L I B R.Y OF THE UNIVERSITY or ILLINOIS D55t. It)— WAR SERVICE LIBRARy V THIS-BOOK-IS PnoVIDED-BY THE-PEOPLE OF-THE UNITED-STATES THROUGHTHE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION FOR THE-USE-OF THE-SOLDIERS AND'SAlLORi A TALE OF TWO CITIES AND SKETCHES BY BOZ! BY CHARLES DICKENS. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. BARNARD* I CHICAGO AND NEW YORK : BELFORD, CLARKE & COMPANY, Publishers. TROW'8 WHNTmO AND BOOKBINDINO COMPMrg NEW YORK. ^^3 77 r.^-,^- PREFACE. When I was acting, with my children and friends, in Mr. WiLKiE Collinses drama of The Frozen Deep, I first conceived the main idea of this story. A strong desire was upon me then, to embody it in my own person ; and I traced out in my fancy the state of mind of which it would necessitate the pre- sentation to an observant spectator, with particular care and interest. As the idea became familiar to me, it gradually shaped it- self into its present form. Throughout its execution, it has had complete possession of me ; I have so far verified what is done and suffered in these pages, as that I have certainly done and suffered it all myself. Whenever any reference (however slight) is made here to the condition of the French people before or during the Rev- olution, it is truly made, on the faith of trustworthy witnesses. It has been one of my hopes to add something to the popular and picturesque means of understanding that terrible time, though no one can hope to add anything to the philosophy of Mr. Carlyle's wonderful book. CONTENTS. A TALE OF TWO CITIES. BOOK THE FIRST. RECALLED TO LIFE. CHAP. PAGE 1. The period 7 II. The mail lo III. The night shadows 15 IV. The preparation 19 V. The wine-shop 30 VI. The shoemaker - . 40 BOOK THE SECOND. — THE GOLDEN THREAD. I. Five years later 51 II. A sight 57 III. A disappointment 63 IV. Congratulatory 76 V. The jackal 82 VI. Hundreds of people 87 VII. Monseigneur in town 99 VIII. Monseigneur in the country 107 IX. The Gorgon's head 112 X. Two promises 122 XI. A companion picture 130 XII. The fellow of delicacy ... 134 XIII. The fellow of no delicacy. 140 XIV. The honest tradesman. 145 XV. Knitting 155 XVI. Still knitting 165 X\T I. One night 175 XVI II. Nine days 180 XIX. An opinion i86 XX. A plea 193 XXL Echoing footsteps 197 XXII. The sea still rises 207 XXI II. Fire rises 212 XXIV\ Drawn to the loadstone rock 219 V CONTENTS. BOOK THE THIRD. THE TRACK OF A STORM. CHAP- PAGE I. In secret. ... 231 II. The grindstone 242 III. The shadow 248 IV. Cahn in storm , 253 V. The wood-sawyer 258 VI. Triumph i 263 •VII. A knock at the door , 270 VIII. A hand at cards 275 IX. The game made 287 X. The sub^ance of the shadow 298 XI. Dusk 312 XII. Darkness 316 XI II. Fifty-two 324 XIV. The knitting done. 335 XV. The footsteps die out for ever 347 SKETCHES BY BOZ. OUR PARISH. I. The beadle. The parish engine. The schoolmaster 355 11. The curate. The old lady. The half-pay captain. .. 362 III. The four sisters 367 IV. The election for beadle , 372 V. T]:ie broker's man 379 VI. The ladies' societies 387 VII. Our next-door neighbor 393 SCENES. I. The streets — morning 399 II. The streets — night 404 III. Shops and their tenants .0 409 IV. Scotland-yard 413 V. Seven Dials 417 VI. Meditations in Monmouth-street 422 VII. Hackney-coach stands 428 VIII. Doctors' Commons 432 IX. London recreations 438 X. The river 442 XI. Astley's 449 XII. Greenwich Fair .... 455 CONTENTS. V CHAP. PAGE XIII. Private theatres 463 XIV. Vauxhall-gardens by day 469 XV. Early coaches 474 XVI. Omnibuses 479 XVII. The last cab-driver, and the first omnibus cad 483 XVIII., A Parliamentary sketch 492 XIX. Public dinners 503 XX. The first of May 509 XXI. Brokers' and marine-store shops , . 516 XXII. Gin shops.. . ,^ 520 XXIII. The pawnbroker's shop 525 XXIV. Criminal courts 532 XXV, A visit to Newgate 537 CHARACTERS. I. Thoughts about people. 550 II. A Christmas dinner 555 III. The New Year 559 IV. Miss Evans and the eagle 564 V. The parlor orator 568 VI. The hospital patient 573 VII. The misplaced attachment of Mr. John Bounce. . . . 577 VIII. The mistaken milliner. A tale of ambition 583 IX. The dancing academy 588 X. • Shab.by-genteel people 594 XI. Making a night of it 698 XII. The prisoners' van 603 TALES. I. The boarding house 607 II. Mr. Minns and his cousin 642 III. Sentiment 653 IV. The Tuggs's at Ramsgatc 664 V. Horatio Sparkins 683 VI. The black veil 698 VII. The steam excursion 709 V'lII. The Great Winglebury duel 730 IX. Mrs. Joseph Porter 747 X. A passage in the life of Mr. Watkins Tottle 756 XI. The Bloomsbury christjening , 791 XII. The drunkard's death 807 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Sn QLl\xcc Books. BOOK THE FIRST. RECALLED TO LIFE. CHAPTER 1. THE PERIOD. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England ; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever. It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to Eng- land at that favored period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of 8 A TALE OF TWO CTTFES. whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year las* past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out thtiirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and people, from a congress of British subjects in America : which, strange to ^ relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood. France, less favored on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such human achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honor to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer wag" put to death, already marked by the Wood- man, Fate, to come l3own and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough out- houses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread : the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any sus- picion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and trai- torous. In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capi- tal itself every night ; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers' warehouses for security ; the highwayman in the dark was a THE PERIOD. 9 City tradesman in the light, and, being recognized and challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of "the Captain," gallantly shot him through the head and rode away ; the mail was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other four, " in consequence of the failure of his am- munition : " after which the mail was robbed in peace ; that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue \ prisoners in London gaols fought battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball ; thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at Court draw- ing-rooms ; musketeers went into St. Giles's, to search for con- traband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way. In the midst of $hem, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition ; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals ; now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday \ now, burning people in the hand at Newgate by the dozen, and now burn- ing pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall ; to-day taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer's boy of sixpence. All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the dear old year one thousand seven hun- dred and seventy-five. Environed by them, while the Wood- man and the Farmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures — the creatures of this chronicle among the rest- along the roads that lay before them. to A TALE OF 7^ WO CITIES. CHAPTER 11. THE MAIL. ]t was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late in November, before the first of the persons with whom this his- tory has business. The Dover road lay, as to him, beyond the Dover mail, as it lumbered up Shooter's Hill. He walked uphill in the mire by the side of the mail, as the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the least relish for walk- ing exercise, under the circumstances, but because the hill, and the harness, and the mud, and the mail, were all so heavy, that the horses had three times already come to a stop, besides once drawing the coach across the road, with the mutinous intent of taking it back to Blackheath. Reins and whip and coachman and gu'ard, however, in combination, had read that article of war which forbade a purpose other- wise strongly in favor of the argument, that some brute animals are endued with Reason ; and the team had capitu- lated and returned to their duty. With drooping heads and tremulous tails, they mashed their way through the thick mud, floundering and stumbling between whiles, as if they were falling to pieces at the larger joints. As often as the driver rested them and brought them to a stand, with a wary " Wo-ho ! so-ho then ! " the near leader violently shook his head and everything upon it — like an unusually emphatic horse, denying that the coach could be got up the hill. Whenever the leader made this rattle, the passenger started, as a nervous passenger might, and was dis- • turbed in mind. There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had roamed in its forlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit, seek- ing rest and finding none. A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its slow way through the air in ripples that visibly fol- lowed and overspread one another, as the waves of an un- wholesome sea might do. It was dense enough to shut out everything from the light of the coach-lamps but these its own workings, and a few yards of road ; and the reek of the labor- ing horses steamed into it, as if they had made it all. Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up THE MAIL. II the hill by the side of the mail. All three were wrapped to the cheek-bones and over the ears, and wore jack-boots. Not one of the three could have said, from anything he saw, what either of the other two was like ; and each was hidden under almost as many wrappers from the eyes of the mind, as from the eyes of the body, of his two companions. In those daySj travellers were very shy of being confidential on a short notice,, for anybody on the road might be a robber or in league with robbers. As to the latter, when every posting-house and ale- house could produce somebody in the Captain's " pay, rang- ' ing from the landlord to the lowest stable nondescript, it was the likeliest thing upon the cards. So the guard of the Dover mail thought to himself, that Friday night in November, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, lumbering up Shooter's Hill, as he stood on his own particular perch behind the mail, beating his feet, and keeping an eye and a hand on the arm-chest before him, where a loaded blunderbuss lay at the top of six or eight loaded horse-pistols, deposited on a substratum of cutlass. The Dover mail was in its usual genial position that the guard suspected the passengers, the passengers suspected one another and the guard, they all suspected everybody else, and the coachman w^as sure of nothing but the horses ; as to which cattle he could with a clear conscience have taken his oath on the two Testaments that they were not fit for the journey. " Wo-ho ! '' said the coachman. ^' So, then ! One mo^ pull and you're at the top and be damned to you, for I havr^ had trouble enough to get you to it ! — Joe ! " Halloa ! " the guard replied. " What o'clock do you make it, Joe ? '^ " Ten minutes, good, past eleven." My blood ! " ejaculated the vexed coachman, " and noJ atop of Shooter's yet ! Tst ! Yah ! Get on with 3'ou ! " The emphatic horse, cut short by the whip in a most de- cided negative, made a decided scramble for it, and the three other horses followed suit. Once more, the Dover mail strug- gled on, with the jack-boots of its passengers squashing along By its side. They had stopped when the coach stopped, and they kept close company with it. If any one of the three had had the hardihood to propose to another to walk on a little ahead into the mist and dai^ness, he would have put himself in a fair way of getting shot instantly as a highwayman. The last burst carried the mail to the summit of the hill S2 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, The horses stopped to breathe again, and the guard got down to skid the wheel for the descent, and open the coach-door to let the passengers in. " Tst ! Joe!" cried the coachman in a warning voices looking down from his box. What do you say, Tom 1 " They both listened. " I say a horse at a canter coming up, Joe.*' / say a horse at a gallop, Tom," returned the guard, leaving his hold of the door, and mounting nimbly to his place. " Gentlemen ! In the king's name, all of you ! " With this hurried adjuration, he cocked his blunderbuss, and stood on the offensive. The passenger booked by this history, was on the coacti* step, getting in ; the two other passengers were close behind him, and about to follow. He remained on the step, half in the coach and half out of ; they remained in the road below him. They all looked from the coachman to the guard, and from the guard to the coachman and listened. The coachman looked back and the guard looked back, and even the emphatic leader pricked up his ears and looked back, without contradicting. The stillness consequent on the cessation of the rumbling and laboring of the coach, added to the stillness of the night, made it very quiet indeed. The panting of the horses com- municated a tremulous motion to the coach, as if it were in a state of agitation. The hearts of the passengers beat loud enough perhaps to be heard : but at any rate, the quiet pause was audibly expressive of people out of breath, and holding the breath, and having the pulses quickened by expectation. The sound of a horse at a gallop came fast and furiously up the hill. " So-ho ! " the guard sang out, as loud as he could roar, " Yo there ! Stand ! I shall fire ! " The pace was suddenly checked, and, with much splashing and floundering, a man's voice called from the mist, Is that the Dover mail ? " " Never you mind what it is ? " the guard retorted. " What are you ? " " Is that the Dover mail 1 " " Why do you want to know " I want a passenger, if it is, " What passenger ? " THE MAIL* 13 "Mr Jarvis Lorry/' Our booked passenger showed in a moment that it was his nam'2. The guard, the coachman, and the two other passen- ger':? eyed him distrustfully. " Keep where you are,'' the guard called to the voice in the mist, " because, if I should make a mistake, it could never be set right in your lifetime. Gentleman of the name of Lorry answer stiaight.'' What is the matter 1 " asked the passenger, then, with mildly quavering speech. " Who wants me } Is it Jerry ? " (" I don't like Jerry's voice, if it is Jerry," growled the guard to himself. ^' He's hoarser than suits me, is Jerry.") " Yes, Mr. Lorry." " What is the matter " " A despatch sent after you from over yonder. T. and Co," " I know this messenger, guard," said Mr. Lorry, getting down into the road — assisted from behind more swiftly than politely by the other two passengers, who immediately scram- bled into the coach, shut the door, and pulled up the window. " He may come close ; there's nothing wrong." " I hope there ain't, but I can't make so 'Nation sure of that," said the guard, in gruff soliloquy. " Hallo you ! " " Well ! And hallo you ! " said Jerry, more hoarsely than before. " Come on at a footpace ! d'ye mind me ? And if youVe got holsters to that saddle o' yourn, don't let me see your hand go nigh 'em. For I'm a devil at a quick mistake, and when I make one it takes the form of Lead. So now let's look at you." The figures of a horse and rider came slowly through the eddying mist, and came to the side of the mail, where the passenger stood. The rider stooped, and, casting up his eyes at the guard, handed the passenger a small folded paper. The rider's horse was blown, and both horse and rider were covered with mud, from the hoofs of the horse to the hat of the man. " Guard ! " said the passenger, in a tone of quiet business confidence. The watchful guard, with his right hand at the stock of his raised blunderbuss, his left at the barrel, and his eye on the horseman, answered curtly, "Sir." " There is nothing to apprehend. I belong to Tellson's 14 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Bank. You must know Tellson's Bank in London. I am going to Paris on business. A crown to drink. I may read this t " If so be as you're quick, sir." He opened it in the Hght of the coach-lamp on that side, and read — first to himself and then aloud : ^' ^ Wait at Dover for Mam'selle.' It's not long, you see, guard. Jerry, say that my answer was, recalled to life." Jerry started in his saddle. " That's a Blazing strange answer, too," said he, at his hoarsest. Take that message back, and they will know that I re- ceived this, as well as if I wrote. Make the best of your way. Good-night." With those words the passenger opened the coach-door and got in ; not at all assisted by his fellow-passengers, who had expeditiously secreted their watches and purses in their boots, and were now making a general pretence of being asleep. With no more definite purpose than to escape the hazard of originating any other kind of action. The coach lumbered on again, with heavier wreaths of mist closing round it as it began the descent. The guard soon replaced his blunderbuss in his arm chest, and, having looked to the rest of its contents, and having looked to the supple- mentary pistols that he wore in his belt, looked to a smaller chest beneath his seat, in which there were a few smith's tools, a couple of torches, and a tinder-box. For he was furnished with that completeness that if the coach-lamps had been blown and stormed out, which did occasionally happen, he had only to shut himself up inside, keep the flint and steel sparks well off the straw, and get a light with tolerably safety and ease (if he were lucky) in five minutes. " Tom ! " softly over the coach-roof. Hallo, Joe." " Did you hear the message ? " I did, Joe." " What did you make of it, Tom ? " " Nothing at ail, Joe." That's a coincidence, too," the guard mused^ "for I made the same of it myself." Jerry, left alone in the mist and darkness, dismounted meanwhile, not only to ease his spent horse, but to wipe the mud from his face, and shake the wet out of his hat-brim, which might be capable of holding about half a gallon. After stand* THE NIGHT SHADOWS. iiig with the bridle over his heavily-splashed arm, until the wheels of the mail were no longer within hearing and the night was quite still again, he turned to walk down the hill. "AftA- that there gallop from Temple Bar, old lady, I won't trust your fore-legs till I get you on the level," said this hoarse messenger, glancing at his mare. " ' Recalled to life ! ' That's a Blazing strange message. Much of that wouldn't do for you, Jerry ! I say, Jerry ! You'd be in a Blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into fashion, Jerry 1 " CHAPTER IIL THE NIGHT SHADOWS. A WONDERFUL fact to reflect upon, that every human crea- ture is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret ; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret ; that every beating heart in the hun- dreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in ^ome of its imagin- ings, a secret to the heart nearest it ! Something of the aw- fulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbor is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead ; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end. In any of the burial places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their inner* most personality, to me, or than I am to them ? i6 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, As to this, his natural and not to be alienated inheritance, the messenger on horseback had exactly the same possessions as the King, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London. So with the three passengers shut up m the nar- row compass of one lumbering old mail coach ; they were mys- teries to one another, as complete as if each had been in his own coach and six, or his own coach and sixty, with the breadth of a county between him and the next. The messenger rode back at an easy trot, stopping pretty often at ale-houses by the way to drink, but evincing a ten- dency to keep his own counsel and to keep his hat cocked over his eyes. He had eyes that assorted very well with that decoration, being of a surface black, with no depth in the color or form, and much too near together — as if they were afraid of being found out in something, singly, if they kept too far apart. They had a sinister expression, under an old cocked-hat like a three-cornered spittoon, and over a great muffler for the chin and throat, which descended nearly to the wearer's knees. When he stopped for drink, he moved this muffler with his left hand, only while he poured his liquor in with his right ; as soon as that was done, he muffled again. No, Jerry , no ! " said the messenger, harping on one theme as he rode. " It wouldn't do for you, Jerry. Jerry, you honest tradesman, it wouldn't suit your line of business ! Recalled — ! Buat me if I don't think he'd been a drinking ! " His message perplexed his mind to that degree that he was fain, several times, to take off his hat to scratch his head. Except on the crovv^n, which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair, standing jaggedly all over it, and growing down hill almost to his broad, blunt nose. It w-as so like smith's work, so much more like the top of a strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog might have declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world to go over. While he trotted back with the message he was to deliver to the night watchman in his box at the door of Tellson's Bank, by Temple Bar, who was to deliver it to greater au- thorities within, the shadows of the night took such shapes to him as arose out of the message, and took such shapes to the mare as arose out of her private topics of uneasiness. They seemed to be numerous, for she shied at every shadow on the road. What time, the mail-coach lumbered, jolted, rattled, and THE NIGirr SHADOWS. Dumped upon its tedious way, with its three fellow-inscruta bles inside. To whom, likewise, the shadows of the night revealed themselves, in the forms their dozing eyes and wan- dering thoughts suggested. Tellson's bank had a run upon it in the mail. As the bank passenger — with an arm drawn through the leathern strap, which did what lay in it to keep him from pounding against the next passenger, and driving him into his corner^ whenever the coach got a special jolt — nodded in his place, with half-shut eyes, the little coach-windows, and the coach- lamp dimly gleaming through them, and the bulky bundle of opposite passenger, became the bank, and did a great stroke of business. The rattle of the harness was the chink of money, and more drafts w^e re honored in five minutes than even Tellson's with all its foreign and home connection, ever paid in thrice the time. Then the strong-rooms underground, at Tellson's, with such of their valuable stores and secrets as were known to the passenger (and it was not a little that he knew about them), opened before him, and he went in among them with the great keys and the feebly-burning candle, and found them safe, and strong, and sound, and still just as he had last seen them. But though the bank was almost always with him, and though the coach (in a confused way, like the presence of pain under an opiate) was always with him, there was another cur- rent of impression that never ceased to run, all through the night. He was on his way to dig some one out of a grave. Now, which of the multitude of faces that showed them- selves before him was the true face of die buried person, the shadows of the night did not indicate-; but they were all the faces of a man of five-and-forty by years, and they differed principally in the passions they expressed, and in the ghast- liness of their worn and wasted state. Pride, contempt, defi- ance, stubbornness, submission, lamentation, succeeded one another : so did varieties of sunken cheek, cadaverous color, ^emaciated hands and figures. But the face was in the main one face, and every head was prematurely white. A hundred times the dozing passenger inquired of this spectre : " Buried how long ? " The answer was always the same : " Almost eighteen years." " You had abandoned all hope of being dug out ? " " Long ago." iS A TALE OF TWO CITIES. You know that you are recalled to life ? They tell me so." " I hope you care to live ? " I can't say." " Shall I show her to you ? Will you come and see her ? *' The answers to this question were various and contradic- tory. Sometimes the broken reply was, " Wait ! It would kill me if I saw her too soon." Sometimes, it was given in a tender rain of tears, and then it was ^'Take me to her." Sometimes it was startling and bewildered, and then it was, "I don't know her. I don't understand." After such imaginary discourse, the passenger in his fancy would dig, and dig, dig — now with a spade, now with a great key, now with his hands — to dig this wretched creature out. Got out at last, with earth hanging about his face and hair, he would suddenly fall away to dust. The passenger would then start to himself, and lower the window, to get the reality of mist and rain on his cheek. Yet even when his eyes were opened on the mist and rain, on the moving patch of light from the lamps, and the hedge at the roadside retreating by jerks, the night shadows outside the coach would fall into the train of the night shadows with- in. The real Banking-house by Temple Bar, the real busi- ness of the past day, the real strong rooms, the real express sent after him, and the real message returned, would all be there. Out of the midst of them, the ghostly face would rise, and he would accost it again. " Buried how long ? " Almost eighteen years. " " I hope you care to live ? " " I can't say." Dig — dig — dig — until an impatient movement from one of the two passengers would admonish him to pull up the win- dow, draw his arm securely through the leathern strap, and speculate upon the two slumbering forms, until his mind lost its hold of them, and they again slid away into the bank and the grave. " Buried how long ? " " Almost eighteen years." " You had abandoned all hope of being dug out } " " Long ago." The words were still in his hearing as just spoken — dis- tinctly in his hearing as ever spoken words had been in his life THE FkEPARA riON. 19 a— when the weary passenger started to the consciousness of daylight, and found that the shadows of the night were gone. He lowered the window, and looked out at the rising sua There was a ridge of ploughed land, with a plough upon it where it had been left last night when the horses were un- yoked ; beyond a quiet coppice-w^ood, in which many leaves of burning red and golden yellow still remained upon the trees. Though the earth was cold and wet, the sky was clear, and the sun rose bright, placid, and beautiful. " Eighteen years ! " said the passenger, looking at the sun. "Gracious Creator of day ! To be buried alive for eighteen years ! " CHAPTER IV. THE PREPARATION. When the mail got successfully to Dover, in the course of the forenoon, the head drawer at Royal George Hotel opened the coach-door as his custom was. He did it with some flour- ish of ceremony, for a mail journey from London in winter was an achievement to congratulate an adventurous traveller upon. By that time there was only one adventurous traveller left to be congratulated : for the two others had been set down at their respective roadside destinations. The mildewy inside of the coach, with its damp and dirty straw, its disagreeable smell and its obscurity, was rather like a larger dog-kennel. Mr. Lorry, the passenger, shaking himself out of it in chains ot straw, a tangle of shaggy wrapper, flapping hat, and muddy legs, was rather like a larger sort of dog. There will be a packet to Calais, to-morrow, drawer? " Yes, sir, if the weather holds and the wind sets tolerable fair. The tide will serve pretty nicely at about two in the after- noon, sir. Bed, sir ? " I shall not go to bed till night ; but I want a bedroom, and a barber." ^'^ And then breakfast, sir ? Yes, sir. That way, sir, if you please. Show Concord ! Gentleman's valise and hot water to Concord. Pull off gentleman's boots in Concord. 20 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. St (You will find a fine sea-coal fire, sir.) Fetch barber to Con» cord. Stir about there, now, for Concord ! " The Concord bed-chamber being always assigned to a passenger by the mail, and passengers by the mail being always heavily wrapped up from head to foot, the room had the odd interest for the establishment of the Royal George, that although but one kind of man was seen to go into it, all kinds and varieties of men came out of it. Consequently an- other drawer, and two porters, and several maids and the landlady, were all loitering by accident at various points of the road between the Concord and the coffee-room, when a gentleman of sixty, formally dressed in a brown suit of clothes, pretty well worn, but very well kept, with large square cuffs and large flaps to the pockets, passed along on his way to his breakfast. The coffee-room had no other occupant that forenoon, than the gentleman in brown. His breakfast-table was drawn before the fire, and as he sat, with its light shining on him, waiting for the meal, he sat so still, that he might have been sitting for his portrait. Very orderly and methodical he looked, with a hand on each knee^ and a loud watch ticking a sonorous sermon under his flapped waistcoat, as though it pitted its gravity and longevity against the levity and evanescence of the brisk fire. He had a good leg, and was a little vain of it, for his brown stockings fitted sleek and close, and were of a fine texture ; his shoes and buckles, too, though plain, were trim. He wore an odd little sleek crisp flaxen wig, setting very close to his head : which wig, it is to be presumed, was made of hair, but which looked far more as though it was spun from filaments of silk or glass. His linen, though not of a fineness in accord- ance with his stockings, was as white as the tops of the waves that broke upon the neighboring beach, or the specks of sail that glinted in the sunlight far at sea. A face habitually suppressed and quieted, was still lighted up under the quaint wig by a pair of moist bright eyes that it must have cost their owner in years gone by, some pains to drill to the composed and reserved expression of Tellson's Bank. He had a healthy color in his cheeks, and his face, though lined, bore few traces of anxiety. But, perhaps the confidential bachelor clerks in Tellson's Bank were principally occupied with the cares of other people ; and perhaps second-hand cares, like second- hand clothes, come easily off and on. THE PREPARATIOJV. 21 Completing his resemblance to a man who was sitting for his portrait, Mr. Lorry dropped off to sleep. The arrival of his breakfast roused him, and he said to the drawer, as he moved his chair to it : " I wish accommodation prepared for a young lady who may come here at any time to-day. She may ask for Mr. Jarvis Lorry, or she may only ask for a gentleman from Tellson's Bank. Please to let me know." " Yes, sir. Tellson's Bank in London, sir ? " " Yes.'' "Yes, sir. We have oftentimes the honor to entertait:' your gentlemen in their travellmg backwards and forwards betwixt London and Paris, sir. A vast deal of travelling, sir, in Tellson and Company's House." " Yes. We are quite a French House, as well as an Eng- lish one." " Yes, sir. Not much in the habit of such travelling your- self, I think, sir?" " Not of late years. It is fifteen years since we — since I — came last from France." Indeed, sir } That was before my time here, sir. Before our people's time here, sir. The George was in other hands at that time, sir. " I believe so." " But I would hold a pretty wager, sir, that a House like Tellson and Company was flourishing, a matter of fifty, not to to speak of fifteen years ago ? " "You might treble that and say a hundred and fifty, yet not be far from the truth." " Indeed, sir ! " \ Rounding his mouth and both his eyes, as he stepped backward from the table, the waiter shifted his napkin from his right arm to his left, dropped into a comfortable attitude^ and stood surveying the guest while he ate and drank, as from an observatory or watch-tower. According to the immemorial usage of waiters in all ages. When Mr. Lorry had finished his breakfast, he went out for a stroll on the beach. The little narrow, crooked town of Dover hid itself away from the beach, and ran its head into the chalk cliffs, like a marine ostrich. The beach was a desert of heaps of sea and stones tumbling wildly about, and the sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction. It thundered at the town and thundered at the cliffs, and 22 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. brought the coast down, madly. The air among the houses was of so strong a piscatory flavor that one might have sup- posed sick fish went up to be dipped in it, as sick people went down to be dipped in the sea. A little fishing was done in the port, and a quantity of strolling about by night, and look- ing seaward : particularly at those times when the tide made I and was near flood. Small tradesmen, who did no business whatever, sometimes unaccountably realized large fortunes, and it was remarkable that nobody in the neighborhood could endure a lamplighter. As the day declined into the afternoon, and the air, which had been at intervals clear enough to allow the French coast to be seen, became again charged with mist and vapor, Mr. Lorry's thoughts seemed to cloud too. When it was dark, and he sat before the coffee-room fire, awaiting his dinner as he had awaited his breakfast, his mind was busily digging, digging, digging, in the live red coals. A bottle of good claret after dinner does a digger in the red coals no harm, otherwise than as it has a tendency to throw him out of work. Mr. Lorry had been idle a long time, and had just poured out his last glassful of wine with as com- plete an appearance of satisfaction as is ever to be found in an elderly gentleman of a fresh complexion who has got to the end of a bottle, when a rattling of wheels came up the narrow street and rumbled into the inn-yard. He set down his glass untouched. This is Mam'selle said he. In a very few minutes the waiter came in to announce that Miss Manette had arrived from London, and would be happy to see the gentleman from Tellson's. So soon.?" Miss Manette had taken some refreshment on the road, and required none then, and was extremely anxious to see the gentleman from Tellson's immediately, if it suited his pleasure and convenience. The gentleman from Tellson's had nothing left for it but to empty his glass with an air of stolid desperation, settle his odd little flaxen wig at the ears, and follow the waiter to Mis3 Manette's apartment. It was a large, dark room, furnished in a funereal manner with black horsehair, and loaded with heavy dark tables. These had been oiled and oiled, until the two tall candles on the table in the middle of the room were gloomily reflected on every leaf ; as if they were buried, in deep THE PREPARA TION, 23 graves of black mahogany, and no light to speak of could be expected from them until they were dug out. The obscurity was so difficult to penetrate, that Mr. Lorry, picking his way over the well-worn Turkey carpet, supposed Miss Manette to be, for the moment, in some adjacent room, until, having got past the two tall candles, he saw standing to receive him by the table between them and the fire, a young lady of not more than seventeen, in a riding-cloak, and still holding her straw travelling-hat by its ribbon in her hand. As his eyes rested on a short, slight, pretty figure, a quantity of golden hair, a pair of blue eyes that met his own with an in- quiring look, and a forehead with a singular capacity (remem- bering how young and smooth it was), of lifting and knitting it- self into an expression that was not quite one of perplexity, or wonder, or alarm, or merely of a bright fixed attention, though it included all the four exjDressions — as his eyes rested on these things, a sudden vivid likeness passed before him, of a child whom he had held in his arms on the passage across that very Channel, one cold time, when the hail drifted heavily and the sea ran high. The likeness passed away, like a breath along the surface of the gaunt pier-glass behind her, on the frame of which, a hospital procession of negro cupids, several headless and all cripples, w^ere offering black baskets of Dead Sea fruit to black divinities of the feminine gender — and he made his formal bow to Miss Manette. " Pray take a seat, sir." In a very clear and pleasant young voice ; a little foreign in its accent, but a very little in- deed. " I kiss your hand, miss," said Mr. Lorry, with the man- jfiers of an earlier date, as he made his formal bow again, and took his seat. "I received a letter from the Bank, sir, yesterday, inform- ing me that some intelligence — or discovery " " The word is not material, miss ; either word will do." — respecting the small property of my poor father, whom I never saw — so long dead " Mr. Lorry moved in his chair, and cast a troubled look towards the hospital procession of negro cupids. As if ihey had any help for anybody in their absurd baskets ! " — rendered it necessary that I should go to Paris, there to communicate with a gentleman of the Bank, so good as to be despatched to Paris for the purpose." "Myself." 2 24 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, " As I was prepared to hear, sir." She curtseyed to him (young ladies made curtseys in those days), with a pretty desire to convey to him that she felt how much older and wiser he was than she. He made her another bow. " I replied to the Bank, sir, that as it was considered ne- cessary, by those who know, and who are so kind as to advise me, that I should go to France, and that as I am an orphan and have no friend who could go with me, I should esteem it highly if I might be permitted to place myself, during the journey, under that worthy gentleman's protection. The gen- tleman had left London, but I think a messenger was sent after him to beg the favor of his waiting for me here.'' " I was happy," said Mr. Lorry, *'to be entrusted with the charge. I shall be more happy to execute it." " Sir, I thank you indeed. I thank you very gratefully. It was told me by the Bank that the gentleman would explain to me the details of the business, and that I must prepare my- self to find them of a surprising nature^. I have done my best to prepare myself, and I naturally have a strong and eager interest to know what they are." " Naturally," said Mr. Lorry. " Yes— I " After a pause, he added, again settling the crisp flaxen wig at the ears : " It is very difficult to begin." He did'not begin, but, in his indecision, met her glance. The young forehead lifted itself into that singular expression — but it was pretty and characteristic, besides being singula! — and she raised her hand, as if with an involuntary action she caught at, or stayed some passing shadow. " Are you quite a stranger to me, sir ? " " Am I not ? " Mr. Lorry opened his hands, and extended them outwards with an argumentative smile. Between the eyebrows and just over the little feminine nose, the line of which was as delicate and fine as it was pos- sible to be, the expression deepened itself as she took her seat thoughtfully in the chair by which she had hitherto remained standing. He watched her as she mused, and the moment she raised her eyes again, went on : " In your adopted country, I presume, I cannot do better than address you as a young English lady. Miss Manette ? " " If you please, sir." ** Miss Manette, I am a man of business. I have a busi THE PREP/^A TION. 25 ness charge to acquit myself of. In your reception of it, don't heed me any more than if I was a speaking machine — truly, I am not much else. I will, with your leave, relate to. you, miss, the story of one of our customers. Story He seemed wilfully to mistake the word she had repeated, when he added, in a hurry, "Yes, customers ; in the banking business we usually call our connection our customers. He was a French gentleman ; a scientific gentleman ; a man of great acquirements — a Doctor." " Not of Beauvais ? " " Why, yes, of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father, the gentleman was of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Ma- nette, your father, the gentleman was of repute in Paris. I had the honor of knowing him there. Our relations were business relations, but confidential. I was at that time, in our French House, and had been — oh ! twenty years. " At that time — I may ask, at what time, sir ? " " I speak, miss, of twenty years ago. He married — an English lady — and I was one of the trustees. His affairs, like the affairs of mqny other French gentlemen and French iamilies, were entirely in Tellson's hands. In a similar way I am, or I have been, trustee of one kind or other for scores of our customers. These are mere business .relations, miss; there is no friendship in them, no particular interest, nothing like sentiment. I have passed from one to another, in the course of my business life, just as I pass from one of our cus- tomers to another in the course of my business day ; in short, I have no feelings ; I am a mere machine. To go on " " But this is my father's story, sir ; and I begin to think " — the curiously roughened forehead was very intent upon him — " that when I was left an orphan through my mother's sur- viving my father only two years, it was you who brought me to England. I am almost sure it was you." Mr. Lorry took the hesitating little hand that confidingly advanced to take his, and he put it Vv'ith some ceremony to his lips. He then conducted the young lady straightway to her chair again, and, holding the chair-back with his left hand, and using his right by turns to rub his chin, pull his wig at the ears, or point what he said, stood looking down into her face while she sat looking up into his. " Miss Manette, it 7vas I. And you will see how truly I spoke of myself just now, in saying I had no feelings, and that 26 A TALE Of' TWO CITIES, all the relations I hold with my fellow-creatures are mere business relations, when you reflect that I have never seen you since. No ; you have been the ward of Tellson's House since, and I have been busy with the other business of Tellson's House since. Feelings ! I have no time for them, no ghance of them. I pass my whole life, miss, in turning an immense pecuniary Mangle.'' After this odd description of his daily routine of employ-^ ment, Mr. Lorry flattened his flaxen wdg upon his head with both hands (which was most unnecessar}'-, for nothing coul.l be flatter than its shining surface was before), and resumed his former attitude. " So far, miss (as you have remarked), this is the stoiy of your regretted father. Now comes the difference. If your father had not died when he did Don't be frightened ! How you start ! " She did, indeed, start. And she caught his wrist with both her hands. "Pray," said Mr. Lorry, in a soothing tone, bringing his left hand from the back of the chair to lay it on the supplica- tory fingers that clasped him in so violent a tremble : ''pray control your agitation — a matter of business. As I was say- ing " Her look so discomposed him that he stopped, wandered, and began anew : "As I was saying ; if Monsieur Manette had not died ; if he had suddenly and silently disappeared ; if he had been spir- ited away ; if it had not been difficult to guess to what dreadful place, though no art could trace him ; if he had an enemy in some compatriot who could exercise a privilege that I in my own time have known the boldest people afraid to speak of in a whisper, across the water there ; for instance, the privilege of filling up blank forms for the consignment of any one to the oblivion of a prison for any length of time ; if his \yife had implored the king, the queen, the court, the clergy, for any ti- dings of him, and all quite in vain ; — then the history of your father would have been the history of this unfortunate gentle- man, the Doctor of Beauvais." " I entreat you to tell me more, sir." " I will. I am going to. You can bear it " " I can bear anything but the uncertainty you leave me in at this moment." "You speak collectedly, and you (^r^ collected. That's THE PREPARA TION. 27 good ! (Though his manner was less satisfied than his words.) " A matter of business. Regard it as a matter of business — business that must be done. Now if this doctor's wife, though a lady of great courage and spirit, had suffered so intensely from this cause before her little child was born " " The little child was a daughter, sir.'^ " A daughter. A — a — matter of business — don't be dis- tressed. Miss, if the poor lady had suffered so intensely be- fore her little child was born, that she came to the determina- tion of sparing the poor child the inheritance of any part of the agony she had known the pains of, by rearing her in the be- lief that her father was dead No, don't kneel ! In Heav- en's name w^hy should you kneel to me ! " For the truth. O dear, good, compassionate sir, for the truth ! A — a matter of business. You confuse me, and how can I transact business if I am confused ? Let us be clear-headed. If you could kindly mention now, for instance, what nine times ninepence are, or how many shillings in twenty guineas, it would be so encouraging. I should be so much more at my ease about your state of mind." Without directly answering to this appeal, she sat so still when he had very gently raised her, and the hands that had not ceased to clasp his wrists were so much more steady than they had been, that she communicated some re-assurance to Mr. Jarvis Lorry. " That's right, that's right. Courage ! Business ! You have business before you; useful business. Miss Manette, your mother took this course with you. And when she died — I believe broken-hearted — having never slackened her un- availing search for your father, she left you, at two years old, to grow to be blooming, beautiful, and happy, without the dark cloud upon you of living in uncertainty whether your father soon wore his heart out in prison, or wasted there through many lingering years." As he said the words he looked down, with an admiring pity, on the flowing golden hair ; as if he pictured to himself that it might have been already tinged with gray. " You know that your parents had no great possession, and that what they had was secured to your mother and to you. There has been no new discovery, of money, or of any other property ; but " 28 A TALE OF TWO CITIEj^, He felt his wrist held closer, and he stopped. The ex* pression in the forehead, which had so particularly attracted his notice, and which was now immovable, had deepened into one of pain and horror. " But he has been — been found. He is alive. Greatly changed, it is too probable ; almost a wreck, it is possible ; though we will hope the best. Still, alivf' Your father has been taken to the house of an old servant in Paris, and we are going there : I, to identify him if I can : you, to restore him to life, love, duty, rest, comfort." A shiver ran through her frame, and from it through his. She said, in a low, distinct, awe-stricken voice, as if she were saying it in a dream, I am going to see his Ghost ! It will be his Ghost — not him ! " Mr. Lorry quietly chafed the hands that held his arm. " There, there, there ! See now, see now ! The best and the worst are known to you, now. You are well on your way to the poor wronged gentleman, and, with a fair sea voyage, and a fair land journey, you will soon be at his dear side." She repeated in the same tone, sunk to a whisper, I have been free, I have been happy, yet his Ghost has never haunted me ! " " Only one thing more," said Mr. Lorry, liying stress upon it as a wholesome means of enforcing her attention : " he has been found under another name ; his own, long forgotten or long concealed. It would be worse than useless now to in- quire which ; worse than useless to seek to know whether he has been for years overlooked, or always designedly held prisoner. It would be worse than useless now to make any inquiries, because it would be dangerotis. Better not to mention the subject, anywhere or in any way, and to remove him — for awhile at all events — out of France. Even I, safe as an Englishman, and even Tellson's, important as they are to French credit, avoid all naming of the matter. I carry about me, not a scrap of writing openly referring to it. This is a secret service altogether. My credentials, entries, and memoranda, are all comprehended in the one line, ^ Recalled to Life ; ' which may mean anything. But what is the mat- ter ! She doesn't notice a word ! Miss Manette ! " Perfectly still and silent, and not even fallen back in her chair, she sat under his hand, utterly insensible ; with her eyes open and fixed upon him, and with that last expression THE PREPARA TION. 29 looking as if it were carved or branded into her forehead So close was her hold upon his arm, that he feared to detach himself lest he should hurt her ; therefore he called out loudly for assistance without moving. A wild-looking woman, whom even in his agitation, Mr. Lorry observed to be all of a red color, and to have red hair, and to be dressed in some extraordinary tight-fitting fashion, and to have on her head a most wonderful bonnet like a Grenadier wooden measure, and good measure too, or a great Stilton cheese, came running into the room in advance of the inn servants, and soon settled the question of his detachment from the poor young lady, by laying a brawny hand upon his chest, and sending him flying back against the nearest wall. C I really think this must be a man ! " was Mr. Lorry's breathless reflection, simultaneously with his coming against the wall). " Why, look at you all ! " bawled this figure, addressing the inn servants. " Why don't you go and fetch things, in- stead of standing there staring at me 1 I am not so much to look at, am I ? Why don't you go and fetch things ? I'll let you know, if you don't bring smelling-salts, cold water, and vinegar, quick, I will." There was an immediate dispersal for these restoratives, and she softly laid the patient on a sofa, and tended her with great skill and gentleness : calling her " my precious ! " and "my bird!" and spreading her golden hair aside over her shoulders with great pride and care. " And you in brown ! " she saic ^ indignantly turning to Mr. Lorry ; couldn't you tell her what you had to tell her, without frightening her to death } Look at her, with her pretty pale face and her cold hands. Do you call that being a Banker } " Mr. Lorry was so exceedingly disconcerted by a question so hard to answer, that he could only look on, at a distance, with much feebler sympathy and humility, while the strong woman, having banished the inn servants under the mysterious penalty of " letting them know " something not mentioned if they stayed there, staring, recovered her charge by a regular series of gradations, and coaxed her to lay her drooping head upon her shoulder. " I hope she will do well now," said Mr. Lorry. " No thanks to you in brown, if she does. My darling pretty ! " " I hope," said Mr. Lorry, after another pause of feeble 3© A TALE OF TWO CITIES. sympathy and humility, " that you accompany Miss Manette to France ? " A likely thing, too ! replied the strong woman. " If it was ever intended that I should go across salt water, do you suppose Providence would have cast my lot in an island ? " This being another question hard to answer, Mr. Jarvis Lorry withdrew to consider it. CHAPTER V. THE WINE-SHOP. A LARGE cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in the street. The accident had happened in getting it out of a cart ; the cask had tumbled out with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay on the stones just outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell. All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine. The rough, irregular stones of the street, pointing every way, and designed, one might have thought, expressly to lame all living creatures that approached them, had damned it into little pools ; these were surrounded, each by its own jostling group or crowd, according to its size. Some men kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all run out between their fingers. Others, men and women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from women's heads, which were squeezed dry into infants' mouths ; others made small mud-embankments, to stem the wine as it ran ; others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and there, to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new directions ; others devoted themselves to the sodden and lee- dyed pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted fragments with eager relish. There was no drainage to carry off the wine, and not only did it all get taken up, but so much mud got taken up along with it, that tkere might have been a scavenger in the street, if anybody THE WINE-SHOP. 3» acquainted with it could have beUeved in such a miraculous presence. A shrill sound of laughter and of amused voices — ^voices of men, women, and children — resounded in the street v/hile this wine game lasted. There was little roughness in the sport, and much playfulness. There was a special companion ship in it, an observable inclination on the part of every one to join some other one, which led, especially among the luckier or light-hearted, to frolicsome embraces, drinking of healths, shaking of hands, and even joining of hands and dancing, a dozen together. When the wine was gone, and the places where it had been most abundant were raked into a gridiron-pattern by fingers, these demonstrations ceased, as suddenly as they had broken out. The man who had left his saw sticking in the firewood he was cutting, set it in motion again ; the woman who had left on the door-step the little pot of hot ashes, at which she had been trying to soften the pain in her own starved fingers and toes, or in those of her child, returned to it ; men with bare arms, matted locks, and cadaverous faces, who had emerged into the winter light from cellars moved away, to descend again ; and a gloom gathered on the scene that appeared more natural to it than sunshine. The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many wooden shoes. The hands of the man who sawed the wood, left red marks on the billets ; and the forehead of the woman who nursed her baby, was stained with the stain of the old rag she wound about her head again. Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth ; and one tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a night-cap than in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine-lees — Blood. The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there. And now that the cloud settled upon Saint Antoine, which a momentary gleam had driven from his sacred countenance, the darkness of it was heavy — cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance, and want, were the lords in waiting on the saintly presence — - nobles of great power all of them ; but, most especially the last. Samples of a people that had undergone a terrible grind 32 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, ing and re-grinding in the mill, and certainly not in the fabulous mill which ground old people young, shivered at every corner, passed in and out at every doorway, looked from every window, fluttered in every vestige of a garment that the wind shook. The mill which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds young people old ; the children had ancient faces and grave voices ; and upon them, and upon the grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the sign. Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing rhat hung upon poles and lines ; Hunger was patched intcf them with straw and rag and wood and paper ; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off ; Hunger stared down from the smoke- less chimneys, and started up from the iilthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker's shelves, written in every small ioaf of his s^tanty stock of bad bread ; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the tunned cylinder ; Hunger was shred into atom.ies in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil. Its abiding place was in all things fitted to it. A narrow winding street, full of offence and stench, with other narrow winding streets diverging, all peopled by rags and nightcaps, and all smelling of rags and nightcaps, and all visible things with a brooding look upon them that looked ill. In the hunted air of the people there was yet some Avild-beast thought of the possibility of turning at bay. Depressed and slinking though they were, eyes of fire were not wanting among them \ nor compressed lips, white with what they suppressed ; nor foreheads knitted into the likeness of the gallows-rope they mused about enduring or inflicting. The trade signs (and they were almost as many as the shops) were, all, grim illus- trations of Want. The butcher and the porkman painted up, only the leanest scrags of meat ; the baker, the coarsest of meagre loaves. The people rudely pictured as drinking in the wine-shops, croaked over their scanty measures of thin wine and beer, and wera gloweringly confidential together. Nothing was represented in a flourishing condition, save tools and weapons ; but, the cutler's knives and axes were sharp and bright, the smithes hammers were heavy, and the gui> THE WINE-SHOP. 33 maker^s stock was murderous. The crippling stones of the pavement, with their many Uttle reservoirs of mud and water, had no footways, but broke off abruptly at the doors. The kennel, to make amends, ran down the middle of the street — = when it ran at all : which was only after heavy rains, and then it ran, by many eccentric fits, into the houses. Across the streets, at v/ide intervals, one clumsy lamp was slung by a rope and pulley ; at night, when the lamplighter had let these down, and lighted, and hoisted them again, a feeble grove of dim wicks swung in a sickly manner over head, as if they were at sea. Indeed they were at sea, and the ship and crew were in peril of tempest. For, the time was to come, when the gaunt scarecrows of that region should have watched the lamplighter, in their idle- ness and hunger, so long, as to conceive the idea of improving on his method, and hauling up men by those ropes and pul- leys, to flare upon the darkness of their condition. But the time was not come yet ; and every wind that blew over France shook the rags of the scarecrows in vain, for the birds, fine of song and feather, took no warning. The wine-shop was a corner shop, better than most others in its appearance and degree, and the master of the wine-shop had stood outside it, in a yellow waistcoat and green breeches, looking on at the struggle for the lost wine. " It's not my affair," said he, with a final shrug of the shoulders. "The people from the market did it. Let them bring another." There, his eyes happening to catch the tall joker writing up his joke, he called to him across the way : " Say, then, my Gaspard, what do you do there 1 " The fellow pointed to his joke with immense significance, as is often the way with his tribe. It missed its mark, and completely failed, as. is often the way with his tribe too. " What now ? Are you a subject for the mad hospital ? " ^aid the wine-shop keeper, crossing the road, and obliterating the jest with a handful of mud, picked up for the purpose, and smeared over it. " Why do you write in the public streets ? Is there — tell me thou — is there no other place to write such words in ? " In his expostulation he dropped his cleaner hand (perhaps accidentally, perhaps not) upon the joker's heart. The joker rapped it with his own, took a nimble spring upward, and came down in a fantastic dancing attitude, with one of his stained shoes jerked off his foot into his hand, and held out 34 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. A joker of an extremely, not to say wolfishly practical character, he looked, under those circumstances. "Put it on, put it on," said the other. "Call wine, wine; and finish there." With that advice, he wiped his soiled hand upon the joker's dress, such as it was — quite deliberately, as having dirtied the hand on his account ; and then recrossed the road and entered the wine-shop. This wine-shop keeper was a bull-necked, martial-looking man of thirty, and he should have been of a hot temperament, for, although it was a bitter day, he wore no coat, but carried one slung over his slx)ulder. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up too, and his brown arms were bare to the elbows. Neither did he wear anything more on his head than his own crisply- curling short dark hair. He w^as a dark man altogether, with good eyes and a good bold breadth between them. Good- humored looking on the whole, but implacable-looking, too \ evidently a man of a strong resolution and a set purpose ; a man not desirable to be met, rushing down a narrow pass with a gulf on either side, for nothing would turn the man. Madame Defarge, his wife, sat in the shop behind the counter as he came in. Madame Defarge was a stout woman of about his own age, with a watchful eye that seldom seemed to look at anything, a large hand heavily ringed, a steady face, strong features and great composure of manner. There was a character about Madame Defarge, from which one might have predicated that she did not often make mistakes against herself in any of the reckonings over which she presided. Madame Defarge being sensitive to cold, was wrapped in fur, and had a quantity of bright shawl twined about her head, though not to the concealment of her large ear-rings. Her knitting was before her, but she had laid it down to pick her teeth with a toothpick. Thus engaged, with her right elbow supported by her left hand, Madame Defarge said nothing when her lord came in, but coughed just one grain of cough. This, in combination with the lifting of her darkly defined eyebrows over her toothpick by the breadth of a line, sug- gested to her husband that he ^vould do well to look round the shop among the customers, for any new customer who had dropped in while he stepped over the w^ay. The wine-shop keeper according rolled his eyes about, until they rested upon an elderly gentleman and a young lady who were seated in a comer. Other company were there : two playing cards, two playing dominoes, three standing by tht THE ir/ArE-sirop, 35 counter lengthening out a short supply of wine. As he passed behind the counter, he took notice that the elderly gentleman said in a look to the young lady, " This is our man." " What the devil do you do in that galley there ? " said Monsieur Defarge to himself ; " I don't know you." But, he feigned not to notice the two strangers, and fell into discourse with the triumvirate of customers who were drinking at the counter. " How goes it, Jacques ? " said one of these three to Mon- sieur Defarge. Is all the spilt wine swallowed ? " " Every drop, Jacques,'' answered Monsieur Defarge. When this interchange of christian name was effected Madame Defarge, picking her teeth with her toothpick, coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line. " It is not often," said the second of the three, addressing Monsieur Defarge, **that many of these miserable beasts know the taste of wine, or of anything but black bread and death. Is it not so, Jacques ? " " It is so, Jacques," Monsieur Defarge returned. At this second interchange of the christian name, Madame Defarge, still using her toothpick with profound composure, coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line. The last of the three now said his say, as he put down his empty drinking vessel and smacked his lips. Ah ! So much the worse ! A bitter taste it is that such poor cattle always have in their mouths, and hard lives they live, Jacques. Am I right, Jacques ? " You are right, Jacques," was the response of Monsieur Defarge. This third interchange of the christian name was com- pleted at the moment when Madame Defarge put her tooth- pick by, kept her eyebrows up, and slightly rustled in her seat. " Hold then ! True ! " muttered her husband. Gentle men — my wife ! " The . three customers pulled off their hats to Madame Defarge, with three flourishes. She acknowledged their homage by bending her head, and giving them a quick look. Then she glanced in a casual manner round the wine-shop, took up her knitting with great apparent calmness and repose •f spirit, and became absorbed in it. " Gentlemen," said her husband, who had kept his bright 36 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, eye observantly upon her, " good-day. The chamber, fui nished bachelor-fashion, diat you wished to see, and were in quiring for when I stepped out, is on the fifth floor. The doorway of the staircase gives on the little court-yard close to the left here,'' pointing with his hand, near to the window of my establishment. But, now that I remember, one of you has already been there, and can show the way. Gentlemen^ adieu ! They paid for their wine, and left the place. The eyes ol Monsieur Defarge were studying his wife at her knitting when the elderly gentleman advanced from his corner, and begged the favor of a word. " Willingly, sir,'' said Monsieur Defarge, and quietly went with him to the door. Their conference was very short, but very decided. Al- most at the first word. Monsieur Defarge started and became deeply attentive. It had not lasted a minute, when he nodded and went out. The gentleman then becKcned to the young lady, and they, too, went out. Madame Defarge knitted with Tiimble fingers and steady eyebrows, and saw nothing. Mr. Jarvis Lorry and Miss Manette, emerging from the wine-shop thus, joined Monsieur Defarge in the doorway to which he had directed his other company just before. It opened from a stinking little black court-yard, and was the general public entrance to a great pile of houses, inhabited by a great number of people. In the gloomy tile-paved entry to the gloomy tile-paved staircase. Monsieur Defarge bent down on one knee to the child of his old master, and put her hand to his lips. It was a gentle action, but not at all gently done ; a very remarkable transformation had come over him in a few seconds. He had no good-humor in his face, nor any openness of aspect left, but had become a secret, angry, dangerous man. * It is very high ; it is a little difficult. Better to begin slowly." Thus, Monsieur Defarge, in a stern voice, to Mr. Lorry, as they began ascending the stairs. " Is he alone ? " the latter whispered. " Alone ! God help him, who should be with him ! " said the other, in the same low voice. Is he always alone, then ? " " Yes." Of his own desire ? " " Of his own necessity. As he was, when I first saw him THE WINE-SHOP, 37 after they found me and demanded to know if I would take him, and, at my peril be discreet — as he was then, so he is now." " He is greatly changed ? " " Changed ! " The keeper of the wine-shop stopped to strike the waJi ^^ith his hand, and mutter a tremendous curse. No direct answer could have been half so forcible. Mr. Lorry's spirits grew heavier and heavier, as he and his two companions ascended higher and higher. Such a staircase, with its accessories in the older and more crowded parts of Paris, would be bad enough now ; but, at that time, it was vile indeed to unaccustomed and un^ hardened senses. Every little habitation within the great foul nest of one high building — that is to say, the room oi rooms within every door that opened on the general staircase — left its own heap of refuse on its own landing, besides flinging other refuse from its own windows. The uncon- trollable and hopeless mass of decomposition so engendered, would have polluted the air, even if poverty and deprivation had not loaded it with their intangible impurities ; the two bad sources combined made it almost insupportable. Through such an atmosphere, by a steep dark shaft of dirt and poison, the way lay. Yielding to his own disturbance of mind, and to his young companion's agitation, which became greater every instant, Mr. Jarvis Lorry twice stopped to rest. Each of these stoppages was made at a doleful grating, by which any languishing good airs that were left uncorrupted, seemed to escape, and all spoilt and sickly vapors seemed to crawl in. Through the rusted bars, tastes, rather than glimpses, were caught of the jumbled neighborhood ; and nothing within range, nearer or lower than the summits of the two great towers of Notre-Dame, had any promise on it of healthy life or wholesome aspirations. At last, the top of the staircase was gained, and they stopped for the third time. There was yet an upper staircase, of a steeper inclination and of contracted dimensions, to be ascended, before the garret story was reached. The keeper of the wine-shop, always going a little in advance, and always going on the side which Mr. Lorry took, as though he dreaded to be asked any question by the young lady, turned himself about here, and, carefully feeling in the pockets of the coat be carried over his shoulder, took out a key. 38 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, The door is locked then, my friend ? said Mr. Lorry, surprised. Ay. Yes/' was the grim reply of- Monsieur Defarge. " You think it necessary to keep the unfortunate gentle- man so retired 1 " " I think it necessary to turn the key." Monsieur Defarge whispered it closer in his ear, and frowned heavily. " Why?" Why ! Because he has lived so long, locked up, that he would be frightened — rave — tear himself to pieces — die — come to 1 know not what harm — if his door was left open." " Is it possible ! " exclaimed Mr. Lorry. " Is it possible ! " repeated Defarge, bitterly. " Yes. And a beautiful world we live in, when it is possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done — done, see you ! — under that sky there, every day. Long live the Devil. Let us go on." This dialogue had been held in so very low a whisper, that not a word of it had reached the young lady's ears. But, by this time she trembled under such strong emotion, and her face expressed such anxiety, and, above all, such dread and terror, that Mr. Lorry felt it incumbent on him co speak a word or two of reassurance. " Courage, dear miss ! Courage ! Business ! The worst will be over in a moment ; it is but passing the room-door, and the worst is over. Then, all the good you bring to him, all the relief, all the happiness you bring to him, begin. Let our good friend here, assist you on that side. That's well, friend Defarge. Come now. Business, business ! " They went up slowly and softly. The staircase was short, and they were soon at the top. There, as it had an abrupt turn in it, they came all at once in sight of three men, whose heads were bent down close together at the side of a door, and who were intently looking into the room to which the door belonged, through some chinks or holes in the wall. On hear- ing footsteps close at hand, these three turned, and rose, and showed themselves to be the three of one name who had been drinking in the wine shop. " I forgot them in the surprise of your visit," explained Monsieur Defarge. " Leave us, good bovs ; we have business here." ^ The three glmed by, and went silently down. There appearing to be no o.ther door on that floor, and the THE WINE-SHOP. 39 keeper of the wine-shop going straight to this one when they were left alone, Mr. Lorry asked him in a whisper, with a little anger : " Do you make a show of Monsieur Manette ? " " I show him, in the way you have seen, to a chosen few." " Is that well ? " I think it is well." " Who are the few ? How do you choose them ? " " I choose them as real men, of my name — Jacques is my name — to whom the sight is likely to do good. Enough ; you are English ; that is another thing. Stay there, if you please, a little moment." With an admonitory gesture to keep them back, he stooped, and looked in through the crevice in the wall. Soon raising his head again, he struck twice or thrice upon the door — evi- dently with no other object than to make a noise there. With the same intention, he drew the key across it, three or four times, before he put it clumsily into the lock, and turned it as heavily as he could. The door slowly opened inward under his hand, and he looked into the room and said something. A faint voice an- swered something. Little more than a single syllable could have been spoken on either side. He looked back over his shoulder, and beckoned them to enter. Mr. Lorry got his arm securely round the daughter's waist, and held her ; for he felt that she was sinking. " A — a — a — business, business ! " he urged, with a moist- ure that was not of business shining on hi-s cheek. " Come in, come in ! " " I am afraid of it," she answered, shuddering. "Of it? What?" " I mean of him. Of my father." Rendered in a manner desperate, by her state and by the beckoning of their conductor, he drew over his neck the arm that shook upon his shoulder, lifted her a little, and hurried her into the room. He set her down just within the door, and held her, clinging to him. Defarge drew out the key, closed the door, locked it on the inside, took out the key again, and held it in his hand. All this he did, methodically, and with as loud and harsh an accompaniment of noise as he could make. Finally, he walked across the room with a measured tread to where the window was. He stopped there, and faced round. 40 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. The garret, built to be a depository for firewood and the like, was dim and dark : for, the window of dormer shape, was in truth a door in the roof, vvith a Uttle crane over it for the hoisting up of stores from the street : unglazed, and closing up the middle in two pieces, like any other door of French construction. To exclude the cold, one half of this door was fast closed, and the other was opened but a very little way. Such a scanty ' portion of light was admitted through these means, that it was difficult, on first coming in, to see anything ; and long habit alone could have slowly formed in any one, the ability to do any work requiring nicety in such obscurity. Yet, work of that kind was being done in the garret ; for, with his back towards the door, and his face towards the window where the keeper of the wine-shop stood looking at him, a white-haired man sat on a low bench, stoop- ing forward and very busy, making shoes. CHAPTER VI. THE SHOEMAKER.. " Good-day ! ^' said Monsieur Defarge, looking down at the white head that bent low over the shoemaking. It was raised for a moment, and a very faint voice re- sponded to the salutation, as if it were at a distance. " Good-day ! " " You are still hard at work I see ? After a long silence, the head was lifted for another mo- ment, and the voice replied, *'Yes — I am working." This time, a pair of haggard eyes had looked at the questioner, be- fore the face had dropped again. The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not the faintness of physical weakness, though confine- ment and hard fare no doubt had their part in it. Its de- plorable peculiarity was, that it was the faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it lost the life and resonance of the human voice, that it affected the senses like a once beautiful color faded away into a poor weak stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, that it was like a voice under- ground. So expressive it was, of a hopeless and lost creature^ THE SHOEMAKER, 41 that a famished traveller, wearied out by lonely wandeiing in a wilderness, would have remembered home and friends in such a tone before lying down to die. - Some minutes of silent work had passed ; and the haggard eyes had looked up again : not with any interest or curiosity, but with a dull mechanical perception, beforehand, that the spot where the only visitor they were aware of had stood, was not yet empty. " I want," said Defarge, who had not removed his gaze from the shoemaker, to let in a little more light here. You can bear a little more ? " The shoemaker stopped his work ; looked with a vacant air of listening, at the floor on one side of him ; then similarly at the floor on the other side of him ; then, upward at the speaker. " What did you say ? " " You can bear a little more light ? " " I must bear it, if you let it in." (Laying the palest shadow of a stress upon the second word.) The opened half-door was opened a little further, and se- cured at that angle for the time. A broad ray of light fell into the garret, and showed the workman with an unfinished shoe upon his lap, pausing in his labor. His few common +ools and various scraps of leather were at his feet and on his bench. He had a white beard, raggedly cut, but not very long, a hollow face, and exceedingly bright eyes. The hol- lowness and thinness of his face would have caused them to look large, under his yet dark eyebrows and his confused white hair, though they had been really otherwise ; but, they were naturally large, and looked unnaturally so. His yellow rags of shirt lay open at the throat, and showed his body to be withered and worn. He, and his old canvas frock, and his loose stockings, and all his poor tatters of clothes, had, in a long seclusion from direct light and air, faded down to such a dull uniformity of parchment-yellow, that it would have been hard to say which was which. He had put up a hand between his eyes and the light, and the very bones of it seemed transparent. So he sat, with a steadfastly vacant gaze, pausing in his work. He never looked at the figure before him, without first looking down on this side of himself, then on that, as if he had lost the habit of associating place with sound ; he never spoke, without first wandering in this manner, and forgetting to speak. 42 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. " Are you going to finish that pair of shoes to-day ? * asked Defarge, motioning to Mr. Lorry to come forward. " What did you say ? " " Do you mean to finish that pair of shoes to-day ? " " I can't say that I mean to. I suppose so. I don't know." But, the question reminded him of his work, and he bent over it again. Mr. Lorry carne silently forward, leaving the daughter by the door. When he had stood, for a minute or two, by the side of Defarge, the shoemaker looked up. He showed no surprise at seeing another figure, but the unsteady fingers ol one of his hands strayed to his lips as he looked at it (his lips and his nails were of the same pale lead-color), and then the hand dropped to his work, and he once more bent over the shoe. The look and the action had occupied but an instant. " You have a visitor, you see," said Monsieur Defarge. " What did you say 1 " " Here is a visitor." The shoemaker looked up as before, but without removing a hand from his work, " Come ! " said Defarge. " Here is Monsieur, who knows a well-made shoe when he sees one. Show him that shoe you are working at. Take it, monsieur." Mr. Lorry took it in his hand. " Tell Monsieur what kind of shoe it is, and the maker's name." There was a longer pause than usual, before the shoe- maker replied : "I forget what it was you asked me. What did you say ? " " I said, couldn't you describe the kind of shoe, for mon- sieur's information 1 " " It is a lady's shoe. It is a young lady's walking-shoe. It Is in the present mode. I never saw the mode. I have had a pattern in my hand." He glanced at the shoe with some little passing touch of pride. " And the maker's name " said Defarge. Now that he had no work to hold, he laid the knuckles of the right hand in the hollow of the left, and then the knuckles of the left hand in the hollow of the right, and then passed a hand across his bearded chin, and so on in regular changes, without a moment's intermission. The task of recall THE SHOEMAKER. 43 ing him from the vacancy into which he always sank when he had spoken, was like recalling some very weak person from a swoon, or endeavoring, in the hope of some disclosure, to stay the spirit of a fast-dying man/ " Did you ask me for my name ? "Assuredly I did." " One Hundred and Five, North Tower." " Is that all ? " " One Hundred and Five, North Tower." With a weary sound that was not a sigh, nor a groan, he bent to work again, until the silence was again broken. " You are not a shoemaker by trade ? " said Mr. Lorry, looking steadfastly at him. His haggard eyes turned to Defarge as if he would have transferred the question to him ; but as no help came from, that quarter, they turned back on the questioner when they had sought the ground. " I am not a shoemaker by trade ? No, I was not a shoe- maker by trade. I — I learnt it here. I taught myself. I asked leave to " He lapsed away, even for minutes, ringing those meas- ured changes on his hands the whole time. His eyes came slowly back, at last, to the face from which they had wan- dered ; when they rested on it, he started, and resumed, in the manner of a sleeper that moment awake, reverting to a tubject of last night. " I asked leave to teach myself, and I got it with much difficulty after a long while, and I have made shoes ever gince.'* As he held out his hand for the shoe that had been taken {rom him, Mr. Lorry said, still looking steadfastly in his /ace: " Monsieur Manette, do you remember nothing of me ? " The shoe dropped to the ground, and he sat looking fix- edly at the questioner. " Monsieur Manette ; " Mr. Lorry laid his hand upon Defarge's arm ; do you remember nothing of this man ^. Look at him. Look at me. Is there no old banker, no old business, no old servant, no old time, rising in your mind. Monsieur Manette t " As the captive of many years sat looking fixedly, by turns, at Mr. Lorry and at Defarge, some long obliterated marks of an actively intent intelligence in the middle of the forehead, 44 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. gradually forced themselves through the black mist that had fallen on him. They were overclouded again, they were fainter, they were gone ; but they had been there. And so exactly was the expression repeated on the fair young face of her who had crept along the wall to a point where she could see him, and where she now stood looking at him, with hands which at first had been only raised in frightened compassion, if not even to keep him off and shut out the sight of him, but which were now extending towards him, trembling with eager- ness to lay- the spectral face upon her warm young breast, and love it back to life and hope — so exactly was the ex- pression repeated (though in stronger characters) on her fair young face, that it looked as though it had passed like a mov* ing light, from him to her. Darkness had fallen on him in its place. He looked at the two, less and less attentively, and his eyes in gloomy ab- straction sought the ground and looked about him in the old way. Finally, with a deep long sigh, he took the shoe up, and resumed his work. " Have you recognized him, monsieur ? asked Defarge in a whisper. "Yes; for a moment. At first I thought it quite hope- less, but I have unquestionably seen, for a single moment, the face that I once knew so well. Hush ! Let us draw further back. Hush 1 She had moved from the wall of the garret, very near to the bench on which he sat. There was something awful in his unconsciousness of the figure that could have put out its hand and touched him as he stooped over his labor. Not a word was spoken, not a sound was made. She stood, like a spirit, beside him, and he bent over his work. It happened, at length, that he had occasion to change the instrument in his hand, for his shoemaker's knife. It lay on that side of him which was not the side on which she stood. He had taken it up, and was stooping to work again, when his eyes caught the skirt of her dress. He raised them, and saw her face. The two spectators started forward, but she stayed them with a motion of her hand. She had no fear of his striking at her with the knife, though they had. He stared at her with a fearful look, and after a while his lips began to form some words, though no sound proceeded from them. By degrees, in the pauses of his quick and la' bored breathing, he was heard to say : THE SHOEMAKER. 45 " What is this ? With the tears streaming down her face, she put her two hands to her Hps, and kissed them to him ; then clasped them on her breast, as if she laid his ruined head there. " You are not the gaoler's daughter ? She sighed No." " Who are you ? " Not yet trusting the tones of her voice, she sat down on the bench beside him. He recoiled, but she laid her hand upon his arm. A strange thrill struck him when she did so, * and visibly passed over his frame j he laid the knife dovi^n softly, as he sat staring at ber. Her golden hair, which she wore in long curls, had been hurriedly pushed aside, and fell down over her neck. Ad- vancing his hand by little and little, he took it up and looked at it. In the midst of the action he went astray, and, with another deep sigh, fell to work at his shoemaking. But not for long. Releasing his arm, she laid her hand upon his shoulder. After looking doubtfully at it, two or three times, as if to be sure that it was really there, he laid down his work, put his hand to his neck, and took off a black- ened string with a scrap of folded rag attached to it. He opened this, carefully, on his knee, and it contained a very little quantity of hair : not more than one or two long golden hairs, which he had, in some old day, wound off upon his finger. He took her hair into his hand again, and looked closely at it. " It is the same. How can it be ! When was it ! How was it ! As the concentrating expression returned to his forehead, he seemed to become conscious that it was in hers too. He turned her full to the light, and looked at her. " She had jaid her head upon my shoulder, that night when I was summoned out — she had a fear of my going, though I had none — and v/hen I was brought to the North Tower, they found these upon my sleeve. ^ You will leave me them ? They can never help me to escape in the body, though they may in the spirit.' Those were the words I said. I remember them very well." He formed this speech with his lips many times before he could utter it. But when he did find spoken words for it, they came to him coherently, though slowly, " Hqw was this ? — Was it you ? " 46 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Once more, the two spectators started, as he turned upon her with a frightful suddenness. But she sat perfectly still in his grasp, and only said, in a low voice, " I entreat you, good gentlemen, do not come near us, do not speak, do not move ! " " Hark ! " he exclaimed. " Whose voice was that ? " His hands released her as he uttered this cry, and wenf up to his white hair, which they tore in a frenzy. It died out, as everything but his shoemaking did die out of him, and he refolded his little packet and tried to secure it in his breast j but he still looked at her, and gloomily shook his head. " No, no, no ; you are too young, too blooming. It can't be. See what the prisoner is. These are not the hands she knew, this is not the face she knew, this is not a voice she ever heard. No, no. She was — and He was — before the slow years of the North Tower — ages ago. What is your name, my gentle angel ? Hailing his softened tone and manner, his daughter fell Upon her knees before him, with her appealing hands upon his breast. " O, sir, at another time you shall know my namfe, and who my mother was, and who my father, and how I never knew their hard, hard history. But I cannot tell you at this time, and I cannot tell you here. All that I may tell you, here and now, is, that I pray to you to touch me and to bless me. Kiss me, kiss me ! O my dear, my dear! " His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed and lighted it as though it were the light of Freedom shining on him. " If you hear in my voice — I don't know that it is so, but I hope it is — if you hear in my voice any resemblance to a voice that once was sweet music in your ears, weep for it, weep for it ! If you touch, in touching my hair, anything that recalls a beloved head that lay on your breast when you were young and free, weep for it, weep for it ! If, when I hint to you of a Home that is before us, where I will be true to you with all my duty and with all my faithful service, I bring back the remembrance of a Home long desolate, while your pool heart pined away, weep for it, weep for it ! " She held him closer round the neck, and rocked him on her breast like a child. " If, when I tell you, dearest dear, that your agony is over, and that I have come here to take you from it, and that we THE SHOEMAKER. 