,
you can&rsquo;t get rid of Barnet.&nbsp; Then, the monotony of all the
streets, streets, streets&mdash;and of all the roads, roads, roads&mdash;and
the dust, dust, dust!&rsquo;&nbsp; When he had said this, he wished
Parkle a good evening, but came back again and said, with his watch
in his hand, &lsquo;Oh, I really cannot go on winding up this watch
over and over again; I wish you would take care of it.&rsquo;&nbsp;
So, Parkle laughed and consented, and the man went out of town.&nbsp;
The man remained out of town so long, that his letter-box became choked,
and no more letters could be got into it, and they began to be left
at the lodge and to accumulate there.&nbsp; At last the head-porter
decided, on conference with the steward, to use his master-key and look
into the chambers, and give them the benefit of a whiff of air.&nbsp;
Then, it was found that he had hanged himself to his bedstead, and had
left this written memorandum: &lsquo;I should prefer to be cut down
by my neighbour and friend (if he will allow me to call him so), H.
Parkle, Esq.&rsquo;&nbsp; This was an end of Parkle&rsquo;s occupancy
of chambers.&nbsp; He went into lodgings immediately.</p>
<p>Third.&nbsp; While Parkle lived in Gray&rsquo;s Inn, and I myself
was uncommercially preparing for the Bar&mdash;which is done, as everybody
knows, by having a frayed old gown put on in a pantry by an old woman
in a chronic state of Saint Anthony&rsquo;s fire and dropsy, and, so
decorated, bolting a bad dinner in a party of four, whereof each individual
mistrusts the other three&mdash;I say, while these things were, there
was a certain elderly gentleman who lived in a court of the Temple,
and was a great judge and lover of port wine.&nbsp; Every day he dined
at his club and drank his bottle or two of port wine, and every night
came home to the Temple and went to bed in his lonely chambers.&nbsp;
This had gone on many years without variation, when one night he had
a fit on coming home, and fell and cut his head deep, but partly recovered
and groped about in the dark to find the door.&nbsp; When he was afterwards
discovered, dead, it was clearly established by the marks of his hands
about the room that he must have done so.&nbsp; Now, this chanced on
the night of Christmas Eve, and over him lived a young fellow who had
sisters and young country friends, and who gave them a little party
that night, in the course of which they played at Blindman&rsquo;s Buff.&nbsp;
They played that game, for their greater sport, by the light of the
fire only; and once, when they were all quietly rustling and stealing
about, and the blindman was trying to pick out the prettiest sister
(for which I am far from blaming him), somebody cried, Hark!&nbsp; The
man below must be playing Blindman&rsquo;s Buff by himself to-night!&nbsp;
They listened, and they heard sounds of some one falling about and stumbling
against furniture, and they all laughed at the conceit, and went on
with their play, more light-hearted and merry than ever.&nbsp; Thus,
those two so different games of life and death were played out together,
blindfolded, in the two sets of chambers.</p>
<p>Such are the occurrences, which, coming to my knowledge, imbued me
long ago with a strong sense of the loneliness of chambers.&nbsp; There
was a fantastic illustration to much the same purpose implicitly believed
by a strange sort of man now dead, whom I knew when I had not quite
arrived at legal years of discretion, though I was already in the uncommercial
line.</p>
<p>This was a man who, though not more than thirty, had seen the world
in divers irreconcilable capacities&mdash;had been an officer in a South
American regiment among other odd things&mdash;but had not achieved
much in any way of life, and was in debt, and in hiding.&nbsp; He occupied
chambers of the dreariest nature in Lyons Inn; his name, however, was
not up on the door, or door-post, but in lieu of it stood the name of
a friend who had died in the chambers, and had given him the furniture.&nbsp;
The story arose out of the furniture, and was to this effect:- Let the
former holder of the chambers, whose name was still upon the door and
door-post, be Mr. Testator.</p>
<p>Mr. Testator took a set of chambers in Lyons Inn when he had but
very scanty furniture for his bedroom, and none for his sitting-room.&nbsp;
He had lived some wintry months in this condition, and had found it
very bare and cold.&nbsp; One night, past midnight, when he sat writing
and still had writing to do that must be done before he went to bed,
he found himself out of coals.&nbsp; He had coals down-stairs, but had
never been to his cellar; however the cellar-key was on his mantelshelf,
and if he went down and opened the cellar it fitted, he might fairly
assume the coals in that cellar to be his.&nbsp; As to his laundress,
she lived among the coal-waggons and Thames watermen&mdash;for there
were Thames watermen at that time&mdash;in some unknown rat-hole by
the river, down lanes and alleys on the other side of the Strand.&nbsp;
As to any other person to meet him or obstruct him, Lyons Inn was dreaming,
drunk, maudlin, moody, betting, brooding over bill-discounting or renewing&mdash;asleep
or awake, minding its own affairs.&nbsp; Mr. Testator took his coal-scuttle
in one hand, his candle and key in the other, and descended to the dismallest
underground dens of Lyons Inn, where the late vehicles in the streets
became thunderous, and all the water-pipes in the neighbourhood seemed
to have Macbeth&rsquo;s Amen sticking in their throats, and to be trying
to get it out.&nbsp; After groping here and there among low doors to
no purpose, Mr. Testator at length came to a door with a rusty padlock
which his key fitted.&nbsp; Getting the door open with much trouble,
and looking in, he found, no coals, but a confused pile of furniture.&nbsp;
Alarmed by this intrusion on another man&rsquo;s property, he locked
the door again, found his own cellar, filled his scuttle, and returned
up-stairs.</p>
<p>But the furniture he had seen, ran on castors across and across Mr.
Testator&rsquo;s mind incessantly, when, in the chill hour of five in
the morning, he got to bed.&nbsp; He particularly wanted a table to
write at, and a table expressly made to be written at, had been the
piece of furniture in the foreground of the heap.&nbsp; When his laundress
emerged from her burrow in the morning to make his kettle boil, he artfully
led up to the subject of cellars and furniture; but the two ideas had
evidently no connexion in her mind.&nbsp; When she left him, and he
sat at his breakfast, thinking about the furniture, he recalled the
rusty state of the padlock, and inferred that the furniture must have
been stored in the cellars for a long time&mdash;was perhaps forgotten&mdash;owner
dead, perhaps?&nbsp; After thinking it over, a few days, in the course
of which he could pump nothing out of Lyons Inn about the furniture,
he became desperate, and resolved to borrow that table.&nbsp; He did
so, that night.&nbsp; He had not had the table long, when he determined
to borrow an easy-chair; he had not had that long, when he made up his
mind to borrow a bookcase; then, a couch; then, a carpet and rug.&nbsp;
By that time, he felt he was &lsquo;in furniture stepped in so far,&rsquo;
as that it could be no worse to borrow it all.&nbsp; Consequently, he
borrowed it all, and locked up the cellar for good.&nbsp; He had always
locked it, after every visit.&nbsp; He had carried up every separate
article in the dead of the night, and, at the best, had felt as wicked
as a Resurrection Man.&nbsp; Every article was blue and furry when brought
into his rooms, and he had had, in a murderous and guilty sort of way,
to polish it up while London slept.</p>
<p>Mr. Testator lived in his furnished chambers two or three years,
or more, and gradually lulled himself into the opinion that the furniture
was his own.&nbsp; This was his convenient state of mind when, late
one night, a step came up the stairs, and a hand passed over his door
feeling for his knocker, and then one deep and solemn rap was rapped
that might have been a spring in Mr. Testator&rsquo;s easy-chair to
shoot him out of it; so promptly was it attended with that effect.</p>
<p>With a candle in his hand, Mr. Testator went to the door, and found
there, a very pale and very tall man; a man who stooped; a man with
very high shoulders, a very narrow chest, and a very red nose; a shabby-genteel
man.&nbsp; He was wrapped in a long thread-bare black coat, fastened
up the front with more pins than buttons, and under his arm he squeezed
an umbrella without a handle, as if he were playing bagpipes.&nbsp;
He said, &lsquo;I ask your pardon, but can you tell me&mdash;&rsquo;
and stopped; his eyes resting on some object within the chambers.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Can I tell you what?&rsquo; asked Mr. Testator, noting his
stoppage with quick alarm.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I ask your pardon,&rsquo; said the stranger, &lsquo;but&mdash;this
is not the inquiry I was going to make&mdash;<i>do</i> I see in there,
any small article of property belonging to <i>me</i>?&rsquo;</p>
<p>Mr. Testator was beginning to stammer that he was not aware&mdash;when
the visitor slipped past him, into the chambers.&nbsp; There, in a goblin
way which froze Mr. Testator to the marrow, he examined, first, the
writing-table, and said, &lsquo;Mine;&rsquo; then, the easy-chair, and
said, &lsquo;Mine;&rsquo; then, the bookcase, and said, &lsquo;Mine;&rsquo;
then, turned up a corner of the carpet, and said, &lsquo;Mine!&rsquo;
in a word, inspected every item of furniture from the cellar, in succession,
and said, &lsquo;Mine!&rsquo;&nbsp; Towards the end of this investigation,
Mr. Testator perceived that he was sodden with liquor, and that the
liquor was gin.&nbsp; He was not unsteady with gin, either in his speech
or carriage; but he was stiff with gin in both particulars.</p>
<p>Mr. Testator was in a dreadful state, for (according to his making
out of the story) the possible consequences of what he had done in recklessness
and hardihood, flashed upon him in their fulness for the first time.&nbsp;
When they had stood gazing at one another for a little while, he tremulously
began:</p>
<p>&lsquo;Sir, I am conscious that the fullest explanation, compensation,
and restitution, are your due.&nbsp; They shall be yours.&nbsp; Allow
me to entreat that, without temper, without even natural irritation
on your part, we may have a little&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Drop of something to drink,&rsquo; interposed the stranger.&nbsp;
&lsquo;I am agreeable.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Mr. Testator had intended to say, &lsquo;a little quiet conversation,&rsquo;
but with great relief of mind adopted the amendment.&nbsp; He produced
a decanter of gin, and was bustling about for hot water and sugar, when
he found that his visitor had already drunk half of the decanter&rsquo;s
contents.&nbsp; With hot water and sugar the visitor drank the remainder
before he had been an hour in the chambers by the chimes of the church
of St. Mary in the Strand; and during the process he frequently whispered
to himself, &lsquo;Mine!&rsquo;</p>
<p>The gin gone, and Mr. Testator wondering what was to follow it, the
visitor rose and said, with increased stiffness, &lsquo;At what hour
of the morning, sir, will it be convenient?&rsquo;&nbsp; Mr. Testator
hazarded, &lsquo;At ten?&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; said the visitor,
&lsquo;at ten, to the moment, I shall be here.&rsquo;&nbsp; He then
contemplated Mr. Testator somewhat at leisure, and said, &lsquo;God
bless you!&nbsp; How is your wife?&rsquo;&nbsp; Mr. Testator (who never
had a wife) replied with much feeling, &lsquo;Deeply anxious, poor soul,
but otherwise well.&rsquo;&nbsp; The visitor thereupon turned and went
away, and fell twice in going down-stairs.&nbsp; From that hour he was
never heard of.&nbsp; Whether he was a ghost, or a spectral illusion
of conscience, or a drunken man who had no business there, or the drunken
rightful owner of the furniture, with a transitory gleam of memory;
whether he got safe home, or had no time to get to; whether he died
of liquor on the way, or lived in liquor ever afterwards; he never was
heard of more.&nbsp; This was the story, received with the furniture
and held to be as substantial, by its second possessor in an upper set
of chambers in grim Lyons Inn.</p>
<p>It is to be remarked of chambers in general, that they must have
been built for chambers, to have the right kind of loneliness.&nbsp;
You may make a great dwelling-house very lonely, but isolating suites
of rooms and calling them chambers, but you cannot make the true kind
of loneliness.&nbsp; In dwelling-houses, there have been family festivals;
children have grown in them, girls have bloomed into women in them,
courtships and marriages have taken place in them.&nbsp; True chambers
never were young, childish, maidenly; never had dolls in them, or rocking-horses,
or christenings, or betrothals, or little coffins.&nbsp; Let Gray&rsquo;s
Inn identify the child who first touched hands and hearts with Robinson
Crusoe, in any one of its many &lsquo;sets,&rsquo; and that child&rsquo;s
little statue, in white marble with a golden inscription, shall be at
its service, at my cost and charge, as a drinking fountain for the spirit,
to freshen its thirsty square.&nbsp; Let Lincoln&rsquo;s produce from
all its houses, a twentieth of the procession derivable from any dwelling-house
one-twentieth of its age, of fair young brides who married for love
and hope, not settlements, and all the Vice-Chancellors shall thenceforward
be kept in nosegays for nothing, on application to the writer hereof.&nbsp;
It is not denied that on the terrace of the Adelphi, or in any of the
streets of that subterranean-stable-haunted spot, or about Bedford-row,
or James-street of that ilk (a grewsome place), or anywhere among the
neighbourhoods that have done flowering and have run to seed, you may
find Chambers replete with the accommodations of Solitude, Closeness,
and Darkness, where you may be as low-spirited as in the genuine article,
and might be as easily murdered, with the placid reputation of having
merely gone down to the sea-side.&nbsp; But, the many waters of life
did run musical in those dry channels once;&mdash;among the Inns, never.&nbsp;
The only popular legend known in relation to any one of the dull family
of Inns, is a dark Old Bailey whisper concerning Clement&rsquo;s, and
importing how the black creature who holds the sun-dial there, was a
negro who slew his master and built the dismal pile out of the contents
of his strong box&mdash;for which architectural offence alone he ought
to have been condemned to live in it.&nbsp; But, what populace would
waste fancy upon such a place, or on New Inn, Staple Inn, Barnard&rsquo;s
Inn, or any of the shabby crew?</p>
<p>The genuine laundress, too, is an institution not to be had in its
entirety out of and away from the genuine Chambers.&nbsp; Again, it
is not denied that you may be robbed elsewhere.&nbsp; Elsewhere you
may have&mdash;for money&mdash;dishonesty, drunkenness, dirt, laziness,
and profound incapacity.&nbsp; But the veritable shining-red-faced shameless
laundress; the true Mrs. Sweeney&mdash;in figure, colour, texture, and
smell, like the old damp family umbrella; the tip-top complicated abomination
of stockings, spirits, bonnet, limpness, looseness, and larceny; is
only to be drawn at the fountain-head.&nbsp; Mrs. Sweeney is beyond
the reach of individual art.&nbsp; It requires the united efforts of
several men to ensure that great result, and it is only developed in
perfection under an Honourable Society and in an Inn of Court.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XV&mdash;NURSE&rsquo;S STORIES</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>There are not many places that I find it more agreeable to revisit
when I am in an idle mood, than some places to which I have never been.&nbsp;
For, my acquaintance with those spots is of such long standing, and
has ripened into an intimacy of so affectionate a nature, that I take
a particular interest in assuring myself that they are unchanged.</p>
<p>I never was in Robinson Crusoe&rsquo;s Island, yet I frequently return
there.&nbsp; The colony he established on it soon faded away, and it
is uninhabited by any descendants of the grave and courteous Spaniards,
or of Will Atkins and the other mutineers, and has relapsed into its
original condition.&nbsp; Not a twig of its wicker houses remains, its
goats have long run wild again, its screaming parrots would darken the
sun with a cloud of many flaming colours if a gun were fired there,
no face is ever reflected in the waters of the little creek which Friday
swam across when pursued by his two brother cannibals with sharpened
stomachs.&nbsp; After comparing notes with other travellers who have
similarly revisited the Island and conscientiously inspected it, I have
satisfied myself that it contains no vestige of Mr. Atkins&rsquo;s domesticity
or theology, though his track on the memorable evening of his landing
to set his captain ashore, when he was decoyed about and round about
until it was dark, and his boat was stove, and his strength and spirits
failed him, is yet plainly to be traced.&nbsp; So is the hill-top on
which Robinson was struck dumb with joy when the reinstated captain
pointed to the ship, riding within half a mile of the shore, that was
to bear him away, in the nine-and-twentieth year of his seclusion in
that lonely place.&nbsp; So is the sandy beach on which the memorable
footstep was impressed, and where the savages hauled up their canoes
when they came ashore for those dreadful public dinners, which led to
a dancing worse than speech-making.&nbsp; So is the cave where the flaring
eyes of the old goat made such a goblin appearance in the dark.&nbsp;
So is the site of the hut where Robinson lived with the dog and the
parrot and the cat, and where he endured those first agonies of solitude,
which&mdash;strange to say&mdash;never involved any ghostly fancies;
a circumstance so very remarkable, that perhaps he left out something
in writing his record?&nbsp; Round hundreds of such objects, hidden
in the dense tropical foliage, the tropical sea breaks evermore; and
over them the tropical sky, saving in the short rainy season, shines
bright and cloudless.</p>
<p>Neither, was I ever belated among wolves, on the borders of France
and Spain; nor, did I ever, when night was closing in and the ground
was covered with snow, draw up my little company among some felled trees
which served as a breastwork, and there fire a train of gunpowder so
dexterously that suddenly we had three or four score blazing wolves
illuminating the darkness around us.&nbsp; Nevertheless, I occasionally
go back to that dismal region and perform the feat again; when indeed
to smell the singeing and the frying of the wolves afire, and to see
them setting one another alight as they rush and tumble, and to behold
them rolling in the snow vainly attempting to put themselves out, and
to hear their howlings taken up by all the echoes as well as by all
the unseen wolves within the woods, makes me tremble.</p>
<p>I was never in the robbers&rsquo; cave, where Gil Blas lived, but
I often go back there and find the trap-door just as heavy to raise
as it used to be, while that wicked old disabled Black lies everlastingly
cursing in bed.&nbsp; I was never in Don Quixote&rsquo;s study, where
he read his books of chivalry until he rose and hacked at imaginary
giants, and then refreshed himself with great draughts of water, yet
you couldn&rsquo;t move a book in it without my knowledge, or with my
consent.&nbsp; I was never (thank Heaven) in company with the little
old woman who hobbled out of the chest and told the merchant Abudah
to go in search of the Talisman of Oromanes, yet I make it my business
to know that she is well preserved and as intolerable as ever.&nbsp;
I was never at the school where the boy Horatio Nelson got out of bed
to steal the pears: not because he wanted any, but because every other
boy was afraid: yet I have several times been back to this Academy,
to see him let down out of window with a sheet.&nbsp; So with Damascus,
and Bagdad, and Brobingnag (which has the curious fate of being usually
misspelt when written), and Lilliput, and Laputa, and the Nile, and
Abyssinia, and the Ganges, and the North Pole, and many hundreds of
places&mdash;I was never at them, yet it is an affair of my life to
keep them intact, and I am always going back to them.</p>
<p>But, when I was in Dullborough one day, revisiting the associations
of my childhood as recorded in previous pages of these notes, my experience
in this wise was made quite inconsiderable and of no account, by the
quantity of places and people&mdash;utterly impossible places and people,
but none the less alarmingly real&mdash;that I found I had been introduced
to by my nurse before I was six years old, and used to be forced to
go back to at night without at all wanting to go.&nbsp; If we all knew
our own minds (in a more enlarged sense than the popular acceptation
of that phrase), I suspect we should find our nurses responsible for
most of the dark corners we are forced to go back to, against our wills.</p>
<p>The first diabolical character who intruded himself on my peaceful
youth (as I called to mind that day at Dullborough), was a certain Captain
Murderer.&nbsp; This wretch must have been an off-shoot of the Blue
Beard family, but I had no suspicion of the consanguinity in those times.&nbsp;
His warning name would seem to have awakened no general prejudice against
him, for he was admitted into the best society and possessed immense
wealth.&nbsp; Captain Murderer&rsquo;s mission was matrimony, and the
gratification of a cannibal appetite with tender brides.&nbsp; On his
marriage morning, he always caused both sides of the way to church to
be planted with curious flowers; and when his bride said, &lsquo;Dear
Captain Murderer, I ever saw flowers like these before: what are they
called?&rsquo; he answered, &lsquo;They are called Garnish for house-lamb,&rsquo;
and laughed at his ferocious practical joke in a horrid manner, disquieting
the minds of the noble bridal company, with a very sharp show of teeth,
then displayed for the first time.&nbsp; He made love in a coach and
six, and married in a coach and twelve, and all his horses were milk-white
horses with one red spot on the back which he caused to be hidden by
the harness.&nbsp; For, the spot <i>would</i> come there, though every
horse was milk-white when Captain Murderer bought him.&nbsp; And the
spot was young bride&rsquo;s blood.&nbsp; (To this terrific point I
am indebted for my first personal experience of a shudder and cold beads
on the forehead.)&nbsp; When Captain Murderer had made an end of feasting
and revelry, and had dismissed the noble guests, and was alone with
his wife on the day month after their marriage, it was his whimsical
custom to produce a golden rolling-pin and a silver pie-board.&nbsp;
Now, there was this special feature in the Captain&rsquo;s courtships,
that he always asked if the young lady could make pie-crust; and if
she couldn&rsquo;t by nature or education, she was taught.&nbsp; Well.&nbsp;
When the bride saw Captain Murderer produce the golden rolling-pin and
silver pie-board, she remembered this, and turned up her laced-silk
sleeves to make a pie.&nbsp; The Captain brought out a silver pie-dish
of immense capacity, and the Captain brought out flour and butter and
eggs and all things needful, except the inside of the pie; of materials
for the staple of the pie itself, the Captain brought out none.&nbsp;
Then said the lovely bride, &lsquo;Dear Captain Murderer, what pie is
this to be?&rsquo;&nbsp; He replied, &lsquo;A meat pie.&rsquo;&nbsp;
Then said the lovely bride, &lsquo;Dear Captain Murderer, I see no meat.&rsquo;&nbsp;
The Captain humorously retorted, &lsquo;Look in the glass.&rsquo;&nbsp;
She looked in the glass, but still she saw no meat, and then the Captain
roared with laughter, and suddenly frowning and drawing his sword, bade
her roll out the crust.&nbsp; So she rolled out the crust, dropping
large tears upon it all the time because he was so cross, and when she
had lined the dish with crust and had cut the crust all ready to fit
the top, the Captain called out, &lsquo;I see the meat in the glass!&rsquo;&nbsp;
And the bride looked up at the glass, just in time to see the Captain
cutting her head off; and he chopped her in pieces, and peppered her,
and salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent it to the baker&rsquo;s,
and ate it all, and picked the bones.</p>
<p>Captain Murderer went on in this way, prospering exceedingly, until
he came to choose a bride from two twin sisters, and at first didn&rsquo;t
know which to choose.&nbsp; For, though one was fair and the other dark,
they were both equally beautiful.&nbsp; But the fair twin loved him,
and the dark twin hated him, so he chose the fair one.&nbsp; The dark
twin would have prevented the marriage if she could, but she couldn&rsquo;t;
however, on the night before it, much suspecting Captain Murderer, she
stole out and climbed his garden wall, and looked in at his window through
a chink in the shutter, and saw him having his teeth filed sharp.&nbsp;
Next day she listened all day, and heard him make his joke about the
house-lamb.&nbsp; And that day month, he had the paste rolled out, and
cut the fair twin&rsquo;s head off, and chopped her in pieces, and peppered
her, and salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent it to the baker&rsquo;s,
and ate it all, and picked the bones.</p>
<p>Now, the dark twin had had her suspicions much increased by the filing
of the Captain&rsquo;s teeth, and again by the house-lamb joke.&nbsp;
Putting all things together when he gave out that her sister was dead,
she divined the truth, and determined to be revenged.&nbsp; So, she
went up to Captain Murderer&rsquo;s house, and knocked at the knocker
and pulled at the bell, and when the Captain came to the door, said:
&lsquo;Dear Captain Murderer, marry me next, for I always loved you
and was jealous of my sister.&rsquo;&nbsp; The Captain took it as a
compliment, and made a polite answer, and the marriage was quickly arranged.&nbsp;
On the night before it, the bride again climbed to his window, and again
saw him having his teeth filed sharp.&nbsp; At this sight she laughed
such a terrible laugh at the chink in the shutter, that the Captain&rsquo;s
blood curdled, and he said: &lsquo;I hope nothing has disagreed with
me!&rsquo;&nbsp; At that, she laughed again, a still more terrible laugh,
and the shutter was opened and search made, but she was nimbly gone,
and there was no one.&nbsp; Next day they went to church in a coach
and twelve, and were married.&nbsp; And that day month, she rolled the
pie-crust out, and Captain Murderer cut her head off, and chopped her
in pieces, and peppered her, and salted her, and put her in the pie,
and sent it to the baker&rsquo;s, and ate it all, and picked the bones.</p>
<p>But before she began to roll out the paste she had taken a deadly
poison of a most awful character, distilled from toads&rsquo; eyes and
spiders&rsquo; knees; and Captain Murderer had hardly picked her last
bone, when he began to swell, and to turn blue, and to be all over spots,
and to scream.&nbsp; And he went on swelling and turning bluer, and
being more all over spots and screaming, until he reached from floor
to ceiling and from wall to wall; and then, at one o&rsquo;clock in
the morning, he blew up with a loud explosion.&nbsp; At the sound of
it, all the milk-white horses in the stables broke their halters and
went mad, and then they galloped over everybody in Captain Murderer&rsquo;s
house (beginning with the family blacksmith who had filed his teeth)
until the whole were dead, and then they galloped away.</p>
<p>Hundreds of times did I hear this legend of Captain Murderer, in
my early youth, and added hundreds of times was there a mental compulsion
upon me in bed, to peep in at his window as the dark twin peeped, and
to revisit his horrible house, and look at him in his blue and spotty
and screaming stage, as he reached from floor to ceiling and from wall
to wall.&nbsp; The young woman who brought me acquainted with Captain
Murderer had a fiendish enjoyment of my terrors, and used to begin,
I remember&mdash;as a sort of introductory overture&mdash;by clawing
the air with both hands, and uttering a long low hollow groan.&nbsp;
So acutely did I suffer from this ceremony in combination with this
infernal Captain, that I sometimes used to plead I thought I was hardly
strong enough and old enough to hear the story again just yet.&nbsp;
But, she never spared me one word of it, and indeed commanded the awful
chalice to my lips as the only preservative known to science against
&lsquo;The Black Cat&rsquo;&mdash;a weird and glaring-eyed supernatural
Tom, who was reputed to prowl about the world by night, sucking the
breath of infancy, and who was endowed with a special thirst (as I was
given to understand) for mine.</p>
<p>This female bard&mdash;may she have been repaid my debt of obligation
to her in the matter of nightmares and perspirations!&mdash;reappears
in my memory as the daughter of a shipwright.&nbsp; Her name was Mercy,
though she had none on me.&nbsp; There was something of a shipbuilding
flavour in the following story.&nbsp; As it always recurs to me in a
vague association with calomel pills, I believe it to have been reserved
for dull nights when I was low with medicine.</p>
<p>There was once a shipwright, and he wrought in a Government Yard,
and his name was Chips.&nbsp; And his father&rsquo;s name before him
was Chips, and <i>his</i> father&rsquo;s name before <i>him</i> was
Chips, and they were all Chipses.&nbsp; And Chips the father had sold
himself to the Devil for an iron pot and a bushel of tenpenny nails
and half a ton of copper and a rat that could speak; and Chips the grandfather
had sold himself to the Devil for an iron pot and a bushel of tenpenny
nails and half a ton of copper and a rat that could speak; and Chips
the great-grandfather had disposed of himself in the same direction
on the same terms; and the bargain had run in the family for a long,
long time.&nbsp; So, one day, when young Chips was at work in the Dock
Slip all alone, down in the dark hold of an old Seventy-four that was
haled up for repairs, the Devil presented himself, and remarked:</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>&lsquo;A Lemon has pips,<br />And a Yard has ships,<br />And <i>I</i>&rsquo;ll
have Chips!&rsquo;</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>(I don&rsquo;t know why, but this fact of the Devil&rsquo;s expressing
himself in rhyme was peculiarly trying to me.)&nbsp; Chips looked up
when he heard the words, and there he saw the Devil with saucer eyes
that squinted on a terrible great scale, and that struck out sparks
of blue fire continually.&nbsp; And whenever he winked his eyes, showers
of blue sparks came out, and his eyelashes made a clattering like flints
and steels striking lights.&nbsp; And hanging over one of his arms by
the handle was an iron pot, and under that arm was a bushel of tenpenny
nails, and under his other arm was half a ton of copper, and sitting
on one of his shoulders was a rat that could speak.&nbsp; So, the Devil
said again:</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>&lsquo;A Lemon has pips,<br />And a Yard has ships,<br />And <i>I</i>&rsquo;ll
have Chips!&rsquo;</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>(The invariable effect of this alarming tautology on the part of
the Evil Spirit was to deprive me of my senses for some moments.)&nbsp;
So, Chips answered never a word, but went on with his work.&nbsp; &lsquo;What
are you doing, Chips?&rsquo; said the rat that could speak.&nbsp; &lsquo;I
am putting in new planks where you and your gang have eaten old away,&rsquo;
said Chips.&nbsp; &lsquo;But we&rsquo;ll eat them too,&rsquo; said the
rat that could speak; &lsquo;and we&rsquo;ll let in the water and drown
the crew, and we&rsquo;ll eat them too.&rsquo;&nbsp; Chips, being only
a shipwright, and not a Man-of-war&rsquo;s man, said, &lsquo;You are
welcome to it.&rsquo;&nbsp; But he couldn&rsquo;t keep his eyes off
the half a ton of copper or the bushel of tenpenny nails; for nails
and copper are a shipwright&rsquo;s sweethearts, and shipwrights will
run away with them whenever they can.&nbsp; So, the Devil said, &lsquo;I
see what you are looking at, Chips.&nbsp; You had better strike the
bargain.&nbsp; You know the terms.&nbsp; Your father before you was
well acquainted with them, and so were your grandfather and great-grandfather
before him.&rsquo;&nbsp; Says Chips, &lsquo;I like the copper, and I
like the nails, and I don&rsquo;t mind the pot, but I don&rsquo;t like
the rat.&rsquo;&nbsp; Says the Devil, fiercely, &lsquo;You can&rsquo;t
have the metal without him&mdash;and <i>he&rsquo;s</i> a curiosity.&nbsp;
I&rsquo;m going.&rsquo;&nbsp; Chips, afraid of losing the half a ton
of copper and the bushel of nails, then said, &lsquo;Give us hold!&rsquo;&nbsp;
So, he got the copper and the nails and the pot and the rat that could
speak, and the Devil vanished.&nbsp; Chips sold the copper, and he sold
the nails, and he would have sold the pot; but whenever he offered it
for sale, the rat was in it, and the dealers dropped it, and would have
nothing to say to the bargain.&nbsp; So, Chips resolved to kill the
rat, and, being at work in the Yard one day with a great kettle of hot
pitch on one side of him and the iron pot with the rat in it on the
other, he turned the scalding pitch into the pot, and filled it full.&nbsp;
Then, he kept his eye upon it till it cooled and hardened, and then
he let it stand for twenty days, and then he heated the pitch again
and turned it back into the kettle, and then he sank the pot in water
for twenty days more, and then he got the smelters to put it in the
furnace for twenty days more, and then they gave it him out, red hot,
and looking like red-hot glass instead of iron-yet there was the rat
in it, just the same as ever!&nbsp; And the moment it caught his eye,
it said with a jeer:</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>&lsquo;A Lemon has pips,<br />And a Yard has ships,<br />And <i>I</i>&rsquo;ll
have Chips!&rsquo;</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>(For this Refrain I had waited since its last appearance, with inexpressible
horror, which now culminated.)&nbsp; Chips now felt certain in his own
mind that the rat would stick to him; the rat, answering his thought,
said, &lsquo;I will&mdash;like pitch!&rsquo;</p>
<p>Now, as the rat leaped out of the pot when it had spoken, and made
off, Chips began to hope that it wouldn&rsquo;t keep its word.&nbsp;
But, a terrible thing happened next day.&nbsp; For, when dinner-time
came, and the Dock-bell rang to strike work, he put his rule into the
long pocket at the side of his trousers, and there he found a rat&mdash;not
that rat, but another rat.&nbsp; And in his hat, he found another; and
in his pocket-handkerchief, another; and in the sleeves of his coat,
when he pulled it on to go to dinner, two more.&nbsp; And from that
time he found himself so frightfully intimate with all the rats in the
Yard, that they climbed up his legs when he was at work, and sat on
his tools while he used them.&nbsp; And they could all speak to one
another, and he understood what they said.&nbsp; And they got into his
lodging, and into his bed, and into his teapot, and into his beer, and
into his boots.&nbsp; And he was going to be married to a corn-chandler&rsquo;s
daughter; and when he gave her a workbox he had himself made for her,
a rat jumped out of it; and when he put his arm round her waist, a rat
clung about her; so the marriage was broken off, though the banns were
already twice put up&mdash;which the parish clerk well remembers, for,
as he handed the book to the clergyman for the second time of asking,
a large fat rat ran over the leaf.&nbsp; (By this time a special cascade
of rats was rolling down my back, and the whole of my small listening
person was overrun with them.&nbsp; At intervals ever since, I have
been morbidly afraid of my own pocket, lest my exploring hand should
find a specimen or two of those vermin in it.)</p>
<p>You may believe that all this was very terrible to Chips; but even
all this was not the worst.&nbsp; He knew besides, what the rats were
doing, wherever they were.&nbsp; So, sometimes he would cry aloud, when
he was at his club at night, &lsquo;Oh!&nbsp; Keep the rats out of the
convicts&rsquo; burying-ground!&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t let them do that!&rsquo;&nbsp;
Or, &lsquo;There&rsquo;s one of them at the cheese down-stairs!&rsquo;&nbsp;
Or, &lsquo;There&rsquo;s two of them smelling at the baby in the garret!&rsquo;&nbsp;
Or, other things of that sort.&nbsp; At last, he was voted mad, and
lost his work in the Yard, and could get no other work.&nbsp; But, King
George wanted men, so before very long he got pressed for a sailor.&nbsp;
And so he was taken off in a boat one evening to his ship, lying at
Spithead, ready to sail.&nbsp; And so the first thing he made out in
her as he got near her, was the figure-head of the old Seventy-four,
where he had seen the Devil.&nbsp; She was called the Argonaut, and
they rowed right under the bowsprit where the figure-head of the Argonaut,
with a sheepskin in his hand and a blue gown on, was looking out to
sea; and sitting staring on his forehead was the rat who could speak,
and his exact words were these: &lsquo;Chips ahoy!&nbsp; Old boy!&nbsp;
We&rsquo;ve pretty well eat them too, and we&rsquo;ll drown the crew,
and will eat them too!&rsquo;&nbsp; (Here I always became exceedingly
faint, and would have asked for water, but that I was speechless.)</p>
<p>The ship was bound for the Indies; and if you don&rsquo;t know where
that is, you ought to it, and angels will never love you.&nbsp; (Here
I felt myself an outcast from a future state.)&nbsp; The ship set sail
that very night, and she sailed, and sailed, and sailed.&nbsp; Chips&rsquo;s
feelings were dreadful.&nbsp; Nothing ever equalled his terrors.&nbsp;
No wonder.&nbsp; At last, one day he asked leave to speak to the Admiral.&nbsp;
The Admiral giv&rsquo; leave.&nbsp; Chips went down on his knees in
the Great State Cabin.&nbsp; &lsquo;Your Honour, unless your Honour,
without a moment&rsquo;s loss of time, makes sail for the nearest shore,
this is a doomed ship, and her name is the Coffin!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Young
man, your words are a madman&rsquo;s words.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Your
Honour no; they are nibbling us away.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;They?&rsquo;&nbsp;
&lsquo;Your Honour, them dreadful rats.&nbsp; Dust and hollowness where
solid oak ought to be!&nbsp; Rats nibbling a grave for every man on
board!&nbsp; Oh!&nbsp; Does your Honour love your Lady and your pretty
children?&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Yes, my man, to be sure.&rsquo;&nbsp;
&lsquo;Then, for God&rsquo;s sake, make for the nearest shore, for at
this present moment the rats are all stopping in their work, and are
all looking straight towards you with bare teeth, and are all saying
to one another that you shall never, never, never, never, see your Lady
and your children more.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;My poor fellow, you are
a case for the doctor.&nbsp; Sentry, take care of this man!&rsquo;</p>
<p>So, he was bled and he was blistered, and he was this and that, for
six whole days and nights.&nbsp; So, then he again asked leave to speak
to the Admiral.&nbsp; The Admiral giv&rsquo; leave.&nbsp; He went down
on his knees in the Great State Cabin.&nbsp; &lsquo;Now, Admiral, you
must die!&nbsp; You took no warning; you must die!&nbsp; The rats are
never wrong in their calculations, and they make out that they&rsquo;ll
be through, at twelve to-night.&nbsp; So, you must die!&mdash;With me
and all the rest!&rsquo;&nbsp; And so at twelve o&rsquo;clock there
was a great leak reported in the ship, and a torrent of water rushed
in and nothing could stop it, and they all went down, every living soul.&nbsp;
And what the rats&mdash;being water-rats&mdash;left of Chips, at last
floated to shore, and sitting on him was an immense overgrown rat, laughing,
that dived when the corpse touched the beach and never came up.&nbsp;
And there was a deal of seaweed on the remains.&nbsp; And if you get
thirteen bits of seaweed, and dry them and burn them in the fire, they
will go off like in these thirteen words as plain as plain can be:</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>&lsquo;A Lemon has pips,<br />And a Yard has ships,<br />And <i>I</i>&rsquo;ve
got Chips!&rsquo;</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>The same female bard&mdash;descended, possibly, from those terrible
old Scalds who seem to have existed for the express purpose of addling
the brains of mankind when they begin to investigate languages&mdash;made
a standing pretence which greatly assisted in forcing me back to a number
of hideous places that I would by all means have avoided.&nbsp; This
pretence was, that all her ghost stories had occurred to her own relations.&nbsp;
Politeness towards a meritorious family, therefore, forbade my doubting
them, and they acquired an air of authentication that impaired my digestive
powers for life.&nbsp; There was a narrative concerning an unearthly
animal foreboding death, which appeared in the open street to a parlour-maid
who &lsquo;went to fetch the beer&rsquo; for supper: first (as I now
recall it) assuming the likeness of a black dog, and gradually rising
on its hind-legs and swelling into the semblance of some quadruped greatly
surpassing a hippopotamus: which apparition&mdash;not because I deemed
it in the least improbable, but because I felt it to be really too large
to bear&mdash;I feebly endeavoured to explain away.&nbsp; But, on Mercy&rsquo;s
retorting with wounded dignity that the parlour-maid was her own sister-in-law,
I perceived there was no hope, and resigned myself to this zoological
phenomenon as one of my many pursuers.&nbsp; There was another narrative
describing the apparition of a young woman who came out of a glass-case
and haunted another young woman until the other young woman questioned
it and elicited that its bones (Lord!&nbsp; To think of its being so
particular about its bones!) were buried under the glass-case, whereas
she required them to be interred, with every Undertaking solemnity up
to twenty-four pound ten, in another particular place.&nbsp; This narrative
I considered&mdash;I had a personal interest in disproving, because
we had glass-cases at home, and how, otherwise, was I to be guaranteed
from the intrusion of young women requiring <i>me to</i> bury them up
to twenty-four pound ten, when I had only twopence a week?&nbsp; But
my remorseless nurse cut the ground from under my tender feet, by informing
me that She was the other young woman; and I couldn&rsquo;t say &lsquo;I
don&rsquo;t believe you;&rsquo; it was not possible.</p>
<p>Such are a few of the uncommercial journeys that I was forced to
make, against my will, when I was very young and unreasoning.&nbsp;
And really, as to the latter part of them, it is not so very long ago&mdash;now
I come to think of it&mdash;that I was asked to undertake them once
again, with a steady countenance.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XVI&mdash;ARCADIAN LONDON</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>Being in a humour for complete solitude and uninterrupted meditation
this autumn, I have taken a lodging for six weeks in the most unfrequented
part of England&mdash;in a word, in London.</p>
<p>The retreat into which I have withdrawn myself, is Bond-street.&nbsp;
From this lonely spot I make pilgrimages into the surrounding wilderness,
and traverse extensive tracts of the Great Desert.&nbsp; The first solemn
feeling of isolation overcome, the first oppressive consciousness of
profound retirement conquered, I enjoy that sense of freedom, and feel
reviving within me that latent wildness of the original savage, which
has been (upon the whole somewhat frequently) noticed by Travellers.</p>
<p>My lodgings are at a hatter&rsquo;s&mdash;my own hatter&rsquo;s.&nbsp;
After exhibiting no articles in his window for some weeks, but sea-side
wide-awakes, shooting-caps, and a choice of rough waterproof head-gear
for the moors and mountains, he has put upon the heads of his family
as much of this stock as they could carry, and has taken them off to
the Isle of Thanet.&nbsp; His young man alone remains&mdash;and remains
alone in the shop.&nbsp; The young man has let out the fire at which
the irons are heated, and, saving his strong sense of duty, I see no
reason why he should take the shutters down.</p>
<p>Happily for himself and for his country the young man is a Volunteer;
most happily for himself, or I think he would become the prey of a settled
melancholy.&nbsp; For, to live surrounded by human hats, and alienated
from human heads to fit them on, is surely a great endurance.&nbsp;
But, the young man, sustained by practising his exercise, and by constantly
furbishing up his regulation plume (it is unnecessary to observe that,
as a hatter, he is in a cock&rsquo;s-feather corps), is resigned, and
uncomplaining.&nbsp; On a Saturday, when he closes early and gets his
Knickerbockers on, he is even cheerful.&nbsp; I am gratefully particular
in this reference to him, because he is my companion through many peaceful
hours.</p>
<p>My hatter has a desk up certain steps behind his counter, enclosed
like the clerk&rsquo;s desk at Church.&nbsp; I shut myself into this
place of seclusion, after breakfast, and meditate.&nbsp; At such times,
I observe the young man loading an imaginary rifle with the greatest
precision, and maintaining a most galling and destructive fire upon
the national enemy.&nbsp; I thank him publicly for his companionship
and his patriotism.</p>
<p>The simple character of my life, and the calm nature of the scenes
by which I am surrounded, occasion me to rise early.&nbsp; I go forth
in my slippers, and promenade the pavement.&nbsp; It is pastoral to
feel the freshness of the air in the uninhabited town, and to appreciate
the shepherdess character of the few milkwomen who purvey so little
milk that it would be worth nobody&rsquo;s while to adulterate it, if
anybody were left to undertake the task.&nbsp; On the crowded sea-shore,
the great demand for milk, combined with the strong local temptation
of chalk, would betray itself in the lowered quality of the article.&nbsp;
In Arcadian London I derive it from the cow.</p>
<p>The Arcadian simplicity of the metropolis altogether, and the primitive
ways into which it has fallen in this autumnal Golden Age, make it entirely
new to me.&nbsp; Within a few hundred yards of my retreat, is the house
of a friend who maintains a most sumptuous butler.&nbsp; I never, until
yesterday, saw that butler out of superfine black broadcloth.&nbsp;
Until yesterday, I never saw him off duty, never saw him (he is the
best of butlers) with the appearance of having any mind for anything
but the glory of his master and his master&rsquo;s friends.&nbsp; Yesterday
morning, walking in my slippers near the house of which he is the prop
and ornament&mdash;a house now a waste of shutters&mdash;I encountered
that butler, also in his slippers, and in a shooting suit of one colour,
and in a low-crowned straw-hat, smoking an early cigar.&nbsp; He felt
that we had formerly met in another state of existence, and that we
were translated into a new sphere.&nbsp; Wisely and well, he passed
me without recognition.&nbsp; Under his arm he carried the morning paper,
and shortly afterwards I saw him sitting on a rail in the pleasant open
landscape of Regent-street, perusing it at his ease under the ripening
sun.</p>
<p>My landlord having taken his whole establishment to be salted down,
I am waited on by an elderly woman labouring under a chronic sniff,
who, at the shadowy hour of half-past nine o&rsquo;clock of every evening,
gives admittance at the street door to a meagre and mouldy old man whom
I have never yet seen detached from a flat pint of beer in a pewter
pot.&nbsp; The meagre and mouldy old man is her husband, and the pair
have a dejected consciousness that they are not justified in appearing
on the surface of the earth.&nbsp; They come out of some hole when London
empties itself, and go in again when it fills.&nbsp; I saw them arrive
on the evening when I myself took possession, and they arrived with
the flat pint of beer, and their bed in a bundle.&nbsp; The old man
is a weak old man, and appeared to me to get the bed down the kitchen
stairs by tumbling down with and upon it.&nbsp; They make their bed
in the lowest and remotest corner of the basement, and they smell of
bed, and have no possession but bed: unless it be (which I rather infer
from an under-current of flavour in them) cheese.&nbsp; I know their
name, through the chance of having called the wife&rsquo;s attention,
at half-past nine on the second evening of our acquaintance, to the
circumstance of there being some one at the house door; when she apologetically
explained, &lsquo;It&rsquo;s only Mr. Klem.&rsquo;&nbsp; What becomes
of Mr. Klem all day, or when he goes out, or why, is a mystery I cannot
penetrate; but at half-past nine he never fails to turn up on the door-step
with the flat pint of beer.&nbsp; And the pint of beer, flat as it is,
is so much more important than himself, that it always seems to my fancy
as if it had found him drivelling in the street and had humanely brought
him home.&nbsp; In making his way below, Mr. Klem never goes down the
middle of the passage, like another Christian, but shuffles against
the wall as if entreating me to take notice that he is occupying as
little space as possible in the house; and whenever I come upon him
face to face, he backs from me in fascinated confusion.&nbsp; The most
extraordinary circumstance I have traced in connexion with this aged
couple, is, that there is a Miss Klem, their daughter, apparently ten
years older than either of them, who has also a bed and smells of it,
and carries it about the earth at dusk and hides it in deserted houses.&nbsp;
I came into this piece of knowledge through Mrs. Klem&rsquo;s beseeching
me to sanction the sheltering of Miss Klem under that roof for a single
night, &lsquo;between her takin&rsquo; care of the upper part in Pall
Mall which the family of his back, and a &rsquo;ouse in Serjameses-street,
which the family of leaves towng ter-morrer.&rsquo;&nbsp; I gave my
gracious consent (having nothing that I know of to do with it), and
in the shadowy hours Miss Klem became perceptible on the door-step,
wrestling with a bed in a bundle.&nbsp; Where she made it up for the
night I cannot positively state, but, I think, in a sink.&nbsp; I know
that with the instinct of a reptile or an insect, she stowed it and
herself away in deep obscurity.&nbsp; In the Klem family, I have noticed
another remarkable gift of nature, and that is a power they possess
of converting everything into flue.&nbsp; Such broken victuals as they
take by stealth, appear (whatever the nature of the viands) invariably
to generate flue; and even the nightly pint of beer, instead of assimilating
naturally, strikes me as breaking out in that form, equally on the shabby
gown of Mrs. Klem, and the threadbare coat of her husband.</p>
<p>Mrs. Klem has no idea of my name&mdash;as to Mr. Klem he has no idea
of anything&mdash;and only knows me as her good gentleman.&nbsp; Thus,
if doubtful whether I am in my room or no, Mrs. Klem taps at the door
and says, &lsquo;Is my good gentleman here?&rsquo;&nbsp; Or, if a messenger
desiring to see me were consistent with my solitude, she would show
him in with &lsquo;Here is my good gentleman.&rsquo;&nbsp; I find this
to be a generic custom.&nbsp; For, I meant to have observed before now,
that in its Arcadian time all my part of London is indistinctly pervaded
by the Klem species.&nbsp; They creep about with beds, and go to bed
in miles of deserted houses.&nbsp; They hold no companionship except
that sometimes, after dark, two of them will emerge from opposite houses,
and meet in the middle of the road as on neutral ground, or will peep
from adjoining houses over an interposing barrier of area railings,
and compare a few reserved mistrustful notes respecting their good ladies
or good gentlemen.&nbsp; This I have discovered in the course of various
solitary rambles I have taken Northward from my retirement, along the
awful perspectives of Wimpole-street, Harley-street, and similar frowning
regions.&nbsp; Their effect would be scarcely distinguishable from that
of the primeval forests, but for the Klem stragglers; these may be dimly
observed, when the heavy shadows fall, flitting to and fro, putting
up the door-chain, taking in the pint of beer, lowering like phantoms
at the dark parlour windows, or secretly consorting underground with
the dust-bin and the water-cistern.</p>
<p>In the Burlington Arcade, I observe, with peculiar pleasure, a primitive
state of manners to have superseded the baneful influences of ultra
civilisation.&nbsp; Nothing can surpass the innocence of the ladies&rsquo;
shoe-shops, the artificial-flower repositories, and the head-dress depots.&nbsp;
They are in strange hands at this time of year&mdash;hands of unaccustomed
persons, who are imperfectly acquainted with the prices of the goods,
and contemplate them with unsophisticated delight and wonder.&nbsp;
The children of these virtuous people exchange familiarities in the
Arcade, and temper the asperity of the two tall beadles.&nbsp; Their
youthful prattle blends in an unwonted manner with the harmonious shade
of the scene, and the general effect is, as of the voices of birds in
a grove.&nbsp; In this happy restoration of the golden time, it has
been my privilege even to see the bigger beadle&rsquo;s wife.&nbsp;
She brought him his dinner in a basin, and he ate it in his arm-chair,
and afterwards fell asleep like a satiated child.&nbsp; At Mr. Truefitt&rsquo;s,
the excellent hairdresser&rsquo;s, they are learning French to beguile
the time; and even the few solitaries left on guard at Mr. Atkinson&rsquo;s,
the perfumer&rsquo;s round the corner (generally the most inexorable
gentleman in London, and the most scornful of three-and-sixpence), condescend
a little, as they drowsily bide or recall their turn for chasing the
ebbing Neptune on the ribbed sea-sand.&nbsp; From Messrs. Hunt and Roskell&rsquo;s,
the jewellers, all things are absent but the precious stones, and the
gold and silver, and the soldierly pensioner at the door with his decorated
breast.&nbsp; I might stand night and day for a month to come, in Saville-row,
with my tongue out, yet not find a doctor to look at it for love or
money.&nbsp; The dentists&rsquo; instruments are rusting in their drawers,
and their horrible cool parlours, where people pretend to read the Every-Day
Book and not to be afraid, are doing penance for their grimness in white
sheets.&nbsp; The light-weight of shrewd appearance, with one eye always
shut up, as if he were eating a sharp gooseberry in all seasons, who
usually stands at the gateway of the livery-stables on very little legs
under a very large waistcoat, has gone to Doncaster.&nbsp; Of such undesigning
aspect is his guileless yard now, with its gravel and scarlet beans,
and the yellow Break housed under a glass roof in a corner, that I almost
believe I could not be taken in there, if I tried.&nbsp; In the places
of business of the great tailors, the cheval-glasses are dim and dusty
for lack of being looked into.&nbsp; Ranges of brown paper coat and
waistcoat bodies look as funereal as if they were the hatchments of
the customers with whose names they are inscribed; the measuring tapes
hang idle on the wall; the order-taker, left on the hopeless chance
of some one looking in, yawns in the last extremity over the book of
patterns, as if he were trying to read that entertaining library.&nbsp;
The hotels in Brook-street have no one in them, and the staffs of servants
stare disconsolately for next season out of all the windows.&nbsp; The
very man who goes about like an erect Turtle, between two boards recommendatory
of the Sixteen Shilling Trousers, is aware of himself as a hollow mockery,
and eats filberts while he leans his hinder shell against a wall.</p>
<p>Among these tranquillising objects, it is my delight to walk and
meditate.&nbsp; Soothed by the repose around me, I wander insensibly
to considerable distances, and guide myself back by the stars.&nbsp;
Thus, I enjoy the contrast of a few still partially inhabited and busy
spots where all the lights are not fled, where all the garlands are
not dead, whence all but I have not departed.&nbsp; Then, does it appear
to me that in this age three things are clamorously required of Man
in the miscellaneous thoroughfares of the metropolis.&nbsp; Firstly,
that he have his boots cleaned.&nbsp; Secondly, that he eat a penny
ice.&nbsp; Thirdly, that he get himself photographed.&nbsp; Then do
I speculate, What have those seam-worn artists been who stand at the
photograph doors in Greek caps, sample in hand, and mysteriously salute
the public&mdash;the female public with a pressing tenderness&mdash;to
come in and be &lsquo;took&rsquo;?&nbsp; What did they do with their
greasy blandishments, before the era of cheap photography?&nbsp; Of
what class were their previous victims, and how victimised?&nbsp; And
how did they get, and how did they pay for, that large collection of
likenesses, all purporting to have been taken inside, with the taking
of none of which had that establishment any more to do than with the
taking of Delhi?</p>
<p>But, these are small oases, and I am soon back again in metropolitan
Arcadia.&nbsp; It is my impression that much of its serene and peaceful
character is attributable to the absence of customary Talk.&nbsp; How
do I know but there may be subtle influences in Talk, to vex the souls
of men who don&rsquo;t hear it?&nbsp; How do I know but that Talk, five,
ten, twenty miles off, may get into the air and disagree with me?&nbsp;
If I rise from my bed, vaguely troubled and wearied and sick of my life,
in the session of Parliament, who shall say that my noble friend, my
right reverend friend, my right honourable friend, my honourable friend,
my honourable and learned friend, or my honourable and gallant friend,
may not be responsible for that effect upon my nervous system?&nbsp;
Too much Ozone in the air, I am informed and fully believe (though I
have no idea what it is), would affect me in a marvellously disagreeable
way; why may not too much Talk?&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t see or hear the
Ozone; I don&rsquo;t see or hear the Talk.&nbsp; And there is so much
Talk; so much too much; such loud cry, and such scant supply of wool;
such a deal of fleecing, and so little fleece!&nbsp; Hence, in the Arcadian
season, I find it a delicious triumph to walk down to deserted Westminster,
and see the Courts shut up; to walk a little further and see the Two
Houses shut up; to stand in the Abbey Yard, like the New Zealander of
the grand English History (concerning which unfortunate man, a whole
rookery of mares&rsquo; nests is generally being discovered), and gloat
upon the ruins of Talk.&nbsp; Returning to my primitive solitude and
lying down to sleep, my grateful heart expands with the consciousness
that there is no adjourned Debate, no ministerial explanation, nobody
to give notice of intention to ask the noble Lord at the head of her
Majesty&rsquo;s Government five-and-twenty bootless questions in one,
no term time with legal argument, no Nisi Prius with eloquent appeal
to British Jury; that the air will to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
remain untroubled by this superabundant generating of Talk.&nbsp; In
a minor degree it is a delicious triumph to me to go into the club,
and see the carpets up, and the Bores and the other dust dispersed to
the four winds.&nbsp; Again, New Zealander-like, I stand on the cold
hearth, and say in the solitude, &lsquo;Here I watched Bore A 1, with
voice always mysteriously low and head always mysteriously drooped,
whispering political secrets into the ears of Adam&rsquo;s confiding
children.&nbsp; Accursed be his memory for ever and a day!&rsquo;</p>
<p>But, I have all this time been coming to the point, that the happy
nature of my retirement is most sweetly expressed in its being the abode
of Love.&nbsp; It is, as it were, an inexpensive Agapemone: nobody&rsquo;s
speculation: everybody&rsquo;s profit.&nbsp; The one great result of
the resumption of primitive habits, and (convertible terms) the not
having much to do, is, the abounding of Love.</p>
<p>The Klem species are incapable of the softer emotions; probably,
in that low nomadic race, the softer emotions have all degenerated into
flue.&nbsp; But, with this exception, all the sharers of my retreat
make love.</p>
<p>I have mentioned Saville-row.&nbsp; We all know the Doctor&rsquo;s
servant.&nbsp; We all know what a respectable man he is, what a hard
dry man, what a firm man, what a confidential man: how he lets us into
the waiting-room, like a man who knows minutely what is the matter with
us, but from whom the rack should not wring the secret.&nbsp; In the
prosaic &ldquo;season,&rdquo; he has distinctly the appearance of a
man conscious of money in the savings bank, and taking his stand on
his respectability with both feet.&nbsp; At that time it is as impossible
to associate him with relaxation, or any human weakness, as it is to
meet his eye without feeling guilty of indisposition.&nbsp; In the blest
Arcadian time, how changed!&nbsp; I have seen him, in a pepper-and-salt
jacket&mdash;jacket&mdash;and drab trousers, with his arm round the
waist of a bootmaker&rsquo;s housemaid, smiling in open day.&nbsp; I
have seen him at the pump by the Albany, unsolicitedly pumping for two
fair young creatures, whose figures as they bent over their cans, were&mdash;if
I may be allowed an original expression&mdash;a model for the sculptor.&nbsp;
I have seen him trying the piano in the Doctor&rsquo;s drawing-room
with his forefinger, and have heard him humming tunes in praise of lovely
woman.&nbsp; I have seen him seated on a fire-engine, and going (obviously
in search of excitement) to a fire.&nbsp; I saw him, one moonlight evening
when the peace and purity of our Arcadian west were at their height,
polk with the lovely daughter of a cleaner of gloves, from the door-steps
of his own residence, across Saville-row, round by Clifford-street and
Old Burlington-street, back to Burlington-gardens.&nbsp; Is this the
Golden Age revived, or Iron London?</p>
<p>The Dentist&rsquo;s servant.&nbsp; Is that man no mystery to us,
no type of invisible power?&nbsp; The tremendous individual knows (who
else does?) what is done with the extracted teeth; he knows what goes
on in the little room where something is always being washed or filed;
he knows what warm spicy infusion is put into the comfortable tumbler
from which we rinse our wounded mouth, with a gap in it that feels a
foot wide; he knows whether the thing we spit into is a fixture communicating
with the Thames, or could be cleared away for a dance; he sees the horrible
parlour where there are no patients in it, and he could reveal, if he
would, what becomes of the Every-Day Book then.&nbsp; The conviction
of my coward conscience when I see that man in a professional light,
is, that he knows all the statistics of my teeth and gums, my double
teeth, my single teeth, my stopped teeth, and my sound.&nbsp; In this
Arcadian rest, I am fearless of him as of a harmless, powerless creature
in a Scotch cap, who adores a young lady in a voluminous crinoline,
at a neighbouring billiard-room, and whose passion would be uninfluenced
if every one of her teeth were false.&nbsp; They may be.&nbsp; He takes
them all on trust.</p>
<p>In secluded corners of the place of my seclusion, there are little
shops withdrawn from public curiosity, and never two together, where
servants&rsquo; perquisites are bought.&nbsp; The cook may dispose of
grease at these modest and convenient marts; the butler, of bottles;
the valet and lady&rsquo;s maid, of clothes; most servants, indeed,
of most things they may happen to lay hold of.&nbsp; I have been told
that in sterner times loving correspondence, otherwise interdicted,
may be maintained by letter through the agency of some of these useful
establishments.&nbsp; In the Arcadian autumn, no such device is necessary.&nbsp;
Everybody loves, and openly and blamelessly loves.&nbsp; My landlord&rsquo;s
young man loves the whole of one side of the way of Old Bond-street,
and is beloved several doors up New Bond-street besides.&nbsp; I never
look out of window but I see kissing of hands going on all around me.&nbsp;
It is the morning custom to glide from shop to shop and exchange tender
sentiments; it is the evening custom for couples to stand hand in hand
at house doors, or roam, linked in that flowery manner, through the
unpeopled streets.&nbsp; There is nothing else to do but love; and what
there is to do, is done.</p>
<p>In unison with this pursuit, a chaste simplicity obtains in the domestic
habits of Arcadia.&nbsp; Its few scattered people dine early, live moderately,
sup socially, and sleep soundly.&nbsp; It is rumoured that the Beadles
of the Arcade, from being the mortal enemies of boys, have signed with
tears an address to Lord Shaftesbury, and subscribed to a ragged school.&nbsp;
No wonder!&nbsp; For, they might turn their heavy maces into crooks
and tend sheep in the Arcade, to the purling of the water-carts as they
give the thirsty streets much more to drink than they can carry.</p>
<p>A happy Golden Age, and a serene tranquillity.&nbsp; Charming picture,
but it will fade.&nbsp; The iron age will return, London will come back
to town, if I show my tongue then in Saville-row for half a minute I
shall be prescribed for, the Doctor&rsquo;s man and the Dentist&rsquo;s
man will then pretend that these days of unprofessional innocence never
existed.&nbsp; Where Mr. and Mrs. Klem and their bed will be at that
time, passes human knowledge; but my hatter hermitage will then know
them no more, nor will it then know me.&nbsp; The desk at which I have
written these meditations will retributively assist at the making out
of my account, and the wheels of gorgeous carriages and the hoofs of
high-stepping horses will crush the silence out of Bond-street&mdash;will
grind Arcadia away, and give it to the elements in granite powder.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XVII&mdash;THE ITALIAN PRISONER</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>The rising of the Italian people from under their unutterable wrongs,
and the tardy burst of day upon them after the long long night of oppression
that has darkened their beautiful country, have naturally caused my
mind to dwell often of late on my own small wanderings in Italy.&nbsp;
Connected with them, is a curious little drama, in which the character
I myself sustained was so very subordinate that I may relate its story
without any fear of being suspected of self-display.&nbsp; It is strictly
a true story.</p>
<p>I am newly arrived one summer evening, in a certain small town on
the Mediterranean.&nbsp; I have had my dinner at the inn, and I and
the mosquitoes are coming out into the streets together.&nbsp; It is
far from Naples; but a bright, brown, plump little woman-servant at
the inn, is a Neapolitan, and is so vivaciously expert in panto-mimic
action, that in the single moment of answering my request to have a
pair of shoes cleaned which I have left up-stairs, she plies imaginary
brushes, and goes completely through the motions of polishing the shoes
up, and laying them at my feet.&nbsp; I smile at the brisk little woman
in perfect satisfaction with her briskness; and the brisk little woman,
amiably pleased with me because I am pleased with her, claps her hands
and laughs delightfully.&nbsp; We are in the inn yard.&nbsp; As the
little woman&rsquo;s bright eyes sparkle on the cigarette I am smoking,
I make bold to offer her one; she accepts it none the less merrily,
because I touch a most charming little dimple in her fat cheek, with
its light paper end.&nbsp; Glancing up at the many green lattices to
assure herself that the mistress is not looking on, the little woman
then puts her two little dimple arms a-kimbo, and stands on tiptoe to
light her cigarette at mine.&nbsp; &lsquo;And now, dear little sir,&rsquo;
says she, puffing out smoke in a most innocent and cherubic manner,
&lsquo;keep quite straight on, take the first to the right and probably
you will see him standing at his door.&rsquo;</p>
<p>I gave a commission to &lsquo;him,&rsquo; and I have been inquiring
about him.&nbsp; I have carried the commission about Italy several months.&nbsp;
Before I left England, there came to me one night a certain generous
and gentle English nobleman (he is dead in these days when I relate
the story, and exiles have lost their best British friend), with this
request: &lsquo;Whenever you come to such a town, will you seek out
one Giovanni Carlavero, who keeps a little wine-shop there, mention
my name to him suddenly, and observe how it affects him?&rsquo;&nbsp;
I accepted the trust, and am on my way to discharge it.</p>
<p>The sirocco has been blowing all day, and it is a hot unwholesome
evening with no cool sea-breeze.&nbsp; Mosquitoes and fire-flies are
lively enough, but most other creatures are faint.&nbsp; The coquettish
airs of pretty young women in the tiniest and wickedest of dolls&rsquo;
straw hats, who lean out at opened lattice blinds, are almost the only
airs stirring.&nbsp; Very ugly and haggard old women with distaffs,
and with a grey tow upon them that looks as if they were spinning out
their own hair (I suppose they were once pretty, too, but it is very
difficult to believe so), sit on the footway leaning against house walls.&nbsp;
Everybody who has come for water to the fountain, stays there, and seems
incapable of any such energetic idea as going home.&nbsp; Vespers are
over, though not so long but that I can smell the heavy resinous incense
as I pass the church.&nbsp; No man seems to be at work, save the coppersmith.&nbsp;
In an Italian town he is always at work, and always thumping in the
deadliest manner.</p>
<p>I keep straight on, and come in due time to the first on the right:
a narrow dull street, where I see a well-favoured man of good stature
and military bearing, in a great cloak, standing at a door.&nbsp; Drawing
nearer to this threshold, I see it is the threshold of a small wine-shop;
and I can just make out, in the dim light, the inscription that it is
kept by Giovanni Carlavero.</p>
<p>I touch my hat to the figure in the cloak, and pass in, and draw
a stool to a little table.&nbsp; The lamp (just such another as they
dig out of Pompeii) is lighted, but the place is empty.&nbsp; The figure
in the cloak has followed me in, and stands before me.</p>
<p>&lsquo;The master?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;At your service, sir.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Please to give me a glass of the wine of the country.&rsquo;</p>
<p>He turns to a little counter, to get it.&nbsp; As his striking face
is pale, and his action is evidently that of an enfeebled man, I remark
that I fear he has been ill.&nbsp; It is not much, he courteously and
gravely answers, though bad while it lasts: the fever.</p>
<p>As he sets the wine on the little table, to his manifest surprise
I lay my hand on the back of his, look him in the face, and say in a
low voice: &lsquo;I am an Englishman, and you are acquainted with a
friend of mine.&nbsp; Do you recollect&mdash;?&rsquo; and I mentioned
the name of my generous countryman.</p>
<p>Instantly, he utters a loud cry, bursts into tears, and falls on
his knees at my feet, clasping my legs in both his arms and bowing his
head to the ground.</p>
<p>Some years ago, this man at my feet, whose over-fraught heart is
heaving as if it would burst from his breast, and whose tears are wet
upon the dress I wear, was a galley-slave in the North of Italy.&nbsp;
He was a political offender, having been concerned in the then last
rising, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life.&nbsp; That he would
have died in his chains, is certain, but for the circumstance that the
Englishman happened to visit his prison.</p>
<p>It was one of the vile old prisons of Italy, and a part of it was
below the waters of the harbour.&nbsp; The place of his confinement
was an arched under-ground and under-water gallery, with a grill-gate
at the entrance, through which it received such light and air as it
got.&nbsp; Its condition was insufferably foul, and a stranger could
hardly breathe in it, or see in it with the aid of a torch.&nbsp; At
the upper end of this dungeon, and consequently in the worst position,
as being the furthest removed from light and air, the Englishman first
beheld him, sitting on an iron bedstead to which he was chained by a
heavy chain.&nbsp; His countenance impressed the Englishmen as having
nothing in common with the faces of the malefactors with whom he was
associated, and he talked with him, and learnt how he came to be there.</p>
<p>When the Englishman emerged from the dreadful den into the light
of day, he asked his conductor, the governor of the jail, why Giovanni
Carlavero was put into the worst place?</p>
<p>&lsquo;Because he is particularly recommended,&rsquo; was the stringent
answer.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Recommended, that is to say, for death?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Excuse me; particularly recommended,&rsquo; was again the
answer.</p>
<p>&lsquo;He has a bad tumour in his neck, no doubt occasioned by the
hardship of his miserable life.&nbsp; If he continues to be neglected,
and he remains where he is, it will kill him.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Excuse me, I can do nothing.&nbsp; He is particularly recommended.&rsquo;&nbsp;
The Englishman was staying in that town, and he went to his home there;
but the figure of this man chained to the bedstead made it no home,
and destroyed his rest and peace.&nbsp; He was an Englishman of an extraordinarily
tender heart, and he could not bear the picture.&nbsp; He went back
to the prison grate; went back again and again, and talked to the man
and cheered him.&nbsp; He used his utmost influence to get the man unchained
from the bedstead, were it only for ever so short a time in the day,
and permitted to come to the grate.&nbsp; It look a long time, but the
Englishman&rsquo;s station, personal character, and steadiness of purpose,
wore out opposition so far, and that grace was at last accorded.&nbsp;
Through the bars, when he could thus get light upon the tumour, the
Englishman lanced it, and it did well, and healed.&nbsp; His strong
interest in the prisoner had greatly increased by this time, and he
formed the desperate resolution that he would exert his utmost self-devotion
and use his utmost efforts, to get Carlavero pardoned.</p>
<p>If the prisoner had been a brigand and a murderer, if he had committed
every non-political crime in the Newgate Calendar and out of it, nothing
would have been easier than for a man of any court or priestly influence
to obtain his release.&nbsp; As it was, nothing could have been more
difficult.&nbsp; Italian authorities, and English authorities who had
interest with them, alike assured the Englishman that his object was
hopeless.&nbsp; He met with nothing but evasion, refusal, and ridicule.&nbsp;
His political prisoner became a joke in the place.&nbsp; It was especially
observable that English Circumlocution, and English Society on its travels,
were as humorous on the subject as Circumlocution and Society may be
on any subject without loss of caste.&nbsp; But, the Englishman possessed
(and proved it well in his life) a courage very uncommon among us: he
had not the least fear of being considered a bore, in a good humane
cause.&nbsp; So he went on persistently trying, and trying, and trying,
to get Giovanni Carlavero out.&nbsp; That prisoner had been rigorously
re-chained, after the tumour operation, and it was not likely that his
miserable life could last very long.</p>
<p>One day, when all the town knew about the Englishman and his political
prisoner, there came to the Englishman, a certain sprightly Italian
Advocate of whom he had some knowledge; and he made this strange proposal.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Give me a hundred pounds to obtain Carlavero&rsquo;s release.&nbsp;
I think I can get him a pardon, with that money.&nbsp; But I cannot
tell you what I am going to do with the money, nor must you ever ask
me the question if I succeed, nor must you ever ask me for an account
of the money if I fail.&rsquo;&nbsp; The Englishman decided to hazard
the hundred pounds.&nbsp; He did so, and heard not another word of the
matter.&nbsp; For half a year and more, the Advocate made no sign, and
never once &lsquo;took on&rsquo; in any way, to have the subject on
his mind.&nbsp; The Englishman was then obliged to change his residence
to another and more famous town in the North of Italy.&nbsp; He parted
from the poor prisoner with a sorrowful heart, as from a doomed man
for whom there was no release but Death.</p>
<p>The Englishman lived in his new place of abode another half-year
and more, and had no tidings of the wretched prisoner.&nbsp; At length,
one day, he received from the Advocate a cool, concise, mysterious note,
to this effect.&nbsp; &lsquo;If you still wish to bestow that benefit
upon the man in whom you were once interested, send me fifty pounds
more, and I think it can be ensured.&rsquo;&nbsp; Now, the Englishman
had long settled in his mind that the Advocate was a heartless sharper,
who had preyed upon his credulity and his interest in an unfortunate
sufferer.&nbsp; So, he sat down and wrote a dry answer, giving the Advocate
to understand that he was wiser now than he had been formerly, and that
no more money was extractable from his pocket.</p>
<p>He lived outside the city gates, some mile or two from the post-office,
and was accustomed to walk into the city with his letters and post them
himself.&nbsp; On a lovely spring day, when the sky was exquisitely
blue, and the sea Divinely beautiful, he took his usual walk, carrying
this letter to the Advocate in his pocket.&nbsp; As he went along, his
gentle heart was much moved by the loveliness of the prospect, and by
the thought of the slowly dying prisoner chained to the bedstead, for
whom the universe had no delights.&nbsp; As he drew nearer and nearer
to the city where he was to post the letter, he became very uneasy in
his mind.&nbsp; He debated with himself, was it remotely possible, after
all, that this sum of fifty pounds could restore the fellow-creature
whom he pitied so much, and for whom he had striven so hard, to liberty?&nbsp;
He was not a conventionally rich Englishman&mdash;very far from that&mdash;but,
he had a spare fifty pounds at the banker&rsquo;s.&nbsp; He resolved
to risk it.&nbsp; Without doubt, GOD has recompensed him for the resolution.</p>
<p>He went to the banker&rsquo;s, and got a bill for the amount, and
enclosed it in a letter to the Advocate that I wish I could have seen.&nbsp;
He simply told the Advocate that he was quite a poor man, and that he
was sensible it might be a great weakness in him to part with so much
money on the faith of so vague a communication; but, that there it was,
and that he prayed the Advocate to make a good use of it.&nbsp; If he
did otherwise no good could ever come of it, and it would lie heavy
on his soul one day.</p>
<p>Within a week, the Englishman was sitting at his breakfast, when
he heard some suppressed sounds of agitation on the staircase, and Giovanni
Carlavero leaped into the room and fell upon his breast, a free man!</p>
<p>Conscious of having wronged the Advocate in his own thoughts, the
Englishman wrote him an earnest and grateful letter, avowing the fact,
and entreating him to confide by what means and through what agency
he had succeeded so well.&nbsp; The Advocate returned for answer through
the post, &lsquo;There are many things, as you know, in this Italy of
ours, that are safest and best not even spoken of&mdash;far less written
of.&nbsp; We may meet some day, and then I may tell you what you want
to know; not here, and now.&rsquo;&nbsp; But, the two never did meet
again.&nbsp; The Advocate was dead when the Englishman gave me my trust;
and how the man had been set free, remained as great a mystery to the
Englishman, and to the man himself, as it was to me.</p>
<p>But, I knew this:- here was the man, this sultry night, on his knees
at my feet, because I was the Englishman&rsquo;s friend; here were his
tears upon my dress; here were his sobs choking his utterance; here
were his kisses on my hands, because they had touched the hands that
had worked out his release.&nbsp; He had no need to tell me it would
be happiness to him to die for his benefactor; I doubt if I ever saw
real, sterling, fervent gratitude of soul, before or since.</p>
<p>He was much watched and suspected, he said, and had had enough to
do to keep himself out of trouble.&nbsp; This, and his not having prospered
in his worldly affairs, had led to his having failed in his usual communications
to the Englishman for&mdash;as I now remember the period&mdash;some
two or three years.&nbsp; But, his prospects were brighter, and his
wife who had been very ill had recovered, and his fever had left him,
and he had bought a little vineyard, and would I carry to his benefactor
the first of its wine?&nbsp; Ay, that I would (I told him with enthusiasm),
and not a drop of it should be spilled or lost!</p>
<p>He had cautiously closed the door before speaking of himself, and
had talked with such excess of emotion, and in a provincial Italian
so difficult to understand, that I had more than once been obliged to
stop him, and beg him to have compassion on me and be slower and calmer.&nbsp;
By degrees he became so, and tranquilly walked back with me to the hotel.&nbsp;
There, I sat down before I went to bed and wrote a faithful account
of him to the Englishman: which I concluded by saying that I would bring
the wine home, against any difficulties, every drop.</p>
<p>Early next morning, when I came out at the hotel door to pursue my
journey, I found my friend waiting with one of those immense bottles
in which the Italian peasants store their wine&mdash;a bottle holding
some half-dozen gallons&mdash;bound round with basket-work for greater
safety on the journey.&nbsp; I see him now, in the bright sunshine,
tears of gratitude in his eyes, proudly inviting my attention to this
corpulent bottle.&nbsp; (At the street-comer hard by, two high-flavoured,
able-bodied monks&mdash;pretending to talk together, but keeping their
four evil eyes upon us.)</p>
<p>How the bottle had been got there, did not appear; but the difficulty
of getting it into the ramshackle vetturino carriage in which I was
departing, was so great, and it took up so much room when it was got
in, that I elected to sit outside.&nbsp; The last I saw of Giovanni
Carlavero was his running through the town by the side of the jingling
wheels, clasping my hand as I stretched it down from the box, charging
me with a thousand last loving and dutiful messages to his dear patron,
and finally looking in at the bottle as it reposed inside, with an admiration
of its honourable way of travelling that was beyond measure delightful.</p>
<p>And now, what disquiet of mind this dearly-beloved and highly-treasured
Bottle began to cost me, no man knows.&nbsp; It was my precious charge
through a long tour, and, for hundreds of miles, I never had it off
my mind by day or by night.&nbsp; Over bad roads&mdash;and they were
many&mdash;I clung to it with affectionate desperation.&nbsp; Up mountains,
I looked in at it and saw it helplessly tilting over on its back, with
terror.&nbsp; At innumerable inn doors when the weather was bad, I was
obliged to be put into my vehicle before the Bottle could be got in,
and was obliged to have the Bottle lifted out before human aid could
come near me.&nbsp; The Imp of the same name, except that his associations
were all evil and these associations were all good, would have been
a less troublesome travelling companion.&nbsp; I might have served Mr.