47 go to England to be at peace and at rest, I cause you to think of your useful life laid waste, and of our native France so wicked to you, weep for it, weep for it ! And if, when I shall tell you of my name, and of my father who is living, and of my mother who is dead, you learn that I have to kneel to my honored father, and implore his pardon for having never for his sake striven all day and lain awake and wept all night, be- cause the love of my poor mother hid his torture from me, weep for it, w^eep for it ! Weep for her, then, and for me ! Good gentlemen, thank God ! I feel his sacred tears upon my face, and his sobs strike against my heart. O, see ! Thank God for us, thank God ! He had sunk in her arms, and his face dropped on her breast : a sight so touching, yet so terrible in the tremendous wrong and suffering which had gone before it, that the two beholders covered their faces. When the quiet of the garret had been long undisturbed, and his heavdng breast and shaken form had long yielded to the calm that must follow all storms — emblem to humanity, of the rest and silence into which the storm called Life must hush at last — they came forward to raise the father and daugh- ter from the ground. He had gradually dropped to the floor, and lay there in a lethargy, worn out. She had nestled down with him, that his head might lie upon her arm ; and her hair drooping over him curtained him from the light. " If without disturbing him," she said, raising her hand to Mr. Lorry as he stooped over them, after repeated blowings of his nose, " all could be arranged for our leaving Paris at once, so that, from the very door, he could be taken away — " " But, consider. Is he fit for the journey ? " asked Mr. Lorry. " More fit for that, I think, than to remain in this city, so dreadful to him." "It is true," said Defarge, who was kneeling to look on and hear. " More than that ; Monsieur Manette is, for all reasons, best out of France. Say, shall I hire a carriage and post-horses ? " " That's business," said Mr. Lorry, resuming on the shortest notice his methodical manners ; and if business is to be done, I had better do it." "Then be so kind," urged Miss Manette, "as to leave us here. You see how composed he has become, and you cannot be afra,id to leave him with me now. Why should you be ? 8 48 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. If you will lock the door to secure us from interruption, I do not doubt that you will find him, when you come back, as quiet as you leave him. In any case I will take care of him until you return, and then we will remove him straight." Bolih Mr. Lorry and Defarge were rather disinclined to this course, and in favor of one of them remaining. But, as there were not only carriage and horses to be seen to, but travelling papers ; and as time pressed, for the day was drawing to an end, it came at last to their hastily dividing the business that was necessary to be done, and hurrying away to do it. Then, as the darkness closed in, the daughter laid her head down on the hard ground close at the father's side, and watched him. The darkness deepened and deepened, and they both lay quiet, until a light gleamed through the chinks in the wall. Mr. Lorry and Monsieur Defarge had made all ready for the journey, and had brought with them, besides travelling cloaks and wrappers, bread and meat, wine, and hot coffee. Monsieur Defarge put this provender, and the lamp he carried, on the shoemaker's bench (there was nothing else in the garret but a pallet bed), and he and Mr. Lorry roused the captive, and assisted him to his feet. No human intelligence could have read the mysteries of his mind, in the scared blank wonder of his face. Whether he knew what had happened, whether he recollected what they had said to him, whether he knew that he was free, were questions which no sagacity could have solved. They tried speaking to him ; but, he was so confused, and so very slow to answer, that they took fright at his bewilderment, and agreed for the time to tamper with him no more. He had a wild, lost manner of occasionally clasping his head in his hands, that had not been seen in him before ; yet, he had some pleasure in the mere sound of his daughter's voice, and invariably turned to it when she spoke. In the submissive way of one long accustomed to obey under coercion, he ate and drank what they gave him to eat and drink, and put on the cloak and other wrappings, that they gave him to wear. He readily responded to his daugh ter's drawing her arm through his, and took — and kept — hei hand in both his own. They began to descend ; Monsieur Defarge going first with the lamp, Mr. Lorry closing the little procession. The^ THE SHOEMAKEI^ 49 had not traversed many steps of the long main staircase when he .stopped, and stared at the roof and round at the walls. ^' You remember the place, my father ? You remember coming up here ? , What did you say ? " But, before she could repeat the question, he murmured an answer as if she had repeated it. " Remember ? No, I don't remember. It was so very iong ago." That he had no recollection whatever of his having been brought from his prison to that house, was apparent to them. They heard him mutter, One Hundred and Five, North Tower;" and when he looked about him, it evidently was foi the strong fortress-walls which had long encompassed him. On their reaching the court-yard he instinctively altered his tread, as being in expectation of a drawbridge ; and when there was no drawbridge, and he saw the carriage walking in the open street, he dropped his daughter's hand and clasped his head again. No crowd was about the door : no people were discernible at any of the many windows; not even a chance passer-by was in the street. An unnatural silence and desertion reigned there. Only one soul was to be seen, and that was Madame Defarge — who leaned against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing. The prisoner had got into a coach, and his daughter had followed him, when Mr. Lorry's feet were arrested on the step by his asking, miserably, for his shoemaking tools and the unfinished shoes. Madame Defarge immediately called to her husband that she would get them, and went, knitting, out of the lamplight, through the court-yard. She quickly brought them down and handed them in ; — and immediately afterwards leaned against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing. Defarge got upon the box, and gave the word " To the Barrier ! " The postilion cracked his whip, and they clattered away under the feeble over-swinging lamps. Under the over-swinging lamps — swinging ever brighter in the better streets, and ever dimmer in the worse — and by lighted shops, gay crowds, illuminated coffee-houses, and theatre-doors, to one of the city gates. Soldiers with lanterns, at the guard-house there. " Your papers, travellers ! " See A TALE OF TWO CITIES. here then, Monsieur the Officer," said Defarge, getting down, and taking him gravely apart, "these are the papers of monsieur inside, with the white head. They were consigned to me, with him, at the He dropped his voice, there was a flutter among the mihtary lanterns, and one of them being handed into the coach by an arm in*uniform, the eyes connected with the arm looked, not an every day or an every night look, at monsieur with the white head. " It is well. Forward ! " from the uniform. " Adieu ! " from Defarge. And so, under a short grove of feebler and feebler over- swinging lamps, out under the great grove of stars. Beneath that arch of unmoved and eternal lights ; some, 50 remote from this little earth that the learned tell us it is doubtful whether their rays have even yet discovered it, as a point in space where anything is suffered or done : the shadows of the night were broad and black. All through the cold and restless interval, until dawn, they once more whis- pered in the ears of Mr. Jarvis Lorry — sitting opposite the buried man who had been dug out, and wondering what sub- tle powers were for ever lost to hiin, and what were capable of restoration — the old inquiry : " I hope you caxe to be recalled to life ? And the old answer ; can't say/' • FIVE YEARS LATER. 5» BOOK THE SECOND. THE GOLDEN THREAD. CHAPTER I. FIVE YEARS LATER. Tellson's Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned place, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very inconv modious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the House were proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness. They were even boastful of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired by an express conviction that, if it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable. This was no passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more convenient places of business. Tellson's (they said) wanted no elbow-room, Tellson's wanted no light, Tellson's wanted no embellishment. Noakes and Co.'s might, or Snooks Brothers' might ; but Tellson's, thank Heaven ! — Any one of these partners would have disinherited his son on the question of rebuilding Tellson's. In this respect the House was much on a par with the Country ; which did very often disinherit its sons for suggesting improvements in laws and customs that had long been highly objectionable, but were only the more respectable. Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson's was the triumph- ant perfection of inconvenience. After bursting open a door of idiotic obstinacy with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson's down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop, with two little counters, where the oldest of men made your check shake as if the wind rustled it. 5^ A TALE OF TWO CITIES. while they examined the signature by the dingiest of windows, which were always under a shower-bath of mud from Fleet street, and which were made the dingier by their own iron bars proper and the heavy shadow of Temple Bar. If your business necessitated your seeing " the House," you were put into a species of Condemned Hold at the back, where you meditated on a misspent life, until the House came with its hands in its pockets, and you could hardly blink at it in the dismal twilight. Your money came out of, or went into, wormy old wooden drawers, particles of which flew up your nose and down your throat when they were opened and shut. Your bank-notes had a mnc',y odor, as if they were fast de- composing into rags again. Your plate was stowed away among the neighboring cesspools, and evil communications corrupted its good polish in a day or two. Your deeds got into extemporized strong-rooms made of kitchens and scul- leries, and fretted all the fat out of their parchments into the banking-house air. Your lighter boxes of family papers went up stairs into a Barcemide room, that always had a great din- ing-table in it and never had a dinner, and where, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty, the first letters written to you by your old love, or by your little children, were but newly released from the horror of being ogled through the windows, by the heads exposed on Temple Bar with an insensate brutality and ferocity worthy of Abyssinia or Ashantee. But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a recipe much in vogue with all trade and professions, and not least of all with Tellson's. Death is Nature's remedy for all things, and why not Legislation's \ Accordingly, the forger was put to Death ; the utterer of a bad note was put to Death j the unlawful opener of a letter was put to Death ; the pur- loiner of forty shillings and sixpence was put to Death ; the holder of a horse at Tellson's door, who made off with it, was put to Death ; the coiner of a bad shilling was put to Death ; the sounders of three-fourths of the notes in the whole gamut of Crime, were put to Death. Not that it did the least good in the way of prevention — it might almost have been worth remarking that the fact was exactly the reverse — but, it cleared off (as to this world) the trouble of each particular case, and left nothing else connected with it to be looked after. Thus, Tellson's, in its day, like greater places of business, its contemporaries, had taken so many FIVE YEARS AFTER. 53 lives, that, if the heads laid low before it had been ranged on Temple Bar instead of being privately disposed of, they would probably have excluded what little light the ground floor had, in a rather significant manner. Cramped in all kinds of dim cupboards and hutches at Tellson's, the oldest of men carried on the business gravely. When they took a young man into Tellson's London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old. They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavor and blue-mould upon him. Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books, and casting his breeches and gaiters into the general weight of the establish- ment. Outside Tellson's — never by any means in it, unless called in — was an odd-job man, an occasional porter and messenger, who served as the live sign of the house. He was never absent during business hours, unless upon an errand, and then he was represented by his son ; a grisly urchin of twelve, who was his express image. People understood that Tell- son's, in a stately way, tolerated the odd-job-man. The house had always tolerated some person in that capacity, and time and tide had drifted this person to the post. His surname was Cruncher, and on the youthful occasion of his renouncing by proxy the works of darkness, in the easterly parish church of Hounsditch, he had received the added appellation of Jerry. The scene was Mr. Cruncher's private lodging in Hang- ing-sword-alley, Whitefriars : the time, half-past seven of the clock on a windy March morning. Anno Domini seventeen hundred and eighty. (JV; . Cruncher himself always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes : apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from the inven- tion of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it.) Mr. Cruncher's apartments were not in a savory neighbor- hood, and were but two in number, even if a closet with a single pane of glass in it might be counted as one. But they were very decently kept. Early as it was, on the windy March morning, the room in which he lay a-bed was already scrubbed throughout ; and between the cups and saucers arranged for breakfast, and the lumbering deal table, a very clean white cloth was spread. Mr. Cruncher reposed under a patchwork counterpane, like a Harlequin at home. At first, he slept heavily, but, by 54 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. degrees, began to roll and surge in bed, until he rose above the surface, with his spiky hair looking as if it must tear the sheets to ribbons. At which juncture, he exclaimed, in a voice of dire exasperation : " Bust me, if she ain't at it agin ! " A woman of orderly and industrious appearance rose from her knees in a corner, with sufficient haste and trepidation to show that she was the person referred to. **What!" said Mr. Cruncher, looking out of bed for a boot. " You're at it agin, are you } " After hailing the morn with this second salutation, he threw a boot at the woman as a third. It was a very muddy boot, and may introduce the odd circumstance connected with Mr. Cruncher's domestic economy, that, whereas he often came home after banking hours with clean boots, he often got up next morning to find the same boots covered with clay. "What," said Mr. Cruncher, varying his apostrophe after missing his mark — " what are you up to, Aggerawayter ? " I was only saying my prayers." " Saying your prayers ! You're a nice woman ! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me 1 " " I was not praying against you ; I was praying for you." "You weren't. And if you were, I won't be took the liberty with. Here ! your mother's a nice woman, young Jerry, going a praying agin your father's prosperity. You've got a dutiful mother, you have, my son. You've got a relig- ious mother, you have, my boy : going and flopping herself down, and praying that the bread-and-butter may be snatched out of the mouth of her only child." Master Cruncher (who was in his shirt) took this very ill, and, turning to his mother, strongly deprecated any praying away of his personal board. " And what do you suppose, you conceited female," said Mr. Cruncher, with unconscious inconsistency, " that the worth of your prayers may be Name the price that you put your prayers at ! " " They only come from the heart, Jerry. They are worth no more than that." "Worth no more than that," repeated Mr. Cruncher " They ain't worth much then. Whether or no, I won't be prayed agin, I tell you. I can't afford it. I'm not a going to be made unlucky by your sneaking. If you must go flopping yourself down, flop in favor of your husband and child, and FIVE YEARS AFTER. ss not in opposition to 'em. If I had had any but a unnat'ral wife, and this poor boy had had any but a unnat'ral mother, 1 might have m^de some money last week instead oi being coun- terprayed and countermined and religiously circumwented into the worst of luck. B-u-u-ust me ! " said Mr. Cruncher, who all this time had been putting on his clothes, if I ain't, what with piety and one blowed thing and another, been choused this last week into as bad luck as ever a poor devil of a honest tradesman met with ! Young Jerry, dress yourself, my boy, and while I clean my boots keep a eye upon your mother now and then, and if you see any signs of more flopping give me a call. For I tell you," here he addressed his wife once more, I won't be gone agin, in this manner. I am as rickety as a hackney-coach, I'm as sleepy as laudanum, my lines is strained to that degree that I shouldn't know, if it wasn't for the pain in 'em, which was me and which somebody else, yet I'm none the better for it in pocket ; and it's my suspicion that you've been at it from morning to night to prevent me from being the better for it in pocket, and I won't put up with it, Aggera- wayter, and what do you say now ! " Growling, in addition, such phrases as Ah ! yes ! You're religious, too. You wouldn't put yourself in opposition to the interests of your husband and child, would you ? Not you !" and throwing off other sarcastic sparks from the whirling grindstone of his indignation, Mr. Cruncher betook himself to his boot-cleaning and his general preparations for business. In the meantime, his son, whose head was garnished with tenderer spikes, and whose young eyes stood close by one another, as his father's did, kept the required watch upon his mother. He greatly disturbed that poor woman at intervals, by darting out of his sleeping closet, where he made his toilet, with a suppressed cry of You are going to flop mother. — Holloa, father ! " and, after raising this fictitious alarm, dart- ing in again with an undutiful grin. Mr. Cruncher's temper was not at all improved when he came to his breakfast. He resented Mrs. Cruncher's saying grace with particular animosity. " Now, Aggerawayter ! What are you up to ? At it agin ? " His wife explained that she had merely asked a blessing." Don't do it ! " said Mr. Cruncher, looking about, as if Ae rather expected to see the loaf disappear under the efficacy of his wife's petitions. I ain't a going to be blest out of house and home. I won't have ogr wittles blest off my table. Keep still ! A TALE OF TWO CITIES, Exceedingly red-eyed and grim, as if he had been up all night at a party which had taken anything but a convivial turn, Jerry Cruncher w^orried his breakfast ratli^r than ate it, growling over it like any four-footed inmate of a menagerie. Towards nine o'clock he smoothed his ruffled aspect, and, presenting as respectable and business-like an exterior as he could overlay his natural self with, issued forth to the occupa- tion of the day. It could scarcely be called a trade, in spite of his favorite description of himself as " a honest tradesman.'' His stock consisted of a wooden stool, made out of a broken-backed chair cut down, which stool, young Jerry, walking at his father's side, carried every morning to beneath the banking-house window that was nearest Temple Bar : where, with the addi- tion of the first handful of straw that could be gleaned from any passing vehicle to keep the cold and wet from the odd- job-man's feet, it formed the encampment for the day. On this post of his, Mr. Cruncher was as well known to Fleet street and the Temple, as the Bar itself, — and was almost as ill-looking. Encamped at a quarter before nine, in good time to toucly his three-cornered hat to the oldest of men as they passed in to Teilson's, Jerry took up his station on this windy March morning, with young Jerry standing by him, when not engaged in making forays through the Bar, to inflict bodily and mental injuries of an acute description on passing boys who were small enough for his amiable purpose. Father and son, ex- tremely like each other, looking silently on at the morning traffic in Fleet-street, with their two heads as near to one another as the two eyes of each were, bore a considerable resemblance to a pair of monkeys. The resemblance was not lessened by the accidental circumstance, that the mature Jerry bit and spat out straw, while the twinkling eyes of the youthful Jerry were as restlessly watchful of him as of every- thing else in Fleet street. The head of one of the regular indoor messengers attached to Teilson's establishment was put through the door, and the word was given : " Porter wanted ! " " Hooray, father ! Here's an early job to begin with ! " Having thus given his parent God speed, young Jerry seated himself on the stool, entered on his reversionary in- terest in the straw his father had been chewing, and cogitated. A SIGHT. 57 " Al- ways rusty ! His fingers is al-ways rusty ! " muttered young Jerry. " Where does my father get all that iron rust from ? He don't get no iron rust here ! " CHAPTER II. A SIGHT. " You know the Old Bailey well, no doubt ? " said one of the oldest of clerks to Jerry the messenger. **Ye-es, sir," returned Jerry, in something of a dogged manner, " I do know the Bailey." " Just so. And you know Mr. Lorry." " I know Mr. Lorry, sir, much better than I know the Bai- ley. Much better," said Jerry, not unlike a reluctant witness at the establishment in question, " than I, as a honest trades- man, wish to know the Bailey." " Very well. Find the door where the witnesses go in, and show the door-keeper this note for Mr. Lorry. He will then let you in." " Into the court, sir ? " " Into the court." Mr. Cruncher's eyes seemed to get a little closer to one another, and to interchange the inquiry, What do you think of this ? " " Am I to wait in the court, sir " he asked, as the result of that conference. " I am going to tell you. The door-keeper will pass the note to Mr. Lorry, and do you maKC any gesture that will at- tract Mr. Lorry's attention, and show him where you stand. Then what you have to do, is, to remain there until he wants you." " Is that all, sir ? " " That's all. He wishes to have a messenger at hand. This is to tell him you are there." As the ancient clerk deliberately folded and superscribed the note, Mr. Cruncher, after surveying him in silence until he came to the blotting-paper stage, remarked : "I suppose they'll be trying Forgeries this morning?^' A TALE OF TWO CITIES, " Treason ! " "That's quartering/' said Jerry. " Barbarous ! " " It is the law," remarked tiie ancient clerk, turning his surprised spectacles upon him. " It is the law." " It's hard in the law to spile a man, I think. It's hard enough to kill him, but it's wery hard to spile him, sir." " Not at all," returned the ancient clerk. " Speak well ot the law. Take care of your chest and voice, my good friend, and leave the law to take care of itself. I give you that ad vice." " It's the damp, sir, what settles on my chest and voice,'-' said Jerry. " I leave you to judge what a damp way of earn- ing a living mine is." ''Well, well," said the old clerk ; " we all havt our various ways of gaining a livelihood. Some of us have damp ways, and some of us have dry ways. Here u che letter. Go along." Jerry took the letter, and, remarking to himself with less internal deference than he made an out>vard show of, ''You are a lean old one, too," made his bow, informed his son, in passing, of his destination, and went his way. They hanged at Tyburn, in those days, so the street out- side Newgate had not obtained one infamous notoriety that has since attached to it. Bu/, the gaol was a vile place, in which most kinds of debauchery and villainy were practised, and where dire diseases we:e bred, that came into courts with the prisoners, and sometimes rushed straight from the dock at my Lord Chief Justice himself, and pulled him off th^ bench. It had more than once happened, that the Judge in the black cap pronounced his own doom as certainly as the prisoner's, and even died before him. For the rest, the Old Bailey was famous as a kind of deadly inn-yard, from which pale travellers set out continually, in carts and coaches, on a violent passage into the other world : traversing some two miles and a half of public street and road, and shaming few good citize.is, if any. So powerful is use, and so desirable to be good use in the beginning. It was famous, too, for the pillory, L wise old institution, that inflicted a punishment of which no one could forsee the extent ; also, for the whipping- post, LQOther dear old institution, very humanizing and soften- ing to behold in action ; also, for extensiv^e transactions in blojd-money, another fragment of ancestral wisdom, system- atically leading to the most frightful mercenary crimes that A SIGHT, 59 could be committed under Heaven. Altogether, the Old Bai- ley, at that date, was a choice illustration of the precept, that " Whatever is is right ; " an aphorism that would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence, that nothing that ever was, was wrong. Making his way through the tainted crowd, dispersed up and down this hideous scene of action, with the skill of a man accustomed to make his way quietly, the messenger found out the door he sought, and handed in his letter through a trap in it. For, people then paid to see the play at the Old Bailey, just as they paid to see the play in Bedlam — only the former entertainment was much the dearer. Therefore, all the Old Bailey doors were well guarded — except, indeed, the social doors by which the criminals got there, and those were always left wide open. After some delay and demur, the door grudgingly turned on its hinges a very little way, and allowed Mr. Jerry Cruncher to squeeze himself into court. " What's on ? " he asked, in a whisper, of the man he found himself next to. " Nothing yet." " What's coming on ? " "The Treason case." " The quartering one, eh ? " " Ah ! " returned the man, with a relish ; " he'll be drawn on a hurdle to be half hanged, and then he'll be taken down and sliced before his own face, and then his inside will be taken out and burnt while he looks on, and then his head will be chopped off, and he'll be cut into quarters. That's the sentence." " If he's found Guilty, you mean to say ? " Jerry added, by way of proviso. " Oh ! " they'll find him guilty," said the other. " Don't you be afraid of that." Mr. Cruncher's attention was here diverted to the door- keeper, whom he saw making his way to Mr. Lorry, with the note in his hand. Mr. Lorry sat at a table, among the gentle- men in wigs : not far from a wigged gentleman, the prisoner's counsel, who had a great bundle of papers before him : and nearly opposite another wigged gentleman with his hands in his pockets, whose whole attention, when Mr. Cruncher looked at him then or afterwards, seemed to be concentrated on the ceiling of the court. After some gruff coughing and rubbing 6o A TALE OF TWO CITIES. of his chin and signing with his hand, Jerry attracted the no tice of Mr. Lorry, who had stood up to look for him, and who quietly nodded and sat down again. " What's he got to do with the case ? " asked the man he had spoken with. " Blest if I know," said Jerry. " What have you got to do with it; then, if a person may inquire ? " " Blest if I know that either," said Jerry. The entrance of the Judge, and a consequent great stir and settling down in the court, stopped the dialogue. Pres- ently, the dock became the central point of interest. Two gaolers, who had been standing there, went out, and the prisoner was brought in, and put to the bar. Everybody present, except the one wigged gentleman who looked at the ceiling, stared at him. All the human breath in the place, rolled at him, like a sea, or a wind, or a fire. Eager faces strained round pillars and corners, to get a sight of him ,* spectators in back rows stood up, not to miss a hair of him ; people on the floor of the court, laid their hands on the shoul- ders of the people before them, to help themselves, at anybody's cost, to a view of him — stood a-tiptoe, got upon ledges, stood upon next to nothing, to see every inch of him. Conspicuous among these latter, like an animated bit of the spiked wall of Newgate, Jerry stood : aiming at the prisoner the beery breath of a whet he had taken as he came along, and discharging it to mingle with the waves of other beer, and gin, and tea, and coffee, and what not, that flowed at him, and already brr'\e upon the great windows behind him in an impure mist and rain. The object of all this staring and blaring, was a young man of about five-and-twenty, w^ell-grown and well-looking, with a sunburnt cheek and a dark eye. His condition was that of a young gentleman. He was plainly dressed in blacky or very dark gray, and his hair, which was long and dark, was gathered in a ribbon at the back of his neck : more to be out of his v/ay than for ornament. As an emotion of the mind will express itself through any covering of the body, so the paleness which his situation engendered came through the brown upon his cheek, showing the soul to be stronger than the sun. He was otherwise quite self-possessed, bowed to the Judge, and stood quiet. The sort of interest with which this man was stared and A SIGHT 6l breathed at, was not a sort that elevated humanity. Had he stood in peril of a less horrible sentence — had there been a chance of any one of its savage details being spared — by just so much would he have lost in his fascination. The form that was to be doomed to be so shamefully mangled, v/as the sight ; the immortal creature that was to be so butchered and torn asunder, yielded the sensation. Whatever gloss the various spectators put upon the interest, according to their several arts and powers of self-deceit, the interest was, at the root of It, Ogreish. Silence in the court ! Charles Darnay had yesterday pleaded Not Guilty to- an indictment denouncing him (with infinite jingle and jangle) for that he was a false traitor to our serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, prince, our Lord the King, by reason of his having, on divers occasions, and by divers means and ways, assisted Lewis, the French King, in his wars against our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth ; that was to say, by coming and going, between the dominions of our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, and those of the said French Lewis, and wickedly, falsely, traitorously, and otherwise evil-adverbiously, revealing to the said French Lewis what forces our said serene, illustri- ous, excellent, and so forth, had in preparation to send to Canada and North America. This much, Jerry, with his head becoming more and more spiky as the law terms bristled it, made out with huge satisfaction, and so arrived circuitously at the understanding that the aforesaid, and over and over again aforesaid, Charles Darnay, stood there before him upon his trial ; that the jury were swearing in ; and that Mr. At- torney-General was making ready to speak. The accused, who was (and who knew he was) being mentally hanged, beheaded, and quartered, by everybody .there, neither flinched from the situation, nor assumed any theatrical air in it. He was quiet and attentive ; watched .^he opening proceedings with a grave interest ; and stood /vith his hands resting on the slab of wood before him, so composedly, that they had not displaced a leaf of the herbs with which it was strew^n. The court was all bestrewn with herbs and sprinkled with vinegar, as a precaution against gaol air and gaol fever. Over the prisoner's head there was a mirror, to throw the light down upon him. Crowxls of the wicked and the wretched had been reflected in it, and had passed from its surface and 62 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. this earth's together. Haunted in a most ghastly mannei that abominable place would have been, if the glass could ever have rendered back its reflections, as the ocean is one day to give up its dead. Some passing thought of the infamy and disgrace for which it had been reserved, may have struck the prisoner's mind. Be that as it may, a change in his posi- tion making him conscious of a bar of light across his face, he looked up ; and when he saw the glass his face flushed, and his right hand pushed the herbs away. It happened, that the action turned his face to that side of the court which was on his left. About on a level with his eyes, there sat, in that corner of the Judge's bench, two persons upon whom his look immediately rested ; so immedi- ately, and so much to the changing of his aspect, that all the eyes that were turned upon him, turned to them. The spectators saw in the two figures, a young lady of little more than twenty, and a gentleman who was evidently her father ; a man of a very remarkable appearance in respect of the absolute whiteness of his hair, and a certain indescrib- able intensity of face : not of an active kind, but pondering and self-communing. When this expression was upon him, he looked as if he were old ; but when it was stirred and broken up — as it was now, in a moment, on his speaking to his daughter — he became a handsome man, not past the prime of life. His daughter had one of her hands drawn through his arm, as she sat by him, and the other pressed upon it. She had drawn close to him, in her dread of the scene, and in her pity for the prisoner. Her forehead had been strikingly expressive of an engrossing terror and compassion that saw nothing but the peril of the accused. This had been so very noticeable, so very powerfully and naturally shown, that starers who had had no pity for him were touched by her ; and the whisper, went about, Who are they ? " Jerry, the messenger, who had made his own observations, in his own manner, and who had been sucking the rust off his fingers in his absorption, stretched his neck to hear who they were. The crowd about him had pressed and passed the inquiry on to the nearest attendant, and from him it had been more slowly pressed and passed back : at last it got to Jerry. " Witnesses." " For which side ? A DISAPPOINTMENT. 63 " Against/' " Against what side ? ' " The prisoner's." The Judge, whose eyes had gone in the general direction, recalled them, leaned back in his seat, and looked steadily at the man whose life was in his hand, as Mr. Attorney-General rose to spin the rope, grind the axe, and hammer the nails into the scaffold. CHAPTER III. A DISAPPOINTMENT. Mr. Attorney-General had to inform the jury, -that the prisoner before them, though young in years, was old in the treasonable practices which claimed the forfeit of his life. That this correspondence with the public enemy was not a correspondence of to-da}'', or of yesterday, or even of last year, or of the year before. That, it was certain the prisoner had, for longer than that, been in the habit of passing and repassing between France and England, on secret business of which he could give no honest account. That, if it were in the nature of traitorous ways to thrive (which happily it never was), the real wickedness and guilt of his business might have remained undiscovered. That Providence, how- ever, had put it into the heart of a person who was beyond fear and beyond reproach, to ferret out the nature of the pris- oner's schemes, and, struck with horror, to disclose them to his Majesty's Chief Secretary of State and most honorable Privy Council. That, this patriot would be produced before them, That, his position and attitude were, on the whole, sublime. That, he had been the prisoner's friend, but, at once in an auspicious and an evil hour detecting his infamy, had re- solved to immolate the traitor he could no longer cherish in his bosom, on the sacred altar of his country. That, if statues were decreed in Britain, as in ancient Greece and Rome, to public benfactors, this shining citizen would assuredly have had one. That, as they were not so decreed, he probably 64 A 7'ALE OF TWO C/77ES: would not have one. That, Virtue, as had been observed by the poets (in many passages which he well knew the jury would have, word for word, at the tips of their tongues ; whereat the J'ury's countenances displayed a guilty consciousness that they .:new nothing about the passages), was in a manner contagi ous ; more especially the bright virtue known as patriotism, ol love of country. That, the lofty example of this immaculate and unimpeachable witness for the Crown, to refer to whom however unworthily was an honor, had communicated itself to the prisoner's servant, and had engendered in him a holy de- termination to examine his master's table-drawers and pockets, and secrete his papers. That, he (Mr. Attorney-General) was prepared to hear some disparagement attempted of this ad- mirable servant ; but that, in a general way, he preferred him to his (Mr. Attorney-General's) brothers and sisters, and hon- ored him more than his (Mr. Attorney-General's) father and mother. That, he called with confidence on the jury to come and do likewise. That, the evidence of these two witnesses, coupled with the documents of their discovering that would be produced, would show the prisoner to have been fur- nished with lists of his Majesty's forces, and of their dis- position and preparation, both by sea and land, and would leave no doubt that he had habitually conveyed such informa- tion to a hostile power. That, these lists could not be proved to be in the prisoner's handwriting ; but that it was all the same ; that, indeed, it was rather the better for the prosecution, as showing the prisoner to be artful in his precautions. That, the proof would go back five years, and would show the pris- oner already engaged in these pernicious missions, within a few weeks before the date of the very first action fought be- tween the British troops and the Americans. That, for these reasons, the jury, being a loyal jury (as he knew they were), and being a responsible jury (as tkey knew they were), must positively find the prisoner Guilty, and make an end of him, whether they liked it or not. That, they never could lay their neads upon their pillows ; that, they never could tolerate the idea of their wives laying their heads upon their pillows ; that, they never could endure the notion of their children laying their heads upon their pillows; in short, that there never more could be, for them or theirs, any laying of heads upon pillows at all, unless the prisoner's head was taken off. That head Mr. Attorney-General concluded by demanding of them, in the name of everything he could think of with a round turn A DISAPPOINTMENT. 05 jn it, and on the faith of his solemn asseveration that he already considered the prisoner as good as dead and gone. When the Attorney-General ceased, a buzz arose in the court as if a cloud of great blue-flies were swarming about the prisoner, in anticipation of what he was soon to become. When toned down again, the unimpeachable patriot appeared in the witness-box. Mr. Solicitor-General then, following his leader's lead, examined the patriot ; John Barsad, gentleman, by naniCo The story of his pure soul was exactly what Mr. Attorney- General had described it to be — perhaps, ii it had a fault, a little too exactly. Having released his noble bosom of its burden, he would have modestly withdiawn himself, but that the wigged gentleman with the papers before him, sitting not far from Mr. Lorry, begged to ask him a few questions. The wigged gentleman sitting opposite, still looking at the ceiling of the court. Had he ever been a spy himself > No, he scorned the base insinuation. What did he live upon? His propert}^ Where was his property ? He didn't precisely reme.nber where it was. What was it ? No business of anybody's. Had he inherited it ? Yes, he had. From whom ? Distant rela- tion. Very distant ? Rather. Ever been in prison ? Cer- tainly not. Never in a debtors' prison ? Didn't see what that had to do with it. Never in a debtors' prison ? — Come, once again. Never ? Yes. How many times ? Two or three times. Not five or six ? Perhaps. Of what profession ? Gentleman. Ever been kicked t Might have been. Fre- quently ? No. Ever kicked down stairs ? Decidedly not ; once received a kick on the top of a staircase, and fell down stairs of his own accord. Kicked on that occasion for cheat- ing at dice t Something to that effect was said by the intoxi- cated liar who commited the assault, but it was not true. Swear it was not true ? Positively. Ever live by cheating at play? Never. Ever live by play ? Not more than other gentlemen do. Ever borrow money of the prisoner ? YeSe Ever pay him ? No. Was not this intimacy with the prisoner, in reality a very slight one, forced upon the prisoner in coaches, inns, and packets ? No. Sure he saw the prisoner with these lists? Certain. Knew no more about the lists ? No. Had not procured them himself, for instance ? No. Expect to get anything by this evidence ? No. Not in regular govern- ment pay and employment, to lay traps ? Oh dear no ! Or to 66 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. do anything ? Oh dear no ! Swear that ? Over and ovei again. No motives but motives of sheer patriotism ? None whatever. The virtuous servant, Roger Cly, swore his way through the case at a great rate. He had taken service with the pris- oner, in good faith and simplicity, four years ago. He had asked the prisoner, aboard the Calais packet, if he wanted a handy fellow, and the prisoner had engaged him. He had not asked the prisoner to take the handy fellow as an act of charity — never thought of such a thing. He began to have suspicions of the prisoner, and to keep an eye upon him, soon afterwards. In arranging his clothes, while travelling, he had seen similar lists to these in the prisoner's pockets, over and over again. He had taken these lists from the drawer of the prisoner's desk. He had not put them there first. He had seen the prisoner show these identical lists to French gentle- men at Calais, and similar lists to French gentlemen, both at Calais and Boulogne. He loved his country, and couldn't bear it, and had given information. He had never been sus- pected of stealing a silver tea-pot ; he had been maligned ie- specting a mustard-pot, but it turned out to be only a plated one. He had known the last witness seven or eight years ; that was merely a coincidence. He didn't call it a particularly curious coincidence ; most coincidences were curious. Neither did he call it a curious coincidence that true patriotism was /lis only motive too. He was a true Briton, and hoped th^re were many like him. The blue-flies buzzed again, and Mr. Attorney-General called Mr. Jarvis Lorry. " Mr. Jarvis Lorrv, are you a clerk in Tellson's bank ? '* " I am." " On a certain Friday night in November one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, did business occasion you to travel between London and Dover by the mail 1 " " It did." Were there any other passengers in the mail 1 " " Two." Did they alight on the road in the course of the night ? " " They did." " Mr. Lorry, look upon the prisoner. Was he one of those two passengers ? " " I cannot undertake to say that it was." " Does he resemble either of these two passengers ? " A DISAPPOINTMENT. 67 " Both were so wrapped up, and the night was so dark, and ^ve were all so reserved, that I cannot undertake to say even that.'^ " Mr. Lorry, look again upon the prisoner. Supposing him wrapped up as those two passengers were, is there any- thing in his bulk and stature to render it unlikely that he was 3ne of them ? " ^'No.'' " You will not swear, Mr. Lorry, that he was not one of them ? "No.'' " So at least you say he may have been one of them ? " " Yes. Except that I remember them both to have been — like myself — timorous of highwaymen, and the prisoner has not a timorous air." " Did you ever see a counterfeit of timidity, Mr. Lorry ? " "I certainly have seen diat." " Mr. Lorry, look once more upon the prisoner. Have you seen him, to your certain knowledge, before ? " " I have.'' "When?" " I was returning from France a few days afterwards, and at Calais, the prisoner came on board the packet-ship in which I returned and made the voyage with me." " At what hour did he come on board ? " " At a little after midnight." " In the dead of the night. Was he the only passenger who came on board at that untimely hour t " " He happened to be the only one." " Never mind ^out * happening,' Mr. Lorry. He was the only passenger who came on board in the dead of the night ? " " He was." " Were you travelling alone, Mr. Lorry, or with any com- panion ? " " With two companions. A gentleman and lady. They are here." " They are here. Had you any conversation with the prisoner ? " " Hardly any. The weather was stormy, and the pas- sage long and rough, and I lay on a sofa, almost from shore to shore." " Miss Manette ! " 68 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. The young lady to whom all eyes had been turned before, and were now turned again, stood up where she had sat. Her father rose with her, and kept her hand drawn through his arm. " Miss Manette, look upon the prisoner.'' To be confronted with such pity, and such earnest youth and beauty, was far more trying to the accused than to be confronted with all the crowd. Standing, as it were, apart with her on the edge of his grave, not all the strange curi- osity that looked on, could, for the moment, nerve him to remain quite still. His hurried right hand parcelled out the herbs before him into imaginary beds of flowers in a garden ; and his efforts to control and steady his breathing shook the lips from which the color rushed to his heart. The buzz of the great flies was loud again. " Miss Manette, hav*^ you seen the prisoner before ? " "Yes, sir.'' " Where ? " " On board of the packet-ship just now referred to, and on the same occasion." " You are the young lady just now referred to ? " " O ! most unhappily, I am ! " The plaintive tone of her compassion merged into the less musical voice of the judge, as he said something fiercely : " Answer the questions put to you, and make no remark upon them. ' " Miss Manette, had you any conversation with the pris- oner on that passage across the Channel } " "Yes, sir." "Recall it." In the midst of a profound stillness, she faintly began : " When the gentleman came on board " " Do you mean the prisoner ? " inquired the Judge, knit- ting his brows. " Yes, my Lord." "Then say the prisoner," " When the prisoner came on board, he noticed that my father," turning her eyes lovingly to him as he stood beside her, "was much fatigued and in a very weak state of health. My father was so reduced that I was afraid to take him out of the air, and I had made a bed for him on the deck near the cabin steps, and I sat on the deck at his side to take care of him. There were no other passeng^^-s that night, but we A DISAPPOINTMENT. 69 four. The prisoner was so good as to beg permission to advise me how I could shelter my father from the wind and weather, better than I had done. I had not known how to do it well, not understanding how the wind would set when we were out of the harbor. He did it for me. He expressed great gen- tleness and kindness for my father's state, and I am sure he felt it. That was the manner of our beginning to speak together.'' ^' Let me interrupt you for a moment. Had he come on board alone ? " ^^No." " How many were with him ? " Two French gentlemen." " Had they conferred together?" " They had conferred together until the last moment, when it was necessary for the French gentlemen to be landed in their boat." Had any papers been handed about among them, similar to these lists } " " Some papers had been handed about among them, but I don't know what papers." " Like these in shape and size ? " " Possibly, but indeed I don't know, although they stood whispering very near to me : because they stood at the top of the cabin steps to have the light of the lamp that was hang- ing there ; it was a dull lamp, and they spoke very low, and I did not hear what they said, and saw only that they looked at papers." " Now, to the prisoner's conversation. Miss Manette." The prisoner was as open in his confidence with me — - which arose out of my helpless situation — as he was kind, and good, and useful to my father. I hope," bursting into tears ^''I may not repay him by doing him harm to-day." Buzzing from the blue-flies. " Miss Manette, if the prisoner does not perfectly under- stand that you give the evidence which it is your duty to give — which you must give — and which you cannot escape from giving — with great unwillingness, he is the only person pres- ent in that condition. Please to go on." " He told me that he was travelling on business of a deli- cate and difficult nature, which might get people into trouble^ and that he was therefore travelling under an assumed name. He said that his business had, within a few days, taken him A TALE OF TWO CITIES, to France, and might, at intervals, take him backwards and forwards between France and England for a long time to come." " Did he say anything about America, Miss Manette ? Be particular." " He tried to explain to me how that • quarrel had arisen, and he said that, so far as he could judge, it was a wrong and foolish one on England's part. He added, in a jesting way, that perhaps George Washington might gain almost as great a name in history as George the Third, But there was no harm in his way of saying this : it was said laughingly, and to beguile the time." Any strongly marked expression of face on the part of a chief actor in a scene of great interest to whom many eyes are directed, will be unconsciously imitated by the spectators. Her forehead was painfully anxious and intent as she gave this evidence, and, in the pauses when she stopped for the Judge to write it down, watched its effect upon the counsel for and against. Among the lookers-on there was the same expres- sion in all quarters of the court ; insomuch, that a great ma- jority of the foreheads there, might have been mirrors reflect- ing the witness when the Judge looked up from his notes to glare at that tremendous heresy about George Washington. Mr. Attorney-General now signified to my Lord, that he deemed it necessary, as a matter of precaution and form, to call the young lady's father. Doctor Manette. Who was called accordingly. Doctor Manette, look upon the prisoner. Have you ever seen him before ? " Once. When he called at my " lodgings in London. Some three years, or three years and a half ago." Can you identify him as your fellow-passenger on board the packet, or speak of his conversation with your daughter? " Sir, I can do neither." " Is there any particular and special reason for your being unable to do either ? " He answered, in a low voice, ^' There is." " Has it been your misfortune to undergo a long imprison- ment, without trial, or even accusation, in your native country, Doctor Manette ? " He answered, in a tone that went to every heart, A long /nprisonment." Were you newly released on the occasion in question?' A DISAPPOINTMENT. They tell me so.'' Have you no remembrance on the occasion ? " " None. My mind is a blank, from some time — I cannot even say what time — when I employed myself, in my captiv- ity, in making shoes, to the time when I found myself living in London with my dear daughter here. She had become familiar to me, when a gracious God restored my faculties ; but, I am quite unable even to say how she had become fami-^ liar. I have no remembrance of the process." Mr. Attorney-General sat down, and the father and daugh- ter sat down together. A singular circumstance then arose in the case. The ob- ject in hand being to show that the prisoner went down, with some fellow-plotter untracked, in the Dover mail on that Fri- day night in November five years ago, and got out of the mail in the night, as a blind, at a place where he did not re- main, but from which he travelled back some dozen miles or more, to a garrison and dockyard, and there collected infor- , mation ; a witness was called to identify him as having been at the precise time required, in the coffee-room of an hotel in that garrison-and-dockyard town, waiting for another person. The prisoner's counsel was cross-examining this witness with no result, except that he had never seen the prisoner on any other occasion, when the wigged gentleman who had all this time been looking at the ceiling of the court, wrote a word or two on a little piece of paper, screwed it up, and tossed it to him. Opening this piece of paper in the next pause, the coun- sel looked with great attention and curiosity at the prisoner. " You say again you are quite sure that it was the pris- oner ? " The witness was quite sure. " Did you ever see anybody very like the prisoner? " Not so like (the witness said) as that he could be mis- taken. " Look well upon that gentleman, my learned friend there," pointing to him who had tossed the paper over, " and then look well upon the prisoner. How say you ? Are they very like each other } " Allowing for my learned friend's appearance being careless and slovenly if not debauched, they were sufficiently like each other to surprise, not only the witness, but everybody present, when they were thus brought into comparison. My Lord being prayed to bid my learned friend lay aside his wig, 72 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, and giving no very gracious consent, the likeness became much more remarkable. My Lord inquired of Mr. Stryver (the prisoner's counsel), whether they were next to try Mr. Carton (name of my learned friend) for treason ? But, Mr. Stryver replied to my Lord, no ; but he would ask the witness to tell him whether what happened once, might happen twice ; Arhether he would have been so confident if he had seen this illustration of his rashness sooner, whether he would be so confident, having seen it ; and more. The upshot of which, was, to smash this witness like a crockery vessel, and shiver his part of the case to useless lumber. Mr. Cruncher had by this time taken quite a lunch of rust off his fingers in his following of the evidence. He had now to attend while Mr. Stryver fitted the ' prisoner's case on the jury, like a compact suit of clothes ; showing them how the patriot, Barsad, was a hired spy and traitor, an unblushing trafficker in blood, and one of the greatest scoundrels upon earth since accursed Judas — which he certainly did look rather like. How the virtuous servant, Cly, was his friend • and partner, and was worthy to be • how the watchful eyes of ciiose forgers and false swearers had rested on the prisoner as a victim, because some family affairs in France, he being of French extraction, did require his making those passages across the Channel — though what those affairs were, a con- sideration for others who were near and dear to him, forbade him, even for his life, to disclose. How the evidence that had been warped and wrested from the young lady, whose anguish in giving it they had witnessed, came to nothing, involving the mere little innocent gallantries and politenesses likely to pass between any young gentleman and young lady so thrown togeth- er ; — with the exception of that reference to George Washing- ton, which was altogether too extravagant and impossible to be regarded in any other light than as a monstrous joke. How it would be a weakness in the government to break down in this attempt to practice for popularity on the lowest national anti- pathies and fears, and therefore Mr. Attorney-General had made the most of it ; how, nevertheless, it rested upon noth- ing, save that vile and infamous character of evidence too often disfiguring such cases, and of which the State Trials of this country were full. But, there my Lord interposed (with as grave a face as if it had not been true), saying that he could not sit upon that Bench and suffer those allusions. Mr. Stryver then called his few witnesses, and Mr. 0 A DISAPPOINTMENT. 73 Cruncher had next to attend while Mr. Attorney-General turned the whole suit of clothes Mr. Stryver had fitted on the jury, inside out ; showing how Barsad and Cly were even a hundred times better than he had thought them, and the pris- oner a hundred times worse. Lastly, came my Lord himself, turning the suit of clothes, now inside out, now outside in, but on the whole decidedly trimming and shaping them into grave-clothes for the prisoner. And now, the jury turned to consider, and the great flies swarmed again. Mr. Carton, who had so long sat looking at the ceiling of the court, changed neither his place nor his attitude, even in this excitement. While his learned friend, Mr. Stryver, mass- ing his papers before him, whispered with those who sat near, and from time to time glanced anxiously at the jury ; while all the spectators moved more or less, and grouped themselves anew ; while even my Lord himself arose from his seat, and slowly paced up and down his platform, not unat- tended by a suspicion in the minds of the audience that his state was feverish ; this one man sat leaning back, with his torn gown half off him, his untidy wig put on just as it had happened to light on his head after its removal, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes on the ceiling as they had been all day. Something especially reckless in his demeanor, not only gave him a disreputable look, but so diminished the strong resemblance he undoubtedly bore to the prisoner (which his momentary earnestness, when they were compared together, had strengthened), that many of the lookers-on, taking note of him nowj said to one another they would hardly have thought the two were so alike. Mr. Cruncher made the observation to his next neighbor, and added, " I'd hold half a guinea that he don't get no law-work to do. Don't look like the sort of one to get any, do he } " Yet, this Mr. Carton took in more of the details of the scene than he appeared to take in ; for now, when Miss Manette's head dropped upon her father's breast, he was the first to see it, and to say audibly : Officer ! look to that young lady. Help the gentleman to take her out. Don't you see she will fall ! " There was much commiseration for her as she was removed, and much sympathy with her father. It had evidently been a great distress to him, to have the days of his imprisonment recalled. He had shown strong internal agitation when ha 74 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, was questioned, and that pondering or brooding look which made him old, had been upon him, like a heavy cloud, ever since. As he passed out, the jury, who had turned back and paused a moment, spoke, through their foreman. They were not agreed, and wished to retire. My Lord (perhaps with George Washington on his mind) showed some surprise that they were not agreed, but signified his pleasure that they should retire under watch and ward, and retired himself. The. trial had lasted all day, and the lamps in the court were now being lighted. It began to be rumored that the jury would be out a long while. The spectators dropped off to get refreshment, and the prisoner withdrew to the back of the dock, and sat down. Mr. Lorry, who had gone out when the young lady and her father went out, now reappeared, and beckoned to Jerr}^ : who, in the slackened interest, could easily get near him. " Jerry, if you wish to take something to eat, you can. But, keep in the way. You will be sure to hear when the jury come in. Don't be a moment behind them, for I want you to take the verdict back to the bank. You are the quickest messenger I know, and will get to Temple Bar long before I can." Jerry had just enough forehead to knuckle, and he knuckled it in acknowledgment of this communication and a shilling. Mr. Carton came up at the moment, and touched Mr. Lorry on the arm. " How is the young lady ? " " She is greatly distressed ; but her father is comforting her, and she feels the better for being out of court.'' I'll tell the prisoner so. It won't do for a respectable bank gentleman like you, to be seen speaking to him publicly, you know." Mr. Lorry reddened as if he were conscious of having debated the point in his mind, and Mr. Carton made his way to the outside of the bar. The way out of court lay in that direction, and Jerry followed him, all eyes, ears, and spikes. " Mr. Darnay ! " The prisoner came forward directly. *^ You will naturally be anxious to hear of the witness, Miss Manette. She will do very well. You have seen the worst ot her agitation." " I am deeply sorry to have been the cause of it. Could you tell her so for me with my fervent acknowledgments ? " A DISAPPOINTMENT, 75 " Yes, I could. I will, if you ask it." Mr. Carton's manner was so careless as to be almost in« Solent. He stood, half turned from the prisoner, lounging with his elbow against the bar. " I do ask it. Accept my cordial thanks." "What," said Carton, still only half turned towards him. do you expect, Mr. Darnay ? " " The worst." " It's the wisest thing to expect, and the likeliest. But I think their withdrawing is in your favor." Loitering on the way out of court not being allowed, Jerry heard no more : but left them — so like each other in feature, so unlike each other in manner — standing side by side, both reflected in the glass above them. An hour and a half limped heavily away in the thief-and- rascal crowded passages below, even though assisted off with mutton pies and ale. The hoarse messenger, uncomfortably seated on a form after taking that refectioi), had dropped into a doze, when a loud murmur and a rapid tide of people setting up the stairs that led to the court, carried him along with them. " Jerry ! Jerry ! " Mr. Lorry was already calling at the door when he got there. " Here, sir ! It's a fight to get back again. Here I am, sir ! " Mr. Lorry handed him a paper through the throng. Quick ! Have you got it ? " "Yes, sir.?" Hastily written on the paper was the word " Acquitted." " If you had sent the message, ' Recalled to Life,' again," muttered Jerry, as he turned, " I should have known what you meant, this time." He had no opportunity of saying, or so much as thinking, anything else, until he was clear of the Old Bailey ; for, the crowd came pouring out with a vehemence that nearly took him off his legs, and a loud buzz swept into the street as il the baffled blye-flies were dispersing in search of other car rion. A TALE OF TWO CITIES, CHAPTER IV. CONGRATULATORY. From the dimly-lighted passages of the court, the la-^t sediment of the human stew that had been boiling there all day, was straining off, when Doctor Manette, Lucie Manette, his daughter, Mr. Lorry, the solicitor for the defence, and its counsel, Mr. Stryver, stood gathered round Mr. Charles Dar- nay — just released — congratulating him on his escape from death. It would have been difficult by a far brighter light, to recognize in Doctor Manette, intellectual of face and upright of bearing, the shoemaker of the garret in Paris. Yet, no one could have looked at him twice, without looking again : even though the opportunity of observation had not extended to the mournful cadence of his low grave voice, and to the ab- straction that overclouded^ him fitfully, without any apparent reason. While one external cause, and that a reference to his long lingering agony, would always — as on the trial — evoke this condition from the depths of his soul, it was also in its nature to arise of itself, and to draw a gloom over him, as incomprehensible to those unacquainted with his story as if they had seen the shadow of the actual Bastille thrown upon him by a summer sun, when the substance was three hundred miles away. Only his daughter had the power of charming this black brooding from his mind. She was the golden thread that united him to a Past beyond his misery, and to a Present beyond his misery : and the sound of her voice, the light oi her face, the touch of her hand, had a strong beneficial influ= ence with him almost always. Not absolutely always, for she could recall some occasions on which her power had failed ; but they were few and slight, and she believed them over. Mr, Darnay had kissed her hand fervently and gratefully, and had turned to Mr. Str3^ver, whom he warmly thanked. Mr. Stryver, a man of little more than thirty, but looking twenty years older than he was, stout, loud, red, bluff, and free from any drawback of delicacy, had a pushing way of shouldering CONG R A TULA TOR Y. 77 himself (morally and physically) into companies and conver- sation's, that argued well for his shouldering his way up in life. He still had his wig and gown on, and he said, squaring himself at his late client to that degree that he squeezed the innocent Mr. Lorry clean out of the group : " I am glad to have brought you off with honor, Mr. Darnay. It was an in- famous prosecution, grossly infamous ; but not the less likely to succeed on that account." " You have laid me under an obligation to you for life — in two senses," said his late client, taking his hand", I have done my best for you, Mr. Darnay ; and my best is as good as another man's, I believe." It clearly being incumbent on some one to say, " Much better," Mr. Lorry said it ; perhaps not quite disinterestedly, but with the interested object of squeezing himself back again. You think so ? " said Mr. Stryver. Well ! you have been present all day, and you ought to know. You are a man of business, too." *^And as such," quoth Mr. Lorry, w4iom the counsel learned in the law had now shouldered back into the group, just as he had previously shouldered him out of it — " as such I will appeal to Doctor Manette, to break up this conference and order us all to our homes. Miss Lucie looks ill, Mr. Darnay has had a terrible day, we are worn out." " Speak for yourself, Mr. Lorry," said Stryver ; I have a night's work to do yet. Speak for yourself." " 1 speak for myself," answered Mr. Lorry, " and for Mr. Darnay, and for Miss Lucie, and Miss Lucie, do you not think I may speak for us all ? " He asked her the question pointedly, and with a glance at her father. His face had become frozen, as it were, in a very curious look at Darnay : an intent look, deepening into a frown of dislike and distrust not even unmixed with fear. With this strange expression on him his thoughts had wandered away. My father," said Lucie, softly laying her hand on his. He slowly shook the shadow off, and turned to her. " Shall we go home, my father t " With a long breath, he answered "Yes." The friends of the acquitted prisoner had dispersed, unde^ the impression — which he himself had originated — that he would not be released that night. The lights were nearly all 78 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. extinguished in the passages, the iron gates were being close(S with a jar and a rattle, and the dismal place was deserted until to-morrow morning's interest of gallows, pillory, whip- ping-post, and branding-iron, should re-people it. Walking between her father and Mr. Darnay, Lucie Manette passed into the open air. A hackney coach was called, and the father and daughter departed in it. Mr. Stryver had left them in the passages, to shoulder his way back to the robing-room. Another person, who had not Joined the group, or interchanged a word with any one of them, but who had been leaning against the wall where its shadow was darkest, had silently strolled out after the rest, and had looked on until the coach drove away. He now stepped up to where Mr. Lorry and Mr. Darnay stood upon the pavement. " So, Mr. Lorry ! Men of business may speak to Mr. Darnay now " Nobody had made any acknowledgment of Mr, Carton's part in the day's proceedings ; nobody had known of it. He was unrobed, and was none the better for it in appearance. " If you knew what a conflicc goes on in the business mind, when the business mind is divided between good- natured impulse and business appearances, you would be amused, Mr. Darnay." Mr. Lorry reddened, and said, warmly, " You have men- tioned that before, sir. We men of business, who serve a House, are not our own masters. We have to think of the House more than ourselves." know, / know," rejoined Mr. Carton, carelessly. " Don't be nettled, Mr. Lorry. You are as good as another, I have no doubt : better, I dare say." "And indeed, sir," pursued Mr. Lorry, not minding him, " I really don't know what you have to do with the matter. If you'll excuse me, as very much your elder, for saying so, I really don't know that it is your business." " Business ! Bless you, / have no business," said Ml Carton. "It is a pity you have not, sir." " I think so, too." "If you had," pursued Mr. Lorry, "perhaps you would attend to it." " Lord love you, no ! — I shouldn't," said Mr. Carton. " Well, sir !" cried Mr. Lorry, thoroughly heated by his CO NCR A TULA TOR V. 79 indifference, " business is a very good thing, and a very re- spectable thing. And, sir, if business imposes its restraints and its silences and impediments, Mr. Darnay as a young gentleman of generosity knows how to make allowance foi that circumstance. Mr. Darnay, good-night, God bless you, sir ! I hope you have been this day preserved for a prosper- ous happy life — Chair there ! " Perhaps a little angry with himself, as well as with the barrister, Mr. Lorry bustled into the chair, and was carried off to Tellson's. Carton, who smelt of port wine, and did not appear to be quite sober, laughed then, and turned to Darnay : This is a strange chance that throws you and me to- gether. This must be a strange night to you, standing alone here with your counterpart on these street stones ? " " I hardly seem yet,'^ returned Charles Darnay, to be- long to this world again. " I don't wonder at it ; it's not so long since you were pretty far advanced on your way to another. You speak faintly." " I begin to think I am faint." " Then why the devil don't you dine } I dined, myself, while those numskulls were deliberating which world you should belong to — this, or some other. Let me show you the nearest tavern to dine well at." Drawing his arm through his own, he took him down Lud- gate-hill to Fleet-street, and so, up a covered way, into a tav- ern. Here, they were shown into a little room, where Charles Darnay was soon recruiting his strength with a good plain dinner and good wine : while Carton sat opposite to him at the same table, with his separate bottle of port before him, and his fully half-insolent manner upon him. " Do you feel, yet, that you belong to this terrestrial scheme again, Mr. Darnay.^ " " I am frightfully confused regarding time and place ; but I am so far mended as to feel that." " It must be an immense satisfaction ! " He said it bitterly, and filled up his glass again : which was a large one. " As to me, the greatest desire I have, is to forget that I belong to it. It has no good in it for me — except wine like this — nor I for it. So we are not much alike in that particu- lar. Indeed, I begin to think we are no^ ^nch alike in any particular, you and I." • 8o A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Confused by the emotion of the day, and feeling his being there with this Double of coarse deportment, to be like a dream, Charles Darnay was at a loss how to answer ; finally; answered not at all. " Now your dinner is done," Carton presently said, "why don't you call a health, Mr. Darney ; why don't you give your toast ? " " What health ? What toast ? " " Why, it's on the tip of your tongue. It ought to be, it must be, I'll swear it's there." " Miss Manette, then ! " Miss Manette, then! " Looking his companion full in the face while he drank the toast. Carton flung his glass over his shoulder against the wall, where it shivered to pieces ; then rang the bell, and ordered in another. " That's a fair young lady to hand to a coach in the dark, Mr. Darnay ! " he said, filling his new goblet. A slight frown and a laconic " Yes," were the answer. " That's a fair young lady to be pitied by and wept for by ! How does it feel ? Is it worth being tried for one's life, to be the object of such sympathy and compassion, Mr. Darnay ? " Again Darnay answered not a word. " She was mightily pleased to have your message, when I gave it her. Not that she showed she was pleased, but I sup- pose she was." The allusion served as a timely reminder to Darnay that this disagreeable companion had, of his own free will, assisted him in the strait of the day. He turned the dialogue to that point, and thanked him for it. " I neither want any thanks, nor merit any," was the care- less rejoinder. " It was nothing to do, in the first place ; and I don't know why I did it, in the second. Mr. Darnay, let me ask you a question." "Willingly, and a small return for your good offices." " Do you think I particularly like you ? " " Really, Mr. Carton," returned the other, oddly discon- certed, " I have not asked myself the question." " But ask yourself the question now." "You have acted as if you do ; but I don't think you do.'' " / don't think I do," said Carton. " I begin to have a very good opinion of your understanding." " Nevertheless," pursued Darnay, rising to ring the bell, CONGRA TULA TOR Y, 8l tfiere is nothing in that, I hope, to prevent my calUng the reckoning, and our parting without ill-blood on either side." Carton rejoining, " Nothing in life ! Darnay rang. " Do you call the whole reckoning ? " said Carton. On his answer- ing in the affirmative, " Then bring me another pint of this same wine, drawer, and come and wake me at ten.'^ The bill being paid, Charles Darnay rose and wished him good-night. Without returning the wish. Carton rose too, with something of a threat of defiance in his manner, and said, " A last word, Mr. Darnay ; you think I am drunk ? I think you have been drinking, Mr. Carton." "Think ? You know I have been drinking." " Since I must say so, I know it." " Then you shall likewise know why, I am a disappointed drudge, sir. I care for no man on earth, and no man on. earth cares for me." ^' Much to be regretted. You might have used your talents better." May be so, Mr. Darnay ; may be not. Don't let your sober face elate you, however; you don't know what it may come to. Good night ! " When he was left alone, this strange being took up a can- dle, went to a glass that hung against the wall, and surveyed himself minutely in it. " Do you particularly like the man 1 " he muttered, at his own image ; why should you particularly like a man who re- sembles you ? There is nothing in you to like \ you know that. Ah, confound you ! What a change you have made in yourself ! A good reason for taking to a man, that he shows you what you have fallen away from, and what you might have been ! Change places with him, and would you have been looked at by those blue eyes as he was, and commiserated by that agitated face as he was ? Come on, and have it out in plain v/ords ! You hate the fellow." He resorted to his pint of wine for consolation, drank it all in a few minutes, and fell asleep on his arms, with his hair straggling over the table, and a long winding-sheet in the can- dle dripping dovv^n upon him. A TALE OF TWO CITIES. CHAPTER V. THE JACKAL. Those were drinking days, and most men drank hard. So very great is the improvement Time has brought about in such habits, that a moderate statement of the quantity of wine and punch which one man would swallow in the course of a night, without any detriment to his reputation as a perfect gentleman, would seem, in these days, a ridiculous exaggera- tion. The learned profession of the law was certainly not be- hind any other learned profession in its Bacchanalian pro- pensities ; neither was Mr. Stryver, already fast shouldering his way to a large and lucrative practice, behind his compeers in this particular, any more than in the drier parts of the legal race. A favorite at the Old Bailey, and eke at the Sessions, Mr. Stryver had begun cautiously to hew away the lower staves of the ladder on which he mounted. Sessions and Old Bailey had now to summon their favorite, specially, to their longing arms ; and shouldering itself towards the visage of the Lord Chief Justice in the Court of King's Bench, the florid coun- tenance of Mr. Stryver might be daily seen, bursting out of the bed of wigs, like a great sunflower pushing its way at the sun from among a rank gardenful of flaring companions. It had once been noted at the Bar, that while Mr. Stryver was a glib man, and an unscrupulous, and a ready, and a bold, he had not that faculty of extracting the essence from a heap of statements, which is among the most striking and necessary of the advocate's accomplishments. But, a remarkable im- provement came upon him as to this. The more business he got, the greater his power seemed to grow of getting at- its pith and marrow; and however late at night he sat carousing with Sy Iney Carton, he always had his points at his fingers' ends in the morning. Sydney Carton, idlest and most unpromising of men, was Stryver's great ally. What the two drank together, between Hilary Term and Michaelmas, might have floated a king's ship. Stryver never had a case in hand, anywhere, but Carton was there, with his hands in his pockets, staring at the ceiling of THE JACKAL. 83 the court ; they went the same Circuit, and even there they pro- longed their usual orgies late into the night, and Carton was rumored to be seen at broad day, going home stealthily and unsteadily to his lodgings, like a dissipated cat. At last, it began to get about, among such as were interested in the mat- ter, that although Sydney Carton would never be a lion, he was an amazingly good jackal, and that he rendered suit and service to Stryver in that humble capacity. " Ten o'clock, sir," said the man at the tavern, whom he had charged to wake him — ten o'clock, sir." " Whafs the matter ? " " Ten o'clock, sir." " What do you mean ? Ten o'clock at night " " Yes, sir. Your honor told me to call you." " Oh ! I remember. Very well, very well." " After a few dull efforts to get to sleep again, which the man dexterously combated by stirring the fire continuously for five minut.es, he got up, tossed his hat on, and walked out. He turned into the Temple, p.nd, having revived him- self by twice pacing the pavements of King's bench-walk and Paper-buildings, turned into the Stryver chambers. The Stryver clerk, who never assisted at these conferences, had gone home, and the Stryver principal opened the door. He had his slippers on, and a loose bed-gown, and his throat was bare for his greater ease. He had that rather wild, strained, seared marking about the eyes, which may be ob- served in all free livers of his class, from the portrait of Jeff- ries downward, and which can be traced, under various dis- guises of Art, through the portraits of every Drinking Age. You are a little late. Memory," said Stryver. " About the usual time ; it may be a quarter of an hour later." They went into a dingy room lined with books and littered with papers, where there was a blazing fire. A kettle steamed upon the hob, and in the midst of the wreck of papers a tabic shone, with plenty of wine upon it, and brandy, and rum, and sugar, and lemons. " You have had your bottle, I perceive, Sydney." " Two to-night, I think. I have been dining with the day's client ; or seeing him dine — it's all one ! " *^ That was a rare point, Sydney, that you brought to bear upon the identification. How did you come by it ? When did it strike you ? " 84 4 TALE OF TWO CITIES, I thought he was rather a handsome fellow, and I thought I should have been much the same sort of fellow, if I had had any luck.'^ Mr. Stryver laughed till he shook his precocious paunch. You and your luck, Sydney ! Get to work, get to work." Sullenly enough, the jackal loosened his dress, went into an adjoining room, and came back with a large jug of cold water, a basin, and a towel or two. Steeping the towels in the water, and partially wringing them out, he folded them on his head in a manner hideous to behold, sat down at the table, and said, " Now I am ready ! " "Not much boiling down to be done to-night. Memory," said Mr. Stryver, gayly, as he looked among his papers. " How much ? " " Only two sets of them." " Give me the worst first." "There they are, Sydney. Fire away ! " The lion then composed himself on his back on a sofa on one side of the drinking-table, while the jackal sat at his own paper-bestrewn table proper, on the other side of it, with the bottles and glasses ready to his hand. Both resorted to the drinking-table without stint, but each in a different way ; the lion for the most part reclining with his hands in his waist- band, looking at the fire, or occasionally flirting with some lighter document ; the jackal, with knitted brows and intent face, so deep in his task, that his eyes did not even follow the hand he stretched out for his glass — which often groped about, for a minute or more, before it found the glass for his lips. Two or three times, the matter in hand became so knotty, that the jackal found it imperative on him to get up, and steep his towels anew. From these pilgrimages to the jug and basin, he returned with such eccentricities of damp head- gear as no words can describe ; which were made the more ludicrous by his anxious gravity. At length the jackal had got together a compact repast for the lion, and proceeded to offer it to him. The lion took it with care and caution, made his selections from it, and his remarks upon it, and the jackal assisted both. When the repast was fully discussed, the lion put his hands in his waist- band again, and lay down to meditate. The jackal then in- vigorated himself with a bumper for his throttle, and a fresh application to his head, and applied himself to the collection of a second meal ; this was administered to the lion in the THE JACKAL. 85 same manner, and was not dispose^ of until the clocks struck three in the morning. And now we have done, Sydney, fill a bumper of punch," said Mr. Stryver. The jackal removed the towels from his head, which had been steaming again, shook himself, yawned, shivered^ and complied. You were very sound, Sydney, in the' matter of those crown witnesses to-day. Every question told." ^' I always am sound ; am I not 1 " " I don't gainsay it. What has roughened your temper ? Put some punch to it and smooth it again." With a deprecatory grunt, the jackal again complied. " The old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School," said Stryver, nodding his head over him as he reviewed him in the present and the past, the old seesaw Sydney. Up one minute and down the next ; now in spirits and now in de- spondency ! " " Ah ! " returned the other, sighing : " yes ! The same Sydney, with the same luck. Even then, I did exercises for other boys, and seldom did my own." " And why not ? " " God knows. It was my way, I suppose." He sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out before him, looking at the fire. "Carton," said his friend, squaring himself at him with a bullying air, as if the fire-grate had been the furnace in which sustained endeavor was forged, and the one delicate thing to be done for the old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School was to shoulder him into it, " your way is, and always was, a lame way. You summon no energy and purpose. Look at me." " Oh, botheration ! " returned Sydney, with a lighter and more good-humored laugh, " don't you be moral ! " How have I done what I have done } " said Stryver ^ " how do I do what I do ? " " Partly through paying me to help you, I suppose. But it's not worth your while to apostrophize me, or the air, about it ; what you want to do, you do. You were always in the front rank, and I was always behind." " I had to get into the front rank ; I was not born there, was I ? " " I was not present at the ceremony ; but my opinion m 86 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. you were," said Carton. At this, he laughed again, and thej both laughed. " Before Shrewsbury, and at Shrewsbury, and ever since Shrewsbury," pursued Carton, ^'you have fallen into your rank, and I have fallen into mine. Even when we were fellow- students in the Student-Quarter of Paris, picking up French, and French law, and other French crumbs that we didn't get much good of, you were always somewhere, and I was always — nowhere." " And whose fault was thiit ? " " Upon my soul, I am not sure that it was not yours. You were always driving and riving and shouldering and pressing, to that restless degree that I had no chance for my life but in rust and repose. It's a gloomy thing, however, to talk about one's own past, with the day breaking. Turn me in some other direction before I go." " Well then ! Pledge me to the pretty witness," said Stryver, holding up his glass. " Are you turned in a pleasant direction ? " Apparently not, for he became gloomy agam. " Pretty witness," he muttered, looking down into his glass. I have had enough of witnesses to-day and to-night ; whose's your pretty witness ? " ''The picturesque doctor's daughter, Miss Manette." " She pretty ? " " Is she not ? " " No." " Why, man alive, she was the admiration of the whole Court ! " " Rot the admiration of the whole Court ! Who made the Old Bailey a judge of beauty .'^ She was a golden-haired doll ! " ^' Do you know, Sidney," said Mr. Stryver, looking at him with sharp eyes, and slowly drawing a hand across his florid face : '' do you know I rather thought, at the time, that you sympathized with the golden-haired doll, and were quick to see what happened to the golden-haired doll " " Quick to see what happened ! If a girl, doll or no doll, swoons within a yard or two of a man's nose, he can see it without a perspective-glass. I pledge you, but I deny the beauty. And now I'll have no more drink ; I'll get to bed." Whea his host followed him out on the staircase with a candle, to light him down the stairs, the day was coldly look- HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE. 87 ing in through its grimy windows. When he got out of the house, the air was cold and sad, the dull sky overcast, the river dark and dim, the whole scene like a lifeless desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning round and round before the morning blast, as if the desert-sand had risen far away, and the first spray of it in its advance had begun to over- whelm the city. Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of hon orable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon, him, gardens in which the fruit of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight.' A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears. Sadly, sadly the sun rose ; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away. CHAPTER VI. HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE. The quiet lodgings of Doctor Manette were in a quiet street corner not far from Soho-square. On the afternoon of a certain fine Sunday when the waves of four months had rolled over the tiial for treason, and carried it, as to the pub- lic interest and memory, far out to sea, Mr. Jarvis Lorry walked along the sunny streets from Clerkenwell^ where he lived, on his way to dine with the Doctor. After several re- lapses into business absorption, Mr. Lorry had become the Doctor's friend, and the quiet street-corner was the sunny part of his life. On this certain fine Sunday, Mr. Lorry walked towards Soho, early in the afternoon, for three reasons of habit 88 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Firstly, because, on fine Sundays, he often walke«^ before dinner, with the Doctor and Lucie ; secondly, because, on un- favorable Sundays he was accustomed to be with them as the family friend, talking, reading, looking out of window, and generally getting through the day ; thirdly, because he hap- pened to have his own little shrewd doubts to solve, and knew how the ways of the Doctor's household pointed to that time as a likely time for solving them. A quainter corner than the corner w^here the Doctor lived, was not to be found in London. There was no way through it, and the front windows of the Doctor's lodgings commanded a pleasant little vista of street that had a congenial air of retirement on it. There were few buildings then, north of the Oxford-road, and forest-trees flourished, and wild flowers grew, and the hawthorn blossomed, in the now vanished fields. As a consequence,, country airs circulated in Soho with a vigorous freedom, instead of languishing into the parish like stray paupers without a settlement ; and there was many a good south wall, not far off, on which the peaches ripened in their season. The summer light struck into the corner brilliantly in the earlier part of the day ; but, when the streets grew hot, the corner was in shadow, though not in shadow so remote but that you could see beyond it into a glare of brightness. It was a cool spot, staid but cheerful, a wonderful place for echoes, and a very harbor from the raging streets. There ought to have been a tranquil bark in such an anchorage, and there was. The Doctor occupied two floors of a large still house, where several callings purported to be pursued by day, but whereof little was audible any day, and which was shunned by all of them by night. In a building at the back, attainable by a court-yard where a plane-tree rustled its green leaves, church-organs claimed to be made, and silver to be chased, and likewise gold to be beaten by some myste- rious giant who had a golden arm starting out of the wall of the front hall — as if he had beaten himself precious, and menaced a similar conversion of all visitors. Very little of these trades, or of a lonely lodger rumored to live up stairs, or of a dim coach-trimming maker asserted to have a count- 'ing house below, was ever heard or seen. Occasionally, a stray workman putting his coat on, traversed the hall, or a stranger peered about there, or a distant clink was heard across the court-yard, or a thump from the golden giant. HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE. 89 These, however, were only the exceptions required to prove the rule that the sparrows in the plane-tree behind the house, and the echoes in the corner before it, had their own way from Sunday morning unto Saturday night. Doctor Manette received such patients here as his old reputation, and its revival in the floating whispers of his stor}^, brought him. His scientific knowledge, and his vigilance and skill in conducting ingenious experiments, brought him other- wise into moderate request, and he earned as much as he wanted. These things were within Mr. Jarvis Lorry's knowledge, thoughts, and notice, when he rang the door-bell of the tran- quil house in the corner, on the fine Sunday afternoon. " Doctor Manette at home 1 " Expected home. " Miss Lucie at home ? " Expected home. Miss Pross at home ? " Possibly at home, but of a certainty impossible for hand- maid to anticipate intentions of Miss Pross, as to admission or denial of the fact. " As I am at home myself," said Mr. Lorry, " I'll go up stairs." Although the Doctor's daughter had known nothing of the country of her birth, she appeared to have innately derived from it that ability to make much of little means, which is one of its most useful and most agreeable characteristics. Simple as the furniture was, it was set off by so many little adorn- ments, of no value but for their taste and fancy, that its efTect was delightful. The disposition of everything in the rooms, from the largest object to the least ; the arrangement of colors, the elegant variety and contrast obtained by thrift in trifles, by delicate hands, clear eyes, and good sense ; were at once so pleasant in themselves, and so expressive of their originator, that, as Mr. Lorry stood looking about him, the very chairs and tables seemed to ask him, with something of that peculiar expression which he knew so well by this time, whether he approved } There were three rooms on a floor, and, the doors by which they communicated being put open that the air might pass freely through them all, Mr. Lorry, smilingly observant of that fanciful resemblance which lie detected all round him, W^alked from one to another. The flrst was the best room, 90 A TALE OF TWO CTTIES. and in it were Lucie's birds, and flowers, and books, and desk^ and work-table, and box of water-colors ; the second was the Doctor's consulting-room, used also as the dining-room ; the third, changingly speckled by the rustle of the plane-tree in the yard, was the Doctor's bed-room, and there, in a corner, stood the disused shoemaker's benCh and tray of tools, much as it had stood on the fifth floor of the dismal house by the wine-shop, in the suburb of Saint Antoine in Paris. ^' I wonder," said Mr. Lorry, pausing in his looking about, " that he keeps that reminder of his sufferings about him ! " " And why wonder at that 1 " was the abrupt inquiry that made him start. It proceeded from Miss Pross, the wild red woman, strong of hand, whose acquaintance he had first made at the Royal George Hotel at Dover, and had since improved. " I should have thought -" Mr. Lorry began. Pooh ! You'd have thought ! " said Miss Pross ; and Mr. Lorry left oif. How do you do ? " inquired that lady then — sharply, and yet as if to express that she bore him no malice. " I am pretty well, I thank you," answered Mr. Lorry, with meekness ; how are you ? " "Nothing to boast of," said Miss Pross. " Indeed ? " " Ah 1 indeed ! " said Miss Pross. " I am very much put out about my Ladybird." "Indeed.? " " For gracious sake say something else besides * indeed,' or you'll fidget me to death," said Miss Pross : whose char- acter (dissociated from stature) was shortness. " Really, then ? '^ said Mr. Lorry, as an amendment. " Really, is bad enough," returned Miss Pross, " but better. Yes, I am very much put out." " May I ask the cause ? " " I don't want dozens of people who are not at all worthy of Ladybird, to come here looking after her," said Miss Pross. " Do dozens come for that purpose ? " " Hundreds," said Miss Pross. It was characteristic of this lady (as of some other people before her time and since) that whenever her original proposi- tion was questioned, she exaggerated it. " Dear me " said Mr. Lorry, as the safest remark he could think of. HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE. 9^ " I have lived with the darling — or the darhng has lived with me, and paid me for it ; which she certainly should never have done, you may take your affidavit, if I could have afforded to keep either myself or her for nothing — since she was ten years old. And it's really very hard," said Miss Pross. Not seeing with precision what was very hard, Mr. Lorry shook his head ; using that important part of himself as a soft of fairy cloak that would fit anything. " All sorts of people who are not in the least degree worthy of the pet, are always turning up," said Miss Pross. When you began it " " / began it, Miss Pross " Didn't you ? Who brought, her father to life ? " " Oh ! If //laf was beginning it " said Mr. Lorry. It wasn't ending it, I suppose ? I say, when you began it, it was hard enough ; not that I have any fault to find with Doctor Manette, except that he is not worthy of such a daughter, which is no imputation on him, for it was not to be expected that anybody should be, under any circumstances. But it really is doubly and trebly hard to have crowds and multitudes of people turning up after him (I could have for- given him), to take Ladybird's affections away from me.'^ Mr. Lorry knew Miss Pross to be very jealous, but he also knew her by this time to be, beneath the service of her eccen- tricity, one of those unselfish creatures — found only among women — who will, for pure love and admiration, bind them- selves willing slaves, to youth when they have lost it, to beauty that they never had, to accomplishments that they were never fortunate enough to gain, to bright hopes that never shone upon their own sombre lives. He knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faith- ful service of the heart ; so rendered and so free from any mercenary taint, he had such an exalted respect for it, that in the retributive arrangements made by his own mind — we all make such arrangements, more or less — he stationed Miss Pross much nearer to the lower Angels than many ladies im- m.easurably better got up both by Nature and Art, who had balances at Tellson's. "There never was, nor will be, but one man worthy of Ladybird," said Miss Pross; "and that was my brother Solomon, if he hadn't made a mistake in life.'^ Here again : Mr. Lorry's inquiries into Miss Prose's per- sonal history had established the fact that her brother Solo* 92 A TALE OF Tiro CITIES. mon was a heartless scoundrel who had stripped her of every, thug she possessed, as a stake to speculate with, and had abandoned her in her poverty for evermore, vvith no touch of compunction. Miss Press's fidelity of belief in Solomon (deducting a mere trifle for this slight mistake) was quite a serious matter with Mr. Lorry, and had its Vv'eight in his good opinion of her. " As we happen to be alone for the moment, and are both people of business,'' he said, when they had got back to the drawing-room and had sat down there in friendly relations, let me ask you — does the Doctor, in talking with Lucie, never refer to the shoemaking time, yet ? " Never." And yet keeps that bench and those tools beside him ? " Ah ! " returned Miss Pross, shaking her head. But I don't say he don't refer to it within himself." Do you believe that he thinks of it much ? " I do," said Miss Pross. " Do you imagine " Mr. Lorry had begun, when Miss Pross took him up short with : " Never imagine anything. Have no imagination at all." " I stand corrected ; do you suppose — you go so far as to suppose, sometimes?" " Now and then," said Miss Pross. " Do you suppose," Mr. Lorry went on, with a laughing twinkle in his bright eye, as it looked kindly at her, that Doctor Manette has any theory of his own, preserv^ed through all those years, relative to the cause of his being so oppressed ; perhaps, even to the name of his oppressor ? " I don't suppose anvthing about it but what Ladybird tells me." "And that is ?" " That she thinks he has.*' " Now don't be angry at my asking all these questions ; because I am a mere dull man of business, and you are a woman of business." Dull ? " Miss Pross inquired, with placidity. Rather wishing his modest adjective away, Mr. Lorry re- plied, " No, no, no. Surely not. To return to business : — • Is it not remarkable that Doctor Manette, unquestionably innocent of any crime as we are all well assured he is, should never touch upon that question ? I will not say with me, though he had business relations with me many years ago, HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE 93 and we are now intimate ; I will say with the fair daughter to whom he is so devotedly attached, and who is so devotedly attached to him ? Believe me, Miss Pross, I don't approach the topic with you, out of curiosity, but out of zealous in- terest." Well ! To the best of my understanding, and bad's the best, you'll tell me,'^ said Miss Pross, softened by the tone of the apology, " he is afraid of the whole subject." Afraid ?" " It's plain enough, I should think, why he may be. It's a dreadful remembrance. Besides that, his loss of himself grew out of it. Not knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing himself again. That alone wouldn't make the subject pleas- ant, I should think." It was a profounder remark than Mr. Lorry had looked for. "True," said he, "and fearful to reflect upon. Yet, a doubt lurks m my mind. Miss Pross, whether it is good for Doctor Manette to have that suppression always shut up within him. Indeed, it is this doubt and the uneasiness it sometimes causes me that has led me to our present con- fidence." " Can't be helped," said Miss Pross, shaking her head. " Touch that string, and he instantly changes for the worse. Better leave it alone. In short, must leave it alone, like or no like. Sometimes, he gets up in the dead of the night, and will be heard, by us overhead there, walking up and down, walking up and down, in his room. Ladybird has learnt to know then that his mind is walking up and down, walking up and down, in his old prison. She hurries to him, and they go on together, walking up and down, walking up and down, until he is composed. But he never says a word of the true reason of his restlessness, to her, and she finds it best not to hint at it to him. In silence they go walking up and down together, walking up and down together, till her love and company have brought him to himself." Notwithstanding Miss Pross's denial of her own imagi- nation, there was a perception of the pain of being monoto- nously haunted by one sad idea, in her repetition of the phrase, walking up and down, which testified to her possess- ing such a thing. The corner has been mentioned as a wonderful corner for echoes ; it had begun to echo so resoundingly to the tread of 94 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. coming feet, that it seemed as though the very mention oi that weary pacing to and fro had set it going. Here they are ! " said Miss Pross, rising to break up the conference , and now we shall have hundreds of people pretty soon ! " It was such a curious corner in its acoustical properties,, such a peculiar Ear of a place, that as Mr. Lorry stood at the open window, looking for the father and daughter whose steps he heard, he fancied they would never approach. Not only would the echoes die away, as though the steps had gone ; but, echoes of other steps that never came would be heard in their stead, and would die away for good when they seemed close at hand. However, father and daughter did at last appear, and Miss Pross was ready at the street door to receive them. Miss Pross was a pleasant sight, albeit wild, and red, and grim, taking off her darling's bonnet when she came up stairs^ and touching it up with the ends of her handkerchief, and blowing the dust off it, and folding her mantle ready for lay- ing by, and smoothing her rich hair with as much pride as she could possibly have taken in her own hair if she had been the vainest and handsomest of women. Her darling was a pleas- ant sight too, em.bracing her and thanking her, and protesting against her taking so much trouble for her — which last she only dared to do playfully, or Miss Pross, sorely hurt, would have retired to her own chamber and cried. The Doctor was a pleasant sight too, looking on at them, and telling Miss Pross how she spoilt Lucie, in accents and with eyes that had as much spoiling in them as Miss Pross had, and would have had more if it were possible. Mr. Lorry was a pleasant sight too, beaming at all this in his little wig, and thanking his bachelor stars for having lighted him in his declining years to a Home. But, no Hundreds of people came to see the sights, and Mr. Lorry looked in vain for the fulfilment of Miss Pross's prediction. Dinner-time and still no Hundreds of people. In the arrangements of the little household. Miss Pross took charge of the lower regions, and always acquitted herself marvellously. Her dinners, of a very modest quality, were so well cooked and so well served, and so neat in their contrivances, half English and half French, that nothing could be better. Misg Pross's friendship being of the thoroughly practical kind^ she had ravaged Soho and the adjacent provinces, in search of HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE. impoverished French, who, tempted by shillings and half crowns, would impart culinary mysteries to her. From these decayed sons and daughters of Gaul, she had acquired such wonderful arts, that the woman and girl who formed the staff of domestics regarded her as quite a Sorceress, or Cinderella's Godmother : who would send out for a fowl, a rabbit, a vege- table or two from the garden, and change them into anything she pleased. On Sundays, Miss Pross dined at the Doctor's table, but on other days persisted in taking her meals at unknown periods, either in the lower regions, or in her own room on the second floor — a blue chamber, to which no one but her Ladybird ever gained admittance. On this occasion. Miss Pross, responding to Ladybird's pleasant face and pleasant efforts to please her, unbent exceedingly , so the dinner was very pleasant, too. It was an oppressive day, and, after dinner, Lucie pro- posed that the wine should be carried out under the plane- tree, and they should sit there in the air. As everything turned upon her, and revolved about her, they went out under the plane-tree, and she carried the wine down for the special benefit of Mr„ Lorry. She had installed herself, some time before, as Mr. Lorry's cup-bearer ; and while they sat under the plane-tree, talking, she kept his glass replenished. Mys- terious backs and ends of houses peeped at them as they talked, and the plane-tree whispered to them in its own way above their heads. Still, the Hundreds of people did not present themselves. Mr. Darnay presented himself while they were sitting under the plane-tree, but he was only One. Doctor Manette received him kindly, and so did Lucie. But, Miss Pross suddenly became afflicted with a twitching in the head and body, and retired into the house. She was not unfrequently the victim of this disorder, and she called it, in familiar conversation, " a fit of the jerks.'' The Doctor was in his best condition, and looked spe- cially young. The resemblance between him and Lucie was very strong at such times, and as they sat side by side, she leaning on his shoulder, and he resting his arm on the back of her chair, it was very agreeable to trace the likeness. He had been talking all day, on many subjects, and with unusual vivacity. Pray, Doctor Manette," said Mr. Darnay, as they sat under the plane-tree — and he said it in the nat 96 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. ural pursuit of the topic in hand, which happened to be the old buildings of London — have you seen much of the Tower?'' Lucie and I have been there ; but only casually. We have seen enough of it to know that it teems with interest \ little more." " / have been there, as you remember/' said Darnay, with a smile, though reddening a little angrily, in another char- acter, and not in a character that gives facilities fcj seeing much of it. They told me a curious thing when I was there." " What was that " Lucie asked. In making some alterations, the workmen came upon an old dungeon, which had been, for many years, built up and forgotten. Every stone of its inner wall was covered by in- scriptions which had been carved by prisoners — dates, names, complaints, and prayers. Upon a corner stone in an angle of the wall, one prisoner, who seemed to have gone to execu- tion, had cut as his last work, three letters. They were done with some very poor instrument, and hurriedly, with an un- steady hand. At first, they were read as D. I. C. ; but, on being more carefully examined, the last letter was found to btj G. There was no record or legend of any prisoner with those initials, and many fruitless guesses were made what the name could have been. At length, it was suggested that the letters were not initials, but the complete word. Dig. The floor was examined very carefully under the inscription, and, in the earth beneath a stone, or tile, or some fragment of pav- ing, were found the ashes of a paper, mingled with the ashes of a small leathern case or bag. What the unknown pris- oner had written will never be read, but he had written some- thing, and hidden it away to keep it from the gaoler." " My father," exclaimed Lucie, you are ill ! " He had suddenly started up, with his hand to his head. His manner and his look quite terrified them all. " No, my dear, not ill. There are large drops of rain falling, and they made me start. We had better go in." He recovered himself almost instantly. Rain was really falling in large drops, and he showed the back of his hand with rain-drops on it. But, he said not a single word in ref- erence to the discovery that had been told of, and, as they went into the house, the business eye of Mr. Lorry either de- tected, or fancied it detected, on his face, as it turned towards Charles Darnay the same singular look that had been upon HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE. 97 it when it turned towards him in the passages of the Court House. He recovered himself so quickly, however, that Mr. Lorry had doubts of his business eye. The arm of the golden giant in the hall was not more steady than he was, when he stopped under it to remark to them that he was not yet proof against slight surprises (if he ever would be), and that the rain had startled him. Tea-time, and Miss Pross making tea, with another fit of the jerks upon her, and yet no Hundreds of people. Mr. Carton had lounged in, but he only made Two. The night was so very sultry, that although they sat with doors and windows open, they were overpowered by heat. When the tea-table was done with, they all moved to one of the windows, and looked out into the heavy twilight. Lucie s^t by her father ; Darnay sat beside her ; and Carton leaned against a window. The curtains were long and white, and some of the thunder-gusts that whirled into the corner, caught them up to the ceiling, and waved them like spectral wings. ^ The rain-drops are still falling, large, heavy, and few,'' said Doctor Manette. It comes slowly." It comes surely,'^ said Carton. They spoke low, as people watching and waiting mostly do ; as people in a dark room, watching and waiting for Lightning, always do. There was a great hurry in the streets, of people speeding away to get shelter before the storm broke ; the wonderful corner for echoes resounded with the echoes of footsteps com- ing and going, yet not a footstep was there. A multitude of people, and yet a solitude ! " said Darnay tvhen they had listened for a while. " Is it not impressive, Mr. Darnay? " asked Lucie. " Some« times, I have sat here of an evening, until I have fancied — but even the shade of a foolish fancy makes me shudder to night, when all is so black and solemn " *'Let us shudder too. We may know what it is.'' It will seem nothing to you. Such whims are only im- pressive as we originate them, I think ; they are not to be communicated. I have sometimes sat alone here of an even- ing, listening, until I have made the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by and by into our lives." " There is a great crowd coming one day into our lires, if that be so," Sydney Carton struck in, in his moody way. 98 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. The footsteps were incessant, and the hurry of them be came more and more rapid. The corner echoed and re echoed with the tread of feet ; some, as it seemed, under thft windows ; some, as it seemed, in the roorn ; some coming, some going, some breaking off, some stopping altogether ; all in the distant streets, and not one within sight. " Are all these footsteps destined to come to all of us. Miss iVIanette, or are we to divide them among us ? " I don't know, Mr. Darnay ; I told you it was a foolish fancy, but you asked for it. When I have yielded myself to it, I have been alone, and then I have imagined them the footsteps of the people who are to come into my life, and my fathers." " I take them into mine ! " said Carton. " / ask no ques- tions and make no stipulations. There is a great crowd bear- ing down upon us. Miss Manette, and I see them by the Lightning." He added the last words, after there had been a vivid flash which had shown him lounging in the window. " And I hear them ! " he added again, after a peal oi thunder. Here they come, fast, fierce, and furious ! " It was the rush and roar of rain that he typified, and it stopped him, for no voice could be heard in it. A memorable storm of thunder and lightning broke with that sweep of water, and there was not a moment's interval in crash, and fire, and rain, until after the moon rose at midnight. The great bell of Saint Paul's was striking One in the cleared air, when Mr. Lorry, escorted by Jerry, high-booted and bearing a lantern, set forth on his return-passage to Clerkenwell. There were solitary patches of road on the way between Soho and Clerkenwell, and Mr. Lorry, mindful of footpads, always retained Jerry for this service : though it was usually performed a good two hours earlier. " What a night it has been ! Almost a night, Jerry," said Mr. Lorry, to bring the dead out of their graves." I never see the night myself, master — nor yet I don't expect to — what would do that," answered Jerry. "Good-night, Mr. Carton," said the man of business. " Good-night, Mr. Darnay. Shall we ever see such a night again, together ! " Perhaps. Perhaps, see the great crowd of people with its rush and roar, bearing down upon them, too MONSEIGNEUR IN TOWN. 99 CHAPTER VII. MONSEIGNEUR IN TOWN. MoNSEiGNEUR, One of the great lords in power at the Court, held his fortnightly reception in his grand hotel in Paris. Monseigneur was in his inner room, his sanctuary of sanctuaries, the Holiest of Holiests to the crowd of worship- pers in the suite of rooms without. Monseigneur was about to take his chocolate. Monseigner could swallow a great many things with ease, and was by some few sullen minds supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France ; but, his morning's chocolate could not so much as get into the throat of Monseigneur, without the aid of four strong men besides the Cook. Yes. It took four men, all four a-blaze with gorgeous decoration, and the Chief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur's lips. One lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence ; a second, milled and frothed the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function ; a third, presented the favored napkin ; a fourth (he of the two gold watches), poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring Heavens. Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by ,only three men ; he must have died of two. ' Monseigneur had been out at a little supper last night, ' where the Comedy and the Grand Opera were charmingly represented. Monseigneur was out at a little supper most nights, with fascinating company. So polite and so impressi- ble was Monseigneur, that the Comedy and the Grand Opera had far more influence with him in the tiresome articles of slate affairs and state secrets, than the needs of all France, A happy circumstance for France, as the like always is for all countries similarly favored ! — always was for England (byway of example), in the regretted days of the merry Stuart who sold it. JOO A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general public business, which was, to let everything go on in its own way ; of particular public business, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea that it must all go his way — tend to his own power and pocket. Of his pleasures, general and particular, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea, that the world. >/^as made for them. The text of his order (altered from the original by only a pronoun, which is not much) ran : ''The earth and the fulness thereof are mine, saith Monseigneur." Yet, Monseigneur had slowly found that vulgar embarrass- ments crept into his affairs, both private and public ; and he had, as to both classes of affairs, allied himself perforce with a Farmer-General. As to finances public, because Monseign- eur could not make anythmg at all of them, and must con- sequently let them out to somebody who could ; as to finances private, because Farmer-Generals were rich, and Monseigneur, efter generations of great luxury and expense, was growing poor. Hence Monseigneur had taken his sister from a convent, while there was yet time to ward off the impending veil, the cheapest garment she could wear, and had bestowed her as a prize upon a very rich Farmer-General, poor in family. Which Farmer-General, carrying an appropriate cane with a goldep apple on the top of it, was now among the company in the outer rooms, much prostrated before by mankind — always excepthig superior mankind of the blood of Monseigneur, who, his own wife included, looked down upon him with the loftiest contempt. A sumptuous man was the Farmer-General. Thirty horses stood in his stables, twenty-four male domestics sat in his halls, six body-women waited on his wife. As one who pretended to do nothing but plunder and forage where he could, the Farmer-General — howsoever his matrimonial relations con- duced to social morality — was at least the greatest reality among the personages who attended at the hotel of Monseign- eur that day. For, the rooms, though a beautiful scene to look at, and adorned with every device of decoration tliat the taste and skill of the time could achieve, were, in truth, not a sound business ; considered with any reference to the scarecrows in the rags and nightcaps elsewhere (and not so far off, either, but that the watching towers of Notre Dame, almost equi-distant from the two extremes, could see them both), they would have been an exceedingly uncomfortable business — if that could have MONSEJGNEUR IN TOWN, loi been anybody's business, at the house of Monseigneur. Mil- itary officers destitute of military knowledge ; naval officers with no idea of a ship ; civil officers without a notion of affairs; brazen ecclesiastics, of the worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives; all totally unfit for their several callings, all lying horribly in pretending to belong to them, but all nearly or remotely of the order of Monseigneur, and therefore foisted on all public employments from which anything was to be got \ these were to be told off by the score and the score. People not immediately connected wdth Mon- seigneur or -the State, yet equally unconnected with anything that was real, or with Uves passed in travelling by any straight road to any true earthly end, were no less abundant. Doctors who made great fortunes out of dainty remedies for imaginary disorders that never existed, smiled upon their courtly patients in the ante-chambers of Monseigneur. Projectors who had discovered ever^^ kind of remedy for the little evils wdth which the State was touched, except the remedy of setting to work in earnest to root out a single sm, poured their distracting babble into any ears they could lay hold of, at the reception of Monseigneur. Unbelieving Philosophers who were remo- delling the world with w^ords and making card-towers of Babel to scale the skies with, talked with Unbelieving Chemists wh(^ had an eye on the transmutation of metals, at this wonderful gathering accumulated by Monseigneur. Exquisite gentlemep of the finest breeding, which was at that remarkable time — ' and has been since — to be known by its fniits of indifference* to every natural subject of human interest, were in the most exemplary state of exhaustion, at the hotel of Morseigneur, Such homes had these various notabilities left behind them Id the fine world of Paris, that the spies among the assembled devotees of Monseigneur — forming a goodly halt of the polite company — would have found it hard to discover among the angels of that sphere one solitary wife, who, in her manners and appearance, owned to being a Mother. Indeed, except for the mere act of bringing a troublesome creature into this world — which does not go far towards the realization of the name of mother — there was no such thing known to the fashion. Peasant women kept the unfashionable babies clo^e, and brought them up, and charming grand-mammas of sixty- dressed and supped as at twenty. The leprosy of unreality disfigured ever}^ human creature in attendance upon Monseigneur. In the outermost room M02 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. were half a dozen exceptional people who had had, for a fe\^ years, some vague misgiving in them that things in general were going rather wrong. As a promising way of setting them right, half of the half-dozen had become members of a fan- tastic sect of Convulsionists, and were even then considering within themselves whether they should foam, rage, roar, and turn cataleptic on the spot — thereby setting up a highly in- telligible finger-post to the Future, for Monseigneur's guidance. Besides these Dervishes, were other three who had rushed mto another sect, which mended matter with a jargon about the Centre of Truth : Holding that Man had got out of the Centre of Truth — which did not need much demonstration — but had not got out of the Circumference, and that he was to be kept from flying out of the Circumference, and was even to be shoved back into the Centre, by fasting and seeing of spirits. Among these, accordingly, much discoursing with spirits went on — and it did a world of good which never be- came manifest. But, the comfort was, that all the company at the grand hotel of Monseigneur were perfectly dressed. If the Day of Judgment had only been ascertained to be a dress day, every- body there would have been eternally correct. Such frizzling and powdering and sticking up of hair, such delicate com- plexions artificially preserved and mended, such gallant swords to look at, and such delicate honor to the sense of smell, would surely keep anything going, for ever and ever. The exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding wore little pendent trinkets that chinked as they languidly moved ; these golden fetters rang like precious little bells ; and what with that ringing, and with the rustle of silk and brocade and fine linen, there was a flutter in the air that fanned Saint Antoine and his devouring hunger far away. Dress was the one unfailing talisman and charm used for keeping all things in their places. Everybody was dressed for a Fancy Ball that was never to leave off. From the Palace of the Tuileries, through Monseigneur and the whole Court, through the Chambers, the Tribunals of Justice, and all society (except the scare-crows), the Fancy Ball descended to the Common Executioner : who, in pursuance of the charm, was required to officiate frizzled, powdered, in a gold-laced coat, pumps, and white silk stockings." At the gallows and the wheel — the axe was a rarity — Monsieur Paris, as it was the episcopal mode among his brother Professors of the pro- MONSEIGNEUR IN TOWN. 103 vinces, Monsieur Orleans, and the rest, to call him, presided in this dainty dress. And who among the company at Mon- seigneur's reception in that seventeen hundred and eightieth year of our Lord, could possibly doubt, that a system rooted in a frizzled hangman, powdered, gold-laced, pumped, and wliite silk stockinged, would see the very stars out 1 Mon seigneur having eased his four men of their burdens and taken his chocolate, caused the doors of the Holiest of iHoliests to be thrown open, and issued forth. Then, what submission, what cringing and fawning, what servility, what abject humiliation ! As to bowing down in body and spirit, nothing in that way was left for Heaven — which may have been one among other reasons why the worshippers of Mon- seigneur never troubled it. Bestowing a word of promise here and a smile there, a whisper on one happy slave and a wave of the hand on another, Monseigneur affably passed through his rooms to the remote region of the Circumference of Truth. There, Mon- seigneur turned, and came back again, and so in due course of time got himself shut up in his sanctuary by the chocolate sprites, and was seen no more. The show being over, the flutter in the air became quite a little storm, and the precious little bells went ringing down stairs. There was soon but one person left of all the crowd, and he, with his hat under his arm and his snuff-box in his hand, slowly passed among the mirrors on his way out. " I devote you," said this person, stopping at the last door on his way, and turning in the direction of the sanctuary, ^' to the Devil ! With that, he shook the snuff from his fingers as if he had shaken the dust from his feet and quietly walked down stairs. He was a man of about sixty, handsomely dressed, haughty in manner, and with a face like a fine mask. A face of a transparent paleness ; every feature in it clearly defined ; one set expression on it. The nose, beautifully formed otherwise, was very slightly pinched at the top of each nostril. In those two compressions, or dints, the only little change that the face ever showed, resided. They persisted in changing color some- times, and they would be occasionally dilated and contracted by something like a faint pulsation ; then, they gave a look of treachery, and cruelty, to the whole countenance. Examined with attention, its capacity of helping such a look was to be found in the line of the mouth, and the lines of the orbits of /4 lALE OF TWO CITIES. the eyes, being; much too horizontal and thin ; still, in the effect tne face i^ade, it was a handsome face, and a remark- able one. Its ownex went down stairs into the court-yard, got into his carriage, zxid drove away. Not many people had talked with him at the reception ; he had stood in a little space apart, and Monseigneur might have been warmer in his manner. It appeared, under the circumstances, rather agreeable to him to see the common people dispersed before his horses, and often barely escaping from being run down. His man drove as if he were charging an enemy, and the furious recklessness of the man brought no check into the face, or to the lips, of the master. The complaint had som.etimes made itself audible, even in that deaf city and dumb age, that, in the narrow streets without footways, the fierce patrician custom of hard driving endangered and maimed the mere vulgar in a bar- barous manner. But, few cared enough for that to think of it a second time, and, in this matter, as in all others, the com- • mon wretches were left to get out of their difficulties as they could. With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman aban- donment of consideration not easy to be understood in these days, the carriage dashed through streets and swept round corners, with women screaming before it, and men clutching each other and clutching children out of its way. At last, swooping at a street corner by a fountain, one of its wheels came to a sickening little jolt, and there was a loud cry from a number of voices, and the horses reared and plunged. But for the latter inconvenience, the carriage probably would not have stopped ; carriages were often known to drive on, and leave their wounded behind, and v/hy not ? But the frightened valet had got down in a hurry, and there were twenty hands at the horses' bridles. What has gone wrong ? " said Monsieur, calmly looking out. A tall man in a nightcap had caught up a bundle from among the feet of the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the fountain, and was down in the mud and wet, howling over it like a wild animal. Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis ! " said a ragged and submissive man, "it is a child." Why does he make that abominable noise ? Is it his child?" MONSEIGNEUR IN luiVN. Excuse me, Monsieur the Marquis — it is a pity — yes." The fountain was a little removed ; for the street opened, v«/here it was, into a space some ten or twelve yard's square. As the tall man suddenly got up from the ground, and came running at the carriage, Monsieur the Marquis clapped his hand for an instant on his sword-hilt. " Killed ! " shrieked the man, in wild desperation, extend ing both arms at their length above his head, and staring at him. " Dead ! The people closed round, and looked at Monsieur the Marquis. There was nothing revealed by the many eyes that looked at him but watchfulness and eagerness ; there was no visible menacing or anger. Neither did the people say any- thing ; after the first cry, they had been silent, and they re- mained so. The voice of the submissive man who had spoken, was fiat and tame in its extreme submission. Monsieur the Marquis ran his eyes over them all, as if they had been mere rats come out of their holes. He took out his purse. "It is extraordinary to me," said he, "that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is for ever in. the way. How do I know what in- jury you have done my horses. See ! Give him that." He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all the heads craned forward that all the eyes might look down at it as it fell. The tall man called out again with a most un- earthly cry, " Dead 1 " He was arrested by the quick arrival of another man, for whom the rest made way. On seeing him, the miserable creature fell upon his shoulder, sobbing and crying, and pointing to the fountain, where some women were stooping over the motionless bundle, and moving gently about it. They were as silent, however, as the men. " I know all, I know all," said the last comer. " Be a brave man, my Gaspard ! It is better for the poor little play- thing to die so, than to live. It has died in a moment with- out pain. Could it have lived an hour as happily?" " You are a philosopher, you there," said the Marquis, smiling. " How do they call you ? " " They call me Defarge." " Of what trade ? " " Monsieur the Marquis, vendor of wine." " Pick up that, philosopher and vendor of wine," said the io6 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Marquis, throwing him another gold coin, " and spend it as you will. The horses there ; are they right ? " Without deigning to look at the assemblage a second time^ Monsieur the Marquis leaned back in his seat, and was just being driven away with the air of a gentleman who had accv dentally broke some common thing, and had paid for it, and could afford to pay for it ; when his ease was suddenly dis turbed by a coin flying into his carriage, and ringing on its floor. " Hold ! " said Monsieur the Marquis. Hold the horses ! Who threw that.? " He looked to the spot where Defarge the vendor of wine had stood, a moment before ; but the wretched father was grovelling on his face on the pavement in that spot, and the figure that stood beside him was the figure of a dark stout woman, knitting. You dogs ! " said the Marquis, but smoothly, and wich an unchanged front, except as to the spots on his nose : " I * would ride over any of you very willingly, and exterminate you from the earth. If I knew which rascal threw at the car- riage, and if that brigand were sufficiently near it, he should be crushed under the wheels." So cowed was their condition, and so long and hard theii experience of what such a man could do to them, within the law and beyond it, that not a voice or a hand, or even an eye was raised. Among the men, not one. But the woman who stood knitting looked up steadily, and looked the Marquis in the face. It was not for his dignity to notice it ; his con- temptuous eyes passed over her, and over all the other rats ; and he leaned bkck in his seat again, and gave the word Go on ! " He was driven on, and other carriages came whirling by in quick succession ; the Minister, the State-Projector, the Farmer-General, the Doctor, the Lawyer, the Ecclesiastic, the Grand Opera, the comedy, the whole Fancy Ball in a bright continuous flow, came whirling by. The rats had crept out of their holes to look on, and they remained looking on for hours ; soldiers and police often passing between them and the spectacle, and making a barrier behind which they slunk, and through which they peeped. The father had long ago taken up his bundle and hidden himself away with it, when the women who had tended the bundle while it lay on the base of the fountain, sat there watching the running of tho MONSEIGNEUR IN THE COUNTRY, water and the rolling of the Fancy Ball — when the one woman who had stood conspicuous, knitting, still knitted on with the steadfastness of Fate. The water of the fountain ran, the swift river ran, the day ran into evening, so much life in the city ran into death according to rule, time and tide waited for no man, the rats were sleeping close together in their dark lioles again, the Fancy Ball was lighted up at supper, all things ran their course. CHAPTER VIII. MONSEIGNEUR IN THE COUNTRY. A BEAUTIFUL landscape, with the corn bright in it, but not abundant. Patches of poor rye where corn should have been, patches of poor peas and beans, patches of most coarse vege- table substitutes for wheat. On inanimate nature, as on the men and women who cultivated it, a prevalent tendency tow- ards an appearance of vegetating unwillingly — a dejected disposition to give up, and wither away. Monsieur the Marquis in his travelling carriage (which might have been lighter), conducted by four post-horses and two postilions, fagged up a steep hill. A blush on the coun- tenance of Monsieur the Marquis was no impeachment of his high breeding ; it was not from within ; it was occasioned by ^n external circumstance beyond his control — the setting Kun. The sunset struck so brilliantly into the travelling carriage when it gained the hill-top that its occupant was steeped in crimson. " It will die out,'' said Monsieur the Marquis, glancing at his hands " directly." In effect, the sun was so low that it dipped at the moment. When the heavy drag had been adjusted to the wheel, and the carriage slid down hill, with a cinderous smell, in a cloud of dust, the red glow departed quickly ; the sun and the Mar- quis going down together, there was no glow left when the drag was taken off. But there remained a broken country, bold and open, a little village at the bottom of the hill, a broad sweep and rise io8 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. beyond it, a church-tower^ a windmill, a forest for the chase, and a crag with a fortress on it used as a prison. Round upon all these darkening objects as the night drew on, the Mar- quis looked, with the air of one who was coming near home. The village had its one poor street, with its poor brewery, poor tannery, poor tavern, poor stable-yard for relays of post- horses, poor fountain, all usual poor appointments. It had its poor people too. All its people were poor, and many of 'them were sitting at their doors, shredding spare onions and the like for supper, while many were at the fountain, washing leaves, and grasses, and any such small yieldings of the earth that could be eaten. Expressive signs of what made them poor, were not wanting ] the tax for the state, the tax^for the church, the tax for the lord, tax local and tax general, were to be paid here and to be paid there, according ^to solemn in- scription in the little village, until the wonder was, that there was any village left unswallowed. Few children were to be seen, and no dogs. As to the men and women, their choice on earth was stated in the pros- pect — Life on the lowest terms that could sustain it, down in the little village under the mill ; or captivity and Death in the dominant prison on the crag. Heralded by a courier in advance, and by the cracking of his postilion's whips, which twined snake-like about their heads in the evening air, as if he came attended by the Furies, Monsieur the Marquis drew up in his travelling carriage at the posting-house gate. It was hard by the fountain, and the peasants suspended their operations to look at him. He looked at them, and saw in them, without knowing it, the slow sure filing down of misery-worn face and figure, that was to make the meagreness of Frenchmen an English superstition which should survive the truth through the best part of a hun- dred years. Monsieur the Marquis cast his eyes over the submissive faces that drooped before him, as the like of himself had drooped before Monseigneur of the Court — only the difference was, that these faces drooped merely to suffer and not to pro- pitiate — when a grizzled mender of the roads joined the group. " Bring me hither that fellow ! " said the Marquis to the courier. The fellow was brought, cap in hand, and the other fellows closed round to look and listen, in the manner of the peopli at the ^aris fountain. MONSEIGNEUR IN THE COUNTRY. 109 " I passed you on the road ? " Monseigneur, it is true. I had the honor of being passed on the road." " Coming up the hill, and at the top of the hill, both ? " Monseigneur, it is true." " What did you look at, so fixedly ? " " Monseigneur, I looked at the man." lie stooped a little, and with his tattered blue cap pointed under the carriage. All his fellows stooped to look under the carriage. What man, pig ? And why look there ? " " Pardon, Monseigneur ; he swung by the chain of the shoe — the drag." " Who 1 " demanded the traveller. " Monseigneur, the man." " May the Devil carry away these idiots ! How do you ca]\ the man ? You know all the men of this part of the coun- •try. Who was he ? " " Your clemency, Monseigneur ! He was not of this part of the country. Of all the days of my life, I never saw him." " Swinging by the chain ? To be suifocated t " With your gracious permission, that was the wonder of it, Monseigneur. His head hanging over — like this ! " He turned himself sideways to the carriage, and leaned back, with his face thrown up to the sky, and his head hanging down; then recovered himself, fumbled with his cap, and made a bow. " What was he like ? " " Monseigneur, he was whiter than the miller. All covered with dust, white as a spectre, tall as a spectre ! " The picture produced an immense sensation in the little crowd ; but all eyes, without comparing notes with other eyes, looked at Monsieur the Marquis. Perhaps, to observe whether he had any spectre on his conscience. " Truly you did well," said the Marquis, felicitously sensi- ble that such vermin v/ere not to ruffle him, " to see a thief accompanying my carriage, and not open that great mouth of yours. Bah ! Put him aside. Monsieur Gabelle ! " Monsieur Gabelle was the Postmaster, and some other taxing functionary united ; he had come out with great obse* quiousness to assist at ^ - * examination, and had held the ex- amined by the drapery of his arm in an official manner. " Bah I Go aside 1 " said Monsieur Gabelle. / no A TALE OF TWO CITIES, " Lay hands on this stranger if he seeks to lodge in youl village to-night, and be sure that his business is honest, Gabelle." Monseigneur, I am flattered to devote myse/f to your or- ders." " Did he run away, fellow ? — where is that Accursed ? " The accursed was already under the carriage with some half-dozen particular friends, pointing out the chain with his •blue cap. Some half-dozen other particular friends promptly hauled him out, and presented him breathless to Monsieur the Marquis. " Did the man run away. Dolt, when we stopped for the drag ? " " Monseigneur, he precipitated himself over the hill-side, head first, as a person plunges into the river." " See to it, Gabelle. Go on ! " The half-dozen who were peering at the chain were still among the wheels, like sheep ; the wheels turned so suddenly * that they were lucky to save their skins and bones ; they had very little else to save, or they might not have been so fortu- nate. The burst with which the carriage started out of the village and up the rise beyond, was soon checked by the steepness of the hill. Gradually, it subsided to a foot pace, swinging and lumbering upward among the many sweet scents of a summer night. The postilions, with a thousand gossamer gnats circling about them in lieu of the Furies, quietly mended the points to the lashes of their whips ; the valet walked by the horses ; the courier was audible, trotting on ahead into the dim distance. At the steepest point of the hill there was a little burial- ground, with a Cross and a new large figure of Our Saviour on it ; it was a poor figure in wood, done by some inexperi- enced rustic carver, but he had studied the figure from tlie life — his own life, maybe — for it was dreadfully spare and thin. To this distressful emblem of a great distress that had long been grcAving worse, and was not at its worst, a woman was kneeling. She turned her head as the carriage came up to her, rose quickly, and presented herself at the carriage- door. It is you, Monseigneur ! Monseigneur, a petition." With an exclamation of impatience, but with his unchange able face, Monseigneur looked out. MONSEIGNEUR IN THE COUNTRY. Ill " How, then ! What is it ? Always petitions ! " " Monseigneur. P'or the love of the great God ! M3; husband, the forester/' What of your husband, the forester ? Always the same with you people. He cannot pay something ? " He has paid all, Monseigneur. He is dead.'' " Well ! He is quiet. Can I restore him to you 1 " " Alas, no, Monseigneur ! But he lies yonder, under a iittle heap of poor grass." " Well 1 " " Monseigneur, there are so many little heaps of poor grass " Again well t " 0 She looked an old woman, but was young. Her manner was one of passionate grief ; by turns she clasped her veinous and knotted hands together with wild energy, and laid one of them on the carriage-door — tenderly, caressingly, as if it had been a human breast, and could be expected to feel the ap- pealing touch. " Monseigneur, hear me ! Monseigneur, hear my petition ! My husband died of want ; so many die of want ; so many more will die of want." " Again, well 1 Can I feed them ? " " Monseigneur, the good God knows ; but I don't ask it My petition is, that a morsel of stone or wood, with my hus- band's name, may be placed over him to show where he lies. Otherwise, the place will be quickly forgotten, it will never be found when I am dead of the same malady, I shall be laid under some other heap of poor grass. Monseigneur, they are r>o many, they increase so fast, there is so much want. Mon- seigneur ! Monseigneur ! " The valet had put her away from the door, the carriage liad broken into a brisk trot, the postilions had quickened the pace, she was left far behind, and Monseigneur, again es- corted by the furies, was rapidly diminishing the league or two of distance that remained between him and his chateau. The sweet scents of the summer night rose all around him, and rose, as the rain falls, impartially, on the dusty, ragged, and toil-worn group at the fountain not far away ; to whom the mender of roads, with the aid of the blue cap without which he was nothing, still enlarged upon his man like a spec- tre, as long as they could bear it. By degrees, as they could bear no more, they dropped off one by one, and lights twink' 112 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. led in little casements ; which lights, as the casements dark ened, and more stars came out, seemed to have shot up into the sky instead of having been extinguished. The shadow of a large high-roofed house, and of many overhanging trees, w^as upon Monsieur the Marquis by that time ; and the shadow was exchanged for the light of a flam beau, as his carriage stopped, and the great door of his chateau was opened to him. ^' Monsieur Charles, whom I expect ; is he arrived from England V " Monseigneur, not yet.'' CHAPTER IX. THE Gorgon's head It was a heavy mass of building, that chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, with a large stone court-yard before it, and two stone sweeps of staircase meeting in a stone terrace before the principal door. A stony business altogether, with heavy stone balustrades, and stone, urns, and stone flowers, and stone faces of men, and stone heads of lions, in all directions. As if the Gorgon's head had surveyed it, when it was finished, two centuries ago. Up the broad flight of shallow steps. Monsieur the Mar- quis, flambeau preceded, went from his carriage, sufficiently disturbing the darkness to elicit loud remonstrance from an owl in the roof of the great pile of stable building away among the trees. All else was so quiet that the flambeau carried up the steps, and the other flambeau held at the great door, burnt as if they were in a close room of state, instead of being in the open night-air. Other sound than the owl's voice there was none, save the falling of a fountain into its stone basin : for, it was one of those dark nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and then heave a long low sigh and hold their breath again. The great door clanged behind him, and Monsieur the Marquis crossed a hall grim with certain old boar-spears, swords, and knives of the chase ; grimmer with certain heavy riding-rods and riding-whips, of which many a peasant, gone THE GORGON'S HEAD, to his benefactor Death, had felt the weight when his lord was angry. Avoiding the larger rooms, which were dark and made fast for the night. Monsieur the Marquis, with his flambeau-bearer going on before, went up the staircase to a door in a corridor. This thrown open, admitted him to his own private apartment of three rooms : his bed-chamber and two others. High vaulted rooms with cool uncarpeted floors, great dogs upon the hearths for the burning of wood in winter time, and all luxuries befitting the state of a marquis in a luxurious age and country. The fashion of the last Louis but one, of the line that was never to break — the fourteenth Louis — was con- spicuous in their rich furniture ; but, it was diversified by many objects that were illustrations of old pages in the history of France. A supper-table was laid for two, in the third of the rooms ; a round room, in one of the chateau's four extinguisher-topped towers. A small lofty room, with its wmdow wide open, and the wooden jalousie-blinds closed, so that the dark night only showed in slight horizontal lines of black, alternating with their broad lines of stone color. " My nephevv^," said the Marquis, glancing at the supper preparation j "they said he was not arrived.'' Nor was he ; but, he had been expected with Monseigneur. " Ah ! It is not probable he will arrive to-night ; never- theless, leave the table as it is. I shall be ready in a quarter of an hour." In a quarter of an hour Monseigneur was ready, and sat down alone to his sumptuous and choice supper. His chair was opposite to the window, and he had taken his soup, and was raising his glass of Bordeaux to his lips, when he put it down. "What is that ? " he calmly asked, looking with attention at the horizontal lines of black and stone color. " Monseigneur ? That ? " " Outside the blinds. Open the blinds." It was done. "Well?" " Monseigneur, it is nothmg. The trees and the night are all that are here." The servant who spoke, had thrown the blinds wide, had looked out into the vacant darkness, and stood, with that blank behind him looking round for instructions. 114 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. " Good/' said the imperturbable master. Close them again.'' That was done too, and the Marquis went on ^ith his sup- per. He was half way through it, when he again stopped with his glass in his hand, hearing the sound of wheels. It came on briskly, and came up to the front of the chateau. " Ask who is arrived." It was the nephew of Monseigneur. He had been some few leagues behind Monseigneur, early in the afternoon. He had* diminished the distance rapidly, but not so rapidly as to come up with Monseigneur on the road. He had heard of Monseigneur, at the posting houses, as being before him. He was to be told (said Monseigneur) that supper awaited him then and there, and that he was prayed to come to it. In a little while he came. He had been known in England as Charles Darnay. Monseigneur received him in a courtly manner, but they did not shake hands. " You left Paris yesterday, sir ? " he said to Monseigneur, as he took his seat at table. " Yesterday. And you ? " " I come direct." " From London " Yes." " You have been a long time coming," said the Marquis, with a smile. " On the contrary ; I come direct." " Pardon me ! I mean, not a long time on the journey ; a long time intending the journey." " I have been detained by " — the nephew stopped a mo- ment in his answer — various business." Without doubt," said the polished uncle. So long as a servant was present, no other words passed between them. When coffee had been served and they were alone together, the nephew, looking at the uncle and meeting the eyes of the face that was like a fine mask, opened a con- versation. " I have come back, sir, as you anticipate, pursuing the object that took me away. It carried me into great and unex- pected peril ; but it is a sacred object, and if it had carried me to death I hope it would have sustained me." " Not to death," said the uncle ; " it is not necessary to say, to death " THE GORGON'S HEAD. " I doubt, sir/' returned the nephew, " whether, if it had carried me to the utmost brink of death, you would have cared to stop me there." The deepened marks in the nose, and the lengthening ot the fine straight lines in the cruel face, looked ominous as to that ; the uncle made a graceful gesture of protest, which was so clearly a slight form of good breeding that it was not reassuring. " Indeed, sir," pursued the nephew, "for anything I know, you may have expressly worked to give a more suspicious ap- pearance to the suspicious circumstances that surrounded me." " No, no, no," said the uncle, pleasantly. " But, however that may be," resumed the nephew, glanc- ing at him with deep distrust, " I know that your diplomacy would stop me by any means, and would know no scruple a.s to means." " My friend, I told you so," said the uncle, with a fine pulsation in the two marks. " Do me the favor to recall that I told you so, long ago." " I recall it." " Thank you," said the Marquis — very sweetly indeed. His tone lingered in the air, almost like the tone of a musical instrument. " In effect, sir," pursued the nephew, " I believe it to be at once your bad fortune, and my good fortune, that has kept me out of a prison in France here." " I do not quite understand," returned the uncle, sipping his coffee. " Dare I ask you to explain t " " I believe that if you were not in disgrace with the Court, and had not been overshadowed by that cloud for years past, a lettre de cachet would have sent me to some fortress indefi- nitely." " It is possible," said the uncle, with great calmness. " For the honor of the family, I could even resolve to incom- mode you to that extent. Pray excuse me ! " I perceive that, happily for me, the Reception of the day before yesterday was, as usual, a cold one," observed the nephew. " I would not say happily, my friend," returned the uncle, with refined politeness ; " I would not be sure of that. A good opportunity for consideration, surrounded by the advan- tages of solitude, might influence your destiny to far greater advantage than you influence it for yourself. But it is useless 7l6 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, to discuss the question. I am, as you say, at a disadvantage. These little instruments of correction, these gentle aids to the power and honor of families, these slight favors that might so incommode you, are only to be obtained by interest and impor^ tunity. They are sought by so many, and they are granted (comparatively) to so few ! It used not to be so, but France in all such things is changed for the worse. Our not remote ancestors held the right of life and death over the surround- ing vulgar. From this room, many such dogs have been taken out to be hanged ; in the next room (my bedroom), one fellow, to our knowledge, was poniarded on the spot for professing some insolent delicacy respecting his daughter — his daughter ? We have lost many privileges ; a new philosophy has become the mode ; and the assertion of our station, in these days, might (I do not go so far as to say would, but might) cause us real inconvenience. All very bad, very bad ! " The Marquis took a gentle little pinch of snuff, and shook his head ; as elegantly despondent as he could becomingly be of a country still containing himself, that great means of regeneration. We have so asserted our station, both in the old time and in the modern time also," said the nephew, gloomily, that I believe our name to be more detested than any name in France." Let us hope so," said the uncle. " Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low." There is not," pursued the nephew, in his former tone, " a face I can look at, in all this country round about us, which looks at me with any deference on it but the dark def- erence of fear and slavery." " A compliment," said the Marquis, " to the grandeur of the family, merited by the manner in which the family has sustained its grandeur. Hah ! " And he took another gen- tle little pinch of snuff, and lightly crossed his legs. But, when his nephew, leaning an elbow on the table, covered his eyes thoughtfully and dejectedly with his hand, the fine mask looked at him sideways with a stronger concen- tration of keenness, closeness, and dislike, than was comport- able with its wearer's assumption of indifference. Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend," observed the Mar- quis, will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof," looking up to it, shuts out the sky." THE GORGON'S HEAD, 117 That might not be so long as the Marquis supposed. If a picture of the chateau as it was to be a very few years hence, and of fifty Uke it as they too were to be a very few years hence, could have been shown to him that night, he might have been at a loss to claim his own from the ghastly, fire- charred, plunder-wrecked ruins. As for the roof he vaunted, he might have found that shutting out the sky in a new way — to wit, for ever, from the eyes of the bodies into which its lead was fired, out of the barrels of a hundred thousand muskets. " Meanwhile," said the Marquis, " I will preserve the honor and repose of the family, if you will not. But you must be fatigued. Shall we terminate our conference for the night ? " " A moment more.'' " An hour, if you please." " Sir," said the nephew, " we have done wrong, and are reaping the fruits of wrong." " We have done wrong ? " repeated the Marquis, with an inquiring smile, and delicately pointing, first to his nephew, then to himself. " Our family ; our honorable family, whose honor is of so much account to both of us, in such different ways. Even in my father's time, we did a world of wrong, injuring every human creature who came between us and our pleasure, what- ever it was. Why need I speak of my father's time, when it is equally yours ? Can I separate my father's twin-brother, joint inheritor, and next successor, from himself.^ " " Death has done that ! " said the J^arquis. " And has left me," answered the nephew, "bound to a system that is frightful to me, responsible for it, but power- less in it ; seeking to execute the last request of my dear mother's lips, and obey the last look of my dear mother's eyes, which implored me to have mercy and to redress ; and tortured by seeking assistance and power in vain." " Seeking them from me, my nephew," said tho Marquis, touching him on the breast with his forefinger — they were now standing by the hearth — "you will for ever seek them in vain, be assured." Every fine straight line in the clear whiteness of his face,' was cruelly, craftily, and closely compressed, while he stood looking quietly at his nephew, with his snufi-box in his hand. Once again he touched him on the breast as though his finger ii8 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. were the fine point of a small sword, with which, in delicate finesse, he ran him through the body, and said, " My friend, I will die, perpetuating the system undei which I have lived." When he had said it, he took a culminating pinch of snuff, and put his box in his pocket. "Better to be a rational creature," he added then, aftei ringing a small bell on the table, " and accept your natural destiny. But you are lost, Monsieur Charles, I see." "This property and France are lost to me," said the nephew, sadly ; " I renounce them." " Are they both yours to renounce ? France may be,' but is the property ? It is scarcely worth mentioning ; but, is it yet ? " " I had no intention, in the words I used, to claim it yet. If it passed to me from you, to-morrow " " Which I have the vanity to hope is not probable." " — or twenty years hence " "You do me too much honor," said the Marquis; "still, I prefer that supposition." " — I would abandon it, and live otherwise and elsewhere. It is a little to relinquish. What is it but a wilderness of misery and ruin ! " " Hah 1 " said the Marquis, glancing round the luxurious room. " To the eye it is fair enough, here ; but seen in its in- tegrity, under the sky and by the daylight, it is a crumbling tower of waste, mismanagement, extortion, debt, mortgage, oppression, hunger, nakedness, and suffering." " Hah ! " said the Marquis again, in a well-satisfied manner. - " If it ever becomes mine, it shall be put into some hands better qualified to free it slowly (if such a thing is possible) from the weight that drags it down, so that the miserable people who cannot leave it and who have been long wrung to the last point of endurance, may, in another generation, suffer less ; but it is not for me. There is a curse on it, and on all this land." " And you ? " said the uncle. " Forgive my curiosity ; do you, under your new philosophy, graciously intend to live > " " I must do, to live, what others of my countrymen, even with nobility at their backs, may have to do some day— ' work." THE GORGON'S HEAD, ^' In England, for example ? " " Yes. The family honor, sir, is safe from me in this coun- try. The family name can suffer from me in no other, for I bear it in no other." The ringing of the bell has caused the adjoining bed- chamber to be lighted. It now shone brightly, through the door of communication. The Marquis looked that way, and listened for the retreating step of his valet. England is very attractive to you, seeing how indifferently^ - you have prospered there," he observed then, turning his calm face to his nephew with a smile. " I have already said, that for my prospering there, I am sensible I may be indebted to you, sir. For the rest, it is my Refuge." " They say, those boastful English, that it is the Refuge of many. You know* a compatriot who has found a Refuge there ? A Doctor ? " ^ • - "Yes." " With a daughter ? ' "Yes." "Yes," said the Marquis. "You are fatigued. Good- night ! " As he bent his head in his most courtly manner, there was a secrecy in his smiling face, and he conveyed an air of mystery to those words, which struck the eyes and ears of his nephew forcibly. At the same time, the thin straight lines of the setting of the eyes, and the thin straight lips, and the markings in the nose, curved with a sarcasm that looked handsomely diabolic. " Yes," repeated the Marquis. . " A Doctor with a daugh- ter. Yes. So commences the new philosophy ! You are fatigued. Good-night ! " It would have been of as much avail to interrogate any stone face outside the chateau as to interrogate that face of his. The nephew looked at him, in vain, in passing on to the door. " Good-night ! " said the uncle. " I look to the pleasure of seeing you again in the morning. Good repose ! Light Monsieur my nephew to his chamber there ! — And burn Mon- sieur my nephew in his bed, if you will," he added to himself, before he rang his little bell again, and summoned his valet to his own bedroom. The valet '^^'^e and gone, Monsieur the Marquis walked G I20 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. to and fro in his loose cliamber-robe, to prepare himself gently for sleep, that hot still night. Rustling about the room, his softly-slippered feet making no noise on the floor, he moved like a refined tiger : — looked like some enchanted marquis of the impenitently wicked sort, in story, whose periodical change into tiger form was either just going off, or , just coming on. He moved from end to end of his voluptuous bedroom, looking again at the scraps of the day's journey that came unbidden into his mind ; the slow toil up the hill at sunset, the setting sun, the descent, the mill, the prison on the crag, the little village in the hollow, the peasants at the fountain, and the mender of roads with his blue cap pointing out the chain under the carriage. That fountain suggested the Paris fountain, the little bundle lying on the step, the women bending over it, and the tall man with his arms up, crying, Dead ! " " I am cool now," said Monsieur the Marquis, " and may go to bed.'' So, leaving only one light burning on the large hearth, he let his tliin gauze curtains fall around him, and heard the night break its silence with a long sigh as he composed himself to sleep. The stone faces on the outer walls stared blindly at the black night for three heavy hours ; for three heavy hours, the horses in the stables rattled at their racks, the dogs barked, and the owl made a noise with very little resemblance in it to the noise conventionally assigned to the owl by men-poets. But it is the obstinate custom of such creatures hardly ever to say what is set down for them. For three heavy hours, the stone faces of the chateau, lion and human, stared blindly at the night. Dead darkness lay on all the landscape, dead darkness added its own hush to the hushing dust on all the roads. The burial-place had got to the pass that its little heaps of poor grass were undis- tinguishable from one another ; the figure on the Cross might have come down, for anything that could be seen of it. In the village, taxers and taxed were fast asleep. Dreaming, perhaps, of banquets, as the starved usually do, and of ease and rest, as the driven slave and the yoked ox may, its lean inhabitants slept soundly, and were fed and freed. The fountain in the village flowed unseen and unheard, and the fountain at the chateau dropped unseen and unheard THE GORGON'S HEAD. 121 ^both melting away, like the minutes that were falling from the spring of Time — through three dark hours. Then, the gray water of both began to be ghostly in the light, and the eyes of the stone faces of the chateau were opened. Lighter and lighter, until at last the sun touched the tops of the still trees, and poured its radiance over the hill. In the glow, the water o*f the chateau fountain seemed to turn to blood, and the stone faces crimsoned. The carol of the birds was loud and high, and, on the weather-beaten sill of the great window of the bed-chamber of Monsieur the Marquis, one little bird sang its sweetest song with all its might. At this, the nearest stone face seemed to stare amazed, and, with open mouth and dropped under-jaw, looked awe-stricken. Now, the sun was full up, and movement began in the vil- lage. Casement windows opened, crazy doors were unbarred, and people came forth shivering — chilled, as yet, by the new sweet air. Then began the rarely lightened toil of the day among the village population. Some, to the fountain ; some, to the fields ; men and women here, to dig and delve ; men and women there, to see to the poor live stock, and lead the bony cows out, to such pasture as could be found by the road- side. In the church and at the Cross, a kneeling figure or two ; attendant on the latter prayers, the led cow, trying for a breakfast among the weeds at his foot. The chateau awoke later, as became its quality, but awok^ gradually and surely. First, the lonely boar-spears and knive«i of the chase had been reddened as of old ; then, had gleamed trenchant in the morning sunshine ; now, doors and windows were thrown open, horses in their stables looked round over their shoulders at the light and freshness pouring in at door- ways, leaves sparkled and rustled at iron-grated windows, dogs pulled hard at their chains, and reared impatient to be loosed. All these trivial incidents belonged to the routine of life, and the return of morning. Surely, not so the ringing of the great bell of the chateau, nor the running up and down the stairs ; nor the hurried figures on the terrace ; nor the booting and tramping here and there and everywhere, nor the quick saddling of horses and riding away } What winds conveyed this hurry to the grizzled mender of roads, already at work on the hill-top beyond the village, with his day's dinner (not much to carry) lying in a bundle that it was worth no crow's while to peck at, on a heap of stones } Had the birds, carrying some grains of it to a distance. 122 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, dropped one over him as they sow chance seeds ? Whethe? or no, the mender of roads ran, on the sultry morning, as ii for his Hfe, down the hill, knee-high in dust, and never stopped till he got to the fountain. All the people of the village were at the fountain, standing about in their depressed manner, and whispering low, but showing no other emotions than grim curiosity and surprise. The led cows, hastily brought in and tethered to anything that would hold them, were looking stupidly on, or lying down chewing the cud of nothing particularly repaying their trouble, which they had picked up in their interrupted saunter. Some of the people of the chateau, and some of those of the posting- house, and all the taxing authorities, were armed more or less, and were crowded on the other side of the little street in a pur poseless way, that was highly fraught with nothing. Already, the mender of roads had penetrated into the midst of a group of fifty particular friends, and was smiting himself in the breast with his blue cap. What did all this portend, and what por- tended the swift hoisting-up of Monsieur Gabelle behind a servant on horseback, and the conveying away of the said Gabelle (double-laden though the horse was), at a gallop, like a new version of the German ballad of Leonora? It portended that there was one stone face too many, up at the chateau. The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the night, and had added the one stone face wanting ; the stone face for which it had waited through about two hundred years. It lay back on the pillow of Monsieur the Marquis. It was like a fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and petri- fied. Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it, was a knife. Round its hilt was a frill of paper, on which was scrawled : " Drive him fast to his tomb. This ^ from Jacques." CHAPTER X TWO PROMISES. More months, to the number of twelve, had come and gone, and Mr. Charles Darnay was established in England as a higher teacher of the French language who was conversant TWO PROMISES. 123 with French hterature. In this age, he would have been a Professor; in that age, he was a Tutor. He read with young men who could find any leisure and interest for the study of a living tongue spoken all over the world, and he cultivated a taste for its stores of knowledge and fancy. He could write of them, besides, in sound English, and render them into sound English. Such masters were not at that time easily found ; Princes that had been, and Kings that were to be, v/ere not yet of the Teacher class, and no ruined nobility had dropped out of Tellson^s ledgers, to turn cooks and carpen- ters. As a tutor, whose attainments made the student's way unusually pleasant and profitable, and as an elegant trans- lator who brought something to his work besides mere dictionary knowledge, young Mr. Darnay soon became known and encouraged. He w^as well acquainted, moreover, with the circumstances of his country, and those were of ever-growl- ing interest. So, with great perseverance and untiring industry, he prospered. In London, he had expected neither to walk on pavements of gold, nor to lie on beds of roses ; if he had had any such exalted expectation, he would not have prospered. He had expected labor, and he found it, and did it, and made the best of it. In this, his prosperity consisted. A certain portion of his time was passed at Cambridge, where he read with undergraduates as a sort of tolerated smuggler who drove a contraband trade in European languages, instead of conveying Greek and Latin through the Custom- house. The rest of his time he passed in London. Now, from the days when it was always summer in Eden, to these days when it is mostly winter in fallen latitudes, the world of a man has invariably gone one way — Charles Darnay's way — the way of the love of a woman. He had loved Lucie Manette from the hour of his danger. He had never heard a sound so sweet and dear as the sound of her compassionate voice ; he had never seen a face so ten- derly beautiful, as hers when it was confronted with his own on the edge of the grave that had been dug for him. But, he had not yet spoken to her on the subject ; the assassination at the deserted chateau far away beyond the heaving water and the long, long, dusty roads — the solid stone chateau which had itself become the mere mist of a dream — had been done a year, and he had never yet, by so much as a single spoken word, disclosed to her the state of his heart. 124 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. That he had his reasons for this, he knew full well. It was again a summer day when, lately arrived in London, from his college occupation, he turned into the quiet corner in Soho, bent on seeking an opportunity of opening his-mind to Doctol Manette, It was the close of the summer day, and he kneM Lucie to be out with Miss Pross. He found the Doctor reading in his arm-chair at a window. The energy which had at once supported him under his old sufferings and aggravated their sharpness, had been gradually restored to him. He was now a very energetic man indeed, with great firmness of purpose, strength of resolution, and vigor of action. In his recovered energy he was sometimes a little fitful and sudden, as he had at first been in the exercise of his other recovered faculties ; but, this had never been fre- quently observable, and had grown more and more rare. He studied much, slept little, sustained a great deal of fatigue with ease, and was equably cheerful. To him, nov^^ entered Charles Darnay, at sight of whom he laid aside his book and held out his hand. Charles Darnay ! I rejoice to see you. We have been counting on your return these three or four days past. Mr. Stryver and Sydney Carton were both here yesterday, and both made you out to be more than due." " I am obliged to them for their interest in the matter," he answered, a little coldly as to them, though very warmly as to the Doctor. " Miss Manette " " Is well," said the Doctor, as he stopped short, " and your return will delight us all. She has gone out on some house- hold matters, but will soon be home." " Doctor Manette, I knew she was from home. I took the opportunity of her being from home, to beg to speak to you." There was a blank silence. " Yes ? " said the Doctor, with evident constraint. " Bring your chair here, and speak on." He complied as to the chair, but appeared to find the speaking on less easy. I have had the happiness. Doctor Manette, of being so intimate here," so he at length began, "for some year and a half, that I hope the topic on which I am about to touch may not " He was stayed by the Doctor's putting out his hand to stop him. When he had kept it so a little while, he said, drawing it back : TWO PROMISES. " Is Lucie the topic ? " " She is." " It is hard for me to speak of her at any time. It is very hard for me to hear her spoken of in that tone of yours, Charles Darnay." " It is a tone of fervent admiration, true homage, and deep love. Doctor Manette ! " he said deferentially. There was another blank silence before her father re- joined : " I believe it. I do you justice ; I believe it." His constraint was so manifest, and it was so manifest, too, that it originated in an unwillingness to approach the subject, that Charles Darnay hesitated. "Shall I go on, sir?" Another blank. " Yes, go on." " You anticipate what I would say, though you cannot know how earnestly I say it, how earnestly I feel it, without knowing my secret heart, and the hopes and fears and anxieties with which it has long been laden. Dear Doctor Manette, I love your daughter fondly, dearly, disinterestedly, devotedly. If ever there were love in the world, I love her. You have loved yourself ; let your old love speak for me ! " The Doctor sat with his face turned away, and his eyes bent on the ground. At the last words, he stretched out his hand again, hurriedly, and cried : *^ Not that, sir ! Let that be ! I adjure you, do not recall that ! " His Qxy was so like a cry of actual pain, that it rang in Charles Darnay's ears long after he had ceased. He motioned with the hand he had extended, and it seemed to be an appeal to Darnay to pause. The latter so received it, and remained silent. " I ask your pardon," said the Doctor, in a subdued tone, after some moments. " I do not doubt your loving Lucie ; you may be satisfied of it." He turned towards him in his chair, but did not look at him, or raise his eyes. His chin dropped upon his hand, and his white hair overshadowed his face : "Have you spoken to Lucie ? " " No." " Nor written ? ^ Never." 