Cruikshank as a subject for a new illustration of the miseries of the
Bottle.&nbsp; The National Temperance Society might have made a powerful
Tract of me.</p>
<p>The suspicions that attached to this innocent Bottle, greatly aggravated
my difficulties.&nbsp; It was like the apple-pie in the child&rsquo;s
book.&nbsp; Parma pouted at it, Modena mocked it, Tuscany tackled it,
Naples nibbled it, Rome refused it, Austria accused it, Soldiers suspected
it, Jesuits jobbed it.&nbsp; I composed a neat Oration, developing my
inoffensive intentions in connexion with this Bottle, and delivered
it in an infinity of guard-houses, at a multitude of town gates, and
on every drawbridge, angle, and rampart, of a complete system of fortifications.&nbsp;
Fifty times a day, I got down to harangue an infuriated soldiery about
the Bottle.&nbsp; Through the filthy degradation of the abject and vile
Roman States, I had as much difficulty in working my way with the Bottle,
as if it had bottled up a complete system of heretical theology.&nbsp;
In the Neapolitan country, where everybody was a spy, a soldier, a priest,
or a lazzarone, the shameless beggars of all four denominations incessantly
pounced on the Bottle and made it a pretext for extorting money from
me.&nbsp; Quires&mdash;quires do I say?&nbsp; Reams&mdash;of forms illegibly
printed on whity-brown paper were filled up about the Bottle, and it
was the subject of more stamping and sanding than I had ever seen before.&nbsp;
In consequence of which haze of sand, perhaps, it was always irregular,
and always latent with dismal penalties of going back or not going forward,
which were only to be abated by the silver crossing of a base hand,
poked shirtless out of a ragged uniform sleeve.&nbsp; Under all discouragements,
however, I stuck to my Bottle, and held firm to my resolution that every
drop of its contents should reach the Bottle&rsquo;s destination.</p>
<p>The latter refinement cost me a separate heap of troubles on its
own separate account.&nbsp; What corkscrews did I see the military power
bring out against that Bottle; what gimlets, spikes, divining rods,
gauges, and unknown tests and instruments!&nbsp; At some places, they
persisted in declaring that the wine must not be passed, without being
opened and tasted; I, pleading to the contrary, used then to argue the
question seated on the Bottle lest they should open it in spite of me.&nbsp;
In the southern parts of Italy more violent shrieking, face-making,
and gesticulating, greater vehemence of speech and countenance and action,
went on about that Bottle than would attend fifty murders in a northern
latitude.&nbsp; It raised important functionaries out of their beds,
in the dead of night.&nbsp; I have known half-a-dozen military lanterns
to disperse themselves at all points of a great sleeping Piazza, each
lantern summoning some official creature to get up, put on his cocked-hat
instantly, and come and stop the Bottle.&nbsp; It was characteristic
that while this innocent Bottle had such immense difficulty in getting
from little town to town, Signor Mazzini and the fiery cross were traversing
Italy from end to end.</p>
<p>Still, I stuck to my Bottle, like any fine old English gentleman
all of the olden time.&nbsp; The more the Bottle was interfered with,
the stauncher I became (if possible) in my first determination that
my countryman should have it delivered to him intact, as the man whom
he had so nobly restored to life and liberty had delivered it to me.&nbsp;
If ever I had been obstinate in my days&mdash;and I may have been, say,
once or twice&mdash;I was obstinate about the Bottle.&nbsp; But, I made
it a rule always to keep a pocket full of small coin at its service,
and never to be out of temper in its cause.&nbsp; Thus, I and the Bottle
made our way.&nbsp; Once we had a break-down; rather a bad break-down,
on a steep high place with the sea below us, on a tempestuous evening
when it blew great guns.&nbsp; We were driving four wild horses abreast,
Southern fashion, and there was some little difficulty in stopping them.&nbsp;
I was outside, and not thrown off; but no words can describe my feelings
when I saw the Bottle&mdash;travelling inside, as usual&mdash;burst
the door open, and roll obesely out into the road.&nbsp; A blessed Bottle
with a charmed existence, he took no hurt, and we repaired damage, and
went on triumphant.</p>
<p>A thousand representations were made to me that the Bottle must be
left at this place, or that, and called for again.&nbsp; I never yielded
to one of them, and never parted from the Bottle, on any pretence, consideration,
threat, or entreaty.&nbsp; I had no faith in any official receipt for
the Bottle, and nothing would induce me to accept one.&nbsp; These unmanageable
politics at last brought me and the Bottle, still triumphant, to Genoa.&nbsp;
There, I took a tender and reluctant leave of him for a few weeks, and
consigned him to a trusty English captain, to be conveyed to the Port
of London by sea.</p>
<p>While the Bottle was on his voyage to England, I read the Shipping
Intelligence as anxiously as if I had been an underwriter.&nbsp; There
was some stormy weather after I myself had got to England by way of
Switzerland and France, and my mind greatly misgave me that the Bottle
might be wrecked.&nbsp; At last to my great joy, I received notice of
his safe arrival, and immediately went down to Saint Katharine&rsquo;s
Docks, and found him in a state of honourable captivity in the Custom
House.</p>
<p>The wine was mere vinegar when I set it down before the generous
Englishman&mdash;probably it had been something like vinegar when I
took it up from Giovanni Carlavero&mdash;but not a drop of it was spilled
or gone.&nbsp; And the Englishman told me, with much emotion in his
face and voice, that he had never tasted wine that seemed to him so
sweet and sound.&nbsp; And long afterwards, the Bottle graced his table.&nbsp;
And the last time I saw him in this world that misses him, he took me
aside in a crowd, to say, with his amiable smile: &lsquo;We were talking
of you only to-day at dinner, and I wished you had been there, for I
had some Claret up in Carlavero&rsquo;s Bottle.&rsquo;</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XVIII&mdash;THE CALAIS NIGHT MAIL</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>It is an unsettled question with me whether I shall leave Calais
something handsome in my will, or whether I shall leave it my malediction.&nbsp;
I hate it so much, and yet I am always so very glad to see it, that
I am in a state of constant indecision on this subject.&nbsp; When I
first made acquaintance with Calais, it was as a maundering young wretch
in a clammy perspiration and dripping saline particles, who was conscious
of no extremities but the one great extremity, sea-sickness&mdash;who
was a mere bilious torso, with a mislaid headache somewhere in its stomach&mdash;who
had been put into a horrible swing in Dover Harbour, and had tumbled
giddily out of it on the French coast, or the Isle of Man, or anywhere.&nbsp;
Times have changed, and now I enter Calais self-reliant and rational.&nbsp;
I know where it is beforehand, I keep a look out for it, I recognise
its landmarks when I see any of them, I am acquainted with its ways,
and I know&mdash;and I can bear&mdash;its worst behaviour.</p>
<p>Malignant Calais!&nbsp; Low-lying alligator, evading the eyesight
and discouraging hope!&nbsp; Dodging flat streak, now on this bow, now
on that, now anywhere, now everywhere, now nowhere!&nbsp; In vain Cape
Grinez, coming frankly forth into the sea, exhorts the failing to be
stout of heart and stomach: sneaking Calais, prone behind its bar, invites
emetically to despair.&nbsp; Even when it can no longer quite conceal
itself in its muddy dock, it has an evil way of falling off, has Calais,
which is more hopeless than its invisibility.&nbsp; The pier is all
but on the bowsprit, and you think you are there&mdash;roll, roar, wash!&mdash;Calais
has retired miles inland, and Dover has burst out to look for it.&nbsp;
It has a last dip and slide in its character, has Calais, to be especially
commanded to the infernal gods.&nbsp; Thrice accursed be that garrison-town,
when it dives under the boat&rsquo;s keel, and comes up a league or
two to the right, with the packet shivering and spluttering and staring
about for it!</p>
<p>Not but what I have my animosities towards Dover.&nbsp; I particularly
detest Dover for the self-complacency with which it goes to bed.&nbsp;
It always goes to bed (when I am going to Calais) with a more brilliant
display of lamp and candle than any other town.&nbsp; Mr. and Mrs. Birmingham,
host and hostess of the Lord Warden Hotel, are my much esteemed friends,
but they are too conceited about the comforts of that establishment
when the Night Mail is starting.&nbsp; I know it is a good house to
stay at, and I don&rsquo;t want the fact insisted upon in all its warm
bright windows at such an hour.&nbsp; I know the Warden is a stationary
edifice that never rolls or pitches, and I object to its big outline
seeming to insist upon that circumstance, and, as it were, to come over
me with it, when I am reeling on the deck of the boat.&nbsp; Beshrew
the Warden likewise, for obstructing that corner, and making the wind
so angry as it rushes round.&nbsp; Shall I not know that it blows quite
soon enough, without the officious Warden&rsquo;s interference?</p>
<p>As I wait here on board the night packet, for the South-Eastern Train
to come down with the Mail, Dover appears to me to be illuminated for
some intensely aggravating festivity in my personal dishonour.&nbsp;
All its noises smack of taunting praises of the land, and dispraises
of the gloomy sea, and of me for going on it.&nbsp; The drums upon the
heights have gone to bed, or I know they would rattle taunts against
me for having my unsteady footing on this slippery deck.&nbsp; The many
gas eyes of the Marine Parade twinkle in an offensive manner, as if
with derision.&nbsp; The distant dogs of Dover bark at me in my misshapen
wrappers, as if I were Richard the Third.</p>
<p>A screech, a bell, and two red eyes come gliding down the Admiralty
Pier with a smoothness of motion rendered more smooth by the heaving
of the boat.&nbsp; The sea makes noises against the pier, as if several
hippopotami were lapping at it, and were prevented by circumstances
over which they had no control from drinking peaceably.&nbsp; We, the
boat, become violently agitated&mdash;rumble, hum, scream, roar, and
establish an immense family washing-day at each paddle-box.&nbsp; Bright
patches break out in the train as the doors of the post-office vans
are opened, and instantly stooping figures with sacks upon their backs
begin to be beheld among the piles, descending as it would seem in ghostly
procession to Davy Jones&rsquo;s Locker.&nbsp; The passengers come on
board; a few shadowy Frenchmen, with hatboxes shaped like the stoppers
of gigantic case-bottles; a few shadowy Germans in immense fur coats
and boots; a few shadowy Englishmen prepared for the worst and pretending
not to expect it.&nbsp; I cannot disguise from my uncommercial mind
the miserable fact that we are a body of outcasts; that the attendants
on us are as scant in number as may serve to get rid of us with the
least possible delay; that there are no night-loungers interested in
us; that the unwilling lamps shiver and shudder at us; that the sole
object is to commit us to the deep and abandon us.&nbsp; Lo, the two
red eyes glaring in increasing distance, and then the very train itself
has gone to bed before we are off!</p>
<p>What is the moral support derived by some sea-going amateurs from
an umbrella?&nbsp; Why do certain voyagers across the Channel always
put up that article, and hold it up with a grim and fierce tenacity?&nbsp;
A fellow-creature near me&mdash;whom I only know to <i>be</i> a fellow-creature,
because of his umbrella: without which he might be a dark bit of cliff,
pier, or bulkbead&mdash;clutches that instrument with a desperate grasp,
that will not relax until he lands at Calais.&nbsp; Is there any analogy,
in certain constitutions, between keeping an umbrella up, and keeping
the spirits up?&nbsp; A hawser thrown on board with a flop replies &lsquo;Stand
by!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Stand by, below!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Half a
turn a head!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Half a turn a head!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Half
speed!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Half speed!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Port!&rsquo;&nbsp;
&lsquo;Port!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Steady!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Steady!&rsquo;&nbsp;
&lsquo;Go on!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Go on!&rsquo;</p>
<p>A stout wooden wedge driven in at my right temple and out at my left,
a floating deposit of lukewarm oil in my throat, and a compression of
the bridge of my nose in a blunt pair of pincers,&mdash;these are the
personal sensations by which I know we are off, and by which I shall
continue to know it until I am on the soil of France.&nbsp; My symptoms
have scarcely established themselves comfortably, when two or three
skating shadows that have been trying to walk or stand, get flung together,
and other two or three shadows in tarpaulin slide with them into corners
and cover them up.&nbsp; Then the South Foreland lights begin to hiccup
at us in a way that bodes no good.</p>
<p>It is at about this period that my detestation of Calais knows no
bounds.&nbsp; Inwardly I resolve afresh that I never will forgive that
hated town.&nbsp; I have done so before, many times, but that is past.&nbsp;
Let me register a vow.&nbsp; Implacable animosity to Calais everm- that
was an awkward sea, and the funnel seems of my opinion, for it gives
a complaining roar.</p>
<p>The wind blows stiffly from the Nor-East, the sea runs high, we ship
a deal of water, the night is dark and cold, and the shapeless passengers
lie about in melancholy bundles, as if they were sorted out for the
laundress; but for my own uncommercial part I cannot pretend that I
am much inconvenienced by any of these things.&nbsp; A general howling,
whistling, flopping, gurgling, and scooping, I am aware of, and a general
knocking about of Nature; but the impressions I receive are very vague.&nbsp;
In a sweet faint temper, something like the smell of damaged oranges,
I think I should feel languidly benevolent if I had time.&nbsp; I have
not time, because I am under a curious compulsion to occupy myself with
the Irish melodies.&nbsp; &lsquo;Rich and rare were the gems she wore,&rsquo;
is the particular melody to which I find myself devoted.&nbsp; I sing
it to myself in the most charming manner and with the greatest expression.&nbsp;
Now and then, I raise my head (I am sitting on the hardest of wet seats,
in the most uncomfortable of wet attitudes, but I don&rsquo;t mind it,)
and notice that I am a whirling shuttlecock between a fiery battledore
of a lighthouse on the French coast and a fiery battledore of a lighthouse
on the English coast; but I don&rsquo;t notice it particularly, except
to feel envenomed in my hatred of Calais.&nbsp; Then I go on again,
&lsquo;Rich and rare were the ge-ems she-e-e-e wore, And a bright gold
ring on her wa-and she bo-ore, But O her beauty was fa-a-a-a-r beyond&rsquo;&mdash;I
am particularly proud of my execution here, when I become aware of another
awkward shock from the sea, and another protest from the funnel, and
a fellow-creature at the paddle-box more audibly indisposed than I think
he need be&mdash;&lsquo;Her sparkling gems, or snow-white wand, But
O her beauty was fa-a-a-a-a-r beyond&rsquo;&mdash;another awkward one
here, and the fellow-creature with the umbrella down and picked up&mdash;&lsquo;Her
spa-a-rkling ge-ems, or her Port! port! steady! steady! snow-white fellow-creature
at the paddle-box very selfishly audible, bump, roar, wash, white wand.&rsquo;</p>
<p>As my execution of the Irish melodies partakes of my imperfect perceptions
of what is going on around me, so what is going on around me becomes
something else than what it is.&nbsp; The stokers open the furnace doors
below, to feed the fires, and I am again on the box of the old Exeter
Telegraph fast coach, and that is the light of the for ever extinguished
coach-lamps, and the gleam on the hatches and paddle-boxes is <i>their</i>
gleam on cottages and haystacks, and the monotonous noise of the engines
is the steady jingle of the splendid team.&nbsp; Anon, the intermittent
funnel roar of protest at every violent roll, becomes the regular blast
of a high pressure engine, and I recognise the exceedingly explosive
steamer in which I ascended the Mississippi when the American civil
war was not, and when only its causes were.&nbsp; A fragment of mast
on which the light of a lantern falls, an end of rope, and a jerking
block or so, become suggestive of Franconi&rsquo;s Circus at Paris where
I shall be this very night mayhap (for it must be morning now), and
they dance to the self-same time and tune as the trained steed, Black
Raven.&nbsp; What may be the speciality of these waves as they come
rushing on, I cannot desert the pressing demands made upon me by the
gems she wore, to inquire, but they are charged with something about
Robinson Crusoe, and I think it was in Yarmouth Roads that he first
went a seafaring and was near foundering (what a terrific sound that
word had for me when I was a boy!) in his first gale of wind.&nbsp;
Still, through all this, I must ask her (who <i>was</i> she I wonder!)
for the fiftieth time, and without ever stopping, Does she not fear
to stray, So lone and lovely through this bleak way, And are Erin&rsquo;s
sons so good or so cold, As not to be tempted by more fellow-creatures
at the paddle-box or gold?&nbsp; Sir Knight I feel not the least alarm,
No son of Erin will offer me harm, For though they love fellow-creature
with umbrella down again and golden store, Sir Knight they what a tremendous
one love honour and virtue more: For though they love Stewards with
a bull&rsquo;s eye bright, they&rsquo;ll trouble you for your ticket,
sir-rough passage to-night!</p>
<p>I freely admit it to be a miserable piece of human weakness and inconsistency,
but I no sooner become conscious of those last words from the steward
than I begin to soften towards Calais.&nbsp; Whereas I have been vindictively
wishing that those Calais burghers who came out of their town by a short
cut into the History of England, with those fatal ropes round their
necks by which they have since been towed into so many cartoons, had
all been hanged on the spot, I now begin to regard them as highly respectable
and virtuous tradesmen.&nbsp; Looking about me, I see the light of Cape
Grinez well astern of the boat on the davits to leeward, and the light
of Calais Harbour undeniably at its old tricks, but still ahead and
shining.&nbsp; Sentiments of forgiveness of Calais, not to say of attachment
to Calais, begin to expand my bosom.&nbsp; I have weak notions that
I will stay there a day or two on my way back.&nbsp; A faded and recumbent
stranger pausing in a profound reverie over the rim of a basin, asks
me what kind of place Calais is?&nbsp; I tell him (Heaven forgive me!)
a very agreeable place indeed&mdash;rather hilly than otherwise.</p>
<p>So strangely goes the time, and on the whole so quickly&mdash;though
still I seem to have been on board a week&mdash;that I am bumped, rolled,
gurgled, washed and pitched into Calais Harbour before her maiden smile
has finally lighted her through the Green Isle, When blest for ever
is she who relied, On entering Calais at the top of the tide.&nbsp;
For we have not to land to-night down among those slimy timbers&mdash;covered
with green hair as if it were the mermaids&rsquo; favourite combing-place&mdash;where
one crawls to the surface of the jetty, like a stranded shrimp, but
we go steaming up the harbour to the Railway Station Quay.&nbsp; And
as we go, the sea washes in and out among piles and planks, with dead
heavy beats and in quite a furious manner (whereof we are proud), and
the lamps shake in the wind, and the bells of Calais striking One seem
to send their vibrations struggling against troubled air, as we have
come struggling against troubled water.&nbsp; And now, in the sudden
relief and wiping of faces, everybody on board seems to have had a prodigious
double-tooth out, and to be this very instant free of the Dentist&rsquo;s
hands.&nbsp; And now we all know for the first time how wet and cold
we are, and how salt we are; and now I love Calais with my heart of
hearts!</p>
<p>&lsquo;H&ocirc;tel Dessin!&rsquo; (but in this one case it is not
a vocal cry; it is but a bright lustre in the eyes of the cheery representative
of that best of inns).&nbsp; &lsquo;H&ocirc;tel Meurice!&rsquo;&nbsp;
&lsquo;H&ocirc;tel de France!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;H&ocirc;tel de Calais!&rsquo;&nbsp;
&lsquo;The Royal Hotel, Sir, Angaishe ouse!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;You
going to Parry, Sir?&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Your baggage, registair froo,
Sir?&rsquo;&nbsp; Bless ye, my Touters, bless ye, my commissionaires,
bless ye, my hungry-eyed mysteries in caps of a military form, who are
always here, day or night, fair weather or foul, seeking inscrutable
jobs which I never see you get!&nbsp; Bless ye, my Custom House officers
in green and grey; permit me to grasp the welcome hands that descend
into my travelling-bag, one on each side, and meet at the bottom to
give my change of linen a peculiar shake up, as if it were a measure
of chaff or grain!&nbsp; I have nothing to declare, Monsieur le Douanier,
except that when I cease to breathe, Calais will be found written on
my heart.&nbsp; No article liable to local duty have I with me, Monsieur
l&rsquo;Officier de l&rsquo;Octroi, unless the overflowing of a breast
devoted to your charming town should be in that wise chargeable.&nbsp;
Ah! see at the gangway by the twinkling lantern, my dearest brother
and friend, he once of the Passport Office, he who collects the names!&nbsp;
May he be for ever changeless in his buttoned black surtout, with his
note-book in his hand, and his tall black hat, surmounting his round,
smiling, patient face!&nbsp; Let us embrace, my dearest brother.&nbsp;
I am yours &agrave; tout jamais&mdash;for the whole of ever.</p>
<p>Calais up and doing at the railway station, and Calais down and dreaming
in its bed; Calais with something of &lsquo;an ancient and fish-like
smell&rsquo; about it, and Calais blown and sea-washed pure; Calais
represented at the Buffet by savoury roast fowls, hot coffee, cognac,
and Bordeaux; and Calais represented everywhere by flitting persons
with a monomania for changing money&mdash;though I never shall be able
to understand in my present state of existence how they live by it,
but I suppose I should, if I understood the currency question&mdash;Calais
<i>en gros</i>, and Calais <i>en d&eacute;tail</i>, forgive one who
has deeply wronged you.&mdash;I was not fully aware of it on the other
side, but I meant Dover.</p>
<p>Ding, ding!&nbsp; To the carriages, gentlemen the travellers.&nbsp;
Ascend then, gentlemen the travellers, for Hazebroucke, Lille, Douai,
Bruxelles, Arras, Amiens, and Paris!&nbsp; I, humble representative
of the uncommercial interest, ascend with the rest.&nbsp; The train
is light to-night, and I share my compartment with but two fellow-travellers;
one, a compatriot in an obsolete cravat, who thinks it a quite unaccountable
thing that they don&rsquo;t keep &lsquo;London time&rsquo; on a French
railway, and who is made angry by my modestly suggesting the possibility
of Paris time being more in their way; the other, a young priest, with
a very small bird in a very small cage, who feeds the small bird with
a quill, and then puts him up in the network above his head, where he
advances twittering, to his front wires, and seems to address me in
an electioneering manner.&nbsp; The compatriot (who crossed in the boat,
and whom I judge to be some person of distinction, as he was shut up,
like a stately species of rabbit, in a private hutch on deck) and the
young priest (who joined us at Calais) are soon asleep, and then the
bird and I have it all to ourselves.</p>
<p>A stormy night still; a night that sweeps the wires of the electric
telegraph with a wild and fitful hand; a night so very stormy, with
the added storm of the train-progress through it, that when the Guard
comes clambering round to mark the tickets while we are at full speed
(a really horrible performance in an express train, though he holds
on to the open window by his elbows in the most deliberate manner),
he stands in such a whirlwind that I grip him fast by the collar, and
feel it next to manslaughter to let him go.&nbsp; Still, when he is
gone, the small, small bird remains at his front wires feebly twittering
to me&mdash;twittering and twittering, until, leaning back in my place
and looking at him in drowsy fascination, I find that he seems to jog
my memory as we rush along.</p>
<p>Uncommercial travels (thus the small, small bird) have lain in their
idle thriftless way through all this range of swamp and dyke, as through
many other odd places; and about here, as you very well know, are the
queer old stone farm-houses, approached by drawbridges, and the windmills
that you get at by boats.&nbsp; Here, are the lands where the women
hoe and dig, paddling canoe-wise from field to field, and here are the
cabarets and other peasant-houses where the stone dove-cotes in the
littered yards are as strong as warders&rsquo; towers in old castles.&nbsp;
Here, are the long monotonous miles of canal, with the great Dutch-built
barges garishly painted, and the towing girls, sometimes harnessed by
the forehead, sometimes by the girdle and the shoulders, not a pleasant
sight to see.&nbsp; Scattered through this country are mighty works
of VAUBAN, whom you know about, and regiments of such corporals as you
heard of once upon a time, and many a blue-eyed Bebelle.&nbsp; Through
these flat districts, in the shining summer days, walk those long, grotesque
files of young novices in enormous shovel-hats, whom you remember blackening
the ground checkered by the avenues of leafy trees.&nbsp; And now that
Hazebroucke slumbers certain kilometres ahead, recall the summer evening
when your dusty feet strolling up from the station tended hap-hazard
to a Fair there, where the oldest inhabitants were circling round and
round a barrel-organ on hobby-horses, with the greatest gravity, and
where the principal show in the Fair was a Religious Richardson&rsquo;s&mdash;literally,
on its own announcement in great letters, THEATRE RELIGIEUX.&nbsp; In
which improving Temple, the dramatic representation was of &lsquo;all
the interesting events in the life of our Lord, from the Manger to the
Tomb;&rsquo; the principal female character, without any reservation
or exception, being at the moment of your arrival, engaged in trimming
the external Moderators (as it was growing dusk), while the next principal
female character took the money, and the Young Saint John disported
himself upside down on the platform.</p>
<p>Looking up at this point to confirm the small, small bird in every
particular he has mentioned, I find he has ceased to twitter, and has
put his head under his wing.&nbsp; Therefore, in my different way I
follow the good example.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XIX&mdash;SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF MORTALITY</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>I had parted from the small bird at somewhere about four o&rsquo;clock
in the morning, when he had got out at Arras, and had been received
by two shovel-hats in waiting at the station, who presented an appropriately
ornithological and crow-like appearance.&nbsp; My compatriot and I had
gone on to Paris; my compatriot enlightening me occasionally with a
long list of the enormous grievances of French railway travelling: every
one of which, as I am a sinner, was perfectly new to me, though I have
as much experience of French railways as most uncommercials.&nbsp; I
had left him at the terminus (through his conviction, against all explanation
and remonstrance, that his baggage-ticket was his passenger-ticket),
insisting in a very high temper to the functionary on duty, that in
his own personal identity he was four packages weighing so many kilogrammes&mdash;as
if he had been Cassim Baba!&nbsp; I had bathed and breakfasted, and
was strolling on the bright quays.&nbsp; The subject of my meditations
was the question whether it is positively in the essence and nature
of things, as a certain school of Britons would seem to think it, that
a Capital must be ensnared and enslaved before it can be made beautiful:
when I lifted up my eyes and found that my feet, straying like my mind,
had brought me to Notre-Dame.</p>
<p>That is to say, Notre-Dame was before me, but there was a large open
space between us.&nbsp; A very little while gone, I had left that space
covered with buildings densely crowded; and now it was cleared for some
new wonder in the way of public Street, Place, Garden, Fountain, or
all four.&nbsp; Only the obscene little Morgue, slinking on the brink
of the river and soon to come down, was left there, looking mortally
ashamed of itself, and supremely wicked.&nbsp; I had but glanced at
this old acquaintance, when I beheld an airy procession coming round
in front of Notre-Dame, past the great hospital.&nbsp; It had something
of a Masaniello look, with fluttering striped curtains in the midst
of it, and it came dancing round the cathedral in the liveliest manner.</p>
<p>I was speculating on a marriage in Blouse-life, or a Christening,
or some other domestic festivity which I would see out, when I found,
from the talk of a quick rush of Blouses past me, that it was a Body
coming to the Morgue.&nbsp; Having never before chanced upon this initiation,
I constituted myself a Blouse likewise, and ran into the Morgue with
the rest.&nbsp; It was a very muddy day, and we took in a quantity of
mire with us, and the procession coming in upon our heels brought a
quantity more.&nbsp; The procession was in the highest spirits, and
consisted of idlers who had come with the curtained litter from its
starting-place, and of all the reinforcements it had picked up by the
way.&nbsp; It set the litter down in the midst of the Morgue, and then
two Custodians proclaimed aloud that we were all &lsquo;invited&rsquo;
to go out.&nbsp; This invitation was rendered the more pressing, if
not the more flattering, by our being shoved out, and the folding-gates
being barred upon us.</p>
<p>Those who have never seen the Morgue, may see it perfectly, by presenting
to themselves on indifferently paved coach-house accessible from the
street by a pair of folding-gates; on the left of the coach-house, occupying
its width, any large London tailor&rsquo;s or linendraper&rsquo;s plate-glass
window reaching to the ground; within the window, on two rows of inclined
plane, what the coach-house has to show; hanging above, like irregular
stalactites from the roof of a cave, a quantity of clothes&mdash;the
clothes of the dead and buried shows of the coach-house.</p>
<p>We had been excited in the highest degree by seeing the Custodians
pull off their coats and tuck up their shirt-sleeves, as the procession
came along.&nbsp; It looked so interestingly like business.&nbsp; Shut
out in the muddy street, we now became quite ravenous to know all about
it.&nbsp; Was it river, pistol, knife, love, gambling, robbery, hatred,
how many stabs, how many bullets, fresh or decomposed, suicide or murder?&nbsp;
All wedged together, and all staring at one another with our heads thrust
forward, we propounded these inquiries and a hundred more such.&nbsp;
Imperceptibly, it came to be known that Monsieur the tall and sallow
mason yonder, was acquainted with the facts.&nbsp; Would Monsieur the
tall and sallow mason, surged at by a new wave of us, have the goodness
to impart?&nbsp; It was but a poor old man, passing along the street
under one of the new buildings, on whom a stone had fallen, and who
had tumbled dead.&nbsp; His age?&nbsp; Another wave surged up against
the tall and sallow mason, and our wave swept on and broke, and he was
any age from sixty-five to ninety.</p>
<p>An old man was not much: moreover, we could have wished he had been
killed by human agency&mdash;his own, or somebody else&rsquo;s: the
latter, preferable&mdash;but our comfort was, that he had nothing about
him to lead to his identification, and that his people must seek him
here.&nbsp; Perhaps they were waiting dinner for him even now?&nbsp;
We liked that.&nbsp; Such of us as had pocket-handkerchiefs took a slow,
intense, protracted wipe at our noses, and then crammed our handkerchiefs
into the breast of our blouses.&nbsp; Others of us who had no handkerchiefs
administered a similar relief to our overwrought minds, by means of
prolonged smears or wipes of our mouths on our sleeves.&nbsp; One man
with a gloomy malformation of brow&mdash;a homicidal worker in white-lead,
to judge from his blue tone of colour, and a certain flavour of paralysis
pervading him&mdash;got his coat-collar between his teeth, and bit at
it with an appetite.&nbsp; Several decent women arrived upon the outskirts
of the crowd, and prepared to launch themselves into the dismal coach-house
when opportunity should come; among them, a pretty young mother, pretending
to bite the forefinger of her baby-boy, kept it between her rosy lips
that it might be handy for guiding to point at the show.&nbsp; Meantime,
all faces were turned towards the building, and we men waited with a
fixed and stern resolution:- for the most part with folded arms.&nbsp;
Surely, it was the only public French sight these uncommercial eyes
had seen, at which the expectant people did not form <i>en queue</i>.&nbsp;
But there was no such order of arrangement here; nothing but a general
determination to make a rush for it, and a disposition to object to
some boys who had mounted on the two stone posts by the hinges of the
gates, with the design of swooping in when the hinges should turn.</p>
<p>Now, they turned, and we rushed!&nbsp; Great pressure, and a scream
or two from the front.&nbsp; Then a laugh or two, some expressions of
disappointment, and a slackening of the pressure and subsidence of the
struggle.&mdash;Old man not there.</p>
<p>&lsquo;But what would you have?&rsquo; the Custodian reasonably argues,
as he looks out at his little door.&nbsp; &lsquo;Patience, patience!&nbsp;
We make his toilette, gentlemen.&nbsp; He will be exposed presently.&nbsp;
It is necessary to proceed according to rule.&nbsp; His toilette is
not made all at a blow.&nbsp; He will be exposed in good time, gentlemen,
in good time.&rsquo;&nbsp; And so retires, smoking, with a wave of his
sleeveless arm towards the window, importing, &lsquo;Entertain yourselves
in the meanwhile with the other curiosities.&nbsp; Fortunately the Museum
is not empty to-day.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Who would have thought of public fickleness even at the Morgue?&nbsp;
But there it was, on that occasion.&nbsp; Three lately popular articles
that had been attracting greatly when the litter was first descried
coming dancing round the corner by the great cathedral, were so completely
deposed now, that nobody save two little girls (one showing them to
a doll) would look at them.&nbsp; Yet the chief of the three, the article
in the front row, had received jagged injury of the left temple; and
the other two in the back row, the drowned two lying side by side with
their heads very slightly turned towards each other, seemed to be comparing
notes about it.&nbsp; Indeed, those two of the back row were so furtive
of appearance, and so (in their puffed way) assassinatingly knowing
as to the one of the front, that it was hard to think the three had
never come together in their lives, and were only chance companions
after death.&nbsp; Whether or no this was the general, as it was the
uncommercial, fancy, it is not to be disputed that the group had drawn
exceedingly within ten minutes.&nbsp; Yet now, the inconstant public
turned its back upon them, and even leaned its elbows carelessly against
the bar outside the window and shook off the mud from its shoes, and
also lent and borrowed fire for pipes.</p>
<p>Custodian re-enters from his door.&nbsp; &lsquo;Again once, gentlemen,
you are invited&mdash;&rsquo;&nbsp; No further invitation necessary.&nbsp;
Ready dash into the street.&nbsp; Toilette finished.&nbsp; Old man coming
out.</p>
<p>This time, the interest was grown too hot to admit of toleration
of the boys on the stone posts.&nbsp; The homicidal white-lead worker
made a pounce upon one boy who was hoisting himself up, and brought
him to earth amidst general commendation.&nbsp; Closely stowed as we
were, we yet formed into groups&mdash;groups of conversation, without
separation from the mass&mdash;to discuss the old man.&nbsp; Rivals
of the tall and sallow mason sprang into being, and here again was popular
inconstancy.&nbsp; These rivals attracted audiences, and were greedily
listened to; and whereas they had derived their information solely from
the tall and sallow one, officious members of the crowd now sought to
enlighten <i>him</i> on their authority.&nbsp; Changed by this social
experience into an iron-visaged and inveterate misanthrope, the mason
glared at mankind, and evidently cherished in his breast the wish that
the whole of the present company could change places with the deceased
old man.&nbsp; And now listeners became inattentive, and people made
a start forward at a slight sound, and an unholy fire kindled in the
public eye, and those next the gates beat at them impatiently, as if
they were of the cannibal species and hungry.</p>
<p>Again the hinges creaked, and we rushed.&nbsp; Disorderly pressure
for some time ensued before the uncommercial unit got figured into the
front row of the sum.&nbsp; It was strange to see so much heat and uproar
seething about one poor spare, white-haired old man, quiet for evermore.&nbsp;
He was calm of feature and undisfigured, as he lay on his back&mdash;having
been struck upon the hinder part of his head, and thrown forward&mdash;and
something like a tear or two had started from the closed eyes, and lay
wet upon the face.&nbsp; The uncommercial interest, sated at a glance,
directed itself upon the striving crowd on either side and behind: wondering
whether one might have guessed, from the expression of those faces merely,
what kind of sight they were looking at.&nbsp; The differences of expression
were not many.&nbsp; There was a little pity, but not much, and that
mostly with a selfish touch in it&mdash;as who would say, &lsquo;Shall
I, poor I, look like that, when the time comes!&rsquo;&nbsp; There was
more of a secretly brooding contemplation and curiosity, as &lsquo;That
man I don&rsquo;t like, and have the grudge against; would such be his
appearance, if some one&mdash;not to mention names&mdash;by any chance
gave him an knock?&rsquo;&nbsp; There was a wolfish stare at the object,
in which homicidal white-lead worker shone conspicuous.&nbsp; And there
was a much more general, purposeless, vacant staring at it&mdash;like
looking at waxwork, without a catalogue, and not knowing what to make
of it.&nbsp; But all these expressions concurred in possessing the one
underlying expression of <i>looking at something that could not</i>
<i>return a look</i>.&nbsp; The uncommercial notice had established
this as very remarkable, when a new pressure all at once coming up from
the street pinioned him ignominiously, and hurried him into the arms
(now sleeved again) of the Custodian smoking at his door, and answering
questions, between puffs, with a certain placid meritorious air of not
being proud, though high in office.&nbsp; And mentioning pride, it may
be observed, by the way, that one could not well help investing the
original sole occupant of the front row with an air depreciatory of
the legitimate attraction of the poor old man: while the two in the
second row seemed to exult at this superseded popularity.</p>
<p>Pacing presently round the garden of the Tower of St. Jacques de
la Boucherie, and presently again in front of the H&ocirc;tel de Ville,
I called to mind a certain desolate open-air Morgue that I happened
to light upon in London, one day in the hard winter of 1861, and which
seemed as strange to me, at the time of seeing it, as if I had found
it in China.&nbsp; Towards that hour of a winter&rsquo;s afternoon when
the lamp-lighters are beginning to light the lamps in the streets a
little before they are wanted, because the darkness thickens fast and
soon, I was walking in from the country on the northern side of the
Regent&rsquo;s Park&mdash;hard frozen and deserted&mdash;when I saw
an empty Hansom cab drive up to the lodge at Gloucester-gate, and the
driver with great agitation call to the man there: who quickly reached
a long pole from a tree, and, deftly collared by the driver, jumped
to the step of his little seat, and so the Hansom rattled out at the
gate, galloping over the iron-bound road.&nbsp; I followed running,
though not so fast but that when I came to the right-hand Canal Bridge,
near the cross-path to Chalk Farm, the Hansom was stationary, the horse
was smoking hot, the long pole was idle on the ground, and the driver
and the park-keeper were looking over the bridge parapet.&nbsp; Looking
over too, I saw, lying on the towing-path with her face turned up towards
us, a woman, dead a day or two, and under thirty, as I guessed, poorly
dressed in black.&nbsp; The feet were lightly crossed at the ankles,
and the dark hair, all pushed back from the face, as though that had
been the last action of her desperate hands, streamed over the ground.&nbsp;
Dabbled all about her, was the water and the broken ice that had dropped
from her dress, and had splashed as she was got out.&nbsp; The policeman
who had just got her out, and the passing costermonger who had helped
him, were standing near the body; the latter with that stare at it which
I have likened to being at a waxwork exhibition without a catalogue;
the former, looking over his stock, with professional stiffness and
coolness, in the direction in which the bearers he had sent for were
expected.&nbsp; So dreadfully forlorn, so dreadfully sad, so dreadfully
mysterious, this spectacle of our dear sister here departed!&nbsp; A
barge came up, breaking the floating ice and the silence, and a woman
steered it.&nbsp; The man with the horse that towed it, cared so little
for the body, that the stumbling hoofs had been among the hair, and
the tow-rope had caught and turned the head, before our cry of horror
took him to the bridle.&nbsp; At which sound the steering woman looked
up at us on the bridge, with contempt unutterable, and then looking
down at the body with a similar expression&mdash;as if it were made
in another likeness from herself, had been informed with other passions,
had been lost by other chances, had had another nature dragged down
to perdition&mdash;steered a spurning streak of mud at it, and passed
on.</p>
<p>A better experience, but also of the Morgue kind, in which chance
happily made me useful in a slight degree, arose to my remembrance as
I took my way by the Boulevard de S&eacute;bastopol to the brighter
scenes of Paris.</p>
<p>The thing happened, say five-and-twenty years ago.&nbsp; I was a
modest young uncommercial then, and timid and inexperienced.&nbsp; Many
suns and winds have browned me in the line, but those were my pale days.&nbsp;
Having newly taken the lease of a house in a certain distinguished metropolitan
parish&mdash;a house which then appeared to me to be a frightfully first-class
Family Mansion, involving awful responsibilities&mdash;I became the
prey of a Beadle.&nbsp; I think the Beadle must have seen me going in
or coming out, and must have observed that I tottered under the weight
of my grandeur.&nbsp; Or he may have been in hiding under straw when
I bought my first horse (in the desirable stable-yard attached to the
first-class Family Mansion), and when the vendor remarked to me, in
an original manner, on bringing him for approval, taking his cloth off
and smacking him, &lsquo;There, Sir!<i>&nbsp; There&rsquo;s</i> a Orse!&rsquo;&nbsp;
And when I said gallantly, &lsquo;How much do you want for him?&rsquo;
and when the vendor said, &lsquo;No more than sixty guineas, from you,&rsquo;
and when I said smartly, &lsquo;Why not more than sixty from <i>me</i>?&rsquo;&nbsp;
And when he said crushingly, &lsquo;Because upon my soul and body he&rsquo;d
be considered cheap at seventy, by one who understood the subject&mdash;but
you don&rsquo;t.&rsquo;&mdash;I say, the Beadle may have been in hiding
under straw, when this disgrace befell me, or he may have noted that
I was too raw and young an Atlas to carry the first-class Family Mansion
in a knowing manner.&nbsp; Be this as it may, the Beadle did what Melancholy
did to the youth in Gray&rsquo;s Elegy&mdash;he marked me for his own.&nbsp;
And the way in which the Beadle did it, was this: he summoned me as
a Juryman on his Coroner&rsquo;s Inquests.</p>
<p>In my first feverish alarm I repaired &lsquo;for safety and for succour&rsquo;&mdash;like
those sagacious Northern shepherds who, having had no previous reason
whatever to believe in young Norval, very prudently did not originate
the hazardous idea of believing in him&mdash;to a deep householder.&nbsp;
This profound man informed me that the Beadle counted on my buying him
off; on my bribing him not to summon me; and that if I would attend
an Inquest with a cheerful countenance, and profess alacrity in that
branch of my country&rsquo;s service, the Beadle would be disheartened,
and would give up the game.</p>
<p>I roused my energies, and the next time the wily Beadle summoned
me, I went.&nbsp; The Beadle was the blankest Beadle I have ever looked
on when I answered to my name; and his discomfiture gave me courage
to go through with it.</p>
<p>We were impanelled to inquire concerning the death of a very little
mite of a child.&nbsp; It was the old miserable story.&nbsp; Whether
the mother had committed the minor offence of concealing the birth,
or whether she had committed the major offence of killing the child,
was the question on which we were wanted.&nbsp; We must commit her on
one of the two issues.</p>
<p>The Inquest came off in the parish workhouse, and I have yet a lively
impression that I was unanimously received by my brother Jurymen as
a brother of the utmost conceivable insignificance.&nbsp; Also, that
before we began, a broker who had lately cheated me fearfully in the
matter of a pair of card-tables, was for the utmost rigour of the law.&nbsp;
I remember that we sat in a sort of board-room, on such very large square
horse-hair chairs that I wondered what race of Patagonians they were
made for; and further, that an undertaker gave me his card when we were
in the full moral freshness of having just been sworn, as &lsquo;an
inhabitant that was newly come into the parish, and was likely to have
a young family.&rsquo;&nbsp; The case was then stated to us by the Coroner,
and then we went down-stairs&mdash;led by the plotting Beadle&mdash;to
view the body.&nbsp; From that day to this, the poor little figure,
on which that sounding legal appellation was bestowed, has lain in the
same place and with the same surroundings, to my thinking.&nbsp; In
a kind of crypt devoted to the warehousing of the parochial coffins,
and in the midst of a perfect Panorama of coffins of all sizes, it was
stretched on a box; the mother had put it in her box&mdash;this box&mdash;almost
as soon as it was born, and it had been presently found there.&nbsp;
It had been opened, and neatly sewn up, and regarded from that point
of view, it looked like a stuffed creature.&nbsp; It rested on a clean
white cloth, with a surgical instrument or so at hand, and regarded
from that point of view, it looked as if the cloth were &lsquo;laid,&rsquo;
and the Giant were coming to dinner.&nbsp; There was nothing repellent
about the poor piece of innocence, and it demanded a mere form of looking
at.&nbsp; So, we looked at an old pauper who was going about among the
coffins with a foot rule, as if he were a case of Self-Measurement;
and we looked at one another; and we said the place was well whitewashed
anyhow; and then our conversational powers as a British Jury flagged,
and the foreman said, &lsquo;All right, gentlemen?&nbsp; Back again,
Mr. Beadle!&rsquo;</p>
<p>The miserable young creature who had given birth to this child within
a very few days, and who had cleaned the cold wet door-steps immediately
afterwards, was brought before us when we resumed our horse-hair chairs,
and was present during the proceedings.&nbsp; She had a horse-hair chair
herself, being very weak and ill; and I remember how she turned to the
unsympathetic nurse who attended her, and who might have been the figure-head
of a pauper-ship, and how she hid her face and sobs and tears upon that
wooden shoulder.&nbsp; I remember, too, how hard her mistress was upon
her (she was a servant-of-all-work), and with what a cruel pertinacity
that piece of Virtue spun her thread of evidence double, by intertwisting
it with the sternest thread of construction.&nbsp; Smitten hard by the
terrible low wail from the utterly friendless orphan girl, which never
ceased during the whole inquiry, I took heart to ask this witness a
question or two, which hopefully admitted of an answer that might give
a favourable turn to the case.&nbsp; She made the turn as little favourable
as it could be, but it did some good, and the Coroner, who was nobly
patient and humane (he was the late Mr. Wakley), cast a look of strong
encouragement in my direction.&nbsp; Then, we had the doctor who had
made the examination, and the usual tests as to whether the child was
born alive; but he was a timid, muddle-headed doctor, and got confused
and contradictory, and wouldn&rsquo;t say this, and couldn&rsquo;t answer
for that, and the immaculate broker was too much for him, and our side
slid back again.&nbsp; However, I tried again, and the Coroner backed
me again, for which I ever afterwards felt grateful to him as I do now
to his memory; and we got another favourable turn, out of some other
witness, some member of the family with a strong prepossession against
the sinner; and I think we had the doctor back again; and I know that
the Coroner summed up for our side, and that I and my British brothers
turned round to discuss our verdict, and get ourselves into great difficulties
with our large chairs and the broker.&nbsp; At that stage of the case
I tried hard again, being convinced that I had cause for it; and at
last we found for the minor offence of only concealing the birth; and
the poor desolate creature, who had been taken out during our deliberation,
being brought in again to be told of the verdict, then dropped upon
her knees before us, with protestations that we were right&mdash;protestations
among the most affecting that I have ever heard in my life&mdash;and
was carried away insensible.</p>
<p>(In private conversation after this was all over, the Coroner showed
me his reasons as a trained surgeon, for perceiving it to be impossible
that the child could, under the most favourable circumstances, have
drawn many breaths, in the very doubtful case of its having ever breathed
at all; this, owing to the discovery of some foreign matter in the windpipe,
quite irreconcilable with many moments of life.)</p>
<p>When the agonised girl had made those final protestations, I had
seen her face, and it was in unison with her distracted heartbroken
voice, and it was very moving.&nbsp; It certainly did not impress me
by any beauty that it had, and if I ever see it again in another world
I shall only know it by the help of some new sense or intelligence.&nbsp;
But it came to me in my sleep that night, and I selfishly dismissed
it in the most efficient way I could think of.&nbsp; I caused some extra
care to be taken of her in the prison, and counsel to be retained for
her defence when she was tried at the Old Bailey; and her sentence was
lenient, and her history and conduct proved that it was right.&nbsp;
In doing the little I did for her, I remember to have had the kind help
of some gentle-hearted functionary to whom I addressed myself&mdash;but
what functionary I have long forgotten&mdash;who I suppose was officially
present at the Inquest.</p>
<p>I regard this as a very notable uncommercial experience, because
this good came of a Beadle.&nbsp; And to the best of my knowledge, information,
and belief, it is the only good that ever did come of a Beadle since
the first Beadle put on his cocked-hat.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XX&mdash;BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>It came into my mind that I would recall in these notes a few of
the many hostelries I have rested at in the course of my journeys; and,
indeed, I had taken up my pen for the purpose, when I was baffled by
an accidental circumstance.&nbsp; It was the having to leave off, to
wish the owner of a certain bright face that looked in at my door, &lsquo;many
happy returns of the day.&rsquo;&nbsp; Thereupon a new thought came
into my mind, driving its predecessor out, and I began to recall&mdash;instead
of Inns&mdash;the birthdays that I have put up at, on my way to this
present sheet of paper.</p>
<p>I can very well remember being taken out to visit some peach-faced
creature in a blue sash, and shoes to correspond, whose life I supposed
to consist entirely of birthdays.&nbsp; Upon seed-cake, sweet wine,
and shining presents, that glorified young person seemed to me to be
exclusively reared.&nbsp; At so early a stage of my travels did I assist
at the anniversary of her nativity (and become enamoured of her), that
I had not yet acquired the recondite knowledge that a birthday is the
common property of all who are born, but supposed it to be a special
gift bestowed by the favouring Heavens on that one distinguished infant.&nbsp;
There was no other company, and we sat in a shady bower&mdash;under
a table, as my better (or worse) knowledge leads me to believe&mdash;and
were regaled with saccharine substances and liquids, until it was time
to part.&nbsp; A bitter powder was administered to me next morning,
and I was wretched.&nbsp; On the whole, a pretty accurate foreshadowing
of my more mature experiences in such wise!</p>
<p>Then came the time when, inseparable from one&rsquo;s own birthday,
was a certain sense of merit, a consciousness of well-earned distinction.&nbsp;
When I regarded my birthday as a graceful achievement of my own, a monument
of my perseverance, independence, and good sense, redounding greatly
to my honour.&nbsp; This was at about the period when Olympia Squires
became involved in the anniversary.&nbsp; Olympia was most beautiful
(of course), and I loved her to that degree, that I used to be obliged
to get out of my little bed in the night, expressly to exclaim to Solitude,
&lsquo;O, Olympia Squires!&rsquo;&nbsp; Visions of Olympia, clothed
entirely in sage-green, from which I infer a defectively educated taste
on the part of her respected parents, who were necessarily unacquainted
with the South Kensington Museum, still arise before me.&nbsp; Truth
is sacred, and the visions are crowned by a shining white beaver bonnet,
impossibly suggestive of a little feminine postboy.&nbsp; My memory
presents a birthday when Olympia and I were taken by an unfeeling relative&mdash;some
cruel uncle, or the like&mdash;to a slow torture called an Orrery.&nbsp;
The terrible instrument was set up at the local Theatre, and I had expressed
a profane wish in the morning that it was a Play: for which a serious
aunt had probed my conscience deep, and my pocket deeper, by reclaiming
a bestowed half-crown.&nbsp; It was a venerable and a shabby Orrery,
at least one thousand stars and twenty-five comets behind the age.&nbsp;