126 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, " It would be ungenerous to affect not to know that yow self-denial is to be referred to your consideration for her fathen Her father thanks you.'' He offered his hand ; but his eyes did not go with it. "I know," said Darnay, respectfully, "how can I fail to know, Doctor Manette, I who have seen you together from day to day, that between you and Miss Manette there is an affection so unusual, so touching, so belonging to the circumstances in 'which it has been nurtured, that it can have few parallels, even in the tenderness between a father and a child. I know Dr. Manette — how can I fail to know — that, mingled with the affection and duty of a daughter who has become a woman, there is, in her hqart, towards you, all the love and reliance of infancy itself. I know that, as in her childhood she had no parent, so she is now devoted to you with all the constancy and fervor of her present years and character, united to the trustfulness and attachment of the early days in which you were lost to her. I know perfectly well that if yoii had been restored to her from the world beyond this life, you could hardly be invested, in her sight, with a more sacred character than that in which you are always with her. I know that when she is clinging to you, the hands of baby, girl, and woman, all in one, are round your neck. I know that in lov- ing you she sees and loves her mother at her own age, sees and loves you at my age, loves her mother broken-hearted, loves you through your dreadful trial and in your blessed restoration. I have known this, night and day, since I have known you in your home." Her father sat silent, with his face bent down. His breathing was a little quickened ; but he repressed all other signs of agitation. " Dear Doctor Manette, always knowing this, always see- ing her and you with this hallowed light about you, I have forborne and forborne, as long as it was in the nature of man to do it. I have felt, and do even now feel, that to bring my love — even mine — between you, is to touch your history with something not quite so good as itself. But I love her. Heaven is my witn^ess that I love her ! " " I believe it," answered her father, mournfully. " I have thought so before now. I believe it." " But do not believe," said Darnay, upon whose ear the mournful voice struck with a reproachful sound, " that if my fortune were so cast as that, being one day so happy as ta TWO PROMISES. 127 make her my wife, I must at any time put any separation be^ tween her and you, I could or would breathe a word of what I now sayo Besides that I should know it to be hopeless, I should know it to be a baseness. If I had any such pSssi- bility, even at a remote distance of years, harbored in my thoughts, and hidden in my heart — if it ever had been there — if it ever could be there — I could not now touch this honored hand." He laid his own upon it as he spoke. " No, dear Doctor Manette. Like you, a voluntary exile from France ; like you, driven from it by its distractions, op- pressions, and miseries ; like you, striving to live away from it by my own exertions, and trusting in a happier future ; I look only to sharing your fortunes, sharing your life and home, and being faithful to you to the death. Not to divide with Lucie her privilege as your child, companion, and friend ; but to come in aid of it, and bind her closer to you, if such a thing can be/' His touch still lingered on her father's hand. Answering the touch for a moment, but not coldly, her father rested his hands upon the arms of his chair, and looked up for the first time since the beginning of the conference. A struggle was evidently in his face ; a struggle with that occasional look which had a tendency in it to dark doubt and dread. " You speak so feelingly and so manfully, Charles Darnay, that I thank you with all my heart, and will open all my heart — or nearly so. Have you any reason to believe that Lucie loves you ? " " None. As yet, none." " Is it the immediate object of this confidence, that you may at once ascertain that, with my knowledge ? " " Not even so. I might not have the hopefulness to do it for weeks ; I might (mistaken or not mistaken) have that hopefulness to-morrow." " Do you seek any guidance from me ? " " I ask none, sir. But I have thought it possible that you might have it in your power, if you should deem it right, to give me some." " Do you seek any promise from me ? " I do seek that." " What is it ? " " I well understand that, without you, I could have no hope. I well understand that, even if Miss Manette held me 128 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. at this moment in her innocent heart — do not think I have the presumption to assume so much — I could retain no place in it against her love for her father." If that be so, do you see what, on the other hand, is in- volved in it ? " " I understand equally well, that a word from her father in any suitor's favor, would outweigh herself and all the world. For which reason, Doctor Manette," said Darnay, modestl}/ but firmly, I would not ask that word, to save my life." " I am sure of it. Charles Darnay, mysteries arise out of close love, as well as out of wide division ; in the former case, they are subtle and delicate, and difficult to penetrate. My daughter Lucie is, in this one respect, such a mystery to me • I can make no guess at the state of her heart." " May I ask, sir, if you think she is " As he hesi- tated, her father supplied the rest. " Is sought by any other suitor ? " " It is what I meant to say." Her father considered a little before he answered : "You have seen Mr. Carton here, yourself. Mr. Stryver is here too, occasionally. If it be at all, it can only be by one of these." " Or both," said Darnay. " I had not thought of both ; I should not think either, likely. You want a promise from me. Tell me what it is." " It is, that if Miss Manette should bring to you at any time, on her own part, such a confidence as I have ventured to lay before you, you will bear testimony to what I have said, and to your belief in it. I hope you may be able to think so well of me, as to urge no influence against me. I say nothing more of my stake in this ; this is what I ask. The condition on which I ask it, and which you have an undoubted right to require, I will observe immediately." " I give the promise," said the Doctor, "without any con- dition. I believe your object to be, purely and truthfully, as you have stated it. I believe your intention is to perpetuate, and not to weaken, the ties between me and my other and far dearer self. If she should ever tell me that you are essential to her perfect happiness, I will give her to you. If there were ■ — Charles Darnay, if there were " The young man had taken his hand gratefully ; theit hands were joined as the Doctor spoke : " — any fancies, any reasons, any apprehensions, anything TWO PROMISES. 129 whatsoever, new or old against the man she really loved — the direct responsibility thereof not lying on hi^ head — they should all be obliterated for her sake. She is everything to me ; more to me than suffering, more to me than wrong, more to me Well ! This is idle talk.'' So strange was the way in which he faded into silencep and so strange his fixed look when he had ceased to speak, that Darnay felt his own hand turn cold in the hand that slowly released and dropped it. " You said something to me,'' said Doctor Manette, break- ing into a smile. What was it you said to me 1 " He was at a loss how to answer, until he remembered having spoken of a condition. Relieved as his mind reverted to that, he answered : " Your confidence in me ought to be returned with full confidence on my part. My present name, though but slightly changed from my mother's, is not, as you will remember, my own. I wish to tell you what that is, and why I am in England." " Stop ! " said the Doctor of Beauvais. " I wish it, that I may the better deserve your confidence, and have no secret from you." " Stop ! " For an instant, the Doctor even had his two hands at his ears ; for another instant, even had his two hands laid on Darnay's lips. " Tell me when I ask you, not now. If your suit should prosper, if Lucie should love you, you shall tell me on your marriage morning. Do you promise " " Willingly." " Give me your hand. She will be home directly, and it is better she should not see us together to-night. Go ! God bless you ! " It was dark when Charles Darnay left him, and it was an hour later and darker when Lucie came home ; she hurried into the room alone — for Miss Pross had gone straight up stairs — and was surprised to find his reading-chair empty. " My father ! " she called to him. " Father dear 1 " Nothing was said in answer, but she heard a low hammer- ing sound in his bedroom. Passing lightly across the inter mediate room, she looked in at his door and came running back frightened, crying to herself, with her blood all chilled, " What shall I do ! What shall I do A TALE OF TWO CITIES, Her uncertainty lasted but a moment ; she hurried back, and tapped at his door, and softly called to him. The noise ceased at the sound of her voice, and he presently came out to her, and they walked up and down together for a long time. She came down from her bed, to look at him in his sleep that night. He slept heavily, and his tray of shoe-making tools, and his old unfinished work, were all as usual. CHAPTER XI. A COMPANION PICTURE. " Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, on that self- same night, or morning, to his jackal ; "mix another bowl of punch ; I have something to say to you." Sydney had been working double tides that night, and the night before, and the night before that, and a good many nights in succession, making a grand clearance among Mr. Stryver's papers before the setting in of the long vacation. The clearance was effected at last ; the Stryver arrears w^ere handsomely fetched up ; everything was got rid of until Nov- ember should come with its fogs atmospheric and fogs legal, and bring grist to the mill again. Sydney was none the livelier and none the soberer for so much application. It had taken a deal of extra wet-towelling to pull him through the night \ a correspondingly extra quan- tity of wine had preceded the towelling ; and he was in a very damaged condition, as he now pulled his turban off and threw it into the basin in which he had steeped it at intervals for the last six hours. " Are you mixing that other bowl of punch ? " said Stryver the portly, with his hands in his waistband, glancing round from the sofa where he lay on his back. " I am." " Now, look here I I am going to tell you something that will rather surprise you, and that perhaps will make you think me not quite as shrewd as you usually do think me. I intend to marry." A COMPANION PICTURE. lot " Yes. And not for money. What do you say now ? " I don't feel disposed to say much. Who is she ? "Guess.'' "Do I know her?" " Guess." " I am not going to guess, at five o'clock in the morning, with my brains frying and sputtering in my head. If you want me to guess, you must ask me to dinner." "Well then, I'll tell you," said Stryver, coming slowly into a sitting posture. " Sydney, I rather despair of making myself intelligible to you, because you are such an insensible dog." " And you," returned Sydney, busy concocting the punch, " are such a sensitive and poetical spirit." * " Come ! " rejoined Stryver, laughing boastfully, "though I don't prefer any claim to being the soul of Romance (for I hope I know better), still I am a tenderer sort of a fellow than you.^^ " You are a luckier, if you mean that." " I don't mean that. I mean I am a man of more — — " Say gallantry, while you are about it," suggested Carton. " Well ! I'll say gallantry. My meaning is that I am a man," said Stryver, inflating himself at his friend as he made the punch, " who cares more to be agreeable, who takes more pains to be agreeable, who knows better how to be agreeable, in a woman's society, than you do." " Go on," said Sydney Carton. " No ; but before I go on," said Stryver, shaking his head in his bullying way, " I'll have this out with you. You've been at Dr. Manette's house as much as I have, or more than I have. Why, I have been ashamed of your moroseness there ! Your manners have been of that silent and sullen and hang-dog kind, that, upon my life and soul, I have been ashamed of you, Sydney ! " " It should be very beneficial to a man in your practice at the bar, to be ashamed of anything," returned Sydney; "you ought to be much obliged to me." " You shall not get off in that way," rejoined Stryver, shouldering the rejoinder at him ; " no, Sydney, it's my duty to tell you — and I tell you to your face to do you good — that you are a de-vilish ill-conditioned fellow in that sort of society. You are a disagreeable fellow." more- A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Sydney drank a bumper of the punch he had made, and laughed. " Look at me ! said Stryver, squaring himself ; I have less need to make myself agreeable than you have, being more independent in circumstances. Why do I do it ? " " I never saw you do it yet/' muttered Carton. I do it because it's politic ; I do it on principle. And look at me ! I get on." You don't get on with your account of your matrimonial intentions,'' answered Carton, with a careless air ; "I wish you would keep to that. As to me — will you never under- stand that I am incorrigible ? " He asked the question with some appearance of scorn. " You have no business to be incorrigible," was his friend's answer, delivered in no very soothing tone. " I have no business to be, at all, that I know of," said Sydney Carton. Who is the lady t " " Now, don't let my announcement of the name make you uncomfortable, Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, preparing him with ostentatious friendliness for the disclosure he was about to make, " because I know you don't mean half you say ; and if you meant it all, it would be of no importance. I make this little preface, because you once mentioned the young lady to me in slighting terms." " I did ? " " Certainly ; and in these chambers." Sydney Carton looked at his punch and looked at his com- placent friend ; drank his punch and looked at his compla- cent friend. " You made mention of the young lady as a golden-haired doll. The young lady is Miss Manette. If you had been a fellow of any sensitiveness or delicacy of feeling in that kind of way, Sydney, I might have been a little resentful of your employing such a designation ; but you are not. You want that sense altogether^; therefore I am no more annoyed when I think of the expression, than I should be annoyed by a man's opinion of a picture of mine, who had no eye for pic- tures : or of a piece of music of mine, who had no ear for music." Sydney Carton drank the punch at a great rate ; drank it by bumpers, looking at his friend. " Now you know all about it, Syd," said Mr. Stryver. I don't care about fortune : she is a charming creature, and I A COMPANION PICTURE. ^33 have made up my mind to please myself : on the whole, I think I can afford to please myself. She will have in me a man already pretty well off, and a rapidly rising man, and a man of some distinction : it is a piece of good fortune for her, but she is worthy of good fortune. Are you astonished? " Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, " Why should I be astonished ? " You approve ? " Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, " Why should I not approve ? " Well ! " said his friend Stryver, " you take it more easilj than I fancied you would, and are less mercenary on my be* half than I thought you would be ; though, to be sure, you know well enough by this time that your ancient chum is a man of a pretty strong will. Yes, Sydney, I have had enough of this style of life, with no other as a change from it ; I feel that it is a pleasant thing for a man to have a home when he feels inclined to go to it (when he doesn't, he can stay away), and I feel that Miss Manette will tell well in any station, and will always do me credit. So I have made up my mind. And now, Sydney, old boy, I want to say a word to you about your prospects. You are in a bad way, you know ; you really are in a bad way. You don't know the value of money, you live hard, you'll knock up one of these days, and be ill and poor ; you really ought to think about a nurse.'' The prosperous patronage with which he said it, made him look twice as big as he was, and four times as offensive. "Now, let me recommend you," pursued Stryver, "to look it in the face. I have looked it in the face, in my different way ; look it in the face, you, in your different way. Marry. Provide somebody to take care of you. Never mind your having no enjoyment of women's society, nor understanding of it, nor tact for it. Find out somebody. Find out some respectable woman with a little property — somebody in the landlady way, or lodging-letting way — and marry her, against a rainy day. That's the kind of thing ioxyou. Now think of it, Sydney." " rU think of it/' said Sydney. «34 d TALE OF TWO CITIES. CHAPTER XIL THE FELLOW OP DELICACY. Mr. Stryvfr having made up his mind to that magnani- mous bestowal of good fortune on the Doctor's daughter, resolved to make her happiness known to her before he left town for the Long Vacation. After some mental debating of the point, he came to the conclusion that it would be as well to get all the preliminaries done with, and they could then arrange at their leisure whether he should give her his hand a week or two before Michaelmas Term, or in the little Christ- mas vacation between it and Hilary. As to the strength of his case, he had not a doubt about it, but clearly saw his way to the verdict. Argued with the jury on substantial worldly grounds — the .only grounds ever worth taking into account — it was a plain case, and had not a weak spot in it. He called himself for the plaintiff, there was no getting over his evidence, the counsel for the defendant threw up his brief, and the jury did not even turn to consider. After trying it, Stryver, C. J., was satisfied that no plainer case could be. Accordingly, Mr. Stryver inaugurated the Long Vacation with a formal proposal to take Miss Manette to Vauxhall Gardens ; that failing, to Ranelagh ; that unaccountably fail- ing too, it behoved him to present himself in Soho, and there declare his noble mind. Towards Soho, therefore, Mr. Stryver shouldered his way from the Temple, while the bloom of the Long Vacation's infancy was still upon it. Anybody who had seen him pro- jecting himself into Soho while he was yet on Saint Dunstan's side of Temple Bar, bursting in his full-blown way along the pavement, to the jostlement of all weaker people, might have seen how safe and strong he was. His way taking him past Tellson's, and he both banking at Tellson's and knowing Mr. Lorry as the intimate friend of the Manettes, it entered Mr. Stryver's mind to enter the bank and reveal to Mr. Lorry the brightness of the Soho horizon. So, he pushed open the door with the weak rattle in its throat, stumbled down the two steps, got past the two ancient cashiers. THE FELLOW OF DELICACY; and shouldered himself into the musty back closet where Mr. Lorry sat at great books ruled for figures, with perpendicular iron bars to his window as if that were ruled for figures too, and everything under the clouds were a sum. Halloa ! said Mr. Stryver. " How do you do ? I hope you are well ! It was Stryver's grand peculiarity that he always seemed . too big for any place, or space. He was so much too big for Tellson's, that old clerks in distant corners looked up with looks of remonstrance, as though he squeezed them against the wall. The House itself, magnificently reading the paper quite in the far-off perspective, lowered displeased, as if the Stryver head had been butted into its responsible waistcoat. The discreet Mr. Lorry said, in a sample tone of the voice he would recommend under the circumstances, " How do you do, Mr. Stryver ? How do you do, sir ? " and shook hands. There was a peculiarity in his manner of shaking hands, always to be seen in any clerk at Tellson's who shook hands with a customer when the House pervaded the air. He shook in a self-abnegating way, as one who shook for Tellson and Co. " Can I do anything for you, Mr. Stryver ? " asked Mr. Lorry, in his business character. " Why, no, thank you ; this is a private visit to yourself, Mr. Lorry ; I have come for a private word.'' " Oh indeed ! " said Mr. Lorry, bending down his ear, while his eye strayed to the House afar off. "I am going," said Mr. Stryver, leaning his arms confi- dentially on the desk : whereupon, although it was a large double one, there appeared to be not half desk enough for him : " I am going to make an offer of myself in marriage to your agreeable little friend. Miss Manette, Mr. Lorry." " Oh dear me ! " cried Mr. Lorry, rubbing his chin, and looking at his visitor dubiously. " Oh dear me, sir ? " repeated Stryver, drawing back. " Oh dear you, sir ? What may your meaning be, Mr. Lorry 1 " " My meaning," answered the man of business, " is, of course, friendly and appreciative, and that it does you the greatest credit, and — in short, my meaning is everything you could desire. But — really, you know, Mr. Stryver " Mr. Lorry paused, and shook his head at him in the oddest man- ner, as if he were compelled against his will to add, internally, " you know there really is so much too much of you I " 136 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. "Well ! said Stryver, slapping the desk with his conten tious hand, opening his eyes wider, and taking a long breatli, *^if I understand you, Mr. Lorry, I'll be hanged ! " Mr. Lorry adjusted his little wig at both ears as a means towards that end, and bit the feather of a pen. " D — n it all, sir ! ' ' said Stryver, staring at him, " am I not eligible ? " " Oh dear yes ! Yes. Oh yes, you're eligible ! " said Mr. Lorry. " If you say eligible, you are eligible." " Am I not prosperous ? " asked Stryver. Oh ! if you come to prosperous, you are prosperous," said Mr, Lorry. " And advancing ? " " If you come to advancing, you know," said Mr. Lorry, delighted to be able to make another admission, " nobody can doubt that." " Then what on earth is your meaning, Mr. Lorry " demanded Stryver, perceptibly crestfallen. " Well ! I Were you going there now ? " asked Mr. Lorry. " Straight! " said Stryver, with a plump of his fist on the desk. " Then I think I wouldn't, if I was you." " Why ? " said Stryver. " Now, I'll put you in a corner,'' forensically shaking a forefinger at him. " You are a man of business and bound to have a reason. State your reason. Why wouldn't you go ? " " Because," said Mr. Lorry, " I wouldn't go on such an object without having some cause to believe that I should succeed." — n ME ! " cried Stryver, "but this beats everything." Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant House, and glanced at the angry Stryver. " Here's a man of business — a man oi years — a man of experience — in a Bank," said Stryver; " and having summed up three leading reasons for complete success, he says there's no reason at all ! Says it with his head on ! " Mr. Stryver remarked upon the peculiarity as if it would have been infi- nitely less remarkable if he had said it with his head off. "When I speak of success, I speak of success with the young lady ; and when I speak of causes and reasons to make success probable, I speak of causes and reasons that will tell as such with the young lady. The young lady, my good sir/' t THE FELLOW OF DELICACY, said Mr. Lorry, mildly tapping the Stryver arm, " the young lady. The young lady goes before all." "Then you mean to tell me, Mr. Lorry,'' said Stryver, squaring his elbows, that it is your deliberate opinion that the young lady at present in question is a mincing Fool ? " " Not exactly so. I mean to tell you, Mr. Stryver," said Mr. Lorry, reddening, that I will hear no disrespectful word of that young lady from any lips ; and that if I knew any man — which I hope I do not — whose taste was so coarse, and whose temper was so overbearing, that he could not restrain himself from speaking disrespectfully of that young lady at this desk, not even Tellson's should prevent my giving him a piece of my mind." The necessity of being angry in a suppressed tone had put Mr. Stryver's blood-vessels into a dangerous state when it was his turn to be angry ; Mr. Lorry's veins, methodical as their courses could usually be, were in no better state now it was his turn. " That is what I mean to tell you, sir," said Mr. Lorry. Pray let there be no mistake about it." Mr. Stryver sucked the end of a ruler for a little while, and then stood hitting a tune out of his teeth with it, which probably gave him the toothache. He broke the awkward silence by saying : This is something new to me, Mr. Lorry. You deliber- ately advise me not to go up to Soho and offer myself — my- self, Stryver of the King's Bench bar? " " Do you ask me for my advice, Mr. Stryver ? " Yes, I do." Very good. Then I give it, and you have repeated it correctly." " And all I can say of it is," laughed Stryver with a vexed laugh, " that this — ha, ha ! — beats everything past, present, and to come.^' " Now understand me," pursued Mr. Lorry. " As a man of business, I am not justified in saying anything about this matter, for, as a man of business, I know nothing of it. But, as an old fellow, who has carried Miss Manette in his arms, who is the trusted frienH of Miss Manette and of her father too, and who has a great affection for them both, 1 have spoken. The confidence is not of my seeking, recollect. Now, you think I may not be right.?" '^Not 1 1 " said Stryver, whistling. I can't undertake to A TALE OF TWO CITIES. find tliird parties in common sense ; I can only find it for my- self. I suppose sense in certain quarters ; you suppose min< cing bread-and-butter nonsense. It's new to me, but you are right, I dare say." " What I suppose, Mr. Stryver, I claim to characterize foi myself. And understand me, sir," said Mr. Lorry, quickly flushing again, " I will not — not even at Tellson's — have it characterized for me by any gentleman breathing." " There ! I beg your pardon ! " said Stryver. " Granted. Thank you. Well, Mr. Stryver, I was about to say : it might be painful to you to find yourself mistaken, it might be painful to Dr. Manette to have the task of being explicit with you, it might be very painful to Miss Manette to have the task of being explicit with you. You know the terms upon which I have the honor and happiness to stand with the family. If you please, committing you in no way, representing you in no way, I will undertake to correct my advice by the exercise of a little new observation and judg- ment expressly brought to bear upon it. If you should then be dissatisfied with it, you can but test its soundness for your- self ; if, on the other hand, you should be satisfied with it, and it should be what it now is, it may spare all sides what is best spared. What do you say ? " How long would you keep me in town ? " Oh ! It is only a question of a few hours. I could go to Soho in the evening, and come to your chambers after- wards." " Then I say yes," said Stryver : " I won't go up there now, I am not so hot upon it as that comes to ; I say yes, and I shall expect you to look in to-night. Good-morning." Then Mr. Stryver turned and burst out of the Bank, causing such a concussion of air on his passage through, that to stand up against it bowing behind the two counters, re- quired the utmost remaining strength of the two ancient clerks. Those venerable and feeble persons were always seen by the public in the act of bowing, and were popularly believed, when they had bowed a customer out, still to keep on bowing in the empty office^ until they bowed another cus- tomer in. The barrister was keen enough to divine that the banker would not have gone so far in his expression of opinion on any less solid ground than moral certainty. Unprepared as he was for the large pill he had to swallow, he got it down. THE FELLOW OF DELICACY, 139 " And now," said Mr. Stryver, shaking his forensic forefinger at the Temple in general, when it was down, my way out of this, is, to put you all in the wrong." It was a bit of the art of an Old Bailey tactician, in which he found great relief, *' You shall not put me in the wrong, young lady," said Mr, Stryver ; " I'll do that for you." Accordingly, when Mr, Lorry called that night as late as ten o'clock, Mr, Stryver, among a quantity of books and papers littered out for the purpose, seemed to have nothing less on his mind than the subject of the morning. He even showed surprise when he saw Mr. Lorry, and was altogether in an absent and preoccupied state. " Well I " said that good-natured emissary, after a full half-hour of bootless attempts to bring him round to the question, " I have been to Soho." " To Soho " repeated Mr. Stryver, coldly. " Oh, to be sure ! What am I thinking of ! " " And I have no doubt," said Mr. Lorry, " that I was right in the conversation we had. My opinion is confirmed, and I reiterate my advice." " I assure you," returned Mr. Stryver, in the friendliest way, " that I am sorry for it on your account, and sorry for it on the poor father's account. I know this must always be a sore subject with the family ; let us say no more about it." " I don't understand you," said Mr. Lorry. I dare say not," rejoined Stryver, nodding his head in a smoothing and final way ; " no matter, no matter." But it does matter," Mr. Lorry urged. " No it doesn't ; I assure you it doesn't. Having sup- posed that there was sense where there is no sense, and a laudable ambition where there is not a laudable ambition, I am well out of my mistake, and no harm is done. Young women have committed similar follies often before, and have repented them in poverty and obscurity often before. In an unselfish aspect, I am sorry that the thing is dropped, because it would have been a bad thing for me in a worldly point of view ; in a selfish aspect, I am glad that the thing has dropped, because it would have been a bad thing for me in a worldly point of view — it is hardly necessary to say I could have gained nothing by it. There is no harm at all done. I have not proposed to the young lady, and, between ourselves, I am by no means certain, on reflection, that I ever should have com- mitted myself to that extent, Mr. Lorry, you cannot control A TALE OF TWO CITIES, the mincing vanities and giddiness of empty-headed girls; you must not expect to do it, or you will always be disap- pointed. Now, pray say no more about it. I tell you, I re- gret it on account of others, but I am satisfied on my own ac- count. And I am really very much obliged to you for allow- ing me to sound you, and for giving me your advice ; you know the young lady better than I do j you were right, it never would have done." Mr. Lorry was so taken aback, that he looked quite stu- pidly at Mr. Stryver shouldering him towards the door, with an appearance of showering generosity, forbearance, and good- will, on his erring head. Make the best of it, my dear sir," said Stryver ; " say no more about it ; thank you again for allowing me to sound you ; good-night ! Mr. Lorry was out in the night, before he knew where he was. Mr. Stryver was lying back on his sofa, winking at his ceiling. CHAPTER Xin. THE FELLOW OF NO DELICACY. If Sydney Carton ever shone anywhere, he certainly never shone in the house of Doctor Manette. He had been there often, during a whole year, and had always been the same moody and morose lounger there. When he cared to talk, he talked well ; but, the cloud of caring for nothing, which over- shadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him. And yet he did care something for the streets that envi- roned that house, and for the senseless stones that made their pavements. Many a night he vaguely and unhappily wan- dered there, when wine had brought no transitory gladness to him; many a dreary daybreak revealed his solitary figure lingering there, and still lingering there when the first beams of the sun brought into strong relief, removed beauties of ar- chitecture in spires of churches and lofty buildings, as perhaps the quiet time brought some sense of better things, else for- gotten and unattainable, into his mind. Of late, the negJ^cted bed in the Temple Court had known him more scan til) than irrr sj^lloiv of no delicacy. ever ; and often when he had thrown himself upon it no longer than a few minutes, he had got up again, and haunted that nGi;;^'^-borhood. On a day in August, when Mr. Stryver (after notifying to his jackal that "he had thought better of that marrying matter ") had carried his delicacy into Devonshire, and when the sight and scent of flowsers in the City streets had some wai.:s of goodness in them for the worst, of health for the sickliest, and of youth for the oldest, Sydney's feet still trod those stones.' From being irresolute and purposeless, his feet became animated by an intention, and, in the working out of that intention, they took him to the Doctor's door. He was shown up stairs, and found Lucie at her work, alone. She had never been quite at her ease with him, and received him with some little embarrassment as he seated himself near her table. But, looking up at his face in the in- terchange of the first few common-places, she observed a change in it. " I fear you are not well, Mr. Carton ! " No. But the life I lead, Miss Manette, is not conducive to health. What is to be expected of, or by, such profli- gates ? " "Is it not — forgive me ; I have begun the question qu my lips — a pity to live no better life ? " God knows it is a shame ! " Then why not change it ? Looking gently at him again, she was surprised and sad- dened to see that there were tears in his eyes. There were tears in his voice too, as he answered : "It is too late for that, I shall never be better than I am. I shall sink lower, and be worse.'* He leaned an elbow on her table, and covered his eyes with his hand. The table trembled in the silence that fol- lowed. She had never seen him softened, and was much distressed^ He knew her to be so, without looking at her, and said : " Pray forgive me, Miss Manette. I break down before the knowledge of what I want to say to you. Will you hear me t " " If it will do you any good, Mr. Carton, if it would make you happier, it would make me very glad ! " " God bless you for your sweet compassion ! " He unshaded his face after a little while, and spoke steadily. 1^2 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. " Don't be afraid to hear me. Don't shrink from anything 1 say. I am like one who died young. All my life might have been.'' " No, Mr. Carton. I am sure that the best part of u might still be ; I am sure that you might be much, much wor- thier of yourself." Say of you, Miss Manette,»and although I know bettei — although in the mystery of fny own wretched heart I know better — I shall never forget it ! " She was pale and trembling. He came to her relief with a fixed despair of himself which made the interview unlike any other that could have been holden. If it had been possible, Miss Manette, that you could have returned the love of the man you see before you — self- flung away, wasted, drunken, poor creature of misuse as you know him to be — he would have been conscious this day and hour, in spite of his happiness, that he would bring you to misery, bring you to sorrow and repentance, blight you, dis- grace you, pull you down with him. I know very well that you can have no tenderness for me ; I ask for none ; I am even thankful that it cannot be." " Without it, can I not save you, Mr. Carton ? Can I not recall you — forgive me again ! — to a better course ? Can I in no way repay your confidence ? I know this is a confidence," she modestly said, after a little hesitation, and in earnest tears, " I know you would say this to no one else. Can I turn it to no good account for yourself, Mr. Carton ? " He shook his head. " To none. No, Miss Manette, to none. If you will hear me through a very little more, all you can ever do for me is done. I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul. In my degradation I have not been so degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of this home made such a home by you, has stirred old shadows that I thought had died out of me. Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it." THE FELLOW OF NO FfELICACY. "Will nothing of it remain ? O Mr. Carton, think again 1 Try again ! " " No, Miss Manette ; all through it, I have known myself to be quite undeserving. And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sud- den mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire = — a fire, however, inseparable in its nature from myself, quick- ening nothing, lighting nothing, doing no service, idly burning away/' " Since it is my misfortune, Mr. Carton, to have made you more unhappy than you were before you knew me— — " " Don't say that. Miss Manette, for you would have re- claimed me, if anything could. You will not be the cause of my becoming worse." " Since the state of your mind that you describe, is, at all events, attributable to some influence of mine — this is what I mean, if I can make it plain — can I use no influence to serve you ? Have I no power for good, with you, at all 1 " " The utmost good that I am capable of now, Miss Ma- nette, I have come here to realize. Let me carry through the rest of my misdirected life, the remembrance that I opened my heart to you, last of all the world ; and that there was something left in me at this time which you could deplore and pity." "Which I entreated you to believe, again and again, most fervently, with all my heart, was capable of better things, Mr. Carton ! " " Entreat me to believe it no more. Miss Manette. I have proved myself, and I know better. I distress you ; I draw fast to an end. Will you let me believe, when I recall this day, that the last confidence of my life was reposed in your pure and innocent breast, and that it lies there alone, and will be " shared by no one ? " " If that will be a consolation to you, yes." " Not even by the dearest one ever to be known to you ? " " Mr. Carton," she answered, after an agitated pause, "the secret is yours, not mine ; and I promise to respect it." " Thank you. And again, God bless you." He put her hand to his lips, and moved towards the door, " Be under no apprehension, Miss Manette, of my ever resuming this conversation by so much as a passing word. I will never refer to it again. If I were dead, that could not be surer than it is henceforth. In the hour of my death, I 7 144 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, shall hold sacred the one good remembrance — -and shall thank and bless you for it — that my last avowal of myself was made to you, and that my name, and faults, and miseries were gently carried in your heart. May it otherwise be light and happy ! He was so unlike what he had ever show^n himself to be, and it was so sad to think how much he had thrown away, and how much he every day kept down and perverted, Lucie Manette wept mournfully for him as he stood looking back at her. " Be ??)mforted ! he said, " I am not worth such feeling, Miss Manette. An hour or two hence, and the low compan- ions and low habits that I scorn but yield to, will render me less worth such tears as those, than any wretch who creeps along the streets. Be comforted ! But, within myself, I shall always be, towards you, what I am now, though outwardly I shall be what you have heretofore seen me. The last sup- plication but one I make to you, is, that you will believe this of me,'' " I will, Mr. Carton." " My last supplication of all, is this ; and with it, I will relieve you of a visitor with whom I well know you have noth- ing in unison, and between whom and you there is an impass- able space. It is useless to say it, I know, but it rises out of my soul. For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. If my career were of that better kind that there was any opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, I would em- brace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. Try to hold me in your mind, at some quiet times, as ardent and sin- cere in this one thing. The time will come, the time will not be long in coming, when new ties will be formed about you — ties that will bind you yet more tenderly and strongly to the home you so adorn — the dearest ties that will ever grace and gladden you. O Miss Manette, when the little picture of a happy father's face looks up in yours, when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you ! " He said, " Farewell ! " said a last " God bless you ! " and hft her. THE HONEST TRADESMAN, CHAPTER XIV. THE HONEST TRADESMAN. To the eyes of Mr. Jeremiah Cruncher, sitting on his stoo'. In Fleet Street with his grisly urchin beside him, a vast num- ber and variety of objects in movement were every day pre- sented. Who could sit upon anything in Fleet Street during the busy hours of the day, and not be dazed and deafened by two immense processions, one ever tending westward with the sun^ the other ever tending eastward from the sun, both ever tending to the plains beyond the range of red and purple where the sun goes down ! With his straw in his mouth, Mr. Cruncher sat watching the two streams, like the heathen rustic who has for several centuries been on duty watching one stream — saving that Jerry had no expectation of their ever running dry. Nor would it have been an expectation of a hopeful kind, since a small part of his income was derived from the pilotage of timid women (mostly of a full habit and past the middle term of life) from Tellson's side of the tides to the opposite shore. Brief as such companionship was in every separate instance, Mr. Cruncher never failed to become so interested in the lady as to express a strong desire to have the honor of drinking her very good health. And it was from the gifts bestowed upon him towards the execution of this benevolent purpose, that he recruited his finances, as just now observed. Time was, when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place, and mused in the sight of men. Mr. Cruncher, sitting on a stool in a public place, but not being a poet, mused as little as possible, and looked about him. It fell out that he was thus engaged in a season when crowds were few, and belated women few, and when his af^ fairs in general were so unprosperous as to awaken a strong suspicion in his breast that Mrs. Cruncher must have been "flopping" in some pointed manner, when an unusual con- course pouring down Fleet Street westward, attracted his at- tentioi?. Looking that way, Mr. Cruncher made out -that 146 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. some kind of funeral was coming along, and that there wag popular objection to this funeral, which engendered uproar. " Young Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher, turning to his off* spring, *'it's a buryin'." " Hooroar, father ! cried Young Jerry. The young gentleman uttered this exultant sound with mysterious significance. The elder gentleman took the cry so ill, that he watched his opportunity, and smote the young gentleman on the ear. " What d'ye mean ? What are you hooroaring at ? What do you want to conwey to your own father, you young Rip ? This boy is a getting too many for me /^^ said Mr. Cruncher, surveying him. Him and his hooroars ! Don't let me hear no more of you, or you shall feel some more of me. D'ye hear ? " " I warn't doing no harm," Young Jerry protested, rubbing his cheek. ^' Drop it then," said Mr. Cruncher ; " I won't have none of your no harms. Get a top of that there seat, and look at the crowd." His son obeyed, and the crowd approached ; they were bawling and hissing round a dingy hearse and dingy mourning coach, in which mourning coach there was only one mourner, dressed in the dingy trappings that were considered essential to the dignity of the position. The position appeared by no means to please him, however, with an increasing rabble sur- rounding the coach, deriding him, making grimaces at him, and incessantly groaning and calling out : " Yah ! Spies ! Tst ! Yaha ! Spies ! " with many compliments too numerous and forcible to repeat. Funerals had at all times a remarkable attraction for Mr. Cruncher; he always pricked up his senses, and became ex- cited, when a funeral passed Tellson's. Naturally, therefore, a funeral with this uncommon attendance excited him greatly, and he asked of the first man who ran against him : " What is it, brother ? What's it about ? " " / don't know," said the man. " Spies ! Yaha ! Tst I Spies ! " He asked another man. " Who is it ? " "/don't know," returned the man, clapping his hand to his mouth nevertheless, and vociferating in a surprising heat and with the greatest ardor, Spies ! Yaha ! Tst, tst 1 Spi-ies ! " THE HONEST TRADESMAN, 147 At length, a person better informed on the merits of the case, tumbled against him, and from this person he learned that the funeral was the funeral of one Roger Cly. " Was he a spy ? asked Mr. Cruncher. " Old Bailey spy," returned his informant. " Yaha ! Tst ! Yah ! Old Bailey Spi-i-ies ! " " Why, to be sure ! " exclaimed Jerry, recalling the Trial at which he had assisted. I've seen him. Dead, is he ? " Dead as mutton," returned the other, " and can't be too dead. Have 'em out, there ! Spies ! Pull 'em out, there ! Spies ! " The idea was so acceptable in the prevalent absence of any idea, that the crowd caught it up with eagerness, and loudly repeating the suggestion to have 'em out, and to pull 'em out, mobbed the two vehicles so closely that they came to a stop. On the crowd's opening the coach doors, the one mourner scuffled out of himself and was in their hands for a moment ; but he was so alert, and made such good use of his time, that in another moment he was scouring away up a by-street, after shedding his cloak, hat, long hatband, white pocket-handker- chief, and other symbolical tears. These, the people tore to pieces and scattered far and wide with great enjoyment, while the tradesmen hurriedly shut up their shops ; for a crowd in those times stopped at nothing, and was a monster much dreaded. They had already got the length of opening the hearse to take the coffin out, when some brighter genius proposed instead, its being escorted to its destination amidst general rejoicing. Practical suggestions being much needed, this suggestion, too, was received with acclamation, and the coach was immediately filled with eight inside and a dozen out, while as many people got on the roof of the hearse as could by any exercise of in- genuity stick upon it. Among the first of these volunteers was Jerry Cruncher himself, who modestly concealed his spiky head from the observation of Tellson's, in the further corner of the mourning coach. The officiating undertakers made some protest against these changes in the ceremonies ; but, the river being alarm- ingly near, and several voices remarking on the efficacy of cold immersion in bringing refractory members of the pro^ fession to reason, the protest was faint and brief. The remodelled procession started, with a chimney-sweep driving the hoarse — advised by the regular driver, who was perched A TALE OF TWO CITIES, beside him, under close inspection, for the purpose — and with a pieman, also attended by his cabinet minister, driving the mourning coach. A bear-leader, a popular street character of the time, was impressed as an additional ornament, before the cavalcade had gone far down the Strand ; and his bear, who was black and very mangy, gave quite an Undertaking air to that part of the procession in which he walked. Thus, with beer-drinking, pipe-smoking, song-roaring, and infinite caricaturing of woe, the disorderly procession went its way, recruiting at every step, and all the shops shutting up before it. Its destination was the old church of Saint Pancras, far off in the fields. It got there in course of time ; insisted on pouring into the burial-ground ; finally, accom- plished the interment of the deceased Roger Cly in its own way, and highly to its own satisfaction. The dead man disposed of, and the crowd being under the necessity of providing some other entertainment for itself, another brighter genius (or perhaps the same) conceived the humor of impeaching casual passers-by, as Old Bailey spies, and wreaking vengeance on them. Chase was given to some scores of inoffensive persons who had never been near the Old Bailey in their lives, in the realization of this fancy, and they were roughly hustled and maltreated. The transition to the sport of window-breaking, and thence to the plundering of public-houses, was easy and natural. At last, after several hours, when sundry summer-houses had been pulled down, and some area-railings had been torn up, to arm the more belligerent spirits, a rumor got about that the Guards were coming. Before this rumor, the crowd gradually melted away, and perhaps the Guards came, and perhaps they never came, and this was the usual progress of a mob. Mr. Cruncher did not assist at the closing sports, but had remained behind in the churchyard, to confer and condole with the undertakers. The place had a soothing influence on him. He procured a pipe from a neighboring public-house, and smoked it, looking in at the railings and maturely con- sidering the spot. ^' Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher, apostrophizing himself in his usual way, you see that there Cly that day, and you see with your own eyes that he was a young 'un and a straight made ^un.'' Having smoked his pipe out, and ruminated a little longer, he turned himself about, that he might appear, before the houl THE HONEST TRADESMAN. 149 ot closing, on his station at Tellson's. Whether his medita- tions on mortality had touched his liver, or whether his general health had been previously at all amiss, or v^hether he desired to show a little attention to an eminent man, is not so much to the purpose, as that he made a short call upon his medical adviser — a distinguished surgeon — on his way back. Young Jerry relieved his father with dutiful interest, and reported No job in his absence. The bank closed, the ancient clerks came out, the usual watch was set, and Mr. Cruncher and his son went home to tea. " New, I tell you where it is ! " said Mr. Cruncher to his wife on entering. If, as a honest tradesman, my wenturs goes wrong to-night, I shall make sure that you've been praying again me, and I shall work you for it just the same as if I seen you do it." The dejected Mrs. Cruncher shook her head. "Why, you're at it afore my face !" said Mr. Cruncher, with signs of angry apprehension. " I am saying nothing." " Well, then ; don't meditate nothing. You might as well flop as meditate. You may as well go again me one way as another. Drop it altogether." "Yes, Jerry." "Yes, Jerry," repeated Mr. Cruncher sitting down to tea. " Ah ! It is yes, Jerry. That's about it. You may say yes, Jerry." Mr, Cruncher had no particular meaning in these sulky corroborations, but made use of them, as people not unfre- quently do, to express general ironical dissatisfaction. " You and your yes, Jerry,'^ said Mr. Cruncher, taking a bite out of his bread-and-butter, and seeming to help it down with a large invisible oyster out of his saucer. " Ah ! I think so. I believe you." " You are going out to-night ? " asked his decent wife, when he took another bite. " Yes, f am." " May I go with you, father? " asked his son, briskly. " No, you mayn't. I'm a going — as your mother knows— a fishing. That's where I'm going to. Going a fishing." " Your fishing-rod gets rayther rusty ; don't it, father ? " Never you mind." * Shall you bring any fish home, father ? " If I don't, you'll have short commons, to-morrow," re A TALE OF TWO CITIES, turned that gentleman, shaking his head ; " that's questions enough for vou ; I ain't a going out, till youVe been long a- bed.'^ He devoted himself during the remainder of the evening to keeping a most vigilant watch on Mrs. Cruncher, and sul- lenly holding her in conversation that she might be prevented from meditating any petitions to his disadvantage. With this view, he urged his son to hold her in conversation also, and led the unfortunate woman a hard life by dwelling on any causes of complaint he could bring against her, rather than he would leave her for a moment to her own reflections. The de- voutest person could have rendered no greater homage to the efficacy of an honest prayer than he did in this distrust of his wife. It was as if a protessed unbeliever in ghosts should be frightened by a ghost story. And mind you," said Mr. Cruncher. " No games to- morrow ! If I, as a honest tradesman, succeed in providing a jinte of meat or two, none of your not touching of it, and sticking to bread. If I, as a honest tradesman, am able to provide a little beer, none of your declaring on water. When you go to Rome, do as Rome does. Rome will be a ugly customer to you, if you don't. 7'm your Rome, you know." Then he began grumbling again ; " With your flying into the face of your own wittles and drink ! I don't know how scarce you mayn't make the wittles and drink here, by your flopping tricks and your unfeeling conduct. Look at your boy : he is your'n, ain't he ? He's as thin as a lath. Do you call yourself a mother, and not know that a mother's first duty is to blow her boy out " This touched young Jerry on a tender place ; who adjured his mother to perform her first duty, and, whatever else she did or neglected, above all things to lay especial stress on the discharge of that maternal function so affectingly and delicate ly indicated by his other parent. Thus the evening wore away with the Cruncher family, until Young Jerry was ordered to bed, and his mother, laid under similar injunctions, obeyed them. Mr. Cruncher be- guiled the earlier watches of the night with solitary pipes, and did not start upon his excursion until nearly one o'clock. Towards that small and ghostly hour, he rose up from his chair, took a key out of his pocket, opened a locked cupboard, and brought forth a sack, a crowbar of convenient size, a rope and chain, and other fishing tackle of that nature. Disposing THE HONEST TRADESMAN. these articles about him in skilful manner, he bestowed a parting defiance on Mrs. Cruncher, extinguished the light, and went out. Young Jerry, who had only made a feint of undressing when he went to bed, was not long after his father. Under cover of the darkness he followed out of the room, followed down the stairs, followed down the court, followed out inta the streets. He was in no uneasiness concerning his getting; into the house again, for it was full of lodgers, and the door stood ajar all night. Impelled by a laudable ambition to study the art and mys- tery of his father's honest calling, Young Jerry, keeping a:> close to house fronts, walls, and door-ways,, as his eyes were close to one another, held his honored parent in view. The honored parent steering Northward, had not gone far, when he was joined by another disciple of Izaak Walton, and the two trudged on together. Within half an hour from the first starting, they were be- yond the winking lamps, and the more than winking watch- men, and were out upon a lonely road. Another fisherman was picked up here — and that so silently, that if Young Jerry had been superstitious, he might have supposed the second follower of the gentle craft to have, all of a sudden, split him- self into two. The three went on, and Young Jerry went on, until the three stopped under a bank overhanging the road. Upon the top of the bank was a low brick wall, surmounted by an iron railing. In the shadow of bank and wall the three turned out of the road, and up a blind lane, of which the wall — there, risen to some eight or ten feet high — formed one side. Crouching down in a corner, peeping up the lane, the next object that Young Jerry saw, was the form of his honored parent, pretty well defined against a watery and clouded moon, nimbly scaling an iron gate. He was soon over, and then the second fisherman got over, and then the third. They all dropped softly on the ground within the gate, and lay there a little — listening perhaps. Then they moved away on their hands and knees. It was now Young Jerry's turn to approach the gate : vvhich he did, holding his breath. Crouching down again in a corner there, and looking in, he made out the three fisher- men creeping through some rank grass ! and all the grave- t^tones in the churchyard — it was a large churchyard that they 152 A TALE GF TWO CITiES. were in — looking on like ghosts in white, while the church towei itself looked on like the ghost of a monstrous giant. The} did not creep far, before they stopped and stood upright. And then they began to fish. They fished with a spade at first. Presently the honored parent appeared to be adjusting some instrument like a great corkscrew. Whatever tools they worked with, they worked hard, until the awful striking of the church clock so terrified Young Jerry, that he made off, with his hair as stiff as his father's. f3ut, his long-cherished desire to know more about these matters, not only stopped him in his running away, but lured him back again. They were still fishing perseveringly, when he peeped in at the gate for the second time ; but now they seemed to have got a bite. There was a screwing and com- plaining sound down below, and their bent figures were strained, as if by a weight. By slow degrees the veight broke away the earth upon it, and came to the surface. Young Jerry very well knew what it would be ; but, when he saw it, and saw his honored parent about to wrench it open, he was so frightened, being new to the sight, that he made off again, and never stopped until he had run a mile or more. He would not have stopped then, for anything less neces- sary than breath, it being a spectral sort of race that he ran, and one highly desirable to get to the end of. He had a strong idea that the coffin he had seen was running after him; and, pictured as hopping on behind him, bolt upright, upon its narrow end, always on the point of overtaking him and hopping on at his side — perhaps taking his arm — it was a pursuer to shun. It was an inconsistent and ubiquitous fiend too, for, while it was making the whole night behind him dreadful, he darted out into the roadway to avoid dark alleys, fearful of its coming hopping out of them like a dropsical boy's Kite without tail and wings. It hid in door-ways too, rubbing its horrible shoulders against doors, and drawing them up to its ears, as if it were laughing. It got into shad- ows on the road, and lay cunningly on its back to trip him up. All this time it was incessantly hopping on behind and gaining on him, so that when the boy got to his own door he had reason for being half dead. And even then it would not leave him, but followed him up stairs with a bump on ever) stair, scrambled into bed with him, and bumped down, dead and heavy, on his breast when he fell asleep. THE HONEST TRADESMAN. 153 From his oppressed slumber, Young Jerry in his closet was awakened after daybreak and before sunrise, by the presence of his father in the famHy room. Something had gone wrong with him ; at least, so Young Jerry inferred, from the circumstance of his holding Mrs. Cruncher by the ears, and knocking the back of her head against the head board of the bed. " I told you I would," said Mr. Cruncher, "and I did.'' " Jerry, Jerry, Jerry ! " his wife implored. " You oppose yourself to the profit of the business," said Jerry, " and me and my partners suffer. You was to honor and obey ; why the devil don't you ? " " I try to be a good wife, Jerry," the poor woman protested, with tears. Is it being a good wife to oppose your husband's business ? Is it honoring your husband to dishonor his busi- ness ? Is it obeying your husband to disobey him on the wital subject of his business ? " Yot hadn't taken to the dreadful business then, Jerry." '*It's enough for you," retorted Mr. Cruncher, "to be the wife of a honest tradesman, and not to occupy your female mind with calculations when he took to his trade or when he didn't. A honoring and obeying wife would let his trade alone altogether. Call yourself a religious woman 1 If you're a religious woman, give me a irreligious one ! You have no more nat'ral sense of duty than the bed of this here Thames river has of a pile, and similarly it must be knocked into you."^ The altercation was conducted in a low tone of voice, and terminated in the honest tradesman's kicking off his clay- soiled boots, and lying down at his length on the floor. After taking a timid peep at him lying on his back, with his rusty hands under his head for a pillow, his son lay down too, and fell asleep again. There was no fish for breakfast, and not much of anything else. Mr. Cruncher was out of spirits, and out of temper, and kept an iron pot-lid by him as a projectile for the correc- tion of Mrs. Cruncher, in case he should observe any symp- toms of her saying Grace. He was brushed and washed at the usual hour, and set off with his son to pursue his osten- sible calling. Young Jerry, walking with the stool under his arm at his father's side a^ong sunny and crowded Fleet Street, was a IS4 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. very different Young Jerry from him of the previous nighty running home through darkness and solitude from his grim pursuer. His cunning was fresh with the day, and his quahns were gone with the night — in which particulars it is not im- probable that he had compeers in Fleet Street and the City of London, that fine morning. Father,'' said Young Jerry, as they walked along : tak- ing care to keep at arm's length and to have the stool well between them : " what's a Resurrection-Man ? " Mr. Cruncher came to a stop on the pavement before he answered, " How should I know ? " " I thought you knowed everything, father," said the art- less boy. " Hem ! Well," returned Mr. Cruncher, going on again, and lifting off his hat to give his spikes free play, " he's a tradesman." " What's his goods, father ? " asked the brisk Young Jerry. " His goods," said Mr. Cruncher, after turning it over in his mind, " is a branch of Scientific goods." " Persons' bodies, ain't it, father ? " asked the lively boy. " I believe it is something of that sort," observed Mr. Cruncher. " Oh, father, I should so like to be a Resurrection-Man when I'm quite growed up ! " Mr. Cruncher was soothed, but shook his head in a dubi ous and moral way. It depends upon how you dewelop your talents. Be careful to dewelop your talents, and never to say no more than you can help to nobody, and there's no telling at the present time what you may not come to be fit for." As Young Jerry, thus encouraged, went on a few yards in advance, to plant the stool in the shadow of the Bar, Mr. Cruncher added to himself: Jerry, you honest tradesman, there's hopes wot that boy will yet be a blessing to you, and a recompense to you for his mother ! " KNITTING. CHAPTER XV. KNITTING. There had been earlier drinking than usual in the wine* shop of Monsieur Defarge. As early as six o'clock in the morning, sallow faces peeping through its barred windows had descried other faces within, bending over measures of wine. Monsieur Defarge sold a very thin wine at the best of times, but it would seem to have been an unusually thin wine that he sold at this time. A sour' wine, moreover, or a souring, for its influence on the mood of those who drank it was to make them gloomy. No vivacious Bacchanalian flame leaped out of the pressed grape of Monsieur Defarge : but, a smould- ering fire that burnt in the dark, lay hidden in the dregs of it. This had been the third morning in succession, on which there had been early drinking at the wine-shop of Monsieur Defarge. It had begun on Monday, and here was Wednes- day come. There had been more early brooding than drink- ing ; f(5r, many men had listened and whispered and slunk about there from the time of the opening of the door, who could not have laid a piece of money on the counter to save their souls. These were to the full as interested in the place, however, as if they could have commanded whole barrels of wine ; and they glided from seat to seat, and from corner to corner, swallowing talk in lieu of drink, with greedy looks. Notwithstanding an unusual flow of company, the master of the wine-shop was not visible. He was not missed ; for, nobody who crossed the threshold looked for him, nobody asked for him, nobody wondered to see only Madame Defarge in her seat, presiding over the distribution of wine, with a bowl of battered small coins before her, as much defaced and beaten out of their original impress as the small coinage of humanity from whose ragged pockets they have come. A suspended interest and a prevalent absence of mind, were perhaps observed by the spies who looked in at the wine-shop, as they looked in at every place, high and low, from the king's palace to the criminal's gaol. Games at cards languished, players at dominoes musingly built towers with them, drinkers drew figures on the tables with spilt drops of X TALK OF V'H 'O CITIES. wine. Madame Defarge herself picked out tlie pattern on her sleeve with her toothpick, and saw and heard something inau- dible and invisible a long way off. Thus Saint Antoine in this vinous feature of his, until midday. It was high noontide, when two dusty men passed through his streets and under his swinging lamps ; of whom^ one was Monsieur Defarge ; the other a member of roads in a blue cap. All adust and athirst, the two entered the wine- shop. Their arrival had lighted a kind of fire in the breast of Saint Antoine, fast spreading as they came along, which stirred and flickered in flames of faces at most doors and win- dows. Yet, no one had followed them, and no man spoke when they entered the wine-shop, though the eyes of every man there were turned upon them. " Good-day, gentlemen ! " said Monsieur Defarge. It may have been a signal for loosening the general tongue. It elicited an answering chorus of Good-day ! " " It is bad weather, gentlemen,'' said Defarge, shaking his head. Upon which, every man looked at his neighbor, and then all cast down their eyes and sat silent. Except one man, who got up and went out. " My wife," said Defarge aloud, addressing Madanie De- farge : " I have travelled certain leagues wdth this good men- der of roads, called Jacques. I met him — by accident — a day and half's journey out of Paris. He is a good child, this mender of roads, called Jacques. Give him to drink, my wife ! " A second man got up and went out. Madame Defarge set wine before the mender of roads called Jacques, who doffed his blue cap to the company, and drank. In the breast of his blouse he carried some coarse dark bread ; he ate of this between whiles, and sat munching and drinking near Madame Defarge's counter. A third man got up and went out. Defarge refreshed himself with a draught of wine — but, he took less than was given to the stranger, as being himself a man to whom it was no rarity — and stood waiting until the countryman had made his breakfast. He looked at no one present, and no one now^ looked at him ; not even Madame Defarge, who had taken up her knitting, and was at work. " Have you finished your repast, friend t " he asked, in due season. "Yes, thank you." KNITTING, " Come, then ! You shall see the apartment that I told you you could occupy. It will suit you to a marvel." Out of the wine-shop into the street, out of the street into a court-yard, out of the court-yard up a steep staircase, out of the staircase into a garret, — formerly the garret where a white- haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes. No white-haired man was there now ; but, the three men were there who had gone out of the wine-shop singly. And between them and the white-haired man afar off, was the one small link, that they had once looked in at him through the chinks in the wall. Defarge closed the door carefully, and spoke in a subdued voice : "Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques Three ! This is the witness encountered by appointment, by me, Jacques Four. He will tell you all. Speak, Jacques Five ! " The mender of roads, blue cap in hand, wiped his swarthy forehead with it, and said, " Where shall I commence. Mon- sieur .5^'' " Commence," was Monsieur Defarge's not unreasonable reply, " at the commencement." " I saw him then, messieurs," began the mender of roads, " a year ago this running summer, underneath the carriage of the Marquis, hanging by the chain. Behold the manner of it. I leaving my work on the road, the sun going to bed, the car- riage of the Marquis slowly ascending the hill, he hanging by the chain — like this." ♦Again the mender of roads went through the whole per- formance ; in which he ought to have been perfect by that time, seeing that it had been the infallible resource and indispens- able entertainment of his village during a whoL^ year. Jacques One struck in, and asked if he had ever seen the man before ? " Never," answered the mender of roads, recovering his perpendicular. Jacques Three demanded how he afterwards recognized him then ? " By his tall figure," said the mender of roads, softly, and with his finger at his nose. "When Monsieur the Marquis demands that evening, * Say, what is he like ? ' I make re- sponse, ' Tall as a spectre.' " " You should have said, short as a dwarf," returned Jacques Two. A TALE OF TWO CITIES. " But what did I know ? The deed was not then accom< plished, neither did he confide in me. Observe ! Under those circumstances even, I do not offer my testimony. Monsieur the Marquis indicates me with his finger, standing near our little fountain, and says, * To me ! Bring that rascal ! ' My faith, messieurs, I offer nothing.'' He is right there, Jacques," murmured Defarge, to him who had interrupted. " Go on ! " Good ! '' said the mender of roads, with an air of myster}\ The tall man is lost, and he is sought — how many months ? Nine, ten, eleven.?'' No matter, the number," said Defarge. "He is well hidden, but at last he is unluckily found. Go on ! " " I am again at work upon the hill-side, and the sun is again about to go to bed. I am collecting my tools to descend to my cottage down in the village below, where it is already dark, when I raise my eyes, and see coming over the hill six soldiers. In the midst of them is a tall man with his arms bound — tied to his sides — like this ! " With the aid of his indispensable cap, he represented a man with his elbows bound fast at his hips, with cords that were knotted behind him. " I stand aside, messieurs, by my heap of stones, to see the soldiers and their prisoner pass (for it is a solitary road, that, where any spectacle is well worth looking at), and at first, as they approach, I see no more than that they are six soldiers with a tall man bound, and that they are almost black to my sight — except on the side of the sun going to bed, where they have a red edge, messieurs. Also, I see that their long shadows are on the hollow ridge on the opposite side of the road, and are on the hill above *t, and are like the shadows of giants. Also, I see that they ate covered with dust, and that the dust moves with them, as they come, tramp, tramp ! But when they advance quite near to me, I recognize the tall man, and he recognizes me. Ah, but he would be well content to precipitate himself over the hill-side once again, as on the evening when he and I first encountered, close to the same spot I " He described it as if he were there, and it was evident that he saw it vividly ; perhaps he had not seen much in his life. " I do not show the soldiers that I recognize the tall man / he does not show the soldiers that he recognizes me ; we do KNITTING. 159 it, and we know it, with our eyes. * Come on ! ' says the chief of that company, pointing to the village, ' bring him fast to his tomb ! ' and they bring him faster. I follow. His arms are swelled because of being bound so tight, his wooden shoes are large and clumsy, and he is lame. Because he is lame, and consequently slow, they drive him with their guns — like this ! He imitated the action of a man's being impelled for- ward by the butt-ends of muskets. " As they descend the hill like madmen running a race, he falls. They laugh and pick him up again. His face is bleeding and covered with dust, but he cannot touch it: thereupon they laugh again. They bring him into the village , all the village runs to look ; they take him past the mill, and up to the prison ; all the village sees the prison gate open in the darkness of the night, and swallow him — like this ! " He opened his mouth as wide as he could, and shut it with a sounding snap of his teeth. Observant of his unwill- ingness to mar the effect by opening it again, Defarge said, " Go on, Jacques." " All the village,'* pursued the mender of roads, on tiptoe and in a low voice, withdraws; all the village whispers by the fountain ; all the village sleeps ; all the village dreams of that unhappy one, within the locks and bars of the prison on the crag, and never to come out of it, except to perish. In the morning, with my tools upon my shoulder, eating my morsel of black bread as I go, I make a circuit by the prison, on my way to my work. There I see him, high up, behind the bars of a lofty iron cage, bloody and dusty as last night, look- ing through* He has no hand free, to wave to me ; I dare not call to him ; he regards me like a dead man.'' Defarge and the three glanced darkly at one another. The looks of all of them were dark, repressed, and revengeful, as they listened to the countryman's story ; the manner of all of them, while it was secret, was authoritative too. They had the ah of a rough tribunal ; Jacques One and Two sitting on the old pallet-bed, each with his chin resting on his hand, and his eyes intent on the road-mender ; Jacques Three, equally in- tent, on one knee behind them, with his agitated hand always gliding over the network of fine ner^^es about his mouth and nose ; Defarge standing between them and the narrator, whom he had stationed in the light of the window, by turns looking from him to them, and froiU thera to him. i6o A TALE OF TWO CITIES. " Go on, Jacques/' said Defarge. " He remains up there in his iron cage some days. The village looks at him by stealth, for it is afraid. But it always looks up, from a distance, at the prison on the crag ; and in the evening, when the work of the day is achieved and it assembles to gossip at the fountain, all faces are turned towards the prison. Formerly, they were turned to- wards the posting-house ; now, they are turned towards the prison. They whisper at the fountain, that although con- demned to death he will not be executed ; they say that peti- tions have -been presented in Paris, showing that he was en^ raged and made mad by the death of his child ; they say that a petition has been presented to the King himself. What do I know? It is possible. Perhaps yes, perhaps no." Listen then, Jacques," Number One of that name sternly interposed. Know that a petition was presented to the King and Queen. All here, yourself excepted, saw the King take it, in his carriage in the street, sitting beside the Queen. It is Defarge whom you see here, who, at the hazard of his life, darted out before the horses, with the petition in his hand." " And once again listen, Jacques ! " said the kneeling Number Three : his fingers ever wandering over and over those fine nerves, with a strikingly greedy air, as* if he hungered for something — that was neither food nor drink ; " the guard, horse and foot, surrounded the petitioner, and struck him blows. You hear ? " " I hear, messieurs." " Go on then," said Defarge. Again; on the other hand, they whisper at the foun- tain," resumed the countryman, that he is brought down into our country to be executed on the spot, and that he will very certainly be executed. They even whisper that because he has slain Monseigneur^ and because Monseigneur was the father of his tenants — serfs — what you will — he will be exe- cuted as a parricide. One old man says at the fountain, that his right hand armed with a knife, will be burnt off before his face ; that, into wounds which will be made into his arms, his breast, and his legs, there will be poured boiling oil, melted lead, hot resin, wax, and sulphur ; finally that he will be torn limb from limb by four strong horses. That old man says, all this was actually done to a prisoner who made an at- tempt on the life of the late King, Louis Fifteen. But how do I know if he lies ? I am not a scholar." KNITTING, i6i " Listen once again then, Jacques ! " said the man with the restless hand and the craving air. " The name of that prisoner was Damiens, and it was all done in open day, in the open streets of this city of Paris ; and nothing was more noticed in the vast concourse that saw it done, than the crowd of ladies of quality and fashion, who were full of eager at tention to the last — to the last, Jacques, prolonged until nightfall, when he had lost two legs and an arm, and still breathed ! And it was done — why, how old are you ? " Thirty-five,'' said the mender of roads, who looked sixty. " It was done when you were more than ten years old ; you might have seen it." " Enough ! " said Defarge, with grim impatience. " Long live the Devil ! Go on." " Well ! Some whisper this, some whisper that ; they speak of nothing else ; even the fountain appears to fall to that tune. At length, on Sunday night when all the village is asleep, come soldiers, winding down from the prison, and their guns ring on the stones of the little street. Workmen dig, Workmen hammer, soldiers laugh and sing ; in the morn- ing, by the fountain, there is raised a gallows forty feet high, poisoning the water." The mender of roads looked through rather than at the low ceiling, and pointed as if he saw the gallows somewhere in the sky. " All work is stopped, all assemble there, nobody leads the cows out, the cows are there with the rest. At midday, the roll of drums. Soldiers have marched into the prison in the night, and he is in the midst of many soldiers. He is bound as before, and in his mouth there is a gag — tied so, with a tight string, making him look almost as if he laughed." He suggested it, by creasing his face with his two thumbs, from the corners of his mouth to his ears. ^' On the top of the gallows is fixed the knife, blade upwards, with its point in the air. He is hanged there forty feet high — and is left hanging, poisoning the water." They look at one another, as he used his blue cap to wipe his face, on which the perspiration had started afresh while he recalled the spectacle. "It is frightful, messieurs. How can the women and the children draw water ! Who can gossip of an evening, under that shadow ! Under it, have I said ? When I left the village, Monday evening as the sun was going to bed, and A TALE OF TWO CITIES, looked back from the hill, the shadow struck across the church, across the mill, across the prison — ^^seemed to strike across the earth, messieurs, to where the sky rests upon it!" The hungry man gnawed one of his fingers as he looked at the other three, and his finger quivered with the craving that was on him. That's all, messieurs. I left at sunset (as I had been warned to do), and I walked on, that night and half the next day, until I met (as I was warned I should) this comrade. With him, I came on, now riding and now walking, through the rest of yesterday and through last night. And here you see me ! " After a gloomy silence, the first Jacques said, " Good ! You have acted and recounted faithfully. Will you wait for us a little, outside the door? " " Very willingly,'' said the mender of roads. Whom De- farge escorted to the top of the stairs, and, leaving seated there, returned. The three had risen, and their heads were together when he came back to the garret. " How say you, Jacques ? " demanded Number One. " To be registered ? " " To be registered, as doomed to destruction," returned Defarge. " Magnificent ! " croaked the man with the craving. " The chateau, and all the race ? " inquired the first. "The chateau and' all the race," returned Defarge. " Extermination." The hungry man repeated, in a rapturous croak, " Magnifi- cent ! " and began g»awing another finger. Are you sure," asked Jacques Two, of Defarge, " that no embarrassment can arise from our manner of keeping the register ? Without doubt it is safe, for no one beyond our- selves can decipher it ; but shall we always be able to decipher it — or, I ought to say, will she ? " " Jacques," returned Defarge, drawing himself up, " if madrjiic my wife undertook to keep the register in her memory alcnc, she would not lose a word of it — not a syllable of it. Knitted, in her own stitches, and her own symbols, it will always be as plain to her as the sun. Confide in Madame Defarge. It would be easier for the weakest poltroon that lives, to erase himself from existence, than to erase one letter KNITTING. from his name or crimes from the knitted register of: Madame Defarge." There was a murmur of confidence and approval, and then the man who hungered asked : Is this rustic to be sent back soon ? I hope so. He is very simple ; is he not a little dan- gerous ? " ^'He knows nothing/' said Defarge; "at least nothing more than would easily elevate himself to a gallows of the same height. I charge myself with him ; let him remain with me ; I will take care of him, and set him on his road. He wishes to see the fine world — the King, the Queen, and Court ; let him see them on Sunday." " What ? exclaimed the hungry man, staring. " Is it a good sign, that he wishes to see Royalty and Nobility? " Jacques," said Defarge ; " judiciously show a cat milk, if you wish her to thirst for it. Judiciously show a dog his natural prey, if you wish him to bring it down one day,'' Nothing more was said, and the mender of roads, being found already dozing^ on the topmost stair, was advised to lay himself down on the pallet-bed and take some rest He needed no persuasion, and was soon asleep. Worse quarters than Defarge 's v/ine-shop, could easily have been found in Paris for a provincial slave of that degree. Saving for a mysterious dread of madame by which he was constantly haunted, his life was very new and agreeable. But madame sat all day at her counter, so expressively uncon- s(;ious of him, and so particularly determined not to perceive that his being there had any connection with anything below the surface, that he shook in his wooden shoes whenever his eye lighted on her. For, he contended with himself that it was impossible to foresee what that lady might pretend next ; and he felt assured that if she should take it into her brightly ornamented head to pretend that she had seen him do a mur- der and afterwards flay the victim, she would infallibly go through with it until the play was played out. Therefore, when Sunday came, the mender of roads was not enchanted (though he said he was) to find that madame was to accompany monsieur and himself to Versailles. It was additionally disconcerting to have madame knitting, all the way there, in a pubHc conveyence ; it was additionally discon- certing yet, to have madame in the crowd in the afternoon, still with her knittins^ in her liands as the crowd waited to see the carriage of the King and Queen. r64 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, "You work hard, madame," said a man near her. "Yes/' answered Madame Defarge ; "I have a good dea \o do.'' " What do you make, madame ? " Many things." For instance " For instance," returned Madame Defarge, composedly, shrouds." The man moved a Httle further away, as soon as he could, and the mender of roads fanned himself with his blue cap : feel- ing it mightily close and oppressive. If he needed a King and Queen to restore him, he was fortunate in having his remedy at hand ; for, soon, the large faced King and the fair-faced Queen came in their golden coach, attended by the shining Bull's Eye of their Court, a glittering multitude of laughing ladies and fine lords ; and in jewels and silks and powder and splendor and elegantly spurning figures and handsomely dis- dainful faces of both sexes, the mender of roads bathed him- self, so much to his temporary intoxicatk)n, that he cried Long live the King, Long live the Queen, Long live everybody and everything! as if he never heard of ubiquitous Jacques in his time. Then, there were gardens, court-yards, terraces, foun- tains, green banks, more King and Queen, more Bull's Eye, more lords and ladies, more Long liv^ they all ! until he ab- solutely wept with sentiment. During the whole of this scene which lasted some three hours, he had plenty of shout- ing and weeping and sentimental company, and throughout Defarge held him by the collar, as if to restrain him from fly- ing at the objects of his brief devotion and tearing them to pieces. " Bravo ! " said Defarge, clapping him on the back when it was over, like a patron ; " you are a good boy ! " The mender of roads was now coming to himself, and was mistrustful of having made a mistake in his late demon- strations ; but no. You are the fellow we want," said Defarge, in his ear ; " you make these fools believe that it will last ioi ever. Then, they are the more insolent, and it is the nearer ended." " Hey ! " cried the mender of the roads, reflectively \ "that's true." " These fools know nothing. While they despise youi breath, and would stop it for ever and ever, in you or in g STILL lOVITTLNG. hundred like you rather than in one of their own horses or dogs, they only know what your breath tells them. Let it deceive them, then, a little longer ; it cannot deceive them too much/' Madame Defarge looked superciliously at the client, and nodded in confirmation. As to you," said she, "you would shout and shed tears for anything, if it made a show and a noise. Say 1 Would you not ? " Truly madame, I think so. For the moment." " If you were shown a great heap of dolls, and were set upon them to pluck them to pieces and despoil them for yc^r own advantage, you would pick out the richest and gayesri Say ! Would you not } ^ " Truly yes, madame." " Yes. And if you were shown a flock of birds, unable to fly, and were set upon them to strip them of their feathers for your own advantage, you would set upon the birds of the finest feathers ; would you not ? " " It is true, madame." ^ "You have seen both dolls and birds to-day," said Madame Defarge, with a wave of her hand towards the place where they had last been apparent ; " now, go home 1 " CHAPTER XVI. STILL KNITTING. Madame Defarge and monsieur her husband returned amicably to the bosom of Saint Antoine, while a speck in a blue cap toiled through the darkness, and through the dust, and down the weary miles of avenue by the wayside, slowly tending towards that point of the compass where the chPiteau of Monsieur the Marquis, now in his grave, listened to the whispering trees. Such ample leisure had the stone faces, now, for listening to the trees and to the fountain, that the few village scarecrows who, in their quest for herbs to eat and fragments of dead stick to burn, strayed within sight^of the great stone court-yard and terrace staircase^ had it borne in A TALE OF TWO CITIES- upon their starved fancy that the expression of the faces was altered. A rumor just lived in the village — had a faint and bare existence there, as its people had — that when the knife struck home, the faces changed, from faces of pride to faces of anger and pain ; also, that when that dangling figure was hauled up forty feet above the fountain, they changed again, and bore a cruel look of being avenged, which they would henceforth bear for ever. In the stone face over the great window of the bed-chamber where the murder was done, two fine dints were pointed out in the sculptured nose, which everybody recognized, and which nobody had seen of old; and on the scarce occasions when two or three ragged peasants emerged from the crowd to take a hurried peep at Monsieur the Marquis petrified, a skinny finger would not have pointed to it for a minute, before they all started away among the moss and leaves, like the more fortunate hares who could find a living there. Chateau and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on the stone floor, and the pure water in the village well — thousands of acres of land — a whole province of France — ■ all France itself — lay under the night sky, concentrated into a faint hair-breadth line. So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyze the manner of its composition, so, sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible creature on it The Defarges, husband and wife, came lumbering under the starlight, in their public vehicle, to that gate of Paris whereunto their journey naturally tended. There was the usual stoppage at the barrier guard-house, and the usual lan- terns came glancing forth for the usual examination and inquiry. Monsieur Defarge alighted ; knowing one or two of the soldiery there, and one of the police. The latter he was intimate with, and affectionately embraced. When Saint Antoine Jiad again enfolded the Defarges in his dusky wings, and they, having finally alighted near the Saint's boundaries, were picking their way on foot through the black mud and offal of his streets, Madame Defarge spoke to her husband : " Say then, my friend \ what did Jacques of the police tell thee?" STILL KNITTING. 167 " Very little to-night, but all he knows. There is another spy commissioned for our quarter. There may be many more, for all that he can say, but he knows of one.'^ " Eh well ! " said Madame Defarge, raising her eyebrows with a cool business air. " It is necessary to register him. How do they call that man } " "He is English." *' So much the better. His name ? " " Barsad," said Defarge, making it French by pronunci- ation. But he had been so careful to get it accurately, that he then spelt it with perfect correctness, " Barsad," repeated madame. " Good. Christian name ? " "John." " John Barsad," repeated madame, after murmuring it once to herself. " Good. His appearance ; is it known ? " " Age, about forty years ; height, about five feet nine ; black hair ; complexion dark ; generally, rather handsome visage ; eyes dark, face thin, long, and sallow ; nose aquiline, but not straight, having a peculiar inclination towards the left cheek j expression therefore, sinister." " Eh my faith. It is a portrait ! " said madame, laughing. * He shall be registered to-morrow." They turned into the wine-shop, which was closed (for it was midnight), and where Madame Defarge immediately took her post at her desk, counted the small moneys that had been taken during her absence, examined the stock, went through the entries of the book, made other entries of her own, checked the serving man in every possible way, and finally dismissed him to bed. Then she turned out the contents of the bowl of money for the second time, and began knotting them up in her handkerchief, in a chain of separate knots, for safe keep- ing through the night. All this while, Defarge, with his pipe in his mouth, walked up and down, complacently admiring, but never interfering ; in which condition, indeed, as to the business and his domestic affairs, he walked up and down through life. The night was hot, and the shop, close shut and sur- rounded by so foul a neighborhood, was ill-smelling. Mon- sieur Defarge's olfactory sense was by no means delicate, but the stock of wine smelt much stronger than it ever tasted, and so did the stock of rum and brandy and aniseed. He whiffed the compound of scents away, as he put down his smoked-out pipe. 8 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. You are fatigued," said madame, raising her glance as she knotted the money. There are only the usual odors." 1 am a little tired," her husband acknowledged. " You are a little depressed, too," said madame, whose quick eyes had never been so intent on the accounts, but thej had had a ray or two for him. Oh, the men, the men ! " But my dear ! " began Defarge. But my dear ! " repeated madame, nodding firmly ; " but my dear ! You are faint of heart to-night, my dear I " " Well, then," said Defarge, as if a thought were wrung out of his breast, "it is a long time." "It is a long time," repeated his wife; "and when is it not a long time ? Vengeance and retribution require a long time ; it is the rule." "It does not take a long time to strike a man with Light- ning," said Defarge. " How long," demanded madame, composedly, "does it take to make and store the lightnmg ? Tell me." Defarge raised his head thoughtfully, as if there were something in that too. "It does not take a long time," said madame, "for an earthquake to swallow a town. Eh well ! Tell me how long it takes to prepare the earthquake ? " * "A long time, I suppose," said Defarge. " But when it is ready, it takes place, and grinds to pieces everything before it. In the meantime, it is always preparing, though it is not seen or heard. That is your consolation. Keep it." She tied a knot with flashing eyes, as if it throttled a foe. " I tell thee," said madame, extending her right hand, for emphasis, " that although it is a long time on the road, it is on the road and coming. I tell thee it never retreats, and never stops. I tell thee it is always advancing. Look around and consider the lives of all the world that we know, consider the faces of all the world that we know, consider the rage and discontent to which the Jacquerie addresses itself with more and more of certainty every hour. Can such things last.^ Bah ? I mock you." " My brave wdfe," returned Defarge, standing before her w^th his head a little, bent, and his hands clasped at his back, like a docile and attentive pupil before his catechist, " I do not question all this. But it has lasted a long time, and it is possible — you know well my wife, it is possible — that it maj not come, during our Uves/' STILL KNITTING. " Eh well ! -^How then ? " demanded madame, tying an- other knot, as if there were another enemy strangled. " Well ! " said Defarge, with a half complain.mg and half apologetic shrug. " We shall not see the triumph." We shall have helped it" returned madame, with her extended hand in strong action. " Nothing ' that we do, is done in vain. I believe, with all my soul, that we shall see the triumph. But even if not, even if I knew certainly not, show me the neck of an aristocrat and tyrant, and still I would " Then madame, with her teeth set, tied a very terrible knot indeed. " Hold ! " cried Defarge, reddening a little as if he felt charged with cowardice , " I too, my dear, will stop at noth- ing." Yes ! But it is your weakness that you sometimes need to see your victim and your opportunity, to sustain you. Sus- tain yourself without that. When the time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil but wait for the time with the tiger and the devil chained — not shown — yet always ready." Madame enforced the conclusion of this piece of advice by striking her little counter with her chain of money as if she knocked its brains out, and then gathering the heavy handkerchief under her arm in a serene manner, and observ ing that it was tim.e to go to bed. Next noontide saw the admirable woman in her usual place in the wme-shop, knitting away assiduously. A rose lay beside her, and if she now and then glanced at the flower, it was with no infraction of her usual pre-occupied air. There were a few customers, drinking or not drinking, standing or seated, sprinkled about. The day was very hot, and heaps of flies, who were extending their inquisitive and adventurous perquisitions into all the glutinous little glasses near madame, fell dead at the bottom. Their decease made no impression on the other flies out promenading, who looked at them in the coolest manner (as if they themselves were elephants, or something as far removed), until they met the same fate. Curious to consider how heedless flies are ! — perhaps they thought as much at Court that sunny summer day. A figure entering at the door threw a shadow on Madame Defarge which she felt to be a new one. She laid down her knitting, and began to pin her rose in her head-dress, before she looked at the hgure. 170 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, It was curious. The moment Madame -Defarge took up the rose, the customers ceased talking, and began gradually to drop out o^ the wine-shop. " Good-day, madame," said the new comer. "Good-day, monsieur." , She said it aloud, but added to herself, as she resumed her knitting : " Hah ! Good-day, age about forty, height about five feet nine, black hair, generally rather handsome visage, complexion dark, eyes dark, thin long and sallow face, aquiline nose but not straight, having a peculiar inclination towards the left cheek which imparts a sinister expression ! Good-day, one and all ! " " Have the goodness to give me a little glass of old cognac, and a mouthful of cool fresh water, madame.'^ Madame complied with a polite air. Marvellous cognac this, madame 1 " It was the first time it had ever been so complimented, and Madame Defarge knew enough of its antecedents to know better. She said, however, that the cognac was flat- tered, and took up her knitting. The visitor watched her fingers for a few moments, and took the opportunity of ob- serving the place in general. " You knit with great skill, madame." " I am accustomed to it." " A pretty pattern too ! " You think so ? " said madame, looking at him with a smile. " Decidedly. May one ask what it is for ? " " Pastime," said madame, still looking at him with a smile, while her fingers moved nimbly. Not for use ? " "That depends. I may find a use for it one day. If I do well," said madame, drawing a breath and nodding her head with a stern kind of coquetry, " I'll use it ! " It was remarkable ; but, the taste of Saint Antoine seemed to be decidedly opposed to a rose on the head-dress of Madame Defarge. Two men had entered separately, and had been about to order drink, when, catching sight of that novelty, they faltered, made a pretence of looking about as if for some friend who was not there, and went away. Nor, of those who had been there when this visitor entered, was there one left. They had all dropped off. The spy had kept his eyes open, but had been able to detect no sign. They had lounged STILL KNITTING, 171 away in a poverty-stricken, purposeless, accidental manner, quite natural and unimpeachable. "John," thought madame, checking off her work as her lingers knitted, and her eyes looked at the stranger. Stay long enough, and I shall knit ' Barsad ' before you go/^ " You have a husband, madame ? " " I have, « Children?" V No children." Business seems bad ? " Business is very bad ; the people are so poor. " Ah, the unfortunate, miserable people ! So oppressed, too — as you say,'' " As joti say," madame retorted, correcting him, and deftly knitting an extra something into his name that boded him no good. " Pardon me ; certainly it w^as I who said so, but you naturally think so. Of course." "/ think ? " returned madame, in a high voice. " I and my husband have enough to do to keep this wine-shop open, without thinking. All we think, here, is how to live. That is the subject we think of, and it gives us, from morning to night, enough to think about, without embarrassing our heads concerning others. / think for others ? No, no." The spy, who was there to pick up any crumbs he could find or make, did not allow his baffled state to express itself in his sinister face ; but, stood with an air of gossiping gal- lantry, leaning his elbow on Madame Defarge's little counter, and occasionally sipping his cognac. A bad business this, madame, of Gaspard's execution. Ah ! the poor Gaspard ! " With a sigh of great compassion. ''My faith!" returned m.adame, coolly and lightly, ''if people use knives for such purposes, they have to pay for it. He knew beforehand what the price of his luxury was ; he has paid the price." '' I believe," said the spy, dropping his soft voice to a tone that invited confidence, and expressing an injured revolu- tionary susceptibility in every muscle of his wicked face : " I believe there is much compassion and anger in this neighbor- hood, touching the poor fellow } Between ourselves." " Is there ? " asked madame, vacantly. "Is there not? " " — Here is my husband ! " said Madame Defarge. 1^2 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, As the keeper of the wine-shop entered at the door, the spy saluted him by touching his hat, and saying, with aa engaging smile, "Good-day, Jacques T' Defarge stopped short, and stared at him. " Good-day, Jacques ! the spy repeated ; with not quite so much confidence, or quite so easy a smile under the starCo You deceive yourself, monsieur," returned the keeper of ihe wine-shop. " You mistake me for another. That is not my name. I am Ernest Defarge.'^ " It is all the same," said the spy, airily, but discomfited too : good-day ! " Good-day ! " ans\yered Defarge, dryly. " I was saying to madame, with whom I had the pleasure of chatting when you entered, that they tell me there is — and no wonder! — much sympathy and anger in Saint Antoine, touching thci unhappy fate of poor Gaspard." No one has told me so," said Defarge, shaking his head. " I know nothing of it." Having said it, he passed behind the little counter, and stood with his hand on the back of his wife's chair, looking over that barrier at the person to whom they were both op- posed, and whom either of them would have shot with the greatest satisfaction. The spy, well used to his business, did not change his un- conscious attitude, but drained his little glass of cognac, took a sip of fresh water, and asked for another glass of cognac. Madame Defarge poured it out for him, took to her knitting again, and hummed a little song over it. You seem to know this quarter well ; that is to say, bet- ter than I do ? " observed Defarge. ' " Not at all, but I hope to know it better. I am so pro. foundly interested in its miserable inhabitants." Hah ! " muttered Defarge. " The pleasure of conversing with you, Monsieur Defarge, recalls to me," pursued the spy, " that I have the honor of cherishing some interesting associations with your name." Indeed ! " said Defarge, with much indifference. " Yes, indeed. When Dr. Manette was released, you, his old domestic, had the charge of him, I know. He was de- livered to you. You see I am informed of the circum- stances ? " " Such is the fact, certainly," said Defarge. He had had it conveyed to him, in an accidental touch of his wife's elbo\if STILL KNITTING, as she knitted and warbled, that he would do best to answei- but always with brevity. "It was to you/' said the spy, "that his daughter came ; and it was from your care that his daughter took him, accom- panied by a neat brown monsieur ; how is he called ? — in a little wig — Lorry — of the bank of Tellson and Company — over to England." " Such is the fact," repeated Defarge. " Very interesting remembrances ! " said the spy. " I have known Dr. Manette and his daughter, in England." " Yes ? " said Defarge. "You don't hear much about them now? '^ said the spy. " No," said Defarge. " In effect," madame struck in, looking up from her work and her little song, " we never hear about them. We re- ceived the news of their safe arrival, and perhaps another letter, or perhaps two ; but, since then, they have gradually taken their road in life — we, ours — and we have held no cor- respondence." " Perfectly so, madame," replied the spy. " She is going to be married." " Going ? " echoed madame. " She was pretty enough to have been married long ago. You English are cold, it seems to me." " Oh ! You know I am English." " I perceive your tongue is," returned madame ; " and what the tongue is, I suppose the man is." He did not take the identification as a compliment ; but he made the best of it, and turned it off with a laugh. After sipping his cognac to the end, he added : "Yes, Miss Manette is going to be married. But not to an Englishman ; to one who, like herself, is French by birth. And speaking of Gaspard (ah, poor Gaspard ! It was cruel, cruel !), it is a curious thing that she is going to marry the nephew of Monsieur the Marquis, for whom Gaspard was; exalted to that height of so many feet ; in other words, the present Marquis. 'I3ut he lives unknown in England, he is no Marquis there ; he is Mr. Charles Darnay. D'Aulnais is the name of his mother's family." Madame Defarge knitted steadily, but the intelligence had a palpable effect upon her husband. Do what he would, be- hind the little counter, as to the striking of a light and the lighting of his pipe, he was troubled, and his hand was not A TALE OF TWO CITIES, trustworthy. The spy would have been no spy if he had flailed to see it, or to record it in his mind. Having made, at least, this one hit, whatever it might prove to be worth, and no customers coming in to help him to any other, Mr. Barsad paid for what he had drunk, and took his leave ; taking occasion to say, in a genteel manner, before he departed, that he looked forward to the pleasure of seeing Monsieur and Madame Defarge again. For some minutes after he had emerged into the outer presence of Saint Antoine, the husband and wife remained exactly as he had left them^ lest he should come back. " Can it be true," said Defarge, in a low voice, looking down at his wife as he stood smoking with hi^ hand on the back of her chair, " what he has said of Ma'amselle Manette ? " •* As he has said it," returned madame, lifting her eye- brows a little, " it is probably false. But it may be true." " If it is " Defarge began, and stopped. ^* If it is ? " repeated his wife. " — And if it does come, while we live to see it triumph — 1 hope, for her sake, Destiny will keep her husband out of France." Her husband's destiny," said Madame Defarge, with her usual composure, will take him where he is to go, and will lead him to the end that is to end him. That is all I know." ''But it is very strange — now, at least, is it not veiy strange"- — said Defarge, rather pleading with his wife, to in- duce her to admit it, that, after all our sympathy for Mon- sieur her father, and herself, her husband's name should be proscribed under your hand at this moment, by the side of that infernal dog's who has just left us ? " " Stranger things than that will happen when it does come," answered madame. " I have them both here, of a certainty ; and they are both here for their merits; that is enough." She rolled up her knitting when she had said those wordSp and presently took the rose out of the handkerchief that was wound about her head. Either Saint Antoine had an instinct- ive sense that the objectionable decoration was gone, or Saint Antoine was on the watch for its disappearance ; howbeit, the Saint took courage to lounge in, very shortly afterwards, and the wine-shop recovered its habitual aspect. In the evening, at which season of all others Saint Antoine turned himself inside out, and sat on doorsteps and ONE NIGHT. window ledges, and came to the corners of vile streets and courts, for a breath of air, Madame Defarge with her work in her hand was accustomed to pass from place to place and from group to group : a Missionary — there were many like her — such as the world will do well never to breed again. All the women knitted. They knitted worthless things ; but the mechanical work was a mechanical substitute for eating and drinking; the hands moved for the jaws and the digestive ap- paratus : if the bony fingers had been still, the stomachs would have been more famine-pinched. But, as the fingers went, the eyes went, and the thoughts. And as Madame Defarge moved on from group to group, all three went quicker and fiercer among every little k2iot of women that she had spoken with, and left behind. . Her husband smoked at his door, looking after her with admiration. A great woman," said he, " a strong woman, 2, grand woman, a frightfully grand woman ! " Darkness closed around, and then came the ringing of charch bells and the distant beating of the military drums in the Palace Court-Yard, as the women sat knitting, knitting. Darkness encompassed them. Another darkness was closing in as surely, when the church bells, then ringing pleasantly in many an airy steeple over France, should be melted into the thundering cannon ; when the military drums should be beat- ing to drown a wretched voice, that night all potent as the voice of Power and Plenty, Freedom and Life. So much was clos- ing in about the women who sat knitting, knitting, that they their very selves were closing in around a structure yet unbuilt, where they were to sit knitting, knitting, counting dropping heads. CHAPTER XVII. ONE NIGHT. Never did the sun go down with a brighter glory on the quiet corner in Soho, than one memorable evening when the Doctor and his daughter sat under the plane-tree together. Never did the moon rise with a milder radiance over greal 176 A TALE OF TV/0 CITIES. London, than on that night when it found them still seated under the tree, and shone upon their faces through its leaves, Lucie was to be married to-morrow. She had reserv^ed this last evening for her father, and they sat alone under the olanetree, " You are happy, my dear father ? " "Quite, my child/* They had said little, though they had been there a long time. When it was yet light enough to work and read, she had neither engaged herself in her usual work, nor had sha read to him. She had employed herself in both ways at his side under the tree, many and many a time ; but t|iis time was not quite like any other, and nothing could make it so. " And I am very happy to-night, dear father. I am deeplj happy in the love that Heaven has so blessed — my love for Charles, and Charles's love for me. But, if my life were not to be still consecrated to you, or if my marriage was so ar- ranged as that it would part us, even by the length of a few 0/ these streets, I should be more unhappy and self-reproacMul now than I can tell yoUo Even as it is Even as it was she could not command her voice. • In the sad moonlight, she clasped him by the neck, and laid her face upon his breast. In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is — as the light called human life is — at its coming and its going. " Dearest dear ! Can you tell me, this last time, that you feel quite, quite sure, no new affections of mine, and no new duties of mine, will ever interpose between us ? / know it well, but do you know it 1 In your own heart, do you feel quite certain ? ^ Her father answered with a cheerful firmness of convic- tion he could scarcely have assumed, Quite sure, my darling ! More than that,'* he added, as he tenderly kissed her ; " my future is far brighter, Luci;^, seen through your marriage^ than it could have been — nay, than it ever was — without it.'' " If I could hope that^ my father ! " " Believe it, love ! Indeed it is so. Consider how natural and how plain it is my dear, that it should be so. You, de- voted and young, cannot fully appreciate the anxiety I have felt that your life should not be wasted " She moved her hand towards his lips, but he took it in his, and repeated the word. — wasted, my child — should not be v/asted, struck aside ONE NIGHT. 1/7 from the natural order of things — for my sake. Your unsel^ fishness cannot entirely comprehend how much my mind has gone on this ; but only ask yourself, how could my happiness be perfect, while yours was incomplete ? " If I had never seen Charles, my father, I should have been quite happy with you." He smiled at her unconscious admission that she would have been unhappy without Charles, having seen him ; and replied : ^' My child, you did see him, and it is Charles. If it had not been Charles it would have been another. Or, if it had been no other, I should have been the cause, and then th^ dark part of my life would have cast its shadow beyond my- self, and would have fallen on you." It was the first time, except at the trial, of her ever hearing him refer to the period of his suffering. It gave her a strange and new sensation while his words were in her ears ; and she remembered it long afterwards. " See ! said the Doctor of Beauvais, raising his hand towards the moon. I have looked at her from my prison- window, when I could not bear her light. I have looked at her when it has been such torture to me to think of her shining upon what I had lost, that I have beaten my head against my prison-walls. I. have looked at her, in a state so dull and lethargic, that I have thought of nothing but the number of horizontal lines I could draw across her at the full, and the number of perpendicular lines with which I could intersect them." He added in his inward and pondering manner, as he looked at the moon, " It was twenty either way, I remember, and the twentieth was difficult to squeeze in." The strange thrill wdth which she heard him go back to that time, deepened as he dwelt upon it ; but, there was nothing to shock her in the manner of his reference. He only seemed to contrast his present cheerfulness and felicity with the dire endurance that was over. I have looked at her, speculating thousands of times upon the unborn child from whom I had been rent. Whether it was alive. Whether it had been born alive, or the poor mother's shock had killed it. Whether it was a son who would some day avenge his father. (There was a time in my imprisonment, when my desire for vengeance was unbear- able.) Whether it was a son who would never know his father's story ; who might evea live to weigh the possibility 178 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. of his father's having disappeared of his own will and act Whether it was a daughter who would grow to be a woman." She drew closer to him, and kissed his cheek and his hand. ^' I have pictured my daughter, to myself, as perfectly for getful of me — rather, altogether ignorant of me, and uncon^ scious of me. I have cast up the years of her age, year aftei year. I have seen her married to a man who knew nothing of my fate. I have altogether perished from the remembrance of the living, and in the next generation my place was a blank." ^' My father! Even to hear that you had such thoughts of a daughter who never existed, strikes to my heart as if I had been that child." " You, Lucie ? It is out of the consolation and restora- tion you have brought to me, that these remembrances arise, and pass between us and the moon on this last night. — What did I say just now " " She knew nothing of you. She cared nothing for you." " So ! But on other moonlight nights, when the sadness and the silence have touched me in a different way — have af- fected me with something as like a sorrowful sense of peace, as any emotion that had pain for its foundations could — I have imagined her as coming to me in my cell, and leading me out into the freedom beyond the fortress. I have seen her image in the moonlight often, as I now see you ; ex- cept that I never held her in my arms ; it stood betv/een the little grated window and the door. But, you understand that that was not the child I am speaking of ? " ^^The figure was not ; the — the — image ; the fancy ? " " No. That was another thing. It stood before my dis- turbed sense of sight, but it never moved. The phantom that my mind pursued, was another and more real child. Of her outward appearance I know no more than that she was like her mother. The other had that likeness too — as you have — but was not the same. Can you follow me, Lucie ? Hardly, I think . I doubt you must have been a solitary prisoner to understand these perplexed distinctions." His collected and calm manner could not prevent her blood from running cold, as he thus tried to anatomize his old condition. " In that more peaceful state, I have imagined her, in the moonlight, coming to me and taking me out to show me that ONE NIGH1\ 179 the home of her married life was full of her loving remem- brance of her lost father. My picture was in hei room, and I was in her prayers. Her life was active, cheerful, useful ; but my poor history pervaded it all." I was that child, my father, I was not half so good, but in my love that was I." " And she showed me her children," said the Doctor of Beauvais, " and they had heard of me, and had been taught to pity me. When they passed a prison of the State, they kept far from its frowning walls, and looked up at its bars, and spoke in whispers. She could never deliver me ; I im- agined that she always brought me back after showing me such things. But then, blessed with the relief of tears, I fell upon my knees, and blessed her." " I am that child, 1 hope, my father. O my dear, my dear, will you bless me as fervently to-morrow ? " Lucie, I recall these old troubles in the reason that I have to-night for loving you better than words can tell, and thanking God for my great happiness. My thoughts, when they were wildest, never rose near the happiness that I have known with you, and that we have before us." He embraced her, solemnly commended her to Heaven, and humbly thanked Heaven, for having bestowed her on him. By and by, they went into the house. There was no one bidden to the marriage but Mr. Lorry ; there was even to be no bridesmaid but the gaunt Miss Pross. The marriage was to make no change in their place of resi- dence ; they had been able to extend it, by taking to them- selves the upper rooms formerly belonging to the apocryphal invisible lodger, and they desired nothing more. Doctor Manette was very cheerful at the little supper. They were only three at table, and Miss Pross made the third. He regretted that Charles was not there ; was more than half disposed to object to the loving little plot that kept him away ; and drank to him affectionately. So, the time came for him to bid Lucie good-night, and they separated. But, in the stillness of the third hour of the mornmg, Lucie came down stairs again, and stole into his room ; not free from unshaped fears, beforehand. All things, however, were in their places ; all was quiet ; and he lay asleep, his white hair picturesque on the untroub- led pillow, and his hands lying quiet on the coverlet. She put her needless candle in the shadow at a distance, crept up i8o /I TALE OF TWO CITIES. to his bed, and put her lips to his 3 then, leaned over hha^ and looked at him. Into his handsome face the bitter waters of captivity had worn ; but, he covered up their tracks with a determination so strong, that he held the mastery of them even in his sleep. A more remarkable face in its quiet, resolute, and guarded struggle with an unseen assailant, was not to be beheld in all the wide dominions of sleep, that night. She timidly laid her hand on his dear breast, and put up a prayer that she might ever be as true to him as her love as- pired to be, and as his sorrows deserved. Then, she with- drew her hand, and kissed his lips once more, and went away. So, the sunrise came, and the shadows of the leaves of the plane-tree moved upon his face, as softly as her lips had moved in praying for him. CHAPTER XVIII. NINE DAYS. The marriage-day was shining brightly, and they were ready outside the closed door of the doctor's room, where he was speaking with Charles Darnay. They were ready to go to church ; the beautiful bride, Mr. Lorry, and Miss Pross — • to whom the event, through a gradual process of reconcile- ment to the inevitable, would have been one of absolute bliss, but for the yet lingering consideration that her brother Solo- mon should have been the bridgeroom. " And so,'' said Mr. Lorry, who could not sufficiently ad- mire the bride, and who had been moving round her to take in every point of her quiet, pretty dress ; and so it was for this, my sweet Lucie, that I brought you across the Channel, such a baby ! Lord bless me ! How little I thought what I was doing! How lightly I valued the obligation I was con- ferring on my friend Mr. Charles ! " *'You didn't mean it," remarked the matter-of-fact Miss Pross, " and therefore how could you know it ? Nonsense ! '* " Really ? Well ! but don't cry," said the gentle Mr Lorry. NINE DA YS, I am not ctying," said Miss Pross ; ''you are." " I, my Pross ? " (By this time, Mr. Lorry dar.'sd to be pleasant with her, on occasion.) You were, just now ; I saw you do it, and I don't wonder at it. Such a present of plate as you have made 'em, is enough to bring tears into anybody's eyes. There's not a fork or a spoon in the collection,'' said Miss Pross, that I didn't cry over, last night after the box came, till I couldn't see it." I am highly gratified," said Mr. Lorry, " though, upon my honor, I had no intention of rendering those trifling arti- cles of remembrance invisible to any one. Dear me ! This is an occasion that makes a man speculate on all he has lost. Dear, dear, dear ! To think that there might have been a Mrs. Lorry, any time these fifty years almost ! " " Not at all 1 " From Miss Pross. " You think that there never might have been a Mrs. Lorry ? " asked the gentleman of that name. " Pooh ! " rejoined Miss Pross ; " you were a bachelor in your cradle." " Well ! " observed Mr. Lorry, beamingly adjusting his little wig, that seems probable, too." '" And you were cut out for a bachelor," pursued Miss Pross, "before you were put in your cradle." " Then, I think," said Mr. Lorry, " that I was very unhand- somely dealt with, and that I ought to have had a voice in the selection of my pattern. Enough ! Now, my dear Lucie," dravvdng his arm soothingly round her waist, " I hear them moving in the next room, and Miss Pross and I, as two formal folks of business, are anxious not to lose the final opportunity of saying something to you that you wish to hear. You leave your good father, my dear, in hands as earnest and as loving as your own ; he shall be taken every conceivable care of \ during the next fortnight, while you are in Warwickshire and thereabouts, even Tellson's shall go to the wall (comparatively speaking) before him. And when, at the fortnight's end, he comes to join you and your beloved husband, on your other fortnight's trip in Wales, you shall say that we have sent him to you in the best health and in the happiest frame. Now, I hear Somebody's step coming to the door. Let me kiss my dear girl with an old-fashioned bachelor blessing, before Some- * body comes to claim his own." For a moment he held the fair face from him to look at the well-remembered expression on the forehead, and then iS^ A TALE OF TWO CITIES. laid the bright golden hair against his little brown wig, with ^ genuine tenderness and delicacy which, if such things be old- fashioned, were as old as Adam. The door of the Doctor's room opened, and he came out with Charles Darnay. He was so deadly pale — which had not been the case when they went in together — that no vestige of color was to be seen in his face. But, in the composure of his manner he was unaltered, except that to the shrewd glance of Mr. Lorry it disclosed some shadowy indication that the old air of avoidance and dread had lately passed over him, like a cold wind. He gave his arm to his daughter, and took her down stairs to the chariot which Mr. Lorry had hired in honor of the day. The rest followed in another carriage, and soor..^ in a neighboring church, where no strange eyes looked on, Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette were happily married. Besides the glancing tears that shone among the smiles of the little group when it was done, some diamonds very bright and sparkling, glanced on the bride's hand, which were newly released from the dark obscurity of one of Mr. Lorry's pockets. They returned home to breakfast, and all went well, and in due course the golden hair that had mingled with the poor shoemaker's white locks in the Paris garret, were mingled with them again in the morning sunlight, on the threshold of the door at parting. It was a hard parting, though it was not for long. But her father cheered her, and said at last, gently disengaging him- self from her enfolding arms, " Take her, Charles 1 She is j^ours ! " And her agitated hand waved to them from the chaise window, and she was gone. The corner being out of the way of the idle and curious, and the ^ preparations having been very simple and few, the Doctor, Mr. Lorry, and Miss Pross, were left quite alone. It was when they turned into the welcome shade of the cool old hall, that Mr. Lorry observed a great change to have come over the Doctor; as if the golden arm uplifted there had struck him a poisoned blow. He had naturally repressed much, and some revulsion might have been expected in him when the occasion for repres- sion was gone. But, it was the old scared lost look that troubled Mr. Lorry ; and through his absent manner of clasp- ing his head and drearily wandering away into his own room NINE DA YS. i8j when they got up stairs, Mr. Lorry was reminded of Defarge the wine-shop keeper, and the starUght ride. " I think,'' he whispered to Miss Pross, after anxious con- sideration, " I think we had best not speak to him just now, or at all disturb him. I must look in at Tellson's ; so I will go there at once and come back presently. Then, we will take him a ride into the country, and dine there, and all will be well.'' It was easier for Mr. Lorry to look in at Tellson's, than to look out of Tellson's. He was detained two hours. When he came back, he ascended the old staircase alone, having asked no question of the servant ; going thus into the Doctor's room, he was stopped by a low sound of knocking. " Good God ! " he said, with a start. ''What's that ? " Miss Pross, with a terrified, face was at his ear. '* O me, O me ! All is lost ! " cried she, wringing her hands. '' What is to be told to Ladybird } He doesn't know me, and is mak- ing shoes ! " Mr. Lorry said what he could to calm her, and w^ent him- self into the Doctor's room. The bench was turned towards the light, as it had been when he had seen the shoemaker at his work before, and his head was bent down, and he was very busy. " Doctor Manette. My dear friend. Doctor Manette ! " The Doctor looked at him for a moment — half inquir- ingly, half as if he were angry at being spoken to — and bent over his work again. He had laid aside his coat and waistcoat ; his shirt was open at the throat, as it used to be when he did that work ; and even the old haggard, faded surface of face had come back to him. He worked hard — impatiently — as if in some sense of having been interrupted. Mr. Lorry glanced at the work in his hand and observed that it was a shoe of the old size and shape. He took up another that was lying by him, and asked what it was ? "A young lady's walking, shoe," he muttered, without look ing up. " It ought to have been finished long ago. Let it be." " But, Doctor Manette, Look at me ! " He obeyed, in the old mechanically submissive manner, without pausing in his work. " You know me, my dear friend ? Think again. This is not your proper occupation. Think, dear friend 1 i84 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Nothing would induce him to speak more. He looked np for an instant at a time^ when he was requested to do so ; but, no persuasion would extract a word from him. He worked, and worked, and worked, in silence, and words fell on him as they would have fallen on an echoless wall, or on the air. The only ray of hope that Mr. Lorry could discover^ was, that he sometimes furtively looked up without being asked. In that, there seemed a faint expression of curiosity or perplexity — as though he were trying to reconcile some doubts in his mind. Two things at once impressed themselves on Mr. Lorry, as important above all others ; the first, that this must be kept secret from Lucie ; the second that it must be kept secret from all w4io knew him. In conjunction wdth Miss Pross, he took immediate steps towards the latter precaution, by giving out that the Doctor was not well, and required a few days of complete rest. In aid of the kind deception to be practised on his daughter, Miss Pross was to write, describing his hav- ing been called away professionally, and referring to an im- aginary letter of two or three hurried lines in his own hand, represented to have been addressed to her by the same post. These measures, advisable to be taken in any case, Mr. Lorry took in the hope of his coming to himself. If that should happen soon, he kept another course in reserve ; which was, to have a certain opinion that he thought the best, on the Doctor's case. In the hope of his recovery, and of resort to this third course being thereby rendered practicable, Mr. Lorry resolved to watch him attentively, with as little appearance as possible of doing so. He therefore made arrangements to absent him- self from Tellson's for the first time in his life, and took hi^ post by the window in the same room. He was not long in discovering that it was worse than useless to speak to him, since, on being pressed, he became worried. He abandoned that attempt on the first day, and resolved merely to keep himself always before him, as a silent protest against the delusion into which he had fallen, or was falling. He remained, therefore, in his seat near the window, reading and writing, and expressing in as many pleasant and natural ways as he could think of, that it was a free place. Doctor Manette took what was given him to eat and drink, and worked on, that first day, until it was too dark to see— - worked on, half an hour after Mr. Lorry could not have seen. NINE DA YS, for his life, to read or write. When he put his tools aside as useless, until morning, Mr. Lorry rose and said to him : Will you go out ? He looked down at the floor on either side of him in the old manner, looked up in the old manner, and repeated in the old low voice : "Out?" Yes j for a walk with me. Why not ? " He made no effort to say why hot, and said not a word more. But, Mr. Lorry thought he saw, as he leaned forward on his bench in the dusk, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, that he was in some misty, w^ay asking himself, *'Why not? " The sagacity of the man of business perceived an advantage here, and determined to hold it. Miss Pross and he divided the night into two watches, and observed him at intervals from the adjoining room. He paced up and down for a long time before he lay down ; but, when he did finally lay himself down, he fell asleep. In the morning, he was up betimes, and went straight to his bench and to work. On this second day, Mr. Lorry saluted him cheerfully by his name, and spoke to him on topics that had been of late familiar to them. He returned no reply, but it was evident that he heard what was said, and that he thought about it, however confusedly. This encouraged Mr. Lorry to have Miss Pross in with her work, several times daring the day ; at those times, they quiedy spoke of Lucie, a id of her father then present, precisely in the usual mannei and as if there were nothing amiss. This was done witho c any demonstra- tive accompaniment, not long enough, oi often enough to harass him ; and it lightened IMr. Lorr}^'s friendly heart to believe that he looked up oftener, and that appeared to be stirred by some perception of inconsistencie\ surrounding him. When it fell dark again, Mr. Lorry aske 1 him as before - "Dear Doctor, will you go out ? " As before, he repeated, " Out ? " Yes ; for a walk with me. Why not ? This time, Mr. Lorry feigned to go ou% when he could extract no answer from him, and, after remai ling absent for an hour, returned. In the meanwhile, the Doc ior had removed to the seat in the window, and had sat thc;t/f looking down at the plane-tree \ but, on Mr. Lorry's returu, he slipped away to his bench. i86 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. The time went very slawly on, and Mr. Lorry^'s hope darkened, and his heart grew heavier again, and grew yet heavier and heavier every day. The third day came and went, the fourth, the fifth. Five days, six days, seven days, eight days, nine days. With a hope ever darkening, and with a heart always growing heavier and heavier, Mr. Lorry passed through this anxious time. The secret was well kept, and Lucie was un- conscious and happy ; but he could not fail to observe that the shoemaker, whose hand had been a little out at first, was dreadfully skilful, and that he had never been so intent on his work, and that his hands had never been so nimble and expert, as in the dusk of the ninth evening. CHAPTER XIX. AN OPINION. Worn out by anxious watching, Mr. Lorry fell asleep at his post. On the tenth morning of his suspense, he was startled by the shining of the sun into the room where a heavy slumber had overtaken him when it was dark night. He rubbed his eyes and roused himself ; but he doubted, when he had done so, whether he was not still asleep. For, going to the door of the Doctor's room and looking in, he perceived that the shoemaker's bench and tools were put aside again, and that the Doctor himself sat reading at the window. He was in his usual morning dress, and his face (which Mr. Lorry could distinctly see), though still very pale, was calmly studious and attentive. Even when he had satisfied himself that he was awake, Mr. Lorry felt giddily uncertain for some few moments whether the late shoemaking might not be a disturbed dream of his own; for, did not his eyes show him his friend before him in his accustomed clothing and aspect, and employed as usual; and was there any sign within their range, that the change oi which he had so strong an impression had actually hap pened ? It was but the inquiry of his first confusion and astonish- AA' OPINION. 187 ment, the answer being obvious. If the impression v/ere not produced by a real corresponding and sufficient cause, how came he, Jarvis Lorry, there ? How came he to have fallen asleep, in his clothes, on the sofa in Dr. Manette's consulting- room, and to be debating these points outside the Doctor's bed-room door in the early morning. Within a few minutes. Miss Pross stood whispering at his side. If he had had any particle of doubt left, her talk would of necessity have resolved it ; but he was by that time clear- headed, and had none. He advised that they should let the time go by until the regular breakfast-hour, and should then meet the Doctor as if nothing unusual had occurred. If he appeared to be in his customary state of mind, Mr. Lorry would then cautiously proceed to seek direction and guidance from the opinion he had been, in his anxiety, so anxious to obtain. Miss Pross, submitting herself to his judgment, the scheme was worked out with care. Having abundance of time for his usual methodical toilette, Mr. Lorry presented himself at the breakfast-hour in his usual white linen, and with his usual neat leg. The Doctor was summoned in the usual way, and came to breakfast. So far as it was possible to comprehend him without over- stepping those delicate and gradual approaches which Mr. Lorry felt to be the only safe advance, he at first supposed that his daughter's marriage had taken place yesterday. An incidental allusion, purposely thrown out, to the day of the week, and the day of the month, set him thinking and count- ing^and evidently made him uneasy. In all other respects, however, he was so composedly himself, that Mr. Lorry de- termined to have the aid he sought. And that aid was his own. Therefore, when the breakfast was done and cleared away, and he and the Doctor were left together, Mr. Lorry said, feelingly : "My dear Manette, I am anxious to have your opinion, in confidence, on a very curious case in which I am deeply in- terested ; that is to sa}^, it is very curious to me ; perhaps, to your better information it may be less so." Glancing at his hands, which were discolored by his late work, the Doctor looked troubled, and listened attentively. He had already glanced at his hands more than once. Doctor Manette," said Mr. Lorry, touching him affectioiv i88 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. ately on the arm, ^' the case is the case of a particularly dear friend of mine. Pray give your mind to it, and advise me well for his sake — and above all, for his daughter's — his daughter's, my dear Manette." " If I understand," said the Doctor, in a subdued tone, " some mental shock ? " ^'Yes I" Be explicit," said the Doctor. ^' Spare no detail." Mr. Lorry saw that they understood one another, and pro- ceeded. " My dear Manette, it is the case of an old and a pro- longed shock, of great acuteness and severity to the affec- tions, the feelings, the — the — as you express it — the mind. The mind. It is the case of a shock under which the sufferer was borne down, one cannot say for how long, because I be- lieve he cannot calculate the time himself, and there are-^ no other means of getting at it. It is the case of a shock from which the sufferer recovered, by a process that he cannot trace himself — as I once heard him publicly relate in a strik- ing manner. It is the case of a shock from which he has re- covered, so completely, as to b^ a highly intelligent man, capable of close application of mind, and great exertion of body, and of constantly making fresh additions to his stock of knowledge, which was already very large. But, unfortu- nately, there has been," he paused and took a deep breath — " a slight relapse." The Doctor, in a low voice, asked, " Of how long dura- tion?" " Nine days and nights." ^ " How did it show itself ? I infer," glancing at his hands again, "in the resumption of some old pursuit connected with the shock ? " " That is the fact." " Now, did you ever see him," asked the Doctor, dis- tinctly and collectedly, though in the same low voice, "en- gaged in that pursuit originally ? " " Once." " And when the relapse fell on him, was he in most re spects — or in all respects — as he was then ? " " I think in all respects." " You spoke of his daughter. Does his daughter know of the relapse ? " " No. It has been kept from her, and I hope will always AN OPINION. be kept from her. It is known only to myself, and to one other who may be trusted." The Doctor grasped his hand, and murmured, " That wks very kind. That was very thoughtful ! " Mr. Lorry grasped his hand in return, and neither of the two spoke for a little while. " Now, my dear Manette," said Mr. Lorry, at length, in liis most considerate and most affectionate way, " I am a mere man of business, and unfit to cope with such intricate and difficult matters. I do not possess the kind of informa^ tion necessary ; I do not possess the kind of intelligence ; I want guiding. There is no man in this world on whom I could so rely for right guidance, as on you. Tell me, how does this relapse come about ? Is there danger of another? Could a repetition of it be prevented How should a repeti- tioii of it be treated t How does it come about at all ? What can I do for my friend ? No man ever can have been more desirous in his heart to serve a friend, than I am to serve mine, if I knew how. But I don't know how to originate, in such a case. It your sagacity, knowledge, and experience, could put me on the right track, I might be able to do so much ; unenlightened and undirected, I can do so little. Pray discuss it with me ; pray enable me to see it a little more clearly, and teach me how to be a little more useful." Doctor Manette sat meditating after these earnest words were spoken, and Mr. Lorry did not press him. " I think it probable," said the Doctor, breaking silence with an effort, " that the relapse you have described, my dear friend, was not quite unforeseen by its subject." Was it dreaded by him ? " Mr. Lorry ventured to ask. "Very much." He said it with an involuntary shudder. " You have no idea how such an apprehension weighs on the sufferer's mind, and how difficult — how almost impossible — it is, for him to force himself to utter a word upon the topic that oppresses him." " Would he," asked Mr. Lorry, " be sensibly relieved if he could prevail upon himself to impart that secret brooding to any one, when it is on him ? " " I think so. But it is, as I have told you, next to impos sible. . I even believe it — in some cases — to be quite impossi < ble." " Now," said Mr. Lorry, gently laying his hand on the Doctor's arm again, after a short silence on both sides, "to what would you refer this attack? " 190 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, I believe," returned Doctor Manette, that there had been a strong and extraordinary revival of .the train of thought and remembrance that was the first cause of the mal- ady. Some intense associations of a most distressing nature were vividly recalled, I think. It is probable that there had long been a dread lurking in his mind, that those associations would be recalled — say, under certain circumstances — say, on a particular occasion. He tried to prepare himself in vain ; perhaps the effort to prepare himself made him less able to bear it." " Would he remember what took place in the relapse ? " asked Mr. Lorry, with natural hesitation. The Doctor looked desolately round the room, shook his head, and answered, in a low voice, " Not at all." " Now, as to the future," hinted Mr. Lorry. " As to the future," said the Doctor, recovering firmness, " I should have great hope. As it pleased Heaven in its mercy to restore him so soon, I should have great hope. He, . yielding under the pressure of a complicated something, long dreaded and long vaguely foreseen and contended against, and recovering after the cloud had burst and passed, I should hope that the worst was over." " Well, well ! That's good comfort, I am thankful ! " said Mr. Lorry. " I am thankful ! " repeated the Doctor, bending his head with reverence. " There are two other points," said Mr. Lorry, "on which I am anxious to be instructed. I may go on 1 " " You cannot do your friend a better service." The Doctor gave him his hand. " To the first, then. He is of a studious habit, and un- usually energetic ; he applies himself with great ardor to the acquisition of professional knowledge, to the conducting of experiments, to many things. Now, does he do too much ?" " I think not. It may be the character of- his mind, to be always in singular need of occupation. That may be, in part, natural to it ; in part, the result of affliction. The less it was occupied with healthy things, the more it would be in danger of turning in the unhealthy direction. He may have observed himself, and made the discovery." " You are sure that he is not under too great a strain ? " " I think I am quite sure of it." ^* My dear Manette, if he were overworked now—-" AN OPINION. ^* My dear Lorry, I doubt if that could easily be. There has been a violent stress in one direction, and it needs a counterweight." " Excuse me, as a persistent man of business. Assuming for a moment, that he overworked ; it would show itself in some renewal of this disorder .'^ " I do not think so. I do not think," said Doctor Manette with the firmness of self-conviction, " that anything but the one train of association would renew it. I think that, hence- forth, nothing but some extraordinary jarring of that chord could renew it. After what has happened, and after his re- covery, I find it difficult to imagine any such violent sounding of that string again. I trust, and I almost believe, that the circumstances likely to renew it are exhausted," He spoke with the diffidence of a man who knew how slight a thing would overset the delicate organization of the mind, and yet with the confidence of a man who had slowly won his assurance out of personal endurance and distress. It was not for his friend to abate that confidence. He professed himself more relieved and encouraged than he really was, and approached his second and last point. He felt it to be the most difficult of all ; but, remembering his old Sunday morn- ing conversation with Miss Pross, and remembering what he had seen in the last nine days, he knew that he must face it. " The occupation resumed under the influence of this passing affliction so happily recovered from," said Mr. Lorry, clearing his throat, " we will call — Blacksmith's work, Black- smith's work. We will say, to put a case and for the sake of illustration, that he had been used, in his bad tim.e, to work at a little forge. We will say that he was unexpectedly found at his forge again. - Is it not a pity that he should keep it by him ? " The Doctor shaded his forehead with his hand, and beat lus foot nervously on the ground. He has always kept it by him," said Mr. Lorr}^, with nnxious look at his friend. " Now, would it not be better thai he should let it go ? " Still, the Doctor, with shaded forehead, beat his foot nervously on the ground. " You do not find it easy to advise me ? " said Mr. Lorry. * I quite understand it to be a nice question. And yet I think " and there he shook his head, and stopped. You see," said Doctor Manette, turning to him after an 1^2 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. uneasy pause, " it is very hard to explain, consistently, the in* nermost workings of this poor man's mind. He once yearned so frightfully for that occupation, and it was so welcome when it came ; no doubt it relieved his pain so much, by sub- stituting the perplexity of the fingers for the perplexity of the brain, and by substituting, as he became more practiced, the ingenuity of the hands, for the ingenuity of the mental torture % * that he has never been able to bear the thought of putting it quite out of his reach. Even now, when I believe he is more hopeful of himself than he has ever been, and even speaks of himself with a kind of confidence, the idea that he might need that old employment, and not find it, gives him a sudden sense of terror, like that which one may fancy strikes to the heart of a lost child." He looked like his illustration, as he raised his eyes to Mr. Lorry's face. " But may not — mind ! I ask for information, as a plodding man of business who only deals with such material objects as guineas, shillings and bank-notes — may not the retention of the thing involve the retention of the idea ? If the thing were gone, my dear Manette, might not the fear go with it ? In short, is it not a concession to the misgiving, to keep the forge ? " There was another silence. " You see, too,'' said the Doctor, tremulously, " it is such an old companion." " I would not keep it," said Mr. Lorry, shaking his head ; for he gained in firmness as he saw the Doctor disquieted. " I would recommend him to sacrifice it. I only want your authority. I am sure it does no good. Come ! Give me your authority, like a dear good man. For his daughter's sake, my dear Manette ! " Very strange to see what a struggle there was within him ! In her name, then, let it be done ; I sanction it. But, I would not take it away while he was present. Let it be removed v/hen he is not there 3 let him miss his old com- panion after an absence." Mr. Lorry readily engaged for that, and the conference was ended. They passed the day in the country, and the Doctor was quite restored. On the three following days he remained perfectly well, and on the fourteenth day he went away to join Lucie and her husband. The precaution that had been taken to account for his silence, Mr. Lorry had pre- A PLEA. viously explained to him, and he had written to Lucie in accordance with it, and she had no suspicions. On the night of the day on which he left the house, Mr. Lorry went into his room with a chopper, saw, chisel, and hammer, attended by T.Iiss Pross carrying a light. There, wdth closed doors, and in a mysterious and guilty manner, Mr^ Lorry hacked the shoemaker's bench to pieces, while Miss Pross held the candle as if she were assisting at a murder — fpr which, indeed, in her grimness, she was no unsuitable figure. The burning of the body (previously reduced to pieces convenient for the purpose) was commenced without delay in the kitchen lire ; and the tools, shoes, and leather, were buried in the garden. So wicked do destruction and secrecy appear to honest mmds, that Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross, while engaged m tlie commission of their deed and in the removal of its traces, almost I'elt, ancJ almost looked, like accomplices in a horrible crime. CHAPTER XX. A PLEA. When the newly-married pair came home, the Srst person iff^» appeared, to offer his congratulations, was Sydney Car- ton. They had not been at home many hours, when he pre- sented himself. Ke was not improved in habits, or in looks, or in manner ; but there was a certain rugged air of fidelity about him, which was new to the observation of Charles Darnay. He watched his opportunity of taking Darnay aside into a window, and of speaking to him when no one overheard. "Mr. Darnay," said Carton, "I wish we might b€ friends." " We are already friends, I hope." " You are good enough to say so, as a fashion of soeech , but, I don't mean any fashion of speech. Indeed, when I say I wish we might be friends, I scarcely mean quite that, either." Charles Darnay — as was natural — asked him, in ^il good humor, and good-fellowship, what he did mean ? XP4 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, ^' Upon my life," said Carton, smiling, I find that easiei to comprehend in my own mind, than to convey to yours. Huwever, let me try. You remember a certain famous occa- sion when I was more drunk than — than usual ? " I remember a certain famous occasion when you forced me to confess that you had been drinking." " I remember it too. The curse of those occasions is heavy upon me, for I always remember them. I hope it may be taken into account one day, when all days are at an end for me ! Don't be alarmed ; I am not going to preach." " I am not at all alarmed. Earnestness in you, is anything but alarming to me." " Ah ! " said Carton, with a careless wave of his hand, as if he waved that away. " On the drunken occasion in question (one of a large number, as you know), I was insufferable about liking you, and not liking you. I wish you would for- get it." " I forgot it long ago." " Fashion of speech again ! But, Mr. Darnay, oblivion is not so easy to me, as you represent it to be to you. I have by no means forgotten it, and a light answer does not help me to forget it." " If it was a light answer," returned Darnay, " I beg your forgiveness for it. I had had no other object than to turn a slight thing, which, to my surprise, seems to trouble you too much, aside. I declare to you, on the faith of a gen- tleman, that I have long dismissed it from my mind. Good Heaven, what was there to dismiss ! Have I had nothing -more important to remember, in thegreat service you rendered me that day ? " " As to the great service," said Carton, " I am bound to avow to you, when you spaak of it in that way, that it was mere professional claptrap. I don't know that I cared what became of you, when I rendered it. — Mind ! I say when I ren- j'^^red it ; I am speaking of the past." '^You make light of the obligation," returned Darnay , ^*butl will not quarrel v^\\h. your light answer." " Genuine truth, Mr. Darnay, trust me ! I have gone aside from my purpose ; I was speaking about our being friends. Now, you know me ; you know I am incapable of all the higher and better flights of men. If you doubt it, ask Stryver, and he'll tell you so." .1 prefer to form my own opinion, without the aid of his.*' A PLEA. Well ! At any rate you know me as a dissolute dog, who has never done any good, and never will." " I don't know that you * never will.' " " But I do, and you must take my word for it. Well 1 If you could endure to have such a worthless fellow, and a fellow of such indifferent reputation, coming and going at odd times, I should ask that I might be permitted, to come and go as a privileged person here ; that I might be regarded as an use- less (and I would add, if it were not for the resemblance I detected between you and me), an unornamental, piece of furniture, tolerated for its old service, and taken no notice of. I doubt if I should abuse the permission. It is a bundled to one if I should avail myself of it four times in a year. It would satisfy me, I dare say, to know that I had it." "Will you try.?" " That is another way of saying that I am placed on the footing I have indicated. I thank you, Darnay. I may use that freedom with your name t " " I think so. Carton, by this time." They shook hands upon it, and Sydney turned away. Within a minute afterwards, he was, to all outward appear- ance, as unsubstantial as ever. When he was gone, and in the course of an evening passed with Miss Pross, the Doctor, and Mr. Lorry, Charles Darnay made some mention of this conversation in general terms, and spoke of Sydney Carton as a problem of carelessness and recklessness. He spoke of him, in short, not bitterly or meaning to bear hard upon him, but as anybody might who saw him as he showed himself. He had no idea that this could dwell in the thoughts of his fair young wife ; but, when he afterwards joined her in their own rooms, he found her waiting for him with the old pretty lifting of the forehead strongly marked. " We are thoughtful to-night ! " said Darnay, drawing his arm about her. " Yes, dearest Charles," with her hands on his breast, and the inquiring and attentive expression fixed upon him ; we are rather thoughtful to-night, for we have something on our mind to-night." " What is it, my Lucie ? " " Will you promise not to press one question on me, if I beg you not to ask it ? " " Will I promise ? What will I not promise to my Love ? " A TALE OF TWO CT'T/ES. What, indeed, with liis hand putting aside the golden hail from the cheek, and his other hand against the heart thai beat for him ! " I think, Charles, pocr Mr. Carton deserves more con- sideration and respect than you expressed for him to-night." Indeed, my own ? Why so ? " "That is what you are not to ask me ? But I think — 1 know — he does." " If you know it, it is enough. What would you have me do, my Life ? " " I would ask you dearest, to be very generous with him always, and very lenient on his faults when he is not by. I Would ask you to believe that he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals, and that there are deep wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding." " It is a painful reflection to me," said Charles Darnay, quite astounded, " that I should have done him any wrong. I never thought this of him." " My husband, it is so. I fear he is not to be reclaimed ; there is scarcely a hope that anything in his character or for- tunes is reparable now. But, I am sure that he is capable of good things, gentle things, even magnanimous things." She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man, that her husband could have looked at her as she was for hours. " And, O my dearest love ! " she urged, clinging nearer to him, laying her head upon his breast, and raising her eyes to his, " remember how strong we are in our happiness, and how weak he is in his misery ! " The supplication touched him home. " I will always re- member it, dear heart ! I will remember it as long as I live." He bent over the golden head, and put the rosy lips to his, and folded her in his arms. If one forlorn wanderer then pacing the dark streets, could have heard her innocent dis- closure, and could have seen tne drops of pity kissed away by her husband from the soft blue eyes so loving of that hus- band, he might have cried to the night — and the words would not have parted from his lips for the first time — i " God bless her for her sweet compassion 1 ECHOING FOOTSTEPS. CHAPTER XXI. ECHOING FOOTSTEPS, A WONDERFUL corner for echoes, it has been iemarked^ tliat corner where the Doctor Uved. Ever busily winding the golden thread which bound her husband, and her father, and herself, and her old directress and companion, in a life of quiet bliss, Lucie sat in the still house in the tranquilly re- sounding corner, listening to the echoing footsteps of years. At first, there w^ere times, though she was a perfectly happy young wife, when her work would slowly fall from her hands, and her eyes would be dimmed. For, there was something coming in the echoes, something light, afar off, and scarcely audible yet, that stirred her heart too much. Fluttering hopes and doubts — hopes, of a love as yet unknown to her : doubts, of her remaining upon earth, to enjoy that new delight — divided her breast. Among the echoes then, there would arise the sound of footsteps at her own early grave ; and thoughts of the husband who would be left so desolate, and who would mourn for her so much, swelled to her eyes, and broke like waves. That time passed, and her little Lucie lay on her bosom. Then, among the advancing echoes, there was the tread of her tiny feet and the sound of her prattling words„ Let greater echoes resound as they would, the young mother at the cradle side could always hear those coming. They came, and the shady house was sunny with a child's laugh^ and the Divine friend of children, to whom in her trouble she had confided hers, seemed to take her child in his arms, as He took the child of old, and made it a sacred joy to her. Ever busily winding the golden thread that bound them aii together, weaving the service of her happy influence through the tissue of all their lives, and making it predomi- fiate nowhere, Lucie heard in the echoes of years none but friendly and soothing sounds. Her husband's step was strong and prosperous among them ; her father's firm and equal. Lo, Miss Pross, in harness of string, awakening the echoes^ as an unruly charger, whip-corrected, snorting and pawing the tarth under the plane-tree in the garden ! Even when there were sounds of sorrow among the rest. A TALE OF TWO CITIES. they were not harsh nor cruel. Even when golden hair, like her own, lay in a halo on a pillow round the worn face of a little boy, and he said, with a radiant smile, Dear papa and mamma, I am very sorry to leave you both, and to leave my pretty sister ; but I am called, and I must go ! " those were not tears all of agony that wetted his young mother's cheeky as the spirit departed from her embrace that had been en trusted to it. Suffer them and forbid them not. They see my Father's face. O Father, blessed words ! Thus, the rustling of an Angel's wings got blended with the other echoes, and they were not wholly of earth, but had in them that breath of Heaven. Sighs of the winds that blew over a little garden-tomb were mingled with them also, and both were audible to Lucie, in a hushed murmur — like the breathing of a summer sea asleep upon a sandy shore — as the little Lucie, comically studious at the task of the morning, or dressing a doll at her mother's footstool, chattered in the tongues of the Two Cities that were blended in her life. The echoes rarely answered to the actual tread of Sydney Carton. Some half-dozen times a j^ear, at most, he claimed his privilege of coming in uninvited, and would sit among them through the evening, as he had once done often. He never came there heated with wine. And one other thing re- garding him was whispered in the echoes, which has been whispered by all true echoes for ages and ages. No man ever really loved a woman, lost her, and knew her with a blameless though an unchanging mind, when she was a wife and a mother, but her children had a strange sympathy with him — an instinctive delicacy of pity for him. What fine hidden sensibilities are touched in such a case, no echoes tell ; but it is so, and it was so here. Carton was the first stranger to whom little Lucie held out her chubby arms, and he kept his place with her as she grew. The little boy had spoken of him, almost at the last. " Poor Carton ! Kiss him for me ! " Mr. Stryver shouldered his way through the law, like some great engine forcing itself through turbid water, and dragged his useful friend in his wake, like a boat towed astern. As the boat so favored is usually in a rough plight, and mostly under water, so, Sydney had a swamped life of it. But, easy and strong custom, unhappily so much easier and stronger in him than any stimulating sense of desert or disgrace, made it the life he was to lead ; and he no more thought of emerging ECHOING FOOTSTEPS. 199 from his state of lion's jackal, than any real jackal may be supposed to think of rising to be a lion. Stryver was rich ; had married a florid widow with property and three boys, who had nothing particularly shining about them but the straight hair of their dumpling heads. These three young gentlemen, Mr. Stryver, exuding patron* age of the most offensive quality from every pore, had walked before him like three sheep to the quiet corner in Soho, and had offered as pupils to Lucie's husband : delicately saying, " Halloa ! here are three lumps of bread-and-cheese towards your matrimonial picnic, Darnay ! The polite rejection of the three lumps of bread-and-cheese had quite bloated Mr. Stryver with indignation, which he afterwards turned to ac- count in the training of the young gentlemen, by directing them to beware of the pride of Beggars, like that tutor-fellow. He was also in the habit of declaiming to Mrs. Stryver, over his full-bodied wine, on the arts Mrs. Darnay had once put in practice to catch '' him, and on the diamond-cut-diamond arts in himself, madam, which had rendered him " not to be caught." Some of his King's Bench familiars, who were oc- casionally parties to the full-bodied wine and the lie, excused him for the latter by saying that he had told it so often, that he believed it himself — which is surely such an incorrigible aggravation of an originally bad offence, as to justify any such offender's being carried off to some suitably retired spot, and there hanged out of the way. These were among the echoes to which Lucie, sometimes pensive, sometimes amused and laughing, listened in the echoing corner, until her little daughter was six years old. How near to her heart the echoes of her child's tread came, and those of her own dear father's, always active and self- possessed, and those of her dear husband's, need not be told. Nor, how th< lightest echo of their united home, directed by herself with such a wxse and elegant thrift that it was more abundant than any waste, was music to her. Nor, how thtre were echoes all about her, sweet in her ears, of the many times her father had told her that he found her more devoted to him married (if that could be) than single, and of the many times her husband had said to her that no cares and duties seemed to divide her love for him or her help to him, and asked her " What is the magic secret, my darling, of your being everything to all of us, as if there were only one of us, yet never seeming to be hurried, or to have too much to do } " 200 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. But, there were other echoes, from a distance, that rum- bled menacingly in the corner all through this space of time, And it was now, about little Lucie's sixth birthday, that the)' began to have an awful sound, as of a great storm in France with a dreadful sea rising. On a night in mid-July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine, Mr. Lorry came in late, from Tellson's, and sat himself down by Lucie and her husband in the dark window. It was a hot, wild night, and they w^ere all three reminded ol the old Sunday night when they had looked at the lightning from the same place. I began to think," said Mr. Lorry, pushing his brown wig back, that I should have to pass the night at Tellson's. We have been so full of business all day, that we have not known what to do first, or which way to turn. There is such an uneasiness in Paris, that we have actually a run of confi- dence upon us ! Our customers over there, seem not to be able to confide their property to us fast enough. There is positively a mania among some of them for sending it to Eng- land." That has a bad look," said Darnay. " A bad look, you say, my dear Darnay ? Yes, bu( we don't know what reason there is in it. People are so unrea- sonable ! Some of us at Tellson's are getting old, and we really can't be troubled out of the ordinary course without due occasion." " Still," said Darnay, "you know how gloomy and threat- ening the sky is." " I know that, to be sure," assented Mr. Lorry, trying to persuade himself that his sweet temper was soured, and that he grumbled, " but I am determined to be peevish after my long day's botheration. Where is Manette ? " " Here he is," said the Doctor, entering the dark room at the moment. " I am quite glad you are at home ; for these huiries anci forebodings by which I have been surrounded all day long, have made me nervous without reason. You are not going out, I hope ? " " No ; I am going to play backgammon with you, if you like," said the-Doctor. " I don't think I do like, if I may speak my mind. I am not fit to be pitted against you to -night. Is the tea-board stiU there, Lucie ? I can't see," ECHOING FOOTSTEPS. 2C1 " Of course it has been kept for you." " Thank ye, my dear. The precious child is safe in bed ? " "And sleeping soundly." " That's right ; all safe and well ! I don't know why any- thing should be otherwise than safe and well here, thank God ; but I have been so put out all day, and I am not as young as I was ! My tea, my dear ! Thank ye. Now, come and take your place in the circle, and let us sit quiet, and. hear the echoes about which you have your theory." Not a theory ; it was a fancy." ^' A fancy, then, my wise pet," said Mr. Lorry, patting her hand. They are very numerous and very loud, though, are they not ? Only hear them ! " Headlong, mad, and dangerous footsteps to force their way into anybody's life, footsteps not easily made clean again if once stained red, the footsteps raging in Saint Antoine afar off, as the little circle sat in the dark London window. Saint Antoine had been, that morning, a vast dusky mass of scarecrows heaving to and fro, with frequent gleams of light above the billowy heads, where steel blades and bayonets shone in the sun. A tremendous roar arose from the throat of Saint Antoine, and a forest of naked arms struggled in the air like shrivelled branches of trees in a winter wind : all the fingers convulsively clutching at every weapon or semblance of a weapon that was thrown up from the depth below, no matter how far off. Who gave them out, whence they last came, where they began, through what agency they crookedly quivered and jerked, scores at a time, over the heads of the crowd, like a kind of lightning, no eye in the throng could have told ; but, muskets were being distributed — so were cartridges, powder, and ball, bars of iron and wood, knives, axes, pikes, every weapon that distracted ingenuity could discover or devise. People who could lay hold of nothing else, set themselves with bleeding hands to force stones and bricks out of their places m walls. Every pulse and heart in Saint Antoine was on high-fever strain, and at high-fever heat. Every living crea- ture there held life as of no account, and was demented with a passionate readiness to sacrifice it. As a whirlpool of boiUng waters has a centre point, so, all this raging circled round Defarge's wine-shop, and every hu- man drop in the caldron had a tendency to be sucked towards 202 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. the vortex where Defarge himself, already begrimed with gun- powder and sweat, issued orders, issued arms, thrust this man back, dragged this man forward, disarmed one to arm another, labored and strove in the thickest of the uproar. " Keep near to me, Jacques Three," cried Defarge ; and do you, Jacques One and Two, separate and put yourselves at the head of as many of these patriots as you can. Where is my wife ? " Eh, well ! Here you see me ! " said madame, composed as ever, but not knitting to-day. Madame's resolute right hand was occupied with an axe, in place of the usual softer implements, and in her girdle were a pistol and a cruel knife. " Where do you go, my wife .-^ " " I go,'' said madame, " with you at present. You shall see me at the head of women, by and by." " Come, then ! " cried Defarge, in a resounding voice. " Patriots and friends, we are ready ! The Bastile ! " With a roar that sounded as if all the breath in France had been shaped into the detested word, the living sea rose, wave on wave, depth on depth, and overflowed the city to that point. Alarm-bells ringing, drums beating, the sea rag- ing and thundering on its new beach, the attack begun. Deep ditches, double drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. Through the fire and through the smoke — in the fire and in the smoke, for the sea cast him up against a cannon, and on the instant he became a cannonier — Defarge of the wine-shop worked like a manful soldier, two fierce hours. Deep ditch, single drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. One draw- bridge down ! " Work, comrades all, work ! Work, Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques One Thousand, Jacques Two Thousand, Jacques Five-and-Twenty-Thousand ; in the name of all the Angels or the Devils — which* you prefer — work !" Thus Defarge of the wine-shop, still at his gun, which had long grown hot. " To me, women ! " cried madame his wife. " What I V/g can kill as well as the men when the place is taken ! " Ai)d to her, with a shrill thirsty cry, trooping women variously armed, but all armed alike in hunger and revenge. Cannon, muskets, fire and smoke ; but, still the deep ditch, the single draw-bridge, the massive stone walls, and the eight great towers. Slight displacements of the raging ECHOING FOOTSTEPS. 203 sea, made by the falling wounded. Flashing weapons, blaz- ing torches, smoking wagon-loads of wet straw, hard work at neighboring barricades in all directions, shrieks, volleys, exe- crationSj bravery without stint, boom smash and rattle, and the furious sounding of the living sea ; but, still the deep ditch, and the single drawbridge, and the massive stone walls., and the eight great towers, and still Defarge of the wine-shop at his gun, grown doubly hot by the service of Four fierce hours. A white flag from within the fortress, and a parley — this dimly perceptible through the raging storm, nothing audible in it — suddenly the sea rose immeasurably wider and higher, and swept Defarge of the wine-shop over the lowered draw- bridge, past the massive stone outer walls, in among the eight great towers surrendered ! So resistless was the force of the ocean bearing him on, that even to draw his breath or turn his head was as imprac- ticable as if he had been struggling in the surf at the South, Sea, until he was landed in the outer court-yard of the Bas- tile. There, against an angle of a wall, he made a struggle to look about him. Jacques Three was nearly at his side ; Madame Defarge, still heading some of her women, was visible in the mner distance, and her knife was in her hand. Everywhere was tumult, exultation, deafening and maniacal bewilderment, astounding noise, yet furious dumb-show " The Prisoners ! " " The Records ! The secret cells ! " " The instruments of torture ! " '* The Prisoners ! " Of all these cries, and ten thousand incoherencies, " The Prisoners ! was the cry most taken up by the sea that rushed in, as if there were an eternity of people, as well as of time and space. When the foremost billows rolled past, bearing the prison officers with them, and threatening them all with instant death if any secret nook remained undisclosed, Defarge laid his strong hand on the breast of one of these men- — a man with a gray head, who had a lighted torch in his hand — separated him from the rest, and got him between himself and the wall. " Show me the North Tower ! " said Defarge. " Quick I I will faithfully," replied the man, " if you will come with me. But there is no one there." 204 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. What is the meaning of One Hundred and Five, North Tower ? asked Defarge. " Quick ! " " The meaning, monsieur ? " " Does it mean a captive, or a place of captivity ? Or do you mean that I shall strike you dead ? " " Kill him ! " croaked Jacques Three, who had come up. " Monsieur, it is a cell/' Show it me ! " Pass this way, then." Jacques Three, with his usual craving on him, and evi- dently disappointed by the dialogue taking a turn that did not seem to promise bloodshed, held by Defarge's arm as he held by the turnkey's. Their three heads had been close to- gether during this brief discourse, and it had been as much as they could do to hear one another, even then : so tremen- dous was the. noise of the living ocean, in its irruption into the Fortress, and its inundation of the courts and passages and staircases. All around outside, too, it beat the walls with a deep, hoarse roar, from which, occasionally, some partial shouts of tumult broke and leaped into the air like spray. Through gloomy vaults where the light of day had never shone, past hideous doors of dark dens and cages, down ravenous flights of steps, and again up steep rugged ascents of stone and brick, more like dry waterfalls than staircases, Defarge, the turnkey, and Jacques Three, linked hand and arm, went with all the speed they could make. Here and there, especially at first, the inundation started on them and swept by; but when they had done descending, and were winding and climbing up a tower, they were alone. Hemmed in here by the massive thickness of walls and arches, the storm within the fortress and without was only audible to them in a dull, subdued way, as if the noise out of which they had come had almost destroyed their sense of hearing. The turnkey stopped at a low door, put a key in a clash- ing lock, swung the door slowly open, and said, as they all bent their heads and passed in : '^One Hundred and five. North Tower! " There was a small, heavily-grated, unglazed window high in the wall, with a stone screen before it, so that the sky could be only seen by stooping low and looking up. There v/as a small chimney, heavily barred across, a few feet within. There was a heap of old feathery wood-ashes on the hearth. Ti.ere was a stool, and table, and a straw bed. There ECHOING FOOTSTEPS, were the four blackened walls, and a rusted iron ring in one of them. Pass that torch slowly along these walls, that I may see them,'' said Defarge to the turnkey. The man obeyed, and Defarge followed the light closely with his eyes. Stop ! — Look here, Jacques ! " " A. M. ! croaked Jacques Three, as he read greedily. *^ Alexandre Manette," said Defarge in his ear, following the letters with his swart forefinger, deeply engrained with gun- powder. " And here he wrote * a poor physician.' And it was he, without doubt, who scratched a calendar on this stone. What is that in your hand ? A crowbar ? Give it me ! " He had still the linstock of his gun in his own hand. He made a sudden exchange of the two instruments, and turning on the worm-eaten stool and table, beat them to pieces in a few blows. " Hold the light higher ! " he said, wrathfully, to the turnkey. " Look among those fragments with care, Jacques. And see ! Here is my knife," throwing it to him ; rip open that bed, and search the straw. Hold the light higher, you ! " With a menacing look at the turnkey he crawled upon the hearth, and, peering up the chimney, struck and prised at its sides with the crowbar, and worked at the iron grating across it. In a few minutes, some mortar and dust came dropping down, which he averted his face to avoid ; and in it, and in the old wood-ashes, and in a crevice in the chimney into which his weapon had slipped or wrought itself, he groped with a cau- tious touch. Nothing in the wood, and nothing in the straw, Jac- ques ? " " Nothing." " Let us collect them together, in the middle of the cell So ! Light them, you 1 " The turnkey fired the little pile, which blazed high and hot. Stooping again to come out at the low-arched door, they left it burning, and retraced their way to the court-yard \ seeming to recover their sense of hearing as they came down, until they were in the raging flood once more. They found it surging and tossing, in quest of Defarge himself. Saint Antoine was clamorous to have its wine-shop keeper foremost in the guard upon the governor who had de- 2o6 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. fended the Bastile and shot the people. Otherwise, the go^ ernor would not be marched to the Hotel de Ville for judg- ment. Otherwise, the governor would escape, and the pea pie's blood (suddenly of some value, after many years ol worthlessness) be unavenged. In the howling universe of passion and contention that seemed to encompass this grim old officer conspicuous in his gray coat and red decoration, there was but one quite steady figure, and that was a woman's. " See, there is my husband ! " she cried, pointing him out. " See Defarge ! " She stood immovable close to the grim old officer, and remained im- movable close to him ; remained immovable close to him through the streets, as Defarge and the rest bore him along ; remained immovable close to him when he was got near his destination, and began to be struck at from behind ; remained immovable close to him when the long-gathering rain of stabs and blows fell heavy ; was so close to him when he dropped dead under it, that, suddenly animated, she put her foot upon his neck, and with her cruel knife — long ready — hewed off his head. The hour was come when Saint Antoine was to execute his horrible idea of hoisting up men for lamps to show what he could be and do. Saint Antoine's blood was up, and the blood of tyranny and domination by the iron hand was down — down on the steps of the Hotel de Ville where the governor's body lay — down on the sole of the shoe of Madame Defarge where she had trodden on the body to steady it for mutilation. " Lower the lamp yonder ! " cried Saint Antoine, after glaring round for a new means of death ; "here is one of his soldiers to be left on guard ! " The swinging sentinel was posted, and the sea rushed on. The sea of black and threatening waters, and of destructive upheaving of wave against wave, whose depths were yet un- fathomed and whose forces were yet unknown. The remorse- less sea of turbulently swaying shapes, voices of vengeance, and faces hardened in the furnaces of suffering until the touch of pity could make no mark on them. But. in the ocean of faces where every fierce and furious expression was in vivid life, there were two groups of faces- each seven in number — so fixedly contrasting with the rest, that never did sea roll which bore more memorable wrecks with it. Seven faces of prisoners, suddenly released by the storm that had burst their tomb, were carried high overhead • THE SEA STILL RISES. 