Nevertheless, it was awful.&nbsp; When the low-spirited gentleman with
a wand said, &lsquo;Ladies and gentlemen&rsquo; (meaning particularly
Olympia and me), &lsquo;the lights are about to be put out, but there
is not the slightest cause for alarm,&rsquo; it was very alarming.&nbsp;
Then the planets and stars began.&nbsp; Sometimes they wouldn&rsquo;t
come on, sometimes they wouldn&rsquo;t go off, sometimes they had holes
in them, and mostly they didn&rsquo;t seem to be good likenesses.&nbsp;
All this time the gentleman with the wand was going on in the dark (tapping
away at the heavenly bodies between whiles, like a wearisome woodpecker),
about a sphere revolving on its own axis eight hundred and ninety-seven
thousand millions of times&mdash;or miles&mdash;in two hundred and sixty-three
thousand five hundred and twenty-four millions of something elses, until
I thought if this was a birthday it were better never to have been born.&nbsp;
Olympia, also, became much depressed, and we both slumbered and woke
cross, and still the gentleman was going on in the dark&mdash;whether
up in the stars, or down on the stage, it would have been hard to make
out, if it had been worth trying&mdash;cyphering away about planes of
orbits, to such an infamous extent that Olympia, stung to madness, actually
kicked me.&nbsp; A pretty birthday spectacle, when the lights were turned
up again, and all the schools in the town (including the National, who
had come in for nothing, and serve them right, for they were always
throwing stones) were discovered with exhausted countenances, screwing
their knuckles into their eyes, or clutching their heads of hair.&nbsp;
A pretty birthday speech when Dr. Sleek of the City-Free bobbed up his
powdered head in the stage-box, and said that before this assembly dispersed
he really must beg to express his entire approval of a lecture as improving,
as informing, as devoid of anything that could call a blush into the
cheek of youth, as any it had ever been his lot to hear delivered.&nbsp;
A pretty birthday altogether, when Astronomy couldn&rsquo;t leave poor
Small Olympia Squires and me alone, but must put an end to our loves!&nbsp;
For, we never got over it; the threadbare Orrery outwore our mutual
tenderness; the man with the wand was too much for the boy with the
bow.</p>
<p>When shall I disconnect the combined smells of oranges, brown paper,
and straw, from those other birthdays at school, when the coming hamper
casts its shadow before, and when a week of social harmony&mdash;shall
I add of admiring and affectionate popularity&mdash;led up to that Institution?&nbsp;
What noble sentiments were expressed to me in the days before the hamper,
what vows of friendship were sworn to me, what exceedingly old knives
were given me, what generous avowals of having been in the wrong emanated
from else obstinate spirits once enrolled among my enemies!&nbsp; The
birthday of the potted game and guava jelly, is still made special to
me by the noble conduct of Bully Globson.&nbsp; Letters from home had
mysteriously inquired whether I should be much surprised and disappointed
if among the treasures in the coming hamper I discovered potted game,
and guava jelly from the Western Indies.&nbsp; I had mentioned those
hints in confidence to a few friends, and had promised to give away,
as I now see reason to believe, a handsome covey of partridges potted,
and about a hundredweight of guava jelly.&nbsp; It was now that Globson,
Bully no more, sought me out in the playground.&nbsp; He was a big fat
boy, with a big fat head and a big fat fist, and at the beginning of
that Half had raised such a bump on my forehead that I couldn&rsquo;t
get my hat of state on, to go to church.&nbsp; He said that after an
interval of cool reflection (four months) he now felt this blow to have
been an error of judgment, and that he wished to apologise for the same.&nbsp;
Not only that, but holding down his big head between his two big hands
in order that I might reach it conveniently, he requested me, as an
act of justice which would appease his awakened conscience, to raise
a retributive bump upon it, in the presence of witnesses.&nbsp; This
handsome proposal I modestly declined, and he then embraced me, and
we walked away conversing.&nbsp; We conversed respecting the West India
Islands, and, in the pursuit of knowledge he asked me with much interest
whether in the course of my reading I had met with any reliable description
of the mode of manufacturing guava jelly; or whether I had ever happened
to taste that conserve, which he had been given to understand was of
rare excellence.</p>
<p>Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty; and then with the waning months
came an ever augmenting sense of the dignity of twenty-one.&nbsp; Heaven
knows I had nothing to &lsquo;come into,&rsquo; save the bare birthday,
and yet I esteemed it as a great possession.&nbsp; I now and then paved
the way to my state of dignity, by beginning a proposition with the
casual words, &lsquo;say that a man of twenty-one,&rsquo; or by the
incidental assumption of a fact that could not sanely be disputed, as,
&lsquo;for when a fellow comes to be a man of twenty-one.&rsquo;&nbsp;
I gave a party on the occasion.&nbsp; She was there.&nbsp; It is unnecessary
to name Her, more particularly; She was older than I, and had pervaded
every chink and crevice of my mind for three or four years.&nbsp; I
had held volumes of Imaginary Conversations with her mother on the subject
of our union, and I had written letters more in number than Horace Walpole&rsquo;s,
to that discreet woman, soliciting her daughter&rsquo;s hand in marriage.&nbsp;
I had never had the remotest intention of sending any of those letters;
but to write them, and after a few days tear them up, had been a sublime
occupation.&nbsp; Sometimes, I had begun &lsquo;Honoured Madam.&nbsp;
I think that a lady gifted with those powers of observation which I
know you to possess, and endowed with those womanly sympathies with
the young and ardent which it were more than heresy to doubt, can scarcely
have failed to discover that I love your adorable daughter, deeply,
devotedly.&rsquo;&nbsp; In less buoyant states of mind I had begun,
&lsquo;Bear with me, Dear Madam, bear with a daring wretch who is about
to make a surprising confession to you, wholly unanticipated by yourself,
and which he beseeches you to commit to the flames as soon as you have
become aware to what a towering height his mad ambition soars.&rsquo;&nbsp;
At other times&mdash;periods of profound mental depression, when She
had gone out to balls where I was not&mdash;the draft took the affecting
form of a paper to be left on my table after my departure to the confines
of the globe.&nbsp; As thus: &lsquo;For Mrs. Onowenever, these lines
when the hand that traces them shall be far away.&nbsp; I could not
bear the daily torture of hopelessly loving the dear one whom I will
not name.&nbsp; Broiling on the coast of Africa, or congealing on the
shores of Greenland, I am far far better there than here.&rsquo;&nbsp;
(In this sentiment my cooler judgment perceives that the family of the
beloved object would have most completely concurred.)&nbsp; &lsquo;If
I ever emerge from obscurity, and my name is ever heralded by Fame,
it will be for her dear sake.&nbsp; If I ever amass Gold, it will be
to pour it at her feet.&nbsp; Should I on the other hand become the
prey of Ravens&mdash;&rsquo;&nbsp; I doubt if I ever quite made up my
mind what was to be done in that affecting case; I tried &lsquo;then
it is better so;&rsquo; but not feeling convinced that it would be better
so, I vacillated between leaving all else blank, which looked expressive
and bleak, or winding up with &lsquo;Farewell!&rsquo;</p>
<p>This fictitious correspondence of mine is to blame for the foregoing
digression.&nbsp; I was about to pursue the statement that on my twenty-first
birthday I gave a party, and She was there.&nbsp; It was a beautiful
party.&nbsp; There was not a single animate or inanimate object connected
with it (except the company and myself) that I had ever seen before.&nbsp;
Everything was hired, and the mercenaries in attendance were profound
strangers to me.&nbsp; Behind a door, in the crumby part of the night
when wine-glasses were to be found in unexpected spots, I spoke to Her&mdash;spoke
out to Her.&nbsp; What passed, I cannot as a man of honour reveal.&nbsp;
She was all angelical gentleness, but a word was mentioned&mdash;a short
and dreadful word of three letters, beginning with a B- which, as I
remarked at the moment, &lsquo;scorched my brain.&rsquo;&nbsp; She went
away soon afterwards, and when the hollow throng (though to be sure
it was no fault of theirs) dispersed, I issued forth, with a dissipated
scorner, and, as I mentioned expressly to him, &lsquo;sought oblivion.&rsquo;&nbsp;
It was found, with a dreadful headache in it, but it didn&rsquo;t last;
for, in the shaming light of next day&rsquo;s noon, I raised my heavy
head in bed, looking back to the birthdays behind me, and tracking the
circle by which I had got round, after all, to the bitter powder and
the wretchedness again.</p>
<p>This reactionary powder (taken so largely by the human race I am
inclined to regard it as the Universal Medicine once sought for in Laboratories)
is capable of being made up in another form for birthday use.&nbsp;
Anybody&rsquo;s long-lost brother will do ill to turn up on a birthday.&nbsp;
If I had a long-lost brother I should know beforehand that he would
prove a tremendous fraternal failure if he appointed to rush into my
arms on my birthday.&nbsp; The first Magic Lantern I ever saw, was secretly
and elaborately planned to be the great effect of a very juvenile birthday;
but it wouldn&rsquo;t act, and its images were dim.&nbsp; My experience
of adult birthday Magic Lanterns may possibly have been unfortunate,
but has certainly been similar.&nbsp; I have an illustrative birthday
in my eye: a birthday of my friend Flipfield, whose birthdays had long
been remarkable as social successes.&nbsp; There had been nothing set
or formal about them; Flipfield having been accustomed merely to say,
two or three days before, &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t forget to come and dine,
old boy, according to custom;&rsquo;&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know what he
said to the ladies he invited, but I may safely assume it <i>not</i>
to have been &lsquo;old girl.&rsquo;&nbsp; Those were delightful gatherings,
and were enjoyed by all participators.&nbsp; In an evil hour, a long-lost
brother of Flipfield&rsquo;s came to light in foreign parts.&nbsp; Where
he had been hidden, or what he had been doing, I don&rsquo;t know, for
Flipfield vaguely informed me that he had turned up &lsquo;on the banks
of the Ganges&rsquo;&mdash;speaking of him as if he had been washed
ashore.&nbsp; The Long-lost was coming home, and Flipfield made an unfortunate
calculation, based on the well-known regularity of the P. and O. Steamers,
that matters might be so contrived as that the Long-lost should appear
in the nick of time on his (Flipfield&rsquo;s) birthday.&nbsp; Delicacy
commanded that I should repress the gloomy anticipations with which
my soul became fraught when I heard of this plan.&nbsp; The fatal day
arrived, and we assembled in force.&nbsp; Mrs. Flipfield senior formed
an interesting feature in the group, with a blue-veined miniature of
the late Mr. Flipfield round her neck, in an oval, resembling a tart
from the pastrycook&rsquo;s: his hair powdered, and the bright buttons
on his coat, evidently very like.&nbsp; She was accompanied by Miss
Flipfield, the eldest of her numerous family, who held her pocket-handkerchief
to her bosom in a majestic manner, and spoke to all of us (none of us
had ever seen her before), in pious and condoning tones, of all the
quarrels that had taken place in the family, from her infancy&mdash;which
must have been a long time ago&mdash;down to that hour.&nbsp; The Long-lost
did not appear.&nbsp; Dinner, half an hour later than usual, was announced,
and still no Long-lost.&nbsp; We sat down to table.&nbsp; The knife
and fork of the Long-lost made a vacuum in Nature, and when the champagne
came round for the first time, Flipfield gave him up for the day, and
had them removed.&nbsp; It was then that the Long-lost gained the height
of his popularity with the company; for my own part, I felt convinced
that I loved him dearly.&nbsp; Flipfield&rsquo;s dinners are perfect,
and he is the easiest and best of entertainers.&nbsp; Dinner went on
brilliantly, and the more the Long-lost didn&rsquo;t come, the more
comfortable we grew, and the more highly we thought of him.&nbsp; Flipfield&rsquo;s
own man (who has a regard for me) was in the act of struggling with
an ignorant stipendiary, to wrest from him the wooden leg of a Guinea-fowl
which he was pressing on my acceptance, and to substitute a slice of
the breast, when a ringing at the door-bell suspended the strife.&nbsp;
I looked round me, and perceived the sudden pallor which I knew my own
visage revealed, reflected in the faces of the company.&nbsp; Flipfield
hurriedly excused himself, went out, was absent for about a minute or
two, and then re-entered with the Long-lost.</p>
<p>I beg to say distinctly that if the stranger had brought Mont Blanc
with him, or had come attended by a retinue of eternal snows, he could
not have chilled the circle to the marrow in a more efficient manner.&nbsp;
Embodied Failure sat enthroned upon the Long-lost&rsquo;s brow, and
pervaded him to his Long-lost boots.&nbsp; In vain Mrs. Flipfield senior,
opening her arms, exclaimed, &lsquo;My Tom!&rsquo; and pressed his nose
against the counterfeit presentment of his other parent.&nbsp; In vain
Miss Flipfield, in the first transports of this re-union, showed him
a dint upon her maidenly cheek, and asked him if he remembered when
he did that with the bellows?&nbsp; We, the bystanders, were overcome,
but overcome by the palpable, undisguisable, utter, and total break-down
of the Long-lost.&nbsp; Nothing he could have done would have set him
right with us but his instant return to the Ganges.&nbsp; In the very
same moments it became established that the feeling was reciprocal,
and that the Long-lost detested us.&nbsp; When a friend of the family
(not myself, upon my honour), wishing to set things going again, asked
him, while he partook of soup&mdash;asked him with an amiability of
intention beyond all praise, but with a weakness of execution open to
defeat&mdash;what kind of river he considered the Ganges, the Long-lost,
scowling at the friend of the family over his spoon, as one of an abhorrent
race, replied, &lsquo;Why, a river of water, I suppose,&rsquo; and spooned
his soup into himself with a malignancy of hand and eye that blighted
the amiable questioner.&nbsp; Not an opinion could be elicited from
the Long-lost, in unison with the sentiments of any individual present.&nbsp;
He contradicted Flipfield dead, before he had eaten his salmon.&nbsp;
He had no idea&mdash;or affected to have no idea&mdash;that it was his
brother&rsquo;s birthday, and on the communication of that interesting
fact to him, merely wanted to make him out four years older than he
was.&nbsp; He was an antipathetical being, with a peculiar power and
gift of treading on everybody&rsquo;s tenderest place.&nbsp; They talk
in America of a man&rsquo;s &lsquo;Platform.&rsquo;&nbsp; I should describe
the Platform of the Long-lost as a Platform composed of other people&rsquo;s
corns, on which he had stumped his way, with all his might and main,
to his present position.&nbsp; It is needless to add that Flipfield&rsquo;s
great birthday went by the board, and that he was a wreck when I pretended
at parting to wish him many happy returns of it.</p>
<p>There is another class of birthdays at which I have so frequently
assisted, that I may assume such birthdays to be pretty well known to
the human race.&nbsp; My friend Mayday&rsquo;s birthday is an example.&nbsp;
The guests have no knowledge of one another except on that one day in
the year, and are annually terrified for a week by the prospect of meeting
one another again.&nbsp; There is a fiction among us that we have uncommon
reasons for being particularly lively and spirited on the occasion,
whereas deep despondency is no phrase for the expression of our feelings.&nbsp;
But the wonderful feature of the case is, that we are in tacit accordance
to avoid the subject&mdash;to keep it as far off as possible, as long
as possible&mdash;and to talk about anything else, rather than the joyful
event.&nbsp; I may even go so far as to assert that there is a dumb
compact among us that we will pretend that it is NOT Mayday&rsquo;s
birthday.&nbsp; A mysterious and gloomy Being, who is said to have gone
to school with Mayday, and who is so lank and lean that he seriously
impugns the Dietary of the establishment at which they were jointly
educated, always leads us, as I may say, to the block, by laying his
grisly hand on a decanter and begging us to fill our glasses.&nbsp;
The devices and pretences that I have seen put in practice to defer
the fatal moment, and to interpose between this man and his purpose,
are innumerable.&nbsp; I have known desperate guests, when they saw
the grisly hand approaching the decanter, wildly to begin, without any
antecedent whatsoever, &lsquo;That reminds me&mdash;&rsquo; and to plunge
into long stories.&nbsp; When at last the hand and the decanter come
together, a shudder, a palpable perceptible shudder, goes round the
table.&nbsp; We receive the reminder that it is Mayday&rsquo;s birthday,
as if it were the anniversary of some profound disgrace he had undergone,
and we sought to comfort him.&nbsp; And when we have drunk Mayday&rsquo;s
health, and wished him many happy returns, we are seized for some moments
with a ghastly blitheness, an unnatural levity, as if we were in the
first flushed reaction of having undergone a surgical operation.</p>
<p>Birthdays of this species have a public as well as a private phase.&nbsp;
My &lsquo;boyhood&rsquo;s home,&rsquo; Dullborough, presents a case
in point.&nbsp; An Immortal Somebody was wanted in Dullborough, to dimple
for a day the stagnant face of the waters; he was rather wanted by Dullborough
generally, and much wanted by the principal hotel-keeper.&nbsp; The
County history was looked up for a locally Immortal Somebody, but the
registered Dullborough worthies were all Nobodies.&nbsp; In this state
of things, it is hardly necessary to record that Dullborough did what
every man does when he wants to write a book or deliver a lecture, and
is provided with all the materials except a subject.&nbsp; It fell back
upon Shakespeare.</p>
<p>No sooner was it resolved to celebrate Shakespeare&rsquo;s birthday
in Dullborough, than the popularity of the immortal bard became surprising.&nbsp;
You might have supposed the first edition of his works to have been
published last week, and enthusiastic Dullborough to have got half through
them.&nbsp; (I doubt, by the way, whether it had ever done half that,
but that is a private opinion.)&nbsp; A young gentleman with a sonnet,
the retention of which for two years had enfeebled his mind and undermined
his knees, got the sonnet into the Dullborough Warden, and gained flesh.&nbsp;
Portraits of Shakespeare broke out in the bookshop windows, and our
principal artist painted a large original portrait in oils for the decoration
of the dining-room.&nbsp; It was not in the least like any of the other
Portraits, and was exceedingly admired, the head being much swollen.&nbsp;
At the Institution, the Debating Society discussed the new question,
Was there sufficient ground for supposing that the Immortal Shakespeare
ever stole deer?&nbsp; This was indignantly decided by an overwhelming
majority in the negative; indeed, there was but one vote on the Poaching
side, and that was the vote of the orator who had undertaken to advocate
it, and who became quite an obnoxious character&mdash;particularly to
the Dullborough &lsquo;roughs,&rsquo; who were about as well informed
on the matter as most other people.&nbsp; Distinguished speakers were
invited down, and very nearly came (but not quite).&nbsp; Subscriptions
were opened, and committees sat, and it would have been far from a popular
measure in the height of the excitement, to have told Dullborough that
it wasn&rsquo;t Stratford-upon-Avon.&nbsp; Yet, after all these preparations,
when the great festivity took place, and the portrait, elevated aloft,
surveyed the company as if it were in danger of springing a mine of
intellect and blowing itself up, it did undoubtedly happen, according
to the inscrutable mysteries of things, that nobody could be induced,
not to say to touch upon Shakespeare, but to come within a mile of him,
until the crack speaker of Dullborough rose to propose the immortal
memory.&nbsp; Which he did with the perplexing and astonishing result
that before he had repeated the great name half-a-dozen times, or had
been upon his legs as many minutes, he was assailed with a general shout
of &lsquo;Question.&rsquo;</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XXI&mdash;THE SHORT-TIMERS</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>&lsquo;Within so many yards of this Covent-garden lodging of mine,
as within so many yards of Westminster Abbey, Saint Paul&rsquo;s Cathedral,
the Houses of Parliament, the Prisons, the Courts of Justice, all the
Institutions that govern the land, I can find&mdash;<i>must</i> find,
whether I will or no&mdash;in the open streets, shameful instances of
neglect of children, intolerable toleration of the engenderment of paupers,
idlers, thieves, races of wretched and destructive cripples both in
body and mind, a misery to themselves, a misery to the community, a
disgrace to civilisation, and an outrage on Christianity.&mdash;I know
it to be a fact as easy of demonstration as any sum in any of the elementary
rules of arithmetic, that if the State would begin its work and duty
at the beginning, and would with the strong hand take those children
out of the streets, while they are yet children, and wisely train them,
it would make them a part of England&rsquo;s glory, not its shame&mdash;of
England&rsquo;s strength, not its weakness&mdash;would raise good soldiers
and sailors, and good citizens, and many great men, out of the seeds
of its criminal population.&nbsp; Yet I go on bearing with the enormity
as if it were nothing, and I go on reading the Parliamentary Debates
as if they were something, and I concern myself far more about one railway-bridge
across a public thoroughfare, than about a dozen generations of scrofula,
ignorance, wickedness, prostitution, poverty, and felony.&nbsp; I can
slip out at my door, in the small hours after any midnight, and, in
one circuit of the purlieus of Covent-garden Market, can behold a state
of infancy and youth, as vile as if a Bourbon sat upon the English throne;
a great police force looking on with authority to do no more than worry
and hunt the dreadful vermin into corners, and there leave them.&nbsp;
Within the length of a few streets I can find a workhouse, mismanaged
with that dull short-sighted obstinacy that its greatest opportunities
as to the children it receives are lost, and yet not a farthing saved
to any one.&nbsp; But the wheel goes round, and round, and round; and
because it goes round&mdash;so I am told by the politest authorities&mdash;it
goes well.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Thus I reflected, one day in the Whitsun week last past, as I floated
down the Thames among the bridges, looking&mdash;not inappropriately&mdash;at
the drags that were hanging up at certain dirty stairs to hook the drowned
out, and at the numerous conveniences provided to facilitate their tumbling
in.&nbsp; My object in that uncommercial journey called up another train
of thought, and it ran as follows:</p>
<p>&lsquo;When I was at school, one of seventy boys, I wonder by what
secret understanding our attention began to wander when we had pored
over our books for some hours.&nbsp; I wonder by what ingenuity we brought
on that confused state of mind when sense became nonsense, when figures
wouldn&rsquo;t work, when dead languages wouldn&rsquo;t construe, when
live languages wouldn&rsquo;t be spoken, when memory wouldn&rsquo;t
come, when dulness and vacancy wouldn&rsquo;t go.&nbsp; I cannot remember
that we ever conspired to be sleepy after dinner, or that we ever particularly
wanted to be stupid, and to have flushed faces and hot beating heads,
or to find blank hopelessness and obscurity this afternoon in what would
become perfectly clear and bright in the freshness of to-morrow morning.&nbsp;
We suffered for these things, and they made us miserable enough.&nbsp;
Neither do I remember that we ever bound ourselves by any secret oath
or other solemn obligation, to find the seats getting too hard to be
sat upon after a certain time; or to have intolerable twitches in our
legs, rendering us aggressive and malicious with those members; or to
be troubled with a similar uneasiness in our elbows, attended with fistic
consequences to our neighbours; or to carry two pounds of lead in the
chest, four pounds in the head, and several active blue-bottles in each
ear.&nbsp; Yet, for certain, we suffered under those distresses, and
were always charged at for labouring under them, as if we had brought
them on, of our own deliberate act and deed.&nbsp; As to the mental
portion of them being my own fault in my own case&mdash;I should like
to ask any well-trained and experienced teacher, not to say psychologist.&nbsp;
And as to the physical portion&mdash;I should like to ask PROFESSOR
OWEN.&rsquo;</p>
<p>It happened that I had a small bundle of papers with me, on what
is called &lsquo;The Half-Time System&rsquo; in schools.&nbsp; Referring
to one of those papers I found that the indefatigable MR. CHADWICK had
been beforehand with me, and had already asked Professor Owen: who had
handsomely replied that I was not to blame, but that, being troubled
with a skeleton, and having been constituted according to certain natural
laws, I and my skeleton were unfortunately bound by those laws even
in school&mdash;and had comported ourselves accordingly.&nbsp; Much
comforted by the good Professor&rsquo;s being on my side, I read on
to discover whether the indefatigable Mr. Chadwick had taken up the
mental part of my afflictions.&nbsp; I found that he had, and that he
had gained on my behalf, SIR BENJAMIN BRODIE, SIR DAVID WILKIE, SIR
WALTER SCOTT, and the common sense of mankind.&nbsp; For which I beg
Mr. Chadwick, if this should meet his eye, to accept my warm acknowledgments.</p>
<p>Up to that time I had retained a misgiving that the seventy unfortunates
of whom I was one, must have been, without knowing it, leagued together
by the spirit of evil in a sort of perpetual Guy Fawkes Plot, to grope
about in vaults with dark lanterns after a certain period of continuous
study.&nbsp; But now the misgiving vanished, and I floated on with a
quieted mind to see the Half-Time System in action.&nbsp; For that was
the purpose of my journey, both by steamboat on the Thames, and by very
dirty railway on the shore.&nbsp; To which last institution, I beg to
recommend the legal use of coke as engine-fuel, rather than the illegal
use of coal; the recommendation is quite disinterested, for I was most
liberally supplied with small coal on the journey, for which no charge
was made.&nbsp; I had not only my eyes, nose, and ears filled, but my
hat, and all my pockets, and my pocket-book, and my watch.</p>
<p>The V.D.S.C.R.C. (or Very Dirty and Small Coal Railway Company) delivered
me close to my destination, and I soon found the Half-Time System established
in spacious premises, and freely placed at my convenience and disposal.</p>
<p>What would I see first of the Half-Time System?&nbsp; I chose Military
Drill.&nbsp; &lsquo;Atten-tion!&rsquo;&nbsp; Instantly a hundred boys
stood forth in the paved yard as one boy; bright, quick, eager, steady,
watchful for the look of command, instant and ready for the word.&nbsp;
Not only was there complete precision&mdash;complete accord to the eye
and to the ear&mdash;but an alertness in the doing of the thing which
deprived it, curiously, of its monotonous or mechanical character.&nbsp;
There was perfect uniformity, and yet an individual spirit and emulation.&nbsp;
No spectator could doubt that the boys liked it.&nbsp; With non-commissioned
officers varying from a yard to a yard and a half high, the result could
not possibly have been attained otherwise.&nbsp; They marched, and counter-marched,
and formed in line and square, and company, and single file and double
file, and performed a variety of evolutions; all most admirably.&nbsp;
In respect of an air of enjoyable understanding of what they were about,
which seems to be forbidden to English soldiers, the boys might have
been small French troops.&nbsp; When they were dismissed and the broadsword
exercise, limited to a much smaller number, succeeded, the boys who
had no part in that new drill, either looked on attentively, or disported
themselves in a gymnasium hard by.&nbsp; The steadiness of the broadsword
boys on their short legs, and the firmness with which they sustained
the different positions, was truly remarkable.</p>
<p>The broadsword exercise over, suddenly there was great excitement
and a rush.&nbsp; Naval Drill!</p>
<p>In the corner of the ground stood a decked mimic ship, with real
masts, yards, and sails&mdash;mainmast seventy feet high.&nbsp; At the
word of command from the Skipper of this ship&mdash;a mahogany-faced
Old Salt, with the indispensable quid in his cheek, the true nautical
roll, and all wonderfully complete&mdash;the rigging was covered with
a swarm of boys: one, the first to spring into the shrouds, outstripping
all the others, and resting on the truck of the main-topmast in no time.</p>
<p>And now we stood out to sea, in a most amazing manner; the Skipper
himself, the whole crew, the Uncommercial, and all hands present, implicitly
believing that there was not a moment to lose, that the wind had that
instant chopped round and sprung up fair, and that we were away on a
voyage round the world.&nbsp; Get all sail upon her!&nbsp; With a will,
my lads!&nbsp; Lay out upon the main-yard there!&nbsp; Look alive at
the weather earring!&nbsp; Cheery, my boys!&nbsp; Let go the sheet,
now!&nbsp; Stand by at the braces, you!&nbsp; With a will, aloft there!&nbsp;
Belay, starboard watch!&nbsp; Fifer!&nbsp; Come aft, fifer, and give
&rsquo;em a tune!&nbsp; Forthwith, springs up fifer, fife in hand&mdash;smallest
boy ever seen&mdash;big lump on temple, having lately fallen down on
a paving-stone&mdash;gives &rsquo;em a tune with all his might and main.&nbsp;
Hoo-roar, fifer!&nbsp; With a will, my lads!&nbsp; Tip &rsquo;em a livelier
one, fifer!&nbsp; Fifer tips &rsquo;em a livelier one, and excitement
increases.&nbsp; Shake &rsquo;em out, my lads!&nbsp; Well done!&nbsp;
There you have her!&nbsp; Pretty, pretty!&nbsp; Every rag upon her she
can carry, wind right astarn, and ship cutting through the water fifteen
knots an hour!</p>
<p>At this favourable moment of her voyage, I gave the alarm &lsquo;A
man overboard!&rsquo; (on the gravel), but he was immediately recovered,
none the worse.&nbsp; Presently, I observed the Skipper overboard, but
forbore to mention it, as he seemed in no wise disconcerted by the accident.&nbsp;
Indeed, I soon came to regard the Skipper as an amphibious creature,
for he was so perpetually plunging overboard to look up at the hands
aloft, that he was oftener in the bosom of the ocean than on deck.&nbsp;
His pride in his crew on those occasions was delightful, and the conventional
unintelligibility of his orders in the ears of uncommercial landlubbers
and loblolly boys, though they were always intelligible to the crew,
was hardly less pleasant.&nbsp; But we couldn&rsquo;t expect to go on
in this way for ever; dirty weather came on, and then worse weather,
and when we least expected it we got into tremendous difficulties.&nbsp;
Screw loose in the chart perhaps&mdash;something certainly wrong somewhere&mdash;but
here we were with breakers ahead, my lads, driving head on, slap on
a lee shore!&nbsp; The Skipper broached this terrific announcement in
such great agitation, that the small fifer, not fifeing now, but standing
looking on near the wheel with his fife under his arm, seemed for the
moment quite unboyed, though he speedily recovered his presence of mind.&nbsp;
In the trying circumstances that ensued, the Skipper and the crew proved
worthy of one another.&nbsp; The Skipper got dreadfully hoarse, but
otherwise was master of the situation.&nbsp; The man at the wheel did
wonders; all hands (except the fifer) were turned up to wear ship; and
I observed the fifer, when we were at our greatest extremity, to refer
to some document in his waistcoat-pocket, which I conceived to be his
will.&nbsp; I think she struck.&nbsp; I was not myself conscious of
any collision, but I saw the Skipper so very often washed overboard
and back again, that I could only impute it to the beating of the ship.&nbsp;
I am not enough of a seaman to describe the manoeuvres by which we were
saved, but they made the Skipper very hot (French polishing his mahogany
face) and the crew very nimble, and succeeded to a marvel; for, within
a few minutes of the first alarm, we had wore ship and got her off,
and were all a-tauto&mdash;which I felt very grateful for: not that
I knew what it was, but that I perceived that we had not been all a-tauto
lately.&nbsp; Land now appeared on our weather-bow, and we shaped our
course for it, having the wind abeam, and frequently changing the man
at the helm, in order that every man might have his spell.&nbsp; We
worked into harbour under prosperous circumstances, and furled our sails,
and squared our yards, and made all ship-shape and handsome, and so
our voyage ended.&nbsp; When I complimented the Skipper at parting on
his exertions and those of his gallant crew, he informed me that the
latter were provided for the worst, all hands being taught to swim and
dive; and he added that the able seaman at the main-topmast truck especially,
could dive as deep as he could go high.</p>
<p>The next adventure that befell me in my visit to the Short-Timers,
was the sudden apparition of a military band.&nbsp; I had been inspecting
the hammocks of the crew of the good ship, when I saw with astonishment
that several musical instruments, brazen and of great size, appeared
to have suddenly developed two legs each, and to be trotting about a
yard.&nbsp; And my astonishment was heightened when I observed a large
drum, that had previously been leaning helpless against a wall, taking
up a stout position on four legs.&nbsp; Approaching this drum and looking
over it, I found two boys behind it (it was too much for one), and then
I found that each of the brazen instruments had brought out a boy, and
was going to discourse sweet sounds.&nbsp; The boys&mdash;not omitting
the fifer, now playing a new instrument&mdash;were dressed in neat uniform,
and stood up in a circle at their music-stands, like any other Military
Band.&nbsp; They played a march or two, and then we had Cheer boys,
Cheer, and then we had Yankee Doodle, and we finished, as in loyal duty
bound, with God save the Queen.&nbsp; The band&rsquo;s proficiency was
perfectly wonderful, and it was not at all wonderful that the whole
body corporate of Short-Timers listened with faces of the liveliest
interest and pleasure.</p>
<p>What happened next among the Short-Timers?&nbsp; As if the band had
blown me into a great class-room out of their brazen tubes, <i>in</i>
a great class-room I found myself now, with the whole choral force of
Short-Timers singing the praises of a summer&rsquo;s day to the harmonium,
and my small but highly respected friend the fifer blazing away vocally,
as if he had been saving up his wind for the last twelvemonth; also
the whole crew of the good ship Nameless swarming up and down the scale
as if they had never swarmed up and down the rigging.&nbsp; This done,
we threw our whole power into God bless the Prince of Wales, and blessed
his Royal Highness to such an extent that, for my own Uncommercial part,
I gasped again when it was over.&nbsp; The moment this was done, we
formed, with surpassing freshness, into hollow squares, and fell to
work at oral lessons as if we never did, and had never thought of doing,
anything else.</p>
<p>Let a veil be drawn over the self-committals into which the Uncommercial
Traveller would have been betrayed but for a discreet reticence, coupled
with an air of absolute wisdom on the part of that artful personage.&nbsp;
Take the square of five, multiply it by fifteen, divide it by three,
deduct eight from it, add four dozen to it, give me the result in pence,
and tell me how many eggs I could get for it at three farthings apiece.&nbsp;
The problem is hardly stated, when a dozen small boys pour out answers.&nbsp;
Some wide, some very nearly right, some worked as far as they go with
such accuracy, as at once to show what link of the chain has been dropped
in the hurry.&nbsp; For the moment, none are quite right; but behold
a labouring spirit beating the buttons on its corporeal waistcoat, in
a process of internal calculation, and knitting an accidental bump on
its corporeal forehead in a concentration of mental arithmetic!&nbsp;
It is my honourable friend (if he will allow me to call him so) the
fifer.&nbsp; With right arm eagerly extended in token of being inspired
with an answer, and with right leg foremost, the fifer solves the mystery:
then recalls both arm and leg, and with bump in ambush awaits the next
poser.&nbsp; Take the square of three, multiply it by seven, divide
it by four, add fifty to it, take thirteen from it, multiply it by two,
double it, give me the result in pence, and say how many halfpence.&nbsp;
Wise as the serpent is the four feet of performer on the nearest approach
to that instrument, whose right arm instantly appears, and quenches
this arithmetical fire.&nbsp; Tell me something about Great Britain,
tell me something about its principal productions, tell me something
about its ports, tell me something about its seas and rivers, tell me
something about coal, iron, cotton, timber, tin, and turpentine.&nbsp;
The hollow square bristles with extended right arms; but ever faithful
to fact is the fifer, ever wise as the serpent is the performer on that
instrument, ever prominently buoyant and brilliant are all members of
the band.&nbsp; I observe the player of the cymbals to dash at a sounding
answer now and then rather than not cut in at all; but I take that to
be in the way of his instrument.&nbsp; All these questions, and many
such, are put on the spur of the moment, and by one who has never examined
these boys.&nbsp; The Uncommercial, invited to add another, falteringly
demands how many birthdays a man born on the twenty-ninth of February
will have had on completing his fiftieth year?&nbsp; A general perception
of trap and pitfall instantly arises, and the fifer is seen to retire
behind the corduroys of his next neighbours, as perceiving special necessity
for collecting himself and communing with his mind.&nbsp; Meanwhile,
the wisdom of the serpent suggests that the man will have had only one
birthday in all that time, for how can any man have more than one, seeing
that he is born once and dies once?&nbsp; The blushing Uncommercial
stands corrected, and amends the formula.&nbsp; Pondering ensues, two
or three wrong answers are offered, and Cymbals strikes up &lsquo;Six!&rsquo;
but doesn&rsquo;t know why.&nbsp; Then modestly emerging from his Academic
Grove of corduroys appears the fifer, right arm extended, right leg
foremost, bump irradiated.&nbsp; &lsquo;Twelve, and two over!&rsquo;</p>
<p>The feminine Short-Timers passed a similar examination, and very
creditably too.&nbsp; Would have done better perhaps, with a little
more geniality on the part of their pupil-teacher; for a cold eye, my
young friend, and a hard, abrupt manner, are not by any means the powerful
engines that your innocence supposes them to be.&nbsp; Both girls and
boys wrote excellently, from copy and dictation; both could cook; both
could mend their own clothes; both could clean up everything about them
in an orderly and skilful way, the girls having womanly household knowledge
superadded.&nbsp; Order and method began in the songs of the Infant
School which I visited likewise, and they were even in their dwarf degree
to be found in the Nursery, where the Uncommercial walking-stick was
carried off with acclamations, and where &lsquo;the Doctor&rsquo;&mdash;a
medical gentleman of two, who took his degree on the night when he was
found at an apothecary&rsquo;s door&mdash;did the honours of the establishment
with great urbanity and gaiety.</p>
<p>These have long been excellent schools; long before the days of the
Short-Time.&nbsp; I first saw them, twelve or fifteen years ago.&nbsp;
But since the introduction of the Short-Time system it has been proved
here that eighteen hours a week of book-learning are more profitable
than thirty-six, and that the pupils are far quicker and brighter than
of yore.&nbsp; The good influences of music on the whole body of children
have likewise been surprisingly proved.&nbsp; Obviously another of the
immense advantages of the Short-Time system to the cause of good education
is the great diminution of its cost, and of the period of time over
which it extends.&nbsp; The last is a most important consideration,
as poor parents are always impatient to profit by their children&rsquo;s
labour.</p>
<p>It will be objected: Firstly, that this is all very well, but special
local advantages and special selection of children must be necessary
to such success.&nbsp; Secondly, that this is all very well, but must
be very expensive.&nbsp; Thirdly, that this is all very well, but we
have no proof of the results, sir, no proof.</p>
<p>On the first head of local advantages and special selection.&nbsp;
Would Limehouse Hole be picked out for the site of a Children&rsquo;s
Paradise?&nbsp; Or would the legitimate and illegitimate pauper children
of the long-shore population of such a riverside district, be regarded
as unusually favourable specimens to work with?&nbsp; Yet these schools
are at Limehouse, and are the Pauper Schools of the Stepney Pauper Union.</p>
<p>On the second head of expense.&nbsp; Would sixpence a week be considered
a very large cost for the education of each pupil, including all salaries
of teachers and rations of teachers?&nbsp; But supposing the cost were
not sixpence a week, not fivepence? it is FOURPENCE-HALFPENNY.</p>
<p>On the third head of no proof, sir, no proof.&nbsp; Is there any
proof in the facts that Pupil Teachers more in number, and more highly
qualified, have been produced here under the Short-Time system than
under the Long-Time system?&nbsp; That the Short-Timers, in a writing
competition, beat the Long-Timers of a first-class National School?&nbsp;
That the sailor-boys are in such demand for merchant ships, that whereas,
before they were trained, 10<i>l</i>. premium used to be given with
each boy&mdash;too often to some greedy brute of a drunken skipper,
who disappeared before the term of apprenticeship was out, if the ill-used
boy didn&rsquo;t&mdash;captains of the best character now take these
boys more than willingly, with no premium at all?&nbsp; That they are
also much esteemed in the Royal Navy, which they prefer, &lsquo;because
everything is so neat and clean and orderly&rsquo;?&nbsp; Or, is there
any proof in Naval captains writing &lsquo;Your little fellows are all
that I can desire&rsquo;?&nbsp; Or, is there any proof in such testimony
as this: &lsquo;The owner of a vessel called at the school, and said
that as his ship was going down Channel on her last voyage, with one
of the boys from the school on board, the pilot said, &ldquo;It would
be as well if the royal were lowered; I wish it were down.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Without waiting for any orders, and unobserved by the pilot, the lad,
whom they had taken on board from the school, instantly mounted the
mast and lowered the royal, and at the next glance of the pilot to the
masthead, he perceived that the sail had been let down.&nbsp; He exclaimed,
&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s done that job?&rdquo;&nbsp; The owner, who was on
board, said, &ldquo;That was the little fellow whom I put on board two
days ago.&rdquo;&nbsp; The pilot immediately said, &ldquo;Why, where
could he have been brought up?&rdquo;&nbsp; The boy had never seen the
sea or been on a real ship before&rsquo;?&nbsp; Or, is there any proof
in these boys being in greater demand for Regimental Bands than the
Union can meet?&nbsp; Or, in ninety-eight of them having gone into Regimental
Bands in three years?&nbsp; Or, in twelve of them being in the band
of one regiment?&nbsp; Or, in the colonel of that regiment writing,
&lsquo;We want six more boys; they are excellent lads&rsquo;?&nbsp;
Or, in one of the boys having risen to be band-corporal in the same
regiment?&nbsp; Or, in employers of all kinds chorusing, &lsquo;Give
us drilled boys, for they are prompt, obedient, and punctual&rsquo;?&nbsp;
Other proofs I have myself beheld with these Uncommercial eyes, though
I do not regard myself as having a right to relate in what social positions
they have seen respected men and women who were once pauper children
of the Stepney Union.</p>
<p>Into what admirable soldiers others of these boys have the capabilities
for being turned, I need not point out.&nbsp; Many of them are always
ambitious of military service; and once upon a time when an old boy
came back to see the old place, a cavalry soldier all complete, <i>with
his spurs on</i>, such a yearning broke out to get into cavalry regiments
and wear those sublime appendages, that it was one of the greatest excitements
ever known in the school.&nbsp; The girls make excellent domestic servants,
and at certain periods come back, a score or two at a time, to see the
old building, and to take tea with the old teachers, and to hear the
old band, and to see the old ship with her masts towering up above the
neighbouring roofs and chimneys.&nbsp; As to the physical health of
these schools, it is so exceptionally remarkable (simply because the
sanitary regulations are as good as the other educational arrangements),
that when Mr. TUFNELL, the Inspector, first stated it in a report, he
was supposed, in spite of his high character, to have been betrayed
into some extraordinary mistake or exaggeration.&nbsp; In the moral
health of these schools&mdash;where corporal punishment is unknown&mdash;Truthfulness
stands high.&nbsp; When the ship was first erected, the boys were forbidden
to go aloft, until the nets, which are now always there, were stretched
as a precaution against accidents.&nbsp; Certain boys, in their eagerness,
disobeyed the injunction, got out of window in the early daylight, and
climbed to the masthead.&nbsp; One boy unfortunately fell, and was killed.&nbsp;
There was no clue to the others; but all the boys were assembled, and
the chairman of the Board addressed them.&nbsp; &lsquo;I promise nothing;
you see what a dreadful thing has happened; you know what a grave offence
it is that has led to such a consequence; I cannot say what will be
done with the offenders; but, boys, you have been trained here, above
all things, to respect the truth.&nbsp; I want the truth.&nbsp; Who
are the delinquents?&rsquo;&nbsp; Instantly, the whole number of boys
concerned, separated from the rest, and stood out.</p>
<p>Now, the head and heart of that gentleman (it is needless to say,
a good head and a good heart) have been deeply interested in these schools
for many years, and are so still; and the establishment is very fortunate
in a most admirable master, and moreover the schools of the Stepney
Union cannot have got to be what they are, without the Stepney Board
of Guardians having been earnest and humane men strongly imbued with
a sense of their responsibility.&nbsp; But what one set of men can do
in this wise, another set of men can do; and this is a noble example
to all other Bodies and Unions, and a noble example to the State.&nbsp;
Followed, and enlarged upon by its enforcement on bad parents, it would
clear London streets of the most terrible objects they smite the sight
with&mdash;myriads of little children who awfully reverse Our Saviour&rsquo;s
words, and are not of the Kingdom of Heaven, but of the Kingdom of Hell.</p>
<p>Clear the public streets of such shame, and the public conscience
of such reproach?&nbsp; Ah!&nbsp; Almost prophetic, surely, the child&rsquo;s
jingle:</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>When will that be,<br />Say the bells of Step-ney!</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XXII&mdash;BOUND FOR THE GREAT SALT LAKE</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>Behold me on my way to an Emigrant Ship, on a hot morning early in
June.&nbsp; My road lies through that part of London generally known
to the initiated as &lsquo;Down by the Docks.&rsquo;&nbsp; Down by the
Docks, is home to a good many people&mdash;to too many, if I may judge
from the overflow of local population in the streets&mdash;but my nose
insinuates that the number to whom it is Sweet Home might be easily
counted.&nbsp; Down by the Docks, is a region I would choose as my point
of embarkation aboard ship if I were an emigrant.&nbsp; It would present
my intention to me in such a sensible light; it would show me so many
things to be run away from.</p>
<p>Down by the Docks, they eat the largest oysters and scatter the roughest
oyster-shells, known to the descendants of Saint George and the Dragon.&nbsp;
Down by the Docks, they consume the slimiest of shell-fish, which seem
to have been scraped off the copper bottoms of ships.&nbsp; Down by
the Docks, the vegetables at green-grocers&rsquo; doors acquire a saline
and a scaly look, as if they had been crossed with fish and seaweed.&nbsp;
Down by the Docks, they &lsquo;board seamen&rsquo; at the eating-houses,
the public-houses, the slop-shops, the coffee-shops, the tally-shops,
all kinds of shops mentionable and unmentionable&mdash;board them, as
it were, in the piratical sense, making them bleed terribly, and giving
no quarter.&nbsp; Down by the Docks, the seamen roam in mid-street and
mid-day, their pockets inside out, and their heads no better.&nbsp;
Down by the Docks, the daughters of wave-ruling Britannia also rove,
clad in silken attire, with uncovered tresses streaming in the breeze,
bandanna kerchiefs floating from their shoulders, and crinoline not
wanting.&nbsp; Down by the Docks, you may hear the Incomparable Joe
Jackson sing the Standard of England, with a hornpipe, any night; or
any day may see at the waxwork, for a penny and no waiting, him as killed
the policeman at Acton and suffered for it.&nbsp; Down by the Docks,
you may buy polonies, saveloys, and sausage preparations various, if
you are not particular what they are made of besides seasoning.&nbsp;
Down by the Docks, the children of Israel creep into any gloomy cribs
and entries they can hire, and hang slops there&mdash;pewter watches,
sou&rsquo;-wester hats, waterproof overalls&mdash;&lsquo;firtht rate
articleth, Thjack.&rsquo;&nbsp; Down by the Docks, such dealers exhibiting
on a frame a complete nautical suit without the refinement of a waxen
visage in the hat, present the imaginary wearer as drooping at the yard-arm,
with his seafaring and earthfaring troubles over.&nbsp; Down by the
Docks, the placards in the shops apostrophise the customer, knowing
him familiarly beforehand, as, &lsquo;Look here, Jack!&rsquo;&nbsp;
&lsquo;Here&rsquo;s your sort, my lad!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Try our sea-going
mixed, at two and nine!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;The right kit for the British
tar!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Ship ahoy!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Splice the main-brace,
brother!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Come, cheer up, my lads.&nbsp; We&rsquo;ve
the best liquors here, And you&rsquo;ll find something new In our wonderful
Beer!&rsquo;&nbsp; Down by the Docks, the pawnbroker lends money on
Union-Jack pocket-handkerchiefs, on watches with little ships pitching
fore and aft on the dial, on telescopes, nautical instruments in cases,
and such-like.&nbsp; Down by the Docks, the apothecary sets up in business
on the wretchedest scale&mdash;chiefly on lint and plaster for the strapping
of wounds&mdash;and with no bright bottles, and with no little drawers.&nbsp;
Down by the Docks, the shabby undertaker&rsquo;s shop will bury you
for next to nothing, after the Malay or Chinaman has stabbed you for
nothing at all: so you can hardly hope to make a cheaper end.&nbsp;
Down by the Docks, anybody drunk will quarrel with anybody drunk or
sober, and everybody else will have a hand in it, and on the shortest
notice you may revolve in a whirlpool of red shirts, shaggy beards,
wild heads of hair, bare tattooed arms, Britannia&rsquo;s daughters,
malice, mud, maundering, and madness.&nbsp; Down by the Docks, scraping
fiddles go in the public-houses all day long, and, shrill above their
din and all the din, rises the screeching of innumerable parrots brought
from foreign parts, who appear to be very much astonished by what they
find on these native shores of ours.&nbsp; Possibly the parrots don&rsquo;t
know, possibly they do, that Down by the Docks is the road to the Pacific
Ocean, with its lovely islands, where the savage girls plait flowers,
and the savage boys carve cocoa-nut shells, and the grim blind idols
muse in their shady groves to exactly the same purpose as the priests
and chiefs.&nbsp; And possibly the parrots don&rsquo;t know, possibly
they do, that the noble savage is a wearisome impostor wherever he is,
and has five hundred thousand volumes of indifferent rhyme, and no reason,
to answer for.</p>
<p>Shadwell church!&nbsp; Pleasant whispers of there being a fresher
air down the river than down by the Docks, go pursuing one another,
playfully, in and out of the openings in its spire.&nbsp; Gigantic in
the basin just beyond the church, looms my Emigrant Ship: her name,
the Amazon.&nbsp; Her figure-head is not disfigured as those beauteous
founders of the race of strong-minded women are fabled to have been,
for the convenience of drawing the bow; but I sympathise with the carver:</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>A flattering carver who made it his care<br />To carve busts as they
ought to be&mdash;not as they were.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>My Emigrant Ship lies broadside-on to the wharf.&nbsp; Two great
gangways made of spars and planks connect her with the wharf; and up
and down these gangways, perpetually crowding to and fro and in and
out, like ants, are the Emigrants who are going to sail in my Emigrant
Ship.&nbsp; Some with cabbages, some with loaves of bread, some with
cheese and butter, some with milk and beer, some with boxes, beds, and
bundles, some with babies&mdash;nearly all with children&mdash;nearly
all with bran-new tin cans for their daily allowance of water, uncomfortably
suggestive of a tin flavour in the drink.&nbsp; To and fro, up and down,
aboard and ashore, swarming here and there and everywhere, my Emigrants.&nbsp;
And still as the Dock-Gate swings upon its hinges, cabs appear, and
carts appear, and vans appear, bringing more of my Emigrants, with more
cabbages, more loaves, more cheese and butter, more milk and beer, more
boxes, beds, and bundles, more tin cans, and on those shipping investments
accumulated compound interest of children.</p>
<p>I go aboard my Emigrant Ship.&nbsp; I go first to the great cabin,
and find it in the usual condition of a Cabin at that pass.&nbsp; Perspiring
landsmen, with loose papers, and with pens and inkstands, pervade it;
and the general appearance of things is as if the late Mr. Amazon&rsquo;s
funeral had just come home from the cemetery, and the disconsolate Mrs.