207 all scared, all lost, all wondering and amazed, as it the Last Day were come, and those who rejoiced around them were lost spirits. Other seven faces there were, carried higher, seven dead faces, whose drooping eyelids and half-seen eyes awaited the Last Day. Impassive faces, yet with a suspended — not an abolished — expression on them ; faces, rather, in a fearful pause, as having yet to raise the dropped lids of the eyes, arid bear witness with the bloodless lips, "Thou pidst Seven prisoners released, seven gory heads on pikes, the keys of the accursed fortress of the eight strong towers, some discovered letters and other memorials of prisoners of old- time, long dead of broken hearts, — such, and such-like, the loudly echoing footsteps of Saint Antoine escort through the Paris streets in mid-July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine. Now, Heaven defeat the fancy of Lucie Darn ay, and keep these feet far out of her life ! For, they are head- long, mad, and dangerous ; and in the years so long after the breaking of the cask at Defarge's wine-shop door, they are not 'easily purified when once stained red. CHAPTER XXIL THE SEA STILL RISES. Haggard Saint Antoine had had only one exultant week, in which to soften his modicum of hard and bitter bread to such extent as he could, with the relish of fraternal embraces and congratulations, when Madame Defarge sat at her counter as usual, presiding over the customers. Madame Defarge wore no rose in her head, for the great brotherhood of Spies had become, even in one short week, extremely chary of trust- ing themselves to the saint's mercies. The lamps across his streets had a portentously elastic swing with them. Madame Defarge, with her arms folded, sat in the morn- ing light and heat, contemplating the wine-shop and the street. In both, there were several knots of loungers, squalid and miserable, but now with a manifest sense of power enthroned on their distress. The raggedest nightcap, awry on the ^oo A TALE OF TWO CITIES^ ^ wretchedest head, had this crooked significance in it : "1 know how hard it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to support life in myself ; but do you know how easy it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to destroy life in you ? Every lean bare arm, that had been without work before, had this work always ready for it now, that it could strike. The fingers of the knitting women were vicious, with the experience that they could tear. There was a change in the appearance of Saint Antoine ; the image had been hammering into thisfoi hundreds of years, and the last finishing blows had told mightily on the expression. Madame Defarge sat observing it, with such suppressed approval as was to be desired in the leader of the Saint Antoine women. One of her sisterhood knitted beside her. The short, rather plump wife of a starved grocer, and the mother of two children withal, this lieutenant had already earned the complimentary name of The Vengeance. Hark ! " said The Vengeance. " Listen, then ! Who comes ? As if a train of powder laid from the outermost bound of the Saint Antoine Quarter to the wine-shop door, had been suddenly fired, a fast-spreading murmur came rushing along. " It is Defarge," said madame. " Silence, patriots ! Defarge came in breathless, pulled off a red cap he wore, and looked around him ! Listen, everywhere ! " said madame again. " Listen to him ! " Defarge stood, panting, against a background of eager eyes and open mouths, formed outside the door ; all those within the wine-shop had sprung to their feet. Say then, my husband. What is it? News from the other world ! " ^^How, then?" cried madame, contemptuously. "The other world ? " " Does ever^^body here recall old Foulon, who told the famished people that they might eat giass, and who died, and went to Hell ? " " Everybody ! " from all throats. " The news is of him. He is among us ! " " Among us ! " from the universal throat again. " And dead ? " Not dead ! He feared us so much — and with reason — ■ that he caused himself to be represented as dead, and had a grand mock-funeral. But they have found him alive, niding THE SEA STILL RISES, in the country, and have brought him in. I have seen him but now, on his way to the Hotel de Ville, a prisoner. I have said that he had reason to fear us. Say all ! Had he rea- son ? " Wretched old sinner of more than threescore years and ten, if he had never known it yet, he would have known it in his heart of hearts if he could have heard the answering cry. A moment of profound silence followed. Defarge and his i\'ife looked steadfastly at one another. The Vengeance stooped, and the jar of a drum was heard as she moved it at her feet behind the counter. " Patriots ! " said Defarge, in a determined voice, *'are we ready ? Instantly Madame Defarge's knife was in her girdle \ the drum was beating in the streets, as if it and a drummer had flown together by magic ; and The Vengeance, uttering terrific shrieks, and flinging her arms about her head like all the forty Furies at once, was tearing from house to house, rousing the women. The men were terrible, in the bloody-minded anger with which they looked from windows, caught up what arms they had, and came pouring down into the streets ; but, the w^omen were a sight to chill the boldest. From such household oc- cupations as their bare poverty yielded, from their children, from their aged and their sick crouching on the bare ground famished and naked, they ran out with streaming hair, urging one another, and themselves, to madness with the wildest cries and actions. Villain Foulon taken, my sister ! Old Foulon taken, my mother ! Miscreant Foulon taken, my daughter ! Then, a score of others ran into the midst of these, beating their breasts, tearing their hair, and screaming, Foulon alive ! Foulon who told the starving people they might eat grass ! Foulon who told my old father that he might eat grass, when I had no bread to give him ! Foulon who told my baby it might suck grass, hen these breasts were dry with want ! O mother of God, this Foulon ! O Heaven, our suffering ! Hear me, my dead baby and my withered father : I swear on my knees, on these stones, to avenge you on Foulon ! Husbands, and brothers, and young men, Give us the blood of Foulon, Give us the head of Foulon, Give us the heart of Foulon, Give us the body and soul of Foulon, Rend Foulon to pieces, and dig him into the ground, that grass may grow from him ! With these cries, numbers of 210 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. the women, lashed into blind frenzy, whirled about, striking and tearing at their own friends until they dropped into a passionate swoon, and were only saved by the men belonging to them from being trampled under foot. Nevertheless, not a moment was lost ; not a moment ! This Foulon was at the Hotel de Ville, and might be loosed. Never, if Saint Antoine knew his own sufferings, insults, and wrongs ! Armed men and women flocked out of the Quarter so fast, and drew even these last dregs after them with such a force of suction, that within a quarter of an hour there was not a human creature in Saint Antoine's bosom but a few old crones and the wailing children. No. They were all by that time choking the Hall of Examination where this old man, ugly and wicked, was, and overflowing into the adjacent open space and streets. The Defarges, husband and wife. The Vengeance, and Jacques Three, were in the first press, and at no great distance from him in the Hall. "See ! cried madame, pointing with her knife. " See the old villain bound with ropes. That was well done to tie a bunch of grass upon his back. Ha, ha ! That was well done. Let him eat it now ! " Madame put her knife under her arm and clapped her hands as at a play. The people immediately behind Madame Defarge, explain- ing the cause of her satisfaction to those behind them-, and those again explaining to others, and those to others, the neighboring streets resounded with the clapping of hands. Similarly, during two or three hours of drawl, and the winnow- ing of many bushels of words, Madame Defarge's frequent ex- pressions of impatience were taken up, with marvellous quick- ness, at a distance : the more readily, because certain men who had by some wonderful exercise of agility climbed up the ex- ternal architecture to look in from the windows, knew Ma- dame Defarge well, and acted as a telegraph between her and the crowd outside the building. At length the sun rose so high that it struck a kindly ray as of hope or protection, directly down upon the old prisoner's head. The favor was too much to bear ; in an instant the barrier of dust and chaff that had stood surprisingly long, went to the winds, and Saint Antoine had got him ! It was kno\yn directly, to the furthest confines of the crowd. Defarge had but sprung over a railing and a table, and folded the miserable wretch in a deadly embrace — Madame Defarge THE SEA STILL RISES, 211 ftad but followed and turned her hand in one of the ropes with which he was tied — The Vengeance and Jacques Three were not yet up with them, and the men at the windows had not yet swooped into the Hall, like birds of prey from their high perches — when the cry seemed to go up, all over the city, Bring him out ! Bring him to the lamp ! " Down, and up, and head foremost on the steps of the building; now, on his knees ; now, on his feet; now, on his back ; dragged, and struck at, and stifled by the bunches of grass and straw that were thrust into his face by hundreds of hands ; torn, bruised, panting, bleeding, yet always entreating and beseeching for mercy ; now full of vehement agony of action, with a small clear space about him as the people drew one another back that they might see ; now, a log of dead wood drawn through a forest of legs ; he was hauled to the nearest street corner where one of the fatal lamps swung, and there Madame Defarge let him go — as a cat might have done to a mouse — and silently and composedly looked at him while they made ready, and while he besought her: the women pas- sionately screeching at him all the time, and the men sternly calling out to have him killed with grass in his mouth. Once, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking ; twice, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking ; then, the rope was merciful, and held him, and his head was soon upon a pike, with grass enough in the mouth for all Saint Antoine to dance at the sight of. Nor was this the end of the day's bad work, for Saint An- toine so shouted and danced his angry blood up, that it boiled again, on hearing when the day closed in that the son-in-law of the despatched, another of the people's enemies and insult- ers, was coming into Paris under a guard five hundred strong, in cavalry alone. Saint Antoine wrote his crimes on flaring sheets of paper, seized him — would have torn him out of the breast of an army to bear Foulon company — set his head and heart on pikes, and carried the three spoils of the day, in Wolf-procession through the streets. Not before dark night did the men and women come back to the children, waiUng and breadless. Then, the miserable bakers' shops were beset by long files of them, patiently waiting to buy bad bread ; and while they waited with stomachs faint and empty, they beguiled the time by embracing one another on the triumphs of the day, and achieving them again in gos- sip. Gradually, these strings of ragged people shortened and 212 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. frayed away ; and then poor lights began to shine in high windows, and slender fires were made in the streets, at which neighbors cooked in common, afterwards supping at their doors. Scanty and sufficient suppers, those, and innocent of meat, as of most other sauce to wretched bread. Yet, human fellow- ship infused some nourishment into the flinty viands, and struck some sparks of cheerfulne*ss out of them. Fathers and mothers who had had their full share in the worst of the day, played gently with their meagre children ; and lovers, with such a world around them and before them, loved and hoped. It was almost morning, when Defarge's wine-shop parted w^ith its last knot of customers, and Monsieur Defarge said to madame his wife, in husky tones, while fastening the door: " At last it is come, my dear ! " "Eh well " returned madame. " Almost.'' Saint Antoine slept, the* Defarges slept : even The Ven- geance slept with her starved grocer, and the drum was at rest. The drum's was the only voice in Saint Antoine that blood and hurry had not changed. The Vengeance, as cus- todian of the drum, could have wakened him up and had the same speech out of him as before the Bastile fell, or old Fou- Ion was seized ; not so with the hoarse tones of the men and women in Saint Antoine's bosom. CHAPTER XXIII. FIRE RISES. There was a change on the village where the fountain foil, and where the mender of roads went forth daily to ham- mer out of the stones on the highway such morsels of bread as might serve for patches to hold his poor ignorant soul and his poor reduced body together. The prison on the crag was not so dominant as of yore ; there were soldiers to guard it, but not many ; there were officers to guard the soldiers, but not one of them knew what his men would do — beyond this: that it would probably not be what he was ordered. FIRE RISES, 213 Far and wide lay a ruined country, yielding nothing but desolation. Every green leaf, every blade of grass and blade of grain, was as shrivelled and poor as the miserable people, Everything was bowed down, dejected, oppressed, and broken, Habitations, fences, domesticated animals, men, women, chil- dren, and the soil that bore them — all worn out. Monseigneur (often a most worthy individual gentleman) was a national blessing, gave a chivalrous tone to things, was a polite example of luxurious and shining life, and a great deal more to equal purpose ; nevertheless, Monseigneur as a class had, somehow or other, brought things to this. Strange that Creation, designed expressly for Monseigneur, should be so soon wrung dry and squeezed out ! There must be something short-sighted in the eternal arrangements, surely ! Thus it was, however ; and the last drop of blood having been extracted from the flints, and the last screw of the rack having been turned so often that its purchase crumbled, and it now turned and turned with nothing to bite, Monseigneur began to run away from a phenomenon so low and unaccountable. But, this was not the change on the village, and on many a village like it. For scores of years gone by, Monseigneur had squeezed it and wrung it, and had seldom graced it with his presence except for the pleasures of the chase — now, found in hunting the people ; now found in hunting the beasts, for whose preservation Monseigneur made edifying spaces of bar- barous and barren v/ilderness. No. The change consisted in the appearance of strange faces of low caste, rather than in the disappearance of the high-caste, chiselled, and otherwise beatified and beatifying features of Monseigneur. For, in these times, as the mender of roads worked, solitary in the dust, not often troubling himself to reflect that dust he was and to dust he must return, being for the most part too much occupied in thinking how little he had for supper and how much more he would eat if he had it — in these times, as he raised his eyes from his lonely labor, and viewed the pros- pect, he would see some rough figure approaching on foot, the like of which was once a rarity in those parts, but was now a frequent presence. As it advanced, the mender of roads would discern without surprise, that it was a shagg3^-haired man, of almost barbarian aspect, tall, in wooden shoes that were clumsy even to the eyes of a mender of roads, grim^ rough, swart, steeped in the mud and dust of many highways, dank with the marshy moisture of many low grounds. 214 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. sprinkled with the thorns and leaves and moss of many byways through woods. Such a man came upon him, like a ghost, at noon in the July weather, as he sat on his heap of stones under a bank^ taking such shelter as he could get from a shower of hail. The man looked at him, looked at the village in the hol- low, at the mill, and at the prison on the crag. When he had identified these objects in what benighted mind he had, he said, in a dialect that was just intelligible : " How goes it, Jacques } " " All well, Jacques." " Touch then ! " They joined hands, and the man sat down on a heap of stones. " No dinner ? " " Nothing but supper now," said the mender of roads, with a hungry face. " It is the fashion," growled the man. " I meet no dinner anywhere." He took out a blackened pipe, filled it, lighted it with flint and steel, pulled at it until it was in a bright glow : then, sud- denly held it from him and dropped something into it from between his finger and thumb, that blazed and went out in a puff of smoke. " Touch then." It was the turn of the m-ender of roads to say it this time, after observing these operations. They again joined hands. " To-night ? " said the mender of roads. " To-night," said the man, putting the pipe in his mouth. " Where ? " " Here." He and the mender of roads sat on the heap of stones looking silently at one another, with the hail driving in be- tween them like a pigmy charge of bayonets, until the sky began to clear over the village. " Show me ! " said the traveller then, moving to the brow of the hill. " See ! " returned the mender of roads, with extended finger. " You go down here, and straight through the street, and past the fountain " " To the Devil with all that ! " interrupted the other, roW ing his eye over the landscape. " / go through no streets and past no fountains. Well ? " FIRE RISES. "Well ! About two leagues beyond the summit of that hill above the village." " Good. When do you cease to work ? " - " At sunset." " Will you wake me, before departing ? I have walked two nights without resting. Let me finish my pipe, and I shall sleep like a child. Will you wake me ? " Surely." The wayfarer smoked his pipe out, put it in his breast, slipped off his great wooden shoes, and lay down on his back on the heap of stones. He was fast asleep directly. As the road mender plied his dusty labor, and the hail- clouds, rolling away, revealed bright bars and streaks of sky which were responded to by silver gleams upon the landscape, the little man (who wore a red cap now, in place of his blue one) seemed fascinated by the figure on the heap of stones. His eyes were so often turned towards it, that he used his tools mechanically, and, one would have said, to very poor account. The bronze face, the shaggy black hair and beard, the coarse woollen red cap, the rough medley dress of home- spun stuff and hairy skins of beasts, the powerful frame attenuated by spare living, and the sullen and desperate com- pression of the lips in sleep, inspired the mender of roads with awe. The traveller had travelled far, and his feet were footsore, and his ankles chafed and bleeding ; his great shoes, stuffed with leaves and grass, had been heavy to drag over the many long leagues, and his clothes were chafed into holes as he himself was into sores. Stooping down beside him, the road-mender tried to get a peep at secret weapons in his breast or where not ; but, in vain, for he slept with his arms crossed upon him, and set as resolutely as his lips. Fortified towns with their stockades, guard-houses, gates, trenches, and drawbridges, seemed to the mender of roads, to be so much air as against this figure. And when he lifted his eyes from it to the horizon and looked around, he saw in his small fancy similar figures, stopped by no obstacle, tending to centres all over France. The man slept on, indifferent to showers of hail and inter- vals of brightness, to sunshine on his face and shadow, to the pattering lumps of dull ice on his body and the diamonds into which the sun changed them, until the sun was low in the west, and the sky was glowing. Then, the mender of roads having got his tools together and all things ready to go down into the village, roused him. 2l6 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. " Good ! " said the sleeper, rising on his elbow. " Two leagues beyond the summit of the hill ? "About." "About. Good!" The mender of roads went home, with the dust going on before him according to the set of the wind, and was soon at the fountain^ squeezing himself in among the lean kine brought there to drink, and appearing even to whisper to them in his whispering to all the village. When the village had taken its poor supper, it did not creep to bed, as it usually did, but came out of doors again, and remained there. A curious contagion of whispering was upon it, and also, when it gathered together at the fountain in the dark, another curious contagion of looking expectantly at the sky in one direction only. Monsieur Gabelle, chief functionary of the place, be- came uneasy ; went out on his house-top alone, and looked in that direction too ; glanced down from behind his chimneys at the darkening faces by the fountain below, and sent word to the sacristan who kept the keys of the church, that there might be need to ring the tocsin by and by. The night deepened. The trees environing the old chateau, keeping its solitary state apart, moved in a rising wind, as though they threatened the pile of building massive and dark in the gloom. Up the two terrace flights of steps the rain ran wildly, and beat at the great door, like a swift messenger rousing those within ; uneasy rushes of wind went through the hall, among the old spears and knives, and passed lament- ing up the stairs, and shook the curtains of the bed where the last Marquis had slept. Elast, West, North, and South, through the woods, four heavy-treading, unkempt figures crushed the high grass and cracked the branches, striding on cautiously to come together in the court-yard. Four lights broke out there, and moved away in different directions, and all was black again. But, not for long. Presently, the chateau began to make itself strangely visible by some light of its own, as though it were growing luminous. Then, a flickering streak played be- hind the architecture of the front, picking out transparent places, and showing where balustrades, arches, and windows were. Then it soared higher, and grew broader and brighter. Soon, from a score of the great windows, flames burst forth, and the stone faces awakened, stared out of fire. A faint murmur arose about the house from the few people FIRE RISES. 217 who were left there, and there was a saddling of a horse and riding away. There was spurring and splashing through the darkness, and bridle was drawn in the space by the village fountain, and the horse in a foam stood at Monsieur Gabelle's door. " Help, Gabelle ! Help, every one ! " The tocsin rang impatiently, but other help (if that were any) there was none. The mender of roads, and two hundred and fifty particular friends, stood with folded arms at the fountain, looking at the pillar of fire in the sky. " It must be forty feet high," said they, grimly; and never moved. The rider from the chateau, and the horse in a foam, clattered away through the village, and galloped up the stony steep, to the prison on the crag. At the gate, a group of officers were looking at the fire ; removed from them, a group of soldiers. " Help, gentlemen-officers ! The chateau is on fire ; valuable objects may be saved from the flames by timely aid ! Help, help ! " The officers looked towards the soldiers who looked at the fire ; gave no orders \ and answered, with shrugs and biting of lips, It must burn." As the rider rattled down the hill again and through the street, the village was illuminating. The mender of roads, and the two hundred and fifty particular friends, inspired as one man and woman by the idea of lighting up, had darted into their houses, and were putting candles in every dull little pane of glass. The general scarcity of everything, occasioned candles to be borrowed in a rather peremptory manner of Monsieur Gabelle ; and in a moment of reluctance and hesita- tion on that functionary's part, the mender of roads, once so submissive to authority, had remarked that carriages were good to make bonfires with, and that post-horses would roast. The chateau was left to itself to flame and burn. In the roaring and raging of the conflagration, a red-hot wind, driv- ing straight from the infernal regions, seemed to be blowing the edifice away. With the rising and falling of the blaze, the stone faces showed as if they were in torment. When great masses of stone and timber fell, the face with the two dints in the nose became obscured : anon struggled out of the smoke again, as if it were the face of the cruel Marquis, burning at the stake and contending with the fire. The chateau burned ; the nearest trees, laid hold of by the fire, scorched and shrivelled ; trees at a distance, fired by the four fierce figures, begirt the blazing edifice with a new forest of smoke. Molten lead and iron boiled in the marble basin 2l8 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. of the fountain ; the water ran dry ; the extinguisher tops o! the towers vanished Hke ice before the heat, and trickled down into four rugged wells of flame. Great rents and splits branched out in the solid walls, like crystallization ; stupefied birds wheeled about and dropped into the furnace ; four fierce figures trudged away. East, West, North, and South, along the night-enshrouded roads, guided by the beacon they had lighted, towards their next destination. The illuminated village had seized hold of the tocsin, and, abolishing the lawful ringer, rang for joy. Not only that ; but the village, light-headed with famine, fire, and bell-ringing, and bethinking itself that Monsieur Gabelle had to do with the collection of rent and taxes — though it was but a small instalment of taxes, and no rent at all, that Gabelle had got in those latter days — became im- patient for an interview with him, and, surrounding his house, summoned him to come forth for personal conference. Where- upon, Monsieur Gabelle did heavily bar his door, and retire to hold counsel with himself. The result of that conference was, that Gabelle again withdrew himself to his house-top behind his stack of chimneys ; this time resolved, if his door were broken in (he was a small Southern man of retaliative temperament), to pitch himself head foremost over the parapet, and crush a man or two below. Probably Monsieur Gabelle passed a long night up there, with the distant chateau for fire and candle, and the beating at his door, combined with the joy-ringing, for music ; not to mention his having an ill-omened lamp slung across the road before his posting-house gate, which the village showed a lively inclination to displace in his favor. A trying suspense, to be passing a whole summer night on the brink of the black ocean, ready to take that plunge into it upon which Monsieur Gabelle had resolved ! But, the friendly dawn appearing at last, and the rush-candles of the village guttering out, the people happily dispersed, and Monsieur Gabelle came down bringing his life with him for that while. Within a hundred miles, and in the light of other fires, there were other functionaries less fortunate, that night and other nights, whom the rising sun found hanging across once peaceful streets, where they had been born and bred ; also, there are other villagers and townspeople less fortunate than the mender of roads and his fellows, upon whom the func- tionaries and soldiery turned with success, and whom they DRAWN TO THE LOADSTONE ROCK. Strung up in their turn. But, the fierce figures were steadily- wending East, West, North, and South, be that as it would ; and whosoever hung, fire burned. The altitude of the gal- lows that would turn to water and quench it, no function- •^ry, by any stretch of mathematics, was able to calculate sue cessfully. CHAPTER XXIV. ^ DRAWN TO THE LOADSTONE ROCK. In such risings of fire and risings of sea — the firm earth shaken by the rushes of an angry ocean which had now no ebb, but was always on the flow, higher and higher, to the terror and wonder of the beholders on the shore — three years of tempest were consumed. Three more birthdays of little Lucie had been woven by the golden thread into the peaceful tissue of the life of her home. Many a night and many a day had its inmates listened to the echoes in the corner, with hearts that failed them when they heard the thronging feet. For, the footsteps had be- come to their minds as the footsteps of a people, tumultuous under a red flag and with their country declared in danger, changed into wild beasts, by terrible enchantment long per- sisted in. Monseigneur, as a class, had dissociated himself from the phenomenon of his not being appreciated : of his being so little wanted in France, as to incur considerable danger of receiving his dismissal from it, and this life together. Like the fabled rustic who raised the Devil with infinite pains, and was so terrified at the sight of him that he could ask the Enemy no question, but immediately fled ; so, Monseigneur, after boldly reading the Lord's Prayer backwards for a great number of years, and performing many other potent spells for compelling the Evil One, no sooner beheld him in his terrors than he took to his noble heels. The shining BulFs Eye of the Court was gone, or it would have been the mark for a hurricane of national bullets. It had never been a good eye to see with — had long had the 220 A TALK OF TWO CITIES. mote in it of Lucifer's pride, Sardanapalus's luxury, and a mole's blindness — but it had dropped out and was gone. The Court, from that exclusive inner circle to its outermost rotten ring of intrigue, corruption, and dissimulation, was all gone together. Royalty was gone ; had been besieged in its Palace and " suspended," when the last tidings came over. The August of the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two was come, and Monseigneur was by this time scattered far and wide. As was natural, the head-quarters and great gathering- place of Monseigneur, in London, was Tellson's Bank. Spirits are supposed to haunt the places where their bodies most re- sorted, and Monseigneur without a guinea haunted the spot where his guineas used to be. Moreover, it was the spot to which such French intelligence as was most to be relied upon, came quickest. Again : Tellson's was a munificent house, and extended great liberality to old customers who had fallen from their high estate. Again : those nobles who had seen the coming storm in time, and anticipating plunder or con- fiscation, had made provident remittances to Tellson's, were always to be heard of there by their needy brethren. To which it must be added that every new comer from France reported himself and his tidings at Tellson's, almost as a matter of course. For such variety of reasons, Tellson's was at that time, as to French intelligence, a kind of High Ex- change j and this was so well known to the public, and the inquiries made there were in consequence so numerous, that Tellson's sometimes wrote the latest news out in a line or so and posted it in the Bank windows, for all who ran through Temple Bar to read. On a steaming, misty afternoon, Mr. Lorry sat at his desk, and Charles Darnay stood leaning on it, talking with him in a low voice. The penitential den once set apart for inter- views with the House, was now the news-Exchange, and was filled to overflowing. It was within half an hour or so of the time of closing. " But, although you are the youngest man that ever lived," said Charles Darnay, rather hesitating, " I must still suggest to you— — '^ " I understand. That I am too old ? " said Mr. Lorry. " Unsettled weather, a long journey, uncertain means of travelling, a disorganized country, a city that may not be even safe for you." BRAWN TO THE LOADSTONE ROCK. 221 "My dear Charles/' said Mr. Lorry, with cheerful con- fidence, " you touch some of the reasons for my going : not for my staying away. It is safe enough for me ; nobody will care to interfere with an old fellow of hard upon fourscore when there are so many people there much better w^orth inter- fering with. As to its being a disorganized city, if it were not a disorganized city there would be no occasion to send some- body from our House here to our House there, who knows the city and the business, of old, and is in Tellson's con- fidence. As to the uncertain travelling, the long journey, and the winter weather, if I were not prepared to submit myself to a few inconveniences for the sake of Tellson's, after all these years, who ought to be ? " " I wish I were going myself,'' said Charles Darnay, some- what restlessly, and like one thinking aloud. " Indeed ! You are a pretty fellow to object and advise ! " exclaimed Mr. Lorry. " You wish you were going yourself And you a Frenchman born ? You are a wise counsellor." My dear Mr. Lorry, it is because I am a Frenchman born, that the thought (which I did not mean to utter here, however) has passed through my mind often. One cannot help thinking, having had some sympathy for the miserable people, and having abandoned something to them," he spoke here in his former thoughtful manner, " that one might be listened to, and might have the power to persuade to some restraint. Only last night, after you had left us, when I was talking to Lucie " " When you were talking to Lucie," Mr. Lorry repeated. " Yes. I wonder you are not ashamed to mention the name of Lucie ! Wishing you were going to France at this time of day ! " " However, I am not going," said Charles Darnay, with a smile. " It is more to the purpose that you say you are." " And I am, in plain reality. The truth is, my dear Charles," Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant House, and lowered his voice, " you can have no conception of the diffi- culty with which our business is transacted, and of the peril in which our books and papers over yonder are involved. The Lord above knows what the compromising consequences would be to numbers of people, if some of our documents w^ere seized or destroyed ; and they might be, at any time, you know, for who can say that Pai»is is not set a-fire to-day, or sacked to-morrow ! Now, a judicious selection from thesQ 222 A TALK OF TWO CITIES. with the least possible delay, and the burying of them, oi othervvise getting oi them out of harm's way, is within the power (without loss of precious time) of scarcely any one but myself, if any one. And shall 1 hang back, when Tellson's knows this and says this — Tellson's, whose bread I have eaten these sixty years — because I am a little stiff about the joints ? Why, I am a bov, sir, to half a dozen old codgers here 1 How I admire the gallantrj' of your youthful spirit, Mr, Lorry/* " Tut I Nonsense, sir ! — And, my dear Charles," said Mr Lorry, glancing at the Ifouse again, "you are to remember, that getting things out of Paris at this present time, no matter what things, is next to an impossibility. Papers and precious matters were this very day brought to us here (I speak in strict confidence ; it is not business-like to whisper it, even to you), by the strongest bearers you can imagine, every one of whom had his head hanging on by a single hair as he passed the barriers. At another time, our parcels would come and go, as easily as in business-like Old England ; but now, every- thing is stopped/' " And do you really go to-night ? " " I really go to-night, for the case has become too pressing to admit oi delay.'* And do you take no one with you ? '* "All sorts of people have been proposed to me, but I will have nothing to say to any of them. I intend to take Jerry. Jerry has been my body-guard on Sunday nights for a long time past, and I am used to him. Nobody will suspect Jerry of being anything but an English bull-dog, or of having any design in his head but to fly at anybody who touches his master/' " I must say again that I heartily admire your gallantry and youthfulness." I must say again, nonsense, nonsense ! When I have executed this little commission, I shall, perhaps, accept Tell son's proposal to retire and live at my ease. Time enough^ then, to think about growing old." This dialogue had taken place at Mr. Lorry's usual desk, with Monseigneur swarming within a yard or two of it, boast ful of what he would do to avenge himself on the rascal-peo- ple before long. It was i in restor ing the dearest part of herself to her ; by the aid of Heaven T will do it ! Thus, Doctor Manette. And when Jarvis Lorr}: CALM m STORM. 2SS saw the kindled eyes, the resolute face, the calm strong look and bearing of the man whose life always seemed to him to have been stopped, like a clock, for so many years, and then set going again with an energy' which had lain dormant during the cessation of its usefulness, he believed. Greater things than the Doctor had at that time to con tend with, would have yielded before his persevering purposCc While he kept himself in his place, as a physician, whose busi- ness was with all degrees of mankind, bond and free, rich and poor, bad and good, he used his personal influence so wisely, that he was soon the inspecting physician of three prisons, and among them of La Force. He could now assure Lucie that her husband was no longer confined alone, but was mixed with the general body of prisoners ; he saw her husband week- ly, and brought sweet messages to her, straight from his lips ; sometimes her husband himself sent a letter to her (though never by the Doctor's hand), but she was not permitted to write to him : for, among the many wild suspicions of plots in the prisons, the wildest of all pointed at emigrants who were known to have made friends or permanent connections abroad. This new life of the Doctor's was an anxious life, no doubt; still, the sagacious Mr. Lorry saw that there was a new sustaining pride in it. Nothing unbecoming tinged the pride ; it was a natural and worthy one ; but he observed it as a curiosity. The Doctor knew, that up to that time, his im- prisonment had been associated in the minds of his daughter and his friend, with his personal affliction, deprivation, and weakness. Now that this was changed, and he knew himself to be invested through that old trial with forces to which they both looked for Charles's ultimate safety and deliverance, he became so far exalted by the change, that he took the lead and direction, and required them as the weak, to trust to him as the strong. The preceding relative positions of himself and Lucie were reversed, yet only as the liveliest gratitude and affection could reverse them, for he could have had no pride but in rendering some service to her who had rendered so much to him. "All curious to see," thought Mr. Lorry, in his amiably shrewd way, " but all natural and right ; so, take the lead, my dear friend, and keep it : it couldn't be in better hands." But, though the Doctor tried hard, and never ceased try* ing, to get Charles Darnay set at liberty, or at least to get him brought to trial, the public current of the time set too 256 A TALE OF TIVO CITIES. Strong and fast for him. The new era began ; the king was tried, doomed, and beheaded ; the Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared for victory or death against the world in arms ; the black flag waved night and day from the great towers of Notre Dame ; three hundred thousand men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of the earthy rose from all the varying soils of France, as if the drag- on's teeth had been sown broadcast, and had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial mud, under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds of the North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-grounds and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, along the fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the sand of the sea-shore. What private solicitude could rear itself against the deluge of the Year One of Liberty — the deluge rising from below, not falling from above, and with the win- dows of Heaven shut, not opened ! There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of re- lenting rest, no measurement of time. Though days and nights circled as regularly as when time was young, and the evening and morning were the first day, other count of time there was none. Hold of it was lost in the raging fever of a nation, as it is in the fever of one patient. Now, breaking the unnatural silence of a whole city, the executioner showed the people the head of the king — and now, it seemed almost in the same breath, the head of his fair wdfe which had had eight wear}^ months of imprisoned widowhood and misery, to turn it gray. And yet, observing the strange law of contradiction which obtains in all such cases, the time was long, while it flamed by so fast. A revolutionary tribunal in the capital, and forty or fifty thousand revolutionary committees all over the land j a law of the Suspected, which struck away all security for lib- erty or life, and delivered over any good and innocent person to any bad and guilty one ; prisons gorged with people who had committed no offence, and could obtain no hearing ; these things became the established order and nature of ap- pointed things, and seemed to be ancient usage before they were many weeks old. Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world — the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine. It was the popular theme for jests ; it was the best cure CALM IN STORM. 257 for headache, it infallibly prevented the hair from turning gray, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close : who kissed La Guil- lotine, looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack. It was the sign of the regeneration of the human race. It superseded the Cross. Models of it were worn on breasts from which the Cross was discarded, and it was bowed down t.G and believed in where the Cross was denied. It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted, were a rotten red. It was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzle for a young Devil, and was put together again when the occasion wanted it. It hushed the eloquent, struck down the powerful, abolished the beautiful and good. Tv/enty- two friends of high public mark, twenty-one living and one dead, it had lopped the heads off, in one morning, in as many minutes. The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it ; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of God's own Temple every day. Among these terrors, and the brood belonging to them, the Doctor walked with a steady head, confident in his power, cautiously persistent in his end, never doubting that he would save Lucie's husband at last. Yet the current of the time swept by, so . strong and deep, and carried the time away so fiercely, that Charles had lain in prison one year and three months when the Doctor was thus steady and confident. So much more wicked and distracted had the Revolution grown in that December month, that the rivers of the South were en- cumbered with the bodies of the violently drowned by night, and prisoners were shot in lines and squares under the south- ern wintry sun. Still, the Doctor walked among the terrors with a steady head. No man better known than he, in Paris at that day ; no man in a stranger situation. Silent, humane, indispensable in hospital and prison, using his art equally among assassins and victims, he was a man apart. In the exercise of his skill, the appearance and the story of the Bas- tile Captive removed him from all other men. He was not suspected or brought in question, any more than if he had in- deed been recalled to life some eighteen years before, or were a Spixit moving among mortals. A TALE OF TWO CITIES, CHAPTER V. THE WOOD-SAWYER. One year and three months. During all that time Lucie was never sure, from hour to hour, but that the Guillotine would strike off her husband's head next day. Every day^ through the stony streets, the tumbrils now jolted heavily, filled with Condemned. Lovely girls ; bright women, brown- haired, black-haired, and gray ; youths ; stalwart men and old ; gentle born and peasant born ; all red wine for La Gu'il- lotine, all daily brought into light from the dark cellars of the loathsome prisons, and carried to her through the streets to slake her devouring thirst. Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death ; — the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine ! If the suddenness of her calamity, and the whirling wheels of the time had stunned the Doctor's daughter into awaiting the result in idle despair, it would but have been with her as it was with many. But, from the hour when she had taken the white head to her fresh young bosom in the garret of Saint Antoine, she had been true to her duties. She was truest to them in the season of trial, as all the quietly loyal and good will always be. As soon as they were established in their new residence, and her father had entered on the routine of his avocations, she arranged the little household as exactly as if her husband had been there. Everything had its appointed place and its appointed time. Little Lucie she taught as regularly, as if they had all been united in their English home. The slight devices with which she cheated herself into the show of a be- lief that they would soon be reunited — the little preparations for his speedy return, the setting aside of his chair and his books — these, and the solemn prayer at night for one dear prisoner especially, among the many unhappy souls in prison and the shadow of death — were almost the only outspoken re- liefs of her heavy mind. She did not greatly alter in appearance. The plain dark dresses, akin to mourning dresses, which she and her child wore, were as neat and as well attended to as the brighter clothes of happy days. She lost her color, and the old and THE WOOD^SAWYER. 259 intent expression was a constant, not an occasional thing \ otherwise, she remained very pretty and comely. Sometimes, at night on kissing her father, she would burst into the grief she had repressed all day, and would say that her sole reliance, under Heaven, was on him. He always resolutely answered : Nothing can happen to him without my knowledge, and I know that I can save him, Lucie.'' They had not made the round of their changed life many weeks, when her father said to her, on coming home one evening : " My dear, there is an upper window in the prison, to which Charles can sometimes gain access at three in the after' noon. When he can get to it — which depends on many un- certainties and incidents — he might see you in the street, he thinks, if you stood in a certain place that I can show you. But you wdll not be able to see him, my poor child, and even if you could, it would be unsafe for you to make a sign of recognition." " O show me the place, my father, and I will go there every day." From that time, in all weathers, she waited there two hours. As the clock struck two, she was there, and at four she turned resignedly away. When it was not too wet or inclement for her child to be with her, they went together; at other times she was alone ; but, she never missed a single day. It was the dark and dirty corner of a small winding street. The hovel of a cutter of wood into lengths for burning, was the only house at that end ; all else was wall. On the third day of her being there, he noticed her. " Good-day, citizeness." " Good-day, citizen." This mode of address was now prescribed by decree. It had been established voluntarily some time ago, among the more thorough patriots ; but, was now law for everybody. " Walking here again, citizeness ? " " You see me, citizen ? " The wood-sawyer, who was a little man with a redundancy of gesture (he had once been a mender of roads), cast a glance at the prison, pointed at the prison, and putting his ten fin- gers before his face to represent bars, peeped through them jocosely. " But it's not my business," said he. And went on sawing his wood. 26o A TALE OF TWO CITIES, Next day he was looking out for her, and accosted her th« moment she appeared. " What ? Walking here again, citizeness ? " " Yes, citizen." " Ah ! A child too ! Your mother, is it not, my little citizeness ? " Do I say yes, mamma ? " whispered little Lucie, drawing close to her. **Yes, dearest." " Yes, citizen." " Ah ! But it's not my business. My work is my business. See my saw ! I call it my Little Guillotine. La, la, la ; La, la, la ! And off his head comes ! " The billet fell as he spoke, and he threw it into a basket. " I call myself the Samson of the firewood guillotine. See here again ! Loo, loo, loo ; Loo, loo, loo ! And off her head comes ! Now, a child. Tickle, tickle ; Pickle, pickle ! And off its head comes. All the family ! " Lucie shuddered as he threw two more billets into his basket, but it was impossible to be there while the wood-sawyer was at work, and not be in his sight. Thenceforth, to secure his good-will, she always spoke to him first, and often gave him drink-money, which he readily received. He w^as an inquisitive fellow, and sometimes when she had quite forgotten him in gazing at the prison roof and grates, and .in lifting her heart up to her husband, she would come to herself to find him looking at her, with his knee on his bench and his saw stopped in its work. " But it's not my business ! " he would generally say at those times, and would briskly fall to his sawing again. In all weathers, in the snow and frost of winter, in the bitter winds of spring, in the hot sunshine of summer, in the rains of autumn, and again in the snow and frost of winter, Lucie passed two hours of every day at this place ; and every day on leaving it, she kissed the prison wall. Her husband saw her (so she learned from her father) it might be, once in five or six times : it might be twice or thrice running : it might be, not for a week or a fortnight together. It was enough that he could and did see her when the chances served, and on that possibility she would have waited out the day, seven days a week. These occupations brought her round to the December month, wherein her father walked among the terrors with a THE WOOD-SAWYER. 261 Steady head. On a lightly-snowing afternoon she arrived at the usual corner. It was a day of some wild rejoicing, and a festival. She had seen the houses, as she came along, dec orated with little pikes, and with little red caps stuck upon them ; also, with tricolored ribbons ; also, with the standard inscription (tricolored letters were the favorite). Republic' One and Indivisible. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death ! The miserable shop of the wood-sawyer was so small, that its whole surface furnished very indilferent space for this legend. He had got somebody to scrawl it up for him, how- ever, who had squeezed Death in with most inappropriate difficulty. On his house-top, he displayed pike and cap, as a good citizen must, and in a window he had stationed his saw inscribed as his "Little Sainte Guillotine" — for the great sharp female was by that time popularly canonized. His shop was shut and he was not there, which was a relief to Lucie, and left her quite alone. But, he was not far off, for presently she heard a troubled movement and a shouting coming along, which filled her with fear. A moment afterwards, and a throng of people came pouring round the corner by the prison wall, in the midst of whom was the wood-sawyer hand in hand with The Vengeance. There could not be fewer than five hundred people, and they ^ere dancing like five thousand demons. There was no other music than their own singing. They danced to the popular Revolution song, keeping a ferocious time that was like a gnashing of teeth in unison. Men and women danced together, women danced together, men danced together, as hazard had brought them together. At first, they were a mere storm of* coarse red caps and coarse woollen rags ; but, as they filled the place, and stopped to dance about Lucie, some ghastly apparition of a dance-figure gone raving mad arose among them. They advanced, retreated, struck at one another's hands, clutched at one another's heads, spun round alone, caught one another and spun round in pairs, until many of them dropped. While those were down, the rest linked hand in hand, and all spun round together : then the ring broke, and in separate rings of two and four they turned and turned until they all stopped at once, began again, struck, clutched, and tore, and then reversed the spin, and all spun round another way. Suddenly they stopped again, paused, struck out the time afresh, formed into lines the width of the public A 7'ALE OF TWO CITIES. way, and, with their heads low down and their hands high up^ swooped screaming off. No fight could have been half so terrible as this dance. It was so emphatically a fallen sport — ■ a something, once innocent, delivered over to all devilry — a healthy pastime changed into a means of angering the blood. ' bewildering the senses, and steeling the heart. Such grace as was visible in it, made it the uglier, showing how warped and perverted all things good by nature were become. The maidenly bosom bared to this, the pretty almost-child's head thus distracted, the delicate foot mincing in this slough of blood and dirt, were types of the disjointed time. This was the Carmagnole. As it passed, leaving Lucie frightened and bewildered in the doorway of the wood-sawyer's house, the feathery snow fell as quietly and lay as white and soft, as if it had never been. " O my father ! " for he stood before her when she lifted up the eyes she had momentarily darkened with her hand \ " such a cruel, bad sight." " I know, my dear, I know. I have seen it many times. Don't be frightened ! Not one of them would harm you." " I am not frightened for myself, my father. But when I think of my husband, and the mercies of these people " " We will set him above their mercies very soon. I left him climbing to the window, and I came to tell you. There is no one here to see. You m^y kiss your hand towards that highest shelving roof." " I do so, father, and I send him my Soul with it ! " " You cannot see him, my poor dear ? " "No, father," said Lucie, yearning and weeping as she kissed hej: hand, " no." A footstep in the snow. Madame Defarge. " I salute you, citizeness," from the Doctor. " I salute you, citizen." This in passing. Nothing more. Madame Defarge gone, like a shadow over the white road. " Give me your arm, my love. Pass from here with an air of cheerfulness and courage, for his sake. That was well done;" they had left the spot; "it shall not be in vain. Charles is summoned for to-morrow." " For to-morrow ! " " There is no time to lose. I am well prepared, but there are precautions to be taken, that could not be taken until he was actually summoned before the Tribunal. He has not re- ceived the notice yet, but I know that he will presently be TRIUMPH, 263 smnmoned for to-morrow, and removed to the Conciergerie \ I have timely information. You are not afraid ? She could scarcely answer, " I trust in you." " Do so, implicitly. Your suspense is nearly ended, mj darling ; he shall be restored to you within a few hours ; I have eiicompassed him with every protection. I must see Lorry.'' He stonped. There was a heavy lumbering of wheels within hearing. They both knew too well what it meant. One. Two. Three. Three tumbrils faring away with their dread loads over the hushing snow. ^ I must see Lorry,'' the Doctor repeated, turning hei another way. The staunch old gentleman was still in his trust ; had never left it. He and his books were in frequent requisition as to property confiscated and made national. What he could save for the owners, he saved. No better man living to hold fast by what Tellson's had in keeping, and to hold his peace. A murky red and yellow sky, and a rising mist from the Seine, denoted the approach of darkness. It was almost dark when they arrived at the Bank. The stately residence of Monseigneur was altogether blighted and deserted. Above a heap of dust and ashes in the court, ran the letters : Na- tional Property. Republic One and Indivisible, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death ! Who could that be with Mr. Lorry — the owner of the ri«iing-coat upon the chair — who must not be seen ? From whom newly arrived, did he come out, agitated and sur- prised, to take his favorite in his arms ? To whom did he ap- pear to repeat her faltering words, when, raising his voice and turning his head towards the door of the room from which he had issued, he said : " Removed to the Conciergerie, and summoned for to-morrow ? " CHAPTER VI. TRIUMPH. The dread Tribunal of five Judges, Public Prosecutor, and determined Jury, sat every day. Their lists went forth every 264 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. evening, and were read out by the jailers of the various prisons to their prisoners. The standard jailer-joke was, Come out and listen to the Evening Paper, you inside there ! " Charles Evremonde, called Darnay ! " So at last began the Evening Paper at La Force. When a name was called, its owner stepped apart into a spot reserved for those who were announced as being thus fatally recorded. Charles Evremonde, called Darnay, had rea- son to know the usage, he had seen hundreds pass away so. His bloated jailer, who wore spectacles to read with, glanced over them to assure himself that he had taken his place, and went through the list, making a similar short pause at each name. There were twenty-three names, but only twenty were responded to ; for one of the prisoners so sum- moned had died in jail and been forgotten, and two had already been guillotined and forgotten. The list was read, in the vaulted chamber where Darnay had seen the asso- ciated prisoners on the night of his arrival. Every one of those had perished in the massacre ; every human creature he had since cared for and parted with, had died on the scaffold. There were hurried words of farewell and kindness, but the parting was soon over. It was the incident of every day, and the society of La Force were engaged in the preparation of some games of forfeits and a little concert, for that even- ing. They crowded to the grates and shed tears there ; but, twenty places in the projected entertainments had to be re- filled, and the time was, at best, short to the lock-up hour, when the common rooms and corridors would be delivered over to the great dogs who kept watch there through the night. The prisoners were far from insensible or unfeeling ; their ways arose out of the condition of the time. Similarly, though with a subtle difference, a species of fervor or intoxi- cation, known, without doubt, to have led some persons to brave the guillotine unnecessarily, and to die by it, was not mere boastfulness, but a wild infection of the wildly shaken public mind. In seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a secret attraction to the disease — a terrible passing inclina- tion to die of it. And all of us have like wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing circumstances to evoke them. The passage to the Conciergerie was short and dark ; the night in its vermin-haunted cells was long and cold. Next TRIUMPIT. 265 day, fifteen prisoners were put to the bar before Charles Dar- nay's name was called. All the fifteen were condemned, and the trials of the whole occupied an hour and a half. Charles Evremonde, called Darnay," was at length ar- raigned. His judges sat upon the Bench in feathered hats ; but the rough red cap and tricolored cockade was the head-dress otherwise prevailing. Looking at the Jury and the turbulent audience, he might have thought that the usual order of things w^as reversed, and that the felons were trying the honest men. The lowest, crudest, and worst populace of a city, never with- out its quantity of low, cruel, and bad, were the directing spirits of the scene ; noisily commenting, applauding, disap- proving, anticipating, and precipitating the result, without a check. Of the men, the greater part were armed in various ways ; of the women, some wore knives, some daggers, some ate and drank as they looked on, many knitted. Among these last, was one, with a spare piece of knitting under her arm as she worked. She was in a front row, by the side of a man whom he had never seen since his arrival at the Barrier, but whom 'he directly remembered as Defarge. He noticed that she once or twice whispered in his ear, and that she seemed to be his wife ; but what he most noticed in the two figures was, that although they were posted as close to him- self as they could be, they never looked towards him. They seemed to be waiting for something with a dogged determina- tion, and they looked at the Jury, but at nothing else. Under the President sat Doctor Manette, in his usual quiet dress. As well as the prisoner could see, he and Mr. Lorry were the only men there, unconnected with the Tribunal, who wore their usual clothes, and had not assumed the coarse garb of the Carmagnble. Charles Evremonde, called Darnay, was accused by the public prosecutor as an emigrant, whose life was forfeit to the Republic, under the decree which banished all emigrants on pain of Death. It was nothing that the decree bore date since his return to France. There he was, and there was the decree ; he had been taken in France, and his head was demanded. " Take off his head ! cried the audience. " An enemy to the Republic ! " The President rang his bell to silence those cries, and asked the prisoner whether it was not true that he had lived many years in England ? 266 A TALE OF TIVO CITIES. Undoubtedly it was. Was he not an emigrant then? What did he call himself! Not an emigrant, he hoped, within the sense and spirit of the law. Why not ? the President desired to know. Because he had voluntarily relinquished a title that was distasteful to him, and a station that was distasteful to him, and had left his country — he submitted before the word emigrant in the present acceptation by the Tribunal was in use — to live by his own industry in England, rather than on the industry of the overladen people of France. What proof had he of this. He handed in the names of two witnesses ; Th^ophile Gabelie, and Alexandre Manette. But he had married in England ? the President reminded him. True, but not an English woman. A citizeness of France * Yes. By birth. Her name and family 1 "Lucie Manette, only daughter of Doctor Manette, the good physician who sits there." This answer had a happy effect upon the audience. Cries in exaltation of the well-known good physician rent the hall. So capriciously were the people moved, that tears immediately rolled down several ferocious countenances which had been glaring at the prisoner a moment before, as if with impatience to pluck him out into the streets and kill him. On these few steps of his dangerous way, Charles Darnay had set his foot according to Doctor Manette's reiterated in- structions. The same cautious counsel directed every step that lay before him, and had prepared every inch of his road. The President asked, why had he returned to France when he did, and not sooner? He had not returned sooner, he replied, simply because he had no means of living in France, save those he had resigned j whereas, in England, he lived by giving instruction in the French language and literature. He had returned when he did, on the pressing and written entreaty of a French citizen, who represented that his life was endangered by his absence. He had come back, to save a citizen's life, and to bear his testimony, at whatever personal hazard, to the truth. Was that criminal in the eyes of the Republic ? TRIUMPH, 267 The populace cried enthusiastically, " No ! " and the Pres- ident rang his bell to quiet them. Which it did not, for they continued to cry " No ! " until they left off, of their own will. The President required the name of that citizen ? The accused explained that the citizen was his first witness. He also referred with confidence to the citizen's letter, which had been taken from him at the Barrier, but which he did not doubt would be found among the papers then before the Pres- ident. The Doctor had taken care that it should be there — had assured him that it would be there — and at this stage of the proceedings it was produced and read. Citizen Gabelle was called to confirm it, and did so. Citizen Gabelle hinted, with infinite delicacy and politeness, that in the pressure of busi- ness imposed on the Tribunal by the multitude of enemies of the Republic wdth which it had to deal, he had been slightly overlooked in his prison of the Abbaye — in fact, had rather passed out of the Tribunal's patriotic remembrance — until three days ago ; when he had been summoned before it, and had been set at liberty on the Jury's declaring themselves satis- fied that the accusation against him was answered, as to himself, by the surrender of the citizen Evremonde, called Darnay* Doctor Manette was next questioned. His high personal popularity, and the clearness of his answers, made a great im- pression ; but, as he proceeded, as he showed that the Accused was his first friend on his release from his long imprisonment \ that, the accused had remained in England, always faithful and devoted to his daughter and himself in their exile ; that, so far from being in favor with the Aristocrat government there, he had actually been tried for his life by it, as the foe of England and friend of the United States — as he brought these circumstances into view, with the greatest discretion and with the st^ightforward force of truth and earnestness, the Jury and the populace became one. At last, when he ap- pealed by name to Monsieur Lorry, an English gentleman then and there present, who, like himself, had been a witness on that English trial and could corroborate his account of it, the Jury declared that they had heard enough, and that they w^ere ready with their votes if the President were content to receive them. At every vote (the Jurj-men voted aloud and individually), the populace set up a shout of applause. All the voices were in the prisoLcr's favor, and the President declared him free. 268 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Then, began one of those extraordinary scenes with which the populace sometimes gratitled their fickleness, or theii better impulses towards generosity and mercy, or which they regarded as some set-off against their swollen account of cruel rage. No man can decide now to which of these motives such extraordinary scenes were referable ; it is probable, to a blending of all the three, with the second predominating. No sooner was the acquittal pronounced, than tears were shed as freely as blood at another time, and such fraternal embraces were bestowed upon the prisoner by as many of both sexes as could rush at him, that after his long and unwholesome con- finement he was in danger of fainting from exhaustion ; none the less because he knew very well, that the very same people, carried by another current, would have rushed at him with the very same intensity, to rend him to pieces and strew him over the streets. His removal, to make way for other accused persons who were to be tried, rescued him from these caresses for the mo- ment. Five were to be tried together, next, as enemies of the Republic, forasmuch as they had not assisted it by word or deed. So quick was the Tribunal to compensate itself and the nation for a chance lost, that these five came down to him before he left the place, condemned to die within twenty-four hours. The first of them told him so, with the customary prison sign of Death — a raised finger — and they all added in words, " Long live the Republic ! " The five had had, it is true, no audience to lengthen their proceedings, for when he and Doctor Manette emerged from the gate, there was a great crowd about it, in which there seemed to be every face he had seen in Court — except two, for which he looked in vain. On his coming out, the con- course made at him anew, weeping, embracing, and shouting, all by turns and all together, until the very tide^f the river on the bank of which the mad scene was acted, seemed to run mad, like the people on the shore. They put him into a great chair they had among them, and which they had taken either out of the Court itself, or one of its rooms or passages. Over the chair they had thrown a red flag, and to the back of it they had bound a pike with a red cap on its top. In this car of triumph, not even the Doc- tor's entreaties could prevent his being carried to his home on men'$ shoulders, with a confused sea of red caps heaving about him, and casting up to sight from the stormy deep such TRIUMPH, 269 wrecks of faces, that he more than once misdoubted his mind being in confusion, and that he was in the tumbril on his way to the Guillotine. In wild dreamlike procession, embracing whom they met and pointing him out, they carried him on. Reddening the snowy streets with the prevailing Republican color, in winding and tramping through them, as they had reddened them below the snow with a deeper dye, they carried him thus into the court-yard of the building where he lived. Hei father had gone on before, to prepare her, and when her hus- band stood upon his feet, she dropped insensible in his arn-is. As he held her to his heart and turned her beautiful head between his face and the brawling crowd, so that his tears and her lips might come together unseen, a few of the people fell to dancing. Instantly, all the rest fell to dancing, and the court-yard overflowed with the Carmagnole. Then, they elevated into the vacant chair a young woman from the crowd to be carried as the Goddess of Liberty, and then swel- ling and overflowing out into the adjacent streets, and along the river's bank, and over the bridge, the Carmagnole ab- sorbed them every one and whirled themx away. After grasping the Doctor's hand, as he stood victorious and proud before him ; after grasping the hand of Mr. Lorry, who came panting in breathless from his struggle against the waterspout of the Carmagnole ; after kissing little Lucie, who was lifted up to clasp her arms round his neck ; and after embracing the ever zealous and faithful Pross who lifted her ; he took his v/ife in his arms, and carried her up to their rooms. " Lucie ! My own ! I am safe.'' " O dearest Charles, let me thank God for this on my knees as I have prayed to Him.'' They all reverently bowed their heads and hearts. When she was again in his arms, he said to her : " And now speak to your father, dearest. No other man in all this France could have done what he has done for me." She laid her head upon her father's breast, as she had laid his poor head on her own breast, long, long ago. He was happy in the return he had made her, he was recompensed for his suffering, he was proud of his strength. " You must not be weak, my darling," he remonstrated j " don't tremble so. I have saved him," A TALE OF TWO CITIES. CHAFf ER m A KNOCK AT THE DOOR. " I HAVE saved him." It was not another of the dreama in which he had often come back ; he was really here. And yet his wife trembled, and a vague but heavy fear was upon her. All the air around was so thick and dark, the people were so passionately revengeful and fitful, the innocent were so constantly put to death on vague suspicion and black malice, it was so impossible to forget that many as blameless as her husband and as dear to others as he was to her, every day shared the fate from which he had been clutched, that her heart could not be as lightened of its load as she felt it ought to be. The shadows of the wintry afternoon were beginning to fall, and even now the dreadful carts were rolling through the streets. Her mind pursued them, looking for him among the Condemned ; and then she dung closer to his real pres- ence and trembled more. Her father, cheering her, showed a compassionate superi- ority to this woman's weakness, which was wonderful to see. No garret, no shoemaking, no One Hundred and Five, North Tower, now ! He had accomplished the task he had set him- self, his promise was redeemed, he had saved Charles. Let them all lean upon him. Their housekeeping was of a very frugal kind : not only because that was the safest way of life, involving the least offence to the people, but because they were not rich, and Charles, throughout his imprisonment, had had to pay heavily for his bad food, ana for his guard, and towards the living of the poorer prisoners. Partly on this account, and partly to avoid a domestic spy, they kept no servant ; the citizen and citizeness who acted as porters at the court-yard gate, ren- dered them occasional service ; and Jerry (almost wholly transferred to them by Mr. Lorry) had become their daily retainer, and had his bed there every night. It was an ordinance of the Republic One and Indivisible of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, that on the door ot A KNOCK AT THE DOOR 272 door-post of every house, the name of every inmate must be legibly inscribed in letters of a certain size, at a certain co;v venient height from the ground. Mr. Jerry Cruncher's name, therefore, duly embellished the doorpost down below ; and, as the afternoon shadows deepened, the owner of that name himself appeared, from overlooking a painter whom Doctor Manette had employed to add to the list the name of Charles; Evremonde, called Darnay. In the universal fear and distrust that darkened the time, all the usual harmless ways of life were changed. In the Doc- tor's little household, as in very many others, the articles of daily consumption that were wanted were purchased every evening, in small quantities and at various small shops. To avoid attracting notice, and to give as little occasion as pos- sible for talk and envy, was the general desire. For some months past, Miss Pross and Mr. Cruncher had discharged the office of purveyors ; the former carrying the money ; the latter, the basket. Every afternoon at about the time when the public lamps were lighted, they fared forth on this duty, and made and brought home such purchases as were needful. Although Miss Pross, through her long asso- ciation with a French family, might have known as much of their language as of her own, if she had had a mind, she had no mind in that direction ; consequently she knew no more of that " nonsense (as she was pleased to call it) than Mr. Cruncher did. So her manner of marketing was to plump a noun-substantive at the head of a shopkeeper without any in- troduction in the nature of an article, and, if it happened not to be the name of the thing she wanted, to look round for that thing, lay hold of it, and hold on by it until the bargain was concluded. She always made a bargain for it, by holding up, as a statement of its just price, one finger less than the merchant held up, whatever his number might be. " Now, Mr. Cruncher," said Miss Pross, whose eyes were red with felicity ; if you are ready, I am." Jerry hoarsely professed himself at Miss Press's service. He had worn all his rust off long ago, but nothing would file his spiky head down. " There's all manner of things wanted," said Miss Pross, " and we shall have a precious time of it. We want wine., among the rest. Nice toasts these Redheads will be drink- ing, wherever we buy^it." " It will be much the same to your knowledge, I should .^72 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. think/' retorted Jerry, " whether they drink your health or the Old Un's.'^ Who's he ? " said Miss Pross. Mr. Cruncher, with some diffidence, explained himself as meaning " Old Nick's." " Ha ! " said Miss Pross, it doesn't need an interpreter to explain the meaning of these creatures. They have but one, and it's Midnight Murder, and Mischief." " Hush, dear ! Pray, pray, be cautious ! " cried Lucie. "Yes, yes, yes, I'll be cautious," said Miss Pross ; "but 1 may say among ourselves, that I do hope there will be no oniony and tobaccoey smotherings in form of embracings all round, going on in the streets. Now, Ladybird, never you stir from that fire till I come back ! Take care of the dear husband you have recovered, and don't move your pretty head from his shoulder as you have it now, till you see me again ! May I ask a question. Doctor Manette, before I go ? " " I think you may take that liberty," the Doctor answered, smiling. " For gracious sake, don't talk about Liberty ; we have quite enough of that," said Miss Pross. " Hush, dear ! Again ? " Lucie remonstrated. " Well, my sweet," said Miss Pross, nodding her head em- phatically, " the short and the long of it is, that I am a subject of His Most Gracious Majesty King George the Third : " Miss Pross curtseyed at the name ; " and as such, my maxim is, Confound their politics. Frustrate their knavish tricks, On him our hopes we fix, God save the King ! " Mr. Cruncher, in an excess of loyalty, growlingly repeated the words after Miss Pross, like somebody at church, " I am glad you have so much of the Englishman in you, though I wish you had never taken that cold in your voice," said Miss Pross, approvingly. "But the question, Doctoi Manette. Is there " — it was the good creature's way to affect to make light of anything that was a great anxiety with them all, and to come at it in this chance manner — " is there any prospect yet, of our getting out of this place ? " "I fear not yet. It would be dangerous for Charles yet." " Fleigh-ho-hum ! " said Miss Pross, cheerfully repressing a sigh as she glanced at her darling's golden hair in the light of the fire, " then we must have patience and wait : that's all. We must hold up our heads and fight low, as my brother A KNOCK A T THE DOOR, Solomon used to say. Now, Mr. Cruncher ! — Don't you move, Ladybird ! They went out, leaving Lucie, and her husband, her father, and the child, by a brigh fire. Mr. Lorry was expected back presently from the Banking House. Miss Pross had lighted the lamp, but had put it aside in a corner, that they might enjoj* the fire-light un isturbed. Little Lucie sat by her grandfather with her hands clasped through his arm : and he, in a tone not rising much above a whisper, began to tell her a story of a great and powerful Fairy who had opened a prison- wall and let out a captive who had once done the Fairy a ser- vice. All was subdued and quiet, and Lucie was more at ease than she had been. " What is that ? " she cried, all at once. My dear ! " said her father, stopping in his story, and laying his hand on hers, " command yourself. What a dis- ordered state you are in ! The least thing — nothing — startles you ! You^ your father's daughter ! " I thought, my father," said Lucie, excusing herself, with a pale face and in a faltering voice, " that I heard strange feet upon the stairs." " My love, the staircase is as still as Death." As he said the word, a blow was struck upon the door. " Oh father, father. What can this be ! Hide Charles. Save him ! " *'My child," said the Doctor, rising, and laying his hand upon her shoulder, " I have saved him. What weakness is this, my dear ! Let me go to the door." He took the lamp in his hand, crossed the two intervening outer rooms, and opened it. A rude clattering of feet over the floor, and four rough men in red caps, armed with sabres and pistols, entered the room. " The Citizen Evremonde, called Darnay," said the first. " Who seeks him ? " answered Darnay. " I seek him. We seek him. I know you, Evremonde ; T saw you before the Tribunal to-day. You are again the prisoner of the RepubHc." The four surrounded him, where he stood with his wife and child clinging to him. " Tell me how and why am I again a prisoner ? " " It is enough that you return straight to the Conciergerie, and will know to-morrow. You are summoned for to-morrow.'* Dr. Manette, whom this visitation had so turned into stone, 274 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. that he stood with the lamp in his hand, as if he were a statue made to hold it, moved after these words were spoken, put the lamp down, and confronting the speaker, and taking him, not ungently, by the loose front of his red woollen shirt, said : " You know him, you have said. Do you know me ? " "Yes, I know you. Citizen Doctor." " We all know you, Citizen Doctor," said the other three He looked abstractedly from one to another, and said, in a lower voice, after a pause : " Will you answer his question to me then ? How does this happen ? " "Citizen Doctor," said the first, reluctantly, "he has been denounced to the Section of Saint Antoine. TJiis citizen," pointing out the second who had entered, " is from Saint An- toine." The citizen here indicated nodded his head, and added : " He is accused by Saint Antoine." " Of what ? " asked the Doctor. " Citizen Doctor," said the first, with his former reluc- tance, "ask no more. If the Republic demands sacrifices from you without doubt you as a good patriot will be happy to make them. The Republic goes before all. The People is supreme. Evremonde, we are pressed." "One word," the Doctor entreated. "Will you tell me who denounced him ? " " It is against rule," answered the first; "but you can ask him of Saint Antoine here." The Doctor turned his eyes upon that man. Who moved uneasily on his feet, rubbed his beard a little, and at length said : "Well ! Truly it is against rule. But he is denounced — • and gravely — by the Citizen and Citizeness Defarge. And by one other." " What other?" " Do you ask. Citizen Doctor ? " " Yes." " Then," said he of Saint Antoine, with a strange look^ "you will be answered to-morrow. Now, I am dumb ! " A HAND A T CARDS. 275 CHAPTER VIIL A HANDAT CARDS. Happily unconscious of the new calamity at home, Miss Pross threaded her way along the narrow streets and crossed the river by the bridge of the Pont-Neuf, reckoning in her mind the number of indispensable purchases she had to make. Mr. Cruncher, with the basket, walked at her side. They both looked to the right and to the left into most of the shops they passed, had a wary eye for all gregarious assem- blages of people, and turned out of their road to avoid any very excited group of talkers. It was a raw evening, and the misiy river, blurred to the eye with blazing lights and to the ear with harsh noises, showed where the barges were stationed in which the smiths worked, making guns for the Army of the Republic. Woe to the man who played tricks with that Army, or got undeserved promotion in it ! Better for him that his beard had never grown, for the National Razor shaved him close. Having purchased a few small articles of grocery, and a measure of oil for the lamp. Miss Pross bethought herself of the wine they wanted. After peeping into several wine-shops, she stopped at the sign of The Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity, not far from the National Palace, once (and twice) the Tuileries, where the aspect of things rather took her fancy. It had a quieter look than any other place of the same description they had passed, and, though red with patriotic caps, was not so red as the rest. Sounding Mr. Cruncher, and finding him of her opinion. Miss Pross resorted to The Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity, attended by her cavalier. Slightly observant of the smoky lights ; of the people, pipe in mouth, playing with limp cards and yellow dominoes ; of the one bare-breasted, bare-armed, soot-begrimed workman reading a journal aloud, and of the others listening to him of the weapons worn, or laid aside to be resumed ; of the two or three customers fallen forward asleep, who in the popular high shouldered shaggy black spencer looked, in that attitude, lilce slumbering bears or dogs ; the two outlandish 276 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. customers approached the counter, and showed what they wanted. As their wine was measuring out, a man parted from an- other man in a corner, and rose to depart. In going, he had to face Miss Pross. No sooner did he face her, than Miss Pross uttered a scream, and clapped her hands. In a moment, the whole company were on their feet. That somebody was assassinated by somebody vindicating a differ- ence of opinion was the likeliest occurrence. Everybody looked to see somebody fall, but only saw a man and a woman stand- ing staring at each other ; the man with all the outward aspect of a Frenchman and a thorough Republican ; the woman, evi dently English. What was said in this disappointing anti-climax, by the disciples of the Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity, except that it was something very voluble and loud, would have been as so much Hebrew or Chaldean to Miss Pross and her pro- tector, though they had been all ears. But, they had no ears for anything in their surprise. For, it must be recorded, that not only was Miss Pross lost in amazement and agita- tion, but, Mr. Cruncher — though it seemed on his own sep- arate and individual account — was in a state of the greatest wonder. " What is the matter ? " said the man who had caused Miss Pross to scream ; speaking in a vexed, abrupt voice (though in a low tone), and in English. " Oh, Solomon, dear Solomon ! " cried- Miss Pross, clap- ping her hands again. " After not setting eyes upon you or hearing of you for so long a time, do I find you here ! " Don't call me Solomon. Do you want to be the death of me \ asked the man, in a furtive, frightened way. " Brother, brother ! " cried Miss Pross, bursting into tears. " Have I ever been so hard with you that you ask me such a cruel question ? "Then hold your meddlesome tongue," said Solomon, " and come out, if you want to speak to me. Pay for your wine, and come out. Who's this man ? " Miss Pross, shaking her loving and dejected head at her by no means affectionate brother, said through her tears, " Mr. Cruncher." " Let him come out too," said Solomon. " Does he think me a ghost ? " Apparently, Mr. Cruncher did, to judge fron his looks. A HAND AT CARDZ. 277 He said not a word, however, and Miss Pross, exploring the depths of her reticule through her tears with great difficulty paid for her wine. As she did so, Solomon turned to the followers of the Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity, and offered a few words of explanation in the French language, which caused them all to relapse into their former places and pursuits. " Now," said Solomon, stopping at the dark street corner, what do you want ? How dreadfully unkind in a brother nothing has ever turned my love away from ! " cried Miss Pross, to give me such a greeting, and show me no affection.'' " There. Con-found it ! There," said Solomon, making a dab at Miss Pross's lips with his own. " Now are you con- tent t " Miss Pross only shook her head and wept in silence. " If you expect me to be surprised," said her brother Solomon, I am not surprised ; I knew you were here ; I know of most people who are here. If you really don't want to endanger my existence — which I half believe you do — go your ways as soon as possible, and let me go mine. I am busy. I am an official." " My English brother Solomon," mourned Miss Pross, casting up her tear-fraught eyes, that had the makings in him of one of the best and greatest of men in his native country, an official among foreigners, and such foreigners ! I would almost sooner have seen the dear boy lying in his " " I said so ! " cried her brother, interrupting. " I knew it. You want to be the death of me. I shall be rendered suspected by, my own sister. Just as I am getting on ! " " The gracious and merciful Heavens forbid ! " cried Miss Pross. " Far rather would I never see you again, dear Solo- mon, though I have ever loved you truly, and ever shall. Say but one affectionate word to me, and tell me there is nothing angry or estranged between us, and I will detain you no longer." Good Miss Pross ! As if the estrangement between them had come of any culpability of hers. As if Mr. Lorry had not known it for a fact, years ago, in the quiet corner in Soho, that this precious brother had spent her money and left her! He was saying the affectionate word, however with a far 278 A TALE OF TWO CI TIES, more grudging condescension and patronage than he could have shown if their relative merits and positions had been re- versed (which is invariably the case, all the world over), when Mr. Cruncher, touching him on the shoulder, hoarsely and unexpectedly interposed with the following singular ques- tion : *^ I say ! Might I ask the favor ? As to whether jont name is John Solomon, or Solomon John ? " The official turned towards him with sudden distrust. He had not previously uttered a word. " Come ! said Mr. Cruncher. " Speak out, you know." (Which, by the way, was more than he could do himself.) " John Solomon, or Solomon John } She calls you Solomon, and she must know, being your sister. And / know you're John, you know. Which of the two goes first ? And regard- ing that name of Pross, likewise. That warn't your name over the water." " What do you mean ? " " Well, I don't know all I mean, for I can't call to mind what your name was, over the water.'' " No ? " " No. But I'll swear it was a name of two syllables." " Indeed ? " " Yes. T'other one's was one syllable. I know you. You was a spy-witness at the Bailey. What, in the name of the Father of Lies, own father to yourself, was you called at that time ? " " Barsad," said another voice, striking in. " That's the name for a thousand pound ! " cried Jerry. The speaker who struck in, was Sydney Carton. He had his hands behind him under the skirts of his riding-coat, and he stood at Mr. Cruncher's elbow as negligently as he might have stood at the Old Bailey itself. " Don't be alarmed, my dear Miss Pross. I arrived at Mr. Lorry's, to his surprise, yesterday evening : we agreed that I would not present myself elsewhere until all was well, or unless I could be useful ; L present myself here, to beg a little talk with your brother. I wish you had a better employed brother than Mr. Barsad. I wish for your sake Mr. Barsad was not a Sheep of the Prisons." Sheep was a cant word of the time for a spy, under the jailers. The spy, who was pale, turned paler, and asked him how he dared — — A HAND A T CARDS. 279 " I'll tell you," said Sydney. " I lighted on you, Mr. 6arsad, coming out of the prison of the Conciergerie while I was contemplating the walls, an hour or more ago. You have a face to be remembered, and I remember faces well. Made curious by seeing you in that connection, and having a reason, to which you are no stranger, for associating you with the misfortunes of a friend now very unfortunate, I walked in your direction. I walked into the wine-shop here, close after you, and sat near you. I had no difficulty in deducing from your unreserved conversation, and the rumor openly going about among your admirers, the nature of your calling. And gradually, what I had done at random, seemed to shape itself into a purpose, Mr. Barsad." " What purpose ? " the spy asked. " It would be troublesome, and might be dangerous, to explain in the street. Could you favor me, in confidence, with some minutes of your cx)mpany — at the office of Tellson's Bank, for instance " " Under a threat " « Oh ! Did I say that ? " Then, why should I go there ? " Really, Mr. Barsad, I can't say, if you can't." " Do you mean that you won't say, sir ? " the spy irres- olutely asked. " You apprehend me very clearly, Mr. Barsad. I won't." Carton's negligent recklessness of manner came powerfully in aid of his quickness and skill, in such a business as he had in his secret mind, and with such a man as he had to do with. His practised eye saw it, and made the most of it. " Now, I told you so," said the spy, looking reproachfully at his sister ; " if any trouble comes of this, it's your doing." " Come, come, Mr. Barsad ! " exclaimed Sydney. " Don't be ungrateful. But for my great respect for your sister, I might not have led up so pleasantly to a little proposal that I wish to make for our mutual satisfaction. Do you go with me to the Bank ? " " I'll hear what you have got to say. Yes, I'll go with you.'' " I propose that we first conduct your sister safely to the corner of her own street. Let me take your arm. Miss Pross This is not a good city, at this time, for you to be out in, un- protected ; and as your escort knows Mr. Barsad, I will invite him *o Mr. Lorry's with us. Are we ready ? Come then I " 28o A TALE OF TWO CITIES, Miss Pross recalled soon afterwards, and to the end ot her life remembered, that as she pressed her hands on Syd- ney's arm and looked up in his face, implorine him to do no hurt to Solomon, there was a braced purpose in the arm and a kind of inspiration in the eyes, which not only contradicted his light manner, but changed and raised the man. She was too much occupied then with fears for the brother who so little deserved her affection, and with Sydney's friendly reas surances, adequately to heed what she observed. They left her at the corner of the street, and Carton led the way to Mr. Lorry's, which was within a few minutes' walk. ^ John Barsad, or Solomon Pross, walked at his side. Mr. Lorry had just finished his dinner, and was sitting before a cheery little log or two of fire — perhaps looking into their blaze for the picture of that younger elderly gentleman from Tellson's, who had looked into the red coals at the Royal George at Dover, now a good many years ago. He turned his head as they entered, and showed the surprise with which he saw a stranger. " Miss Pross's brother, sir," said Sydney. " Mr. Barsad." " Barsad ? " repeated the old gentleman, " Barsad ? I have an association with the name — and with the face." " I told you you had a remarkable face, Mr. Barsad," ob- served Carton, coolly. ^' Pray sit down." As he took a chair himself, he supplied the link that Mr. Lorry wanted, by saying to him with a frown, " Witness at that trial," Mr. Lorry immediately remembered, and regarded his new visitor with an undisguised look of abhorrence. " Mr. Barsad has been recognized by Miss Pross as the affectionate brother you have heard of," said Sydney, " and has acknowledged the relationship. I pass to worse news. Darnay has been arrested again." Struck with consternation, the old gentleman exclaimed, " What do you tell me ! I left him safe and free within these tv/o hours, and am about to return to him ! " Arrested for all that. When was it done, Mr. Barsad ? " " Just now, if at all." " Mr. Barsad is the best authority possible, sir," said Sydney, " and I have it from Mr. Barsad's communication to a friend and brother Sheep over a bottle of wine, that the arrest has ' taken place. He left the messengers at the gate, and saw them admitted by the porter. There is no earthlj doubt that he is retaken." A HAND A T CARDS. 281 Mr. Lorry's business eye read in the speaker's face that it was '.OSS of time to dwell upon the point. Confused, but sen* sible that something might depend on his presence of mind^ he commanded himself, and was silently attentive. Now, I trust," said Sydney to him, " that the name and influence of Doctor Manette may stanrl him in as good stead to-morrow — you said he would be before the Tribunal again to-morrow, Mr. Barsad ? " " Yes ; I believe so." " — In as good stead to-morrow as to-day. But it may not be so. I own to you, I am shaken, Mr. Loriy, by Doctor Manette's not having had the power to prevent this arrest." He may not have known of it beforehand," said Mr. Lorry. " But that very circumstance would be alarming, when we remember how identified he is with his son-in-law." That's true," Mr. Lorry acknowledged, with his troubled hand at his chin, and his troubled eyes on Carton. " In short," said Sydney, this is a desperate time, when desperate games are played for desperate stakes. Let the Doctor play the winning game ; I will play the losing one. No man's life here is worth purchase. Any one carried home by the people to-day, may be condemned to-moi row. Now, the stake I have resolved to play xor, in care of the worst, is a friend in the Conciergerie. And the friend I purpose to myself to win, is Mr. Barsad." *' You need have good cards, sir," said the spy. " I'll run them over. I'll see what I hold — Mr. Lorry, you know what a brute I am ; I wish you'd give me a' little brandy." It was put before him, and he drank off a glassful — drank off another glassful — pushed the bottle thoughtfully away. " Mr. Barsad," he went on, in the tone of one who really v/as looking over a hand at cards : " Sheep of the prisons, emissary of Republican committ'^es, now turnkey, now pris- oner, always spy and secret informer, ro much che more val- uable here for being English that an Englishman is less open to suspicion of subornation in thos characters than a French- man, represents himself to his employers under a false name, That's a very good card. Mr. Barsad, now in th? employ oi the Republican French government, was formerly in the em- ploy of the aristocratic English government, the enemy of France and freedom. That's an excellent card. Inference 282 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. clear as day in this region of suspicion, that Mr. Barsad, still in the pay of the aristocratic English government, is the spy of Pitt, the treacherous foe of the Republic crouching in its bosom, the English traitor and agent of all mischief so much spoken of and so difficult to find. That's a card not to be beaten. Have you followed my hand, Mr. Barsad ? " Not to understand your play," returned the spy, some what uneasily. " I play my Ace Denunciation of Mr. Barsad to the nearest Section Committee. Look over your hand, Mr. Bar- sad, and see what you have. Don't hurry." He drew the bottle near, poured out another glassful of brandy, and drank it off. He saw that the spy was fearful of his drinking himself into a fit state for the immediate denun- ciation of him. Seeing it, he poured out and drank another glassful. **Look over your hand carefully, Mr. Barsad. Take time." It was a poorer hand than he suspected. Mr. Barsad saw losing cards in it that Sydney Carton knew nothing of. Thrown out of his honorable employment in England, through too much unsuccessful hard swearing there — not because he was not wanted there ; our English reasons for vaunting oui superiority to secrecy and spies are of very modern date — he knew that he had crossed the Channel, and accepted service in France : first, as a tempter and an eavesdropper among his own countrymen there : gradually, as a tempter and an eaves- dropper among the natives. He knew that under the over- thrown government he had been a spy upon Saint Antoine and Defarge's wine-shop : had received from the watchful police such heads of information concerning Doctor Manette's imprisonment, release, and history, as should serve him for an introduction to familiar conversation with the Defarges ; and tried them on Madame Defarge, and had broken down with them signally. He always rememberetl with fear and trembling, that that terrible woman had knitted when he talked with her, and had looked ominously at him as her fingers moved. He had since seen her, in the Section of Saint Antoine, over and over again produce her knitted registers, and denounce people whose lives the guillotine then surely swallowed up. He knew, as every one employed as 'he was did, that he was never safe ; that flight was impossible ; that he was tied fast under the shadow of the axe ; and that in A HAND A T CARDS. 283 spite of his utmost tejrgiversation and treachery in furtherance of the reigning terror, a word might bring it down upon him. Once denounced, and on such grave grounds as had just now been suggested to his m.ina ne foresaw that the dreadful woman of whose unrelenting rli^racter he had seen many proofs, would produce again*:c nim that fatal register, and would squash his last chances 01 hfe. Besides that all secret men are men soon terrili-eG, here ai-e surely cards enough of one black suit, to ijustjfy tl^ie holdei- in growing rather livid as he turned them over. " You scarcely seem to like your Viand,'' said Sydney, with the greatest coftipcsure. " Da you play ? " " I think, sir/' i^aid the spy, in tat meanest manner, as he turned to Mr. i.o.iy, " I may appeal to a gentleman of your years and benevolence, to put it to this other gentlemati, so much your jmiior, whether he can under any circumstances reconcile it to his station to play that Ace of which he has spoken. I admit that / am a spy, and that it is considered a discreditable station — though it must be filled by some- body ; but this gentleman is no spy, and why should he so demean himself as to make himself one ? " " I play my Ace, Mr. Barsad," said Carton, taking the answer on himself, and looking at his watch, "without any scruple, in a very few minutes." " I should have hoped, gentlemen both,'' said the spy, always striving to hook Mr. Lorry into the discussion, " that your respect for my sister " " I could not better testify my respect for your sister than by finally relieving her of her brother," said Sydney Carton. " You think not, sir ? " " I have thoroughly made up my mind about it." The smooth manner of the spy, curiously in dissonance with his ostentatiously rough dress, and probably with his usual demeanor, received such a check from the inscrutability of Carton — who was a mystery to wiser and honester men than he, — that it faltered here and failed him. While he was at a loss. Carton said, resuming his former air of contemplating cards : " And indeed, now I think again, I have a strong impres- sion that I have another good card here, not yet enumerated. That friend and fellow-Sheep, who spoke of himself as pastur- ing in the country prisons ; who was he ? " French. You don't know him," said the spy, quickly. 284 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. " French, eh ? " repeated Carton, mucing, and not appear ^ ing to notice him at all, though he echoed his word. Well ; he may be." Is, I assure you," said the spy; "though it's not im- portant." " Though it's not important," repeated Carton, in the same mechanical way — " though it's not important No, it's not important. No. Yet I know the face." " I think not. I am sure not. It can't be," said the spy. " It — can't — be," muttered Sydney Carton, retrospectively, and filling his glass (which fortunately was a small one) again. " Can't — be. Spoke good French. Yet like a foreigner, I thought ? " "Provincial," said the spy. " No. Foreign ! " cried Carton, striking his open hand on the table, as a light broke clearly on his mind. " Cly ! Disguised, but the same man. We had that man before us at the Old Bailey." "Now, there you are hasty, sir," said Barsad, with a smile that gave his aquiline nose an extra inclination to one side ; there you really give me an advantage over you. Cly (who I will undeservedly admit, at this distance of time, was a part- ner of mine) has been dead several years. I attended him in his last illness. He was buried in London, at the church of Saint Pancras-in-the-Fields. His unpopularity with the black- guard multitude at the moment prevented my following his re- mains, but I helped to lay him in his coffin." Here, Mr. Lorry became aware, from where he sat, of a most remarkable goblin shadow on the wall. Tracing it to its source, he discovered it to be caused by a sudden extraor- dinary rising and stiffening of all the risen and stiff hair on Mr. Cruncher's head. " Let us be reasonable," said the spy, " and let us be fair. To show you how mistaken you are, and what an unfounded assumption yours is, I will lay before you a certificate of Cly's burial, which I happen to have carried in my pocket-book," with a hurried hand he produced and opened it, " ever since. There it is. Oh, look at it, look at it ! You may take it in yout hand ; it's no forgery." Here, Mr Lorry perceived the reflection on the wall to elongate, and Mr. Cruncher rose and stepped forward. His hair could not have been more violently on end, if it had beei? A HAND A T CARDS. 285 that moment dressed by the Cow with the crumpled horn m che house that Jack built. Unseen by the spy, Mr. Cruncher stood at his side, and touched him on the shoulder like a ghostly bailiff. " That there Roger Cly, master,'' said Mr. Cruncher, with a taciturn and iron-bound visage. "So you put him in his coffin ? " I did.'' " Who took him out of it ? Barsad leaned back in his chair, and stammered, " What do you mean-? " " I mean,'' said Mr. Cruncher, " that he warn't never in it. No ! Not he ! Ill have my head took off, if he was ever in it." The spy looked round at the two gentlemen ; they both looked in unspeakable astonishment at Jerry. I tell you," said Jerry, *'that you buried paving-stones and earth in that there coffin. Don't go and tell 7ne that you buried Cly. It was a take in. Me and two more knows it." " How do 3^ou know it ? " " What's that to you ? Ecod ! " growled Mr. Cruncher, "It's you I have got a grudge again, is it, with your shameful imposition upon tradesmen ! I'd catch hold of your throat and choke you for half a guinea." Sydney Carton, who, with Mr. Lorr}% had been lost in amazement at this turn of the business, here requested Mr. Cruncher to moderate and explain himself. " At another time, sir," he returned, evasively, " the pres- ent time is ill-conwenient for explamin'. What I stand to, is, that he knows well wot that there Cly was never in that there coffin. Let him say he was, in so much as a word of one syllable, and I'll either catch hold of his throat and choke him for half a guinea; " Mr. Cruncher dwelt upon this as quite a liberal offer ; or I'll out and announce him.'' " Humph ! I see one thing," said Carton. " I hold an- other card, Mr. Barsad. Impossible, here in raging Paris, with suspicion filling the air, for you to outlive denunciation, when you are in communication with another aristocratic spy of the same antecedents as yourself, who, moreover, has the mystery about him of having feigned death and come to life again ! A plot in the prisons, oi the foreigner against the Republic. A strong card — certain Guillotine card I Do you play ? " 286 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, " No ! returned the spy. " I throw up. I confess that we were so unpopular with the outrageous mob, that I only got away from England at the risk of being ducked to death, and that Cly was so ferreted up and down, that he never would have got away at all but for that sham. Though how this man knows it was a sham, is a wonder of wonders to me." " Never you trouble your head about this man," retorted the contentious Mr. Cruncher ; " you'll have trouble enough with giving your attention to that gentleman. And look here 1 Once more ! " — Mr. Cruncher could not be restrained from making rather an ostentatious parade of his liberality — I'd catch hold of your throat and choke you for half a guinea." The Sheep of the prisons turned from him to Sydney Car- ton, and said, with more decision, " It has come to a point. I go on duty soon, and can't overstay my time. You told me you had a proposal ; what is it ? Now, it is of no use asking too much of me. Ask me to do anything in my office, putting my head in great extra danger, and I had better trust my life to the chances of a refusal than the chances of consent. In short, I should make that choice. You talk of desperation. We are all desperate here. Remember ! I may denounce you if I think proper, and I can swear my way through stone walls, and ^o can others. Now, what do you want with me ? " " Not very much. You are a turnkey at the Concier-. gerie ? " I tell you once for all, there is no such thing as an escape possible," said the spy, firmly. " Why need you tell me what I have not asked? You are a turnkey at the Conciergerie ? " " I am sometimes." " You can be when you choose ? " I can pass in and out when I choose." Sydney Carton filled another glass of brandy, poured it slowly out upon the hearth, and watched it as it dropped. It being all spent, he said, rising : " So far, we have spoken before these two, because it was as well that the merits of the cards should not rest solely be- tween you and me. Come into the dark room here, and lef us have one final word alone." ^ THE GAME MADE. 287 CHAPTER IX. THE GAME MADE. While Sydney Carton and the Sheep of the prisons were in the adjoining dark room, speaking so low that not a sound was heard, Mr. Lorry looked at Jerry in considerable doubt and mistrust. That honest tradesman's manner of re- ceiving the look, did not inspire confidence ; he changed the leg on which he rested, as often as if he had fifty of those limbs, and were trying them all ; he examined his finger-nails with a very questionable closeness of attention ; and whenever Mr. Lorry's eye caught his, he was taken with that peculiar kind of short cough requiring the hollow of a hand before it, which is seldom, if ever, known to be an infirmity attendant on per- fect openness of character. "Jerry," said Mr. Lorry. " Come here." Mr. Cruncher came forward sideways, with one of his shouldero' in advance of him. " What have you been, besides a messenger ? " After some cogitation, accompanied with an intent look at his patron, Mr. Cruncher conceived the luminous idea of replying, " Agricultooral character." " My mind misgives me much," said Mr. Lorry, angrily shaking a forefinger at him, " that you have used the respect- able and great house of Tellson's as a blind, and that you have had an unlawful occupation of an infamous description. If you have, don't expect me to befriend you when you get back to England. If you have, don't expect me to keep your secret Tellson's shall not be imposed upon." " I hope, sir," pleaded the abashed Mr. Cruncher, " that a gentleman like yourself wot I've had the honor of odd job- bing till I'm gray at it, would think twice about harming of me, even if it wos so — I don't say it is, but even if it wos. And which it is to be took into account that if it wos, it wouldn't, even then, be all o' one side. There'd be two sides to it. There might be medical doctors at the present hour, a pick- ing up their guineas where a honest tradesman don't pick up ^lis fardens — fardens ! no, nor yet his half fardens — half far 4 TALE OF TWO CITIES, dens ! no, nor yet his quarter — a banking away like smoke at Tellson's, and a cocking their medical eyes at that tradesman on the sly, a going in and going out to their own carriages — ah ! equally like smoke, if not more so. Well, that 'ud be imposing, too, on Tellson's. For you cannot sarse the goose and not the gander. And here's Mrs. Cruncher, or leastw^ays wos in the Old England times, and would be to-morrow, if cause given, a floppin' again the business to that degree as is ruinating — ■■ stark ruinating ! Whereas them medical doctors^ wives don't flop — catch 'em at it ! Or, if they flop, their floppings goes in favor of more patients, and how can you rightly have one without the t'other ? Then, wot with undertakers, and wot with parish clerks, and wot with sextons, and wot with private watchmen (all awaricious and all in it), a man v/ouldn't get much by it, even if it wos so. And wot little a man did get, would never prosper with him, Mr. Lorry. He'd never have no good of it ; he'd want all along to be out of the line, if he could see his way out, being once in — even if it wos so." " Ugh ! " cried Mr. Lorry, rather relenting, neverthelesis. " I am shocked at the sight of you." "Now, what I would humbly offer to you, sir," pursued Mr. Cruncher, " even if it wos so, which I don't say it is " " Don't prevaricate," said Mr. Lorry. " No, I will not^ sir," returned Mr. Cruncher, as if nothing were further from his thoughts or practice — " which I don't say it is — wot I would humbly offer to you, sir, would be this. Upon that there stool, at that there Bar, sets that there boy of mine, brought up and growed up to be a man, wot will errand you, message you, general-light-job you, till your heels is where your head is, if such should be your wishes. If it wos so which I still don't say it is (for I will not prewaricate to you, sir), let that there boy keep his father's place, and take care of his mother ; don't blow upon that boy's father — do not do it, sir — ■ and let that father go into the line of the reg'lar diggin', and make amends for what he would have un-dug — if it wos so — by diggin' of 'em in with a will, and with conwictions respectin' the futur keepin' of 'em safe. That, Mr. Lorry," said Mr. Crunch- er^ wiping his forehead with his arm, as an announcement that he had arrived at the peroration of his discourse, " is wot I would respectfully offer to you, sir. A man don't see all this here a goin' on dreadful round him, in the way of Sub- jects without heads, dear me, plentiful enough fur to bring the price down to porterage and hardly that, without havin' hi? THE GAME MADE. 289 serious thoughts' of things. And these here would be mine, if it was so, entreatin' of you fur to bear in mind that wot I said just now, I up and said in the good cause when I might have kep' it back." *^That at least is true,'' said Mr. Lorry. ''Say no more now. It may be that I shall yet stand your friend, if you deserve it, and repent in action — not in words. I want no more words." Mr. Cruncher knuckled his forehead, as Sydney Carton and the spy returned from the dark room. "Adieu, Mr. Barsad," said the former ; " our arrangement thus made, you have nothing to fear from me." He sat down in a chair on the hearth, over against Mr. Lorry, When they were alone, Mr. Lorry asked him what he had done ? " Not much. If it should go ill with the prisoner, I have ensured access to him, once." Mr. Lorry's countenance fell. *' It is all I could do," said Carton. " To propose too much, would be to put this man's head under the axe, and, as he himself said, nothing worse could happen to him if he were denounced. It was obviously the weakness of the position. There is no help for it." " But access to him," said Mr. Lorry, " if it should go ill before the Tribunal, will not save him." " I never said it v/ould." Mr. Lorry's eyes gradually sought the fire ; his sympathy with his darling, and the heavy disappointment of this second arrest, gradually weakened them ; he was an old man now, overborne with anxiety of late, and his tears fell. " You are a good man and a true friend," said Cartoii, in an altered voice. " Forgive me if I notice that you are affected. I could not see my father weep, and sit by, careless. And I could not respect your sorrow more, if you were my father You are free from that misfortune, however." 'I'hough he said the last words, with a slip into his usual manner, there was a true feeling and respect Doth in his tone and in his touch, that Mr. Lorry, who had never seen the better side of him, was wholly unprepared for. He gave him his hand, and Carton gently pressed it. "To turn to poor Darnay," said Carton. "Don't tell Her of this interview, or this arrangement. It would not enable Her to go to see him. She might tliink it was con' 19 29© A TALE OF TWO CITIES trived, m case of the worst, to convey to him the means of anticipating the sentence." Mr. Lorry had not thought of that, and he looked quickly at Carton to see if it were in his mind. It seemed to be ; he returned the look, and evidently understood it. " She might think a thousand things,'' Carton said, " and any of them would only add to her trouble. Don't speak of me to her. As I said to you when I first came, I had better not see her. I can put my hand out, to do any little helpful work for her that my hand can find to do, without that. You are going to her, I hope ? She must be very desolate to-night." " I am going now, directly.'' " I am glad of that. She has such a strong attachment to you and reliance on you. How does she look } " " Anxious and unhappy, but very beautiful." " Ah ! " It was a long, grieving sound, like a sigh — almost like a sob. It attracted Mr. Lorry's eyes to Carton's face, which was turned to the fire. A light, or a shade (the old gentleman could not have said which), passed from it as swiftly as a change will sweep over a hill-side on a wild bright day, and he lifted his foot to put back one of the little flaming logs, which was tumbling forward. He wore the white riding-coat and top-boots, then in vogue, and the light of the fire touch- ing their light surfaces made him look very pale, with his long brown hair, all untrimmed, hanging loose about him. His indifference to fire was sufficiently remarkable to elicit a word of remonstrance from Mr. Lorry ; his boot was still upon the hot embers of the flaming log, when it had broken under the weight of his foot. " I forgot it," he said. Mr. Lorry's eyes were again attracted to his face. Taking note of the wasted air which clouded the naturally handsome features, and having the expression of prisoners' faces fresh in his mind, he was strongly reminded of that expression. And your duties here have drawn to an end, sir 1 " said Carton, turning to him. Yes. As I was telling you last night when Lucie came in so unexpectedly, I have at length done all that I can do here. I hoped to have left them in perfect safety, and then to have quitted Paris. I have my Leave to Pass. I was ready to go." They were both silent. THE CAME MADE, " Yours is a long life to look back upon, sir ? " said Car^ ton, wistfully. " I am in my seventy-eighth year." " You have been useful all your life ; steadily and con- stantly occupied ; trusted, respected, and looked up to ? " " I have been a man of business ever since I have been a man. Indeed, I may say that I was a man of business when a boy.'' " See what a place you fill at seventy-eight. How many people will miss you when you leave it empty ! '' " A solitary old bachelor," answered Mr. Lorry, shaking his head. "There is nobody to weep for me." " How can you say that ? Wouldn't She weep for you ? Wouldn't her child ? " " Yes, yes, thank God. I didn't quite mean what I said." " It is a thing to thank God for ; is it not t " " Surely, surely." " If you could say, with truth, to your own solitary heart, to-night, ' I have secured to myself the love and attachment, the gratitude or respect, of no human creature ; I have won myself a tender place in no regard ; I have done nothing good or serviceable to be remembered by!' your seventy-eight years would be seventy-eight heavy curses ; would they not 1 " " You say truly, Mr. Carton ; I think they would be." Sydney turned his eyes again upon the fire, and, after a silence of a few moments, said : " I should like to ask you : — Does your childhood seem far off ? Do the days when you sat at your mother's knee, seem days very long ago ? " Responding to his softened manner, Mr. Lorry answered : " Twenty years back, yes ; at this time of my life, no. For, as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in the circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning. It seems to be one of the kind smoothings and preparings of the way. My heart is touched now, by many remembrances that had long fallen asleep, of my pretty young mother (and I so old !), and by many associations of the days when what we call the World was not so real with me, and my faults were not con- firmed in me." " I understand the feeling ! " exclaimed Carton, with a bright flush. " And you are the better for it." " I hope so." Carton terminated the conversation here, by rising to help 292 A TALE OF TWO CIT/ES. him on with his outer coat; "butyou/^ said Mr. Lorry, revert^ ing to the theme, "you are young." "Yes," said Carton. " I am not old, but my young way was never the way to age. Enough of me." " And of me, I am sure,"' said Mr. Lorry. " Are you go Ing out ? " " V\\ walk with you to her gate. You know my vagabond ftnd restless habits. If I should prowl about the streets a long time, don't be uneasy ; I shall reappear in the morning. You go to the Court to-morrow ? " "Yes, unhappily." " I shall be there, but only as one of the crowd. My Spy will find a place for me. Take my arm, sir." Mr. Lorry did so, and they went down stairs and out in the streets. A few minutes brought them to Mr. Lorry's destina- tion. Carton left him there ; but lingered at a little distance, and turned back to the gate again when it was shut, and touched it. He had heard of her going to the prison every day. "She came out here," he said, looking about him, " turned this way, must have trod on these stones often. Let me follow in her steps." It was ten o'clock at night when he stood before the prison of La Force, where she had stood hundreds of times. A little wood-sawyer, having closed his shop, was smoking his pipe at his shop-door. " Good-night, citizen," said Sydney Carton, pausing- in going by ; for the man eyed him inquisitively. " Good-night, citizen." " How goes the Republic ? " " You mean the Guillotine. Not ill. Sixty-three to-day. We shall mount to , a hundred soon. Samson and his men complain sometimes, of being exhausted. Ha, ha, ha ! He is so droll, that Samson. Such a Barber ! " " Do you often go to see him " " Shave } Always. Every day. What a barber ! You have seen him at work ? " " Never." "Go and see him when he has a good batch. Figure this to yourself, citizen ; he shaved the sixty-three to-day, in less than two pipes ! Less than two pipes. Word of honor ! " As the grinning little man held out the pipe he was smok- ing, to show how he timed the executioner. Carton was so sensible of a rising desire to strike the life out of him, that he turned away. THE GAME MADE. 293 But you are not English," said the wood-sawyer, " though you wear English dress ? " " Yes," said Carton, pausing again, and answering over his shoulder. " You speak like a Frenchman." " I am an old student here." "Aha, a perfect Frenchman. Good-night, Englishman,'' Good-night, citizen." **But go and see that droll dog," the little man persisted, calling after him. And take a pipe with you 1 " Sydney had not gone far out of sight, when he stopped in the middle of the street under a glimmering lamp, and wrote with his pencil on a scrap of paper. Then, traversing with the decided step of one who remembered the way well, several dark and dirty streets — much dirtier than usual, for the best public thoroughfares remained uncleansed in those times of terror — he stopped at a chemist's shop, which the owner was closing with his own hands. A small, dim, crooked shop, kept in a tortuous up-hill thoroughfare, by a small, dim, crooked man. Giving this citizen, too, good-night, as he confronted him at his counter, he laid the scrap of paper before him. " Whew ! " the chemist whistled softly, as he read it. Hi ! hi ! hi 1 " Sydney Carton took no heed, and the chemist said : " For you, citizen ? " " For me." " You will be careful to keep them separate, citizen ? You know the consequences of mixing them ? " " Perfectly." Certain small packets were made and given to him. He put them, one by one, in the breast of his inner coat, counted out the money for them, and deliberately left the shop. There is nothing more to do," said he glancing upward at the moon, " until to-morrow. I can't sleep." It was not a reckless manner, the manner in which he .said these words aloud under the fast-sailing clouds, nor was it more expressive of negligence than defiance. It was the settled manner of a tired man, who had wandered and strug- gled and got lost, but who at length struck into his road ancf saw its end. Long ago, when he had been famous among his earliest competitors as a youth of great promise, he had followed his 294 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, father to the grave. His mother had died, years before. These solemn words, which had been read at his father's grave, arose in his mind as he went down the dark streets, among the heavy shadows, with the moon and the clouds sail- ing on high above him. " I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord : he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live : and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." In a city dominated by the axe, alone at night, with nat- ural sorrow rising in him for the sixty-three who had been that day put to death, and for to-morrow's victims then await ing their doom in the prisons, and still of to-morrow's and to-morrow's, the chain of association that brought the words home, like a rusty old ship's anchor from the deep, might have been easily found. He did not seek it, but repeated thera and went on. With a solemn interest in the lighted windows where the people were going to rest, forgetful through a few calm hours of the horrors surrounding them ; in the towers of the churches where no prayers were said, for the popular revulsion had even travelled that length of self-destruction from years of priestly impostors, plunderers, and profligates ; in the distant burial-places, reserved, as they wrote upon the gates, for Eternal Sleep ; in the abounding jails ; and in the streets along which the sixties rolled to a death which had become so common and material, that no sorrowful story of haunting Spirit ever arose among the people out of all the working of the Guillo- tine ; with a solemn interest in the whole life and death of the city settling down to its short nightly pause in fury ; Sydney Carton crossed the Seine again for the ligliter streets. Few coaches were abroad, for riders in coaches were lia- ble to be suspected, and gentility hid its head in red night- caps, and put on heavy shoes, and trudged. But the theatres were all well filled, and the people poured cheerfully out as he passed, and went chatting home. At one of the theatre doors, there was a little girl with a mother, looking for a way across the street through the mud. He carried the child over, and before the timid arm was loosed frcm his neck asked her for a kiss. " I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord : he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live ; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die." Now, that the streets were quiet, and ^he night wore oi> THE GAME MADE. the words were in the echoes of his feet, and were in the air. Perfectly calm and steady, he sometimes repeated them to himself as he walked ; but, he heard them always. The night wore out, and, as he stood upon the bridge listening to the water as it splashed the river-walls of the Isl- and of Paris, where the picturesque confusion of houses and cathedral shone bright in the light of the moon, the day came coldly, looking like a dead face out of the sky. Then, the night, with the moon and the stars, turned pale and died, and for a little while it seemed as if Creation were delivered over to Death's dominion. But, the glorious sun, rising, seemed to strike those words, that burden of the night, straight and warm to his heart in its long bright rays. And looking along them, with reverently shaded eyes, a bridge of light appeared to span the air be- tween him and the sun, while the river sparkled under it. The strong tide, so swift, so deep, and certain, was like a congenial friend, in the morning stillness. Pie walked by the stream, far from the houses, and in the light and warmtii of the sun fell asleep on the bank. When he awoke and was afoot again, he lingered there yet a little longer, watching an eddy that turned and turned purposeless, until the stream ab- sorbed it, and carried it on to the sea. — " Like me ! '' A trading-boat, with a sail of the softened color of a dead leaf, then glided into his view, floated by him, and died away. As its silent track in the water disappeared, the prayer that had broken up out of his heart for a merciful consideraiion of all his poor blindnesses and errors, ended in the woids, " I am the resurrection and the life.'' Mr. Lorry was already out when he got back, and it was easy to surmise where the good old man was gone. Sydney Carton drank nothing but a little coffee, ate some bread, ai.d, having washed and changed to refresh himself, went out to the place of trial. The court was all astir and a-buzz, when the black sheep — whom many fell away from in dread — pressed him into an obscure corner am.ong the crowd. Mr. Lorry was there, and Doctor Manette was there. She was there, sitting beside her father. When her husband was brought in, she turned a look upon him, so sustaining, so encouraging, so full of admiring love and pitying tenderness, yet so courageous for his sake, that it called the healthy blood in"o his face, brightened his 296 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. glance, and animated his heart. If there had been any eyes to notice the influence of her look, on Sydney Carton, it would have been seen to be the same influence exactly. Before that unjust Tribunal, there was little or no order of procedure, ensuring to any accused person any reasonable hearing. There could have been no such Revolution, if all laws, forms, and ceremonies, had not first been so monstrously abused, that the suicidal vengeance 01 the Revolution was to scatter them all to the winds. Every eye was turned to the jury The same determined patriots and good republicans as yesterday and the day be- fore, and to-morrow and the day after. Eager and prominent among them, one man with a craving face, and his fingers perpetually hovering about his lips, whose appearance gave great satisfaction to the spectators. A life-thirsting, cannibal- looking, bloody-minded juryman, the Jacques Three of St. Antoine. The whole jury, as a jury of dogs empannelled to try the deer. Every eye then turned to the five ju.^ ^^es and public prose- cutor. No favorable leaning in that quarter to-day. A fell, uncompromising, murderous business-meaning there. Every eye then sought some other eye in the crowd, and gleamed at it approvingly ; and heads nodded at one another, before bending forward with a strained attention. Charles Evremonde, called Darnay. Released yesterday. Re-accused and retaken yesterday. Indictment delivered to him last night. Suspected and Denounced enemy of the Republic, Aristocrat, one of a family of tyrants, one of a race proscribed, for that they had used their abolished privileges to the infamous oppression of the people. Charles Evre- monde, called Darnay, in right of such proscription, absolutely Dead in Law. To this effect, in as few or fewer words, the Public ProsC" cutor. The President asked, was the Accused openly denounced or secretly 1 Openly, President." " By whom .> " Three voices. Ernest Defarge, wine-vendor of St. An toine." "Good." **Therfese Defarge, his wife/' •'Good.'' THE GAME MADE, 297 "Alexandre Manette, physician." A great uproar took place in the court, and in the midst ol it Doctor Manette was seen, pale and trembling, standing where he had been seated. " President, I indignantly protest to}outhat this is a forgery and a fraud. You know the accused to be the husband of my daughter. My daughter, and those dear to her, are far dearei to me than my life. Who and where is the false conspirator who says that I denounce the husband of my child ! Citizen Manette, be tranquil. To fail in submission to the authority of the Tribunal would be to put yourself out of Law. As to what is dearer to you than life, nothing can be so dear to a good citizen as the Republic." Loud acclamations hailed this rebuke. The President rang his bell and with warmth resumed. " If the Republic should demand of you the sacrifice of your child herself, you would have no duty but to sacrifice her. Listen to what is to follow. In the meanwhile, be silent Frantic acclamations were again raised. Doctor Manette sat down, with his eyes looking around, and his lips trembling ; his daughter drew closer to him. The craving man on the jury rubbed his hands together and restored the usual hand to his mouth. Defarge was produced, when the court was quiet enough to admit of his being heard, and rapidly expounded the story of the imprisonment, and of his having been a mere boy in the Doctor's service, and of the release, and of the state of the prisoner when released and delivered to him. This short ex- amination followed, for the court was quick with its work. " You did good service at the taking of the Bastile, citi- zen ? " " I believe so." Plere, an excited woman screeched from the crowd ; " You were one of the best patriots there. Why not say so ? You were a cannonier that day there, and you were among the first to enter the accursed fortress when it tell. Patriots, I speak the truth I " It was The Vengeance who, amidst the warm commen- dations of the audience, thus assisted the proceedings. The President rang his bell ; but, The Vengeance, warming with encouragement, shrieked, " I defy that bell ! " wherein she was likewise much commended. 298 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. " Inform the Tribunal of what you did that day within the Bastile, citizen." " I knew," said Defarge, looking down at his wife, who stood at the bottom of the steps on which he was raised, look- ing steadily up at him ; I knew that this prisoner, of whom I speak, had been confined in a cell known as One Hundred and Five, North Tower. I knew it from himself. He knew himself by no other name than One Hundred and Five, North Tower, when he made shoes under my care. As I serve my gun that day, I resolve, when the place shall fall, to examine that cell. It falls. I mount to the cell, with a fellow-citizen w^ho is one of the Jury, directed by a jailer. I examine it very closely. In a hole in the chimney, where a stone has been worked out and replaced, I find a written paper. This is that written paper. I have made it my business to examine some specimens of the writing of Dr. Manette. This is the writing of Doctor Manette. I confide this paper in the writing of Doctor Manette, to the hands of the President." " Let it be read." In a dead silence and stillness — the prisoner under trial looking lovingly at his wife, his wife only looking from him to look with solicitude at her father. Doctor Manette keeping his eyes fixed on the reader, Madame Defarge never taking hers from the prisoner, Defarge never taking his from his feasting wife, and all the other eyes there intent upon the Doctor, who saw none of them — the paper was read, as follows. CHAPTER X, THE SUBSTANCE OF THE SHADOW, "I, Alexandre Manette, unfortunate physician, native Beauvais, and afterwards resident in Paris, write this melan- choly paper in my doleful cell in the Bastile, during the last month of the year 1767. I write it at stolen intervals, under every difficulty. I design to secrete it in the wall of the chimney, where I have slowly and laboriously made a place of concealment for it. Some pitying hand may find it there, when I and my sorrows are dust. THE SUBSTANCE OF THE SHADOW. " These words are formed by the rusty iron point with which I write with difficulty in scrapings of soot and charcoal from the chimney, mixed with blood, in the last month of the tenth year of my captivity. Hope has quite departed from my breast. I know from terrible warnings I have noted in myself that my reason will not long remain unimpaired, but I solemnly declare that I am at this time in the possession of my right mind— that my memory is exact and circumstantial — • and that I write the truth as I shall answer for these my last recorded words, whether they be ever read by men or no^ at the Eternal Judgment-seat. " One cloudy moonlight night, in the third week of Decem- ber (I think the twenty-second of the month), in the year 1757, I was walking on a retired part of the quay by the Seine for the refreshment of the frosty air, at an hour's distance from my place of residence in the Street of the School of Medicine, when a carriage came along behind me, driving very fast. As I stood aside to let that carriage pass, apprehensive that it might otherwise run me down, a head was put out at the win- dow, and a voice called to the driver to stop. " The carriage stopped , as soon as the driver could rein in his horses, and the same voice called me by my name. I answered. The carriage was then so far in advance of me that two gentlemen had time to open the door and alight be- fore I came up with it. I observed that they were both wrapped in cloaks, and appeared to conceal themselves. As they stood side by. side near the carriage door, I also ob- served that they both looked of about my own age, or rather j^ounger, and that they were greatly alike, in stature, manner, voice, and (as far as I could see) face too. * You are Doctor Manette ? ' said one. "'I am.' " 'Doctor Manette, formerly of Beauvais,' said the other; * the young physician, originally an expert surgeon, who within the last year or two has made a rising reputation in Paris ? ' " * Gentlemen,' 1 returned, * lam that Doctor Manette of whom you speak so graciously.' " * We have been to your residence,' said the first, 'and not being so fortunate as to find you there, and being informed that you were probably walking in this direction, we followed in the hope of overtaking you. Will you please enter the car- riage ? ' " The manner of both was imperious, and they both moved, 300 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. as these words were spoken, so as to place me between them selves and the carriage door. They were armed. I was not ' Gentlemen/ said I, * pardon me ; but I usually inquire who does me the honor to seek my assistance, and what is the nature of the case to which I am summoned.' " The reply to this was made by him who had spoken second, * Doctor, your clients are people of condition. As to the nature of the case, our confidence in your skill assures us that you will ascertain it for yourself better than we can describe it. Enough, Will you please to enter the car- riage ? ' I could do nothing but comply, and I entered it in silence. They both entered after me — the last springing in, after putting up the steps. The carriage turned about, and drove on at its former speed. I repeat this conversation exactly as it occurred. I have no doubt that it is, word for word, the same. I describe everything exactly as it took place, constraining my mind not to wander from the task. Where I make the broken marks that follow here, I leave off for the time, and put my paper in its hiding-place. ^ ^ ^ ^ "The carriage left the streets behind, passed the North Barrier, and emerged upon the country road. At two-thirds of a league from the Barrier — I did not estimate the distance at that time, but afterwards when I traversed it — it struck out of the main avenue, and presently stopped at a solitary house. We all three alighted, and walked, by a damp soft footpath in a garden where a neglected fountain had overflowed, to the door of the house. It was not opened immediately, in answer to the ringing of the bell, and one of my two conductors struck the man who opened it, with his heavy riding-glove, across the face. " There was nothing in this action to attract my particular attention, for I had seen common people struck more com- monly than dogs. But, the other of the two, being angry like* wise, struck the man in like manner with his arm ; the look and bearing of the brothers were then so exactly alike, that I then first perceived them to be twin brothers. From the time of our alighting at the uter gate (which we found locked, and which one of the brothers had opened to admit us, and had re-locked), I had heard cries proceeding from an upper chamber. I was conducted to this chamber straight, the cries growing louder as we ascended the stairs^ THE SUBSTANCE OF THE SHADOW. 30, and I found a patient in a high fever of the brain, lying on a bed. The patient was a woman of great beauty, and young \ assuredly not much past twenty. Her hair was torn and ragged, and her arms were bound to her sides with sashes and handkerchiefs. I noticed that these bonds were all por- tions of a gentleman's dress. On one of them, which was a fringed scarf of ceremony, I saw the armorial bearings of a Noble, and the letter E. ^' I saw this within the first minute of my contemplation of the patient ; for, in her restless strivings she had turned over on her face on the edge of the bed, had drawn the end of the scarf into her mouth, and was in danger of suffocation. My first act was to put out my hand to relieve her breathing; and in moving the scarf aside, the embroidery in the corner caught my sight. " I turned her gently over, placed my hands upon her breast to calm her and keep her down, and looked into her face. Her eyes were dilated and wild, and she constantly uttered piercing shrieks, and repeated the words, * My hus- band, my father, and my brother ! ' and then counted up to twelve, and said, * Hush ! ' For an instant, and no more, she would pause to listen, and then the piercing shrieks would begin again, and she would repeat the cry, * My husband, my. father, and my brother ! ' and would count up to twelve, and say * Hush ! ' There was no variation in the order, or the manner. There was no cessation, but the regular moment's pause, in the utterance of these sounds. " * How long,' I asked, Mias this lasted ? ' *' To distinguish the brothers, I will call them the elder and the younger ; by the elder, I mean him who exercised the most authority. It was the elder who replied, * Since about this hour last night.' ' ' She has a husband, a father, and a brother? ' " ' A brother.' " * I do not address her brother ? ' " He answered with great contempt, * No.' " ' She has some recent association with the number twelve ? ' The younger brother impatiently rejoined, 'With twelve o'clock ' " * See gentlemen,' said I, still keeping my hands upon her breast, ' how useless I am, as you have brought me 1 If I ^ TALE OF TWO CITIES. had known what I was coming to see, I could have come pro* vided. As it is, time must be lost. There are no medicines to be obtained in this lonely place/ "The elder brother looked to the younger, who said haughtily, * There is a case of medicines here ; ' and brought it from a closet, and put it on the table. ^ * ^ ^ ^ " I opened some of the bottles, smelt them, and put the stoppers to my lips. If I had wanted to use anything save narcotic medicines that were poisons in themselves, I would not have administered any of those. " * Do you doubt them ? ' asked the younger brother. " * You see, monsieur, I am going to use them,' I replied, and said no more. " I made the patient swallow, with great difficulty, and after many efforts, the dose that I desired to give. As I in- tended to repeat it after a while, and as it was necessary to watch its influence, I then sat down by the side of the bed. There was a timid and suppressed woman in attendance (wife of the man down stairs), who had retreated into a corner.. The house w^as damp and decayed, indifferently fur- nished — evidently, recently occupied and temporarily used. Some thick old hangings had been nailed up before the win- dows, to deaden the sound of the shrieks. They continued to be uttered in their regular succession, with the cry, * My husband, my father, and my brother ! ' the counting up to twelve, and ' Hush ! ' The frenzy was so violent, that I had not unfastened the bandages restraining the arms j but, I had looked to them, to see that they were not painful. The only spark of encouragement in the case, was, that my hand upon the sufferer's breast had this much soothing influence, that for minutes at a time it tranquillized the figure. It had no effect upon the cries ; no pendulum could be more regular. " For the reason that my hand had this effect (I assume), I had sat by the side of the bed for half an hour, with the two brothers looking on, before the elder said : "'There is another patient.' " I was startled, and asked, * Is it a pressing case ? " " * You had better see,' he carelessly answered ; and took up a light. ^ ^ ^ ^ " The other patient lay in a back room across a second staircase, which was a species of loft over a stable. There was a low plastered ceiling to a part of it ; the rest was open, to the ridge of the tiled roof, and there were beams across, THE SUBSTANCE GF THE SHADOW. 303 * Hay and stjraw were stored in that portion of the place, fagots for firing, and a heap of apples in sand. I had to pass through that part, to get at the other. My memory is circum- stantial and unshaken. I try it with these details, and I see them all, in this my cell in the Bastile, near the close of the tenth year of my captivity, as I saw them all that night. " On some hay on the ground, with a cushion thrown ainder his head, lay a handsome peasant boy — a boy of not more than seventeen at the most. He lay on his back, with his teeth set, his right hand clenched on his breast, and his glaring eyes looking straight upward. I could not see where his wound was, as I kneeled on one knee over him ; but, I could see that he was dying of a wound from a sharp point. , " * I am a doctor, my poor fellow,' said I. * Let me ex- amine it.' " ' I do not want it examined,' he answered ; *let it be.' " It was under his hand, and I soothed him to let me move his hand away. The wound was a sword-thrust, re- ceived from twenty to twenty-four hours before, but no skill could have saved him if it had been looked to without delay. He was then dying fast. As I turned my eyes to the elder brother, I saw him looking down at this handsome boy whose life was ebbing out, as if he were a wounded bird, or hare, or rabbit ; not at all as if he were a fellow-creature. " ' How has this been done, monsieur ? ' said I. " * A crazed young common dog ! A serf ! Forced my brother to draw upon him, and has fallen by my brother's sword — like a gentleman.' "There was no touch of pity, sorrow, or kindred hu- manity, in this answer. The speaker seemed to acknowledge that it was inconvenient to have that different order of crea- ture dying there, and that .it would have been better if he had died in the usual obscure routine of his vermin kind. He was quite incapable of any compassionate feeling about the boy, or about his fate. *^ The boy's eyes had slowly moved to him as he had spoken, and they now slowly moved to me. Doctor, they are very proud, these Nobles ; but we com- mon dogs are proud too, sometimes. They plunder us, out- tage us, beat us, kill us ; but we have a little pride left, some- times. She have you seen her. Doctor ? ' ** The shrieks and the cries were audible there, though subdued by the distance. He referred to them, as if she were lying in our presence. ^ TALE OF TWO CITIES, " I said, * I have seen her.' " ' She is my sister, Doctor. They have had their shame ful rights, these Nobles, in the modesty and virtue of oul sisters, many years, but we have had good girls among us. I know it, and have heard my father say so. She was a good girl. She was betrothed to a good young man, too : a tenant of his. We were all tenants of his — that man's who stands there. The other is his brother, the worst of a bad race.' ^' It was with the greatest difficulty that the boy gathered bodily force to speak ; but, his spirit spoke with a dreadful emphasis. " *We were so robbed by that man who stands there, as all we common dogs are by those superior Beings — taxed by him without Inercy, obliged to work for him without pay, obliged to grind our corn at his mill, obliged to feed scores of his tame birds on our wretched crops, and forbidden for our lives to keep a single tame bird of our own, pillaged and plundered to that degree that when we chanced to have a l3it of meat, we ate it in fear, with the door barred and the shutters closed, that his people should not see it and take it from us — I say, we were so robbed, and hunted, and were made so poor, that our father told us it was a dreadful thing to bring a child into the world, and that what we should most pray for, was, that our women might be barren and our miser- able race die out ! ' I had never before seen the sense of being oppressed, bursting forth like a fire. I had supposed that it must be latent in the people somewhere ; but, I had never seen it break out, until I saw it in the dying boy. " ' Nevertheless, Doctor, my sister married. He was aih ing at that time, poor fellow, and she married her lover, that she might tend and comfort him in our cottage — our dog-hut, as that man would call it. She had not been married many weeks, when that man's brother saw her and admired her, and asked t.iat man to lend her to him — for what are husbands among us ! He was willing enough, but my sister was good and virtuous, and hated his brother with a hatred as strong as mine. What did the two then, to persuade her husband to use his influence with her, to make her willing ? ' The boy's eyes, which had been fixed on mine, slowly turned to the looker-on, and I saw in the two faces that all he said was true. The two opposing kinds of pride confront- ing one another, I can see, even in this Bastile ; the gentl© THE SUBSTANCE OF THE SHADOW. man's, all negligent indifference ; the peasant's, all trodden down sentiment, and passionate revenge. " ' You know, Doctor, that it is among the Rights of these Nobles to harness us common dogs to carts, and drive us. They so harnessed him and drove him. You know that it is among their Rights to keep us in their grounds all night, quieting the frogs, in order that their noble sleep may not be disturbed. They kept him out in the unwholesome mists at .light, and ordered him back into his harness in the day. But he was not persuaded. No ! Taken out of harness one day at noon, to feed — if he could find food — he sobbed twelve times, once for every stroke of the bell, and died on her bosom,' " Nothing human could have held life in the boy but his determination to tell all his wrong. He forced back the gathering shadows of death, as he forced his clenched right hand to remain clenched, and to cover his wound. " ' Then, with that man's permission and even with his aid, his brother took her away ; in spite of what I know she must have told his brother — and what that is, will not be long unknown to you. Doctor, if it is now — his brother took her away — for his pleasure and diversion, for a little while. I saw her pass me on the road. When I took the tidings home, our father's heart burst ; he never spoke one of the words^ that filled it. I took my young sister (for I have an- other) to a place beyond the reach of this man, and where, at least, she will never be his vassal. Then, I tracked the brother here, and last night climbed in — a common dog, but sword in hand. — Where is the loft window ? It was some- where here ? ' " The room was darkening to his sight ; the world was narrowing around him. I glanced about me, and saw that the hay and straw were trampled over the floor, as if there had been a struggle. * She heard me, and ran in. I told her not to come near us till he was dead. He came in and first tossed me some pieces of money ; then struck at me with a whip. But I, though a common dog, so struck at him as to make him draw. Let him break into as many pieces as he will, the sword that he stained with my common blood ; he drew to defend himself — thrust at me with all his skill for his life.' " My glance had fallen, but a few moments before, on the fragments of a broken sword, lying among the hay. That A TALE OF TWO CITIES. weapon was a gentleman\s. In another place, lay an old sword that seemed to have been a soldier's. Now, lift me up, Doctor; lift me up. Where is he ? ' " * H? is not here,' I said, supporting the boy, and think- ing that 'ic referred to the brother. " * He ! Proud as these nobles are, he is afraid to see me. Where is the man who was here 1 Turn my face to himc' " I did so, raising the boy's head against my knee. But^ invested for the moment with extraordinary power, he raised himself completely : obliging me to rise too, or I could not have still supported him. ' Marquis,' said the boy, turned to him with his eyes opened wide, and his right hand raised, ^ in the days when all these things are to be answered for, I summon you and yours, to the last of your bad race, to answer for them. I mark this cross of blood upon you, as a sign that I do it. In the days when all these things are to be answered for, I summon your brother, the worst of the bad race, to answer for them separately. I mark this cross of blood upon him, as a sign that I do it.' ^* Twice, he put his hand to the wound in his breast, and with his forefinger drew a cross in the air. He stood for an instant with the finger yet raised, and, as it dropped, he dropped with it, and I laid him down dead. ^ ^ ^ When I returned to the bedside of the young woman, I found her raving in precisely the same order and continuity. I knew that this might last for many hours, and that it would probably end in the silence of the grave. " I repeated the medicines I had given her, and I sat at the side of the bed until the night was far advanced. She never abated the piercing quality of her shrieks, never stumbled in the distinctness or the order of her words. They v/ere al- ways * My husband, my father, and my brother ! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Hush ! ' " This lasted twenty-six hours from the time when I first saw her. I had come and gone twice, and was again sitting by her, when she began to falter. I did what little could be done to assist that opportunity, and by and by she sank into a lethargy, and lay like the dead. ''It was as if the wind and rain had lulled at last, after a long and feaifiil storm. I released her arms, and called the woman to assist me to compose her figure and the dress she THE SUBSTANCE OF THE SHADOW. had torn. It was then that I knew her condition to be that of one in whom the first expectations of being a mother have arisen ; and it was then that I lost the little hope I had had of her. " ' Is she dead ? ' asked the Marquis, whom I will still de- scribe as the elder brother, coming booted into the room from his horse. " * Not dead,' said I ; * but like to die.' " * What strength there is in these common bodies ! ' he said, looking down at her with some curiosity. " * There is prodigious strength,' I answered him, * in sor- row and despair.' " He first laughed at my words, and then frowned at them. He moved a chair with his foot near to mine, ordered the woman away, and said in a subdued voice, " ' Doctor, finding my brother in this difficulty with these hinds, I recommended that your aid should be invited. Your reputation is high, and, as a young man with your fortune to make, you are probably mindful of your interest. The things that you see here, are things to be seen, and not spoken of.' " I listened to the patient's breathing, and avoided answer- ing. " * Do you honor me with your attention. Doctor \ ' Monsieur,' said I, *in my profession, the communica- tions of patients are alwa3^s received in confidence.' I was guarded in my answer, for I was troubled in my ir.i id with what I had heard and seen. " Her breathing was so difficult to trace, that I carefully tried the pulse and the heart. There was life, and no more. Looking round as I resumed my seat, I found both the brothers intent upon me. ^ ^ ^ ^ " I write with so much difficulty, the cold is so severe, I am so fearful of being detected and consigned to an under- ground cell and total darkness, that I must abridge this nar- rative. There is no confusion or failure in my memoiy ; it can recall, and could detail, every word that was ever spoken between me and those brothers. " She lingered for a week. Towards the last, I could un- derstand some few syllables that she said to me, by placing my ear close to her lips. She asked me where she was, and I told her; who I was, and I told her. It was in vain that I asked her for her family name. She faintly shook her head upon the pillow, and kept her secret, as the boy had done. 3o8 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, " I had no opportunity of asking her any question, until 1 had told the brothers she was sinking fast, and could not live another d^y. Until then, though no one was ever presented to her consciousness save the woman and myself, one or other of them had always jealously sat behind the curtain at the head of the bed when I was there. But when it came to that^ they seemed careless what communication I might hold with her ; as if — the thought passed through my mind — I were dying too. ^' I always observed that their pride bitterly resented the younger brother's (as I call him) having crossed swords with a peasant, and that peasant a boy. The only consideration that appeared to affect the mind of either of them was the consideration that this was highly degrading to the family, and was ridiculous. As often as I caught the younger brother's eyes, their expression reminded me that he disliked me deeply, for knowing what I knew from the boy. He was smoother and more polite to me than the elder ; but I saw this. I also saw that I was an incumbrance in the mind of the elder, too. " My patient died, two hours before midnight — at a time, by my watch, answering almost to the minute when I had first seen her. I was alone with her, when her forlorn young head drooped gently on one side, and all her earthly wrongs and sorrows ended. The brothers were waiting in a room down stairs, im- patient to ride away. I had heard them, alone at the bedside, striking their boots with their riding-whips, and loitering up and down. " ' At last she is dead ? ' said the elder, when 1 went in. " * She is dead,' said I. " * I congratulate you, my brother,' were his words as he turned round. " He had before offered me money, which I had postponed taking. H« now gave me a rouleau of gold. I took it from his hand, but laid it on the table. I had considered the ques- tion, and had resolved to accept nothing. " * Pray excuse me,' said I. * Under the circumstances, no.' " They exchanged looks, but bent their heads to me as I bent mine to them, and we parted without another word on either side. ^ " I am weary, weary, wear}^ — worn down by misf^ry I can not read what I have written with this gr.unt hand. Early in the morning the rouleau of gold was left at mv THE SUBSTANCE OF THE SHADOW. door in a little box, with my name on the outside. From the first I had anxiously considered what I ought to do. I de- cided, that day, to write privately to the Minister, stating the nature of the two cases to which 1 had been summoned, and the place to which I had gone : in effect, stating all the cir cumstances. I knew what Court influence was and what the immunities of the Nobles were, and I expected that the mat- ter would nev^er be heard of ; but, I wished to relieve my own mind. I had kept the matter a profound secret, even from my wife ; and this, too, I resolved to state in my letter. I had no apprehension whatever of my real danger ; but I was con- scious that there might be danger for others, if others were compromised by possessing the knowledge that I possessed. " I was much engaged that day, and could not complete my letter that night. I rose long before my usual time next morning to finish it. It was the last day of the year. The letter was lying before me just completed, when I w^as told that a lady waited who wished to see me. ^ ^ * " I am growing more and more unequal to the task I have set myself. It is so cold, so dark, my senses are so benumbed, and the gloom upon me is so dreadful. The lady was young, engaging, and handsome, but not marked for long life. She was in great agitation. She pre- sented herself to me as the wife of the Marquis St. Evre- monde. I connected the title by which the boy had addressed the elder brother, with the initial letter embroidered on the scarf, and had no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that I had seen that nobleman very lately. My memory is still accurate, but I cannot write the words of our conversation. I suspect that I am watched more closely than I was, and I know not at what times I may be watched. She had in part suspected and in part discovered, the main facts of the cruel story, of her husband's share in it, and my being resorted to. She did not know that the girl was dead. Her hope had been, she said in great distress, to show her, in secret, a woman's sympathy. Her hope had been to avert the wrath of Heaven from a House that had long been hateful to the suffering many. She had reasons for believing that there was a young sister living, and her greatest desire was, to help that sister. I could tell her nothing but that there was such a sister ; be- yond that I knew nothing. Her inducement to come to me, relying on my confidence, had been the hope that I could telj A TALE OF TWO CITIES. her the name aad place of abode. Whereas, to this wretched hour I am ignorant of both. ^ ^ ^ These scraps of paper fail me. One was taken from me, with a warning, yesterday. I must finish my record to-day. " She was a good, compassionate lady, and not happy in her marriage. How could she be ! The brother distrusted and disliked her, and his influence was all opposed to her ] she stood in dread of him, and in dread of her husband too. When I handed her down to the door, there was a child, a pretty boy, from two to three years old, in her carriage. " * For his sake. Doctor,' she said pointing to him in tears, * I would do all I can to make what poor amends I can. He will never prosper in his inheritance otherwise. I have a pre- sentiment that if no other innocent atonement is made for this, it will one day be required of him. What I have left to call my own — it is little beyond the worth of a few jewels — I will make it the lirst charge of his life to bestow, with the compassion and lamenting of his dead mother, on this in- jured family, if the sister can be discovered.' " She kissed the boy, and said, caressing him, * It is for thine own dear sake. Thou wilt be faithful, little Charles 1 ' The child answered her bravely, * Yes ! ' I kissed her hand, and she took him in her arms, and went away caressing him. I never saw her more. " As she had mentioned her husband's name in the faith that I knew it, I added no mention of it to my letter. I sealed my letter, and, not trusting it out of my own hands, delivered it myself that day. " That night, the last night of the year, towards nine o'clock, a man in a black dress rang at my gate, demanded to see me, and softly followed my servant, Ernest Defarge, a youth, up stairs. When my servant came into the room where I sat with my wife — O my wife, beloved of my heart ! My fair young English wife ! — we saw the man, who was sup- posed to be at the gate, standing silent behind him. "An urgent case in the Rue St. Honore, he said. It would not detain me, he had a coach in waiting. " It brought me here, it brought me to my grave. When I was clear of the house, a black muffler was drawn tightly over my mouth from behind, and my arms were pinioned. The two brothers crossed the road from a dark corner, and identified me with a single gesture. The Marquis took from his pocket the letter I had written, showed it to me, burnt it THE SUBSTANCE OF THE SHADOW. 311 In the light of a lantern that was held, and extinguished the ashes with his foot. Not a word was spoken. I was brought here, I was brought to my living grave. " If it had pleased God to put it in the hard heart of either of the brothers, in all these frightful years, to grant me any tidings of my dearest wife — so much as to let me know by a word whether alive or dead — I might have thought that He had not quite abandoned them. But, now I believe that the mark of the red cross is fatal to them, and that they have no part in His mercies. And them and their descendants, to the last of their race, I, Alexandre Manette, unhappy pris- oner, do this last night of the year 1767, in my unbear- able agony, denounce to the times when all these things shall be answered for. I denoiuace tliem to Heaven and to earth." A terrible sound arose when the reading of this document was done. A sound of craving and eagerness that had noth- ing articulate in it but blood. The narrative called up the most revengeful passions of the time, and there was not a head in the nation but must have dropped before it. Little need, in presence of that tribunal and that auditory, to show how the Defarges had not made the paper public, with the other captured Bastile memorials borne in proces- sion, and had kept it, biding their time. Little need to show that this detested family name had long been anathematized by Saint Antoine, and was wrought into the fatal register. The man never trod ground whose virtues and services would have sustained him in that place that day, against such de- nunciation. And all the worse for the doomed man, that the denouncer was a well-known citizen, his own attached friend, the father of his wife. One of the frenzied aspirations of the populace w^as, for imitations of the questionable public virtues of an- tiquity, and for sacrifices and self-immolations on the people's altar. Therefore when the President said (else had his own head quivered on his shoulders), that the good physician of the Republic would deserve better still of the Republic by rooting out an obnoxious family of Aristocrats, and would doubtless feel a sacred glow and joy in making his daughter a widow and her child an orphan, there was wild excitement, patriotic fervor, not a touch of human sympathy. " Much influence around him, has that Doctor ? " mur U 312 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. mured Madame Defarge, smiling to The Vengeance. " Save him now, my Doctor, save him ! At every juryman's vote, there was a roar. Another and another. Roar and roar. Unanimously voted. At heart and by descent an Aristo- crat, an enemy of the Republic, a notorious oppressor of the People. Back to the Conciergerie, and Death within four and-*^wenty hours ! CHAPTER XI. DUSK. The wretched wife of the innocent man thus doomed to die, fell under the sentence, as if she had been mortally stricken. But, she uttered no sound ; and so strong was the voice within her, representing that it was she of all the world who must uphold him in his misery and not augment it, that it quickly raised her, even from that shock. The judges having to take part in a public demonstration out of doors, the tribunal adjourned. The quick noise and movement of the court's emptying itself by many passages had not ceased, when Lucie stood stretching out her arms towards her husband, with nothing in her face but love and consolation. If I might touch him ! If I might embrace him once ! O, good citizens, if you would have so much compassion for us! " There was but a jailer left, along with two of the four men who had taken him last night, and Barsad. The people had all poured out to the show in the streets. Barsad pro- posed to the rest, " Let her embrace him then ; it is but a moment." It was silently acquiesced in, and they passed her over the seats in the hall to a raised place, where he, by lean- ing over the dock, could fold her in his arms. " Farewell, dear darling of my soul. My parting blessing on my love. We shall meet again, where the weary are at rest I They were her husband's words, as he held hf to his bosom. DUSK, 313 " I can bear it, dear Charles. I am supported from above : don't suffer for me. A parting blessing for our child.'' " I send it to her by you. I kiss her by you. I say fare- well to her by you." "My husband. No! A moment!" He was tearing him- self apart from her. " We shall not be separated long. I feel that this will break my heart by and by ; but I will do my duty while I can, and when I leave her, God will raise up friends for her, as He did for me." Her father had followed her, and would have fallen on his knees to both of them, but tha/ Darnay put out a hand and seized him, crying : " No, no ! What have you done, what have you done, that you should kneel to us ! We know now, what a struggle you made of old. We know now, what you underwent when you suspected my descent, and when you knew it. We know now, the natural antipathy you strove against, and conquered, for her dear sake. We thank you with all our hearts, and all our love and duty. Heaven be with you ! " Her father's only answer was to draw his hands through his white hair, and wring them with a shriek of anguish. " It could not be otherwise," said the prisoner. " All things have worked together as they have fallen out. It was the always-vain endeavor to discharge my poor mother's trust that first brought my fatal presence near you. Good could never come of such evil, a happier end was not in nature to so unhappy a beginning. Be comforted, and forgive me. Heaven bless you ! " As he was drawn away, his wife released him, and stood looking after him with her hands touching one another in the attitude of prayer, and with a radiant look upon her face, in which there was even a comforting smile. As he went out at the prisoners' door, she turned, laid her head lovingly on her father's breast, tried to speak to him, and fell at his feet. Then, issuing from the obscure corner from which he had never moved, Sydney Carton came and took her up. Only her father and Mr. Lorry were with her. His arm trembled as it raised her, and supported her head. Yet, there was an air about him that was not all pity — that had a flush of pride in it. " Shall I take her to a coach t I shall never feel her weight." He carried her lightly to the door, and laid her tenderly A TALE OF TWO CIIIES. down in a coach. Her father and their old friend got into it, and he took his seat beside the driver. When they arrived at the gateway where he had paused in the dark not many hours before, to picture to himself on which of the rough stones of the street her feet had trodden, he lifted her again, and carried her up the staircase to their rooms. There, he laid her down on a couch, where her child and Miss Pross wept over her. " Don't recall her to herself," he said, softly, to the latter, " she is better so. Don't revive her to consciousness, while she only faints." " Oh, Carton, Carton, dear Carton ! " cried little Lucie, springing up and throwing her arms passionately round him, in a burst of grief. " Now that you have come, I think you will do something to help mamma, something to save papa ! O, look at her, dear Carton ! Can you, of all the people who love her, bear to see her so 1 " He bent over the child, and laid her blooming cheek against his face. He put her gently from him, and looked at her unconscious mother. " Before I go," he said,- and paused — "I may kiss her.'^" It was remembered afterwards that when he h)ent down and touched her face with his lips, he murmured some words. The child, who was nearest to him, told them afterwards, and told her grandchildren when she was a handsome old lady, that she heard .him say, ''A life you love." When he had gone out into the next room, he turned sud- denly on Mr. Lorry and her father, who were following, and said to the latter : " You had great influence but yesterday. Doctor Manette ; let it at least be tried. These judges, and all the men in power, are very friendly to you, and very recognizant of your services ; are they not ? " " Nothing connected with Charles was concealed from me« I had the strongest assurances that I should save him ; and I did." He returned the answer in great trouble, and very slowly. "Try them again. The hours between this and to-morrow afternoon are few and short, but try." " I intend to try. I will not rest a moment." " That's well. I have known such energy as yours do great things before now — though never," he added, with a smile and a sigh together, " such great things as this. But DUSK. try ! Of little worth as life is when we misuse it, it is worth that effort. It would cost nothing to lay down if it were not.'' " I will go," said Doctor Manette, " to the Prosecutor and the President straight, and I will go to others whom it is better not to name. I will write too, and But stay! There ia a celebration in the streets, and no one will be accessible until dark." " That's true. Well ! It is a forlorn hope at the best and not much the forlorner for being delayed till dark. I should like to know how you speed ; though, mind ! I expect nothing ! When are you likely to have seen these dread powers, Doctor Manette? " " Immediately after dark, I should hope. Within an hour or two from this." " It will be dark soon after four. Let us stretch the hour or two. If I go to Mr. Lorry's at nine, shall I hear what you have done, either from our friend or from yourself ? " " Yes." " May you prosper ! " Mr. Lorry followed Sydney to the outer door, and, touch- ing him on the shoulder as he was going away, caused him to turn. " I have no hope," said Mr. Lorry, in a low and sorrowful whisper. " Nor have I." " If any one of these men, or all of these men, were dis- posed to spare him — which is a large supposition ; for what is his life, or any man's to them ! — I doubt if they durst spare him after the demonstration in the court." " And so do I. I heard the fall of the axe in that sound." Mr. Lorry leaned his arm upon the door-post, and bowed his face upon it. " Don't despond," said Carton, very gently ; " don't grieve, I encouraged Doctor Manette in this idea, because I felt that it might one day be consolatory to her. Otherwise, she might think Miis life was .wantonly thrown away or wasted,' and that might trouble her." "Yes, yes, yes," returned Mr. Lorry, dry^ing his eyes, "you are right. But he will perish ; there is no real hope." "Yes. He will perish: there is no real hope," echoed Carton. And walked with a settled step, down stairs. 