Amazon&rsquo;s trustees found the affairs in great disorder, and were
looking high and low for the will.&nbsp; I go out on the poop-deck,
for air, and surveying the emigrants on the deck below (indeed they
are crowded all about me, up there too), find more pens and inkstands
in action, and more papers, and interminable complication respecting
accounts with individuals for tin cans and what not.&nbsp; But nobody
is in an ill-temper, nobody is the worse for drink, nobody swears an
oath or uses a coarse word, nobody appears depressed, nobody is weeping,
and down upon the deck in every corner where it is possible to find
a few square feet to kneel, crouch, or lie in, people, in every unsuitable
attitude for writing, are writing letters.</p>
<p>Now, I have seen emigrant ships before this day in June.&nbsp; And
these people are so strikingly different from all other people in like
circumstances whom I have ever seen, that I wonder aloud, &lsquo;What
<i>would</i> a stranger suppose these emigrants to be!&rsquo;</p>
<p>The vigilant, bright face of the weather-browned captain of the Amazon
is at my shoulder, and he says, &lsquo;What, indeed!&nbsp; The most
of these came aboard yesterday evening.&nbsp; They came from various
parts of England in small parties that had never seen one another before.&nbsp;
Yet they had not been a couple of hours on board, when they established
their own police, made their own regulations, and set their own watches
at all the hatchways.&nbsp; Before nine o&rsquo;clock, the ship was
as orderly and as quiet as a man-of-war.&rsquo;</p>
<p>I looked about me again, and saw the letter-writing going on with
the most curious composure.&nbsp; Perfectly abstracted in the midst
of the crowd; while great casks were swinging aloft, and being lowered
into the hold; while hot agents were hurrying up and down, adjusting
the interminable accounts; while two hundred strangers were searching
everywhere for two hundred other strangers, and were asking questions
about them of two hundred more; while the children played up and down
all the steps, and in and out among all the people&rsquo;s legs, and
were beheld, to the general dismay, toppling over all the dangerous
places; the letter-writers wrote on calmly.&nbsp; On the starboard side
of the ship, a grizzled man dictated a long letter to another grizzled
man in an immense fur cap: which letter was of so profound a quality,
that it became necessary for the amanuensis at intervals to take off
his fur cap in both his hands, for the ventilation of his brain, and
stare at him who dictated, as a man of many mysteries who was worth
looking at.&nbsp; On the lar-board side, a woman had covered a belaying-pin
with a white cloth to make a neat desk of it, and was sitting on a little
box, writing with the deliberation of a bookkeeper.&nbsp; Down, upon
her breast on the planks of the deck at this woman&rsquo;s feet, with
her head diving in under a beam of the bulwarks on that side, as an
eligible place of refuge for her sheet of paper, a neat and pretty girl
wrote for a good hour (she fainted at last), only rising to the surface
occasionally for a dip of ink.&nbsp; Alongside the boat, close to me
on the poop-deck, another girl, a fresh, well-grown country girl, was
writing another letter on the bare deck.&nbsp; Later in the day, when
this self-same boat was filled with a choir who sang glees and catches
for a long time, one of the singers, a girl, sang her part mechanically
all the while, and wrote a letter in the bottom of the boat while doing
so.</p>
<p>&lsquo;A stranger would be puzzled to guess the right name for these
people, Mr. Uncommercial,&rsquo; says the captain.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Indeed he would.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;If you hadn&rsquo;t known, could you ever have supposed&mdash;?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;How could I!&nbsp; I should have said they were in their degree,
the pick and flower of England.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;So should I,&rsquo; says the captain.</p>
<p>&lsquo;How many are they?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Eight hundred in round numbers.&rsquo;</p>
<p>I went between-decks, where the families with children swarmed in
the dark, where unavoidable confusion had been caused by the last arrivals,
and where the confusion was increased by the little preparations for
dinner that were going on in each group.&nbsp; A few women here and
there, had got lost, and were laughing at it, and asking their way to
their own people, or out on deck again.&nbsp; A few of the poor children
were crying; but otherwise the universal cheerfulness was amazing.&nbsp;
&lsquo;We shall shake down by to-morrow.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;We shall
come all right in a day or so.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;We shall have more
light at sea.&rsquo;&nbsp; Such phrases I heard everywhere, as I groped
my way among chests and barrels and beams and unstowed cargo and ring-bolts
and Emigrants, down to the lower-deck, and thence up to the light of
day again, and to my former station.</p>
<p>Surely, an extraordinary people in their power of self-abstraction!&nbsp;
All the former letter-writers were still writing calmly, and many more
letter-writers had broken out in my absence.&nbsp; A boy with a bag
of books in his hand and a slate under his arm, emerged from below,
concentrated himself in my neighbourhood (espying a convenient skylight
for his purpose), and went to work at a sum as if he were stone deaf.&nbsp;
A father and mother and several young children, on the main deck below
me, had formed a family circle close to the foot of the crowded restless
gangway, where the children made a nest for themselves in a coil of
rope, and the father and mother, she suckling the youngest, discussed
family affairs as peaceably as if they were in perfect retirement.&nbsp;
I think the most noticeable characteristic in the eight hundred as a
mass, was their exemption from hurry.</p>
<p>Eight hundred what?&nbsp; &lsquo;Geese, villain?&rsquo;&nbsp; EIGHT
HUNDRED MORMONS.&nbsp; I, Uncommercial Traveller for the firm of Human
Interest Brothers, had come aboard this Emigrant Ship to see what Eight
hundred Latter-day Saints were like, and I found them (to the rout and
overthrow of all my expectations) like what I now describe with scrupulous
exactness.</p>
<p>The Mormon Agent who had been active in getting them together, and
in making the contract with my friends the owners of the ship to take
them as far as New York on their way to the Great Salt Lake, was pointed
out to me.&nbsp; A compactly-made handsome man in black, rather short,
with rich brown hair and beard, and clear bright eyes.&nbsp; From his
speech, I should set him down as American.&nbsp; Probably, a man who
had &lsquo;knocked about the world&rsquo; pretty much.&nbsp; A man with
a frank open manner, and unshrinking look; withal a man of great quickness.&nbsp;
I believe he was wholly ignorant of my Uncommercial individuality, and
consequently of my immense Uncommercial importance.</p>
<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; These are a very fine set of people you have
brought together here.</p>
<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; Yes, sir, they are a <i>very</i> fine set of
people.</p>
<p>UNCOMMERCIAL (looking about).&nbsp; Indeed, I think it would be difficult
to find Eight hundred people together anywhere else, and find so much
beauty and so much strength and capacity for work among them.</p>
<p>MORMON AGENT (not looking about, but looking steadily at Uncommercial).&nbsp;
I think so.&mdash;We sent out about a thousand more, yes&rsquo;day,
from Liverpool.</p>
<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; You are not going with these emigrants?</p>
<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; No, sir.&nbsp; I remain.</p>
<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; But you have been in the Mormon Territory?</p>
<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; Yes; I left Utah about three years ago.</p>
<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; It is surprising to me that these people are
all so cheery, and make so little of the immense distance before them.</p>
<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; Well, you see; many of &rsquo;em have friends
out at Utah, and many of &rsquo;em look forward to meeting friends on
the way.</p>
<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; On the way?</p>
<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; This way &rsquo;tis.&nbsp; This ship lands &rsquo;em
in New York City.&nbsp; Then they go on by rail right away beyond St.
Louis, to that part of the Banks of the Missouri where they strike the
Plains.&nbsp; There, waggons from the settlement meet &rsquo;em to bear
&rsquo;em company on their journey &rsquo;cross-twelve hundred miles
about.&nbsp; Industrious people who come out to the settlement soon
get waggons of their own, and so the friends of some of these will come
down in their own waggons to meet &rsquo;em.&nbsp; They look forward
to that, greatly.</p>
<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; On their long journey across the Desert, do you
arm them?</p>
<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; Mostly you would find they have arms of some
kind or another already with them.&nbsp; Such as had not arms we should
arm across the Plains, for the general protection and defence.</p>
<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; Will these waggons bring down any produce to
the Missouri?</p>
<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; Well, since the war broke out, we&rsquo;ve taken
to growing cotton, and they&rsquo;ll likely bring down cotton to be
exchanged for machinery.&nbsp; We want machinery.&nbsp; Also we have
taken to growing indigo, which is a fine commodity for profit.&nbsp;
It has been found that the climate on the further side of the Great
Salt Lake suits well for raising indigo.</p>
<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; I am told that these people now on board are
principally from the South of England?</p>
<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; And from Wales.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s true.</p>
<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; Do you get many Scotch?</p>
<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; Not many.</p>
<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; Highlanders, for instance?</p>
<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; No, not Highlanders.&nbsp; They ain&rsquo;t interested
enough in universal brotherhood and peace and good will.</p>
<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; The old fighting blood is strong in them?</p>
<p>MORMON AGENT.&nbsp; Well, yes.&nbsp; And besides; they&rsquo;ve no
faith.</p>
<p>UNCOMMERCIAL (who has been burning to get at the Prophet Joe Smith,
and seems to discover an opening).&nbsp; Faith in&mdash;!</p>
<p>MORMON AGENT (far too many for Uncommercial).&nbsp; Well.&mdash;In
anything!</p>
<p>Similarly on this same head, the Uncommercial underwent discomfiture
from a Wiltshire labourer: a simple, fresh-coloured farm-labourer, of
eight-and-thirty, who at one time stood beside him looking on at new
arrivals, and with whom he held this dialogue:</p>
<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; Would you mind my asking you what part of the
country you come from?</p>
<p>WILTSHIRE.&nbsp; Not a bit.&nbsp; Theer! (exultingly) I&rsquo;ve
worked all my life o&rsquo; Salisbury Plain, right under the shadder
o&rsquo; Stonehenge.&nbsp; You mightn&rsquo;t think it, but I haive.</p>
<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; And a pleasant country too.</p>
<p>WILTSHIRE.&nbsp; Ah!&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis a pleasant country.</p>
<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; Have you any family on board?</p>
<p>WILTSHIRE.&nbsp; Two children, boy and gal.&nbsp; I am a widderer,
<i>I</i> am, and I&rsquo;m going out alonger my boy and gal.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s
my gal, and she&rsquo;s a fine gal o&rsquo; sixteen (pointing out the
girl who is writing by the boat).&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll go and fetch my boy.&nbsp;
I&rsquo;d like to show you my boy.&nbsp; (Here Wiltshire disappears,
and presently comes back with a big, shy boy of twelve, in a superabundance
of boots, who is not at all glad to be presented.)&nbsp; He is a fine
boy too, and a boy fur to work!&nbsp; (Boy having undutifully bolted,
Wiltshire drops him.)</p>
<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; It must cost you a great deal of money to go
so far, three strong.</p>
<p>WILTSHIRE.&nbsp; A power of money.&nbsp; Theer!&nbsp; Eight shillen
a week, eight shillen a week, eight shillen a week, put by out of the
week&rsquo;s wages for ever so long.</p>
<p>UNCOMMERCIAL.&nbsp; I wonder how you did it.</p>
<p>WILTSHIRE (recognising in this a kindred spirit).&nbsp; See theer
now!&nbsp; I wonder how I done it!&nbsp; But what with a bit o&rsquo;
subscription heer, and what with a bit o&rsquo; help theer, it were
done at last, though I don&rsquo;t hardly know how.&nbsp; Then it were
unfort&rsquo;net for us, you see, as we got kep&rsquo; in Bristol so
long&mdash;nigh a fortnight, it were&mdash;on accounts of a mistake
wi&rsquo; Brother Halliday.&nbsp; Swaller&rsquo;d up money, it did,
when we might have come straight on.</p>
<p>UNCOMMERCIAL (delicately approaching Joe Smith).&nbsp; You are of
the Mormon religion, of course?</p>
<p>WILTSHIRE (confidently).&nbsp; O yes, I&rsquo;m a Mormon.&nbsp; (Then
reflectively.)&nbsp; I&rsquo;m a Mormon.&nbsp; (Then, looking round
the ship, feigns to descry a particular friend in an empty spot, and
evades the Uncommercial for evermore.)</p>
<p>After a noontide pause for dinner, during which my Emigrants were
nearly all between-decks, and the Amazon looked deserted, a general
muster took place.&nbsp; The muster was for the ceremony of passing
the Government Inspector and the Doctor.&nbsp; Those authorities held
their temporary state amidships, by a cask or two; and, knowing that
the whole Eight hundred emigrants must come face to face with them,
I took my station behind the two.&nbsp; They knew nothing whatever of
me, I believe, and my testimony to the unpretending gentleness and good
nature with which they discharged their duty, may be of the greater
worth.&nbsp; There was not the slightest flavour of the Circumlocution
Office about their proceedings.</p>
<p>The emigrants were now all on deck.&nbsp; They were densely crowded
aft, and swarmed upon the poop-deck like bees.&nbsp; Two or three Mormon
agents stood ready to hand them on to the Inspector, and to hand them
forward when they had passed.&nbsp; By what successful means, a special
aptitude for organisation had been infused into these people, I am,
of course, unable to report.&nbsp; But I know that, even now, there
was no disorder, hurry, or difficulty.</p>
<p>All being ready, the first group are handed on.&nbsp; That member
of the party who is entrusted with the passenger-ticket for the whole,
has been warned by one of the agents to have it ready, and here it is
in his hand.&nbsp; In every instance through the whole eight hundred,
without an exception, this paper is always ready.</p>
<p>INSPECTOR (reading the ticket).&nbsp; Jessie Jobson, Sophronia Jobson,
Jessie Jobson again, Matilda Jobson, William Jobson, Jane Jobson, Matilda
Jobson again, Brigham Jobson, Leonardo Jobson, and Orson Jobson.&nbsp;
Are you all here? (glancing at the party, over his spectacles).</p>
<p>JESSIE JOBSON NUMBER TWO.&nbsp; All here, sir.</p>
<p>This group is composed of an old grandfather and grandmother, their
married son and his wife, and <i>their</i> family of children.&nbsp;
Orson Jobson is a little child asleep in his mother&rsquo;s arms.&nbsp;
The Doctor, with a kind word or so, lifts up the corner of the mother&rsquo;s
shawl, looks at the child&rsquo;s face, and touches the little clenched
hand.&nbsp; If we were all as well as Orson Jobson, doctoring would
be a poor profession.</p>
<p>INSPECTOR.&nbsp; Quite right, Jessie Jobson.&nbsp; Take your ticket,
Jessie, and pass on.</p>
<p>And away they go.&nbsp; Mormon agent, skilful and quiet, hands them
on.&nbsp; Mormon agent, skilful and quiet, hands next party up.</p>
<p>INSPECTOR (reading ticket again).&nbsp; Susannah Cleverly and William
Cleverly.&nbsp; Brother and sister, eh?</p>
<p>SISTER (young woman of business, hustling slow brother).&nbsp; Yes,
sir.</p>
<p>INSPECTOR.&nbsp; Very good, Susannah Cleverly.&nbsp; Take your ticket,
Susannah, and take care of it.</p>
<p>And away they go.</p>
<p>INSPECTOR (taking ticket again).&nbsp; Sampson Dibble and Dorothy
Dibble (surveying a very old couple over his spectacles, with some surprise).&nbsp;
Your husband quite blind, Mrs. Dibble?</p>
<p>MRS. DIBBLE.&nbsp; Yes, sir, he be stone-blind.</p>
<p>MR. DIBBLE (addressing the mast).&nbsp; Yes, sir, I be stone-blind.</p>
<p>INSPECTOR.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s a bad job.&nbsp; Take your ticket,
Mrs. Dibble, and don&rsquo;t lose it, and pass on.</p>
<p>Doctor taps Mr. Dibble on the eyebrow with his forefinger, and away
they go.</p>
<p>INSPECTOR (taking ticket again).&nbsp; Anastatia Weedle.</p>
<p>ANASTATIA (a pretty girl, in a bright Garibaldi, this morning elected
by universal suffrage the Beauty of the Ship).&nbsp; That is me, sir.</p>
<p>INSPECTOR.&nbsp; Going alone, Anastatia?</p>
<p>ANASTATIA (shaking her curls).&nbsp; I am with Mrs. Jobson, sir,
but I&rsquo;ve got separated for the moment.</p>
<p>INSPECTOR.&nbsp; Oh!&nbsp; You are with the Jobsons?&nbsp; Quite
right.&nbsp; That&rsquo;ll do, Miss Weedle.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t lose your
ticket.</p>
<p>Away she goes, and joins the Jobsons who are waiting for her, and
stoops and kisses Brigham Jobson&mdash;who appears to be considered
too young for the purpose, by several Mormons rising twenty, who are
looking on.&nbsp; Before her extensive skirts have departed from the
casks, a decent widow stands there with four children, and so the roll
goes.</p>
<p>The faces of some of the Welsh people, among whom there were many
old persons, were certainly the least intelligent.&nbsp; Some of these
emigrants would have bungled sorely, but for the directing hand that
was always ready.&nbsp; The intelligence here was unquestionably of
a low order, and the heads were of a poor type.&nbsp; Generally the
case was the reverse.&nbsp; There were many worn faces bearing traces
of patient poverty and hard work, and there was great steadiness of
purpose and much undemonstrative self-respect among this class.&nbsp;
A few young men were going singly.&nbsp; Several girls were going, two
or three together.&nbsp; These latter I found it very difficult to refer
back, in my mind, to their relinquished homes and pursuits.&nbsp; Perhaps
they were more like country milliners, and pupil teachers rather tawdrily
dressed, than any other classes of young women.&nbsp; I noticed, among
many little ornaments worn, more than one photograph-brooch of the Princess
of Wales, and also of the late Prince Consort.&nbsp; Some single women
of from thirty to forty, whom one might suppose to be embroiderers,
or straw-bonnet-makers, were obviously going out in quest of husbands,
as finer ladies go to India.&nbsp; That they had any distinct notions
of a plurality of husbands or wives, I do not believe.&nbsp; To suppose
the family groups of whom the majority of emigrants were composed, polygamically
possessed, would be to suppose an absurdity, manifest to any one who
saw the fathers and mothers.</p>
<p>I should say (I had no means of ascertaining the fact) that most
familiar kinds of handicraft trades were represented here.&nbsp; Farm-labourers,
shepherds, and the like, had their full share of representation, but
I doubt if they preponderated.&nbsp; It was interesting to see how the
leading spirit in the family circle never failed to show itself, even
in the simple process of answering to the names as they were called,
and checking off the owners of the names.&nbsp; Sometimes it was the
father, much oftener the mother, sometimes a quick little girl second
or third in order of seniority.&nbsp; It seemed to occur for the first
time to some heavy fathers, what large families they had; and their
eyes rolled about, during the calling of the list, as if they half misdoubted
some other family to have been smuggled into their own.&nbsp; Among
all the fine handsome children, I observed but two with marks upon their
necks that were probably scrofulous.&nbsp; Out of the whole number of
emigrants, but one old woman was temporarily set aside by the doctor,
on suspicion of fever; but even she afterwards obtained a clean bill
of health.</p>
<p>When all had &lsquo;passed,&rsquo; and the afternoon began to wear
on, a black box became visible on deck, which box was in charge of certain
personages also in black, of whom only one had the conventional air
of an itinerant preacher.&nbsp; This box contained a supply of hymn-books,
neatly printed and got up, published at Liverpool, and also in London
at the &lsquo;Latter-Day Saints&rsquo; Book Dep&ocirc;t, 30, Florence-street.&rsquo;&nbsp;
Some copies were handsomely bound; the plainer were the more in request,
and many were bought.&nbsp; The title ran: &lsquo;Sacred Hymns and Spiritual
Songs for the Church of Jesus Church of Latter-Day Saints.&rsquo;&nbsp;
The Preface, dated Manchester, 1840, ran thus:- &lsquo;The Saints in
this country have been very desirous for a Hymn Book adapted to their
faith and worship, that they might sing the truth with an understanding
heart, and express their praise, joy, and gratitude in songs adapted
to the New and Everlasting Covenant.&nbsp; In accordance with their
wishes, we have selected the following volume, which we hope will prove
acceptable until a greater variety can be added.&nbsp; With sentiments
of high consideration and esteem, we subscribe ourselves your brethren
in the New and Everlasting Covenant, BRIGHAM YOUNG, PARLEY P. PRATT,
JOHN TAYLOR.&rsquo;&nbsp; From this book&mdash;by no means explanatory
to myself of the New and Everlasting Covenant, and not at all making
my heart an understanding one on the subject of that mystery&mdash;a
hymn was sung, which did not attract any great amount of attention,
and was supported by a rather select circle.&nbsp; But the choir in
the boat was very popular and pleasant; and there was to have been a
Band, only the Cornet was late in coming on board.&nbsp; In the course
of the afternoon, a mother appeared from shore, in search of her daughter,
&lsquo;who had run away with the Mormons.&rsquo;&nbsp; She received
every assistance from the Inspector, but her daughter was not found
to be on board.&nbsp; The saints did not seem to me, particularly interested
in finding her.</p>
<p>Towards five o&rsquo;clock, the galley became full of tea-kettles,
and an agreeable fragrance of tea pervaded the ship.&nbsp; There was
no scrambling or jostling for the hot water, no ill humour, no quarrelling.&nbsp;
As the Amazon was to sail with the next tide, and as it would not be
high water before two o&rsquo;clock in the morning, I left her with
her tea in full action, and her idle Steam Tug lying by, deputing steam
and smoke for the time being to the Tea-kettles.</p>
<p>I afterwards learned that a Despatch was sent home by the captain
before he struck out into the wide Atlantic, highly extolling the behaviour
of these Emigrants, and the perfect order and propriety of all their
social arrangements.&nbsp; What is in store for the poor people on the
shores of the Great Salt Lake, what happy delusions they are labouring
under now, on what miserable blindness their eyes may be opened then,
I do not pretend to say.&nbsp; But I went on board their ship to bear
testimony against them if they deserved it, as I fully believed they
would; to my great astonishment they did not deserve it; and my predispositions
and tendencies must not affect me as an honest witness.&nbsp; I went
over the Amazon&rsquo;s side, feeling it impossible to deny that, so
far, some remarkable influence had produced a remarkable result, which
better known influences have often missed. *</p>
<p>* After this Uncommercial Journey was printed, I happened to mention
the experience it describes to Lord Houghton.&nbsp; That gentleman then
showed me an article of his writing, in <i>The Edinburgh Review</i>
for January, 1862, which is highly remarkable for its philosophical
and literary research concerning these Latter-Day Saints.&nbsp; I find
in it the following sentences:- &lsquo;The Select Committee of the House
of Commons on emigrant ships for 1854 summoned the Mormon agent and
passenger-broker before it, and came to the conclusion that no ships
under the provisions of the &ldquo;Passengers Act&rdquo; could be depended
upon for comfort and security in the same degree as those under his
administration. The Mormon ship is a Family under strong and accepted
discipline, with every provision for comfort, decorum and internal peace.&rsquo;</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XXIII&mdash;THE CITY OF THE ABSENT</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>When I think I deserve particularly well of myself, and have earned
the right to enjoy a little treat, I stroll from Covent-garden into
the City of London, after business-hours there, on a Saturday, or&mdash;better
yet&mdash;on a Sunday, and roam about its deserted nooks and corners.&nbsp;
It is necessary to the full enjoyment of these journeys that they should
be made in summer-time, for then the retired spots that I love to haunt,
are at their idlest and dullest.&nbsp; A gentle fall of rain is not
objectionable, and a warm mist sets off my favourite retreats to decided
advantage.</p>
<p>Among these, City Churchyards hold a high place.&nbsp; Such strange
churchyards hide in the City of London; churchyards sometimes so entirely
detached from churches, always so pressed upon by houses; so small,
so rank, so silent, so forgotten, except by the few people who ever
look down into them from their smoky windows.&nbsp; As I stand peeping
in through the iron gates and rails, I can peel the rusty metal off,
like bark from an old tree.&nbsp; The illegible tombstones are all lop-sided,
the grave-mounds lost their shape in the rains of a hundred years ago,
the Lombardy Poplar or Plane-Tree that was once a drysalter&rsquo;s
daughter and several common-councilmen, has withered like those worthies,
and its departed leaves are dust beneath it.&nbsp; Contagion of slow
ruin overhangs the place.&nbsp; The discoloured tiled roofs of the environing
buildings stand so awry, that they can hardly be proof against any stress
of weather.&nbsp; Old crazy stacks of chimneys seem to look down as
they overhang, dubiously calculating how far they will have to fall.&nbsp;
In an angle of the walls, what was once the tool-house of the grave-digger
rots away, encrusted with toadstools.&nbsp; Pipes and spouts for carrying
off the rain from the encompassing gables, broken or feloniously cut
for old lead long ago, now let the rain drip and splash as it list,
upon the weedy earth.&nbsp; Sometimes there is a rusty pump somewhere
near, and, as I look in at the rails and meditate, I hear it working
under an unknown hand with a creaking protest: as though the departed
in the churchyard urged, &lsquo;Let us lie here in peace; don&rsquo;t
suck us up and drink us!&rsquo;</p>
<p>One of my best beloved churchyards, I call the churchyard of Saint
Ghastly Grim; touching what men in general call it, I have no information.&nbsp;
It lies at the heart of the City, and the Blackwall Railway shrieks
at it daily.&nbsp; It is a small small churchyard, with a ferocious,
strong, spiked iron gate, like a jail.&nbsp; This gate is ornamented
with skulls and cross-bones, larger than the life, wrought in stone;
but it likewise came into the mind of Saint Ghastly Grim, that to stick
iron spikes a-top of the stone skulls, as though they were impaled,
would be a pleasant device.&nbsp; Therefore the skulls grin aloft horribly,
thrust through and through with iron spears.&nbsp; Hence, there is attraction
of repulsion for me in Saint Ghastly Grim, and, having often contemplated
it in the daylight and the dark, I once felt drawn towards it in a thunderstorm
at midnight.&nbsp; &lsquo;Why not?&rsquo; I said, in self-excuse.&nbsp;
&lsquo;I have been to see the Colosseum by the light of the moon; is
it worse to go to see Saint Ghastly Grim by the light of the lightning?&rsquo;&nbsp;
I repaired to the Saint in a hackney cab, and found the skulls most
effective, having the air of a public execution, and seeming, as the
lightning flashed, to wink and grin with the pain of the spikes.&nbsp;
Having no other person to whom to impart my satisfaction, I communicated
it to the driver.&nbsp; So far from being responsive, he surveyed me&mdash;he
was naturally a bottled-nosed, red-faced man&mdash;with a blanched countenance.&nbsp;
And as he drove me back, he ever and again glanced in over his shoulder
through the little front window of his carriage, as mistrusting that
I was a fare originally from a grave in the churchyard of Saint Ghastly
Grim, who might have flitted home again without paying.</p>
<p>Sometimes, the queer Hall of some queer Company gives upon a churchyard
such as this, and, when the Livery dine, you may hear them (if you are
looking in through the iron rails, which you never are when I am) toasting
their own Worshipful prosperity.&nbsp; Sometimes, a wholesale house
of business, requiring much room for stowage, will occupy one or two
or even all three sides of the enclosing space, and the backs of bales
of goods will lumber up the windows, as if they were holding some crowded
trade-meeting of themselves within.&nbsp; Sometimes, the commanding
windows are all blank, and show no more sign of life than the graves
below&mdash;not so much, for <i>they</i> tell of what once upon a time
was life undoubtedly.&nbsp; Such was the surrounding of one City churchyard
that I saw last summer, on a Volunteering Saturday evening towards eight
of the clock, when with astonishment I beheld an old old man and an
old old woman in it, making hay.&nbsp; Yes, of all occupations in this
world, making hay!&nbsp; It was a very confined patch of churchyard
lying between Gracechurch-street and the Tower, capable of yielding,
say an apronful of hay.&nbsp; By what means the old old man and woman
had got into it, with an almost toothless hay-making rake, I could not
fathom.&nbsp; No open window was within view; no window at all was within
view, sufficiently near the ground to have enabled their old legs to
descend from it; the rusty churchyard-gate was locked, the mouldy church
was locked.&nbsp; Gravely among the graves, they made hay, all alone
by themselves.&nbsp; They looked like Time and his wife.&nbsp; There
was but the one rake between them, and they both had hold of it in a
pastorally-loving manner, and there was hay on the old woman&rsquo;s
black bonnet, as if the old man had recently been playful.&nbsp; The
old man was quite an obsolete old man, in knee-breeches and coarse grey
stockings, and the old woman wore mittens like unto his stockings in
texture and in colour.&nbsp; They took no heed of me as I looked on,
unable to account for them.&nbsp; The old woman was much too bright
for a pew-opener, the old man much too meek for a beadle.&nbsp; On an
old tombstone in the foreground between me and them, were two cherubim;
but for those celestial embellishments being represented as having no
possible use for knee-breeches, stockings, or mittens, I should have
compared them with the hay-makers, and sought a likeness.&nbsp; I coughed
and awoke the echoes, but the hay-makers never looked at me.&nbsp; They
used the rake with a measured action, drawing the scanty crop towards
them; and so I was fain to leave them under three yards and a half of
darkening sky, gravely making hay among the graves, all alone by themselves.&nbsp;
Perhaps they were Spectres, and I wanted a Medium.</p>
<p>In another City churchyard of similar cramped dimensions, I saw,
that selfsame summer, two comfortable charity children.&nbsp; They were
making love&mdash;tremendous proof of the vigour of that immortal article,
for they were in the graceful uniform under which English Charity delights
to hide herself&mdash;and they were overgrown, and their legs (his legs
at least, for I am modestly incompetent to speak of hers) were as much
in the wrong as mere passive weakness of character can render legs.&nbsp;
O it was a leaden churchyard, but no doubt a golden ground to those
young persons!&nbsp; I first saw them on a Saturday evening, and, perceiving
from their occupation that Saturday evening was their trysting-time,
I returned that evening se&rsquo;nnight, and renewed the contemplation
of them.&nbsp; They came there to shake the bits of matting which were
spread in the church aisles, and they afterwards rolled them up, he
rolling his end, she rolling hers, until they met, and over the two
once divided now united rolls&mdash;sweet emblem!&mdash;gave and received
a chaste salute.&nbsp; It was so refreshing to find one of my faded
churchyards blooming into flower thus, that I returned a second time,
and a third, and ultimately this befell:- They had left the church door
open, in their dusting and arranging.&nbsp; Walking in to look at the
church, I became aware, by the dim light, of him in the pulpit, of her
in the reading-desk, of him looking down, of her looking up, exchanging
tender discourse.&nbsp; Immediately both dived, and became as it were
non-existent on this sphere.&nbsp; With an assumption of innocence I
turned to leave the sacred edifice, when an obese form stood in the
portal, puffily demanding Joseph, or in default of Joseph, Celia.&nbsp;
Taking this monster by the sleeve, and luring him forth on pretence
of showing him whom he sought, I gave time for the emergence of Joseph
and Celia, who presently came towards us in the churchyard, bending
under dusty matting, a picture of thriving and unconscious industry.&nbsp;
It would be superfluous to hint that I have ever since deemed this the
proudest passage in my life.</p>
<p>But such instances, or any tokens of vitality, are rare indeed in
my City churchyards.&nbsp; A few sparrows occasionally try to raise
a lively chirrup in their solitary tree&mdash;perhaps, as taking a different
view of worms from that entertained by humanity&mdash;but they are flat
and hoarse of voice, like the clerk, the organ, the bell, the clergyman,
and all the rest of the Church-works when they are wound up for Sunday.&nbsp;
Caged larks, thrushes, or blackbirds, hanging in neighbouring courts,
pour forth their strains passionately, as scenting the tree, trying
to break out, and see leaves again before they die, but their song is
Willow, Willow&mdash;of a churchyard cast.&nbsp; So little light lives
inside the churches of my churchyards, when the two are co-existent,
that it is often only by an accident and after long acquaintance that
I discover their having stained glass in some odd window.&nbsp; The
westering sun slants into the churchyard by some unwonted entry, a few
prismatic tears drop on an old tombstone, and a window that I thought
was only dirty, is for the moment all bejewelled.&nbsp; Then the light
passes and the colours die.&nbsp; Though even then, if there be room
enough for me to fall back so far as that I can gaze up to the top of
the Church Tower, I see the rusty vane new burnished, and seeming to
look out with a joyful flash over the sea of smoke at the distant shore
of country.</p>
<p>Blinking old men who are let out of workhouses by the hour, have
a tendency to sit on bits of coping stone in these churchyards, leaning
with both hands on their sticks and asthmatically gasping.&nbsp; The
more depressed class of beggars too, bring hither broken meats, and
munch.&nbsp; I am on nodding terms with a meditative turncock who lingers
in one of them, and whom I suspect of a turn for poetry; the rather,
as he looks out of temper when he gives the fire-plug a disparaging
wrench with that large tuning-fork of his which would wear out the shoulder
of his coat, but for a precautionary piece of inlaid leather.&nbsp;
Fire-ladders, which I am satisfied nobody knows anything about, and
the keys of which were lost in ancient times, moulder away in the larger
churchyards, under eaves like wooden eyebrows; and so removed are those
corners from the haunts of men and boys, that once on a fifth of November
I found a &lsquo;Guy&rsquo; trusted to take care of himself there, while
his proprietors had gone to dinner.&nbsp; Of the expression of his face
I cannot report, because it was turned to the wall; but his shrugged
shoulders and his ten extended fingers, appeared to denote that he had
moralised in his little straw chair on the mystery of mortality until
he gave it up as a bad job.</p>
<p>You do not come upon these churchyards violently; there are shapes
of transition in the neighbourhood.&nbsp; An antiquated news shop, or
barber&rsquo;s shop, apparently bereft of customers in the earlier days
of George the Third, would warn me to look out for one, if any discoveries
in this respect were left for me to make.&nbsp; A very quiet court,
in combination with an unaccountable dyer&rsquo;s and scourer&rsquo;s,
would prepare me for a churchyard.&nbsp; An exceedingly retiring public-house,
with a bagatelle-board shadily visible in a sawdusty parlour shaped
like an omnibus, and with a shelf of punch-bowls in the bar, would apprise
me that I stood near consecrated ground.&nbsp; A &lsquo;Dairy,&rsquo;
exhibiting in its modest window one very little milk-can and three eggs,
would suggest to me the certainty of finding the poultry hard by, pecking
at my forefathers.&nbsp; I first inferred the vicinity of Saint Ghastly
Grim, from a certain air of extra repose and gloom pervading a vast
stack of warehouses.</p>
<p>From the hush of these places, it is congenial to pass into the hushed
resorts of business.&nbsp; Down the lanes I like to see the carts and
waggons huddled together in repose, the cranes idle, and the warehouses
shut.&nbsp; Pausing in the alleys behind the closed Banks of mighty
Lombard-street, it gives one as good as a rich feeling to think of the
broad counters with a rim along the edge, made for telling money out
on, the scales for weighing precious metals, the ponderous ledgers,
and, above all, the bright copper shovels for shovelling gold.&nbsp;
When I draw money, it never seems so much money as when it is shovelled
at me out of a bright copper shovel.&nbsp; I like to say, &lsquo;In
gold,&rsquo; and to see seven pounds musically pouring out of the shovel,
like seventy; the Bank appearing to remark to me&mdash;I italicise <i>appearing&mdash;</i>&lsquo;if
you want more of this yellow earth, we keep it in barrows at your service.&rsquo;&nbsp;
To think of the banker&rsquo;s clerk with his deft finger turning the
crisp edges of the Hundred-Pound Notes he has taken in a fat roll out
of a drawer, is again to hear the rustling of that delicious south-cash
wind.&nbsp; &lsquo;How will you have it?&rsquo;&nbsp; I once heard this
usual question asked at a Bank Counter of an elderly female, habited
in mourning and steeped in simplicity, who answered, open-eyed, crook-fingered,
laughing with expectation, &lsquo;Anyhow!&rsquo;&nbsp; Calling these
things to mind as I stroll among the Banks, I wonder whether the other
solitary Sunday man I pass, has designs upon the Banks.&nbsp; For the
interest and mystery of the matter, I almost hope he may have, and that
his confederate may be at this moment taking impressions of the keys
of the iron closets in wax, and that a delightful robbery may be in
course of transaction.&nbsp; About College-hill, Mark-lane, and so on
towards the Tower, and Dockward, the deserted wine-merchants&rsquo;
cellars are fine subjects for consideration; but the deserted money-cellars
of the Bankers, and their plate-cellars, and their jewel-cellars, what
subterranean regions of the Wonderful Lamp are these!&nbsp; And again:
possibly some shoeless boy in rags, passed through this street yesterday,
for whom it is reserved to be a Banker in the fulness of time, and to
be surpassing rich.&nbsp; Such reverses have been, since the days of
Whittington; and were, long before.&nbsp; I want to know whether the
boy has any foreglittering of that glittering fortune now, when he treads
these stones, hungry.&nbsp; Much as I also want to know whether the
next man to be hanged at Newgate yonder, had any suspicion upon him
that he was moving steadily towards that fate, when he talked so much
about the last man who paid the same great debt at the same small Debtors&rsquo;
Door.</p>
<p>Where are all the people who on busy working-days pervade these scenes?&nbsp;
The locomotive banker&rsquo;s clerk, who carries a black portfolio chained
to him by a chain of steel, where is he?&nbsp; Does he go to bed with
his chain on&mdash;to church with his chain on&mdash;or does he lay
it by?&nbsp; And if he lays it by, what becomes of his portfolio when
he is unchained for a holiday?&nbsp; The wastepaper baskets of these
closed counting-houses would let me into many hints of business matters
if I had the exploration of them; and what secrets of the heart should
I discover on the &lsquo;pads&rsquo; of the young clerks&mdash;the sheets
of cartridge-paper and blotting-paper interposed between their writing
and their desks!&nbsp; Pads are taken into confidence on the tenderest
occasions, and oftentimes when I have made a business visit, and have
sent in my name from the outer office, have I had it forced on my discursive
notice that the officiating young gentleman has over and over again
inscribed AMELIA, in ink of various dates, on corners of his pad.&nbsp;
Indeed, the pad may be regarded as the legitimate modern successor of
the old forest-tree: whereon these young knights (having no attainable
forest nearer than Epping) engrave the names of their mistresses.&nbsp;
After all, it is a more satisfactory process than carving, and can be
oftener repeated.&nbsp; So these courts in their Sunday rest are courts
of Love Omnipotent (I rejoice to bethink myself), dry as they look.&nbsp;
And here is Garraway&rsquo;s, bolted and shuttered hard and fast!&nbsp;
It is possible to imagine the man who cuts the sandwiches, on his back
in a hayfield; it is possible to imagine his desk, like the desk of
a clerk at church, without him; but imagination is unable to pursue
the men who wait at Garraway&rsquo;s all the week for the men who never
come.&nbsp; When they are forcibly put out of Garraway&rsquo;s on Saturday
night&mdash;which they must be, for they never would go out of their
own accord&mdash;where do they vanish until Monday morning?&nbsp; On
the first Sunday that I ever strayed here, I expected to find them hovering
about these lanes, like restless ghosts, and trying to peep into Garraway&rsquo;s
through chinks in the shutters, if not endeavouring to turn the lock
of the door with false keys, picks, and screw-drivers.&nbsp; But the
wonder is, that they go clean away!&nbsp; And now I think of it, the
wonder is, that every working-day pervader of these scenes goes clean
away.&nbsp; The man who sells the dogs&rsquo; collars and the little
toy coal-scuttles, feels under as great an obligation to go afar off,
as Glyn and Co., or Smith, Payne, and Smith.&nbsp; There is an old monastery-crypt
under Garraway&rsquo;s (I have been in it among the port wine), and
perhaps Garraway&rsquo;s, taking pity on the mouldy men who wait in
its public-room all their lives, gives them cool house-room down there
over Sundays; but the catacombs of Paris would not be large enough to
hold the rest of the missing.&nbsp; This characteristic of London City
greatly helps its being the quaint place it is in the weekly pause of
business, and greatly helps my Sunday sensation in it of being the Last
Man.&nbsp; In my solitude, the ticket-porters being all gone with the
rest, I venture to breathe to the quiet bricks and stones my confidential
wonderment why a ticket-porter, who never does any work with his hands,
is bound to wear a white apron, and why a great Ecclesiastical Dignitary,
who never does any work with his hands either, is equally bound to wear
a black one.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XXIV&mdash;AN OLD STAGE-COACHING HOUSE</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>Before the waitress had shut the door, I had forgotten how many stage-coaches
she said used to change horses in the town every day.&nbsp; But it was
of little moment; any high number would do as well as another.&nbsp;
It had been a great stage-coaching town in the great stage-coaching
times, and the ruthless railways had killed and buried it.</p>
<p>The sign of the house was the Dolphin&rsquo;s Head.&nbsp; Why only
head, I don&rsquo;t know; for the Dolphin&rsquo;s effigy at full length,
and upside down&mdash;as a Dolphin is always bound to be when artistically
treated, though I suppose he is sometimes right side upward in his natural
condition&mdash;graced the sign-board.&nbsp; The sign-board chafed its
rusty hooks outside the bow-window of my room, and was a shabby work.&nbsp;
No visitor could have denied that the Dolphin was dying by inches, but
he showed no bright colours.&nbsp; He had once served another master;
there was a newer streak of paint below him, displaying with inconsistent
freshness the legend, By J. MELLOWS.</p>
<p>My door opened again, and J. Mellows&rsquo;s representative came
back.&nbsp; I had asked her what I could have for dinner, and she now
returned with the counter question, what would I like?&nbsp; As the
Dolphin stood possessed of nothing that I do like, I was fain to yield
to the suggestion of a duck, which I don&rsquo;t like.&nbsp; J. Mellows&rsquo;s
representative was a mournful young woman with eye susceptible of guidance,
and one uncontrollable eye; which latter, seeming to wander in quest
of stage-coaches, deepened the melancholy in which the Dolphin was steeped.</p>
<p>This young woman had but shut the door on retiring again when I bethought
me of adding to my order, the words, &lsquo;with nice vegetables.&rsquo;&nbsp;
Looking out at the door to give them emphatic utterance, I found her
already in a state of pensive catalepsy in the deserted gallery, picking
her teeth with a pin.</p>
<p>At the Railway Station seven miles off, I had been the subject of
wonder when I ordered a fly in which to come here.&nbsp; And when I
gave the direction &lsquo;To the Dolphin&rsquo;s Head,&rsquo; I had
observed an ominous stare on the countenance of the strong young man
in velveteen, who was the platform servant of the Company.&nbsp; He
had also called to my driver at parting, &lsquo;All ri-ight!&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t
hang yourself when you get there, Geo-o-rge!&rsquo; in a sarcastic tone,
for which I had entertained some transitory thoughts of reporting him
to the General Manager.</p>
<p>I had no business in the town&mdash;I never have any business in
any town&mdash;but I had been caught by the fancy that I would come
and look at it in its degeneracy.&nbsp; My purpose was fitly inaugurated
by the Dolphin&rsquo;s Head, which everywhere expressed past coachfulness
and present coachlessness.&nbsp; Coloured prints of coaches, starting,
arriving, changing horses, coaches in the sunshine, coaches in the snow,
coaches in the wind, coaches in the mist and rain, coaches on the King&rsquo;s
birthday, coaches in all circumstances compatible with their triumph
and victory, but never in the act of breaking down or overturning, pervaded
the house.&nbsp; Of these works of art, some, framed and not glazed,
had holes in them; the varnish of others had become so brown and cracked,
that they looked like overdone pie-crust; the designs of others were
almost obliterated by the flies of many summers.&nbsp; Broken glasses,
damaged frames, lop-sided hanging, and consignment of incurable cripples
to places of refuge in dark corners, attested the desolation of the
rest.&nbsp; The old room on the ground floor where the passengers of
the Highflyer used to dine, had nothing in it but a wretched show of
twigs and flower-pots in the broad window to hide the nakedness of the
land, and in a corner little Mellows&rsquo;s perambulator, with even
its parasol-head turned despondently to the wall.&nbsp; The other room,
where post-horse company used to wait while relays were getting ready
down the yard, still held its ground, but was as airless as I conceive
a hearse to be: insomuch that Mr. Pitt, hanging high against the partition
(with spots on him like port wine, though it is mysterious how port
wine ever got squirted up there), had good reason for perking his nose
and sniffing.&nbsp; The stopperless cruets on the spindle-shanked sideboard
were in a miserably dejected state: the anchovy sauce having turned
blue some years ago, and the cayenne pepper (with a scoop in it like
a small model of a wooden leg) having turned solid.&nbsp; The old fraudulent
candles which were always being paid for and never used, were burnt
out at last; but their tall stilts of candlesticks still lingered, and
still outraged the human intellect by pretending to be silver.&nbsp;
The mouldy old unreformed Borough Member, with his right hand buttoned
up in the breast of his coat, and his back characteristically turned
on bales of petitions from his constituents, was there too; and the
poker which never had been among the fire-irons, lest post-horse company
should overstir the fire, was <i>not</i> there, as of old.</p>
<p>Pursuing my researches in the Dolphin&rsquo;s Head, I found it sorely
shrunken.&nbsp; When J. Mellows came into possession, he had walled
off half the bar, which was now a tobacco-shop with its own entrance
in the yard&mdash;the once glorious yard where the postboys, whip in
hand and always buttoning their waistcoats at the last moment, used
to come running forth to mount and away.&nbsp; A &lsquo;Scientific Shoeing&mdash;Smith
and Veterinary Surgeon,&rsquo; had further encroached upon the yard;
and a grimly satirical jobber, who announced himself as having to Let
&lsquo;A neat one-horse fly, and a one-horse cart,&rsquo; had established
his business, himself, and his family, in a part of the extensive stables.&nbsp;
Another part was lopped clean off from the Dolphin&rsquo;s Head, and
now comprised a chapel, a wheelwright&rsquo;s, and a Young Men&rsquo;s
Mutual Improvement and Discussion Society (in a loft): the whole forming
a back lane.&nbsp; No audacious hand had plucked down the vane from
the central cupola of the stables, but it had grown rusty and stuck
at N-Nil: while the score or two of pigeons that remained true to their
ancestral traditions and the place, had collected in a row on the roof-ridge
of the only outhouse retained by the Dolphin, where all the inside pigeons
tried to push the outside pigeon off.&nbsp; This I accepted as emblematical
of the struggle for post and place in railway times.</p>
<p>Sauntering forth into the town, by way of the covered and pillared
entrance to the Dolphin&rsquo;s Yard, once redolent of soup and stable-litter,
now redolent of musty disuse, I paced the street.&nbsp; It was a hot
day, and the little sun-blinds of the shops were all drawn down, and
the more enterprising tradesmen had caused their &rsquo;Prentices to
trickle water on the pavement appertaining to their frontage.&nbsp;
It looked as if they had been shedding tears for the stage-coaches,
and drying their ineffectual pocket-handkerchiefs.&nbsp; Such weakness
would have been excusable; for business was&mdash;as one dejected porkman
who kept a shop which refused to reciprocate the compliment by keeping
him, informed me&mdash;&lsquo;bitter bad.&rsquo;&nbsp; Most of the harness-makers
and corn-dealers were gone the way of the coaches, but it was a pleasant
recognition of the eternal procession of Children down that old original
steep Incline, the Valley of the Shadow, that those tradesmen were mostly
succeeded by vendors of sweetmeats and cheap toys.&nbsp; The opposition
house to the Dolphin, once famous as the New White Hart, had long collapsed.&nbsp;
In a fit of abject depression, it had cast whitewash on its windows,
and boarded up its front door, and reduced itself to a side entrance;
but even that had proved a world too wide for the Literary Institution
which had been its last phase; for the Institution had collapsed too,
and of the ambitious letters of its inscription on the White Hart&rsquo;s
front, all had fallen off but these:</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>L&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Y&nbsp;  INS&nbsp; &nbsp; T</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>- suggestive of Lamentably Insolvent.&nbsp; As to the neighbouring
market-place, it seemed to have wholly relinquished marketing, to the
dealer in crockery whose pots and pans straggled half across it, and
to the Cheap Jack who sat with folded arms on the shafts of his cart,
superciliously gazing around; his velveteen waistcoat, evidently harbouring
grave doubts whether it was worth his while to stay a night in such
a place.</p>
<p>The church bells began to ring as I left this spot, but they by no
means improved the case, for they said, in a petulant way, and speaking
with some difficulty in their irritation, WHAT&rsquo;S-be-come-of-THE-coach-ES!&rsquo;&nbsp;
Nor would they (I found on listening) ever vary their emphasis, save
in respect of growing more sharp and vexed, but invariably went on,
&lsquo;WHAT&rsquo;S-be-come-of-THE-coach-ES!&rsquo;&mdash;always beginning
the inquiry with an unpolite abruptness.&nbsp; Perhaps from their elevation
they saw the railway, and it aggravated them.</p>
<p>Coming upon a coachmaker&rsquo;s workshop, I began to look about
me with a revived spirit, thinking that perchance I might behold there
some remains of the old times of the town&rsquo;s greatness.&nbsp; There
was only one man at work&mdash;a dry man, grizzled, and far advanced
in years, but tall and upright, who, becoming aware of me looking on,
straightened his back, pushed up his spectacles against his brown-paper
cap, and appeared inclined to defy me.&nbsp; To whom I pacifically said:</p>
<p>&lsquo;Good day, sir!&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;What?&rsquo; said he.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Good day, sir.&rsquo;</p>
<p>He seemed to consider about that, and not to agree with me.&mdash;&lsquo;Was
you a looking for anything?&rsquo; he then asked, in a pointed manner.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I was wondering whether there happened to be any fragment
of an old stage-coach here.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Is that all?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;That&rsquo;s all.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;No, there ain&rsquo;t.&rsquo;</p>
<p>It was now my turn to say &lsquo;Oh!&rsquo; and I said it.&nbsp;
Not another word did the dry and grizzled man say, but bent to his work
again.&nbsp; In the coach-making days, the coach-painters had tried
their brushes on a post beside him; and quite a Calendar of departed
glories was to be read upon it, in blue and yellow and red and green,
some inches thick.&nbsp; Presently he looked up again.</p>
<p>&lsquo;You seem to have a deal of time on your hands,&rsquo; was
his querulous remark.</p>
<p>I admitted the fact.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I think it&rsquo;s a pity you was not brought up to something,&rsquo;
said he.</p>
<p>I said I thought so too.</p>
<p>Appearing to be informed with an idea, he laid down his plane (for
it was a plane he was at work with), pushed up his spectacles again,
and came to the door.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Would a po-shay do for you?&rsquo; he asked.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I am not sure that I understand what you mean.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Would a po-shay,&rsquo; said the coachmaker, standing close
before me, and folding his arms in the manner of a cross-examining counsel&mdash;&lsquo;would
a po-shay meet the views you have expressed?&nbsp; Yes, or no?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Yes.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Then you keep straight along down there till you see one.&nbsp;
<i>You&rsquo;ll</i> see one if you go fur enough.&rsquo;</p>
<p>With that, he turned me by the shoulder in the direction I was to
take, and went in and resumed his work against a background of leaves
and grapes.&nbsp; For, although he was a soured man and a discontented,
his workshop was that agreeable mixture of town and country, street
and garden, which is often to be seen in a small English town.</p>
<p>I went the way he had turned me, and I came to the Beer-shop with
the sign of The First and Last, and was out of the town on the old London
road.&nbsp; I came to the Turnpike, and I found it, in its silent way,
eloquent respecting the change that had fallen on the road.&nbsp; The
Turnpike-house was all overgrown with ivy; and the Turnpike-keeper,
unable to get a living out of the tolls, plied the trade of a cobbler.&nbsp;
Not only that, but his wife sold ginger-beer, and, in the very window
of espial through which the Toll-takers of old times used with awe to
behold the grand London coaches coming on at a gallop, exhibited for
sale little barber&rsquo;s-poles of sweetstuff in a sticky lantern.</p>
<p>The political economy of the master of the turnpike thus expressed
itself.</p>
<p>&lsquo;How goes turnpike business, master?&rsquo; said I to him,
as he sat in his little porch, repairing a shoe.</p>
<p>&lsquo;It don&rsquo;t go at all, master,&rsquo; said he to me.&nbsp;
&lsquo;It&rsquo;s stopped.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;That&rsquo;s bad,&rsquo; said I.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Bad?&rsquo; he repeated.&nbsp; And he pointed to one of his
sunburnt dusty children who was climbing the turnpike-gate, and said,
extending his open right hand in remonstrance with Universal Nature.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Five on &rsquo;em!&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;But how to improve Turnpike business?&rsquo; said I.</p>
<p>&lsquo;There&rsquo;s a way, master,&rsquo; said he, with the air
of one who had thought deeply on the subject.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I should like to know it.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Lay a toll on everything as comes through; lay a toll on walkers.&nbsp;
Lay another toll on everything as don&rsquo;t come through; lay a toll
on them as stops at home.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Would the last remedy be fair?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Fair?&nbsp; Them as stops at home, could come through if they
liked; couldn&rsquo;t they?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Say they could.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Toll &rsquo;em.&nbsp; If they don&rsquo;t come through, it&rsquo;s
<i>their</i> look out.&nbsp; Anyways,&mdash;Toll &rsquo;em!&rsquo;</p>
<p>Finding it was as impossible to argue with this financial genius
as if he had been Chancellor of the Exchequer, and consequently the
right man in the right place, I passed on meekly.</p>
<p>My mind now began to misgive me that the disappointed coach-maker
had sent me on a wild-goose errand, and that there was no post-chaise
in those parts.&nbsp; But coming within view of certain allotment-gardens
by the roadside, I retracted the suspicion, and confessed that I had
done him an injustice.&nbsp; For, there I saw, surely, the poorest superannuated
post-chaise left on earth.</p>
<p>It was a post-chaise taken off its axletree and wheels, and plumped
down on the clayey soil among a ragged growth of vegetables.&nbsp; It
was a post-chaise not even set straight upon the ground, but tilted
over, as if it had fallen out of a balloon.&nbsp; It was a post-chaise
that had been a long time in those decayed circumstances, and against
which scarlet beans were trained.&nbsp; It was a post-chaise patched
and mended with old tea-trays, or with scraps of iron that looked like
them, and boarded up as to the windows, but having A KNOCKER on the
off-side door.&nbsp; Whether it was a post-chaise used as tool-house,
summer-house, or dwelling-house, I could not discover, for there was
nobody at home at the post-chaise when I knocked, but it was certainly
used for something, and locked up.&nbsp; In the wonder of this discovery,
I walked round and round the post-chaise many times, and sat down by
the post-chaise, waiting for further elucidation.&nbsp; None came.&nbsp;
At last, I made my way back to the old London road by the further end
of the allotment-gardens, and consequently at a point beyond that from
which I had diverged.&nbsp; I had to scramble through a hedge and down
a steep bank, and I nearly came down a-top of a little spare man who
sat breaking stones by the roadside.</p>
<p>He stayed his hammer, and said, regarding me mysteriously through
his dark goggles of wire:</p>
<p>&lsquo;Are you aware, sir, that you&rsquo;ve been trespassing?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I turned out of the way,&rsquo; said I, in explanation, &lsquo;to
look at that odd post-chaise.&nbsp; Do you happen to know anything about
it?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I know it was many a year upon the road,&rsquo; said he.</p>
<p>&lsquo;So I supposed.&nbsp; Do you know to whom it belongs?&rsquo;</p>
<p>The stone-breaker bent his brows and goggles over his heap of stones,
as if he were considering whether he should answer the question or not.&nbsp;
Then, raising his barred eyes to my features as before, he said:</p>
<p>&lsquo;To me.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Being quite unprepared for the reply, I received it with a sufficiently
awkward &lsquo;Indeed!&nbsp; Dear me!&rsquo;&nbsp; Presently I added,
&lsquo;Do you&mdash;&rsquo; I was going to say &lsquo;live there,&rsquo;
but it seemed so absurd a question, that I substituted &lsquo;live near
here?&rsquo;</p>
<p>The stone-breaker, who had not broken a fragment since we began to
converse, then did as follows.&nbsp; He raised himself by poising his
finger on his hammer, and took his coat, on which he had been seated,
over his arm.&nbsp; He then backed to an easier part of the bank than
that by which I had come down, keeping his dark goggles silently upon
me all the time, and then shouldered his hammer, suddenly turned, ascended,
and was gone.&nbsp; His face was so small, and his goggles were so large,
that he left me wholly uninformed as to his countenance; but he left
me a profound impression that the curved legs I had seen from behind
as he vanished, were the legs of an old postboy.&nbsp; It was not until
then that I noticed he had been working by a grass-grown milestone,
which looked like a tombstone erected over the grave of the London road.</p>
<p>My dinner-hour being close at hand, I had no leisure to pursue the
goggles or the subject then, but made my way back to the Dolphin&rsquo;s
Head.&nbsp; In the gateway I found J. Mellows, looking at nothing, and
apparently experiencing that it failed to raise his spirits.</p>
<p>&lsquo;<i>I</i> don&rsquo;t care for the town,&rsquo; said J. Mellows,
when I complimented him on the sanitary advantages it may or may not
possess; &lsquo;I wish I had never seen the town!&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;You don&rsquo;t belong to it, Mr. Mellows?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Belong to it!&rsquo; repeated Mellows.&nbsp; &lsquo;If I didn&rsquo;t
belong to a better style of town than this, I&rsquo;d take and drown
myself in a pail.&rsquo;&nbsp; It then occurred to me that Mellows,
having so little to do, was habitually thrown back on his internal resources&mdash;by
which I mean the Dolphin&rsquo;s cellar.</p>
<p>&lsquo;What we want,&rsquo; said Mellows, pulling off his hat, and
making as if he emptied it of the last load of Disgust that had exuded
from his brain, before he put it on again for another load; &lsquo;what
we want, is a Branch.&nbsp; The Petition for the Branch Bill is in the
coffee-room.&nbsp; Would you put your name to it?&nbsp; Every little
helps.&rsquo;</p>
<p>I found the document in question stretched out flat on the coffee-room
table by the aid of certain weights from the kitchen, and I gave it
the additional weight of my uncommercial signature.&nbsp; To the best
of my belief, I bound myself to the modest statement that universal
traffic, happiness, prosperity, and civilisation, together with unbounded
national triumph in competition with the foreigner, would infallibly
flow from the Branch.</p>
<p>Having achieved this constitutional feat, I asked Mr. Mellows if
he could grace my dinner with a pint of good wine?&nbsp; Mr. Mellows
thus replied.</p>
<p>&lsquo;If I couldn&rsquo;t give you a pint of good wine, I&rsquo;d&mdash;there!&mdash;I&rsquo;d
take and drown myself in a pail.&nbsp; But I was deceived when I bought
this business, and the stock was higgledy-piggledy, and I haven&rsquo;t
yet tasted my way quite through it with a view to sorting it.&nbsp;
Therefore, if you order one kind and get another, change till it comes
right.&nbsp; For what,&rsquo; said Mellows, unloading his hat as before,
&lsquo;what would you or any gentleman do, if you ordered one kind of
wine and was required to drink another?&nbsp; Why, you&rsquo;d (and
naturally and properly, having the feelings of a gentleman), you&rsquo;d
take and drown yourself in a pail!&rsquo;</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XXV&mdash;THE BOILED BEEF OF NEW ENGLAND</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>The shabbiness of our English capital, as compared with Paris, Bordeaux,
Frankfort, Milan, Geneva&mdash;almost any important town on the continent
of Europe&mdash;I find very striking after an absence of any duration
in foreign parts.&nbsp; London is shabby in contrast with Edinburgh,
with Aberdeen, with Exeter, with Liverpool, with a bright little town
like Bury St. Edmunds.&nbsp; London is shabby in contrast with New York,
with Boston, with Philadelphia.&nbsp; In detail, one would say it can
rarely fail to be a disappointing piece of shabbiness, to a stranger
from any of those places.&nbsp; There is nothing shabbier than Drury-lane,
in Rome itself.&nbsp; The meanness of Regent-street, set against the
great line of Boulevards in Paris, is as striking as the abortive ugliness
of Trafalgar-square, set against the gallant beauty of the Place de
la Concorde.&nbsp; London is shabby by daylight, and shabbier by gaslight.&nbsp;
No Englishman knows what gaslight is, until he sees the Rue de Rivoli
and the Palais Royal after dark.</p>
<p>The mass of London people are shabby.&nbsp; The absence of distinctive
dress has, no doubt, something to do with it.&nbsp; The porters of the
Vintners&rsquo; Company, the draymen, and the butchers, are about the
only people who wear distinctive dresses; and even these do not wear
them on holidays.&nbsp; We have nothing which for cheapness, cleanliness,
convenience, or picturesqueness, can compare with the belted blouse.&nbsp;
As to our women;&mdash;next Easter or Whitsuntide, look at the bonnets
at the British Museum or the National Gallery, and think of the pretty
white French cap, the Spanish mantilla, or the Genoese mezzero.</p>
<p>Probably there are not more second-hand clothes sold in London than
in Paris, and yet the mass of the London population have a second-hand
look which is not to be detected on the mass of the Parisian population.&nbsp;
I think this is mainly because a Parisian workman does not in the least
trouble himself about what is worn by a Parisian idler, but dresses
in the way of his own class, and for his own comfort.&nbsp; In London,
on the contrary, the fashions descend; and you never fully know how
inconvenient or ridiculous a fashion is, until you see it in its last
descent.&nbsp; It was but the other day, on a race-course, that I observed
four people in a barouche deriving great entertainment from the contemplation
of four people on foot.&nbsp; The four people on foot were two young
men and two young women; the four people in the barouche were two young
men and two young women.&nbsp; The four young women were dressed in
exactly the same style; the four young men were dressed in exactly the
same style.&nbsp; Yet the two couples on wheels were as much amused
by the two couples on foot, as if they were quite unconscious of having
themselves set those fashions, or of being at that very moment engaged
in the display of them.</p>
<p>Is it only in the matter of clothes that fashion descends here in
London&mdash;and consequently in England&mdash;and thence shabbiness
arises?&nbsp; Let us think a little, and be just.&nbsp; The &lsquo;Black
Country&rsquo; round about Birmingham, is a very black country; but
is it quite as black as it has been lately painted?&nbsp; An appalling
accident happened at the People&rsquo;s Park near Birmingham, this last
July, when it was crowded with people from the Black Country&mdash;an
appalling accident consequent on a shamefully dangerous exhibition.&nbsp;
Did the shamefully dangerous exhibition originate in the moral blackness
of the Black Country, and in the Black People&rsquo;s peculiar love
of the excitement attendant on great personal hazard, which they looked
on at, but in which they did not participate?&nbsp; Light is much wanted
in the Black Country.&nbsp; O we are all agreed on that.&nbsp; But,
we must not quite forget the crowds of gentlefolks who set the shamefully
dangerous fashion, either.&nbsp; We must not quite forget the enterprising
Directors of an Institution vaunting mighty educational pretences, who
made the low sensation as strong as they possibly could make it, by
hanging the Blondin rope as high as they possibly could hang it.&nbsp;
All this must not be eclipsed in the Blackness of the Black Country.&nbsp;
The reserved seats high up by the rope, the cleared space below it,
so that no one should be smashed but the performer, the pretence of
slipping and falling off, the baskets for the feet and the sack for
the head, the photographs everywhere, and the virtuous indignation nowhere&mdash;all
this must not be wholly swallowed up in the blackness of the jet-black
country.</p>
<p>Whatsoever fashion is set in England, is certain to descend.&nbsp;
This is a text for a perpetual sermon on care in setting fashions.&nbsp;
When you find a fashion low down, look back for the time (it will never
be far off) when it was the fashion high up.&nbsp; This is the text
for a perpetual sermon on social justice.&nbsp; From imitations of Ethiopian
Serenaders, to imitations of Prince&rsquo;s coats and waistcoats, you
will find the original model in St. James&rsquo;s Parish.&nbsp; When
the Serenaders become tiresome, trace them beyond the Black Country;
when the coats and waistcoats become insupportable, refer them to their
source in the Upper Toady Regions.</p>
<p>Gentlemen&rsquo;s clubs were once maintained for purposes of savage
party warfare; working men&rsquo;s clubs of the same day assumed the
same character.&nbsp; Gentlemen&rsquo;s clubs became places of quiet
inoffensive recreation; working men&rsquo;s clubs began to follow suit.&nbsp;
If working men have seemed rather slow to appreciate advantages of combination
which have saved the pockets of gentlemen, and enhanced their comforts,
it is because working men could scarcely, for want of capital, originate
such combinations without help; and because help has not been separable
from that great impertinence, Patronage.&nbsp; The instinctive revolt
of his spirit against patronage, is a quality much to be respected in
the English working man.&nbsp; It is the base of the base of his best
qualities.&nbsp; Nor is it surprising that he should be unduly suspicious
of patronage, and sometimes resentful of it even where it is not, seeing
what a flood of washy talk has been let loose on his devoted head, or
with what complacent condescension the same devoted head has been smoothed
and patted.&nbsp; It is a proof to me of his self-control that he never
strikes out pugilistically, right and left, when addressed as one of
&lsquo;My friends,&rsquo; or &lsquo;My assembled friends;&rsquo; that
he does not become inappeasable, and run amuck like a Malay, whenever
he sees a biped in broadcloth getting on a platform to talk to him;
that any pretence of improving his mind, does not instantly drive him
out of his mind, and cause him to toss his obliging patron like a mad
bull.</p>
<p>For, how often have I heard the unfortunate working man lectured,
as if he were a little charity-child, humid as to his nasal development,
strictly literal as to his Catechism, and called by Providence to walk
all his days in a station in life represented on festive occasions by
a mug of warm milk-and-water and a bun!&nbsp; What popguns of jokes
have these ears tingled to hear let off at him, what asinine sentiments,
what impotent conclusions, what spelling-book moralities, what adaptations
of the orator&rsquo;s insufferable tediousness to the assumed level
of his understanding!&nbsp; If his sledge-hammers, his spades and pick-axes,
his saws and chisels, his paint-pots and brushes, his forges, furnaces,
and engines, the horses that he drove at his work, and the machines
that drove him at his work, were all toys in one little paper box, and
he the baby who played with them, he could not have been discoursed
to, more impertinently and absurdly than I have heard him discoursed
to times innumerable.&nbsp; Consequently, not being a fool or a fawner,
he has come to acknowledge his patronage by virtually saying: &lsquo;Let
me alone.&nbsp; If you understand me no better than <i>that</i>, sir
and madam, let me alone.&nbsp; You mean very well, I dare say, but I
don&rsquo;t like it, and I won&rsquo;t come here again to have any more
of it.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Whatever is done for the comfort and advancement of the working man
must be so far done by himself as that it is maintained by himself.&nbsp;
And there must be in it no touch of condescension, no shadow of patronage.&nbsp;
In the great working districts, this truth is studied and understood.&nbsp;
When the American civil war rendered it necessary, first in Glasgow,
and afterwards in Manchester, that the working people should be shown
how to avail themselves of the advantages derivable from system, and
from the combination of numbers, in the purchase and the cooking of
their food, this truth was above all things borne in mind.&nbsp; The
quick consequence was, that suspicion and reluctance were vanquished,
and that the effort resulted in an astonishing and a complete success.</p>
<p>Such thoughts passed through my mind on a July morning of this summer,
as I walked towards Commercial Street (not Uncommercial Street), Whitechapel.&nbsp;
The Glasgow and Manchester system had been lately set a-going there,
by certain gentlemen who felt an interest in its diffusion, and I had
been attracted by the following hand-bill printed on rose-coloured paper:</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>SELF-SUPPORTING<br />COOKING DEP&Ocirc;T<br />FOR THE WORKING CLASSES</p>
<p>Commercial-street, Whitechapel,<br />Where Accommodation is provided
for Dining comfortably<br />300 Persons at a time.</p>
<p>Open from 7 A.M. till 7 P.M.</p>
<p>PRICES.</p>
<p>All Articles of the BEST QUALITY.</p>
<pre>Cup of Tea or Coffee&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  One Penny
Bread and Butter&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  One Penny
Bread and Cheese&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  One Penny
Slice of bread&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  One half-penny or
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;One Penny
Boiled Egg&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  One Penny
Ginger Beer&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; One Penny</pre>
<p>The above Articles always ready.</p>
<p>Besides the above may be had, from 12 to 3 o&rsquo;clock,</p>
<pre>Bowl of Scotch Broth&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  One Penny
Bowl of Soup&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  One Penny
Plate of Potatoes&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; One Penny
Plate of Minced Beef&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  Twopence
Plate of Cold Beef&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  Twopence
Plate of Cold Ham&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Twopence
Plate of Plum Pudding or Rice&nbsp; One Penny</pre>
<p>As the Economy of Cooking depends greatly upon the simplicity of
the arrangements with which a great number of persons can be served
at one time, the Upper Room of this Establishment will be especially
set apart for a</p>
<p>PUBLIC DINNER EVERY DAY</p>
<p>From 12 till 3 o&rsquo;clock,</p>
<p><i>Consisting of the following Dishes:</i></p>
<p>Bowl of Broth, or Soup,<br />Plate of Cold Beef or Ham,<br />Plate
of Potatoes,<br />Plum Pudding, or Rice.</p>
<p>FIXED CHARGE 4.5<i>d</i>.</p>
<p>THE DAILY PAPERS PROVIDED.</p>
<p>N.B.&mdash;This Establishment is conducted on the strictest business
principles, with the full intention of making it self-supporting, so
that every one may frequent it with a feeling of perfect independence.</p>
<p>The assistance of all frequenting the Dep&ocirc;t is confidently
expected in checking anything interfering with the comfort, quiet, and
regularity of the establishment.</p>
<p>Please do not destroy this Hand Bill, but hand it to some other person
whom it may interest.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>The Self-Supporting Cooking Dep&ocirc;t (not a very good name, and
one would rather give it an English one) had hired a newly-built warehouse
that it found to let; therefore it was not established in premises specially
designed for the purpose.&nbsp; But, at a small cost they were exceedingly
well adapted to the purpose: being light, well ventilated, clean, and
cheerful.&nbsp; They consisted of three large rooms.&nbsp; That on the
basement story was the kitchen; that on the ground floor was the general
dining-room; that on the floor above was the Upper Room referred to
in the hand-bill, where the Public Dinner at fourpence-halfpenny a head
was provided every day.&nbsp; The cooking was done, with much economy
of space and fuel, by American cooking-stoves, and by young women not
previously, brought up as cooks; the walls and pillars of the two dining-rooms
were agreeably brightened with ornamental colours; the tables were capable
of accommodating six or eight persons each; the attendants were all
young women, becomingly and neatly dressed, and dressed alike.&nbsp;
I think the whole staff was female, with the exception of the steward
or manager.</p>
<p>My first inquiries were directed to the wages of this staff; because,
if any establishment claiming to be self-supporting, live upon the spoliation
of anybody or anything, or eke out a feeble existence by poor mouths
and beggarly resources (as too many so-called Mechanics&rsquo; Institutions
do), I make bold to express my Uncommercial opinion that it has no business
to live, and had better die.&nbsp; It was made clear to me by the account
books, that every person employed was properly paid.&nbsp; My next inquiries
were directed to the quality of the provisions purchased, and to the
terms on which they were bought.&nbsp; It was made equally clear to
me that the quality was the very best, and that all bills were paid
weekly.&nbsp; My next inquiries were directed to the balance-sheet for
the last two weeks&mdash;only the third and fourth of the establishment&rsquo;s
career.&nbsp; It was made equally clear to me, that after everything
bought was paid for, and after each week was charged with its full share
of wages, rent and taxes, depreciation of plant in use, and interest
on capital at the rate of four per cent. per annum, the last week had
yielded a profit of (in round numbers) one pound ten; and the previous
week a profit of six pounds ten.&nbsp; By this time I felt that I had
a healthy appetite for the dinners.</p>
<p>It had just struck twelve, and a quick succession of faces had already
begun to appear at a little window in the wall of the partitioned space
where I sat looking over the books.&nbsp; Within this little window,
like a pay-box at a theatre, a neat and brisk young woman presided to
take money and issue tickets.&nbsp; Every one coming in must take a
ticket.&nbsp; Either the fourpence-halfpenny ticket for the upper room
(the most popular ticket, I think), or a penny ticket for a bowl of
soup, or as many penny tickets as he or she choose to buy.&nbsp; For
three penny tickets one had quite a wide range of choice.&nbsp; A plate
of cold boiled beef and potatoes; or a plate of cold ham and potatoes;
or a plate of hot minced beef and potatoes; or a bowl of soup, bread
and cheese, and a plate of plum-pudding.&nbsp; Touching what they should
have, some customers on taking their seats fell into a reverie&mdash;became
mildly distracted&mdash;postponed decision, and said in bewilderment,
they would think of it.&nbsp; One old man I noticed when I sat among
the tables in the lower room, who was startled by the bill of fare,
and sat contemplating it as if it were something of a ghostly nature.&nbsp;
The decision of the boys was as rapid as their execution, and always
included pudding.</p>
<p>There were several women among the diners, and several clerks and
shopmen.&nbsp; There were carpenters and painters from the neighbouring
buildings under repair, and there were nautical men, and there were,
as one diner observed to me, &lsquo;some of most sorts.&rsquo;&nbsp;
Some were solitary, some came two together, some dined in parties of
three or four, or six.&nbsp; The latter talked together, but assuredly
no one was louder than at my club in Pall-Mall.&nbsp; One young fellow
whistled in rather a shrill manner while he waited for his dinner, but
I was gratified to observe that he did so in evident defiance of my
Uncommercial individuality.&nbsp; Quite agreeing with him, on consideration,
that I had no business to be there, unless I dined like the rest, &lsquo;I
went in,&rsquo; as the phrase is, for fourpence-halfpenny.</p>
<p>The room of the fourpence-halfpenny banquet had, like the lower room,
a counter in it, on which were ranged a great number of cold portions
ready for distribution.&nbsp; Behind this counter, the fragrant soup
was steaming in deep cans, and the best-cooked of potatoes were fished
out of similar receptacles.&nbsp; Nothing to eat was touched with his
hand.&nbsp; Every waitress had her own tables to attend to.&nbsp; As
soon as she saw a new customer seat himself at one of her tables, she
took from the counter all his dinner&mdash;his soup, potatoes, meat,
and pudding&mdash;piled it up dexterously in her two hands, set it before
him, and took his ticket.&nbsp; This serving of the whole dinner at
once, had been found greatly to simplify the business of attendance,
and was also popular with the customers: who were thus enabled to vary
the meal by varying the routine of dishes: beginning with soup-to-day,
putting soup in the middle to-morrow, putting soup at the end the day
after to-morrow, and ringing similar changes on meat and pudding.&nbsp;
The rapidity with which every new-comer got served, was remarkable;
and the dexterity with which the waitresses (quite new to the art a
month before) discharged their duty, was as agreeable to see, as the
neat smartness with which they wore their dress and had dressed their
hair.</p>
<p>If I seldom saw better waiting, so I certainly never ate better meat,
potatoes, or pudding.&nbsp; And the soup was an honest and stout soup,
with rice and barley in it, and &lsquo;little matters for the teeth
to touch,&rsquo; as had been observed to me by my friend below stairs
already quoted.&nbsp; The dinner-service, too, was neither conspicuously
hideous for High Art nor for Low Art, but was of a pleasant and pure
appearance.&nbsp; Concerning the viands and their cookery, one last
remark.&nbsp; I dined at my club in Pall-Mall aforesaid, a few days
afterwards, for exactly twelve times the money, and not half as well.</p>
<p>The company thickened after one o&rsquo;clock struck, and changed
pretty quickly.&nbsp; Although experience of the place had been so recently
attainable, and although there was still considerable curiosity out
in the street and about the entrance, the general tone was as good as
could be, and the customers fell easily into the ways of the place.&nbsp;
It was clear to me, however, that they were there to have what they
paid for, and to be on an independent footing.&nbsp; To the best of
my judgment, they might be patronised out of the building in a month.&nbsp;
With judicious visiting, and by dint of being questioned, read to, and
talked at, they might even be got rid of (for the next quarter of a
century) in half the time.</p>
<p>This disinterested and wise movement is fraught with so many wholesome
changes in the lives of the working people, and with so much good in
the way of overcoming that suspicion which our own unconscious impertinence
has engendered, that it is scarcely gracious to criticise details as
yet; the rather, because it is indisputable that the managers of the
Whitechapel establishment most thoroughly feel that they are upon their
honour with the customers, as to the minutest points of administration.&nbsp;
But, although the American stoves cannot roast, they can surely boil
one kind of meat as well as another, and need not always circumscribe
their boiling talents within the limits of ham and beef.&nbsp; The most
enthusiastic admirer of those substantials, would probably not object
to occasional inconstancy in respect of pork and mutton: or, especially
in cold weather, to a little innocent trifling with Irish stews, meat
pies, and toads in holes.&nbsp; Another drawback on the Whitechapel
establishment, is the absence of beer.&nbsp; Regarded merely as a question
of policy, it is very impolitic, as having a tendency to send the working
men to the public-house, where gin is reported to be sold.&nbsp; But,
there is a much higher ground on which this absence of beer is objectionable.&nbsp;
It expresses distrust of the working man.&nbsp; It is a fragment of
that old mantle of patronage in which so many estimable Thugs, so darkly
wandering up and down the moral world, are sworn to muffle him.&nbsp;
Good beer is a good thing for him, he says, and he likes it; the Dep&ocirc;t
could give it him good, and he now gets it bad.&nbsp; Why does the Dep&ocirc;t
not give it him good?&nbsp; Because he would get drunk.&nbsp; Why does
the Dep&ocirc;t not let him have a pint with his dinner, which would
not make him drunk?&nbsp; Because he might have had another pint, or
another two pints, before he came.&nbsp; Now, this distrust is an affront,
is exceedingly inconsistent with the confidence the managers express
in their hand-bills, and is a timid stopping-short upon the straight
highway.&nbsp; It is unjust and unreasonable, also.&nbsp; It is unjust,
because it punishes the sober man for the vice of the drunken man.&nbsp;
It is unreasonable, because any one at all experienced in such things
knows that the drunken workman does not get drunk where he goes to eat
and drink, but where he goes to drink&mdash;expressly to drink.&nbsp;
To suppose that the working man cannot state this question to himself
quite as plainly as I state it here, is to suppose that he is a baby,
and is again to tell him in the old wearisome, condescending, patronising
way that he must be goody-poody, and do as he is toldy-poldy, and not
be a manny-panny or a voter-poter, but fold his handy-pandys, and be
a childy-pildy.</p>
<p>I found from the accounts of the Whitechapel Self-Supporting Cooking
Dep&ocirc;t, that every article sold in it, even at the prices I have
quoted, yields a certain small profit!&nbsp; Individual speculators
are of course already in the field, and are of course already appropriating
the name.&nbsp; The classes for whose benefit the real dep&ocirc;ts
are designed, will distinguish between the two kinds of enterprise.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XXVI&mdash;CHATHAM DOCKYARD</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>There are some small out-of-the-way landing places on the Thames
and the Medway, where I do much of my summer idling.&nbsp; Running water
is favourable to day-dreams, and a strong tidal river is the best of
running water for mine.&nbsp; I like to watch the great ships standing
out to sea or coming home richly laden, the active little steam-tugs
confidently puffing with them to and from the sea-horizon, the fleet
of barges that seem to have plucked their brown and russet sails from
the ripe trees in the landscape, the heavy old colliers, light in ballast,
floundering down before the tide, the light screw barks and schooners
imperiously holding a straight course while the others patiently tack
and go about, the yachts with their tiny hulls and great white sheets
of canvas, the little sailing-boats bobbing to and fro on their errands
of pleasure or business, and&mdash;as it is the nature of little people
to do&mdash;making a prodigious fuss about their small affairs.&nbsp;
Watching these objects, I still am under no obligation to think about
them, or even so much as to see them, unless it perfectly suits my humour.&nbsp;
As little am I obliged to hear the plash and flop of the tide, the ripple
at my feet, the clinking windlass afar off, or the humming steam-ship
paddles further away yet.&nbsp; These, with the creaking little jetty
on which I sit, and the gaunt high-water marks and low-water marks in
the mud, and the broken causeway, and the broken bank, and the broken
stakes and piles leaning forward as if they were vain of their personal
appearance and looking for their reflection in the water, will melt
into any train of fancy.&nbsp; Equally adaptable to any purpose or to
none, are the posturing sheep and kine upon the marshes, the gulls that
wheel and dip around me, the crows (well out of gunshot) going home
from the rich harvest-fields, the heron that has been out a-fishing
and looks as melancholy, up there in the sky, as if it hadn&rsquo;t
agreed with him.&nbsp; Everything within the range of the senses will,
by the aid of the running water, lend itself to everything beyond that
range, and work into a drowsy whole, not unlike a kind of tune, but
for which there is no exact definition.</p>
<p>One of these landing-places is near an old fort (I can see the Nore
Light from it with my pocket-glass), from which fort mysteriously emerges
a boy, to whom I am much indebted for additions to my scanty stock of
knowledge.&nbsp; He is a young boy, with an intelligent face burnt to
a dust colour by the summer sun, and with crisp hair of the same hue.&nbsp;
He is a boy in whom I have perceived nothing incompatible with habits
of studious inquiry and meditation, unless an evanescent black eye (I
was delicate of inquiring how occasioned) should be so considered.&nbsp;
To him am I indebted for ability to identify a Custom-house boat at
any distance, and for acquaintance with all the forms and ceremonies
observed by a homeward-bound Indiaman coming up the river, when the
Custom-house officers go aboard her.&nbsp; But for him, I might never
have heard of &lsquo;the dumb-ague,&rsquo; respecting which malady I
am now learned.&nbsp; Had I never sat at his feet, I might have finished
my mortal career and never known that when I see a white horse on a
barge&rsquo;s sail, that barge is a lime barge.&nbsp; For precious secrets
in reference to beer, am I likewise beholden to him, involving warning
against the beer of a certain establishment, by reason of its having
turned sour through failure in point of demand: though my young sage
is not of opinion that similar deterioration has befallen the ale.&nbsp;
He has also enlightened me touching the mushrooms of the marshes, and
has gently reproved my ignorance in having supposed them to be impregnated
with salt.&nbsp; His manner of imparting information, is thoughtful,
and appropriate to the scene.&nbsp; As he reclines beside me, he pitches
into the river, a little stone or piece of grit, and then delivers himself
oracularly, as though he spoke out of the centre of the spreading circle
that it makes in the water.&nbsp; He never improves my mind without
observing this formula.</p>
<p>With the wise boy&mdash;whom I know by no other name than the Spirit
of the Fort&mdash;I recently consorted on a breezy day when the river
leaped about us and was full of life.&nbsp; I had seen the sheaved corn
carrying in the golden fields as I came down to the river; and the rosy
farmer, watching his labouring-men in the saddle on his cob, had told
me how he had reaped his two hundred and sixty acres of long-strawed
corn last week, and how a better week&rsquo;s work he had never done
in all his days.&nbsp; Peace and abundance were on the country-side
in beautiful forms and beautiful colours, and the harvest seemed even
to be sailing out to grace the never-reaped sea in the yellow-laden
barges that mellowed the distance.</p>
<p>It was on this occasion that the Spirit of the Fort, directing his
remarks to a certain floating iron battery lately lying in that reach
of the river, enriched my mind with his opinions on naval architecture,
and informed me that he would like to be an engineer.&nbsp; I found
him up to everything that is done in the contracting line by Messrs.
Peto and Brassey&mdash;cunning in the article of concrete&mdash;mellow
in the matter of iron&mdash;great on the subject of gunnery.&nbsp; When
he spoke of pile-driving and sluice-making, he left me not a leg to
stand on, and I can never sufficiently acknowledge his forbearance with
me in my disabled state.&nbsp; While he thus discoursed, he several
times directed his eyes to one distant quarter of the landscape, and
spoke with vague mysterious awe of &lsquo;the Yard.&rsquo;&nbsp; Pondering
his lessons after we had parted, I bethought me that the Yard was one
of our large public Dockyards, and that it lay hidden among the crops
down in the dip behind the windmills, as if it modestly kept itself
out of view in peaceful times, and sought to trouble no man.&nbsp; Taken
with this modesty on the part of the Yard, I resolved to improve the
Yard&rsquo;s acquaintance.</p>
<p>My good opinion of the Yard&rsquo;s retiring character was not dashed
by nearer approach.&nbsp; It resounded with the noise of hammers beating
upon iron; and the great sheds or slips under which the mighty men-of-war
are built, loomed business-like when contemplated from the opposite
side of the river.&nbsp; For all that, however, the Yard made no display,
but kept itself snug under hill-sides of corn-fields, hop-gardens, and
orchards; its great chimneys smoking with a quiet&mdash;almost a lazy&mdash;air,
like giants smoking tobacco; and the great Shears moored off it, looking
meekly and inoffensively out of proportion, like the Giraffe of the
machinery creation.&nbsp; The store of cannon on the neighbouring gun-wharf,
had an innocent toy-like appearance, and the one red-coated sentry on
duty over them was a mere toy figure, with a clock-work movement.&nbsp;
As the hot sunlight sparkled on him he might have passed for the identical
little man who had the little gun, and whose bullets they were made
of lead, lead, lead.</p>
<p>Crossing the river and landing at the Stairs, where a drift of chips
and weed had been trying to land before me and had not succeeded, but
had got into a corner instead, I found the very street posts to be cannon,
and the architectural ornaments to be shells.&nbsp; And so I came to
the Yard, which was shut up tight and strong with great folded gates,
like an enormous patent safe.&nbsp; These gates devouring me, I became
digested into the Yard; and it had, at first, a clean-swept holiday
air, as if it had given over work until next war-time.&nbsp; Though
indeed a quantity of hemp for rope was tumbling out of store-houses,
even there, which would hardly be lying like so much hay on the white
stones if the Yard were as placid as it pretended.</p>
<p>Ding, Clash, Dong, BANG, Boom, Rattle, Clash, BANG, Clink, BANG,
Dong, BANG, Clatter, BANG BANG BANG!&nbsp; What on earth is this!&nbsp;
This is, or soon will be, the Achilles, iron armour-plated ship.&nbsp;
Twelve hundred men are working at her now; twelve hundred men working
on stages over her sides, over her bows, over her stern, under her keel,
between her decks, down in her hold, within her and without, crawling
and creeping into the finest curves of her lines wherever it is possible
for men to twist.&nbsp; Twelve hundred hammerers, measurers, caulkers,
armourers, forgers, smiths, shipwrights; twelve hundred dingers, clashers,
dongers, rattlers, clinkers, bangers bangers bangers!&nbsp; Yet all
this stupendous uproar around the rising Achilles is as nothing to the
reverberations with which the perfected Achilles shall resound upon
the dreadful day when the full work is in hand for which this is but
note of preparation&mdash;the day when the scuppers that are now fitting
like great, dry, thirsty conduit-pipes, shall run red.&nbsp; All these
busy figures between decks, dimly seen bending at their work in smoke
and fire, are as nothing to the figures that shall do work here of another
kind in smoke and fire, that day.&nbsp; These steam-worked engines alongside,
helping the ship by travelling to and fro, and wafting tons of iron
plates about, as though they were so many leaves of trees, would be
rent limb from limb if they stood by her for a minute then.&nbsp; To
think that this Achilles, monstrous compound of iron tank and oaken
chest, can ever swim or roll!&nbsp; To think that any force of wind
and wave could ever break her!&nbsp; To think that wherever I see a
glowing red-hot iron point thrust out of her side from within&mdash;as
I do now, there, and there, and there!&mdash;and two watching men on
a stage without, with bared arms and sledge-hammers, strike at it fiercely,
and repeat their blows until it is black and flat, I see a rivet being
driven home, of which there are many in every iron plate, and thousands
upon thousands in the ship!&nbsp; To think that the difficulty I experience
in appreciating the ship&rsquo;s size when I am on board, arises from
her being a series of iron tanks and oaken chests, so that internally
she is ever finishing and ever beginning, and half of her might be smashed,
and yet the remaining half suffice and be sound.&nbsp; Then, to go over
the side again and down among the ooze and wet to the bottom of the
dock, in the depths of the subterranean forest of dog-shores and stays
that hold her up, and to see the immense mass bulging out against the
upper light, and tapering down towards me, is, with great pains and
much clambering, to arrive at an impossibility of realising that this
is a ship at all, and to become possessed by the fancy that it is an
enormous immovable edifice set up in an ancient amphitheatre (say, that
at Verona), and almost filling it! Yet what would even these things
be, without the tributary workshops and the mechanical powers for piercing
the iron plates&mdash;four inches and a half thick&mdash;for rivets,
shaping them under hydraulic pressure to the finest tapering turns of
the ship&rsquo;s lines, and paring them away, with knives shaped like
the beaks of strong and cruel birds, to the nicest requirements of the
design!&nbsp; These machines of tremendous force, so easily directed
by one attentive face and presiding hand, seem to me to have in them
something of the retiring character of the Yard.&nbsp; &lsquo;Obedient
monster, please to bite this mass of iron through and through, at equal
distances, where these regular chalk-marks are, all round.&rsquo;&nbsp;
Monster looks at its work, and lifting its ponderous head, replies,
&lsquo;I don&rsquo;t particularly want to do it; but if it must be done&mdash;!&rsquo;&nbsp;
The solid metal wriggles out, hot from the monster&rsquo;s crunching
tooth, and it <i>is</i> done.&nbsp; &lsquo;Dutiful monster, observe
this other mass of iron.&nbsp; It is required to be pared away, according
to this delicately lessening and arbitrary line, which please to look
at.&rsquo;&nbsp; Monster (who has been in a reverie) brings down its
blunt head, and, much in the manner of Doctor Johnson, closely looks
along the line&mdash;very closely, being somewhat near-sighted.&nbsp;
&lsquo;I don&rsquo;t particularly want to do it; but if it must be done&mdash;!&rsquo;&nbsp;
Monster takes another near-sighted look, takes aim, and the tortured
piece writhes off, and falls, a hot, tight-twisted snake, among the
ashes.&nbsp; The making of the rivets is merely a pretty round game,
played by a man and a boy, who put red-hot barley sugar in a Pope Joan
board, and immediately rivets fall out of window; but the tone of the
great machines is the tone of the great Yard and the great country:
&lsquo;We don&rsquo;t particularly want to do it; but if it must be
done&mdash;!&rsquo;</p>
<p>How such a prodigious mass as the Achilles can ever be held by such
comparatively little anchors as those intended for her and lying near
her here, is a mystery of seamanship which I will refer to the wise
boy.&nbsp; For my own part, I should as soon have thought of tethering
an elephant to a tent-peg, or the larger hippopotamus in the Zoological
Gardens to my shirt-pin.&nbsp; Yonder in the river, alongside a hulk,
lie two of this ship&rsquo;s hollow iron masts.&nbsp; <i>They</i> are
large enough for the eye, I find, and so are all her other appliances.&nbsp;
I wonder why only her anchors look small.</p>
<p>I have no present time to think about it, for I am going to see the
workshops where they make all the oars used in the British Navy.&nbsp;
A pretty large pile of building, I opine, and a pretty long job!&nbsp;
As to the building, I am soon disappointed, because the work is all
done in one loft.&nbsp; And as to a long job&mdash;what is this?&nbsp;
Two rather large mangles with a swarm of butterflies hovering over them?&nbsp;
What can there be in the mangles that attracts butterflies?</p>
<p>Drawing nearer, I discern that these are not mangles, but intricate
machines, set with knives and saws and planes, which cut smooth and
straight here, and slantwise there, and now cut such a depth, and now
miss cutting altogether, according to the predestined requirements of
the pieces of wood that are pushed on below them: each of which pieces
is to be an oar, and is roughly adapted to that purpose before it takes
its final leave of far-off forests, and sails for England.&nbsp; Likewise
I discern that the butterflies are not true butterflies, but wooden
shavings, which, being spirted up from the wood by the violence of the
machinery, and kept in rapid and not equal movement by the impulse of
its rotation on the air, flutter and play, and rise and fall, and conduct
themselves as like butterflies as heart could wish.&nbsp; Suddenly the
noise and motion cease, and the butterflies drop dead.&nbsp; An oar
has been made since I came in, wanting the shaped handle.&nbsp; As quickly
as I can follow it with my eye and thought, the same oar is carried
to a turning lathe.&nbsp; A whirl and a Nick!&nbsp; Handle made.&nbsp;
Oar finished.</p>
<p>The exquisite beauty and efficiency of this machinery need no illustration,
but happen to have a pointed illustration to-day.&nbsp; A pair of oars
of unusual size chance to be wanted for a special purpose, and they
have to be made by hand.&nbsp; Side by side with the subtle and facile
machine, and side by side with the fast-growing pile of oars on the
floor, a man shapes out these special oars with an axe.&nbsp; Attended
by no butterflies, and chipping and dinting, by comparison as leisurely
as if he were a labouring Pagan getting them ready against his decease
at threescore and ten, to take with him as a present to Charon for his
boat, the man (aged about thirty) plies his task.&nbsp; The machine
would make a regulation oar while the man wipes his forehead.&nbsp;
The man might be buried in a mound made of the strips of thin, broad,
wooden ribbon torn from the wood whirled into oars as the minutes fall
from the clock, before he had done a forenoon&rsquo;s work with his
axe.</p>
<p>Passing from this wonderful sight to the Ships again&mdash;for my
heart, as to the Yard, is where the ships are&mdash;I notice certain
unfinished wooden walls left seasoning on the stocks, pending the solution
of the merits of the wood and iron question, and having an air of biding
their time with surly confidence.&nbsp; The names of these worthies
are set up beside them, together with their capacity in guns&mdash;a
custom highly conducive to ease and satisfaction in social intercourse,
if it could be adapted to mankind.&nbsp; By a plank more gracefully
pendulous than substantial, I make bold to go aboard a transport ship
(iron screw) just sent in from the contractor&rsquo;s yard to be inspected
and passed.&nbsp; She is a very gratifying experience, in the simplicity
and humanity of her arrangements for troops, in her provision for light
and air and cleanliness, and in her care for women and children.&nbsp;
It occurs to me, as I explore her, that I would require a handsome sum
of money to go aboard her, at midnight by the Dockyard bell, and stay
aboard alone till morning; for surely she must be haunted by a crowd
of ghosts of obstinate old martinets, mournfully flapping their cherubic
epaulettes over the changed times.&nbsp; Though still we may learn from
the astounding ways and means in our Yards now, more highly than ever
to respect the forefathers who got to sea, and fought the sea, and held
the sea, without them.&nbsp; This remembrance putting me in the best
of tempers with an old hulk, very green as to her copper, and generally
dim and patched, I pull off my hat to her.&nbsp; Which salutation a
callow and downy-faced young officer of Engineers, going by at the moment,
perceiving, appropriates&mdash;and to which he is most heartily welcome,
I am sure.</p>
<p>Having been torn to pieces (in imagination) by the steam circular
saws, perpendicular saws, horizontal saws, and saws of eccentric action,
I come to the sauntering part of my expedition, and consequently to
the core of my Uncommercial pursuits.</p>
<p>Everywhere, as I saunter up and down the Yard, I meet with tokens
of its quiet and retiring character.&nbsp; There is a gravity upon its
red brick offices and houses, a staid pretence of having nothing worth
mentioning to do, an avoidance of display, which I never saw out of
England.&nbsp; The white stones of the pavement present no other trace
of Achilles and his twelve hundred banging men (not one of whom strikes
an attitude) than a few occasional echoes.&nbsp; But for a whisper in
the air suggestive of sawdust and shavings, the oar-making and the saws
of many movements might be miles away.&nbsp; Down below here, is the
great reservoir of water where timber is steeped in various temperatures,
as a part of its seasoning process.&nbsp; Above it, on a tramroad supported
by pillars, is a Chinese Enchanter&rsquo;s Car, which fishes the logs
up, when sufficiently steeped, and rolls smoothly away with them to
stack them.&nbsp; When I was a child (the Yard being then familiar to
me) I used to think that I should like to play at Chinese Enchanter,
and to have that apparatus placed at my disposal for the purpose by
a beneficent country.&nbsp; I still think that I should rather like
to try the effect of writing a book in it.&nbsp; Its retirement is complete,
and to go gliding to and fro among the stacks of timber would be a convenient
kind of travelling in foreign countries&mdash;among the forests of North
America, the sodden Honduras swamps, the dark pine woods, the Norwegian
frosts, and the tropical heats, rainy seasons, and thunderstorms.&nbsp;
The costly store of timber is stacked and stowed away in sequestered
places, with the pervading avoidance of flourish or effect.&nbsp; It
makes as little of itself as possible, and calls to no one &lsquo;Come
and look at me!&rsquo;&nbsp; And yet it is picked out from the trees
of the world; picked out for length, picked out for breadth, picked
out for straightness, picked out for crookedness, chosen with an eye
to every need of ship and boat.&nbsp; Strangely twisted pieces lie about,
precious in the sight of shipwrights.&nbsp; Sauntering through these
groves, I come upon an open glade where workmen are examining some timber
recently delivered.&nbsp; Quite a pastoral scene, with a background
of river and windmill! and no more like War than the American States
are at present like an Union.</p>
<p>Sauntering among the ropemaking, I am spun into a state of blissful
indolence, wherein my rope of life seems to be so untwisted by the process
as that I can see back to very early days indeed, when my bad dreams&mdash;they
were frightful, though my more mature understanding has never made out
why&mdash;were of an interminable sort of ropemaking, with long minute
filaments for strands, which, when they were spun home together close
to my eyes, occasioned screaming.&nbsp; Next, I walk among the quiet
lofts of stores&mdash;of sails, spars, rigging, ships&rsquo; boats&mdash;determined
to believe that somebody in authority wears a girdle and bends beneath
the weight of a massive bunch of keys, and that, when such a thing is
wanted, he comes telling his keys like Blue Beard, and opens such a
door.&nbsp; Impassive as the long lofts look, let the electric battery
send down the word, and the shutters and doors shall fly open, and such
a fleet of armed ships, under steam and under sail, shall burst forth
as will charge the old Medway&mdash;where the merry Stuart let the Dutch
come, while his not so merry sailors starved in the streets&mdash;with
something worth looking at to carry to the sea.&nbsp; Thus I idle round
to the Medway again, where it is now flood tide; and I find the river
evincing a strong solicitude to force a way into the dry dock where
Achilles is waited on by the twelve hundred bangers, with intent to
bear the whole away before they are ready.</p>
<p>To the last, the Yard puts a quiet face upon it; for I make my way
to the gates through a little quiet grove of trees, shading the quaintest
of Dutch landing-places, where the leaf-speckled shadow of a shipwright
just passing away at the further end might be the shadow of Russian
Peter himself.&nbsp; So, the doors of the great patent safe at last
close upon me, and I take boat again: somehow, thinking as the oars
dip, of braggart Pistol and his brood, and of the quiet monsters of
the Yard, with their &lsquo;We don&rsquo;t particularly want to do it;
but if it must be done&mdash;!&rsquo;&nbsp; Scrunch.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XXVII&mdash;IN THE FRENCH-FLEMISH COUNTRY</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>&lsquo;It is neither a bold nor a diversified country,&rsquo; said
I to myself, &lsquo;this country which is three-quarters Flemish, and
a quarter French; yet it has its attractions too.&nbsp; Though great
lines of railway traverse it, the trains leave it behind, and go puffing
off to Paris and the South, to Belgium and Germany, to the Northern
Sea-Coast of France, and to England, and merely smoke it a little in
passing.&nbsp; Then I don&rsquo;t know it, and that is a good reason
for being here; and I can&rsquo;t pronounce half the long queer names
I see inscribed over the shops, and that is another good reason for
being here, since I surely ought to learn how.&rsquo;&nbsp; In short,
I was &lsquo;here,&rsquo; and I wanted an excuse for not going away
from here, and I made it to my satisfaction, and stayed here.</p>
<p>What part in my decision was borne by Monsieur P. Salcy, is of no
moment, though I own to encountering that gentleman&rsquo;s name on
a red bill on the wall, before I made up my mind.&nbsp; Monsieur P.
Salcy, &lsquo;par permission de M. le Maire,&rsquo; had established
his theatre in the whitewashed H&ocirc;tel de Ville, on the steps of
which illustrious edifice I stood.&nbsp; And Monsieur P. Salcy, privileged
director of such theatre, situate in &lsquo;the first theatrical arrondissement
of the department of the North,&rsquo; invited French-Flemish mankind
to come and partake of the intellectual banquet provided by his family
of dramatic artists, fifteen subjects in number.&nbsp; &lsquo;La Famille
P. SALCY, compos&eacute;e d&rsquo;artistes dramatiques, au nombre de
15 sujets.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Neither a bold nor a diversified country, I say again, and withal
an untidy country, but pleasant enough to ride in, when the paved roads
over the flats and through the hollows, are not too deep in black mud.&nbsp;
A country so sparely inhabited, that I wonder where the peasants who
till and sow and reap the ground, can possibly dwell, and also by what
invisible balloons they are conveyed from their distant homes into the
fields at sunrise and back again at sunset.&nbsp; The occasional few
poor cottages and farms in this region, surely cannot afford shelter
to the numbers necessary to the cultivation, albeit the work is done
so very deliberately, that on one long harvest day I have seen, in twelve
miles, about twice as many men and women (all told) reaping and binding.&nbsp;
Yet have I seen more cattle, more sheep, more pigs, and all in better
case, than where there is purer French spoken, and also better ricks&mdash;round
swelling peg-top ricks, well thatched; not a shapeless brown heap, like
the toast of a Giant&rsquo;s toast-and-water, pinned to the earth with
one of the skewers out of his kitchen.&nbsp; A good custom they have
about here, likewise, of prolonging the sloping tiled roof of farm or
cottage, so that it overhangs three or four feet, carrying off the wet,
and making a good drying-place wherein to hang up herbs, or implements,
or what not.&nbsp; A better custom than the popular one of keeping the
refuse-heap and puddle close before the house door: which, although
I paint my dwelling never so brightly blue (and it cannot be too blue
for me, hereabouts), will bring fever inside my door.&nbsp; Wonderful
poultry of the French-Flemish country, why take the trouble to <i>be</i>
poultry?&nbsp; Why not stop short at eggs in the rising generation,
and die out and have done with it?&nbsp; Parents of chickens have I
seen this day, followed by their wretched young families, scratching
nothing out of the mud with an air&mdash;tottering about on legs so
scraggy and weak, that the valiant word drumsticks becomes a mockery
when applied to them, and the crow of the lord and master has been a
mere dejected case of croup.&nbsp; Carts have I seen, and other agricultural
instruments, unwieldy, dislocated, monstrous.&nbsp; Poplar-trees by
the thousand fringe the fields and fringe the end of the flat landscape,
so that I feel, looking straight on before me, as if, when I pass the
extremest fringe on the low horizon, I shall tumble over into space.&nbsp;
Little whitewashed black holes of chapels, with barred doors and Flemish
inscriptions, abound at roadside corners, and often they are garnished
with a sheaf of wooden crosses, like children&rsquo;s swords; or, in
their default, some hollow old tree with a saint roosting in it, is
similarly decorated, or a pole with a very diminutive saint enshrined
aloft in a sort of sacred pigeon-house.&nbsp; Not that we are deficient
in such decoration in the town here, for, over at the church yonder,
outside the building, is a scenic representation of the Crucifixion,
built up with old bricks and stones, and made out with painted canvas
and wooden figures: the whole surmounting the dusty skull of some holy
personage (perhaps), shut up behind a little ashy iron grate, as if
it were originally put there to be cooked, and the fire had long gone
out.&nbsp; A windmilly country this, though the windmills are so damp
and rickety, that they nearly knock themselves off their legs at every
turn of their sails, and creak in loud complaint.&nbsp; A weaving country,
too, for in the wayside cottages the loom goes wearily&mdash;rattle
and click, rattle and click&mdash;and, looking in, I see the poor weaving
peasant, man or woman, bending at the work, while the child, working
too, turns a little hand-wheel put upon the ground to suit its height.&nbsp;
An unconscionable monster, the loom in a small dwelling, asserting himself
ungenerously as the bread-winner, straddling over the children&rsquo;s
straw beds, cramping the family in space and air, and making himself
generally objectionable and tyrannical.&nbsp; He is tributary, too,
to ugly mills and factories and bleaching-grounds, rising out of the
sluiced fields in an abrupt bare way, disdaining, like himself, to be
ornamental or accommodating.&nbsp; Surrounded by these things, here
I stood on the steps of the H&ocirc;tel de Ville, persuaded to remain
by the P. Salcy family, fifteen dramatic subjects strong.</p>
<p>There was a Fair besides.&nbsp; The double persuasion being irresistible,
and my sponge being left behind at the last Hotel, I made the tour of
the little town to buy another.&nbsp; In the small sunny shops&mdash;mercers,
opticians, and druggist-grocers, with here and there an emporium of
religious images&mdash;the gravest of old spectacled Flemish husbands
and wives sat contemplating one another across bare counters, while
the wasps, who seemed to have taken military possession of the town,
and to have placed it under wasp-martial law, executed warlike manoeuvres
in the windows.&nbsp; Other shops the wasps had entirely to themselves,
and nobody cared and nobody came when I beat with a five-franc piece
upon the board of custom.&nbsp; What I sought was no more to be found
than if I had sought a nugget of Californian gold: so I went, spongeless,
to pass the evening with the Family P. Salcy.</p>
<p>The members of the Family P. Salcy were so fat and so like one another&mdash;fathers,
mothers, sisters, brothers, uncles, and aunts&mdash;that I think the
local audience were much confused about the plot of the piece under
representation, and to the last expected that everybody must turn out
to be the long-lost relative of everybody else.&nbsp; The Theatre was
established on the top story of the H&ocirc;tel de Ville, and was approached
by a long bare staircase, whereon, in an airy situation, one of the
P. Salcy Family&mdash;a stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt&mdash;took
the money.&nbsp; This occasioned the greatest excitement of the evening;
for, no sooner did the curtain rise on the introductory Vaudeville,
and reveal in the person of the young lover (singing a very short song
with his eyebrows) apparently the very same identical stout gentleman
imperfectly repressed by a belt, than everybody rushed out to the paying-place,
to ascertain whether he could possibly have put on that dress-coat,
that clear complexion, and those arched black vocal eyebrows, in so
short a space of time.&nbsp; It then became manifest that this was another
stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt: to whom, before the
spectators had recovered their presence of mind, entered a third stout
gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt, exactly like him.&nbsp; These
two &lsquo;subjects,&rsquo; making with the money-taker three of the
announced fifteen, fell into conversation touching a charming young
widow: who, presently appearing, proved to be a stout lady altogether
irrepressible by any means&mdash;quite a parallel case to the American
Negro&mdash;fourth of the fifteen subjects, and sister of the fifth
who presided over the check-department.&nbsp; In good time the whole
of the fifteen subjects were dramatically presented, and we had the
inevitable Ma M&egrave;re, Ma M&egrave;re! and also the inevitable mal&eacute;diction
d&rsquo;un p&egrave;re, and likewise the inevitable Marquis, and also
the inevitable provincial young man, weak-minded but faithful, who followed
Julie to Paris, and cried and laughed and choked all at once.&nbsp;
The story was wrought out with the help of a virtuous spinning-wheel
in the beginning, a vicious set of diamonds in the middle, and a rheumatic
blessing (which arrived by post) from Ma M&egrave;re towards the end;
the whole resulting in a small sword in the body of one of the stout
gentlemen imperfectly repressed by a belt, fifty thousand francs per
annum and a decoration to the other stout gentleman imperfectly repressed
by a belt, and an assurance from everybody to the provincial young man
that if he were not supremely happy&mdash;which he seemed to have no
reason whatever for being&mdash;he ought to be.&nbsp; This afforded
him a final opportunity of crying and laughing and choking all at once,
and sent the audience home sentimentally delighted.&nbsp; Audience more
attentive or better behaved there could not possibly be, though the
places of second rank in the Theatre of the Family P. Salcy were sixpence
each in English money, and the places of first rank a shilling.&nbsp;
How the fifteen subjects ever got so fat upon it, the kind Heavens know.</p>
<p>What gorgeous china figures of knights and ladies, gilded till they
gleamed again, I might have bought at the Fair for the garniture of
my home, if I had been a French-Flemish peasant, and had had the money!&nbsp;
What shining coffee-cups and saucers I might have won at the turntables,
if I had had the luck!&nbsp; Ravishing perfumery also, and sweetmeats,
I might have speculated in, or I might have fired for prizes at a multitude
of little dolls in niches, and might have hit the doll of dolls, and
won francs and fame.&nbsp; Or, being a French-Flemish youth, I might
have been drawn in a hand-cart by my compeers, to tilt for municipal
rewards at the water-quintain; which, unless I sent my lance clean through
the ring, emptied a full bucket over me; to fend off which, the competitors
wore grotesque old scarecrow hats.&nbsp; Or, being French-Flemish man
or woman, boy or girl, I might have circled all night on my hobby-horse
in a stately cavalcade of hobby-horses four abreast, interspersed with
triumphal cars, going round and round and round and round, we the goodly
company singing a ceaseless chorus to the music of the barrel-organ,
drum, and cymbals.&nbsp; On the whole, not more monotonous than the
Ring in Hyde Park, London, and much merrier; for when do the circling
company sing chorus, <i>there</i>, to the barrel-organ, when do the
ladies embrace their horses round the neck with both arms, when do the
gentlemen fan the ladies with the tails of their gallant steeds?&nbsp;
On all these revolving delights, and on their own especial lamps and
Chinese lanterns revolving with them, the thoughtful weaver-face brightens,
and the H&ocirc;tel de Ville sheds an illuminated line of gaslight:
while above it, the Eagle of France, gas-outlined and apparently afflicted
with the prevailing infirmities that have lighted on the poultry, is
in a very undecided state of policy, and as a bird moulting.&nbsp; Flags
flutter all around.&nbsp; Such is the prevailing gaiety that the keeper
of the prison sits on the stone steps outside the prison-door, to have
a look at the world that is not locked up; while that agreeable retreat,
the wine-shop opposite to the prison in the prison-alley (its sign La
Tranquillit&eacute;, because of its charming situation), resounds with
the voices of the shepherds and shepherdesses who resort there this
festive night.&nbsp; And it reminds me that only this afternoon, I saw
a shepherd in trouble, tending this way, over the jagged stones of a
neighbouring street.&nbsp; A magnificent sight it was, to behold him
in his blouse, a feeble little jog-trot rustic, swept along by the wind
of two immense gendarmes, in cocked-hats for which the street was hardly
wide enough, each carrying a bundle of stolen property that would not
have held his shoulder-knot, and clanking a sabre that dwarfed the prisoner.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you at this Fair, as a
mark of my confidence in the people of this so-renowned town, and as
an act of homage to their good sense and fine taste, the Ventriloquist,
the Ventriloquist!&nbsp; Further, Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to
you the Face-Maker, the Physiognomist, the great Changer of Countenances,
who transforms the features that Heaven has bestowed upon him into an
endless succession of surprising and extraordinary visages, comprehending,
Messieurs et Mesdames, all the contortions, energetic and expressive,
of which the human face is capable, and all the passions of the human
heart, as Love, Jealousy, Revenge, Hatred, Avarice, Despair!&nbsp; Hi
hi!&nbsp; Ho ho!&nbsp; Lu lu!&nbsp; Come in!&rsquo;&nbsp; To this effect,
with an occasional smite upon a sonorous kind of tambourine&mdash;bestowed
with a will, as if it represented the people who won&rsquo;t come in&mdash;holds
forth a man of lofty and severe demeanour; a man in stately uniform,
gloomy with the knowledge he possesses of the inner secrets of the booth.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Come in, come in!&nbsp; Your opportunity presents itself to-night;
to-morrow it will be gone for ever.&nbsp; To-morrow morning by the Express
Train the railroad will reclaim the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker!&nbsp;
Algeria will reclaim the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker!&nbsp; Yes!&nbsp;
For the honour of their country they have accepted propositions of a
magnitude incredible, to appear in Algeria.&nbsp; See them for the last
time before their departure!&nbsp; We go to commence on the instant.&nbsp;
Hi hi!&nbsp; Ho ho!&nbsp; Lu lu!&nbsp; Come in!&nbsp; Take the money
that now ascends, Madame; but after that, no more, for we commence!&nbsp;
Come in!&rsquo;</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the eyes both of the gloomy Speaker and of Madame receiving
sous in a muslin bower, survey the crowd pretty sharply after the ascending
money has ascended, to detect any lingering sous at the turning-point.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Come in, come in!&nbsp; Is there any more money, Madame, on the
point of ascending?&nbsp; If so, we wait for it.&nbsp; If not, we commence!&rsquo;&nbsp;
The orator looks back over his shoulder to say it, lashing the spectators
with the conviction that he beholds through the folds of the drapery
into which he is about to plunge, the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker.&nbsp;
Several sous burst out of pockets, and ascend.&nbsp; &lsquo;Come up,
then, Messieurs!&rsquo; exclaims Madame in a shrill voice, and beckoning
with a bejewelled finger.&nbsp; &lsquo;Come up!&nbsp; This presses.&nbsp;
Monsieur has commanded that they commence!&rsquo;&nbsp; Monsieur dives
into his Interior, and the last half-dozen of us follow.&nbsp; His Interior
is comparatively severe; his Exterior also.&nbsp; A true Temple of Art
needs nothing but seats, drapery, a small table with two moderator lamps
hanging over it, and an ornamental looking-glass let into the wall.&nbsp;
Monsieur in uniform gets behind the table and surveys us with disdain,
his forehead becoming diabolically intellectual under the moderators.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you the Ventriloquist.&nbsp;
He will commence with the celebrated Experience of the bee in the window.&nbsp;
The bee, apparently the veritable bee of Nature, will hover in the window,
and about the room.&nbsp; He will be with difficulty caught in the hand
of Monsieur the Ventriloquist&mdash;he will escape&mdash;he will again
hover&mdash;at length he will be recaptured by Monsieur the Ventriloquist,
and will be with difficulty put into a bottle.&nbsp; Achieve then, Monsieur!&rsquo;&nbsp;
Here the proprietor is replaced behind the table by the Ventriloquist,
who is thin and sallow, and of a weakly aspect.&nbsp; While the bee
is in progress, Monsieur the Proprietor sits apart on a stool, immersed
in dark and remote thought.&nbsp; The moment the bee is bottled, he
stalks forward, eyes us gloomily as we applaud, and then announces,
sternly waving his hand: &lsquo;The magnificent Experience of the child
with the whooping-cough!&rsquo;&nbsp; The child disposed of, he starts
up as before.&nbsp; &lsquo;The superb and extraordinary Experience of
the dialogue between Monsieur Tatambour in his dining-room, and his
domestic, Jerome, in the cellar; concluding with the songsters of the
grove, and the Concert of domestic Farm-yard animals.&rsquo;&nbsp; All
this done, and well done, Monsieur the Ventriloquist withdraws, and
Monsieur the Face-Maker bursts in, as if his retiring-room were a mile
long instead of a yard.&nbsp; A corpulent little man in a large white
waistcoat, with a comic countenance, and with a wig in his hand.&nbsp;
Irreverent disposition to laugh, instantly checked by the tremendous
gravity of the Face-Maker, who intimates in his bow that if we expect
that sort of thing we are mistaken.&nbsp; A very little shaving-glass
with a leg behind it is handed in, and placed on the table before the
Face-Maker.&nbsp; &lsquo;Messieurs et Mesdames, with no other assistance
than this mirror and this wig, I shall have the honour of showing you
a thousand characters.&rsquo;&nbsp; As a preparation, the Face-Maker
with both hands gouges himself, and turns his mouth inside out.&nbsp;
He then becomes frightfully grave again, and says to the Proprietor,
&lsquo;I am ready!&rsquo;&nbsp; Proprietor stalks forth from baleful
reverie, and announces &lsquo;The Young Conscript!&rsquo;&nbsp; Face-Maker
claps his wig on, hind side before, looks in the glass, and appears
above it as a conscript so very imbecile, and squinting so extremely
hard, that I should think the State would never get any good of him.&nbsp;
Thunders of applause.&nbsp; Face-Maker dips behind the looking-glass,
brings his own hair forward, is himself again, is awfully grave.&nbsp;
&lsquo;A distinguished inhabitant of the Faubourg St. Germain.&rsquo;&nbsp;
Face-Maker dips, rises, is supposed to be aged, blear-eyed, toothless,
slightly palsied, supernaturally polite, evidently of noble birth.&nbsp;
&lsquo;The oldest member of the Corps of Invalides on the f&ecirc;te-day
of his master.&rsquo;&nbsp; Face-Maker dips, rises, wears the wig on
one side, has become the feeblest military bore in existence, and (it
is clear) would lie frightfully about his past achievements, if he were
not confined to pantomime.&nbsp; &lsquo;The Miser!&rsquo;&nbsp; Face-Maker
dips, rises, clutches a bag, and every hair of the wig is on end to
express that he lives in continual dread of thieves.&nbsp; &lsquo;The
Genius of France!&rsquo;&nbsp; Face-Maker dips, rises, wig pushed back
and smoothed flat, little cocked-hat (artfully concealed till now) put
a-top of it, Face-Maker&rsquo;s white waistcoat much advanced, Face-Maker&rsquo;s
left hand in bosom of white waistcoat, Face-Maker&rsquo;s right hand
behind his back.&nbsp; Thunders.&nbsp; This is the first of three positions
of the Genius of France.&nbsp; In the second position, the Face-Maker
takes snuff; in the third, rolls up his fight hand, and surveys illimitable
armies through that pocket-glass.&nbsp; The Face-Maker then, by putting
out his tongue, and wearing the wig nohow in particular, becomes the
Village Idiot.&nbsp; The most remarkable feature in the whole of his
ingenious performance, is, that whatever he does to disguise himself,
has the effect of rendering him rather more like himself than he was
at first.</p>
<p>There were peep-shows in this Fair, and I had the pleasure of recognising
several fields of glory with which I became well acquainted a year or
two ago as Crimean battles, now doing duty as Mexican victories.&nbsp;
The change was neatly effected by some extra smoking of the Russians,
and by permitting the camp followers free range in the foreground to
despoil the enemy of their uniforms.&nbsp; As no British troops had
ever happened to be within sight when the artist took his original sketches,
it followed fortunately that none were in the way now.</p>
<p>The Fair wound up with a ball.&nbsp; Respecting the particular night
of the week on which the ball took place, I decline to commit myself;
merely mentioning that it was held in a stable-yard so very close to
the railway, that it was a mercy the locomotive did not set fire to
it.&nbsp; (In Scotland, I suppose, it would have done so.)&nbsp; There,
in a tent prettily decorated with looking-glasses and a myriad of toy
flags, the people danced all night. It was not an expensive recreation,
the price of a double ticket for a cavalier and lady being one and threepence
in English money, and even of that small sum fivepence was reclaimable
for &lsquo;consommation:&rsquo; which word I venture to translate into
refreshments of no greater strength, at the strongest, than ordinary
wine made hot, with sugar and lemon in it.&nbsp; It was a ball of great
good humour and of great enjoyment, though very many of the dancers
must have been as poor as the fifteen subjects of the P. Salcy Family.</p>
<p>In short, not having taken my own pet national pint pot with me to
this Fair, I was very well satisfied with the measure of simple enjoyment
that it poured into the dull French-Flemish country life.&nbsp; How
dull that is, I had an opportunity of considering&mdash;when the Fair
was over&mdash;when the tri-coloured flags were withdrawn from the windows
of the houses on the Place where the Fair was held&mdash;when the windows
were close shut, apparently until next Fair-time&mdash;when the H&ocirc;tel
de Ville had cut off its gas and put away its eagle&mdash;when the two
paviours, whom I take to form the entire paving population of the town,
were ramming down the stones which had been pulled up for the erection
of decorative poles&mdash;when the jailer had slammed his gate, and
sulkily locked himself in with his charges.&nbsp; But then, as I paced
the ring which marked the track of the departed hobby-horses on the
market-place, pondering in my mind how long some hobby-horses do leave
their tracks in public ways, and how difficult they are to erase, my
eyes were greeted with a goodly sight.&nbsp; I beheld four male personages
thoughtfully pacing the Place together, in the sunlight, evidently not
belonging to the town, and having upon them a certain loose cosmopolitan
air of not belonging to any town.&nbsp; One was clad in a suit of white
canvas, another in a cap and blouse, the third in an old military frock,
the fourth in a shapeless dress that looked as if it had been made out
of old umbrellas.&nbsp; All wore dust-coloured shoes.&nbsp; My heart
beat high; for, in those four male personages, although complexionless
and eyebrowless, I beheld four subjects of the Family P. Salcy.&nbsp;
Blue-bearded though they were, and bereft of the youthful smoothness
of cheek which is imparted by what is termed in Albion a &lsquo;Whitechapel
shave&rsquo; (and which is, in fact, whitening, judiciously applied
to the jaws with the palm of the hand), I recognised them.&nbsp; As
I stood admiring, there emerged from the yard of a lowly Cabaret, the
excellent Ma M&egrave;re, Ma M&egrave;re, with the words, &lsquo;The
soup is served;&rsquo; words which so elated the subject in the canvas
suit, that when they all ran in to partake, he went last, dancing with
his hands stuck angularly into the pockets of his canvas trousers, after
the Pierrot manner.&nbsp; Glancing down the Yard, the last I saw of
him was, that he looked in through a window (at the soup, no doubt)
on one leg.</p>
<p>Full of this pleasure, I shortly afterwards departed from the town,
little dreaming of an addition to my good fortune.&nbsp; But more was
in reserve.&nbsp; I went by a train which was heavy with third-class
carriages, full of young fellows (well guarded) who had drawn unlucky
numbers in the last conscription, and were on their way to a famous
French garrison town where much of the raw military material is worked
up into soldiery.&nbsp; At the station they had been sitting about,
in their threadbare homespun blue garments, with their poor little bundles
under their arms, covered with dust and clay, and the various soils
of France; sad enough at heart, most of them, but putting a good face
upon it, and slapping their breasts and singing choruses on the smallest
provocation; the gayest spirits shouldering half loaves of black bread
speared upon their walking-sticks.&nbsp; As we went along, they were
audible at every station, chorusing wildly out of tune, and feigning
the highest hilarity.&nbsp; After a while, however, they began to leave
off singing, and to laugh naturally, while at intervals there mingled
with their laughter the barking of a dog.&nbsp; Now, I had to alight
short of their destination, and, as that stoppage of the train was attended
with a quantity of horn blowing, bell ringing, and proclamation of what
Messieurs les Voyageurs were to do, and were not to do, in order to
reach their respective destinations, I had ample leisure to go forward
on the platform to take a parting look at my recruits, whose heads were
all out at window, and who were laughing like delighted children.&nbsp;
Then I perceived that a large poodle with a pink nose, who had been
their travelling companion and the cause of their mirth, stood on his
hind-legs presenting arms on the extreme verge of the platform, ready
to salute them as the train went off.&nbsp; This poodle wore a military
shako (it is unnecessary to add, very much on one side over one eye),
a little military coat, and the regulation white gaiters.&nbsp; He was
armed with a little musket and a little sword-bayonet, and he stood
presenting arms in perfect attitude, with his unobscured eye on his
master or superior officer, who stood by him.&nbsp; So admirable was
his discipline, that, when the train moved, and he was greeted with
the parting cheers of the recruits, and also with a shower of centimes,
several of which struck his shako, and had a tendency to discompose
him, he remained staunch on his post, until the train was gone.&nbsp;
He then resigned his arms to his officer, took off his shako by rubbing
his paw over it, dropped on four legs, bringing his uniform coat into
the absurdest relations with the overarching skies, and ran about the
platform in his white gaiters, waging his tail to an exceeding great
extent.&nbsp; It struck me that there was more waggery than this in
the poodle, and that he knew that the recruits would neither get through
their exercises, nor get rid of their uniforms, as easily as he; revolving
which in my thoughts, and seeking in my pockets some small money to
bestow upon him, I casually directed my eyes to the face of his superior
officer, and in him beheld the Face-Maker!&nbsp; Though it was not the
way to Algeria, but quite the reverse, the military poodle&rsquo;s Colonel
was the Face-Maker in a dark blouse, with a small bundle dangling over
his shoulder at the end of an umbrella, and taking a pipe from his breast
to smoke as he and the poodle went their mysterious way.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XXVIII&mdash;MEDICINE MEN OF CIVILISATION</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>My voyages (in paper boats) among savages often yield me matter for
reflection at home.&nbsp; It is curious to trace the savage in the civilised
man, and to detect the hold of some savage customs on conditions of
society rather boastful of being high above them.</p>
<p>I wonder, is the Medicine Man of the North American Indians never
to be got rid of, out of the North American country?&nbsp; He comes
into my Wigwam on all manner of occasions, and with the absurdest &lsquo;Medicine.&rsquo;&nbsp;
I always find it extremely difficult, and I often find it simply impossible,
to keep him out of my Wigwam.&nbsp; For his legal &lsquo;Medicine&rsquo;
he sticks upon his head the hair of quadrupeds, and plasters the same
with fat, and dirty white powder, and talks a gibberish quite unknown
to the men and squaws of his tribe.&nbsp; For his religious &lsquo;Medicine&rsquo;
he puts on puffy white sleeves, little black aprons, large black waistcoats
of a peculiar cut, collarless coats with Medicine button-holes, Medicine
stockings and gaiters and shoes, and tops the whole with a highly grotesque
Medicinal hat.&nbsp; In one respect, to be sure, I am quite free from
him.&nbsp; On occasions when the Medicine Men in general, together with
a large number of the miscellaneous inhabitants of his village, both
male and female, are presented to the principal Chief, his native &lsquo;Medicine&rsquo;
is a comical mixture of old odds and ends (hired of traders) and new
things in antiquated shapes, and pieces of red cloth (of which he is
particularly fond), and white and red and blue paint for the face.&nbsp;
The irrationality of this particular Medicine culminates in a mock battle-rush,
from which many of the squaws are borne out, much dilapidated.&nbsp;
I need not observe how unlike this is to a Drawing Room at St. James&rsquo;s
Palace.</p>
<p>The African magician I find it very difficult to exclude from my
Wigwam too.&nbsp; This creature takes cases of death and mourning under
his supervision, and will frequently impoverish a whole family by his
preposterous enchantments.&nbsp; He is a great eater and drinker, and
always conceals a rejoicing stomach under a grieving exterior.&nbsp;
His charms consist of an infinite quantity of worthless scraps, for
which he charges very high.&nbsp; He impresses on the poor bereaved
natives, that the more of his followers they pay to exhibit such scraps
on their persons for an hour or two (though they never saw the deceased
in their lives, and are put in high spirits by his decease), the more
honourably and piously they grieve for the dead.&nbsp; The poor people
submitting themselves to this conjurer, an expensive procession is formed,
in which bits of stick, feathers of birds, and a quantity of other unmeaning
objects besmeared with black paint, are carried in a certain ghastly
order of which no one understands the meaning, if it ever had any, to
the brink of the grave, and are then brought back again.</p>
<p>In the Tonga Islands everything is supposed to have a soul, so that
when a hatchet is irreparably broken, they say, &lsquo;His immortal
part has departed; he is gone to the happy hunting-plains.&rsquo;&nbsp;
This belief leads to the logical sequence that when a man is buried,
some of his eating and drinking vessels, and some of his warlike implements,
must be broken and buried with him.&nbsp; Superstitious and wrong, but
surely a more respectable superstition than the hire of antic scraps
for a show that has no meaning based on any sincere belief.</p>
<p>Let me halt on my Uncommercial road, to throw a passing glance on
some funeral solemnities that I have seen where North American Indians,
African Magicians, and Tonga Islanders, are supposed not to be.</p>
<p>Once, I dwelt in an Italian city, where there dwelt with me for a
while, an Englishman of an amiable nature, great enthusiasm, and no
discretion.&nbsp; This friend discovered a desolate stranger, mourning
over the unexpected death of one very dear to him, in a solitary cottage
among the vineyards of an outlying village.&nbsp; The circumstances
of the bereavement were unusually distressing; and the survivor, new
to the peasants and the country, sorely needed help, being alone with
the remains.&nbsp; With some difficulty, but with the strong influence
of a purpose at once gentle, disinterested, and determined, my friend&mdash;Mr.
Kindheart&mdash;obtained access to the mourner, and undertook to arrange
the burial.</p>
<p>There was a small Protestant cemetery near the city walls, and as
Mr. Kindheart came back to me, he turned into it and chose the spot.&nbsp;
He was always highly flushed when rendering a service unaided, and I
knew that to make him happy I must keep aloof from his ministration.&nbsp;
But when at dinner he warmed with the good action of the day, and conceived
the brilliant idea of comforting the mourner with &lsquo;an English
funeral,&rsquo; I ventured to intimate that I thought that institution,
which was not absolutely sublime at home, might prove a failure in Italian
hands.&nbsp; However, Mr. Kindheart was so enraptured with his conception,
that he presently wrote down into the town requesting the attendance
with to-morrow&rsquo;s earliest light of a certain little upholsterer.&nbsp;
This upholsterer was famous for speaking the unintelligible local dialect
(his own) in a far more unintelligible manner than any other man alive.</p>
<p>When from my bath next morning I overheard Mr. Kindheart and the
upholsterer in conference on the top of an echoing staircase; and when
I overheard Mr. Kindheart rendering English Undertaking phrases into
very choice Italian, and the upholsterer replying in the unknown Tongues;
and when I furthermore remembered that the local funerals had no resemblance
to English funerals; I became in my secret bosom apprehensive.&nbsp;
But Mr. Kindheart informed me at breakfast that measures had been taken
to ensure a signal success.</p>
<p>As the funeral was to take place at sunset, and as I knew to which
of the city gates it must tend, I went out at that gate as the sun descended,
and walked along the dusty, dusty road.&nbsp; I had not walked far,
when I encountered this procession:</p>
<p>1.&nbsp; Mr. Kindheart, much abashed, on an immense grey horse.</p>
<p>2.&nbsp; A bright yellow coach and pair, driven by a coachman in
bright red velvet knee-breeches and waistcoat.&nbsp; (This was the established
local idea of State.)&nbsp; Both coach doors kept open by the coffin,
which was on its side within, and sticking out at each.</p>
<p>3.&nbsp; Behind the coach, the mourner, for whom the coach was intended,
walking in the dust.</p>
<p>4. Concealed behind a roadside well for the irrigation of a garden,
the unintelligible Upholsterer, admiring.</p>
<p>It matters little now.&nbsp; Coaches of all colours are alike to
poor Kindheart, and he rests far North of the little cemetery with the
cypress-trees, by the city walls where the Mediterranean is so beautiful.</p>
<p>My first funeral, a fair representative funeral after its kind, was
that of the husband of a married servant, once my nurse.&nbsp; She married
for money.&nbsp; Sally Flanders, after a year or two of matrimony, became
the relict of Flanders, a small master builder; and either she or Flanders
had done me the honour to express a desire that I should &lsquo;follow.&rsquo;&nbsp;
I may have been seven or eight years old;&mdash;young enough, certainly,
to feel rather alarmed by the expression, as not knowing where the invitation
was held to terminate, and how far I was expected to follow the deceased
Flanders.&nbsp; Consent being given by the heads of houses, I was jobbed
up into what was pronounced at home decent mourning (comprehending somebody
else&rsquo;s shirt, unless my memory deceives me), and was admonished
that if, when the funeral was in action, I put my hands in my pockets,
or took my eyes out of my pocket-handkerchief, I was personally lost,
and my family disgraced.&nbsp; On the eventful day, having tried to
get myself into a disastrous frame of mind, and having formed a very
poor opinion of myself because I couldn&rsquo;t cry, I repaired to Sally&rsquo;s.&nbsp;
Sally was an excellent creature, and had been a good wife to old Flanders,
but the moment I saw her I knew that she was not in her own real natural
state.&nbsp; She formed a sort of Coat of Arms, grouped with a smelling-bottle,
a handkerchief, an orange, a bottle of vinegar, Flanders&rsquo;s sister,
her own sister, Flanders&rsquo;s brother&rsquo;s wife, and two neighbouring
gossips&mdash;all in mourning, and all ready to hold her whenever she
fainted.&nbsp; At sight of poor little me she became much agitated (agitating
me much more), and having exclaimed, &lsquo;O here&rsquo;s dear Master
Uncommercial!&rsquo; became hysterical, and swooned as if I had been
the death of her.&nbsp; An affecting scene followed, during which I
was handed about and poked at her by various people, as if I were the
bottle of salts.&nbsp; Reviving a little, she embraced me, said, &lsquo;You
knew him well, dear Master Uncommercial, and he knew you!&rsquo; and
fainted again: which, as the rest of the Coat of Arms soothingly said,
&lsquo;done her credit.&rsquo;&nbsp; Now, I knew that she needn&rsquo;t
have fainted unless she liked, and that she wouldn&rsquo;t have fainted
unless it had been expected of her, quite as well as I know it at this
day.&nbsp; It made me feel uncomfortable and hypocritical besides.&nbsp;
I was not sure but that it might be manners in <i>me</i> to faint next,
and I resolved to keep my eye on Flanders&rsquo;s uncle, and if I saw
any signs of his going in that direction, to go too, politely.&nbsp;
But Flanders&rsquo;s uncle (who was a weak little old retail grocer)
had only one idea, which was that we all wanted tea; and he handed us
cups of tea all round, incessantly, whether we refused or not.&nbsp;
There was a young nephew of Flanders&rsquo;s present, to whom Flanders,
it was rumoured, had left nineteen guineas.&nbsp; He drank all the tea
that was offered him, this nephew&mdash;amounting, I should say, to
several quarts&mdash;and ate as much plum-cake as he could possibly
come by; but he felt it to be decent mourning that he should now and
then stop in the midst of a lump of cake, and appear to forget that
his mouth was full, in the contemplation of his uncle&rsquo;s memory.&nbsp;
I felt all this to be the fault of the undertaker, who was handing us
gloves on a tea-tray as if they were muffins, and tying us into cloaks
(mine had to be pinned up all round, it was so long for me), because
I knew that he was making game.&nbsp; So, when we got out into the streets,
and I constantly disarranged the procession by tumbling on the people
before me because my handkerchief blinded my eyes, and tripping up the
people behind me because my cloak was so long, I felt that we were all
making game.&nbsp; I was truly sorry for Flanders, but I knew that it
was no reason why we should be trying (the women with their heads in
hoods like coal-scuttles with the black side outward) to keep step with
a man in a scarf, carrying a thing like a mourning spy-glass, which
he was going to open presently and sweep the horizon with.&nbsp; I knew
that we should not all have been speaking in one particular key-note
struck by the undertaker, if we had not been making game.&nbsp; Even
in our faces we were every one of us as like the undertaker as if we
had been his own family, and I perceived that this could not have happened
unless we had been making game.&nbsp; When we returned to Sally&rsquo;s,
it was all of a piece.&nbsp; The continued impossibility of getting
on without plum-cake; the ceremonious apparition of a pair of decanters
containing port and sherry and cork; Sally&rsquo;s sister at the tea-table,
clinking the best crockery and shaking her head mournfully every time
she looked down into the teapot, as if it were the tomb; the Coat of
Arms again, and Sally as before; lastly, the words of consolation administered
to Sally when it was considered right that she should &lsquo;come round
nicely:&rsquo; which were, that the deceased had had &lsquo;as com-for-ta-ble
a fu-ne-ral as comfortable could be!&rsquo;</p>
<p>Other funerals have I seen with grown-up eyes, since that day, of
which the burden has been the same childish burden.&nbsp; Making game.&nbsp;
Real affliction, real grief and solemnity, have been outraged, and the
funeral has been &lsquo;performed.&rsquo;&nbsp; The waste for which
the funeral customs of many tribes of savages are conspicuous, has attended
these civilised obsequies; and once, and twice, have I wished in my
soul that if the waste must be, they would let the undertaker bury the
money, and let me bury the friend.</p>
<p>In France, upon the whole, these ceremonies are more sensibly regulated,
because they are upon the whole less expensively regulated.&nbsp; I
cannot say that I have ever been much edified by the custom of tying
a bib and apron on the front of the house of mourning, or that I would
myself particularly care to be driven to my grave in a nodding and bobbing
car, like an infirm four-post bedstead, by an inky fellow-creature in
a cocked-hat.&nbsp; But it may be that I am constitutionally insensible
to the virtues of a cocked-hat.&nbsp; In provincial France, the solemnities
are sufficiently hideous, but are few and cheap.&nbsp; The friends and
townsmen of the departed, in their own dresses and not masquerading
under the auspices of the African Conjurer, surround the hand-bier,
and often carry it.&nbsp; It is not considered indispensable to stifle
the bearers, or even to elevate the burden on their shoulders; consequently
it is easily taken up, and easily set down, and is carried through the
streets without the distressing floundering and shuffling that we see
at home.&nbsp; A dirty priest or two, and a dirtier acolyte or two,
do not lend any especial grace to the proceedings; and I regard with
personal animosity the bassoon, which is blown at intervals by the big-legged
priest (it is always a big-legged priest who blows the bassoon), when
his fellows combine in a lugubrious stalwart drawl.&nbsp; But there
is far less of the Conjurer and the Medicine Man in the business than
under like circumstances here.&nbsp; The grim coaches that we reserve
expressly for such shows, are non-existent; if the cemetery be far out
of the town, the coaches that are hired for other purposes of life are
hired for this purpose; and although the honest vehicles make no pretence
of being overcome, I have never noticed that the people in them were
the worse for it.&nbsp; In Italy, the hooded Members of Confraternities
who attend on funerals, are dismal and ugly to look upon; but the services
they render are at least voluntarily rendered, and impoverish no one,
and cost nothing.&nbsp; Why should high civilisation and low savagery
ever come together on the point of making them a wantonly wasteful and
contemptible set of forms?</p>
<p>Once I lost a friend by death, who had been troubled in his time
by the Medicine Man and the Conjurer, and upon whose limited resources
there were abundant claims.&nbsp; The Conjurer assured me that I must
positively &lsquo;follow,&rsquo; and both he and the Medicine Man entertained
no doubt that I must go in a black carriage, and must wear &lsquo;fittings.&rsquo;&nbsp;
I objected to fittings as having nothing to do with my friendship, and
I objected to the black carriage as being in more senses than one a
job.&nbsp; So, it came into my mind to try what would happen if I quietly
walked, in my own way, from my own house to my friend&rsquo;s burial-place,
and stood beside his open grave in my own dress and person, reverently
listening to the best of Services.&nbsp; It satisfied my mind, I found,
quite as well as if I had been disguised in a hired hatband and scarf
both trailing to my very heels, and as if I had cost the orphan children,
in their greatest need, ten guineas.</p>
<p>Can any one who ever beheld the stupendous absurdities attendant
on &lsquo;A message from the Lords&rsquo; in the House of Commons, turn
upon the Medicine Man of the poor Indians?&nbsp; Has he any &lsquo;Medicine&rsquo;
in that dried skin pouch of his, so supremely ludicrous as the two Masters
in Chancery holding up their black petticoats and butting their ridiculous
wigs at Mr. Speaker?&nbsp; Yet there are authorities innumerable to
tell me&mdash;as there are authorities innumerable among the Indians
to tell them&mdash;that the nonsense is indispensable, and that its
abrogation would involve most awful consequences.&nbsp; What would any
rational creature who had never heard of judicial and forensic &lsquo;fittings,&rsquo;
think of the Court of Common Pleas on the first day of Term?&nbsp; Or
with what an awakened sense of humour would LIVINGSTONE&rsquo;S account
of a similar scene be perused, if the fur and red cloth and goats&rsquo;
hair and horse hair and powdered chalk and black patches on the top
of the head, were all at Tala Mungongo instead of Westminster?&nbsp;
That model missionary and good brave man found at least one tribe of
blacks with a very strong sense of the ridiculous, insomuch that although
an amiable and docile people, they never could see the Missionaries
dispose of their legs in the attitude of kneeling, or hear them begin
a hymn in chorus, without bursting into roars of irrepressible laughter.&nbsp;
It is much to be hoped that no member of this facetious tribe may ever
find his way to England and get committed for contempt of Court.</p>
<p>In the Tonga Island already mentioned, there are a set of personages
called Mataboos&mdash;or some such name&mdash;who are the masters of
all the public ceremonies, and who know the exact place in which every
chief must sit down when a solemn public meeting takes place: a meeting
which bears a family resemblance to our own Public Dinner, in respect
of its being a main part of the proceedings that every gentleman present
is required to drink something nasty.&nbsp; These Mataboos are a privileged
order, so important is their avocation, and they make the most of their
high functions.&nbsp; A long way out of the Tonga Islands, indeed, rather
near the British Islands, was there no calling in of the Mataboos the
other day to settle an earth-convulsing question of precedence; and
was there no weighty opinion delivered on the part of the Mataboos which,
being interpreted to that unlucky tribe of blacks with the sense of
the ridiculous, would infallibly set the whole population screaming
with laughter?</p>
<p>My sense of justice demands the admission, however, that this is
not quite a one-sided question.&nbsp; If we submit ourselves meekly
to the Medicine Man and the Conjurer, and are not exalted by it, the
savages may retort upon us that we act more unwisely than they in other
matters wherein we fail to imitate them.&nbsp; It is a widely diffused
custom among savage tribes, when they meet to discuss any affair of
public importance, to sit up all night making a horrible noise, dancing,
blowing shells, and (in cases where they are familiar with fire-arms)
flying out into open places and letting off guns.&nbsp; It is questionable
whether our legislative assemblies might not take a hint from this.&nbsp;
A shell is not a melodious wind-instrument, and it is monotonous; but
it is as musical as, and not more monotonous than, my Honourable friend&rsquo;s
own trumpet, or the trumpet that he blows so hard for the Minister.&nbsp;
The uselessness of arguing with any supporter of a Government or of
an Opposition, is well known.&nbsp; Try dancing.&nbsp; It is a better
exercise, and has the unspeakable recommendation that it couldn&rsquo;t
be reported.&nbsp; The honourable and savage member who has a loaded
gun, and has grown impatient of debate, plunges out of doors, fires
in the air, and returns calm and silent to the Palaver.&nbsp; Let the
honourable and civilised member similarly charged with a speech, dart
into the cloisters of Westminster Abbey in the silence of night, let
his speech off, and come back harmless.&nbsp; It is not at first sight
a very rational custom to paint a broad blue stripe across one&rsquo;s
nose and both cheeks, and a broad red stripe from the forehead to the
chin, to attach a few pounds of wood to one&rsquo;s under lip, to stick
fish-bones in one&rsquo;s ears and a brass curtain-ring in one&rsquo;s
nose, and to rub one&rsquo;s body all over with rancid oil, as a preliminary
to entering on business.&nbsp; But this is a question of taste and ceremony,
and so is the Windsor Uniform.&nbsp; The manner of entering on the business
itself is another question.&nbsp; A council of six hundred savage gentlemen
entirely independent of tailors, sitting on their hams in a ring, smoking,
and occasionally grunting, seem to me, according to the experience I
have gathered in my voyages and travels, somehow to do what they come
together for; whereas that is not at all the general experience of a
council of six hundred civilised gentlemen very dependent on tailors
and sitting on mechanical contrivances.&nbsp; It is better that an Assembly
should do its utmost to envelop itself in smoke, than that it should
direct its endeavours to enveloping the public in smoke; and I would
rather it buried half a hundred hatchets than buried one subject demanding
attention.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XXIX&mdash;TITBULL&rsquo;S ALMS-HOUSES</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>By the side of most railways out of London, one may see Alms-Houses
and Retreats (generally with a Wing or a Centre wanting, and ambitious
of being much bigger than they are), some of which are newly-founded
Institutions, and some old establishments transplanted.&nbsp; There
is a tendency in these pieces of architecture to shoot upward unexpectedly,
like Jack&rsquo;s bean-stalk, and to be ornate in spires of Chapels
and lanterns of Halls, which might lead to the embellishment of the
air with many castles of questionable beauty but for the restraining
consideration of expense.&nbsp; However, the manners, being always of
a sanguine temperament, comfort themselves with plans and elevations
of Loomings in the future, and are influenced in the present by philanthropy
towards the railway passengers.&nbsp; For, the question how prosperous
and promising the buildings can be made to look in their eyes, usually
supersedes the lesser question how they can be turned to the best account
for the inmates.</p>
<p>Why none of the people who reside in these places ever look out of
window, or take an airing in the piece of ground which is going to be
a garden by-and-by, is one of the wonders I have added to my always-lengthening
list of the wonders of the world.&nbsp; I have got it into my mind that
they live in a state of chronic injury and resentment, and on that account
refuse to decorate the building with a human interest.&nbsp; As I have
known legatees deeply injured by a bequest of five hundred pounds because
it was not five thousand, and as I was once acquainted with a pensioner
on the Public to the extent of two hundred a year, who perpetually anathematised
his Country because he was not in the receipt of four, having no claim
whatever to sixpence: so perhaps it usually happens, within certain
limits, that to get a little help is to get a notion of being defrauded
of more.&nbsp; &lsquo;How do they pass their lives in this beautiful
and peaceful place!&rsquo; was the subject of my speculation with a
visitor who once accompanied me to a charming rustic retreat for old
men and women: a quaint ancient foundation in a pleasant English country,
behind a picturesque church and among rich old convent gardens.&nbsp;
There were but some dozen or so of houses, and we agreed that we would
talk with the inhabitants, as they sat in their groined rooms between
the light of their fires and the light shining in at their latticed
windows, and would find out.&nbsp; They passed their lives in considering
themselves mulcted of certain ounces of tea by a deaf old steward who
lived among them in the quadrangle.&nbsp; There was no reason to suppose
that any such ounces of tea had ever been in existence, or that the
old steward so much as knew what was the matter;&mdash;he passed <i>his</i>
life in considering himself periodically defrauded of a birch-broom
by the beadle.</p>
<p>But it is neither to old Alms-Houses in the country, nor to new Alms-Houses
by the railroad, that these present Uncommercial notes relate.&nbsp;
They refer back to journeys made among those common-place, smoky-fronted
London Alms-Houses, with a little paved court-yard in front enclosed
by iron railings, which have got snowed up, as it were, by bricks and
mortar; which were once in a suburb, but are now in the densely populated
town; gaps in the busy life around them, parentheses in the close and
blotted texts of the streets.</p>
<p>Sometimes, these Alms-Houses belong to a Company or Society.&nbsp;
Sometimes, they were established by individuals, and are maintained
out of private funds bequeathed in perpetuity long ago.&nbsp; My favourite
among them is Titbull&rsquo;s, which establishment is a picture of many.&nbsp;
Of Titbull I know no more than that he deceased in 1723, that his Christian
name was Sampson, and his social designation Esquire, and that he founded
these Alms-Houses as Dwellings for Nine Poor Women and Six Poor Men
by his Will and Testament.&nbsp; I should not know even this much, but
for its being inscribed on a grim stone very difficult to read, let
into the front of the centre house of Titbull&rsquo;s Alms-Houses, and
which stone is ornamented a-top with a piece of sculptured drapery resembling
the effigy of Titbull&rsquo;s bath-towel.</p>
<p>Titbull&rsquo;s Alms-Houses are in the east of London, in a great
highway, in a poor, busy, and thronged neighbourhood.&nbsp; Old iron
and fried fish, cough drops and artificial flowers, boiled pigs&rsquo;-feet
and household furniture that looks as if it were polished up with lip-salve,
umbrellas full of vocal literature and saucers full of shell-fish in
a green juice which I hope is natural to them when their health is good,
garnish the paved sideways as you go to Titbull&rsquo;s.&nbsp; I take
the ground to have risen in those parts since Titbull&rsquo;s time,
and you drop into his domain by three stone steps.&nbsp; So did I first
drop into it, very nearly striking my brows against Titbull&rsquo;s
pump, which stands with its back to the thoroughfare just inside the
gate, and has a conceited air of reviewing Titbull&rsquo;s pensioners.</p>
<p>&lsquo;And a worse one,&rsquo; said a virulent old man with a pitcher,
&lsquo;there isn&rsquo;t nowhere.&nbsp; A harder one to work, nor a
grudginer one to yield, there isn&rsquo;t nowhere!&rsquo;&nbsp; This
old man wore a long coat, such as we see Hogarth&rsquo;s Chairmen represented
with, and it was of that peculiar green-pea hue without the green, which
seems to come of poverty.&nbsp; It had also that peculiar smell of cupboard
which seems to come of poverty.</p>
<p>&lsquo;The pump is rusty, perhaps,&rsquo; said I.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Not <i>it</i>,&rsquo; said the old man, regarding it with
undiluted virulence in his watery eye.&nbsp; &lsquo;It never were fit
to be termed a pump.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s the matter with
<i>it</i>.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Whose fault is that?&rsquo; said I.</p>
<p>The old man, who had a working mouth which seemed to be trying to
masticate his anger and to find that it was too hard and there was too
much of it, replied, &lsquo;Them gentlemen.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;What gentlemen?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Maybe you&rsquo;re one of &rsquo;em?&rsquo; said the old man,
suspiciously.</p>
<p>&lsquo;The trustees?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t trust &rsquo;em myself,&rsquo; said the virulent
old man.</p>
<p>&lsquo;If you mean the gentlemen who administer this place, no, I
am not one of them; nor have I ever so much as heard of them.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I wish <i>I</i> never heard of them,&rsquo; gasped the old
man: &lsquo;at my time of life&mdash;with the rheumatics&mdash;drawing
water-from that thing!&rsquo;&nbsp; Not to be deluded into calling it
a Pump, the old man gave it another virulent look, took up his pitcher,
and carried it into a corner dwelling-house, shutting the door after
him.</p>
<p>Looking around and seeing that each little house was a house of two
little rooms; and seeing that the little oblong court-yard in front
was like a graveyard for the inhabitants, saving that no word was engraven
on its flat dry stones; and seeing that the currents of life and noise
ran to and fro outside, having no more to do with the place than if
it were a sort of low-water mark on a lively beach; I say, seeing this
and nothing else, I was going out at the gate when one of the doors
opened.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Was you looking for anything, sir?&rsquo; asked a tidy, well-favoured
woman.</p>
<p>Really, no; I couldn&rsquo;t say I was.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Not wanting any one, sir?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;No&mdash;at least I&mdash;pray what is the name of the elderly
gentleman who lives in the corner there?&rsquo;</p>
<p>The tidy woman stepped out to be sure of the door I indicated, and
she and the pump and I stood all three in a row with our backs to the
thoroughfare.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Oh!&nbsp; <i>His</i> name is Mr. Battens,&rsquo; said the
tidy woman, dropping her voice.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I have just been talking with him.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Indeed?&rsquo; said the tidy woman.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ho!&nbsp;
I wonder Mr. Battens talked!&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Is he usually so silent?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Well, Mr. Battens is the oldest here&mdash;that is to say,
the oldest of the old gentlemen&mdash;in point of residence.&rsquo;</p>
<p>She had a way of passing her hands over and under one another as
she spoke, that was not only tidy but propitiatory; so I asked her if
I might look at her little sitting-room?&nbsp; She willingly replied
Yes, and we went into it together: she leaving the door open, with an
eye as I understood to the social proprieties.&nbsp; The door opening
at once into the room without any intervening entry, even scandal must
have been silenced by the precaution.</p>
<p>It was a gloomy little chamber, but clean, and with a mug of wallflower
in the window.&nbsp; On the chimney-piece were two peacock&rsquo;s feathers,
a carved ship, a few shells, and a black profile with one eyelash; whether
this portrait purported to be male or female passed my comprehension,
until my hostess informed me that it was her only son, and &lsquo;quite
a speaking one.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;He is alive, I hope?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;No, sir,&rsquo; said the widow, &lsquo;he were cast away in
China.&rsquo;&nbsp; This was said with a modest sense of its reflecting
a certain geographical distinction on his mother.</p>
<p>&lsquo;If the old gentlemen here are not given to talking,&rsquo;
said I, &lsquo;I hope the old ladies are?&mdash;not that you are one.&rsquo;</p>
<p>She shook her head.&nbsp; &lsquo;You see they get so cross.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;How is that?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Well, whether the gentlemen really do deprive us of any little
matters which ought to be ours by rights, I cannot say for certain;
but the opinion of the old ones is they do.&nbsp; And Mr. Battens he
do even go so far as to doubt whether credit is due to the Founder.&nbsp;
For Mr. Battens he do say, anyhow he got his name up by it and he done
it cheap.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I am afraid the pump has soured Mr. Battens.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;It may be so,&rsquo; returned the tidy widow, &lsquo;but the
handle does go very hard.&nbsp; Still, what I say to myself is, the
gentlemen <i>may</i> not pocket the difference between a good pump and
a bad one, and I would wish to think well of them.&nbsp; And the dwellings,&rsquo;
said my hostess, glancing round her room; &lsquo;perhaps they were convenient
dwellings in the Founder&rsquo;s time, considered <i>as</i> his time,
and therefore he should not be blamed.&nbsp; But Mrs. Saggers is very
hard upon them.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Mrs. Saggers is the oldest here?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;The oldest but one.&nbsp; Mrs. Quinch being the oldest, and
have totally lost her head.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;And you?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I am the youngest in residence, and consequently am not looked
up to.&nbsp; But when Mrs. Quinch makes a happy release, there will
be one below me.&nbsp; Nor is it to be expected that Mrs. Saggers will
prove herself immortal.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;True.&nbsp; Nor Mr. Battens.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Regarding the old gentlemen,&rsquo; said my widow slightingly,
&lsquo;they count among themselves.&nbsp; They do not count among us.&nbsp;
Mr. Battens is that exceptional that he have written to the gentlemen
many times and have worked the case against them.&nbsp; Therefore he
have took a higher ground.&nbsp; But we do not, as a rule, greatly reckon
the old gentlemen.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Pursuing the subject, I found it to be traditionally settled among
the poor ladies that the poor gentlemen, whatever their ages, were all
very old indeed, and in a state of dotage.&nbsp; I also discovered that
the juniors and newcomers preserved, for a time, a waning disposition
to believe in Titbull and his trustees, but that as they gained social
standing they lost this faith, and disparaged Titbull and all his works.</p>
<p>Improving my acquaintance subsequently with this respected lady,
whose name was Mrs. Mitts, and occasionally dropping in upon her with
a little offering of sound Family Hyson in my pocket, I gradually became
familiar with the inner politics and ways of Titbull&rsquo;s Alms-Houses.&nbsp;
But I never could find out who the trustees were, or where they were:
it being one of the fixed ideas of the place that those authorities
must be vaguely and mysteriously mentioned as &lsquo;the gentlemen&rsquo;
only.&nbsp; The secretary of &lsquo;the gentlemen&rsquo; was once pointed
out to me, evidently engaged in championing the obnoxious pump against
the attacks of the discontented Mr. Battens; but I am not in a condition
to report further of him than that he had the sprightly bearing of a
lawyer&rsquo;s clerk.&nbsp; I had it from Mrs. Mitts&rsquo;s lips in
a very confidential moment, that Mr. Battens was once &lsquo;had up
before the gentlemen&rsquo; to stand or fall by his accusations, and
that an old shoe was thrown after him on his departure from the building
on this dread errand;&mdash;not ineffectually, for, the interview resulting
in a plumber, was considered to have encircled the temples of Mr. Battens
with the wreath of victory,</p>
<p>In Titbull&rsquo;s Alms-Houses, the local society is not regarded
as good society.&nbsp; A gentleman or lady receiving visitors from without,
or going out to tea, counts, as it were, accordingly; but visitings
or tea-drinkings interchanged among Titbullians do not score.&nbsp;
Such interchanges, however, are rare, in consequence of internal dissensions
occasioned by Mrs. Saggers&rsquo;s pail: which household article has
split Titbull&rsquo;s into almost as many parties as there are dwellings
in that precinct.&nbsp; The extremely complicated nature of the conflicting
articles of belief on the subject prevents my stating them here with
my usual perspicuity, but I think they have all branched off from the
root-and-trunk question, Has Mrs. Saggers any right to stand her pail
outside her dwelling?&nbsp; The question has been much refined upon,
but roughly stated may be stated in those terms.</p>
<p>There are two old men in Titbull&rsquo;s Alms-Houses who, I have
been given to understand, knew each other in the world beyond its pump
and iron railings, when they were both &lsquo;in trade.&rsquo;&nbsp;
They make the best of their reverses, and are looked upon with great
contempt.&nbsp; They are little, stooping, blear-eyed old men of cheerful
countenance, and they hobble up and down the court-yard wagging their
chins and talking together quite gaily.&nbsp; This has given offence,
and has, moreover, raised the question whether they are justified in
passing any other windows than their own.&nbsp; Mr. Battens, however,
permitting them to pass <i>his</i> windows, on the disdainful ground
that their imbecility almost amounts to irresponsibility, they are allowed
to take their walk in peace.&nbsp; They live next door to one another,
and take it by turns to read the newspaper aloud (that is to say, the
newest newspaper they can get), and they play cribbage at night.&nbsp;
On warm and sunny days they have been known to go so far as to bring
out two chairs and sit by the iron railings, looking forth; but this
low conduct, being much remarked upon throughout Titbull&rsquo;s, they
were deterred by an outraged public opinion from repeating it.&nbsp;
There is a rumour&mdash;but it may be malicious&mdash;that they hold
the memory of Titbull in some weak sort of veneration, and that they
once set off together on a pilgrimage to the parish churchyard to find
his tomb.&nbsp; To this, perhaps, might be traced a general suspicion
that they are spies of &lsquo;the gentlemen:&rsquo; to which they were
supposed to have given colour in my own presence on the occasion of
the weak attempt at justification of the pump by the gentlemen&rsquo;s
clerk; when they emerged bare-headed from the doors of their dwellings,
as if their dwellings and themselves constituted an old-fashioned weather-glass
of double action with two figures of old ladies inside, and deferentially
bowed to him at intervals until he took his departure.&nbsp; They are
understood to be perfectly friendless and relationless.&nbsp; Unquestionably
the two poor fellows make the very best of their lives in Titbull&rsquo;s
Alms-Houses, and unquestionably they are (as before mentioned) the subjects
of unmitigated contempt there.</p>
<p>On Saturday nights, when there is a greater stir than usual outside,
and when itinerant vendors of miscellaneous wares even take their stations
and light up their smoky lamps before the iron railings, Titbull&rsquo;s
becomes flurried.&nbsp; Mrs. Saggers has her celebrated palpitations
of the heart, for the most part, on Saturday nights.&nbsp; But Titbull&rsquo;s
is unfit to strive with the uproar of the streets in any of its phases.&nbsp;
It is religiously believed at Titbull&rsquo;s that people push more
than they used, and likewise that the foremost object of the population
of England and Wales is to get you down and trample on you.&nbsp; Even
of railroads they know, at Titbull&rsquo;s, little more than the shriek
(which Mrs. Saggers says goes through her, and ought to be taken up
by Government); and the penny postage may even yet be unknown there,
for I have never seen a letter delivered to any inhabitant.&nbsp; But
there is a tall, straight, sallow lady resident in Number Seven, Titbull&rsquo;s,
who never speaks to anybody, who is surrounded by a superstitious halo
of lost wealth, who does her household work in housemaid&rsquo;s gloves,
and who is secretly much deferred to, though openly cavilled at; and
it has obscurely leaked out that this old lady has a son, grandson,
nephew, or other relative, who is &lsquo;a Contractor,&rsquo; and who
would think it nothing of a job to knock down Titbull&rsquo;s, pack
it off into Cornwall, and knock it together again.&nbsp; An immense
sensation was made by a gipsy-party calling in a spring-van, to take
this old lady up to go for a day&rsquo;s pleasure into Epping Forest,
and notes were compared as to which of the company was the son, grandson,
nephew, or other relative, the Contractor.&nbsp; A thick-set personage
with a white hat and a cigar in his mouth, was the favourite: though
as Titbull&rsquo;s had no other reason to believe that the Contractor
was there at all, than that this man was supposed to eye the chimney
stacks as if he would like to knock them down and cart them off, the
general mind was much unsettled in arriving at a conclusion.&nbsp; As
a way out of this difficulty, it concentrated itself on the acknowledged
Beauty of the party, every stitch in whose dress was verbally unripped
by the old ladies then and there, and whose &lsquo;goings on&rsquo;
with another and a thinner personage in a white hat might have suffused
the pump (where they were principally discussed) with blushes, for months
afterwards.&nbsp; Herein Titbull&rsquo;s was to Titbull&rsquo;s true,
for it has a constitutional dislike of all strangers.&nbsp; As concerning
innovations and improvements, it is always of opinion that what it doesn&rsquo;t
want itself, nobody ought to want.&nbsp; But I think I have met with
this opinion outside Titbull&rsquo;s.</p>
<p>Of the humble treasures of furniture brought into Titbull&rsquo;s
by the inmates when they establish themselves in that place of contemplation
for the rest of their days, by far the greater and more valuable part
belongs to the ladies.&nbsp; I may claim the honour of having either
crossed the threshold, or looked in at the door, of every one of the
nine ladies, and I have noticed that they are all particular in the
article of bedsteads, and maintain favourite and long-established bedsteads
and bedding as a regular part of their rest.&nbsp; Generally an antiquated
chest of drawers is among their cherished possessions; a tea-tray always
is.&nbsp; I know of at least two rooms in which a little tea-kettle
of genuine burnished copper, vies with the cat in winking at the fire;
and one old lady has a tea-urn set forth in state on the top of her
chest of drawers, which urn is used as her library, and contains four
duodecimo volumes, and a black-bordered newspaper giving an account
of the funeral of Her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte.&nbsp; Among
the poor old gentlemen there are no such niceties.&nbsp; Their furniture
has the air of being contributed, like some obsolete Literary Miscellany,
&lsquo;by several hands;&rsquo; their few chairs never match; old patchwork
coverlets linger among them; and they have an untidy habit of keeping
their wardrobes in hat-boxes.&nbsp; When I recall one old gentleman
who is rather choice in his shoe-brushes and blacking-bottle, I have
summed up the domestic elegances of that side of the building.</p>
<p>On the occurrence of a death in Titbull&rsquo;s, it is invariably
agreed among the survivors&mdash;and it is the only subject on which
they do agree&mdash;that the departed did something &lsquo;to bring
it on.&rsquo;&nbsp; Judging by Titbull&rsquo;s, I should say the human
race need never die, if they took care.&nbsp; But they don&rsquo;t take
care, and they do die, and when they die in Titbull&rsquo;s they are
buried at the cost of the Foundation.&nbsp; Some provision has been
made for the purpose, in virtue of which (I record this on the strength
of having seen the funeral of Mrs. Quinch) a lively neighbouring undertaker
dresses up four of the old men, and four of the old women, hustles them
into a procession of four couples, and leads off with a large black
bow at the back of his hat, looking over his shoulder at them airily
from time to time to see that no member of the party has got lost, or
has tumbled down; as if they were a company of dim old dolls.</p>
<p>Resignation of a dwelling is of very rare occurrence in Titbull&rsquo;s.&nbsp;
A story does obtain there, how an old lady&rsquo;s son once drew a prize
of Thirty Thousand Pounds in the Lottery, and presently drove to the
gate in his own carriage, with French Horns playing up behind, and whisked
his mother away, and left ten guineas for a Feast.&nbsp; But I have
been unable to substantiate it by any evidence, and regard it as an
Alms-House Fairy Tale.&nbsp; It is curious that the only proved case
of resignation happened within my knowledge.</p>
<p>It happened on this wise.&nbsp; There is a sharp competition among
the ladies respecting the gentility of their visitors, and I have so
often observed visitors to be dressed as for a holiday occasion, that
I suppose the ladies to have besought them to make all possible display
when they come.&nbsp; In these circumstances much excitement was one
day occasioned by Mrs. Mitts receiving a visit from a Greenwich Pensioner.&nbsp;
He was a Pensioner of a bluff and warlike appearance, with an empty
coat-sleeve, and he was got up with unusual care; his coat-buttons were
extremely bright, he wore his empty coat-sleeve in a graceful festoon,
and he had a walking-stick in his hand that must have cost money.&nbsp;
When, with the head of his walking-stick, he knocked at Mrs. Mitts&rsquo;s
door&mdash;there are no knockers in Titbull&rsquo;s&mdash;Mrs. Mitts
was overheard by a next-door neighbour to utter a cry of surprise expressing
much agitation; and the same neighbour did afterwards solemnly affirm
that when he was admitted into Mrs. Mitts&rsquo;s room, she heard a
smack.&nbsp; Heard a smack which was not a blow.</p>
<p>There was an air about this Greenwich Pensioner when he took his
departure, which imbued all Titbull&rsquo;s with the conviction that
he was coming again.&nbsp; He was eagerly looked for, and Mrs. Mitts
was closely watched.&nbsp; In the meantime, if anything could have placed
the unfortunate six old gentlemen at a greater disadvantage than that
at which they chronically stood, it would have been the apparition of
this Greenwich Pensioner.&nbsp; They were well shrunken already, but
they shrunk to nothing in comparison with the Pensioner.&nbsp; Even
the poor old gentlemen themselves seemed conscious of their inferiority,
and to know submissively that they could never hope to hold their own
against the Pensioner with his warlike and maritime experience in the
past, and his tobacco money in the present: his chequered career of
blue water, black gunpowder, and red bloodshed for England, home, and
beauty.</p>
<p>Before three weeks were out, the Pensioner reappeared.&nbsp; Again
he knocked at Mrs. Mitts&rsquo;s door with the handle of his stick,
and again was he admitted.&nbsp; But not again did he depart alone;
for Mrs. Mitts, in a bonnet identified as having been re-embellished,
went out walking with him, and stayed out till the ten o&rsquo;clock
beer, Greenwich time.</p>
<p>There was now a truce, even as to the troubled waters of Mrs. Saggers&rsquo;s
pail; nothing was spoken of among the ladies but the conduct of Mrs.
Mitts and its blighting influence on the reputation of Titbull&rsquo;s.&nbsp;
It was agreed that Mr. Battens &lsquo;ought to take it up,&rsquo; and
Mr. Battens was communicated with on the subject.&nbsp; That unsatisfactory
individual replied &lsquo;that he didn&rsquo;t see his way yet,&rsquo;
and it was unanimously voted by the ladies that aggravation was in his
nature.</p>
<p>How it came to pass, with some appearance of inconsistency, that
Mrs. Mitts was cut by all the ladies and the Pensioner admired by all
the ladies, matters not.&nbsp; Before another week was out, Titbull&rsquo;s
was startled by another phenomenon.&nbsp; At ten o&rsquo;clock in the
forenoon appeared a cab, containing not only the Greenwich Pensioner
with one arm, but, to boot, a Chelsea Pensioner with one leg.&nbsp;
Both dismounting to assist Mrs. Mitts into the cab, the Greenwich Pensioner
bore her company inside, and the Chelsea Pensioner mounted the box by
the driver: his wooden leg sticking out after the manner of a bowsprit,
as if in jocular homage to his friend&rsquo;s sea-going career.&nbsp;
Thus the equipage drove away.&nbsp; No Mrs. Mitts returned that night.</p>
<p>What Mr. Battens might have done in the matter of taking it up, goaded
by the infuriated state of public feeling next morning, was anticipated
by another phenomenon.&nbsp; A Truck, propelled by the Greenwich Pensioner
and the Chelsea Pensioner, each placidly smoking a pipe, and pushing
his warrior breast against the handle.</p>
<p>The display on the part of the Greenwich Pensioner of his &lsquo;marriage-lines,&rsquo;
and his announcement that himself and friend had looked in for the furniture
of Mrs. G. Pensioner, late Mitts, by no means reconciled the ladies
to the conduct of their sister; on the contrary, it is said that they
appeared more than ever exasperated.&nbsp; Nevertheless, my stray visits
to Titbull&rsquo;s since the date of this occurrence, have confirmed
me in an impression that it was a wholesome fillip.&nbsp; The nine ladies
are smarter, both in mind and dress, than they used to be, though it
must be admitted that they despise the six gentlemen to the last extent.&nbsp;
They have a much greater interest in the external thoroughfare too,
than they had when I first knew Titbull&rsquo;s.&nbsp; And whenever
I chance to be leaning my back against the pump or the iron railings,
and to be talking to one of the junior ladies, and to see that a flush
has passed over her face, I immediately know without looking round that
a Greenwich Pensioner has gone past.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XXX&mdash;THE RUFFIAN</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>I entertain so strong an objection to the euphonious softening of
Ruffian into Rough, which has lately become popular, that I restore
the right word to the heading of this paper; the rather, as my object
is to dwell upon the fact that the Ruffian is tolerated among us to
an extent that goes beyond all unruffianly endurance.&nbsp; I take the
liberty to believe that if the Ruffian besets my life, a professional
Ruffian at large in the open streets of a great city, notoriously having
no other calling than that of Ruffian, and of disquieting and despoiling
me as I go peacefully about my lawful business, interfering with no
one, then the Government under which I have the great constitutional
privilege, supreme honour and happiness, and all the rest of it, to
exist, breaks down in the discharge of any Government&rsquo;s most simple
elementary duty.</p>
<p>What did I read in the London daily papers, in the early days of
this last September?&nbsp; That the Police had &lsquo;AT LENGTH SUCCEEDED
IN CAPTURING TWO OF THE NOTORIOUS GANG THAT HAVE SO LONG INVESTED THE
WATERLOO ROAD.&rsquo;&nbsp; Is it possible?&nbsp; What a wonderful Police!&nbsp;
Here is a straight, broad, public thoroughfare of immense resort; half
a mile long; gas-lighted by night; with a great gas-lighted railway
station in it, extra the street lamps; full of shops; traversed by two
popular cross thoroughfares of considerable traffic; itself the main
road to the South of London; and the admirable Police have, after long
infestment of this dark and lonely spot by a gang of Ruffians, actually
got hold of two of them.&nbsp; Why, can it be doubted that any man of
fair London knowledge and common resolution, armed with the powers of
the Law, could have captured the whole confederacy in a week?</p>
<p>It is to the saving up of the Ruffian class by the Magistracy and
Police&mdash;to the conventional preserving of them, as if they were
Partridges&mdash;that their number and audacity must be in great part
referred.&nbsp; Why is a notorious Thief and Ruffian ever left at large?&nbsp;
He never turns his liberty to any account but violence and plunder,
he never did a day&rsquo;s work out of gaol, he never will do a day&rsquo;s
work out of gaol.&nbsp; As a proved notorious Thief he is always consignable
to prison for three months.&nbsp; When he comes out, he is surely as
notorious a Thief as he was when he went in.&nbsp; Then send him back
again.&nbsp; &lsquo;Just Heaven!&rsquo; cries the Society for the protection
of remonstrant Ruffians.&nbsp; &lsquo;This is equivalent to a sentence
of perpetual imprisonment!&rsquo;&nbsp; Precisely for that reason it
has my advocacy.&nbsp; I demand to have the Ruffian kept out of my way,
and out of the way of all decent people.&nbsp; I demand to have the
Ruffian employed, perforce, in hewing wood and drawing water somewhere
for the general service, instead of hewing at her Majesty&rsquo;s subjects
and drawing their watches out of their pockets.&nbsp; If this be termed
an unreasonable demand, then the tax-gatherer&rsquo;s demand on me must
be far more unreasonable, and cannot be otherwise than extortionate
and unjust.</p>
<p>It will be seen that I treat of the Thief and Ruffian as one.&nbsp;
I do so, because I know the two characters to be one, in the vast majority
of cases, just as well as the Police know it.&nbsp; (As to the Magistracy,
with a few exceptions, they know nothing about it but what the Police
choose to tell them.)&nbsp; There are disorderly classes of men who
are not thieves; as railway-navigators, brickmakers, wood-sawyers, costermongers.&nbsp;
These classes are often disorderly and troublesome; but it is mostly
among themselves, and at any rate they have their industrious avocations,
they work early and late, and work hard.&nbsp; The generic Ruffian&mdash;honourable
member for what is tenderly called the Rough Element&mdash;is either
a Thief, or the companion of Thieves.&nbsp; When he infamously molests
women coming out of chapel on Sunday evenings (for which I would have
his back scarified often and deep) it is not only for the gratification
of his pleasant instincts, but that there may be a confusion raised
by which either he or his friends may profit, in the commission of highway
robberies or in picking pockets.&nbsp; When he gets a police-constable
down and kicks him helpless for life, it is because that constable once
did his duty in bringing him to justice.&nbsp; When he rushes into the
bar of a public-house and scoops an eye out of one of the company there,
or bites his ear off, it is because the man he maims gave evidence against
him.&nbsp; When he and a line of comrades extending across the footway&mdash;say
of that solitary mountain-spur of the Abruzzi, the Waterloo Road&mdash;advance
towards me &lsquo;skylarking&rsquo; among themselves, my purse or shirt-pin
is in predestined peril from his playfulness.&nbsp; Always a Ruffian,
always a Thief.&nbsp; Always a Thief, always a Ruffian.</p>
<p>Now, when I, who am not paid to know these things, know them daily
on the evidence of my senses and experience; when I know that the Ruffian
never jostles a lady in the streets, or knocks a hat off, but in order
that the Thief may profit, is it surprising that I should require from
those who <i>are</i> paid to know these things, prevention of them?</p>
<p>Look at this group at a street corner.&nbsp; Number one is a shirking
fellow of five-and-twenty, in an ill-favoured and ill-savoured suit,
his trousers of corduroy, his coat of some indiscernible groundwork
for the deposition of grease, his neckerchief like an eel, his complexion
like dirty dough, his mangy fur cap pulled low upon his beetle brows
to hide the prison cut of his hair.&nbsp; His hands are in his pockets.&nbsp;
He puts them there when they are idle, as naturally as in other people&rsquo;s
pockets when they are busy, for he knows that they are not roughened
by work, and that they tell a tale.&nbsp; Hence, whenever he takes one
out to draw a sleeve across his nose&mdash;which is often, for he has
weak eyes and a constitutional cold in his head&mdash;he restores it
to its pocket immediately afterwards.&nbsp; Number two is a burly brute
of five-and-thirty, in a tall stiff hat; is a composite as to his clothes
of betting-man and fighting-man; is whiskered; has a staring pin in
his breast, along with his right hand; has insolent and cruel eyes:
large shoulders; strong legs booted and tipped for kicking.&nbsp; Number
three is forty years of age; is short, thick-set, strong, and bow-legged;
wears knee cords and white stockings, a very long-sleeved waistcoat,
a very large neckerchief doubled or trebled round his throat, and a
crumpled white hat crowns his ghastly parchment face.&nbsp; This fellow
looks like an executed postboy of other days, cut down from the gallows
too soon, and restored and preserved by express diabolical agency.&nbsp;
Numbers five, six, and seven, are hulking, idle, slouching young men,
patched and shabby, too short in the sleeves and too tight in the legs,
slimily clothed, foul-spoken, repulsive wretches inside and out.&nbsp;
In all the party there obtains a certain twitching character of mouth
and furtiveness of eye, that hint how the coward is lurking under the
bully.&nbsp; The hint is quite correct, for they are a slinking sneaking
set, far more prone to lie down on their backs and kick out, when in
difficulty, than to make a stand for it.&nbsp; (This may account for
the street mud on the backs of Numbers five, six, and seven, being much
fresher than the stale splashes on their legs.)</p>
<p>These engaging gentry a Police-constable stands contemplating.&nbsp;
His Station, with a Reserve of assistance, is very near at hand.&nbsp;
They cannot pretend to any trade, not even to be porters or messengers.&nbsp;
It would be idle if they did, for he knows them, and they know that
he knows them, to be nothing but professed Thieves and Ruffians.&nbsp;
He knows where they resort, knows by what slang names they call one
another, knows how often they have been in prison, and how long, and
for what.&nbsp; All this is known at his Station, too, and is (or ought
to be) known at Scotland Yard, too.&nbsp; But does he know, or does
his Station know, or does Scotland Yard know, or does anybody know,
why these fellows should be here at liberty, when, as reputed Thieves
to whom a whole Division of Police could swear, they might all be under
lock and key at hard labour?&nbsp; Not he; truly he would be a wise
man if he did!&nbsp; He only knows that these are members of the &lsquo;notorious
gang,&rsquo; which, according to the newspaper Police-office reports
of this last past September, &lsquo;have so long infested&rsquo; the
awful solitudes of the Waterloo Road, and out of which almost impregnable
fastnesses the Police have at length dragged Two, to the unspeakable
admiration of all good civilians.</p>
<p>The consequences of this contemplative habit on the part of the Executive&mdash;a
habit to be looked for in a hermit, but not in a Police System&mdash;are
familiar to us all.&nbsp; The Ruffian becomes one of the established
orders of the body politic.&nbsp; Under the playful name of Rough (as
if he were merely a practical joker) his movements and successes are
recorded on public occasions.&nbsp; Whether he mustered in large numbers,
or small; whether he was in good spirits, or depressed; whether he turned
his generous exertions to very prosperous account, or Fortune was against
him; whether he was in a sanguinary mood, or robbed with amiable horse-play
and a gracious consideration for life and limb; all this is chronicled
as if he were an Institution.&nbsp; Is there any city in Europe, out
of England, in which these terms are held with the pests of Society?&nbsp;
Or in which, at this day, such violent robberies from the person are
constantly committed as in London?</p>
<p>The Preparatory Schools of Ruffianism are similarly borne with.&nbsp;
The young Ruffians of London&mdash;not Thieves yet, but training for
scholarships and fellowships in the Criminal Court Universities&mdash;molest
quiet people and their property, to an extent that is hardly credible.&nbsp;
The throwing of stones in the streets has become a dangerous and destructive
offence, which surely could have got to no greater height though we
had had no Police but our own riding-whips and walking-sticks&mdash;the
Police to which I myself appeal on these occasions.&nbsp; The throwing
of stones at the windows of railway carriages in motion&mdash;an act
of wanton wickedness with the very Arch-Fiend&rsquo;s hand in it&mdash;had
become a crying evil, when the railway companies forced it on Police
notice.&nbsp; Constabular contemplation had until then been the order
of the day.</p>
<p>Within these twelve months, there arose among the young gentlemen
of London aspiring to Ruffianism, and cultivating that much-encouraged
social art, a facetious cry of &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll have this!&rsquo; accompanied
with a clutch at some article of a passing lady&rsquo;s dress.&nbsp;
I have known a lady&rsquo;s veil to be thus humorously torn from her
face and carried off in the open streets at noon; and I have had the
honour of myself giving chase, on Westminster Bridge, to another young
Ruffian, who, in full daylight early on a summer evening, had nearly
thrown a modest young woman into a swoon of indignation and confusion,
by his shameful manner of attacking her with this cry as she harmlessly
passed along before me.&nbsp; MR. CARLYLE, some time since, awakened
a little pleasantry by writing of his own experience of the Ruffian
of the streets.&nbsp; I have seen the Ruffian act in exact accordance
with Mr. Carlyle&rsquo;s description, innumerable times, and I never
saw him checked.</p>
<p>The blaring use of the very worst language possible, in our public
thoroughfares&mdash;especially in those set apart for recreation&mdash;is
another disgrace to us, and another result of constabular contemplation,
the like of which I have never heard in any other country to which my
uncommercial travels have extended.&nbsp; Years ago, when I had a near
interest in certain children who were sent with their nurses, for air
and exercise, into the Regent&rsquo;s Park, I found this evil to be
so abhorrent and horrible there, that I called public attention to it,
and also to its contemplative reception by the Police.&nbsp; Looking
afterwards into the newest Police Act, and finding that the offence
was punishable under it, I resolved, when striking occasion should arise,
to try my hand as prosecutor.&nbsp; The occasion arose soon enough,
and I ran the following gauntlet.</p>
<p>The utterer of the base coin in question was a girl of seventeen
or eighteen, who, with a suitable attendance of blackguards, youths,
and boys, was flaunting along the streets, returning from an Irish funeral,
in a Progress interspersed with singing and dancing.&nbsp; She had turned
round to me and expressed herself in the most audible manner, to the
great delight of that select circle.&nbsp; I attended the party, on
the opposite side of the way, for a mile further, and then encountered
a Police-constable.&nbsp; The party had made themselves merry at my
expense until now, but seeing me speak to the constable, its male members
instantly took to their heels, leaving the girl alone.&nbsp; I asked
the constable did he know my name?&nbsp; Yes, he did.&nbsp; &lsquo;Take
that girl into custody, on my charge, for using bad language in the
streets.&rsquo;&nbsp; He had never heard of such a charge.&nbsp; I had.&nbsp;
Would he take my word that he should get into no trouble?&nbsp; Yes,
sir, he would do that.&nbsp; So he took the girl, and I went home for
my Police Act.</p>
<p>With this potent instrument in my pocket, I literally as well as
figuratively &lsquo;returned to the charge,&rsquo; and presented myself
at the Police Station of the district.&nbsp; There, I found on duty
a very intelligent Inspector (they are all intelligent men), who, likewise,
had never heard of such a charge.&nbsp; I showed him my clause, and
we went over it together twice or thrice.&nbsp; It was plain, and I
engaged to wait upon the suburban Magistrate to-morrow morning at ten
o&rsquo;clock.</p>
<p>In the morning I put my Police Act in my pocket again, and waited
on the suburban Magistrate.&nbsp; I was not quite so courteously received
by him as I should have been by The Lord Chancellor or The Lord Chief
Justice, but that was a question of good breeding on the suburban Magistrate&rsquo;s
part, and I had my clause ready with its leaf turned down.&nbsp; Which
was enough for <i>me.</i></p>
<p>Conference took place between the Magistrate and clerk respecting
the charge.&nbsp; During conference I was evidently regarded as a much
more objectionable person than the prisoner;&mdash;one giving trouble
by coming there voluntarily, which the prisoner could not be accused
of doing.&nbsp; The prisoner had been got up, since I last had the pleasure
of seeing her, with a great effect of white apron and straw bonnet.&nbsp;
She reminded me of an elder sister of Red Riding Hood, and I seemed
to remind the sympathising Chimney Sweep by whom she was attended, of
the Wolf.</p>
<p>The Magistrate was doubtful, Mr. Uncommercial Traveller, whether
this charge could be entertained.&nbsp; It was not known.&nbsp; Mr.
Uncommercial Traveller replied that he wished it were better known,
and that, if he could afford the leisure, he would use his endeavours
to make it so.&nbsp; There was no question about it, however, he contended.&nbsp;
Here was the clause.</p>
<p>The clause was handed in, and more conference resulted.&nbsp; After
which I was asked the extraordinary question: &lsquo;Mr. Uncommercial,
do you really wish this girl to be sent to prison?&rsquo;&nbsp; To which
I grimly answered, staring: &lsquo;If I didn&rsquo;t, why should I take
the trouble to come here?&rsquo;&nbsp; Finally, I was sworn, and gave
my agreeable evidence in detail, and White Riding Hood was fined ten
shillings, under the clause, or sent to prison for so many days.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Why, Lord bless you, sir,&rsquo; said the Police-officer, who
showed me out, with a great enjoyment of the jest of her having been
got up so effectively, and caused so much hesitation: &lsquo;if she
goes to prison, that will be nothing new to <i>her</i>.&nbsp; She comes
from Charles Street, Drury Lane!&rsquo;</p>
<p>The Police, all things considered, are an excellent force, and I
have borne my small testimony to their merits.&nbsp; Constabular contemplation
is the result of a bad system; a system which is administered, not invented,
by the man in constable&rsquo;s uniform, employed at twenty shillings
a week.&nbsp; He has his orders, and would be marked for discouragement
if he overstepped them.&nbsp; That the system is bad, there needs no
lengthened argument to prove, because the fact is self-evident.&nbsp;
If it were anything else, the results that have attended it could not
possibly have come to pass.&nbsp; Who will say that under a good system,
our streets could have got into their present state?</p>
<p>The objection to the whole Police system, as concerning the Ruffian,
may be stated, and its failure exemplified, as follows.&nbsp; It is
well known that on all great occasions, when they come together in numbers,
the mass of the English people are their own trustworthy Police.&nbsp;
It is well known that wheresoever there is collected together any fair
general representation of the people, a respect for law and order, and
a determination to discountenance lawlessness and disorder, may be relied
upon.&nbsp; As to one another, the people are a very good Police, and
yet are quite willing in their good-nature that the stipendiary Police
should have the credit of the people&rsquo;s moderation.&nbsp; But we
are all of us powerless against the Ruffian, because we submit to the
law, and it is his only trade, by superior force and by violence, to
defy it.&nbsp; Moreover, we are constantly admonished from high places
(like so many Sunday-school children out for a holiday of buns and milk-and-water)
that we are not to take the law into our own hands, but are to hand
our defence over to it.&nbsp; It is clear that the common enemy to be
punished and exterminated first of all is the Ruffian.&nbsp; It is clear
that he is, of all others, <i>the</i> offender for whose repressal we
maintain a costly system of Police.&nbsp; Him, therefore, we expressly
present to the Police to deal with, conscious that, on the whole, we
can, and do, deal reasonably well with one another.&nbsp; Him the Police
deal with so inefficiently and absurdly that he flourishes, and multiplies,
and, with all his evil deeds upon his head as notoriously as his hat
is, pervades the streets with no more let or hindrance than ourselves.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XXXI&mdash;ABOARD SHIP</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>My journeys as Uncommercial Traveller for the firm of Human-Interest
Brothers have not slackened since I last reported of them, but have
kept me continually on the move.&nbsp; I remain in the same idle employment.&nbsp;
I never solicit an order, I never get any commission, I am the rolling
stone that gathers no moss,&mdash;unless any should by chance be found
among these samples.</p>
<p>Some half a year ago, I found myself in my idlest, dreamiest, and
least accountable condition altogether, on board ship, in the harbour
of the city of New York, in the United States of America.&nbsp; Of all
the good ships afloat, mine was the good steamship &lsquo;RUSSIA,&rsquo;
CAPT. COOK, Cunard Line, bound for Liverpool.&nbsp; What more could
I wish for?</p>
<p>I had nothing to wish for but a prosperous passage.&nbsp; My salad-days,
when I was green of visage and sea-sick, being gone with better things
(and no worse), no coming event cast its shadow before.</p>
<p>I might but a few moments previously have imitated Sterne, and said,
&lsquo;&ldquo;And yet, methinks, Eugenius,&rdquo;&mdash;laying my forefinger
wistfully on his coat-sleeve, thus,&mdash;&ldquo;and yet, methinks,
Eugenius, &rsquo;tis but sorry work to part with thee, for what fresh
fields, . . . my dear Eugenius, . . . can be fresher than thou art,
and in what pastures new shall I find Eliza, or call her, Eugenius,
if thou wilt, Annie?&rdquo;&rsquo;&mdash;I say I might have done this;
but Eugenius was gone, and I hadn&rsquo;t done it.</p>
<p>I was resting on a skylight on the hurricane-deck, watching the working
of the ship very slowly about, that she might head for England.&nbsp;
It was high noon on a most brilliant day in April, and the beautiful
bay was glorious and glowing.&nbsp; Full many a time, on shore there,
had I seen the snow come down, down, down (itself like down), until
it lay deep in all the ways of men, and particularly, as it seemed,
in my way, for I had not gone dry-shod many hours for months.&nbsp;
Within two or three days last past had I watched the feathery fall setting
in with the ardour of a new idea, instead of dragging at the skirts
of a worn-out winter, and permitting glimpses of a fresh young spring.&nbsp;
But a bright sun and a clear sky had melted the snow in the great crucible
of nature; and it had been poured out again that morning over sea and
land, transformed into myriads of gold and silver sparkles.</p>
<p>The ship was fragrant with flowers.&nbsp; Something of the old Mexican
passion for flowers may have gradually passed into North America, where
flowers are luxuriously grown, and tastefully combined in the richest
profusion; but, be that as it may, such gorgeous farewells in flowers
had come on board, that the small officer&rsquo;s cabin on deck, which
I tenanted, bloomed over into the adjacent scuppers, and banks of other
flowers that it couldn&rsquo;t hold made a garden of the unoccupied
tables in the passengers&rsquo; saloon.&nbsp; These delicious scents
of the shore, mingling with the fresh airs of the sea, made the atmosphere
a dreamy, an enchanting one.&nbsp; And so, with the watch aloft setting
all the sails, and with the screw below revolving at a mighty rate,
and occasionally giving the ship an angry shake for resisting, I fell
into my idlest ways, and lost myself.</p>
<p>As, for instance, whether it was I lying there, or some other entity
even more mysterious, was a matter I was far too lazy to look into.&nbsp;
What did it signify to me if it were I? or to the more mysterious entity,
if it were he?&nbsp; Equally as to the remembrances that drowsily floated
by me, or by him, why ask when or where the things happened?&nbsp; Was
it not enough that they befell at some time, somewhere?</p>
<p>There was that assisting at the church service on board another steamship,
one Sunday, in a stiff breeze.&nbsp; Perhaps on the passage out.&nbsp;
No matter.&nbsp; Pleasant to hear the ship&rsquo;s bells go as like
church-bells as they could; pleasant to see the watch off duty mustered
and come in: best hats, best Guernseys, washed hands and faces, smoothed
heads.&nbsp; But then arose a set of circumstances so rampantly comical,
that no check which the gravest intentions could put upon them would
hold them in hand.&nbsp; Thus the scene.&nbsp; Some seventy passengers
assembled at the saloon tables.&nbsp; Prayer-books on tables.&nbsp;
Ship rolling heavily.&nbsp; Pause.&nbsp; No minister.&nbsp; Rumour has
related that a modest young clergyman on board has responded to the
captain&rsquo;s request that he will officiate.&nbsp; Pause again, and
very heavy rolling.</p>
<p>Closed double doors suddenly burst open, and two strong stewards
skate in, supporting minister between them.&nbsp; General appearance
as of somebody picked up drunk and incapable, and under conveyance to
station-house.&nbsp; Stoppage, pause, and particularly heavy rolling.&nbsp;
Stewards watch their opportunity, and balance themselves, but cannot
balance minister; who, struggling with a drooping head and a backward
tendency, seems determined to return below, while they are as determined
that he shall be got to the reading-desk in mid-saloon.&nbsp; Desk portable,
sliding away down a long table, and aiming itself at the breasts of
various members of the congregation.&nbsp; Here the double doors, which
have been carefully closed by other stewards, fly open again, and worldly
passenger tumbles in, seemingly with pale-ale designs: who, seeking
friend, says &lsquo;Joe!&rsquo;&nbsp; Perceiving incongruity, says,
&lsquo;Hullo!&nbsp; Beg yer pardon!&rsquo; and tumbles out again.&nbsp;
All this time the congregation have been breaking up into sects,&mdash;as
the manner of congregations often is, each sect sliding away by itself,
and all pounding the weakest sect which slid first into the corner.&nbsp;
Utmost point of dissent soon attained in every corner, and violent rolling.&nbsp;
Stewards at length make a dash; conduct minister to the mast in the
centre of the saloon, which he embraces with both arms; skate out; and
leave him in that condition to arrange affairs with flock.</p>
<p>There was another Sunday, when an officer of the ship read the service.&nbsp;
It was quiet and impressive, until we fell upon the dangerous and perfectly
unnecessary experiment of striking up a hymn.&nbsp; After it was given
out, we all rose, but everybody left it to somebody else to begin.&nbsp;
Silence resulting, the officer (no singer himself) rather reproachfully
gave us the first line again, upon which a rosy pippin of an old gentleman,
remarkable throughout the passage for his cheerful politeness, gave
a little stamp with his boot (as if he were leading off a country dance),
and blithely warbled us into a show of joining.&nbsp; At the end of
the first verse we became, through these tactics, so much refreshed
and encouraged, that none of us, howsoever unmelodious, would submit
to be left out of the second verse; while as to the third we lifted
up our voices in a sacred howl that left it doubtful whether we were
the more boastful of the sentiments we united in professing, or of professing
them with a most discordant defiance of time and tune.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Lord bless us!&rsquo; thought I, when the fresh remembrance
of these things made me laugh heartily alone in the dead water-gurgling
waste of the night, what time I was wedged into my berth by a wooden
bar, or I must have rolled out of it, &lsquo;what errand was I then
upon, and to what Abyssinian point had public events then marched?&nbsp;
No matter as to me.&nbsp; And as to them, if the wonderful popular rage
for a plaything (utterly confounding in its inscrutable unreason) I
had not then lighted on a poor young savage boy, and a poor old screw
of a horse, and hauled the first off by the hair of his princely head
to &ldquo;inspect&rdquo; the British volunteers, and hauled the second
off by the hair of his equine tail to the Crystal Palace, why so much
the better for all of us outside Bedlam!&rsquo;</p>
<p>So, sticking to the ship, I was at the trouble of asking myself would
I like to show the grog distribution in &lsquo;the fiddle&rsquo; at
noon to the Grand United Amalgamated Total Abstinence Society?&nbsp;
Yes, I think I should.&nbsp; I think it would do them good to smell
the rum, under the circumstances.&nbsp; Over the grog, mixed in a bucket,
presides the boatswain&rsquo;s mate, small tin can in hand.&nbsp; Enter
the crew, the guilty consumers, the grown-up brood of Giant Despair,
in contradistinction to the band of youthful angel Hope.&nbsp; Some
in boots, some in leggings, some in tarpaulin overalls, some in frocks,
some in pea-coats, a very few in jackets, most with sou&rsquo;wester
hats, all with something rough and rugged round the throat; all, dripping
salt water where they stand; all pelted by weather, besmeared with grease,
and blackened by the sooty rigging.</p>
<p>Each man&rsquo;s knife in its sheath in his girdle, loosened for
dinner.&nbsp; As the first man, with a knowingly kindled eye, watches
the filling of the poisoned chalice (truly but a very small tin mug,
to be prosaic), and, tossing back his head, tosses the contents into
himself, and passes the empty chalice and passes on, so the second man
with an anticipatory wipe of his mouth on sleeve or handkerchief, bides
his turn, and drinks and hands and passes on, in whom, and in each as
his turn approaches, beams a knowingly kindled eye, a brighter temper,
and a suddenly awakened tendency to be jocose with some shipmate.&nbsp;
Nor do I even observe that the man in charge of the ship&rsquo;s lamps,
who in right of his office has a double allowance of poisoned chalices,
seems thereby vastly degraded, even though he empties the chalices into
himself, one after the other, much as if he were delivering their contents
at some absorbent establishment in which he had no personal interest.&nbsp;
But vastly comforted, I note them all to be, on deck presently, even
to the circulation of redder blood in their cold blue knuckles; and
when I look up at them lying out on the yards, and holding on for life
among the beating sails, I cannot for <i>my</i> life see the justice
of visiting on them&mdash;or on me&mdash;the drunken crimes of any number
of criminals arraigned at the heaviest of assizes.</p>
<p>Abetting myself in my idle humour, I closed my eyes, and recalled
life on board of one of those mail-packets, as I lay, part of that day,
in the Bay of New York, O!&nbsp; The regular life began&mdash;mine always
did, for I never got to sleep afterwards&mdash;with the rigging of the
pump while it was yet dark, and washing down of decks.&nbsp; Any enormous
giant at a prodigious hydropathic establishment, conscientiously undergoing
the water-cure in all its departments, and extremely particular about
cleaning his teeth, would make those noises.&nbsp; Swash, splash, scrub,
rub, toothbrush, bubble, swash, splash, bubble, toothbrush, splash,
splash, bubble, rub.&nbsp; Then the day would break, and, descending
from my berth by a graceful ladder composed of half-opened drawers beneath
it, I would reopen my outer dead-light and my inner sliding window (closed
by a watchman during the water-cure), and would look out at the long-rolling,
lead-coloured, white topped waves over which the dawn, on a cold winter
morning, cast a level, lonely glance, and through which the ship fought
her melancholy way at a terrific rate.&nbsp; And now, lying down again,
awaiting the season for broiled ham and tea, I would be compelled to
listen to the voice of conscience,&mdash;the screw.</p>
<p>It might be, in some cases, no more than the voice of stomach; but
I called it in my fancy by the higher name.&nbsp; Because it seemed
to me that we were all of us, all day long, endeavouring to stifle the
voice.&nbsp; Because it was under everybody&rsquo;s pillow, everybody&rsquo;s
plate, everybody&rsquo;s camp-stool, everybody&rsquo;s book, everybody&rsquo;s
occupation.&nbsp; Because we pretended not to hear it, especially at
meal-times, evening whist, and morning conversation on deck; but it
was always among us in an under monotone, not to be drowned in pea-soup,
not to be shuffled with cards, not to be diverted by books, not to be
knitted into any pattern, not to be walked away from.&nbsp; It was smoked
in the weediest cigar, and drunk in the strongest cocktail; it was conveyed
on deck at noon with limp ladies, who lay there in their wrappers until
the stars shone; it waited at table with the stewards; nobody could
put it out with the lights.&nbsp; It was considered (as on shore) ill-bred
to acknowledge the voice of conscience.&nbsp; It was not polite to mention
it.&nbsp; One squally day an amiable gentleman in love gave much offence
to a surrounding circle, including the object of his attachment, by
saying of it, after it had goaded him over two easy-chairs and a skylight,
&lsquo;Screw!&rsquo;</p>
<p>Sometimes it would appear subdued.&nbsp; In fleeting moments, when
bubbles of champagne pervaded the nose, or when there was &lsquo;hot
pot&rsquo; in the bill of fare, or when an old dish we had had regularly
every day was described in that official document by a new name,&mdash;under
such excitements, one would almost believe it hushed.&nbsp; The ceremony
of washing plates on deck, performed after every meal by a circle as
of ringers of crockery triple-bob majors for a prize, would keep it
down.&nbsp; Hauling the reel, taking the sun at noon, posting the twenty-four
hours&rsquo; run, altering the ship&rsquo;s time by the meridian, casting
the waste food overboard, and attracting the eager gulls that followed
in our wake,&mdash;these events would suppress it for a while.&nbsp;
But the instant any break or pause took place in any such diversion,
the voice would be at it again, importuning us to the last extent.&nbsp;
A newly married young pair, who walked the deck affectionately some
twenty miles per day, would, in the full flush of their exercise, suddenly
become stricken by it, and stand trembling, but otherwise immovable,
under its reproaches.</p>
<p>When this terrible monitor was most severe with us was when the time
approached for our retiring to our dens for the night; when the lighted
candles in the saloon grew fewer and fewer; when the deserted glasses
with spoons in them grew more and more numerous; when waifs of toasted
cheese and strays of sardines fried in batter slid languidly to and
fro in the table-racks; when the man who always read had shut up his
book, and blown out his candle; when the man who always talked had ceased
from troubling; when the man who was always medically reported as going
to have delirium tremens had put it off till to-morrow; when the man
who every night devoted himself to a midnight smoke on deck two hours
in length, and who every night was in bed within ten minutes afterwards,
was buttoning himself up in his third coat for his hardy vigil: for
then, as we fell off one by one, and, entering our several hutches,
came into a peculiar atmosphere of bilge-water and Windsor soap, the
voice would shake us to the centre.&nbsp; Woe to us when we sat down
on our sofa, watching the swinging candle for ever trying and retrying
to stand upon his head! or our coat upon its peg, imitating us as we
appeared in our gymnastic days by sustaining itself horizontally from
the wall, in emulation of the lighter and more facile towels!&nbsp;
Then would the voice especially claim us for its prey, and rend us all
to pieces.</p>
<p>Lights out, we in our berths, and the wind rising, the voice grows
angrier and deeper.&nbsp; Under the mattress and under the pillow, under
the sofa and under the washing-stand, under the ship and under the sea,
seeming to rise from the foundations under the earth with every scoop
of the great Atlantic (and oh! why scoop so?), always the voice.&nbsp;
Vain to deny its existence in the night season; impossible to be hard
of hearing; screw, screw, screw!&nbsp; Sometimes it lifts out of the
water, and revolves with a whirr, like a ferocious firework,&mdash;except
that it never expends itself, but is always ready to go off again; sometimes
it seems to be in anguish, and shivers; sometimes it seems to be terrified
by its last plunge, and has a fit which causes it to struggle, quiver,
and for an instant stop.&nbsp; And now the ship sets in rolling, as
only ships so fiercely screwed through time and space, day and night,
fair weather and foul, <i>can</i> roll.</p>
<p>Did she ever take a roll before like that last?&nbsp; Did she ever
take a roll before like this worse one that is coming now?&nbsp; Here
is the partition at my ear down in the deep on the lee side.&nbsp; Are
we ever coming up again together?&nbsp; I think not; the partition and
I are so long about it that I really do believe we have overdone it
this time.&nbsp; Heavens, what a scoop!&nbsp; What a deep scoop, what
a hollow scoop, what a long scoop!&nbsp; Will it ever end, and can we
bear the heavy mass of water we have taken on board, and which has let
loose all the table furniture in the officers&rsquo; mess, and has beaten
open the door of the little passage between the purser and me, and is
swashing about, even there and even here?&nbsp; The purser snores reassuringly,
and the ship&rsquo;s bells striking, I hear the cheerful &lsquo;All&rsquo;s
well!&rsquo; of the watch musically given back the length of the deck,
as the lately diving partition, now high in air, tries (unsoftened by
what we have gone through together) to force me out of bed and berth.</p>
<p>&lsquo;All&rsquo;s well!&rsquo;&nbsp; Comforting to know, though
surely all might be better.&nbsp; Put aside the rolling and the rush
of water, and think of darting through such darkness with such velocity.&nbsp;
Think of any other similar object coming in the opposite direction!</p>
<p>Whether there may be an attraction in two such moving bodies out
at sea, which may help accident to bring them into collision?&nbsp;
Thoughts, too, arise (the voice never silent all the while, but marvellously
suggestive) of the gulf below; of the strange, unfruitful mountain ranges
and deep valleys over which we are passing; of monstrous fish midway;
of the ship&rsquo;s suddenly altering her course on her own account,
and with a wild plunge settling down, and making <i>that</i> voyage
with a crew of dead discoverers.&nbsp; Now, too, one recalls an almost
universal tendency on the part of passengers to stumble, at some time
or other in the day, on the topic of a certain large steamer making
this same run, which was lost at sea, and never heard of more.&nbsp;
Everybody has seemed under a spell, compelling approach to the threshold
of the grim subject, stoppage, discomfiture, and pretence of never having
been near it.&nbsp; The boatswain&rsquo;s whistle sounds!&nbsp; A change
in the wind, hoarse orders issuing, and the watch very busy.&nbsp; Sails
come crashing home overhead, ropes (that seem all knot) ditto; every
man engaged appears to have twenty feet, with twenty times the average
amount of stamping power in each.&nbsp; Gradually the noise slackens,
the hoarse cries die away, the boatswain&rsquo;s whistle softens into
the soothing and contented notes, which rather reluctantly admit that
the job is done for the time, and the voice sets in again.</p>
<p>Thus come unintelligible dreams of up hill and down, and swinging
and swaying, until consciousness revives of atmospherical Windsor soap
and bilge-water, and the voice announces that the giant has come for
the water-cure again.</p>
<p>Such were my fanciful reminiscences as I lay, part of that day, in
the Bay of New York, O!&nbsp; Also as we passed clear of the Narrows,
and got out to sea; also in many an idle hour at sea in sunny weather!&nbsp;
At length the observations and computations showed that we should make
the coast of Ireland to-night.&nbsp; So I stood watch on deck all night
to-night, to see how we made the coast of Ireland.</p>
<p>Very dark, and the sea most brilliantly phosphorescent.&nbsp; Great
way on the ship, and double look-out kept.&nbsp; Vigilant captain on
the bridge, vigilant first officer looking over the port side, vigilant
second officer standing by the quarter-master at the compass, vigilant
third officer posted at the stern rail with a lantern.&nbsp; No passengers
on the quiet decks, but expectation everywhere nevertheless.&nbsp; The
two men at the wheel very steady, very serious, and very prompt to answer
orders.&nbsp; An order issued sharply now and then, and echoed back;
otherwise the night drags slowly, silently, with no change.</p>
<p>All of a sudden, at the blank hour of two in the morning, a vague
movement of relief from a long strain expresses itself in all hands;
the third officer&rsquo;s lantern tinkles, and he fires a rocket, and
another rocket.&nbsp; A sullen solitary light is pointed out to me in
the black sky yonder.&nbsp; A change is expected in the light, but none
takes place.&nbsp; &lsquo;Give them two more rockets, Mr. Vigilant.&rsquo;&nbsp;
Two more, and a blue-light burnt.&nbsp; All eyes watch the light again.&nbsp;
At last a little toy sky-rocket is flashed up from it; and, even as
that small streak in the darkness dies away, we are telegraphed to Queenstown,
Liverpool, and London, and back again under the ocean to America.</p>
<p>Then up come the half-dozen passengers who are going ashore at Queenstown
and up comes the mail-agent in charge of the bags, and up come the men
who are to carry the bags into the mail-tender that will come off for
them out of the harbour.&nbsp; Lamps and lanterns gleam here and there
about the decks, and impeding bulks are knocked away with handspikes;
and the port-side bulwark, barren but a moment ago, bursts into a crop
of heads of seamen, stewards, and engineers.</p>
<p>The light begins to be gained upon, begins to be alongside, begins
to be left astern.&nbsp; More rockets, and, between us and the land,
steams beautifully the Inman steamship City of Paris, for New York,
outward bound.&nbsp; We observe with complacency that the wind is dead
against her (it being <i>with</i> us), and that she rolls and pitches.&nbsp;
(The sickest passenger on board is the most delighted by this circumstance.)&nbsp;
Time rushes by as we rush on; and now we see the light in Queenstown
Harbour, and now the lights of the mail-tender coming out to us.&nbsp;
What vagaries the mail-tender performs on the way, in every point of
the compass, especially in those where she has no business, and why
she performs them, Heaven only knows!&nbsp; At length she is seen plunging
within a cable&rsquo;s length of our port broadside, and is being roared
at through our speaking-trumpets to do this thing, and not to do that,
and to stand by the other, as if she were a very demented tender indeed.&nbsp;
Then, we slackening amidst a deafening roar of steam, this much-abused
tender is made fast to us by hawsers, and the men in readiness carry
the bags aboard, and return for more, bending under their burdens, and
looking just like the pasteboard figures of the miller and his men in
the theatre of our boyhood, and comporting themselves almost as unsteadily.&nbsp;
All the while the unfortunate tender plunges high and low, and is roared
at.&nbsp; Then the Queenstown passengers are put on board of her, with
infinite plunging and roaring, and the tender gets heaved up on the
sea to that surprising extent that she looks within an ace of washing
aboard of us, high and dry.&nbsp; Roared at with contumely to the last,
this wretched tender is at length let go, with a final plunge of great
ignominy, and falls spinning into our wake.</p>
<p>The voice of conscience resumed its dominion as the day climbed up
the sky, and kept by all of us passengers into port; kept by us as we
passed other lighthouses, and dangerous islands off the coast, where
some of the officers, with whom I stood my watch, had gone ashore in
sailing-ships in fogs (and of which by that token they seemed to have
quite an affectionate remembrance), and past the Welsh coast, and past
the Cheshire coast, and past everything and everywhere lying between
our ship and her own special dock in the Mersey.&nbsp; Off which, at
last, at nine of the clock, on a fair evening early in May, we stopped,
and the voice ceased.&nbsp; A very curious sensation, not unlike having
my own ears stopped, ensued upon that silence; and it was with a no
less curious sensation that I went over the side of the good Cunard
ship &lsquo;Russia&rsquo; (whom prosperity attend through all her voyages!)
and surveyed the outer hull of the gracious monster that the voice had
inhabited.&nbsp; So, perhaps, shall we all, in the spirit, one day survey
the frame that held the busier voice from which my vagrant fancy derived
this similitude.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XXXII&mdash;A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>I had been looking, yesternight, through the famous &lsquo;Dance
of Death,&rsquo; and to-day the grim old woodcuts arose in my mind with
the new significance of a ghastly monotony not to be found in the original.&nbsp;
The weird skeleton rattled along the streets before me, and struck fiercely;
but it was never at the pains of assuming a disguise.&nbsp; It played
on no dulcimer here, was crowned with no flowers, waved no plume, minced
in no flowing robe or train, lifted no wine-cup, sat at no feast, cast
no dice, counted no gold.&nbsp; It was simply a bare, gaunt, famished
skeleton, slaying his way along.</p>
<p>The borders of Ratcliff and Stepney, eastward of London, and giving
on the impure river, were the scene of this uncompromising dance of
death, upon a drizzling November day.&nbsp; A squalid maze of streets,
courts, and alleys of miserable houses let out in single rooms.&nbsp;
A wilderness of dirt, rags, and hunger.&nbsp; A mud-desert, chiefly
inhabited by a tribe from whom employment has departed, or to whom it
comes but fitfully and rarely.&nbsp; They are not skilled mechanics
in any wise.&nbsp; They are but labourers,&mdash;dock-labourers, water-side
labourers, coal-porters, ballast-heavers, such-like hewers of wood and
drawers of water.&nbsp; But they have come into existence, and they
propagate their wretched race.</p>
<p>One grisly joke alone, methought, the skeleton seemed to play off
here.&nbsp; It had stuck election-bills on the walls, which the wind
and rain had deteriorated into suitable rags.&nbsp; It had even summed
up the state of the poll, in chalk, on the shutters of one ruined house.&nbsp;
It adjured the free and independent starvers to vote for Thisman and
vote for Thatman; not to plump, as they valued the state of parties
and the national prosperity (both of great importance to them, I think);
but, by returning Thisman and Thatman, each naught without the other,
to compound a glorious and immortal whole.&nbsp; Surely the skeleton
is nowhere more cruelly ironical in the original monkish idea!</p>
<p>Pondering in my mind the far-seeing schemes of Thisman and Thatman,
and of the public blessing called Party, for staying the degeneracy,
physical and moral, of many thousands (who shall say how many?) of the
English race; for devising employment useful to the community for those
who want but to work and live; for equalising rates, cultivating waste
lands, facilitating emigration, and, above all things, saving and utilising
the oncoming generations, and thereby changing ever-growing national
weakness into strength: pondering in my mind, I say, these hopeful exertions,
I turned down a narrow street to look into a house or two.</p>
<p>It was a dark street with a dead wall on one side.&nbsp; Nearly all
the outer doors of the houses stood open.&nbsp; I took the first entry,
and knocked at a parlour-door.&nbsp; Might I come in?&nbsp; I might,
if I plased, sur.</p>
<p>The woman of the room (Irish) had picked up some long strips of wood,
about some wharf or barge; and they had just now been thrust into the
otherwise empty grate to make two iron pots boil.&nbsp; There was some
fish in one, and there were some potatoes in the other.&nbsp; The flare
of the burning wood enabled me to see a table, and a broken chair or
so, and some old cheap crockery ornaments about the chimney-piece.&nbsp;
It was not until I had spoken with the woman a few minutes, that I saw
a horrible brown heap on the floor in a corner, which, but for previous
experience in this dismal wise, I might not have suspected to be &lsquo;the
bed.&rsquo;&nbsp; There was something thrown upon it; and I asked what
that was.</p>
<p>&lsquo;&rsquo;Tis the poor craythur that stays here, sur; and &rsquo;tis
very bad she is, and &rsquo;tis very bad she&rsquo;s been this long
time, and &rsquo;tis better she&rsquo;ll never be, and &rsquo;tis slape
she does all day, and &rsquo;tis wake she does all night, and &rsquo;tis
the lead, sur.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;The what?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;The lead, sur.&nbsp; Sure &rsquo;tis the lead-mills, where
the women gets took on at eighteen-pence a day, sur, when they makes
application early enough, and is lucky and wanted; and &rsquo;tis lead-pisoned
she is, sur, and some of them gets lead-pisoned soon, and some of them
gets lead-pisoned later, and some, but not many, niver; and &rsquo;tis
all according to the constitooshun, sur, and some constitooshuns is
strong, and some is weak; and her constitooshun is lead-pisoned, bad
as can be, sur; and her brain is coming out at her ear, and it hurts
her dreadful; and that&rsquo;s what it is, and niver no more, and niver
no less, sur.&rsquo;</p>
<p>The sick young woman moaning here, the speaker bent over her, took
a bandage from her head, and threw open a back door to let in the daylight
upon it, from the smallest and most miserable backyard I ever saw.</p>
<p>&lsquo;That&rsquo;s what cooms from her, sur, being lead-pisoned;
and it cooms from her night and day, the poor, sick craythur; and the
pain of it is dreadful; and God he knows that my husband has walked
the sthreets these four days, being a labourer, and is walking them
now, and is ready to work, and no work for him, and no fire and no food
but the bit in the pot, and no more than ten shillings in a fortnight;
God be good to us! and it is poor we are, and dark it is and could it
is indeed.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Knowing that I could compensate myself thereafter for my self-denial,
if I saw fit, I had resolved that I would give nothing in the course
of these visits.&nbsp; I did this to try the people.&nbsp; I may state
at once that my closest observation could not detect any indication
whatever of an expectation that I would give money: they were grateful
to be talked to about their miserable affairs, and sympathy was plainly
a comfort to them; but they neither asked for money in any case, nor
showed the least trace of surprise or disappointment or resentment at
my giving none.</p>
<p>The woman&rsquo;s married daughter had by this time come down from
her room on the floor above, to join in the conversation.&nbsp; She
herself had been to the lead-mills very early that morning to be &lsquo;took
on,&rsquo; but had not succeeded.&nbsp; She had four children; and her
husband, also a water-side labourer, and then out seeking work, seemed
in no better case as to finding it than her father.&nbsp; She was English,
and by nature, of a buxom figure and cheerful.&nbsp; Both in her poor
dress and in her mother&rsquo;s there was an effort to keep up some
appearance of neatness.&nbsp; She knew all about the sufferings of the
unfortunate invalid, and all about the lead-poisoning, and how the symptoms
came on, and how they grew,&mdash;having often seen them.&nbsp; The
very smell when you stood inside the door of the works was enough to
knock you down, she said: yet she was going back again to get &lsquo;took
on.&rsquo;&nbsp; What could she do?&nbsp; Better be ulcerated and paralysed
for eighteen-pence a day, while it lasted, than see the children starve.</p>
<p>A dark and squalid cupboard in this room, touching the back door
and all manner of offence, had been for some time the sleeping-place
of the sick young woman.&nbsp; But the nights being now wintry, and
the blankets and coverlets &lsquo;gone to the leaving shop,&rsquo; she
lay all night where she lay all day, and was lying then.&nbsp; The woman
of the room, her husband, this most miserable patient, and two others,
lay on the one brown heap together for warmth.</p>
<p>&lsquo;God bless you, sir, and thank you!&rsquo; were the parting
words from these people,&mdash;gratefully spoken too,&mdash;with which
I left this place.</p>
<p>Some streets away, I tapped at another parlour-door on another ground-floor.&nbsp;
Looking in, I found a man, his wife, and four children, sitting at a
washing-stool by way of table, at their dinner of bread and infused
tea-leaves.&nbsp; There was a very scanty cinderous fire in the grate
by which they sat; and there was a tent bedstead in the room with a
bed upon it and a coverlet.&nbsp; The man did not rise when I went in,
nor during my stay, but civilly inclined his head on my pulling off
my hat, and, in answer to my inquiry whether I might ask him a question
or two, said, &lsquo;Certainly.&rsquo;&nbsp; There being a window at
each end of this room, back and front, it might have been ventilated;
but it was shut up tight, to keep the cold out, and was very sickening.</p>
<p>The wife, an intelligent, quick woman, rose and stood at her husband&rsquo;s
elbow; and he glanced up at her as if for help.&nbsp; It soon appeared
that he was rather deaf.&nbsp; He was a slow, simple fellow of about
thirty.</p>
<p>&lsquo;What was he by trade?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Gentleman asks what are you by trade, John?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I am a boilermaker;&rsquo; looking about him with an exceedingly
perplexed air, as if for a boiler that had unaccountably vanished.</p>
<p>&lsquo;He ain&rsquo;t a mechanic, you understand, sir,&rsquo; the
wife put in: &lsquo;he&rsquo;s only a labourer.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Are you in work?&rsquo;</p>
<p>He looked up at his wife again.&nbsp; &lsquo;Gentleman says are you
in work, John?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;In work!&rsquo; cried this forlorn boilermaker, staring aghast
at his wife, and then working his vision&rsquo;s way very slowly round
to me: &lsquo;Lord, no!&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Ah, he ain&rsquo;t indeed!&rsquo; said the poor woman, shaking
her head, as she looked at the four children in succession, and then
at him.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Work!&rsquo; said the boilermaker, still seeking that evaporated
boiler, first in my countenance, then in the air, and then in the features
of his second son at his knee: &lsquo;I wish I <i>was</i> in work!&nbsp;
I haven&rsquo;t had more than a day&rsquo;s work to do this three weeks.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;How have you lived?&rsquo;</p>
<p>A faint gleam of admiration lighted up the face of the would-be boilermaker,
as he stretched out the short sleeve of his thread-bare canvas jacket,
and replied, pointing her out, &lsquo;On the work of the wife.&rsquo;</p>
<p>I forget where boilermaking had gone to, or where he supposed it
had gone to; but he added some resigned information on that head, coupled
with an expression of his belief that it was never coming back.</p>
<p>The cheery helpfulness of the wife was very remarkable.&nbsp; She
did slop-work; made pea-jackets.&nbsp; She produced the pea-jacket then
in hand, and spread it out upon the bed,&mdash;the only piece of furniture
in the room on which to spread it.&nbsp; She showed how much of it she
made, and how much was afterwards finished off by the machine.&nbsp;
According to her calculation at the moment, deducting what her trimming
cost her, she got for making a pea-jacket tenpence half-penny, and she
could make one in something less than two days.</p>
<p>But, you see, it come to her through two hands, and of course it
didn&rsquo;t come through the second hand for nothing.&nbsp; Why did
it come through the second hand at all?&nbsp; Why, this way.&nbsp; The
second hand took the risk of the given-out work, you see.&nbsp; If she
had money enough to pay the security deposit,&mdash;call it two pound,&mdash;she
could get the work from the first hand, and so the second would not
have to be deducted for.&nbsp; But, having no money at all, the second
hand come in and took its profit, and so the whole worked down to tenpence
half-penny.&nbsp; Having explained all this with great intelligence,
even with some little pride, and without a whine or murmur, she folded
her work again, sat down by her husband&rsquo;s side at the washing-stool,
and resumed her dinner of dry bread.&nbsp; Mean as the meal was, on
the bare board, with its old gallipots for cups, and what not other
sordid makeshifts; shabby as the woman was in dress, and toning done
towards the Bosjesman colour, with want of nutriment and washing,&mdash;there
was positively a dignity in her, as the family anchor just holding the
poor ship-wrecked boilermaker&rsquo;s bark.&nbsp; When I left the room,
the boiler-maker&rsquo;s eyes were slowly turned towards her, as if
his last hope of ever again seeing that vanished boiler lay in her direction.</p>
<p>These people had never applied for parish relief but once; and that
was when the husband met with a disabling accident at his work.</p>
<p>Not many doors from here, I went into a room on the first floor.&nbsp;
The woman apologised for its being in &lsquo;an untidy mess.&rsquo;&nbsp;
The day was Saturday, and she was boiling the children&rsquo;s clothes
in a saucepan on the hearth.&nbsp; There was nothing else into which
she could have put them.&nbsp; There was no crockery, or tinware, or
tub, or bucket.&nbsp; There was an old gallipot or two, and there was
a broken bottle or so, and there were some broken boxes for seats.&nbsp;
The last small scraping of coals left was raked together in a corner
of the floor.&nbsp; There were some rags in an open cupboard, also on
the floor.&nbsp; In a corner of the room was a crazy old French bed-stead,
with a man lying on his back upon it in a ragged pilot jacket, and rough
oil-skin fantail hat.&nbsp; The room was perfectly black.&nbsp; It was
difficult to believe, at first, that it was not purposely coloured black,
the walls were so begrimed.</p>
<p>As I stood opposite the woman boiling the children&rsquo;s clothes,&mdash;she
had not even a piece of soap to wash them with,&mdash;and apologising
for her occupation, I could take in all these things without appearing
to notice them, and could even correct my inventory.&nbsp; I had missed,
at the first glance, some half a pound of bread in the otherwise empty
safe, an old red ragged crinoline hanging on the handle of the door
by which I had entered, and certain fragments of rusty iron scattered
on the floor, which looked like broken tools and a piece of stove-pipe.&nbsp;
A child stood looking on.&nbsp; On the box nearest to the fire sat two
younger children; one a delicate and pretty little creature, whom the
other sometimes kissed.</p>
<p>This woman, like the last, was wofully shabby, and was degenerating
to the Bosjesman complexion.&nbsp; But her figure, and the ghost of
a certain vivacity about her, and the spectre of a dimple in her cheek,
carried my memory strangely back to the old days of the Adelphi Theatre,
London, when Mrs. Fitzwilliam was the friend of Victorine.</p>
<p>&lsquo;May I ask you what your husband is?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;He&rsquo;s a coal-porter, sir,&rsquo;&mdash;with a glance
and a sigh towards the bed.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Is he out of work?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Oh, yes, sir! and work&rsquo;s at all times very, very scanty
with him; and now he&rsquo;s laid up.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s my legs,&rsquo; said the man upon the bed.&nbsp;
&lsquo;I&rsquo;ll unroll &rsquo;em.&rsquo;&nbsp; And immediately began.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Have you any older children?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I have a daughter that does the needle-work, and I have a
son that does what he can.&nbsp; She&rsquo;s at her work now, and he&rsquo;s
trying for work.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Do they live here?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;They sleep here.&nbsp; They can&rsquo;t afford to pay more
rent, and so they come here at night.&nbsp; The rent is very hard upon
us.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s rose upon us too, now,&mdash;sixpence a week,&mdash;on
account of these new changes in the law, about the rates.&nbsp; We are
a week behind; the landlord&rsquo;s been shaking and rattling at that
door frightfully; he says he&rsquo;ll turn us out.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t
know what&rsquo;s to come of it.&rsquo;</p>
<p>The man upon the bed ruefully interposed, &lsquo;Here&rsquo;s my
legs.&nbsp; The skin&rsquo;s broke, besides the swelling.&nbsp; I have
had a many kicks, working, one way and another.&rsquo;</p>
<p>He looked at his legs (which were much discoloured and misshapen)
for a while, and then appearing to remember that they were not popular
with his family, rolled them up again, as if they were something in
the nature of maps or plans that were not wanted to be referred to,
lay hopelessly down on his back once more with his fantail hat over
his face, and stirred not.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Do your eldest son and daughter sleep in that cupboard?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; replied the woman.</p>
<p>&lsquo;With the children?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Yes.&nbsp; We have to get together for warmth.&nbsp; We have
little to cover us.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Have you nothing by you to eat but the piece of bread I see
there?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Nothing.&nbsp; And we had the rest of the loaf for our breakfast,
with water.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t know what&rsquo;s to come of it.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Have you no prospect of improvement?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;If my eldest son earns anything to-day, he&rsquo;ll bring
it home.&nbsp; Then we shall have something to eat to-night, and may
be able to do something towards the rent.&nbsp; If not, I don&rsquo;t
know what&rsquo;s to come of it.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;This is a sad state of things.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Yes, sir; it&rsquo;s a hard, hard life.&nbsp; Take care of
the stairs as you go, sir,&mdash;they&rsquo;re broken,&mdash;and good
day, sir!&rsquo;</p>
<p>These people had a mortal dread of entering the workhouse, and received
no out-of-door relief.</p>
<p>In another room, in still another tenement, I found a very decent
woman with five children,&mdash;the last a baby, and she herself a patient
of the parish doctor,&mdash;to whom, her husband being in the hospital,
the Union allowed for the support of herself and family, four shillings
a week and five loaves.&nbsp; I suppose when Thisman, M.P., and Thatman,
M.P., and the Public-blessing Party, lay their heads together in course
of time, and come to an equalization of rating, she may go down to the
dance of death to the tune of sixpence more.</p>
<p>I could enter no other houses for that one while, for I could not
bear the contemplation of the children.&nbsp; Such heart as I had summoned
to sustain me against the miseries of the adults failed me when I looked
at the children.&nbsp; I saw how young they were, how hungry, how serious
and still.&nbsp; I thought of them, sick and dying in those lairs.&nbsp;
I think of them dead without anguish; but to think of them so suffering
and so dying quite unmanned me.</p>
<p>Down by the river&rsquo;s bank in Ratcliff, I was turning upward
by a side-street, therefore, to regain the railway, when my eyes rested
on the inscription across the road, &lsquo;East London Children&rsquo;s
Hospital.&rsquo;&nbsp; I could scarcely have seen an inscription better
suited to my frame of mind; and I went across and went straight in.</p>
<p>I found the children&rsquo;s hospital established in an old sail-loft
or storehouse, of the roughest nature, and on the simplest means.&nbsp;
There were trap-doors in the floors, where goods had been hoisted up
and down; heavy feet and heavy weights had started every knot in the
well-trodden planking: inconvenient bulks and beams and awkward staircases
perplexed my passage through the wards.&nbsp; But I found it airy, sweet,
and clean.&nbsp; In its seven and thirty beds I saw but little beauty;
for starvation in the second or third generation takes a pinched look:
but I saw the sufferings both of infancy and childhood tenderly assuaged;
I heard the little patients answering to pet playful names, the light
touch of a delicate lady laid bare the wasted sticks of arms for me
to pity; and the claw-like little hands, as she did so, twined themselves
lovingly around her wedding-ring.</p>
<p>One baby mite there was as pretty as any of Raphael&rsquo;s angels.&nbsp;
The tiny head was bandaged for water on the brain; and it was suffering
with acute bronchitis too, and made from time to time a plaintive, though
not impatient or complaining, little sound.&nbsp; The smooth curve of
the cheeks and of the chin was faultless in its condensation of infantine
beauty, and the large bright eyes were most lovely.&nbsp; It happened
as I stopped at the foot of the bed, that these eyes rested upon mine
with that wistful expression of wondering thoughtfulness which we all
know sometimes in very little children.&nbsp; They remained fixed on
mine, and never turned from me while I stood there.&nbsp; When the utterance
of that plaintive sound shook the little form, the gaze still remained
unchanged.&nbsp; I felt as though the child implored me to tell the
story of the little hospital in which it was sheltered to any gentle
heart I could address.&nbsp; Laying my world-worn hand upon the little
unmarked clasped hand at the chin, I gave it a silent promise that I
would do so.</p>
<p>A gentleman and lady, a young husband and wife, have bought and fitted
up this building for its present noble use, and have quietly settled
themselves in it as its medical officers and directors.&nbsp; Both have
had considerable practical experience of medicine and surgery; he as
house-surgeon of a great London hospital; she as a very earnest student,
tested by severe examination, and also as a nurse of the sick poor during
the prevalence of cholera.</p>
<p>With every qualification to lure them away, with youth and accomplishments
and tastes and habits that can have no response in any breast near them,
close begirt by every repulsive circumstance inseparable from such a
neighbourhood, there they dwell.&nbsp; They live in the hospital itself,
and their rooms are on its first floor.&nbsp; Sitting at their dinner-table,
they could hear the cry of one of the children in pain.&nbsp; The lady&rsquo;s
piano, drawing-materials, books, and other such evidences of refinement
are as much a part of the rough place as the iron bedsteads of the little
patients.&nbsp; They are put to shifts for room, like passengers on
board ship.&nbsp; The dispenser of medicines (attracted to them not
by self-interest, but by their own magnetism and that of their cause)
sleeps in a recess in the dining-room, and has his washing apparatus
in the sideboard.</p>
<p>Their contented manner of making the best of the things around them,
I found so pleasantly inseparable from their usefulness!&nbsp; Their
pride in this partition that we put up ourselves, or in that partition
that we took down, or in that other partition that we moved, or in the
stove that was given us for the waiting-room, or in our nightly conversion
of the little consulting-room into a smoking-room!&nbsp; Their admiration
of the situation, if we could only get rid of its one objectionable
incident, the coal-yard at the back!&nbsp; &lsquo;Our hospital carriage,
presented by a friend, and very useful.&rsquo;&nbsp; That was my presentation
to a perambulator, for which a coach-house had been discovered in a
corner down-stairs, just large enough to hold it.&nbsp; Coloured prints,
in all stages of preparation for being added to those already decorating
the wards, were plentiful; a charming wooden phenomenon of a bird, with
an impossible top-knot, who ducked his head when you set a counter weight
going, had been inaugurated as a public statue that very morning; and
trotting about among the beds, on familiar terms with all the patients,
was a comical mongrel dog, called Poodles.&nbsp; This comical dog (quite
a tonic in himself) was found characteristically starving at the door
of the institution, and was taken in and fed, and has lived here ever
since.&nbsp; An admirer of his mental endowments has presented him with
a collar bearing the legend, &lsquo;Judge not Poodles by external appearances.&rsquo;&nbsp;
He was merrily wagging his tail on a boy&rsquo;s pillow when he made
this modest appeal to me.</p>
<p>When this hospital was first opened, in January of the present year,
the people could not possibly conceive but that somebody paid for the
services rendered there; and were disposed to claim them as a right,
and to find fault if out of temper.&nbsp; They soon came to understand
the case better, and have much increased in gratitude.&nbsp; The mothers
of the patients avail themselves very freely of the visiting rules;
the fathers often on Sundays.&nbsp; There is an unreasonable (but still,
I think, touching and intelligible) tendency in the parents to take
a child away to its wretched home, if on the point of death.&nbsp; One
boy who had been thus carried off on a rainy night, when in a violent
state of inflammation, and who had been afterwards brought back, had
been recovered with exceeding difficulty; but he was a jolly boy, with
a specially strong interest in his dinner, when I saw him.</p>
<p>Insufficient food and unwholesome living are the main causes of disease
among these small patients.&nbsp; So nourishment, cleanliness, and ventilation
are the main remedies.&nbsp; Discharged patients are looked after, and
invited to come and dine now and then; so are certain famishing creatures
who were never patients.&nbsp; Both the lady and the gentleman are well
acquainted, not only with the histories of the patients and their families,
but with the characters and circumstances of great numbers of their
neighbours&mdash;of these they keep a register.&nbsp; It is their common
experience, that people, sinking down by inches into deeper and deeper
poverty, will conceal it, even from them, if possible, unto the very
last extremity.</p>
<p>The nurses of this hospital are all young,&mdash;ranging, say, from
nineteen to four and twenty.&nbsp; They have even within these narrow
limits, what many well-endowed hospitals would not give them, a comfortable
room of their own in which to take their meals.&nbsp; It is a beautiful
truth, that interest in the children and sympathy with their sorrows
bind these young women to their places far more strongly than any other
consideration could.&nbsp; The best skilled of the nurses came originally
from a kindred neighbourhood, almost as poor; and she knew how much
the work was needed.&nbsp; She is a fair dressmaker.&nbsp; The hospital
cannot pay her as many pounds in the year as there are months in it;
and one day the lady regarded it as a duty to speak to her about her
improving her prospects and following her trade.&nbsp; &lsquo;No,&rsquo;
she said: she could never be so useful or so happy elsewhere any more;
she must stay among the children.</p>
<p>And she stays.&nbsp; One of the nurses, as I passed her, was washing
a baby-boy.&nbsp; Liking her pleasant face, I stopped to speak to her
charge,&mdash;a common, bullet-headed, frowning charge enough, laying
hold of his own nose with a slippery grasp, and staring very solemnly
out of a blanket.&nbsp; The melting of the pleasant face into delighted
smiles, as this young gentleman gave an unexpected kick, and laughed
at me, was almost worth my previous pain.</p>
<p>An affecting play was acted in Paris years ago, called &lsquo;The
Children&rsquo;s Doctor.&rsquo;&nbsp; As I parted from my children&rsquo;s
doctor, now in question, I saw in his easy black necktie, in his loose
buttoned black frock-coat, in his pensive face, in the flow of his dark
hair, in his eyelashes, in the very turn of his moustache, the exact
realisation of the Paris artist&rsquo;s ideal as it was presented on
the stage.&nbsp; But no romancer that I know of has had the boldness
to prefigure the life and home of this young husband and young wife
in the Children&rsquo;s Hospital in the east of London.</p>
<p>I came away from Ratcliff by the Stepney railway station to the terminus
at Fenchurch Street.&nbsp; Any one who will reverse that route may retrace
my steps.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XXXIII&mdash;A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>It fell out on a day in this last autumn, that I had to go down from
London to a place of seaside resort, on an hour&rsquo;s business, accompanied
by my esteemed friend Bullfinch.&nbsp; Let the place of seaside resort
be, for the nonce, called Namelesston.</p>
<p>I had been loitering about Paris in very hot weather, pleasantly
breakfasting in the open air in the garden of the Palais Royal or the
Tuileries, pleasantly dining in the open air in the Elysian Fields,
pleasantly taking my cigar and lemonade in the open air on the Italian
Boulevard towards the small hours after midnight.&nbsp; Bullfinch&mdash;an
excellent man of business&mdash;has summoned me back across the Channel,
to transact this said hour&rsquo;s business at Namelesston; and thus
it fell out that Bullfinch and I were in a railway carriage together
on our way to Namelesston, each with his return-ticket in his waistcoat-pocket.</p>
<p>Says Bullfinch, &lsquo;I have a proposal to make.&nbsp; Let us dine
at the Temeraire.&rsquo;</p>
<p>I asked Bullfinch, did he recommend the Temeraire? inasmuch as I
had not been rated on the books of the Temeraire for many years.</p>
<p>Bullfinch declined to accept the responsibility of recommending the
Temeraire, but on the whole was rather sanguine about it.&nbsp; He &lsquo;seemed
to remember,&rsquo; Bullfinch said, that he had dined well there.&nbsp;
A plain dinner, but good.&nbsp; Certainly not like a Parisian dinner
(here Bullfinch obviously became the prey of want of confidence), but
of its kind very fair.</p>
<p>I appeal to Bullfinch&rsquo;s intimate knowledge of my wants and
ways to decide whether I was usually ready to be pleased with any dinner,
or&mdash;for the matter of that&mdash;with anything that was fair of
its kind and really what it claimed to be.&nbsp; Bullfinch doing me
the honour to respond in the affirmative, I agreed to ship myself as
an able trencherman on board the Temeraire.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Now, our plan shall be this,&rsquo; says Bullfinch, with his
forefinger at his nose.&nbsp; &lsquo;As soon as we get to Namelesston,
we&rsquo;ll drive straight to the Temeraire, and order a little dinner
in an hour.&nbsp; And as we shall not have more than enough time in
which to dispose of it comfortably, what do you say to giving the house
the best opportunities of serving it hot and quickly by dining in the
coffee-room?&rsquo;</p>
<p>What I had to say was, Certainly.&nbsp; Bullfinch (who is by nature
of a hopeful constitution) then began to babble of green geese.&nbsp;
But I checked him in that Falstaffian vein, urging considerations of
time and cookery.</p>
<p>In due sequence of events we drove up to the Temeraire, and alighted.&nbsp;
A youth in livery received us on the door-step.&nbsp; &lsquo;Looks well,&rsquo;
said Bullfinch confidentially.&nbsp; And then aloud, &lsquo;Coffee-room!&rsquo;</p>
<p>The youth in livery (now perceived to be mouldy) conducted us to
the desired haven, and was enjoined by Bullfinch to send the waiter
at once, as we wished to order a little dinner in an hour.&nbsp; Then
Bullfinch and I waited for the waiter, until, the waiter continuing
to wait in some unknown and invisible sphere of action, we rang for
the waiter; which ring produced the waiter, who announced himself as
not the waiter who ought to wait upon us, and who didn&rsquo;t wait
a moment longer.</p>
<p>So Bullfinch approached the coffee-room door, and melodiously pitching
his voice into a bar where two young ladies were keeping the books of
the Temeraire, apologetically explained that we wished to order a little
dinner in an hour, and that we were debarred from the execution of our
inoffensive purpose by consignment to solitude.</p>
<p>Hereupon one of the young ladies ran a bell, which reproduced&mdash;at
the bar this time&mdash;the waiter who was not the waiter who ought
to wait upon us; that extraordinary man, whose life seemed consumed
in waiting upon people to say that he wouldn&rsquo;t wait upon them,
repeated his former protest with great indignation, and retired.</p>
<p>Bullfinch, with a fallen countenance, was about to say to me, &lsquo;This
won&rsquo;t do,&rsquo; when the waiter who ought to wait upon us left
off keeping us waiting at last.&nbsp; &lsquo;Waiter,&rsquo; said Bullfinch
piteously, &lsquo;we have been a long time waiting.&rsquo;&nbsp; The
waiter who ought to wait upon us laid the blame upon the waiter who
ought not to wait upon us, and said it was all that waiter&rsquo;s fault.</p>
<p>&lsquo;We wish,&rsquo; said Bullfinch, much depressed, &lsquo;to
order a little dinner in an hour.&nbsp; What can we have?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;What would you like to have, gentlemen?&rsquo;</p>
<p>Bullfinch, with extreme mournfulness of speech and action, and with
a forlorn old fly-blown bill of fare in his hand which the waiter had
given him, and which was a sort of general manuscript index to any cookery-book
you please, moved the previous question.</p>
<p>We could have mock-turtle soup, a sole, curry, and roast duck.&nbsp;
Agreed.&nbsp; At this table by this window.&nbsp; Punctually in an hour.</p>
<p>I had been feigning to look out of this window; but I had been taking
note of the crumbs on all the tables, the dirty table-cloths, the stuffy,
soupy, airless atmosphere, the stale leavings everywhere about, the
deep gloom of the waiter who ought to wait upon us, and the stomach-ache
with which a lonely traveller at a distant table in a corner was too
evidently afflicted.&nbsp; I now pointed out to Bullfinch the alarming
circumstance that this traveller had <i>dined</i>.&nbsp; We hurriedly
debated whether, without infringement of good breeding, we could ask
him to disclose if he had partaken of mock-turtle, sole, curry, or roast
duck?&nbsp; We decided that the thing could not be politely done, and
we had set our own stomachs on a cast, and they must stand the hazard
of the die.</p>
<p>I hold phrenology, within certain limits, to be true; I am much of
the same mind as to the subtler expressions of the hand; I hold physiognomy
to be infallible; though all these sciences demand rare qualities in
the student.&nbsp; But I also hold that there is no more certain index
to personal character than the condition of a set of casters is to the
character of any hotel.&nbsp; Knowing, and having often tested this
theory of mine, Bullfinch resigned himself to the worst, when, laying
aside any remaining veil of disguise, I held up before him in succession
the cloudy oil and furry vinegar, the clogged cayenne, the dirty salt,
the obscene dregs of soy, and the anchovy sauce in a flannel waistcoat
of decomposition.</p>
<p>We went out to transact our business.&nbsp; So inspiriting was the
relief of passing into the clean and windy streets of Namelesston from
the heavy and vapid closeness of the coffee-room of the Temeraire, that
hope began to revive within us.&nbsp; We began to consider that perhaps
the lonely traveller had taken physic, or done something injudicious
to bring his complaint on.&nbsp; Bullfinch remarked that he thought
the waiter who ought to wait upon us had brightened a little when suggesting
curry; and although I knew him to have been at that moment the express
image of despair, I allowed myself to become elevated in spirits.&nbsp;
As we walked by the softly-lapping sea, all the notabilities of Namelesston,
who are for ever going up and down with the changelessness of the tides,
passed to and fro in procession.&nbsp; Pretty girls on horseback, and
with detested riding-masters; pretty girls on foot; mature ladies in
hats,&mdash;spectacled, strong-minded, and glaring at the opposite or
weaker sex.&nbsp; The Stock Exchange was strongly represented, Jerusalem
was strongly represented, the bores of the prosier London clubs were
strongly represented.&nbsp; Fortune-hunters of all denominations were
there, from hirsute insolvency, in a curricle, to closely-buttoned swindlery
in doubtful boots, on the sharp look-out for any likely young gentleman
disposed to play a game at billiards round the corner.&nbsp; Masters
of languages, their lessons finished for the day, were going to their
homes out of sight of the sea; mistresses of accomplishments, carrying
small portfolios, likewise tripped homeward; pairs of scholastic pupils,
two and two, went languidly along the beach, surveying the face of the
waters as if waiting for some Ark to come and take them off.&nbsp; Spectres
of the George the Fourth days flitted unsteadily among the crowd, bearing
the outward semblance of ancient dandies, of every one of whom it might
be said, not that he had one leg in the grave, or both legs, but that
he was steeped in grave to the summit of his high shirt-collar, and
had nothing real about him but his bones.&nbsp; Alone stationary in
the midst of all the movements, the Namelesston boatmen leaned against
the railings and yawned, and looked out to sea, or looked at the moored
fishing-boats and at nothing.&nbsp; Such is the unchanging manner of
life with this nursery of our hardy seamen; and very dry nurses they
are, and always wanting something to drink.&nbsp; The only two nautical
personages detached from the railing were the two fortunate possessors
of the celebrated monstrous unknown barking-fish, just caught (frequently
just caught off Namelesston), who carried him about in a hamper, and
pressed the scientific to look in at the lid.</p>
<p>The sands of the hour had all run out when we got back to the Temeraire.&nbsp;
Says Bullfinch, then, to the youth in livery, with boldness, &lsquo;Lavatory!&rsquo;</p>
<p>When we arrived at the family vault with a skylight, which the youth
in livery presented as the institution sought, we had already whisked
off our cravats and coats; but finding ourselves in the presence of
an evil smell, and no linen but two crumpled towels newly damp from
the countenances of two somebody elses, we put on our cravats and coats
again, and fled unwashed to the coffee-room.</p>
<p>There the waiter who ought to wait upon us had set forth our knives
and forks and glasses, on the cloth whose dirty acquaintance we had
already had the pleasure of making, and which we were pleased to recognise
by the familiar expression of its stains.&nbsp; And now there occurred
the truly surprising phenomenon, that the waiter who ought not to wait
upon us swooped down upon us, clutched our loaf of bread, and vanished
with the same.</p>
<p>Bullfinch, with distracted eyes, was following this unaccountable
figure &lsquo;out at the portal,&rsquo; like the ghost in Hamlet, when
the waiter who ought to wait upon us jostled against it, carrying a
tureen.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Waiter!&rsquo; said a severe diner, lately finished, perusing
his bill fiercely through his eye-glass.</p>
<p>The waiter put down our tureen on a remote side-table, and went to
see what was amiss in this new direction.</p>
<p>&lsquo;This is not right, you know, waiter.&nbsp; Look here! here&rsquo;s
yesterday&rsquo;s sherry, one and eightpence, and here we are again,
two shillings.&nbsp; And what does sixpence mean?&rsquo;</p>
<p>So far from knowing what sixpence meant, the waiter protested that
he didn&rsquo;t know what anything meant.&nbsp; He wiped the perspiration
from his clammy brow, and said it was impossible to do it,&mdash;not
particularising what,&mdash;and the kitchen was so far off.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Take the bill to the bar, and get it altered,&rsquo; said
Mr. Indignation Cocker, so to call him.</p>
<p>The waiter took it, looked intensely at it, didn&rsquo;t seem to
like the idea of taking it to the bar, and submitted, as a new light
upon the case, that perhaps sixpence meant sixpence.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I tell you again,&rsquo; said Mr. Indignation Cocker, &lsquo;here&rsquo;s
yesterday&rsquo;s sherry&mdash;can&rsquo;t you see it?&mdash;one and
eightpence, and here we are again, two shillings.&nbsp; What do you
make of one and eightpence and two shillings?&rsquo;</p>
<p>Totally unable to make anything of one and eightpence and two shillings,
the waiter went out to try if anybody else could; merely casting a helpless
backward glance at Bullfinch, in acknowledgement of his pathetic entreaties
for our soup-tureen.&nbsp; After a pause, during which Mr. Indignation
Cocker read a newspaper and coughed defiant coughs, Bullfinch arose
to get the tureen, when the waiter reappeared and brought it,&mdash;dropping
Mr. Indignation Cocker&rsquo;s altered bill on Mr. Indignation Cocker&rsquo;s
table as he came along.</p>
<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s quite impossible to do it, gentlemen,&rsquo; murmured
the waiter; &lsquo;and the kitchen is so far off.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Well, you don&rsquo;t keep the house; it&rsquo;s not your
fault, we suppose.&nbsp; Bring some sherry.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Waiter!&rsquo; from Mr. Indignation Cocker, with a new and
burning sense of injury upon him.</p>
<p>The waiter, arrested on his way to our sherry, stopped short, and
came back to see what was wrong now.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Will you look here?&nbsp; This is worse than before.&nbsp;
<i>Do</i> you understand?&nbsp; Here&rsquo;s yesterday&rsquo;s sherry,
one and eightpence, and here we are again two shillings.&nbsp; And what
the devil does ninepence mean?&rsquo;</p>
<p>This new portent utterly confounded the waiter.&nbsp; He wrung his
napkin, and mutely appealed to the ceiling.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Waiter, fetch that sherry,&rsquo; says Bullfinch, in open
wrath and revolt.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I want to know,&rsquo; persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker, &lsquo;the
meaning of ninepence.&nbsp; I want to know the meaning of sherry one
and eightpence yesterday, and of here we are again two shillings.&nbsp;
Send somebody.&rsquo;</p>
<p>The distracted waiter got out of the room on pretext of sending somebody,
and by that means got our wine.&nbsp; But the instant he appeared with
our decanter, Mr. Indignation Cocker descended on him again.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Waiter!&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;You will now have the goodness to attend to our dinner, waiter,&rsquo;
said Bullfinch, sternly.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I am very sorry, but it&rsquo;s quite impossible to do it,
gentlemen,&rsquo; pleaded the waiter; &lsquo;and the kitchen&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Waiter!&rsquo; said Mr. Indignation Cocker.</p>
<p>&lsquo;&mdash;Is,&rsquo; resumed the waiter, &lsquo;so far off, that&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Waiter!&rsquo; persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker, &lsquo;send
somebody.&rsquo;</p>
<p>We were not without our fears that the waiter rushed out to hang
himself; and we were much relieved by his fetching somebody,&mdash;in
graceful, flowing skirts and with a waist,&mdash;who very soon settled
Mr. Indignation Cocker&rsquo;s business.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Oh!&rsquo; said Mr. Cocker, with his fire surprisingly quenched
by this apparition; &lsquo;I wished to ask about this bill of mine,
because it appears to me that there&rsquo;s a little mistake here.&nbsp;
Let me show you.&nbsp; Here&rsquo;s yesterday&rsquo;s sherry one and
eightpence, and here we are again two shillings.&nbsp; And how do you
explain ninepence?&rsquo;</p>
<p>However it was explained, in tones too soft to be overheard.&nbsp;
Mr. Cocker was heard to say nothing more than &lsquo;Ah-h-h!&nbsp; Indeed;
thank you!&nbsp; Yes,&rsquo; and shortly afterwards went out, a milder
man.</p>
<p>The lonely traveller with the stomach-ache had all this time suffered
severely, drawing up a leg now and then, and sipping hot brandy-and-water
with grated ginger in it.&nbsp; When we tasted our (very) mock-turtle
soup, and were instantly seized with symptoms of some disorder simulating
apoplexy, and occasioned by the surcharge of nose and brain with lukewarm
dish-water holding in solution sour flour, poisonous condiments, and
(say) seventy-five per cent. of miscellaneous kitchen stuff rolled into
balls, we were inclined to trace his disorder to that source.&nbsp;
On the other hand, there was a silent anguish upon him too strongly
resembling the results established within ourselves by the sherry, to
be discarded from alarmed consideration.&nbsp; Again, we observed him,
with terror, to be much overcome by our sole&rsquo;s being aired in
a temporary retreat close to him, while the waiter went out (as we conceived)
to see his friends.&nbsp; And when the curry made its appearance he
suddenly retired in great disorder.</p>
<p>In fine, for the uneatable part of this little dinner (as contradistinguished
from the undrinkable) we paid only seven shillings and sixpence each.&nbsp;
And Bullfinch and I agreed unanimously, that no such ill-served, ill-appointed,
ill-cooked, nasty little dinner could be got for the money anywhere
else under the sun.&nbsp; With that comfort to our backs, we turned
them on the dear old Temeraire, the charging Temeraire, and resolved
(in the Scotch dialect) to gang nae mair to the flabby Temeraire.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XXXIV&mdash;MR. BARLOW</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>A great reader of good fiction at an unusually early age, it seems
to me as though I had been born under the superintendence of the estimable
but terrific gentleman whose name stands at the head of my present reflections.&nbsp;
The instructive monomaniac, Mr. Barlow, will be remembered as the tutor
of Master Harry Sandford and Master Tommy Merton.&nbsp; He knew everything,
and didactically improved all sorts of occasions, from the consumption
of a plate of cherries to the contemplation of a starlight night.&nbsp;
What youth came to without Mr. Barlow was displayed in the history of
Sandford and Merton, by the example of a certain awful Master Mash.&nbsp;
This young wretch wore buckles and powder, conducted himself with insupportable
levity at the theatre, had no idea of facing a mad bull single-handed
(in which I think him less reprehensible, as remotely reflecting my
own character), and was a frightful instance of the enervating effects
of luxury upon the human race.</p>
<p>Strange destiny on the part of Mr. Barlow, to go down to posterity
as childhood&rsquo;s experience of a bore!&nbsp; Immortal Mr. Barlow,
boring his way through the verdant freshness of ages!</p>
<p>My personal indictment against Mr. Barlow is one of many counts.&nbsp;
I will proceed to set forth a few of the injuries he has done me.</p>
<p>In the first place, he never made or took a joke.&nbsp; This insensibility
on Mr. Barlow&rsquo;s part not only cast its own gloom over my boyhood,
but blighted even the sixpenny jest-books of the time; for, groaning
under a moral spell constraining me to refer all things to Mr. Barlow,
I could not choose but ask myself in a whisper when tickled by a printed
jest, &lsquo;What would <i>he</i> think of it?&nbsp; What would <i>he</i>
see in it?&rsquo;&nbsp; The point of the jest immediately became a sting,
and stung my conscience.&nbsp; For my mind&rsquo;s eye saw him stolid,
frigid, perchance taking from its shelf some dreary Greek book, and
translating at full length what some dismal sage said (and touched up
afterwards, perhaps, for publication), when he banished some unlucky
joker from Athens.</p>
<p>The incompatibility of Mr. Barlow with all other portions of my young
life but himself, the adamantine inadaptability of the man to my favourite
fancies and amusements, is the thing for which I hate him most.&nbsp;
What right had he to bore his way into my Arabian Nights?&nbsp; Yet
he did.&nbsp; He was always hinting doubts of the veracity of Sindbad
the Sailor.&nbsp; If he could have got hold of the Wonderful Lamp, I
knew he would have trimmed it and lighted it, and delivered a lecture
over it on the qualities of sperm-oil, with a glance at the whale fisheries.&nbsp;
He would so soon have found out&mdash;on mechanical principles&mdash;the
peg in the neck of the Enchanted Horse, and would have turned it the
right way in so workmanlike a manner, that the horse could never have
got any height into the air, and the story couldn&rsquo;t have been.&nbsp;
He would have proved, by map and compass, that there was no such kingdom
as the delightful kingdom of Casgar, on the frontiers of Tartary.&nbsp;
He would have caused that hypocritical young prig Harry to make an experiment,&mdash;with
the aid of a temporary building in the garden and a dummy,&mdash;demonstrating
that you couldn&rsquo;t let a choked hunchback down an Eastern chimney
with a cord, and leave him upright on the hearth to terrify the sultan&rsquo;s
purveyor.</p>
<p>The golden sounds of the overture to the first metropolitan pantomime,
I remember, were alloyed by Mr. Barlow.&nbsp; Click click, ting ting,
bang bang, weedle weedle weedle, bang!&nbsp; I recall the chilling air
that ran across my frame and cooled my hot delight, as the thought occurred
to me, &lsquo;This would never do for Mr. Barlow!&rsquo;&nbsp; After
the curtain drew up, dreadful doubts of Mr. Barlow&rsquo;s considering
the costumes of the Nymphs of the Nebula as being sufficiently opaque,
obtruded themselves on my enjoyment.&nbsp; In the clown I perceived
two persons; one a fascinating unaccountable creature of a hectic complexion,
joyous in spirits though feeble in intellect, with flashes of brilliancy;
the other a pupil for Mr. Barlow.&nbsp; I thought how Mr. Barlow would
secretly rise early in the morning, and butter the pavement for <i>him</i>,
and, when he had brought him down, would look severely out of his study
window and ask <i>him</i> how he enjoyed the fun.</p>
<p>I thought how Mr. Barlow would heat all the pokers in the house,
and singe him with the whole collection, to bring him better acquainted
with the properties of incandescent iron, on which he (Barlow) would
fully expatiate.&nbsp; I pictured Mr. Barlow&rsquo;s instituting a comparison
between the clown&rsquo;s conduct at his studies,&mdash;drinking up
the ink, licking his copy-book, and using his head for blotting-paper,&mdash;and
that of the already mentioned young prig of prigs, Harry, sitting at
the Barlovian feet, sneakingly pretending to be in a rapture of youthful
knowledge.&nbsp; I thought how soon Mr. Barlow would smooth the clown&rsquo;s
hair down, instead of letting it stand erect in three tall tufts; and
how, after a couple of years or so with Mr. Barlow, he would keep his
legs close together when he walked, and would take his hands out of
his big loose pockets, and wouldn&rsquo;t have a jump left in him.</p>
<p>That I am particularly ignorant what most things in the universe
are made of, and how they are made, is another of my charges against
Mr. Barlow.&nbsp; With the dread upon me of developing into a Harry,
and with a further dread upon me of being Barlowed if I made inquiries,
by bringing down upon myself a cold shower-bath of explanations and
experiments, I forbore enlightenment in my youth, and became, as they
say in melodramas, &lsquo;the wreck you now behold.&rsquo;&nbsp; That
I consorted with idlers and dunces is another of the melancholy facts
for which I hold Mr. Barlow responsible.&nbsp; That pragmatical prig,
Harry, became so detestable in my sight, that, he being reported studious
in the South, I would have fled idle to the extremest North.&nbsp; Better
to learn misconduct from a Master Mash than science and statistics from
a Sandford!&nbsp; So I took the path, which, but for Mr. Barlow, I might
never have trodden.&nbsp; Thought I, with a shudder, &lsquo;Mr. Barlow
is a bore, with an immense constructive power of making bores.&nbsp;
His prize specimen is a bore.&nbsp; He seeks to make a bore of me.&nbsp;
That knowledge is power I am not prepared to gainsay; but, with Mr.
Barlow, knowledge is power to bore.&rsquo;&nbsp; Therefore I took refuge
in the caves of ignorance, wherein I have resided ever since, and which
are still my private address.</p>
<p>But the weightiest charge of all my charges against Mr. Barlow is,
that he still walks the earth in various disguises, seeking to make
a Tommy of me, even in my maturity.&nbsp; Irrepressible, instructive
monomaniac, Mr. Barlow fills my life with pitfalls, and lies hiding
at the bottom to burst out upon me when I least expect him.</p>
<p>A few of these dismal experiences of mine shall suffice.</p>
<p>Knowing Mr. Barlow to have invested largely in the moving panorama
trade, and having on various occasions identified him in the dark with
a long wand in his hand, holding forth in his old way (made more appalling
in this connection by his sometimes cracking a piece of Mr. Carlyle&rsquo;s
own Dead-Sea fruit in mistake for a joke), I systematically shun pictorial
entertainment on rollers.&nbsp; Similarly, I should demand responsible
bail and guaranty against the appearance of Mr. Barlow, before committing
myself to attendance at any assemblage of my fellow-creatures where
a bottle of water and a note-book were conspicuous objects; for in either
of those associations, I should expressly expect him.&nbsp; But such
is the designing nature of the man, that he steals in where no reasoning
precaution or provision could expect him.&nbsp; As in the following
case:-</p>
<p>Adjoining the Caves of Ignorance is a country town.&nbsp; In this
country town the Mississippi Momuses, nine in number, were announced
to appear in the town-hall, for the general delectation, this last Christmas
week.&nbsp; Knowing Mr. Barlow to be unconnected with the Mississippi,
though holding republican opinions, and deeming myself secure, I took
a stall.&nbsp; My object was to hear and see the Mississippi Momuses
in what the bills described as their &lsquo;National ballads, plantation
break-downs, nigger part-songs, choice conundrums, sparkling repartees,
&amp;c.&rsquo;&nbsp; I found the nine dressed alike, in the black coat
and trousers, white waistcoat, very large shirt-front, very large shirt-collar,
and very large white tie and wristbands, which constitute the dress
of the mass of the African race, and which has been observed by travellers
to prevail over a vast number of degrees of latitude.&nbsp; All the
nine rolled their eyes exceedingly, and had very red lips.&nbsp; At
the extremities of the curve they formed, seated in their chairs, were
the performers on the tambourine and bones.&nbsp; The centre Momus,
a black of melancholy aspect (who inspired me with a vague uneasiness
for which I could not then account), performed on a Mississippi instrument
closely resembling what was once called in this island a hurdy-gurdy.&nbsp;
The Momuses on either side of him had each another instrument peculiar
to the Father of Waters, which may be likened to a stringed weather-glass
held upside down.&nbsp; There were likewise a little flute and a violin.&nbsp;
All went well for awhile, and we had had several sparkling repartees
exchanged between the performers on the tambourine and bones, when the
black of melancholy aspect, turning to the latter, and addressing him
in a deep and improving voice as &lsquo;Bones, sir,&rsquo; delivered
certain grave remarks to him concerning the juveniles present, and the
season of the year; whereon I perceived that I was in the presence of
Mr. Barlow&mdash;corked!</p>
<p>Another night&mdash;and this was in London&mdash;I attended the representation
of a little comedy.&nbsp; As the characters were lifelike (and consequently
not improving), and as they went upon their several ways and designs
without personally addressing themselves to me, I felt rather confident
of coming through it without being regarded as Tommy, the more so, as
we were clearly getting close to the end.&nbsp; But I deceived myself.&nbsp;
All of a sudden, Apropos of nothing, everybody concerned came to a check
and halt, advanced to the foot-lights in a general rally to take dead
aim at me, and brought me down with a moral homily, in which I detected
the dread hand of Barlow.</p>
<p>Nay, so intricate and subtle are the toils of this hunter, that on
the very next night after that, I was again entrapped, where no vestige
of a spring could have been apprehended by the timidest.&nbsp; It was
a burlesque that I saw performed; an uncompromising burlesque, where
everybody concerned, but especially the ladies, carried on at a very
considerable rate indeed.&nbsp; Most prominent and active among the
corps of performers was what I took to be (and she really gave me very
fair opportunities of coming to a right conclusion) a young lady of
a pretty figure.&nbsp; She was dressed as a picturesque young gentleman,
whose pantaloons had been cut off in their infancy; and she had very
neat knees and very neat satin boots.&nbsp; Immediately after singing
a slang song and dancing a slang dance, this engaging figure approached
the fatal lamps, and, bending over them, delivered in a thrilling voice
a random eulogium on, and exhortation to pursue, the virtues.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Great Heaven!&rsquo; was my exclamation; &lsquo;Barlow!&rsquo;</p>
<p>There is still another aspect in which Mr. Barlow perpetually insists
on my sustaining the character of Tommy, which is more unendurable yet,
on account of its extreme aggressiveness.&nbsp; For the purposes of
a review or newspaper, he will get up an abstruse subject with definite
pains, will Barlow, utterly regardless of the price of midnight oil,
and indeed of everything else, save cramming himself to the eyes.</p>
<p>But mark.&nbsp; When Mr. Barlow blows his information off, he is
not contented with having rammed it home, and discharged it upon me,
Tommy, his target, but he pretends that he was always in possession
of it, and made nothing of it,&mdash;that he imbibed it with mother&rsquo;s
milk,&mdash;and that I, the wretched Tommy, am most abjectly behindhand
in not having done the same.&nbsp; I ask, why is Tommy to be always
the foil of Mr. Barlow to this extent?&nbsp; What Mr. Barlow had not
the slightest notion of himself, a week ago, it surely cannot be any
very heavy backsliding in me not to have at my fingers&rsquo; ends to-day!&nbsp;
And yet Mr. Barlow systematically carries it over me with a high hand,
and will tauntingly ask me, in his articles, whether it is possible
that I am not aware that every school-boy knows that the fourteenth
turning on the left in the steppes of Russia will conduct to such and
such a wandering tribe? with other disparaging questions of like nature.&nbsp;
So, when Mr. Barlow addresses a letter to any journal as a volunteer
correspondent (which I frequently find him doing), he will previously
have gotten somebody to tell him some tremendous technicality, and will
write in the coolest manner, &lsquo;Now, sir, I may assume that every
reader of your columns, possessing average information and intelligence,
knows as well as I do that&rsquo;&mdash;say that the draught from the
touch-hole of a cannon of such a calibre bears such a proportion in
the nicest fractions to the draught from the muzzle; or some equally
familiar little fact.&nbsp; But whatever it is, be certain that it always
tends to the exaltation of Mr. Barlow, and the depression of his enforced
and enslaved pupil.</p>
<p>Mr. Barlow&rsquo;s knowledge of my own pursuits I find to be so profound,
that my own knowledge of them becomes as nothing.&nbsp; Mr. Barlow (disguised
and bearing a feigned name, but detected by me) has occasionally taught
me, in a sonorous voice, from end to end of a long dinner-table, trifles
that I took the liberty of teaching him five-and-twenty years ago.&nbsp;
My closing article of impeachment against Mr. Barlow is, that he goes
out to breakfast, goes out to dinner, goes out everywhere, high and
low, and that he WILL preach to me, and that I CAN&rsquo;T get rid of
him.&nbsp; He makes me a Promethean Tommy, bound; and he is the vulture
that gorges itself upon the liver of my uninstructed mind.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XXXV&mdash;ON AN AMATEUR BEAT</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>It is one of my fancies, that even my idlest walk must always have
its appointed destination.&nbsp; I set myself a task before I leave
my lodging in Covent-garden on a street expedition, and should no more
think of altering my route by the way, or turning back and leaving a
part of it unachieved, than I should think of fraudulently violating
an agreement entered into with somebody else.&nbsp; The other day, finding
myself under this kind of obligation to proceed to Limehouse, I started
punctually at noon, in compliance with the terms of the contract with
myself to which my good faith was pledged.</p>
<p>On such an occasion, it is my habit to regard my walk as my beat,
and myself as a higher sort of police-constable doing duty on the same.&nbsp;
There is many a ruffian in the streets whom I mentally collar and clear
out of them, who would see mighty little of London, I can tell him,
if I could deal with him physically.</p>
<p>Issuing forth upon this very beat, and following with my eyes three
hulking garrotters on their way home,&mdash;which home I could confidently
swear to be within so many yards of Drury-lane, in such a narrow and
restricted direction (though they live in their lodging quite as undisturbed
as I in mine),&mdash;I went on duty with a consideration which I respectfully
offer to the new Chief Commissioner,&mdash;in whom I thoroughly confide
as a tried and efficient public servant.&nbsp; How often (thought I)
have I been forced to swallow, in police-reports, the intolerable stereotyped
pill of nonsense, how that the police-constable informed the worthy
magistrate how that the associates of the prisoner did, at that present
speaking, dwell in a street or court which no man dared go down, and
how that the worthy magistrate had heard of the dark reputation of such
street or court, and how that our readers would doubtless remember that
it was always the same street or court which was thus edifyingly discoursed
about, say once a fortnight.</p>
<p>Now, suppose that a Chief Commissioner sent round a circular to every
division of police employed in London, requiring instantly the names
in all districts of all such much-puffed streets or courts which no
man durst go down; and suppose that in such circular he gave plain warning,
&lsquo;If those places really exist, they are a proof of police inefficiency
which I mean to punish; and if they do not exist, but are a conventional
fiction, then they are a proof of lazy tacit police connivance with
professional crime, which I also mean to punish&rsquo;&mdash;what then?&nbsp;
Fictions or realities, could they survive the touchstone of this atom
of common sense?&nbsp; To tell us in open court, until it has become
as trite a feature of news as the great gooseberry, that a costly police-system
such as was never before heard of, has left in London, in the days of
steam and gas and photographs of thieves and electric telegraphs, the
sanctuaries and stews of the Stuarts!&nbsp; Why, a parity of practice,
in all departments, would bring back the Plague in two summers, and
the Druids in a century!</p>
<p>Walking faster under my share of this public injury, I overturned
a wretched little creature, who, clutching at the rags of a pair of
trousers with one of its claws, and at its ragged hair with the other,
pattered with bare feet over the muddy stones.&nbsp; I stopped to raise
and succour this poor weeping wretch, and fifty like it, but of both
sexes, were about me in a moment, begging, tumbling, fighting, clamouring,
yelling, shivering in their nakedness and hunger.&nbsp; The piece of
money I had put into the claw of the child I had over-turned was clawed
out of it, and was again clawed out of that wolfish gripe, and again
out of that, and soon I had no notion in what part of the obscene scuffle
in the mud, of rags and legs and arms and dirt, the money might be.&nbsp;
In raising the child, I had drawn it aside out of the main thoroughfare,
and this took place among some wooden hoardings and barriers and ruins
of demolished buildings, hard by Temple Bar.</p>
<p>Unexpectedly, from among them emerged a genuine police-constable,
before whom the dreadful brood dispersed in various directions, he making
feints and darts in this direction and in that, and catching nothing.&nbsp;
When all were frightened away, he took off his hat, pulled out a handkerchief
from it, wiped his heated brow, and restored the handkerchief and hat
to their places, with the air of a man who had discharged a great moral
duty,&mdash;as indeed he had, in doing what was set down for him.&nbsp;
I looked at him, and I looked about at the disorderly traces in the
mud, and I thought of the drops of rain and the footprints of an extinct
creature, hoary ages upon ages old, that geologists have identified
on the face of a cliff; and this speculation came over me: If this mud
could petrify at this moment, and could lie concealed here for ten thousand
years, I wonder whether the race of men then to be our successors on
the earth could, from these or any marks, by the utmost force of the
human intellect, unassisted by tradition, deduce such an astounding
inference as the existence of a polished state of society that bore
with the public savagery of neglected children in the streets of its
capital city, and was proud of its power by sea and land, and never
used its power to seize and save them!</p>
<p>After this, when I came to the Old Bailey and glanced up it towards
Newgate, I found that the prison had an inconsistent look.&nbsp; There
seemed to be some unlucky inconsistency in the atmosphere that day;
for though the proportions of St. Paul&rsquo;s Cathedral are very beautiful,
it had an air of being somewhat out of drawing, in my eyes.&nbsp; I
felt as though the cross were too high up, and perched upon the intervening
golden ball too far away.</p>
<p>Facing eastward, I left behind me Smithfield and Old Bailey,&mdash;fire
and faggot, condemned hold, public hanging, whipping through the city
at the cart-tail, pillory, branding-iron, and other beautiful ancestral
landmarks, which rude hands have rooted up, without bringing the stars
quite down upon us as yet,&mdash;and went my way upon my beat, noting
how oddly characteristic neighbourhoods are divided from one another,
hereabout, as though by an invisible line across the way.&nbsp; Here
shall cease the bankers and the money-changers; here shall begin the
shipping interest and the nautical-instrument shops; here shall follow
a scarcely perceptible flavouring of groceries and drugs; here shall
come a strong infusion of butchers; now, small hosiers shall be in the
ascendant; henceforth, everything exposed for sale shall have its ticketed
price attached.&nbsp; All this as if specially ordered and appointed.</p>
<p>A single stride at Houndsditch Church, no wider than sufficed to
cross the kennel at the bottom of the Canon-gate, which the debtors
in Holyrood sanctuary were wont to relieve their minds by skipping over,
as Scott relates, and standing in delightful daring of catchpoles on
the free side,&mdash;a single stride, and everything is entirely changed
in grain and character.&nbsp; West of the stride, a table, or a chest
of drawers on sale, shall be of mahogany and French-polished; east of
the stride, it shall be of deal, smeared with a cheap counterfeit resembling
lip-salve.&nbsp; West of the stride, a penny loaf or bun shall be compact
and self-contained; east of the stride, it shall be of a sprawling and
splay-footed character, as seeking to make more of itself for the money.&nbsp;
My beat lying round by Whitechapel Church, and the adjacent sugar-refineries,&mdash;great
buildings, tier upon tier, that have the appearance of being nearly
related to the dock-warehouses at Liverpool,&mdash;I turned off to my
right, and, passing round the awkward corner on my left, came suddenly
on an apparition familiar to London streets afar off.</p>
<p>What London peripatetic of these times has not seen the woman who
has fallen forward, double, through some affection of the spine, and
whose head has of late taken a turn to one side, so that it now droops
over the back of one of her arms at about the wrist?&nbsp; Who does
not know her staff, and her shawl, and her basket, as she gropes her
way along, capable of seeing nothing but the pavement, never begging,
never stopping, for ever going somewhere on no business?&nbsp; How does
she live, whence does she come, whither does she go, and why?&nbsp;
I mind the time when her yellow arms were naught but bone and parchment.&nbsp;
Slight changes steal over her; for there is a shadowy suggestion of
human skin on them now.&nbsp; The Strand may be taken as the central
point about which she revolves in a half-mile orbit.&nbsp; How comes
she so far east as this?&nbsp; And coming back too!&nbsp; Having been
how much farther?&nbsp; She is a rare spectacle in this neighbourhood.&nbsp;
I receive intelligent information to this effect from a dog&mdash;a
lop-sided mongrel with a foolish tail, plodding along with his tail
up, and his ears pricked, and displaying an amiable interest in the
ways of his fellow-men,&mdash;if I may be allowed the expression.&nbsp;
After pausing at a pork-shop, he is jogging eastward like myself, with
a benevolent countenance and a watery mouth, as though musing on the
many excellences of pork, when he beholds this doubled-up bundle approaching.&nbsp;
He is not so much astonished at the bundle (though amazed by that),
as the circumstance that it has within itself the means of locomotion.&nbsp;
He stops, pricks his ears higher, makes a slight point, stares, utters
a short, low growl, and glistens at the nose,&mdash;as I conceive with
terror.&nbsp; The bundle continuing to approach, he barks, turns tail,
and is about to fly, when, arguing with himself that flight is not becoming
in a dog, he turns, and once more faces the advancing heap of clothes.&nbsp;
After much hesitation, it occurs to him that there may be a face in
it somewhere.&nbsp; Desperately resolving to undertake the adventure,
and pursue the inquiry, he goes slowly up to the bundle, goes slowly
round it, and coming at length upon the human countenance down there
where never human countenance should be, gives a yelp of horror, and
flies for the East India Docks.</p>
<p>Being now in the Commercial Road district of my beat, and bethinking
myself that Stepney Station is near, I quicken my pace that I may turn
out of the road at that point, and see how my small eastern star is
shining.</p>
<p>The Children&rsquo;s Hospital, to which I gave that name, is in full
force.&nbsp; All its beds are occupied.&nbsp; There is a new face on
the bed where my pretty baby lay, and that sweet little child is now
at rest for ever.&nbsp; Much kind sympathy has been here since my former
visit, and it is good to see the walls profusely garnished with dolls.&nbsp;
I wonder what Poodles may think of them, as they stretch out their arms
above the beds, and stare, and display their splendid dresses.&nbsp;
Poodles has a greater interest in the patients.&nbsp; I find him making
the round of the beds, like a house-surgeon, attended by another dog,&mdash;a
friend,&mdash;who appears to trot about with him in the character of
his pupil dresser.&nbsp; Poodles is anxious to make me known to a pretty
little girl looking wonderfully healthy, who had had a leg taken off
for cancer of the knee.&nbsp; A difficult operation, Poodles intimates,
wagging his tail on the counterpane, but perfectly successful, as you
see, dear sir!&nbsp; The patient, patting Poodles, adds with a smile,
&lsquo;The leg was so much trouble to me, that I am glad it&rsquo;s
gone.&rsquo;&nbsp; I never saw anything in doggery finer than the deportment
of Poodles, when another little girl opens her mouth to show a peculiar
enlargement of the tongue.&nbsp; Poodles (at that time on a table, to
be on a level with the occasion) looks at the tongue (with his own sympathetically
out) so very gravely and knowingly, that I feel inclined to put my hand
in my waistcoat-pocket, and give him a guinea, wrapped in paper.</p>
<p>On my beat again, and close to Limehouse Church, its termination,
I found myself near to certain &lsquo;Lead-Mills.&rsquo;&nbsp; Struck
by the name, which was fresh in my memory, and finding, on inquiry,
that these same lead-mills were identified with those same lead-mills
of which I made mention when I first visited the East London Children&rsquo;s
Hospital and its neighbourhood as Uncommercial Traveller, I resolved
to have a look at them.</p>
<p>Received by two very intelligent gentlemen, brothers, and partners
with their father in the concern, and who testified every desire to
show their works to me freely, I went over the lead-mills.&nbsp; The
purport of such works is the conversion of pig-lead into white-lead.&nbsp;
This conversion is brought about by the slow and gradual effecting of
certain successive chemical changes in the lead itself.&nbsp; The processes
are picturesque and interesting,&mdash;the most so, being the burying
of the lead, at a certain stage of preparation, in pots, each pot containing
a certain quantity of acid besides, and all the pots being buried in
vast numbers, in layers, under tan, for some ten weeks.</p>
<p>Hopping up ladders, and across planks, and on elevated perches, until
I was uncertain whether to liken myself to a bird or a brick-layer,
I became conscious of standing on nothing particular, looking down into
one of a series of large cocklofts, with the outer day peeping in through
the chinks in the tiled roof above.&nbsp; A number of women were ascending
to, and descending from, this cockloft, each carrying on the upward
journey a pot of prepared lead and acid, for deposition under the smoking
tan.&nbsp; When one layer of pots was completely filled, it was carefully
covered in with planks, and those were carefully covered with tan again,
and then another layer of pots was begun above; sufficient means of
ventilation being preserved through wooden tubes.&nbsp; Going down into
the cockloft then filling, I found the heat of the tan to be surprisingly
great, and also the odour of the lead and acid to be not absolutely
exquisite, though I believe not noxious at that stage.&nbsp; In other
cocklofts, where the pots were being exhumed, the heat of the steaming
tan was much greater, and the smell was penetrating and peculiar.&nbsp;
There were cocklofts in all stages; full and empty, half filled and
half emptied; strong, active women were clambering about them busily;
and the whole thing had rather the air of the upper part of the house
of some immensely rich old Turk, whose faithful seraglio were hiding
his money because the sultan or the pasha was coming.</p>
<p>As is the case with most pulps or pigments, so in the instance of
this white-lead, processes of stirring, separating, washing, grinding,
rolling, and pressing succeed.&nbsp; Some of these are unquestionably
inimical to health, the danger arising from inhalation of particles
of lead, or from contact between the lead and the touch, or both.&nbsp;
Against these dangers, I found good respirators provided (simply made
of flannel and muslin, so as to be inexpensively renewed, and in some
instances washed with scented soap), and gauntlet gloves, and loose
gowns.&nbsp; Everywhere, there was as much fresh air as windows, well
placed and opened, could possibly admit.&nbsp; And it was explained
that the precaution of frequently changing the women employed in the
worst parts of the work (a precaution originating in their own experience
or apprehension of its ill effects) was found salutary.&nbsp; They had
a mysterious and singular appearance, with the mouth and nose covered,
and the loose gown on, and yet bore out the simile of the old Turk and
the seraglio all the better for the disguise.</p>
<p>At last this vexed white-lead, having been buried and resuscitated,
and heated and cooled and stirred, and separated and washed and ground,
and rolled and pressed, is subjected to the action of intense fiery
heat.&nbsp; A row of women, dressed as above described, stood, let us
say, in a large stone bakehouse, passing on the baking-dishes as they
were given out by the cooks, from hand to hand, into the ovens.&nbsp;
The oven, or stove, cold as yet, looked as high as an ordinary house,
and was full of men and women on temporary footholds, briskly passing
up and stowing away the dishes.&nbsp; The door of another oven, or stove,
about to be cooled and emptied, was opened from above, for the uncommercial
countenance to peer down into.&nbsp; The uncommercial countenance withdrew
itself, with expedition and a sense of suffocation, from the dull-glowing
heat and the overpowering smell.&nbsp; On the whole, perhaps the going
into these stoves to work, when they are freshly opened, may be the
worst part of the occupation.</p>
<p>But I made it out to be indubitable that the owners of these lead-mills
honestly and sedulously try to reduce the dangers of the occupation
to the lowest point.</p>
<p>A washing-place is provided for the women (I thought there might
have been more towels), and a room in which they hang their clothes,
and take their meals, and where they have a good fire-range and fire,
and a female attendant to help them, and to watch that they do not neglect
the cleansing of their hands before touching their food.&nbsp; An experienced
medical attendant is provided for them, and any premonitory symptoms
of lead-poisoning are carefully treated.&nbsp; Their teapots and such
things were set out on tables ready for their afternoon meal, when I
saw their room; and it had a homely look.&nbsp; It is found that they
bear the work much better than men: some few of them have been at it
for years, and the great majority of those I observed were strong and
active.&nbsp; On the other hand, it should be remembered that most of
them are very capricious and irregular in their attendance.</p>
<p>American inventiveness would seem to indicate that before very long
white-lead may be made entirely by machinery.&nbsp; The sooner, the
better.&nbsp; In the meantime, I parted from my two frank conductors
over the mills, by telling them that they had nothing there to be concealed,
and nothing to be blamed for.&nbsp; As to the rest, the philosophy of
the matter of lead-poisoning and workpeople seems to me to have been
pretty fairly summed up by the Irishwoman whom I quoted in my former
paper: &lsquo;Some of them gets lead-pisoned soon, and some of them
gets lead-pisoned later, and some, but not many, niver; and &rsquo;tis
all according to the constitooshun, sur; and some constitooshuns is
strong and some is weak.&rsquo;&nbsp; Retracing my footsteps over my
beat, I went off duty.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XXXVI&mdash;A FLY-LEAF IN A LIFE</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>Once upon a time (no matter when), I was engaged in a pursuit (no
matter what), which could be transacted by myself alone; in which I
could have no help; which imposed a constant strain on the attention,
memory, observation, and physical powers; and which involved an almost
fabulous amount of change of place and rapid railway travelling.&nbsp;
I had followed this pursuit through an exceptionally trying winter in
an always trying climate, and had resumed it in England after but a
brief repose.&nbsp; Thus it came to be prolonged until, at length&mdash;and,
as it seemed, all of a sudden&mdash;it so wore me out that I could not
rely, with my usual cheerful confidence, upon myself to achieve the
constantly recurring task, and began to feel (for the first time in
my life) giddy, jarred, shaken, faint, uncertain of voice and sight
and tread and touch, and dull of spirit.&nbsp; The medical advice I
sought within a few hours, was given in two words: &lsquo;instant rest.&rsquo;&nbsp;
Being accustomed to observe myself as curiously as if I were another
man, and knowing the advice to meet my only need, I instantly halted
in the pursuit of which I speak, and rested.</p>
<p>My intention was, to interpose, as it were, a fly-leaf in the book
of my life, in which nothing should be written from without for a brief
season of a few weeks.&nbsp; But some very singular experiences recorded
themselves on this same fly-leaf, and I am going to relate them literally.&nbsp;
I repeat the word: literally.</p>
<p>My first odd experience was of the remarkable coincidence between
my case, in the general mind, and one Mr. Merdle&rsquo;s as I find it
recorded in a work of fiction called LITTLE DORRIT.&nbsp; To be sure,
Mr. Merdle was a swindler, forger, and thief, and my calling had been
of a less harmful (and less remunerative) nature; but it was all one
for that.</p>
<p>Here is Mr. Merdle&rsquo;s case:</p>
<p>&lsquo;At first, he was dead of all the diseases that ever were known,
and of several bran-new maladies invented with the speed of Light to
meet the demand of the occasion.&nbsp; He had concealed a dropsy from
infancy, he had inherited a large estate of water on the chest from
his grandfather, he had had an operation performed upon him every morning
of his life for eighteen years, he had been subject to the explosion
of important veins in his body after the manner of fireworks, he had
had something the matter with his lungs, he had had something the matter
with his heart, he had had something the matter with his brain.&nbsp;
Five hundred people who sat down to breakfast entirely uninformed on
the whole subject, believed before they had done breakfast, that they
privately and personally knew Physician to have said to Mr. Merdle,
&ldquo;You must expect to go out, some day, like the snuff of a candle;&rdquo;
and that they knew Mr. Merdle to have said to Physician, &ldquo;A man
can die but once.&rdquo;&nbsp; By about eleven o&rsquo;clock in the
forenoon, something the matter with the brain, became the favourite
theory against the field; and by twelve the something had been distinctly
ascertained to be &ldquo;Pressure.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Pressure was so entirely satisfactory to the public mind,
and seemed to make every one so comfortable, that it might have lasted
all day but for Bar&rsquo;s having taken the real state of the case
into Court at half-past nine.&nbsp; Pressure, however, so far from being
overthrown by the discovery, became a greater favourite than ever.&nbsp;
There was a general moralising upon Pressure, in every street.&nbsp;
All the people who had tried to make money and had not been able to
do it, said, There you were!&nbsp; You no sooner began to devote yourself
to the pursuit of wealth, than you got Pressure.&nbsp; The idle people
improved the occasion in a similar manner.&nbsp; See, said they, what
you brought yourself to by work, work, work!&nbsp; You persisted in
working, you overdid it, Pressure came on, and you were done for!&nbsp;
This consideration was very potent in many quarters, but nowhere more
so than among the young clerks and partners who had never been in the
slightest danger of overdoing it.&nbsp; These, one and all declared,
quite piously, that they hoped they would never forget the warning as
long as they lived, and that their conduct might be so regulated as
to keep off Pressure, and preserve them, a comfort to their friends,
for many years.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Just my case&mdash;if I had only known it&mdash;when I was quietly
basking in the sunshine in my Kentish meadow!</p>
<p>But while I so rested, thankfully recovering every hour, I had experiences
more odd than this.&nbsp; I had experiences of spiritual conceit, for
which, as giving me a new warning against that curse of mankind, I shall
always feel grateful to the supposition that I was too far gone to protest
against playing sick lion to any stray donkey with an itching hoof.&nbsp;
All sorts of people seemed to become vicariously religious at my expense.&nbsp;
I received the most uncompromising warning that I was a Heathen: on
the conclusive authority of a field preacher, who, like the most of
his ignorant and vain and daring class, could not construct a tolerable
sentence in his native tongue or pen a fair letter.&nbsp; This inspired
individual called me to order roundly, and knew in the freest and easiest
way where I was going to, and what would become of me if I failed to
fashion myself on his bright example, and was on terms of blasphemous
confidence with the Heavenly Host.&nbsp; He was in the secrets of my
heart, and in the lowest soundings of my soul&mdash;he!&mdash;and could
read the depths of my nature better than his A B C, and could turn me
inside out, like his own clammy glove.&nbsp; But what is far more extraordinary
than this&mdash;for such dirty water as this could alone be drawn from
such a shallow and muddy source&mdash;I found from the information of
a beneficed clergyman, of whom I never heard and whom I never saw, that
I had not, as I rather supposed I had, lived a life of some reading,
contemplation, and inquiry; that I had not studied, as I rather supposed
I had, to inculcate some Christian lessons in books; that I had never
tried, as I rather supposed I had, to turn a child or two tenderly towards
the knowledge and love of our Saviour; that I had never had, as I rather
supposed I had had, departed friends, or stood beside open graves; but
that I had lived a life of &lsquo;uninterrupted prosperity,&rsquo; and
that I needed this &lsquo;check, overmuch,&rsquo; and that the way to
turn it to account was to read these sermons and these poems, enclosed,
and written and issued by my correspondent!&nbsp; I beg it may be understood
that I relate facts of my own uncommercial experience, and no vain imaginings.&nbsp;
The documents in proof lie near my hand.</p>
<p>Another odd entry on the fly-leaf, of a more entertaining character,
was the wonderful persistency with which kind sympathisers assumed that
I had injuriously coupled with the so suddenly relinquished pursuit,
those personal habits of mine most obviously incompatible with it, and
most plainly impossible of being maintained, along with it.&nbsp; As,
all that exercise, all that cold bathing, all that wind and weather,
all that uphill training&mdash;all that everything else, say, which
is usually carried about by express trains in a portmanteau and hat-box,
and partaken of under a flaming row of gas-lights in the company of
two thousand people.&nbsp; This assuming of a whole case against all
fact and likelihood, struck me as particularly droll, and was an oddity
of which I certainly had had no adequate experience in life until I
turned that curious fly-leaf.</p>
<p>My old acquaintances the begging-letter writers came out on the fly-leaf,
very piously indeed.&nbsp; They were glad, at such a serious crisis,
to afford me another opportunity of sending that Post-office order.&nbsp;
I needn&rsquo;t make it a pound, as previously insisted on; ten shillings
might ease my mind.&nbsp; And Heaven forbid that they should refuse,
at such an insignificant figure, to take a weight off the memory of
an erring fellow-creature!&nbsp; One gentleman, of an artistic turn
(and copiously illustrating the books of the Mendicity Society), thought
it might soothe my conscience, in the tender respect of gifts misused,
if I would immediately cash up in aid of his lowly talent for original
design&mdash;as a specimen of which he enclosed me a work of art which
I recognized as a tracing from a woodcut originally published in the
late Mrs. Trollope&rsquo;s book on America, forty or fifty years ago.&nbsp;
The number of people who were prepared to live long years after me,
untiring benefactors to their species, for fifty pounds apiece down,
was astonishing.&nbsp; Also, of those who wanted bank-notes for stiff
penitential amounts, to give away:- not to keep, on any account.</p>
<p>Divers wonderful medicines and machines insinuated recommendations
of themselves into the fly-leaf that was to have been so blank.&nbsp;
It was specially observable that every prescriber, whether in a moral
or physical direction, knew me thoroughly&mdash;knew me from head to
heel, in and out, through and through, upside down.&nbsp; I was a glass
piece of general property, and everybody was on the most surprisingly
intimate terms with me.&nbsp; A few public institutions had complimentary
perceptions of corners in my mind, of which, after considerable self-examination,
I have not discovered any indication.&nbsp; Neat little printed forms
were addressed to those corners, beginning with the words: &lsquo;I
give and bequeath.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Will it seem exaggerative to state my belief that the most honest,
the most modest, and the least vain-glorious of all the records upon
this strange fly-leaf, was a letter from the self-deceived discoverer
of the recondite secret &lsquo;how to live four or five hundred years&rsquo;?&nbsp;
Doubtless it will seem so, yet the statement is not exaggerative by
any means, but is made in my serious and sincere conviction.&nbsp; With
this, and with a laugh at the rest that shall not be cynical, I turn
the Fly-leaf, and go on again.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER XXXVII&mdash;A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>One day this last Whitsuntide, at precisely eleven o&rsquo;clock
in the forenoon, there suddenly rode into the field of view commanded
by the windows of my lodging an equestrian phenomenon.&nbsp; It was
a fellow-creature on horseback, dressed in the absurdest manner.&nbsp;
The fellow-creature wore high boots; some other (and much larger) fellow-creature&rsquo;s
breeches, of a slack-baked doughy colour and a baggy form; a blue shirt,
whereof the skirt, or tail, was puffily tucked into the waist-band of
the said breeches; no coat; a red shoulder-belt; and a demi-semi-military
scarlet hat, with a feathered ornament in front, which, to the uninstructed
human vision, had the appearance of a moulting shuttlecock.&nbsp; I
laid down the newspaper with which I had been occupied, and surveyed
the fellow-man in question with astonishment.&nbsp; Whether he had been
sitting to any painter as a frontispiece for a new edition of &lsquo;Sartor
Resartus;&rsquo; whether &lsquo;the husk or shell of him,&rsquo; as
the esteemed Herr Teufelsdroch might put it, were founded on a jockey,
on a circus, on General Garibaldi, on cheap porcelain, on a toy shop,
on Guy Fawkes, on waxwork, on gold-digging, on Bedlam, or on all,&mdash;were
doubts that greatly exercised my mind.&nbsp; Meanwhile, my fellow-man
stumbled and slided, excessively against his will, on the slippery stones
of my Covent-garden street, and elicited shrieks from several sympathetic
females, by convulsively restraining himself from pitching over his
horse&rsquo;s head.&nbsp; In the very crisis of these evolutions, and
indeed at the trying moment when his charger&rsquo;s tail was in a tobacconist&rsquo;s
shop, and his head anywhere about town, this cavalier was joined by
two similar portents, who, likewise stumbling and sliding, caused him
to stumble and slide the more distressingly.&nbsp; At length this Gilpinian
triumvirate effected a halt, and, looking northward, waved their three
right hands as commanding unseen troops, to &lsquo;Up, guards! and at
&rsquo;em.&rsquo;&nbsp; Hereupon a brazen band burst forth, which caused
them to be instantly bolted with to some remote spot of earth in the
direction of the Surrey Hills.</p>
<p>Judging from these appearances that a procession was under way, I
threw up my window, and, craning out, had the satisfaction of beholding
it advancing along the streets.&nbsp; It was a Teetotal procession,
as I learnt from its banners, and was long enough to consume twenty
minutes in passing.&nbsp; There were a great number of children in it,
some of them so very young in their mothers&rsquo; arms as to be in
the act of practically exemplifying their abstinence from fermented
liquors, and attachment to an unintoxicating drink, while the procession
defiled.&nbsp; The display was, on the whole, pleasant to see, as any
good-humoured holiday assemblage of clean, cheerful, and well-conducted
people should be.&nbsp; It was bright with ribbons, tinsel, and shoulder-belts,
and abounded in flowers, as if those latter trophies had come up in
profusion under much watering.&nbsp; The day being breezy, the insubordination
of the large banners was very reprehensible.&nbsp; Each of these being
borne aloft on two poles and stayed with some half-dozen lines, was
carried, as polite books in the last century used to be written, by
&lsquo;various hands,&rsquo; and the anxiety expressed in the upturned
faces of those officers,&mdash;something between the anxiety attendant
on the balancing art, and that inseparable from the pastime of kite-flying,
with a touch of the angler&rsquo;s quality in landing his scaly prey,&mdash;much
impressed me.&nbsp; Suddenly, too, a banner would shiver in the wind,
and go about in the most inconvenient manner.&nbsp; This always happened
oftenest with such gorgeous standards as those representing a gentleman
in black, corpulent with tea and water, in the laudable act of summarily
reforming a family, feeble and pinched with beer.&nbsp; The gentleman
in black distended by wind would then conduct himself with the most
unbecoming levity, while the beery family, growing beerier, would frantically
try to tear themselves away from his ministration.&nbsp; Some of the
inscriptions accompanying the banners were of a highly determined character,
as &lsquo;We never, never will give up the temperance cause,&rsquo;
with similar sound resolutions rather suggestive to the profane mind
of Mrs. Micawber&rsquo;s &lsquo;I never will desert Mr. Micawber,&rsquo;
and of Mr. Micawber&rsquo;s retort, &lsquo;Really, my dear, I am not
aware that you were ever required by any human being to do anything
of the sort.&rsquo;</p>
<p>At intervals, a gloom would fall on the passing members of the procession,
for which I was at first unable to account.&nbsp; But this I discovered,
after a little observation, to be occasioned by the coming on of the
executioners,&mdash;the terrible official beings who were to make the
speeches by-and-by,&mdash;who were distributed in open carriages at
various points of the cavalcade.&nbsp; A dark cloud and a sensation
of dampness, as from many wet blankets, invariably preceded the rolling
on of the dreadful cars containing these headsmen; and I noticed that
the wretched people who closely followed them, and who were in a manner
forced to contemplate their folded arms, complacent countenances, and
threatening lips, were more overshadowed by the cloud and damp than
those in front.&nbsp; Indeed, I perceived in some of these so moody
an implacability towards the magnates of the scaffold, and so plain
a desire to tear them limb from limb, that I would respectfully suggest
to the managers the expediency of conveying the executioners to the
scene of their dismal labours by unfrequented ways, and in closely-tilted
carts, next Whitsuntide.</p>
<p>The procession was composed of a series of smaller processions, which
had come together, each from its own metropolitan district.&nbsp; An
infusion of allegory became perceptible when patriotic Peckham advanced.&nbsp;
So I judged, from the circumstance of Peckham&rsquo;s unfurling a silken
banner that fanned heaven and earth with the words, &lsquo;The Peckham
Lifeboat.&rsquo;&nbsp; No boat being in attendance, though life, in
the likeness of &lsquo;a gallant, gallant crew,&rsquo; in nautical uniform,
followed the flag, I was led to meditate on the fact that Peckham is
described by geographers as an inland settlement, with no larger or
nearer shore-line than the towing-path of the Surrey Canal, on which
stormy station I had been given to understand no lifeboat exists.&nbsp;
Thus I deduced an allegorical meaning, and came to the conclusion, that
if patriotic Peckham picked a peck of pickled poetry, this <i>was</i>
the peck of pickled poetry which patriotic Peckham picked.</p>
<p>I have observed that the aggregate procession was on the whole pleasant
to see.&nbsp; I made use of that qualified expression with a direct
meaning, which I will now explain.&nbsp; It involves the title of this
paper, and a little fair trying of teetotalism by its own tests.&nbsp;
There were many people on foot, and many people in vehicles of various
kinds.&nbsp; The former were pleasant to see, and the latter were not
pleasant to see; for the reason that I never, on any occasion or under
any circumstances, have beheld heavier overloading of horses than in
this public show.&nbsp; Unless the imposition of a great van laden with
from ten to twenty people on a single horse be a moderate tasking of
the poor creature, then the temperate use of horses was immoderate and
cruel.&nbsp; From the smallest and lightest horse to the largest and
heaviest, there were many instances in which the beast of burden was
so shamefully overladen, that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals have frequently interposed in less gross cases.</p>
<p>Now, I have always held that there may be, and that there unquestionably
is, such a thing as use without abuse, and that therefore the total
abolitionists are irrational and wrong-headed.&nbsp; But the procession
completely converted me.&nbsp; For so large a number of the people using
draught-horses in it were so clearly unable to use them without abusing
them, that I perceived total abstinence from horseflesh to be the only
remedy of which the case admitted.&nbsp; As it is all one to teetotalers
whether you take half a pint of beer or half a gallon, so it was all
one here whether the beast of burden were a pony or a cart-horse.&nbsp;
Indeed, my case had the special strength that the half-pint quadruped
underwent as much suffering as the half-gallon quadruped.&nbsp; Moral:
total abstinence from horseflesh through the whole length and breadth
of the scale.&nbsp; This pledge will be in course of administration
to all teetotal processionists, not pedestrians, at the publishing office
of &lsquo;All the Year Round,&rsquo; on the 1st day of April, 1870.</p>
<p>Observe a point for consideration.&nbsp; This procession comprised
many persons in their gigs, broughams, tax-carts, barouches, chaises,
and what not, who were merciful to the dumb beasts that drew them, and
did not overcharge their strength.&nbsp; What is to be done with those
unoffending persons?&nbsp; I will not run amuck and vilify and defame
them, as teetotal tracts and platforms would most assuredly do, if the
question were one of drinking instead of driving: I merely ask what
is to be done with them!&nbsp; The reply admits of no dispute whatever.&nbsp;
Manifestly, in strict accordance with teetotal doctrines, THEY must
come in too, and take the total abstinence from horseflesh pledge.&nbsp;
It is not pretended that those members of the procession misused certain
auxiliaries which in most countries and all ages have been bestowed
upon man for his use, but it is undeniable that other members of the
procession did.&nbsp; Teetotal mathematics demonstrate that the less
includes the greater; that the guilty include the innocent, the blind
the seeing, the deaf the hearing, the dumb the speaking, the drunken
the sober.&nbsp; If any of the moderate users of draught-cattle in question
should deem that there is any gentle violence done to their reason by
these elements of logic, they are invited to come out of the procession
next Whitsuntide, and look at it from my window.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
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