3i6 A TALE OF TWO C J TIES. CHAPTER XII. DARKNESS. Sydney Carton paused in the street, not quite decided where to go. " At Tellson's banking-house at nine," he said, with a musing face. " Shall I do well, in the mean time, to show myself ? I think so. It is best that these ^oeople should know there is such a man as I here ; it is a sound precaution, and may be a necessary preparation. But care, care, care 1 Let me think it out ! " Checking his steps which had begun to tend towards an object, he took a turn or two in the already darkening street, and traced the thought in his mind to its possible conse- quences. His first impression was confirmed. " It is best,'' he said, finally resolved, " that these people should know there is such a man as I here." And he turned his face to- wards Saint Antoine. Defarge had described himself, that day, as the keeper of a wine-shop in the Saint Antoine suburb. It was not difficult for one who knew the city well, to find his house without ask- ing any questions. Having ascertained its situation. Carton came out of those closer streets again, and dined at a place of refreshment and fell sound asleep after dinner. For the first time in many years, he had no strong drink. Since last night he had taken nothing but a little light thin wine, and last night he had dropped the brandy slowly down on Mr. Lorry's hearth like a man who had done with it. It was as late as seven o'clock when he awoke refreshed, and went out into the streets again. As he passed along towards Saint Antoine, he stopped at a shop-window where there was a mirror, and slightly altered the disordered ar- rangement of his loose cravat, and his coat-collar, and his wild hair. This done, he went on direct to Defarge's, and went in. There happened to be no customer in the shop but Jacques Three, of the restless fingers and the croaking voice. This man, whom he had seen upon the Jur}^ stood drinking at the little counter, in conversation with the Defarges, man and wife. The Vengeance assisted in the conversation, like a regular member of the establishment. As Carton walked in, took his seat and asked (in very in- DARKNESS, different French) for a small measure of wine, Madame De- farge cast a careless glance at him, and then a keener, and then a keener, and then advanced to him herself, and asked him what it was he had ordered. He repeated what he had already said. " English ? " asked Madame Defarge, inquisitively raising her dark eyebrows. After looking at her, as if the sound of even a single French word were slow to express itself to him, he answered, in his former strong foreign accent. Yes, madame, yes. I am English ! Madame Defarge returned to her counter to get the wine, and, as he took up a Jacobin journal and feigned to pore over it puzzling out its meaning, he heard her say, I swear to you, like Evremonde ! Defarge brought him the wine, and gave him Good-Even- ing. " How ? " Good-evening." " Oh ! Good-evening, citizen,'* filling his glass. " Ah ! and good wine. I drink to the Republic." Defarge went back to the counter, and said, Certainly, a little like." Madame sternly retorted, " I tell you a good deal like." Jacques Three pacifically remarked, " He is so much in your mind, see you, madame." The amiable Ven- geance added, with a laugh, "Yes, my faith ! And you are looking forward with so much pleasure" to seeing him once more to-morrow ! " Carton followed the lines and words of his paper, with a slow forefinger, and with a studious and absorbed face. They were all leaning their arms on the counter close together, speaking low. After a silence of a few moments, during which they all looked towards him without disturbing his out- ward attention from the Jacobin editor, they resumed their conversation. " It is true what madame says," observed Jacques Three. " Why stop ? There is great force in that. Why stop } " " Well, well," reasoned Defarge, " but one must stop somewhere. After all, the question is still where ? " " At extermination," said madame. " Magnificent ! " croaked Jacques Three. The Vengeance, also, highly approved. " Extermination is good doctrine, my wife," said Defarge^ A TALE OF TWO CITIES. rather troubled ; " in general, I say nothing against it. But ihis Doctor has suffered much ; you have seen him to-day ; you have observed his face when the paper was read." " I have observed his face ! " repeated madame, contempt- uously and angrily. " Yes. I have observed his face. I have observed his face to be not the face of a true friend od the Republic. Let him take care of his face ! " And you have observed, my wife," said Defarge, i,i a deprecatory manner, "the anguish of his daughter, whi.li must be a dreadful anguish to him j *' *^ I have observed his daughter," repeated madame ; "yes, I have observed his daughter, more times than one. 1 have observed her to-day, and I have observed he; other days. 1 have observed her in the court, and I have observed her in the street by the prison. Let me but lift my finger ! " She seems to raise it (the listener's eyes were always on his paper), and to let it fall with a rattle on the ledge before her, as if the axe had dropped. " The citizeness is superb ! " croaked the Juryman. " She is an Angel ! " said The Vengeance, and embraced her. " As to thee," pursued madame, implacably, addressing her husband, " if it depended on thee — which, happily, it does not — thou wouldst rescue this man even now." " No ! " protested Defarge. " Not if to lift this glass would do it ! But I would leave the matter there. I say, stop there." " See you then, Jacques," said Madame Defarge, wrath- fully; "and see you, too, my little Vengeance ; see you both! Listen ! For other crimes as tyrants and oppressors, I have this race a long time on my register, doomed to destruction and extermination. Ask my husband, is that so." " It is so," assented Defarge, without being asked. " In the beginning of the great days, when the Bastile falls, he finds this paper of to-day, and he brings it home, ^and in the middle of the night when this place is clear and ishut, we read it, here on this spot, by the, light of this lamp. Ask him, is that so." " It is so," assented Defarge. "That night, I tell him, when the paper is read through, and the lamp is burnt out, and the day is gleaming in above those shutters and between those iron bars, that I have now ft secret to cornmunicate. Ask him, is that so." 3^9 " It is so," assented Defarge again. " I communicate to him that secret, I smite this bosom with these two hands as I smite it now, and I tell him, * De- farge, I was brought up among the fishermen of the sea-shore, and that peasant family so injured by the two Evremonde brothers, as that Bastile paper describes, is my family. De* farge, that sister of the mortally wounded boy upon the ground was my sister, that husband was my sister's husband, that unborn child was their child, that brother was my brother, that father was my father, those dead are my dead, and that sunnnons to answer for those things descends to me ! ' Ask him, is that so." " It is so," assented Defarge once more. *'Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop," returned madame ; " but don't tell me." Both her hearers derived a horrible enjoyment from the deadly nature of her wrath — the listener could feel how white she was, without seeing her — and both highly commended it. Defarge, a weak minority, interposed a few words for the memory of the compassionate wife of the Marquis ; but only elicited from his own wife a repetition of her last reply. " Tell the Wind and the Fire where to stop ; not me Customers entered, and the group was broken up. The English customer paid for what he had had, perplexedly counted his change, and asked, as a stranger, to be directed towards the National Palace. Madame Defarge took him to the door, and put her arm on his, in pointing out the road. The English customer was not without his reflections then, that it might be a good deed to seize that arm, lift it, and strike under it sharp and deep. But, he went his way, and was soon swallowed up in the shadow of the prison wall. At the appointed hour, he emerged from it to present himself in Mr. Lorry's room again, where he found the old gentleman walking to and fro in restless aruiety. He said he had been with Lucie until just now, and had only left her for a few minutes, to come and keep his ap- pointment. Her father had not been seen, since he quitted the banking-house towards four o'clock. She had some faint hopes that his mediation might save Charles, but they were very slight. He had been more than five hours gone: where could he be ? Mr. Lorry waited until ten ; but, Doctor Manette not re- turning, and he being unwilling to leave I^ucie any longer, it A TALE OF TWO CITIES, was arranged that he should go back to her, and come to the banking-house again at midnight. In the meanwhile. Carton would wait alone by the fire for the Doctor. He waited and waited, and the clock struck twelve ; but Doctor Manette did not come back. Mr. Lorry returned, and found no tidings of him, and brought none. Where could he he} They were discussing this question, and were almost build^ ing up some weak structure of hope on his prolonged absence, when they heard him on the stairs. The instant he entered the room, it was plain that all was lost.. Whether he had really been to any one, or whether he had been all that time traversing the streets, was never known. As he stood staring at them, they asked him no question, for his face told them everything. " I cannot find it,'' said he, ^' and I must have it. Where is it?" His head and throat were bare, and, as he spoke with a helpless look straying all around, he took his coat off, and let it drop on the floor. " Where is my bench ? I have been looking everywhere for my bench, and I can't find it. What have they done with my work ? Time presses : I must finish those shoes." They looked at one another, and their hearts died within them. Come, come ! " said he, in a whimpering miserable way ; " let me get to work. Give me my work." Receiving no answer, he tore his hair, and beat his feet upon the ground, like a distracted child. " Don't torture a poor forlorn wretch," he implored them, with a dreadful cry ; but give me my work ! What is to be- come of us, if those shoes are not done to-night ? " Lost, utterly l^st ! It was so clearly beyond hope to reason with him, or try to restore him, — that — as if by agreement — they each put a hand upon his shoulder, and soothed him to sit down before the fire, with a promise that he should have his work presently. He sank into the chair, and brooded over the embers, and shed tears. As if all that had happened since the garret time were a momentary fancy, or a dream, Mr. Lorry saw him shrink into the exact figure that Defarge had had in keeping. Affected, and impressed with terror as they both were, by this spectacle of ruin, it was not a time to yield to such emcK DARKNESS. tions. His lonely daughter, bereft of her final hope and reli- ance, appealed to them both too strongly. Again, as if by agreement, they looked at one another with one meaning in their faces. Carton was the first to speak • " The last chance is gone ; it was not much. ; he had better be taken to her. But, before you go, will you, for a moment, steadily attend to me ? Don't ask me why I make the stipulations I am going to make, and exact the promise I am going to exact ; I have a reason — a good one." I do not doubt it," answered Mr. Lorry. " Say on." The figure in the chair between them, was all the time monotonously rocking itself to and fro, and moaning. They spoke in such a tone as they would have used if they had been watching by a sick-bed in the night. Carton stooped to pick up the coat, which lay almost entangling his feet. x\s he did so, a small case in which the Doctor was accustomed to carry the list of his day's duties, fell lightly on the floor. Carton took it up, and there was a folded paper in it. We should look at this ! " he said. Mr. Lorry nodded his consent. He opened it, and exclaimed, " Thank God ! " " What is it ? " asked Mr. Lorry, eagerly. " A moment ! Let me speak of it in its place. P'irst," he put his hand in his coat, and took another paper from it, that is the certificate which enables me to pass out of this city. Look at it. You see — Sydney Carton, an English- man ? " Mr. Lorr}'- held it- open in his hand, gazing in his earnest face. Keep it for me until to-morrow. I shall see him to- morrow, you remember, and I had better not take it into the prison." " Why not ? " " I don't know ; I prefer not to do so. Now, take this paper that Doctor Manette has carried about him. It is a similar certificate, enabling him and his daughter and her child, at any time, to pass the barrier and the frontier .J* You see 1 " " Yes ! " " Perhaps he obtained it as his last and utmost precaution against evil, yesterday. When-is it dated But no matter; don't stay to look ; put it up carefully with mine and your 322 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. own. Now, observe ! I never doubted until within this houT or two, that he had, or could have such a paper. It is good, until recalled. But it may be soon recalled, and, I have reason to think, will be." " They are not in danger ? " " They are in great danger. They are in danger of denunciation by Madame Defarge. I know it from her own lips. I have overheard words of that woman's to-night, which have presented their danger to me in strong colors. I have lost no time, and since then, I have seen the spy. He con^. firms me. He knows that a wood-sawyer, living by the prison-wall, is under the control of the Defarges, and has been rehearsed by Madame Defarge as to his having seen Her " — . he never mentioned Lucie's name — " making signs and signals to prisoners. It is easy to foresee that the pretence will be the common one, a prison plot, and that it will involve her life-^ and perhaps her child's — and perhaps her father's — for botlr have been seen with her at that place. Don't look so hor rified. You will save them all." " Heaven grant I may. Carton ! But how ? " " I am going to tell you how. It will depend on you, and it could depend on no better man. This new denunciation will certainly not take place until after to-morrow; probably not until two or three days afterwards ; more probably a week afterwards. You know it is a capital crime, to mourn for, or sympathize with, a victim of the Guillotine. She and her father would unquestionably be guilty of this crime, and this woman (the inveteracy of whose pursuit cannot be de^ scribed) would wait to add that strength to her case, and make herself doubly sure. You follow me ? " ^' So attentively, and with so much confidence in what you say, that for the moment I lose sight," touching the back of the Doctor's chair, even of this distress." " You have mone}^ and can buy the means of travelling to the sea-coast as quickly as the journey can be made. Your preparations have been completed for some days, to return to England. Early to-morrow have your horses ready, so that they may be in starting trim at two o'clock in the afternoon." " It shall be done ! " His manner was so fervent and inspiring, that Mr. Lorry caught the flame, and was as quick as youth. " You are a noble heart. Did I say we could depend upon no better man ? Tell her, to-night, what you know of DARKNESS. 323 her danger as involving her child and her father. Dwell upon that, for she would lay her own fair head beside her husband's cheerfully." He faltered for an instant ; then went on as be- fore. For the sake of her child and her father, press upon her the necessity of leaving Paris, with them and you, at that hour. Tell her that it was her husband's last arrangement. Tell her that more depends upon it than she dare believe, or hope. You think that her father, even in this sad state, will submit himself to her ; do you not 1 " "I am sure of it." " I thought so. Quietly and steadily have all these ar- rangements made in the court-yard here, even to the taking of your own seat in the carriage. The moment 1 come to you, take me in, and drive away." " I understand that I wait for you under all circum- stances ?" " You have my certificate in your hand with the rest, you know, and will reserve my place. Wait for nothing but to have my place occupied, and then for England ! " " Why, then," said Mr. Lorry, grasping his eager but so firm and steady hand, it does not all depend on one old man, but I shall have a young and ardent man at my side." By the help of Heaven you shall ! Promise me solemnly that nothing will influence you to alter the course on which we now stand pledged to one another." " Nothing, Carton." " Remember these words to-morrow : change the course, or delay in it — for any reason — and no life can possibly be saved, and many lives must inevitably be sacrificed." " I will remember them. I hope to do my part faith- fully." And I hope to do mine. Now, good-by ! " Though he said it with a grave smile of earnestness, and though he even put the old man's hand to his lips, he did not part from him then. He helped him so far to arouse the roc ; ling figure before the dying embers, as to get a cloak and Iiat put upon it, and to tempt it forth to find v/here the bench and work were hidden that it still moaningly besought to have. Pie walked on the other side of it and protected it to the court-yard of the house where the afflicted heart — so happy in the memorable time when he had revealed his own desolate heart to it — outwatched the awful night. He entered the court-yard and remained there for a few moments alone^ 324 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, looking up at the light in the window of her room. Before he went away, he breathed a blessing towards it, and a Fare* well. CHAPTER XIIL FIFTY-TWO. In the black prison of the Conciergerie, the doomed of the day awaited their fate. They were in number as the weeks of the year. Fifty-two vv^ere to roll that afternoon on the life- tide of the city to the boundless everlasting sea. Before their cells were quit of them, new occupants were appointed ; be- fore their blood ran into the blood spilled yesterday, the blood that was to mingle with theirs to-morrow was already set apart. Two score and twelve w^ere told off. From the farmer- general of seventy, whose riches could not buy his life, to the seamstress of twenty, whose poverty and obscurity could not save her. Physical diseases, engendered in the vices and neglects of men, will seize on victims of all degrees ; and the frightful moral disorder, born of unspeakable suffering, in- tolerable oppression, and heartless indifference, smote equally without distinction. Charles Darnay, alone in a cell, had" sustained himself with no flattering delusion since he came to it from the Tribunal. In every line of the narrative he had heard, he had heard his condemnation. He had fully comprehended that no personal influence could possibly save him, that he was virtually sentenced by the millions, and that units could avail him nothing. Nevertheless, it was not easy, with the face of his beloved wife fresh before him, to compose his mind to what it must bear. His hold on life was strong, and it was very, very hard, to loosen ; by gradual efforts and degrees unclosed a little here, it clenched the tighter there ; and when he brought his strength to bear on that hand and it yielded, this was closed again. There was a hurry, too, in all his thoughts, a turbulent and heated working of his heart, that contended against res- ignation. If, for a moment, he did feel resigned, then hii FIFTY-TWO. wife and child who had to live after him, seemed to protest and to make it a selfish thing. But, all this was at first. Before long, the consideration that there was no disgrace in the fate he must meet, and that numbers v/ent the same road wrongfully, and trod it firmly every day, sprang up to stimulate him. Next followed the thought that much of the future peace of mind enjoyable by the clear ones, depended on his quiet fortitude. So, by de- grees he calmed into the better state, when he could raise his thoughts much higher, and draw comfort down. Before it had set in dark on the night of his condemna- tion, he had travelled thus far on his last way. Being allowed to purchase the means of writing, and a light, he sat dow^n to write until such time as the prison lamps should be ex- tinguished. He wrote a long letter to Lucie, showing her that he had known nothing of her father's imprisonment, until he had heard of it from herself, and that he had been as ignorant as she of his father's and uncle's responsibility for that misery, until the paper had been read. He had already explained to her that his concealment from herself of the name he had re- linquished, was the one condition — fully intelligible now — • that her father had attached to their betrothal, and was the one promise he had still exacted on the morning of their mar- riage. He entreated her, for her father's sake, never to seek to know whether her father had become oblivious of the existence of the paper, or had had it recalled to him (for the moment, or for good), by the story of the Towner, on that old Sunday under the dear old plane-tree in the garden. If he had preserved any definite remembrance of it, there could be no doubt that he had supposed it destroyed with the Bastile, when he had found no mention of it among the relics of prisoners which the populace had discovered there, and which had been described to all the w^orld. He besought her — though he added that he knew it was needless — to console her father, by impressing him through every tender means she could think of, with the truth that he had done nothing for which he could justly reproach himself, but had uniformly for gotten himself for their joint sakes. Next to her preservation of his own last grateful love and blessing, and her overcoming ot her sorrow, to devote herself to their dear child, he adjurec} her, as they would meet in Heaven, to comfort her father. To her father himself, he wrote in the same strain j but^ 326 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. he told her father that he expressly confided his wife and child to his care. And he told him this, very strongly, with the hope of rousing him from any despondency or dangerous retrospect towards which he foresaw he might be tending. To Mr. Lorry, he commended them all, and explained his worldly affairs. That done, with many added sentences of grateful friendship and warm attachment, all was done. He never thought of Carton. His mind was so full of the others that he never once thought of him. He had time to finish these letters before the lights were put out. When he lay down on his straw bed he thought he had done with this world. But, it beckoned him back in his sleep, and showed itself in shining forms. Free and happy, back in the old house in Soho (though it had nothing in it like the real house), unac- countably released and light of heart, he was with Lucie again, and she told him it was all a dream, and he had never gone away. A pause of forgetfulness, and then he had even suffered, and had come back to her, dead and at peace, and yet there was no difference in him. Another pause of obliv- ion, and he awoke in the sombre morning, unconscious where he was or what had happened, until it flashed upon his mind, " this is the day of my death ! Thus, had he come through the hours, to the day when the fifty-two heads were to fall. And now, while he was com- posed, and hoped that he could meet the end with quiet heroism, a new action began in his waking thoughts, which was very difficult to master. He had never seen the instrument that was to terminate his life. How high it was from the ground, how many steps it had, where he would be stood, how he would be touched, whether the touching hands would be dyed red, which way his face would be turned, whether he would be the first, or might be the last : these and many similar questions, in no wise directed by his will, obtruded themselves over and over again, countless times. Neither were they connected with fear : he was conscious of no fear. Rather, they originated in a strange besetting desire to know what to do when the time came ; a desire gigantically disproportionate to the few swift moments to which it referred ; a wondering that was more like the wondering of some other spirit within his, than his own. The hours went on as he walked to and fro, and the FIFTY- TWO. 327 clocks struck the numbers he would never hear again. Nine gone for ever, ten gone for ever, eleven gone for ever, twelve coming on to pass away. After a hard contest with that ec- centric action of thought which had last perplexed him, he had got the better of it. He walked up and down softly re- peating their names to himself. The worst of the strife was over, He could walk up and down, free from distracting fancies, praying for himself and for them. Tw^elve gone for ever. He had been apprised that the final hour was three, and he knew he would be summoned sometime earlier, inasmuch as the tumbrils jolted heavily and slowly through the streets. Therefore, he resolved to keep two before his mind, as the hour, and so to strengthen himself in the interval that he might be able, after that time, to strengthen others. Walking regularly to and fro with his arms folded on his breast, a very different man from the prisoner, who had walked to and fro at La Force, he heard one struck away from him, without surprise. The hour had measured like most other hours. Devoutly thankful to Heaven for his recovered self-possession, he thought There is but another now,'' and turned to walk again. Footsteps in the stone passage outside the door. He stopped. The key was put in the lock, and turned. Before the door was opened, or as it opened, a man said in a low voice, in English : " He has never seen me here j I have kept out of his way. Go you in alone ; I Vv^ait near. Lose no time ! " The door w^as quickly opened and closed, and there stood before him face to face, quiet, intent upon him, with the light of a smile on his features, and a cautionary finger on his lip, Sydney Carton. There was something so bright and remarkable in his look, that, for the first moment, the prisoner misdoubted him to be an apparition of his own imagining. But, he spoke, and it was his voice ; he took the prisoner's hand, and it was his real grasp. " Of all the people upon earth, you least expected to see me? " he said. " I could not believe it to be you. I can scarcely believe it now. You are not " — the apprehension came suddenly into his mind — a prisoner ? " No. I am accidentally possessed of a power over one 328 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. of the keepers here, and in virtue of it I stand before you. I come from her — your wife, dear Darnay." The prisoner wrung his hand. " I bring you a request from her." "What is it? " A most earnest, pressing, and emphatic entreaty, ad- dressed to you in the most patlietic tones of the voice so deal to 3/0U, that you well remember." The piisoiier turned his face partly aside. You have no time to ask me why I bring it, or what it means ; I have no time to tell you. You must comply with it — take off those boots you wear, and draw on these of mine." There was a chair against the wall of the cell, behind the prisoner. Carton, pressing forward, had already, with the speed of lightning, got him down into it, and stood over him, barefoot. " Draw on these boots of mine. Put your hands to them \ put your will to them. Quick ! " " Carton, there is no escaping from this place ; it never can be done. You will only die with me. It is madness." " It would be madness if I asked you to escape ; but do I ? When I ask you to pass out at that door, tell me it is madness and remain here. Change that cravat for this of mine, that coat for this of mine. While you do it let me take this ribbon from your hair, and shake out your hair like this of mine ! " With wonderful quickness, and with a strength both of will and action, that appeared quite supernatural, he forced all these changes upon him. The prisoner was like a young child in his hands. " Carton ! Dear Carton ! It is madness. It cannot be accomplished, it never can be done, it has been attempted, and has always failed. I implore you not to add your death to the bitterness of mine." " Do I ask you, my dear Darnay, to pass the door ? When I ask that, refuse. There are pen and ink and papei on this table. Is your hand steady enough to write ? " " It was when you came in." Steady it again, and vv^rite what I shall dictate. Quick friend, quick ! " Pressing his hand to his bewildered head, Darnay sat down at the table. Carton, with his right hand in his breast stood close beside him. FIFTY- TWO, 329 "Write exactly as I speak.'* " To whom do I address it ? " " To no one." Carton still had his hand in his breast, "Do I date it?'' "No." The prisoner looked up, at each question. Carton, standing over him with his hand in his breast, looked down. " ' If you remember,' " said Carton, dictating, " ' the words that passed between us, long ago, you will readily comprehend this when you see it. You do remember them, I know. It is not in your nature to forget them.' " He was drawing his hand from his breast ; the prisoner chancing to look up in his hurried wonder as he wrote, the hand stopped, closing upon something. " Have you written ' forget them ? ' " Carton asked. " I have. Is that a weapon in your hand ? " " No ; I am not armed." "What is it in your hand ? " "You shall know directly. Write on; there are but a few words more." He dictated again. ^' ' 1 am thankful that the time has come, when I can prove them. That I do so is no subject for regret or grief.' " As he said these words with his eyes fixed on the writer, his hand slowly and softly moved down close to the writer's face. The pen dropped from Darnay's fingers on the table, and he looked about him vacantly. " What vapor is that ? " he asked. "Vapor?" " Something that crossed me ? " " I am conscious of nothing ; there can be nothing here. Take up the pen and finish. Hurry, hurry ! " As if his memory were impaired, or his faculties disordered, the prisoner made an effort to rally his attention. As he looked at Carton with clouded eyes and with an altered manner of breathing. Carton — his hand again in his breast — looked steadily at him. " Hurry^, hurry ! " The prisoner bent over the paper, once more. " ' If it had been otherwise ; ' " Carton's hand was again watchfully and softly stealing down ; " * I never should have used the longer opportunity. If it had been otherwise ; ' " the hand was at the prisoner's face j " ' I should but have had so much the iiioie to answer for. If it had been otherwise — ' 330 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Carton looked at the pen and saw it was trailing oH into un intelligible signs. Carton's hand moved back to his breast no more. The prisoner sprang up with a reproachful look, but Carton's hand was close and firm at his nostrils, and Carton's left arm caught him around the waist. For a few seconds he vainl) struggled with the man who had come to lay down his life i n him ; but, within a minute or so, he was stretched insensible on the ground. Quickly, but with hands as true to thepurpose as his heart was, Carton dressed himself in the clothes the prisoner had laid aside, combed back his hair, and tied it with the ribbon the prisoner had worn. Then, he softly called, " Enter there ! Come in ! and the Spy presented himself. You see ? " said Carton, looking up, as he kneeled on . one knee beside the insensible figure, putting the paper in the breast : " is your hazard very great ? " " Mr. Carton,'' the Spy answered, with a timid snap oi his lingers, " my hazard is not that, in the thick of business here, if you are true to the whole of your bargain." " Don't fear me. I will be true to the death." " You must be, Mr. Carton, if the tale of fifty-two is to be right. Being made right by you in that dress, I shall have no fear." " Have no fear ! I shall soon be out of the w^ay of harm- ing you, and the rest will soon be far from here, please God ! Now, get assistance and take me to the coach." " You ? " said the . Spy nervously. "Him, man, with whom I have exchanged. You go out at the gate by which you brought me in ? " "Of course." " I was weak and faint when you brought me in, and I arn fainter now you take me out. The parting interview has over- powered me. Such a thing has happened here, often, and too often. Your life is in your own hands. Quick ! Call assistance ! " " You swear not to betray me ? " said the trembling Spy. as he paused for a last moment. " Man, man ! " returned Carton, stamping his foot; *Miave I sworn by no solemn vow already, to go through with this, that you v^^aste the precious moments now t Take him your- self to the court-yard you know of, place him yourself in the carriage, show him yourself to Mr. Lorry, tell him yourself to FJFTY-TWO, give him no restorative but air, and to remember my words of jast night, and his promise of last night, and drive away ! " The Spy withdrew, and Carton seated himself at the table, resting his forehead on his hands. The Spy returned imme- diately, with two men. " How, then ? said one of them, contemplating the fallen figure. " So afflicted to find that his friend has drawn a prize in the lottery of Sainte Guillotine ? " "A good patriot/' said the other, "could hardly have % been more afflicted if the Aristocrat had drawn a blank.'' They raised the unconscious figure, placed it on a litter they had brought to the door, and bent to carry it away. " The time is short, Evremonde," said the Spy, in a warn- ing voice. " I know it well," answered Carton. " Be careful of my friend, I entreat you, and leave me." " Come, then, my children," said Barsad. " Lift him, and come away 1 " The door closed, and Carton was left alone. Straining his powers of listening to the utmost, he listened for any sound that might denote suspicion or alarm. There was none. Keys turned, doors clashed, footsteps passed along distant passages ; no cry was raised, or hurry made, that seemed un- usual. Breathing more freely in a little while, he sat down at the table, and listened again until the clock struck two. Sounds that he was not afraid of, for he divined their meaning, then began to be audible. Several doors were opened in succession, and finally his own. A jailer, with a hst in his hand, looked in, merely saying, "Follow me, Evr^monde ! " and he followed into a large dark room, at a distance. It was a dark winter day, and what with the shad- ows without, he could but dimly discern the others who were brought there to have their arms bound. Some were stand- ing ; some seated. Some were lamenting, and in restless motion ; but, these were few. The great majority were silent and still, locking fixedly at the ground. As he stood by the wall in a dim corner, while some of the fifty-two were brought in after him, one man stopped in passing, to embrace him, as having a knowledge of him. It thrilled him with a great dread of discovery: but the man went on. A veiy few moments after that, a young woiftan, with a sliglit girlish form, a sweet spare face in which there was no vestige of cclofj and large widely queued patient eyes, ros(9 333 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. from the seat where he had observed her sitting, and came ta speak to him. " Citizen Evremonde," she said, touching him with hel cold hand. I am a poor little seamstress, who was with you in La Force.'*' He murmured for answer : " True. I forget what you were accused of 1 " " Plots. Though the just Heaven knows I am innocent of any. Is it likely ? Who would think of plotting with a poor little weak creature like me ? " 4 The forlorn smile with which she said it, so touched him, that tears started from his eyes. " I am not afraid to die, Citizen Evremonde, but I have done nothing. I am not unwilling to die, if the Republic which is to do so much good to us poor, will profit by my death ; but I do not know how that can be. Citizen Evre- monde. Such a poor weak little creature ! As the last thing on earth that his heart was to warm and soften to, it warmed and softened to this pitiable girl. " I heard you were released, Citizen Evremonde. I hoped it was true ? It was. But, I was again taken and condemned.'^ " If I may ride with you. Citizen Evremonde, will you let me hold your hand 1 I am not afraid, -but I am little and weak, and it will give me more courage. As the patient eyes were lifted to his face, he saw a sud- den doubt in them, and then astonishment. He pressed the work-worn, hunger worn young fingers, and touched his lips. " Are you dying for him ? she whispered. " And his wife and child. Hush ! Yes." " O you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger? " Hush ! Yes, my poor sister; to the last." The same shadows that are falling on the prison, are fall- ing, in that same hour of the early afternoon, on the Barrier with the crowd about it, when a coach going out of Paris drives up to be examined. " Who goes here ? Whom have we within ? Papers ! " The papers are handed out, and read. "Alexandre Manette. Physician. French. Which is he ? " . This is he ; this helpless, inarticulately murmuring, warv daring old man pointed out. FIFTY-TWO. 333 " Apparently the Citizen-Doctor is not in his right mind ? The Revolution-fever will have been too much for him ? Greatly too much for him. " Hah ! Many will suffer it. Lucie. His daughter. French. Which is she ? " This is she. " Apparently it must be. Lucie, the wife of Evremonde \ 3 it not i*" It is. " Hah ! Evremonde has an assignation elsewhere. Lucie, her child. English. This is she ? She and no other. " Kiss me, child of Evremonde. • Now, thou hast kissed a good Republican ; something new in thy family ; remember it ! Sydney Carton. Advocate. English. Which is he t He lies here, in this corner of the carriage. He too, is pointed out. ^' Apparently the English advocate is in a swoon ? " It is hoped he will recover in the fresher air. It is repre- sented that he is not in strong health, and has separated sadly from a friend who is under the displeasure of the Re- public. " Is that all ? It is not a great deal, that ! Many are under the displeasure of the Republic, and must look out at the little window. Jarvis Lorry. Banker. English. Which is he?" " I am he. Necessarily being the last." It is Jarvis Lorry who has replied to all the previous ques- tions. It is Jarvis Lorry who has alighted and stands with his hand on the coach door, replying to a group of officials. They leisurely walk round the carriage and leisurely mount the box, to look at what little luggage it carries on the roof ; the country-people hanging about, press nearer to the coach doors and greedily stare in ; a little child, carried by its mother, has its short arm held out for it, that it may touch the wife of an aristocrat who has gone to the Guillotine. " Behold your papers, Jarvis Lorry, countersigned." " One can depart, citizen ? " One can depart. Forward, my postilions ! A good journey ! " " I salute you, citizens. — And the first danger passed ! " These are again the words of Jarvis Lorry, as he clasps his hands, and looks upward. There is terror in the carriage, 334 A TALE OF TWO CITIES- there is weeping, there is the heavy breathing of the insen sible traveller. " Are we not going too slowly ? Can they not be induced to go faster ? " asks Lucie, clinging to the old man. " It would seem like flight, my darling. I must not urge them too much ; it would rouse suspicion." " Look back, look back, and see if we are pursued ! " The road is clear, my dearest. So far, we are not pur sued." Houses in twos and threes pass by us, solitary farms, ruinous buildings, dye works, tanneries, and the like, open country, avenues of leafless trees. The hard uneven pave- ment is under us, the soft deep mud is on either side. SomiC- times, we strike into the skirting mud, to avoid the stones that clatter us and shake us ; sometimes we stick in ruts and sloughs there. The agony of our impatience is then so great, that in our wild alarm and hurry we are for getting out and running — hiding — doing anything but stopping. Out of the open country, in again among ruinous buildings, solitary farms, dye works, tanneries, and the like, cottages in twos and threes, avenues of leafless trees. Have these men deceived us, and taken us back by another road ? Is not this the same place twice over? Thank Heaven, no. A village. Look back, look back, and see if we are pursued ! Hush ! the posting-house. Leisurely, our four horses are taken out ; leisurely, the coach stands in the little street, bereft of horses, and with no likelihood upon it of ever moving again ; leisurely, the new horses come into visible existence, one by one ; leisurely, the new postilions follow, sucking and plaiting the lashes of their whips ; leisurely, the old postilions count their money, make wrong additions, and arrive at dissatisfied results. All the time, our overfraught hearts are beating at a rate that would far outstrip the fastest gallop of the fastest horses ever foaled. At length the new postilions are in their saddles, and the old are left behind. We are through the village, up the hill, and down the hill, and on the low watery grounds. Suddenly, the postilions exchange speech with animated gesticulation, and the horses are pulled up, almost on their haunches. We are pursued " Ho ! Within the carriage there. Speak then ! " " What is it ? " asked Mr. Lorry, looking out at window. How many did they say? " THE KNITTING DONE. 335 I do not understand you." " — At the last post. How many to the Guillotine to day ? " " Fifty-two.'^ " I said so ! A brave number ! My fellow-citizen here would have it forty-two ; ten more heads are worth having. The Guillotine goes handsomely. I love it. Hi forward. Whoop ! " The night comes on dark. He moves more ; he is begin- ning to revive, and to speak intelligibly : he thinks they are still together ; he asks him, by his name, what he has in his hand. O pity us, kind Heaven, and help us ! Look out, look out, and see if we are pursued. The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of us ; but, so far, we are pursued by nothing else. CHAPTER XIV. THE KNITTING DONE. In that same juncture of time when the Fifty-Two awaited their fate, MadamiC Defarge held darkly ominous council with The Vengeance and Jacques Three of the Revolutionary Jury. Not in the wine-shop did Madame Defarge confer with these ministers, but in the shed of the v;ood-sawyer, erst a mender of roads. The sawyer himself did not participate in the con- ference, but abided at a little distance, like an outer satellite who was not to speak until required, or to offer an opinion until invited. " But our Defarge," said Jacques Three, "is undoubtedly a good Republican Eh ? " " There is no better,'' the voluble Vengeance protested in her shrill notes, " in France." Peace, little Vengeance," said Madame Defarge, laying her hand with a slight frown on her lieutenant's lips, " hear me speak. My husband, fellow-citizen, is a good Republican and a bold man ; he has deserved well of the Republic, and 15 33(5 A TALE OF TWO CITIES possesses its confidence. But my husband has his weaknesseS| and he is so weak as to relent towards this Doctor." It is a great pity," croaked Jacques Three, dubiously shaking his head, with his cruel fingers at his hungry mouth \ ^'it is not quite like a good citizen ; it is a thing to regret. ' " See you/^ said madame, " I care nothing for this Doct or. [ Pie may v/ear his head or lose it, for any iniercst I f i him ; it is all one to me. But, the Evremonvie p'jop;:^ i.'- I J be e::terminated, and the vvite and child masL loiuw il. w husband and father." She has a fine head for it," croaked Jacques Three. " I have seen blue eyes and golden hair there, and they looked charming when Samson held them up." Ogre that he was^ he spoke like an epicure. Madame Defarge cast down her eyes, and reflected a little. , " The child also," observed Jacques Three, with a medita- tive enjoyment of his words, has golden hair and blue eyes. And we seldom have a child there. It is a pretty sight ! " In a word," said Madame Defarge, commg out of her short abstraction, " I cannot trust my husband in this matter. Not only do I feel, since last night, that I dare not confide to him the details of my projects ; but also I feel that if 1 delay, there is danger of his 'giving warning, and then they might escape." " That must never be," croaked Jacques Three ; no one must escape. We have not half enough as it is. We ought to have six score a day." "In a word," Madame Defarge went on, "my husband has not my reason for pursuing this familv to annihilation, and I liave not his reason for regardirr;:^ this Doctor v;ith any sensibility. 1 must act for myself, therefore. Come hither, little ciiizen." The v/ood-saw3\'?r, who held her in the respect, and himself :n the submission of mortal fear, advanced wiuh his hand to nis red cap. •'Touching those sirrnals, little citizen," sa'd M.^dam.e De- far2:e, sternly, "thatshic made to the prisoners ] ycu are ready to bear witness to them this very day? " Ay, ay, v/hy not ! " cried the sav^yer. " Eveiy da-' in all weathers, from two to four, always signalling, sometimes with the little one, sometimes without. I know what I know. I have seen with my eyes." 7^HE KNITTING DONE. 337 He made all manner of gestures while he spoke, as if in incidental imitation of some few of the great diversity of sig- nals that he had never seen. *' Clearly plots," said Jacques Three. "Transparently ! "There is no doubt of the Jury ? " inquired Madame De^ farge, letting her eyes turn to him, with a gloomy smile. " Rely upon the patriotic Jury, dear citizeness. I answer for my fellow Jurymen." ^* Now, let me see," said Madame Defarge, pondering again. "Yet once more ! Can I spare this Doctor to my husband ? I have no feeling either way. Can I spare him ? " " He would count as one dead," observed Jacques Three, in a low voice. " We really have not heads enough ; it would be a pity, I think." " He was signalling with her when I saw her," argued Madame Defarge ; " I cannot speak of one vv^ithout the other \ and I must not be silent, and trust the case wholly to him, this little citizen here. For, I am not a bad witness." The Vengeance and Jacques Three vied with each other in their fervent protestations that she was the most admirable and marvellous of witnesses. The little citizen, not to be out- done, declared her to be a celestial witness. " He must take his chance," said Madame Defarge. " No, I cannot spare him ! You are engaged at three o'clock ; you are going to see the batch of to-day executed. — You ? " The question was addressed to the wood-sawyer, who hurriedly replied in the affirmative : seizing the occasion to add that he was the most ardent of Republicans, and that he would be in effect the most desolate of Republicans, if any- thing prevented him from enjoying the pleasure of smoking his afternoon pipe in the contemplation of the droll national barber. He w^as so very demonstrative herein, that he might have been suspected (perhaps was, by the dark eyes that looked contemptuously at him out of Madame Defarge's head) of having his small individual fears for his own personal safety every hour in the day. ** I," said madam e, " am equally enf^aged at the same place. After it is over — say at eight to-night — come you to me, in Saint Antoine, and we will give information against these people at my Section." The wood-sawyer said he would be proud and flattered to attend tha citizeness. The citizeness looking at him, he be 338 A TALE OF TWO CfTIES. came embarrassed, evaded her glance as a small dog would have done, retreated among his wood, and hid his confusion over the handle of his saw. Madame Defarge beckoned the Jurj^an and The Ven- geance a little nearer to the door, and there expounded her further views to fnem thus : " She will now be at home, awaiting the moment of his death. She will be mourning and grieving. She will be in a state of mind to impeach the justice of the Republic. She will be full of sympathy with its enemies. I will go to her." " What an admirable woman ; what an adorable woman ! exclaimed Jacques Three, rapturously. " Ah, my cherished ! " cried The Vengeance ; and embraced her. "Take you my knitting," said Madame Defarge, placing it in her lieutenant's hands, " and have it ready for me in my usual seat. Keep me my usual chair. Go you there, straight, for there will probably be a greater concourse than usual, to day." " I willingly obey the orders of my Chief," said The Ven- geance with alacrity, and kissing her cheek. " You will not be late ? " " I shall be there before the commencement." " And before the tumbrils arrive. Be sure you are there my soul," said The Vengeance, calling after her, for she had already turned into the street, " before the tumbrils arrive ! " Madame Defarge slightly waved her hand, to imply that she heard, and might be relied upon to arrive in good time, and so went through the mud, and round the corner of the prison wall. The Vengeance and the Juryman, looking after her as she walked away, were highly appreciative of her fine figure, and her superb moral endowments. There were many women at that time, upon whom the time laid a dreadfully disfiguring hand ; but, there was not one among them more to be dreaded than this ruthless woman, now taking her way along the streets. Of a strong and fearless character, of shrewd sense and readiness, of great determination, of that kind of beauty which not only seems to impart to its possessor firmness and animosity, but to strike into others an instinctive recognition of those qualities ; the troubled time would have heaved her up, under any circum- stances. But, imbued from her childhood with a brooding sense of wrong, and an inveterate hatred of a class, opportu- nity had developed her into a tigress. She v/as absolutely THE KNITTING DONE. 339 without pity. If she had ever had the virtue in her, it had quite gone out of her. It was nothing to her, that an innocent man was to die foT the sins of his forefathers ; she saw, not him, but them. It was nothing to her, that his wife was to be made a widow and his daughter an orphan ; that was insufficient punishment^ because they were her natural enemies and her pre}^, and as such had no right to Uve. To appeal to her, was made hope less by her having no sense of pity, even for herself. If she had been laid low in the streets, in any of the many encoun- ters in which she had been engaged, she would not have pitied herself ; nor, if she had been ordered to the axe to- morrow, would she have gone to it with any softer feeling than a fierce desire to change places with the man who sent her there. Such a heart Madame Defarge carried under her rough robe. Carelessly worn, it was a becoming robe enough, in a certain weird way, and her dark hair looked rich under her coarse red cap. Lying hidden in her bosom, was a loaded pistol. Lying hidden at her waist, was a sharpened dagger. Thus accoutred, and walking with the confident tread of such a character, and with the supple freedom, of a woman who had habitually walked in her girlhood, bare foot and bare- legged, on the brown sea-sand, Madame Defarge took her way along the streets. Now, when the journey of the travelling coach, at that very moment waiting for the completion of its load, had been planned out last night, the difficulty of taking Miss Pross in it had much engaged Mr. Lorry's attention. It was not merely desirable to avoid overloading the coach, but it was of the highest importance that the time occupied in examining it and its passengers, should be reduced to the utmost ; since their escape might depend on the saving of only a few sec- onds here and there. Finally, he had proposed, after anxious consideration, that Miss Pross and Jerry, who were at liberty to leave the city, should leave it at three o'clock in the lightest wheeled conveyance known to that period. Unincumbered with luggage, they would soon overtake the coach, and, pass- ing it and preceding it on the road, would order its horses in advance, and greatly facilitate its progress during the precious hours of the night, when delay was the most to be dreaded. Seeing in this arrangement the hope of rendering real service in that pressing emergency, Miss Pross hailed it with 340 A 7' ALE OF TWO CITIES. joy. She and Jerry had beheld the coach start, had known who it was that Solomon brought, had passed some ten min- utes in tortures of suspense, and were now concluding theil arrangements to follow the coach, even as Madame Defarge, taking her way through the streets, now 'drew nearer and nearer to the else-deserted lodging in which they held tneir consultation Now what do you think, Mr. Cruncher, said Miss Pross^ whose agitation was so great that she could hardly speak, or stand, or move, or live : " what do you think of our not start- ing from this court-yard ? Another carriage having already gone from here to-day, it might awaken suspicion." " My opinion, miss," returned Mr. Cruncher, is as you're right. Likewise wot I'll stand by you, right or wrong." " I am so distracted with fear and hope for our precious creatures," said Miss Pross, wildly crying, " that I am inca- pable of forming any plan. Are yoii capable of forming any plan, my dear good Mr. Cruncher ? " " Respectin' a future spear o' life, miss," returned Mr. Cruncher, " I hope so. Respectin' any present use o' this here blessed old head o' mine, I think not. Would you do me the favor, miss, to take notice o' two promises and wows wot it is my wishes fur to record in this here crisis ? " " Oh, for gracious sake ! " cried Miss Pross, still wildly crying, record them at once, and get them out of the way, like an excellent man." First," said Mr. Cruncher, who was all in a tremble, and who spoke with an ashy and solemn visage, " them poor things well out o' this, never no more will I do it, never no more ! " " I am quite sure, Mr. Cruncher," returned Miss Pross, "that you never will do it again, whatever it is, and I beg you not to think it necessary to mention more particularly what it is." No, miss," returned Jerry, it shall not be named to you. Second : them poor things well out o' this, and never no more . will I interfere with Mrs. Cruncher's flopping, never no more ! " " Whatever housekeeping arrangement that may be,'^ said Miss Pross, striving to dry her eyes and compose herself, I have no doubt it is best that Mrs. Cruncher should have it entirely under her own superintendence. — O my poor dar- lings ! " " I go so far as to say, miss, morehover," proceeded Mr. Cruncher, with a most alarming tendency to hold forth as THE KNITTING DONE. 345 from a pulpit — and let my words be took down and took to Mrs. Cruncher through yourself — that wot my opinions re= spectin' flopping has undergone a change, and that wot I only hope with all my heart as Mrs. Crunche-r may be flopping at the present time." ''There, there, there ! I hope she is, my dear man," cried the distracted Miss Pross, "and I hope she flnds it an^\ve^]n^,^, '.:ier expectations." " Forbid it," proceeded Mr. Cruncher, with additional so iemnity, additional slowness, and additional tendency to hold forth and hold out, " as anything wot I have ever said or clone should be wisited on my earnest wishes for them poor creeturs now ! Forbid it as we shouldn't all flop (if it was anyways conwenient) to get 'em out o' this here dismal risk ! Forbid it, miss ! Wot I say, for — bid it ! " This was Mr. Cruncher's conclusion after a protracted but vain endeavor to find a bet- ter one. And still Madame Defarge, pursuing her way along the streets, came nearer and nearer. " If we ever get back to our native land," said Miss Pross, "you- may rely upon my telling Mrs. Cruncher as much as I may be able to remember and understand of what you have so impressively said ; and at all events you may be sure 'that I shall bear witness to your being thoroughly in earnest at this dreadful time. Now, pray let us think ! My esteemed Mr. Cruncher let us think ! " Still, Madame Defarge, pursuing her way along the streets, came nearer and nearer. " If you were to go before," said Miss Pross, "and stop the vehicle and horses from coming here, and were to wait somewhere for me ; wouldn't that be best " Mr. Cruncher thought it might be best. " Where could you wait for me ? '^ asked Miss Pross. Mr. Cruncher was so bewildered that he could think of no locality but Temple Ear. Alas ! Temple Ear was hundreds of miles away, and Madame Defarge was drawing very near indeed. *'Eythe cathedral door," said Miss Pross. ''Would it be much out of the way, to take me in, near the great cathedral door between the two towers ? No, miss," answered Mr. Cruncher. "Then, like the best of men," said Miss Pross, "go to the posting-house straight, and make that change." 342 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, I am doubtful,*' said Mr. Cruncher, hesitating and shafe ing his head, " about leaving of you, you see. We don't knoM what may happen." "Heaven knows -we don't," returned Miss Pross, "but have no fear for me. Take me in at the cathedral, at three o'clock, or as near it as you can, and I am sure it will be better than our going from here. 1 feel certain of it. There ! Bless you, Mr. Cruncher 1 Think — not of me, but of the lives that may depend on both of us ! This exordium, and Miss Press's two hands in quite ag- onized entreaty clasping his, decided Mr. Cruncher. With an encouraging nod or two, he immediately went out to alter the arrangements, and left her by herself to follow as she had proposed. The having originated a precaution which was already in course of execution, vv^as a great relief to Miss Pross, The" necessity of composing her appearance so that it should at- tract no special notice in the streets, was another relief. She looked at her watch, and it was twenty minutes past two. She had no time to lose, but must get ready at once. Afraid, in her extreme perturbation, of the loneliness of. the deserted rooms, and of half-imagined faces peeping from behind every open door in them, Miss Pross got a basin of cold water and began laving her eyes, which were swollen and red. Haunted by her feverish apprehensions, she could not bear to have her sight obscured for a minute at a time by the dripping water, but constantly paused and looked round to see that there was no one watching her. In one of those pauses she recoiled and cried out, for she saw a figure stand- ing in the room. The basin fell to the ground broken, and the water flowed to the feet of Madame Defarge. By strange stern ways, and through much staining blood, those feet had come to meet that water. Madame Defarge looked coldly at her, and said, " The wife of Evremonde ; where is she ? " It flashed upon Miss-Pross's mind that the doors were all standing open, and wjould suggest the flight. Her first act was to shut them. There were four in the room, and she shut them all. She then placed herself before the door of the chamber which Lucie had occupied. Madame Defarge's dark eyes followed her through this rapid movement, and rested on her when it was finished. THK KNITTING DONE. 343 Miss Pross had nothing beautiful about her ; years had not tamed the wildness, or softened the grimness, of her appear- ance ; but, she too was a determined woman in her different way, and she measured Madame Defarge with her eyes, every inch. "You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Luci^ fer," said Miss Pross, in her breathing. " Nevertheless, you shall not get the better of me. I am an Englishwoman." Madame Defarge looked at her scornfully, but still with something of Miss Pross's own perception that they two were at bay. She saw a tight, hard, wiry woman before her, as Mr. Lorry had seen in the same figure a woman with a strong hand, in the years gone by. She knew full well that Miss Pross was the family's devoted friend ; Miss Pross knew full well that Madame Defarge was the family's malevolent en- emy. " On my way yonder,'^ said Madame Defarge, with a slight movement of her hand towards the fatal spot, " where they reserve my chair and my knitting for me, I am come to make my compliments to her in passing. I wish to see her." " I know that your intentions are evil," said Miss Pross, "and you may depend upon it, I'll hold my own against them." Each spoke in her own language ; neither understood the other's words ; both were very watchful, and intent to deduce from look and manner, what the unintelligible words meant. It will do her no good to keep herself concealed from me at this moment," said Madame Defarge. "Good patriots will know what that means. Let me see her. Go tell her that I wish to see her. Do you hear ? " " If those eyes of yours v/ere bed-winches," returned Miss Pross, " and I was an English four-poster, they shouldn't lose a splinter of me. No, you wicked foreign woman ; I am your match." Madame Defarge was not likely to follow these idiomatic remarks in detail ; but, she so far understood them as to per- ceive that she was set at naught. " Woman imbecile and pig-like ! " said Madame Defarge, frowning. " I take no answer from you. I demiand to see her. Either tell her that I demand to see her, or stand out of the way of the door and let me go to her ! " This, with an angry explanatory wave of her right arm. " I little thought," said Miss Press, " that J should evef 344 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. want to understand your nonsensical language; but I would give all I have, except the clothes I wear, to know whether you suspect the truth, or any part of it." Neither of them for a single moment released the other's eyes. Madame Detarge had not moved from the spot where she stood when Miss Pross first became aware of her ; but, she now advanced one step. I am a Briton," said Miss Pross, " I am desperate. 1 don't care an English Twopence for myself. I know that the longer I keep you here, the greater hope there is for my Ladybird. I'll not leave a handful of that dark hair upon your head, if you lay a finger on me ! " Thus Miss Pross, with a shake of her head and a flash of her eyes between every rapid sentence, and every rapid sen- tence a whole breath. Thus Miss Pross, who had never struck a blow in her life. But, her courage was of that emotional nature that it brought the irrepressible tears into her eyes. This was a courage that Madame Defarge so little comprehended as to mistake for weakness. Ha, ha ! " she laughed,/' you poor wretch ! What are you worth ! I address myself to that Doctor." Then she raised her voice and called out, " Citizen Doctor ! Wife of Evremonde ! Child of Evremonde 1 Any person but this miserable fool, answer the Citizeness De- farge ! " Perhaps the following silence, perhaps some latent dis- closure in the expression of Miss Press's face, perhaps a sudden misgiving apart from either suggestion, whispered to Madame Defarge that they were gone. Three of the doors she opened swiftly, and looked in. " Those rooms are all in disorder, there has been hurried packing, there are odds and ends upon the ground. There is no one in that room behind you ! Let me look." " Never ! " said Miss Pross, who understood the request as perfectly as Madame Defarge understood the answer. '' If they are not in that room, they are gone, and can be pursued and brought back," said Madame Defarge to herself. **As long as you don't know whether they are in that room or not, you are uncertain what to do," said Miss Pross to herself ; ^'and you shall not know that, if I can prevent }our knowing it : and know that, or not know that, you shall not leave here while I can hold you." J have been in the streets from the first, nothing has THE KNITTING DONE. 345 Stopped me, I will tear you to pieces, but I will have you froni that door," said Madame Defarge. We are alone at the top of a high house in a solitary court-yard, we are not likely to be heard, and I pray for bodily strength to keep you here, while every minute you are here is worth a hundred thousand guineas to my darling," said Miss Pross. Madame Defarge made at the door. Miss Pross, on the instinct of the moment, seized her round the waist in both her arms, and held her tight. It was in vain for Madame De- farge to struggle and to strike ; Miss Pross, with the vigorous tenacity of love, always so much stronger than hate, clasped her tight, and even lifted her from the floor in the struggle that they had. The two hands of Madame Defarge buffeted and tore her face ; but. Miss Pross, with her head down, held her round the waist, and clung to her with more than the holcf of a drowning woman. Soon, Madame Defarge's hands ceased to strike, and felt at her encircled waist. " It is under my arm," said Miss Pross, in smothered tones, you shall not draw it. I am stronger than you, I bless Heaven for it. I'll hold you till one or other of us faints or dies ! " Madame Defarge's hands were at her bosom. Miss Pross looked up, saw what it w^as, struck at it, struck out a flash and a crash, and stood alone — blinded with smoke. All this was in a second. As the smoke cleared, leaving an awful stillness, it passed out on the air, like the soul of the furious woman whose body lay lifeless on the ground. In the first fright and horror of her situation, Miss Pross passed the body as far from it as she could, and ran down the stairs to call for fruitless help. Happily, she bethought herself of the consequences of what she did, in time to check herself and go back. It was dreadful 4o go in at the door again ; but, she did go in, and even went near it, to get the bonnet and other things that she must wear. These she put on, out on the staircase, first shutting and locking the door and taking away the key. She then sat down on the stairs a few moments to breathe and to cry, and then got up and hurried away. By good-fortune she had a veil on her bonnet, or she could hardly have gone along the streets without being stopped. By good-fortune, too, she was naturally so peculiar in appearance as not to show disfigurement like any other 346 A 'TALE OF TWO C/T/TS. woman. She needed both advantages, for the marks of- griping fingers were deep in her face, and her hair was torn, and her dress (hastily composed with unsteady hands) was clutched and dragged a hundred ways. In crossing the bridge, she dropped the door key in the river. Arriving at the cathedral some few minutes before her escort, and waiting there, she thought, what if the key were already taken in a net, what if it were identified, what if the door were opened and the remains discovered, what if she were stopped at the gate, sent to prison, and charged with murder ! In the midst of these fluttering thoughts, the escort appeared, took her in, and took her away. " Is there any noise in the streets " she asked him. " The usual noises," Mr. Cruncher replied ; and looked surprised by the question and by her aspect. " I don't hear you," said Miss Pross. " What do you say ? " ' It was in vain for Mr. Cruncher to repeat what he said ; Miss Pross could not hear him. " So I'll nod my head,'^ thought Mr. Cruncher, amazed, at all events she'll see that.'* And she did. " Is there any noise in the streets now " asked Miss Pross again, presently. Again Mr. Cruncher nodded his head. " I don't hear it." " Gone deaf in a hour ? " said Mr. Cruncher, ruminating, with his mind much disturbed ; " wot's com.e to her " " I feel," said Miss Pross, ^' as if there had been a flash and a crash, and that crash was the last thing I should ever hear in this life." " Blest if she ain't in a queer condition ! " said Mr. Cruncher, more and more disturbed. "Wot can she have been a takin', to kee^p her courage up? Hark ! There's the roll of them dreadful carts ! Y ou can hear that, miss 1 " " I can hear," said Miss Pross, seeing that he spoke to her, " nothing. O, my good man, there was first a great crash, and then a great stillness, and that stillness seems to be fixed and unchangeable, never to be broken any more as long as my life lasts." If she don't hear the roll of those dreadful carts, now very nigh their journey's end," said Mr. Cruncher, glancing over his shoulder, " it's my opinion that indeed she never will hear anything else in this world." And indeed she never did. ^THE FOOTSTEPS DIE OUT FOR EVER, CHAPTER XV. THE FOOTSTEPS DIE OUT FOR EVER. Along 'he Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day's wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and insatiate Monsters imagined since im- agination could record itself, are fused in the one realization. Guillotine. And yet there is not in France, with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a pepper- corn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more cer- tain than those that have produced this horror. Crush human- ity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sov/ the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind. Six tumbrils roll along the streets. Change these back again to what they w^ere, thou powerful enchanter, Time, and they shall be seen to be the carriages of absolute monarchs, the equipages of feudal nobles, the toilettes of flaring Jeza- bels, the churches that are not my father's house but dens of thieves, the huts of millions of starving peasants ! No ; the great magician who majestically works out the appointed order of the creator, never reverses his transformations. If thou be changed into this shape by the will of God,'' say the seers to the enchanted, in the v/ise Arabian stories, then remain so ! But, if thou wear this form through mere passing conjuration, then resume thy former aspect ! " Changeless and hopeless, the tumbrils roll along. As the som.bre wheels of the six carts go round, they seem to plough up a long crooked furrow among the populace in the streets. Ridges of faces are thrown to this side and to that, and the ploughs go steadily onward. So used are the regular inhabitants of the houses to the spectacle, that in many windows there are no people, and in some the occupa- tion of the hands is not so much as suspended, while the eyes survey the faces in the tumbrils. Here and there, the in- mate has visitors to see the sight ; then he points his fmger, with something of the complacency of a curator or authorized exponent, to this cart and to this, and seemsjo tell who sat here yesterday, and who there the day before'. 343 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Of the riders in the tumbrils, some observe these things, and all things on their last roadside, with an impassive stare ; others, with a lingering interest in the ways of life and men. Some, seated with drooping heads, are sunk in silent despair ; again, there are some so heedful of their looks that they cast upon the multitude ^such glances as they have seen in theatres, and in pictures. Several close their eyes, and think, or try to get their straying thoughts together. Only one, and he a miser- able creature, of a crazed aspect, is so shattered and made drunk by horror, that he sings, and tries to dance. Not one of the whole number appeals by look or gesture, to the pity of the people. There is a guard of sundry horsemen riding abreast of the tumbrils, and faces are often turned up to some of them, and they are asked some question. It would seem to be always the same question, for, it is always followed by a press of people towards the third cart. The horsemen abreast of that cart, frequently point out one man in it with their swords. The leading curiosity is, to know which is he ; he stands at the back of the tumbril with his head bent down, to converse with a mere girl who sits on the side of the cart, and holds his hand. He has no curiosity or care for the scene about him, and always speaks to the girl. Here and there in the long street of St. Honore, cries are raised against him. If they move him at all, it is only to a quiet smile, as he shakes his hair a little more loosely about his face. He cannot easily touch his face, his arms being bound. On the steps of a church, awaiting the coming-up of the tumbrils, stands the Spy and prison-sheep. He looks into the first of them : not there. He looks into the second : not there. He already asks himself, " Has he sacrificed me ? " when his face clears, as he looks into the third. "Which is Evremonde ? " says a man behind him. " That. At the back there.'' " With his hand in the girl's ? *^ Yes." Tlie man cries, " Down, Evrdmonde ! To the Guillotine all aristocrats ! Down, Evremonde ! " " Hush, hush ! " the Spy entreats him, timidly. And why not, citizen ? " " He is going to pay the forfeit : it will be paid in five min* ates more. Let him be at peace." But the man continuing to exclaim, " Down Evremonde \ * THE FOOTSTEPS DIE OUT FOR EVER. 349 the face of Evremonde is for a moment turned towards him. Evremonde then sees the Spy, and looks attentively at him, and goes his way. The clocks are on the stroke of three,-and the furrow ploughed among the populace is turning lound, to come on into the place of execution, and end. The rid;^es thrown to this side and to that, now crumble in and close beiund the last plough as it passes on, for all are following to the Guillotine. In front of it, seated in chairs, as in a garden of public diver- sion, are a number of women, busily knitting. On one of the foremost chairs, stands The Vengeance, looking about for her friend. Therese ! " she cries, in her shrill tones. Who has seen her ? Therese Defarge ! " She never missed before," says a knitting-woman of the sisterhood. " No ; nor will she miss now,'^ cries The Vengeance, petulantly. "Therese." " Louder," the woman recommends. Ay ! Louder, Vengeance, much louder, and still she will scarcely hear thee. Louder yet, Vengeance, with a little oath or so added, and j'Ct it will hardly bring her. Send other women up and down to seek her, lingering somewhere : and yet although the messengers have done dread deeds, it is questionable whether of their own wills they will go far enough to find her 1 Bad Fortune ! " cries The Vengeance, stamping her foot in the chair, " and here are the tumbrils! And Evremonde will be despatched in a wink, and she not here ! See her knit- ting in my hand, and her empty chair ready for her. I cry with vexation and disappointment ! " As the Vengeance descends from her elevation to do it, the tumbrils begin to discharge their loads. The ministers of Sainte Guillotine are robed and ready. Crash ! — A head is held up, and the knitting-women who scarcely lifted their eyes io look at it a moment ago v/hen it could think and speak, count One. The second tumbril empties and moves on ; the third comes up. Crash ! — And the knitting-women, never faltering or pausing in their work, count Two. The supposed Evremonde descends, and the seamstress is lifted out next after him. He has not relinquished her pa- tient hand in getting out, but still holds it as he promised. He A TALE OF TWO CITIES, gently places her with her back to the crashing engine that constantly whirrs up and falls, and she looks into his face and thanks him. " But for ycTu, dear stranger, I should not be so composed, for I am naturally a poor little thing, faint of heart ; nor should I have been able to raise my thoughts to Him who was put to death, that we might have hope and com.fort here to-day. I think you were sent to me by Heaven." " Or you to me,'' says Sydney Carton. " Keep your eyes upon me, dear child, and mind no other object." " I mind nothing while I hold your hand. I shall mind nothing when I let it go, if they are rapid." " They will be rapid. Fear not ! " The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, lieart to heart, these two children of the Uni- versal Mother, else so wide apart and differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair home together, and to r^st in her bosom. " Brave and generous friend, will you let me ask you one last question ? I am very ignorant, and it troubles me — ^just a little." " Tell me what it is." " I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan, like myself, whom I love very dearly. She is five years younger than I, and she lives in a farmer's house in the south country. Poverty parted us, and she knows nothing of my fate — for I cannot write — and if I could, how should I tell her ! It is better as it is." " Yes, yes : better as it is." What I have been thinking as v/e came along, and what I am still thinking now, as I look into your kind strong face which gives me so much support, is this : — If the RepubUc really does good to the poor, and they come to be less hungry and in all ways to suffer less, she may live a long time : she may even live to be old." What then, my gentle sister ? " " Do you think : " the uncomplaining eyes in which there is so much endurance, fill with tears, and the lips part a little more and tremble : that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better land where I trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered ? " " It cannot be, my child ; there is no Time there, and no trouble there." TH^ FOOTSTEPS DIE OUT FOR EVER, " You comfort me so much ! I am so ignorant. Am I to . kiss you now ? Is the moment come ? " "Yes." She kisses his lips ; he kisses hers ; they solemnly bless each .other. The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing worse than a sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She goes next before him — is gone ; the knit- ting-women count Twenty-Two. " I am the Resurrection and the life, said the Lord ; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live : and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall neve? die." The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away. Twenty-Three. They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the peacefullest man's face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked sublime and prophetic. One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe — a woman — had asked at the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be allowed to write down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given any utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these : " I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out. " I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but other- wise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years' time enriching them with all he has, and passing tran- quilly to his reward. I see that I hold a sanctuary in their heart, r^nd in the 352 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honored and held sacred in the other's soul, than I was in the souls of both. " I see that child who lay upon her boson and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, foremost of just judges and honored men, bringing a boy of my name, with a fore- head that I know and golden hair, to this place — then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day's disfigurement — and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a falter- ^ ing voice. " It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done ; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have evei known.'' / SKETCHES BY BOZ. ILLUSTRATIVE OF EVERY-DAY LIFE AND EVERY-DAY PEOPLE. U53) PREFACE. The whole of these Sketches were written and published^ one by one, when I was a very young man. They were col lected and republished while I was still a very young man, and sent into the world with all their imperfections (a good many) on their heads. They comprise my first attempts at authorship — with the exception of certain tragedies achieved at the mature age of eight or ten, and represented with great applause to overflow- ing nurseries. I am conscious of their often being extremely crude and ill-considered, and bearing obvious marks of haste and inexperience ; particularly in that section of the present volume which is comprised under the general head of Tales. But as this collection is not originated now, and was very leniently and favorably received when it was first made, I . have not felt it right either to remodel or expunge, beyond a few words and phrases here and there. J55> SKETCHES BY BOZ. OUR PARISH. CHAPTER I. THE BEADLE. THE PARISH ENGINE. THE SCHOOLMASTER. How much is conveyed in those two short words — " The Parish ! " And with how many tales of distress and misery, of broken fortune and ruined hopes, too often of unrelieved wretchedness and successful knavery, are they associated ! A poor man, with small earnings and a large family, just man- ages to live on from hand to mouth, and to procure food from day to day ; he has barely sufficient to satisfy the present cravings of nature, and can take no heed of the future. His taxes are in arrear, quarter-day passes by, another quarter-day arrives : he can procure no more quarter for himself, and is summoned by — the parish. His goods are distrained, his children are crying with cold and hunger, and the very bed on which his sick wife is lying, is dragged from beneath her. What can he do ? To whom is he to apply for relief ? To private charity ? To benevolent individuals ? Certainly not — there is his parish. There are the parish vestry, the parish infirmary, the parish surgeon, the parish officers, the parish beadle. Excellent institutions, and gentle, kind-hearted men. The woman dies — she is buried by the parish. The children have no protector — they are taken care of by the parish. The man first neglects, and afterwards cannot obtain, work — he is relieved by the parish ; and when distress and drunkenness (357) 3S8 SKETCHES B V BOZ, have done their w ork upon him, he is maintained, a harmless, babbling idiot, in the parish asylum. The parish beadle is one of the most, perhaps //le most, important member of the local administration. He is not so well off as the church wardens, certainly, nor is he so learned as the vestry clerk, nor does he order things quite so mud) his own way as either of them. But his power is very great notwithstanding ; and the dignity of his office is never im paired by the absence of efforts on his part to maintain iL The beadle of our parish is a splendid fellow. It is quite delightful to hear him as he explains the state of the existing poor laws to the deaf old women in the board-room passage on business nights ; and to hear what he said to the senior church warden, and what the senior church warden said to him ; and what " we (the beadle and the other gentlemen) came to the determination of doing. A miserable-looking woman is called into the board-room, and represents a case of extreme destitution, affecting herself — a widow with six small children. " Where do you live ? " inquires one of the overseers. " I rents a two-pair back, gentlemen, at Mrs. Brown's, Num- ber 3, Little King William's-alley, which has lived there this fifteen year, and knows me to be very hard-working and in- dustrious, and when my poor husband was alive, gentlemen, as died in the hospital " — " Well, well," interrupts the over- seer, taking a note of the address, " I'll send Simmons, the beadle, to-morrow morning, to ascertain whether your story is correct, and if so, I suppose you must have an order into the House — Simmons, go to this woman's the first thing to-mor- row morning, will you.''" Simmons bows assent, and ushers the woman out. Her previous admiration of " the board " (who all sit behind great books, and with their hats on) fades into nothing before her respect for her lace-trimmed conduc- tor ; and her account of what has passed inside increases — if that be possible — the marks of respect, shown by the assem- bled crowd, to that solemn functionary. As to taking out a summons, it's quite a hopeless case if Simmons attends it, on behalf of the parish. He knows all the titles of the Lord Mayor by heart ; states the case without a single stammer 3 and it is even reported that on one occasion he ventured to make a joke, which the Lord Mayor's head footman (who hap- pened to be present) afterwards told an intimate friend, confi« dentially, was almost equal to one of Mr. Hobler's. See him again on Sunday in his state coat and cocked hat, THE BEADLE, ETC, 359 inth a large-headed staff for show in his left hand, and a small cane for use in his right. How pompously he marshals the children into their places ! and how demurely the little urchins look at him askance as he surveys them when they are all seated, with a glare of the eye peculiar to beadles ! The church wardens and overseers being duly installed in their curtained pews, he seats himself on a mahogany bracket, erected expressly for him at the top of the aisle, and divides his attention between his prayer-book and the boys. Sud* denly, just at the commencement of the communion service, when the whole congregation is hushed into a profound silence, broken only by the voice of the officiating clergyman, a penny is heard to ring on the stone floor of the aisle with astounding clearness. Observe the generalship of the beadle. His involuntary look of horror is instantly changed into one of perfect indifference, as if he were the only person present who had not heard the noise. The artifice succeeds. After putting forth his right leg now and then, as a feeler, the victim who dropped the money ventures to make one or two distinct dives after it; and the beadle, gliding softly round, salutes his little round head, when it again appears above the seat, with divers double knocks, administered with the cane before noticed, to the intense delight of three young men in an adja- cent pew, who cough violently at intervals until the conclusion of the sermon. Such are a few traits of the importance and gravity of a parish beadle — a gravity which has never been disturbed in any case that has come under our observation, except when the services of that particularly useful machine, a parish fire engine, are required : then indeed all is bustle. Two little boys run to the beadle as fast as their legs will carry them, and report from their own personal observation that some neigh- boring chimney is on fire ; the engine is hastily got out, and a plentiful supply of boys being obtained, and harnessed to it with ropes, away they rattle over the pavement, the beadle running — we do not exaggerate — running at the side, until they arrive at some house, smelling strongly of sSot, at the door of which the beadle knocks with considerable gravity for half an hour. No attention being paid to these manual applications, and the turn-cock having turned on the water, the engine turns off amidst the shouts of the boys ; it pulls up once more at the workhouse, and the beadle " pulls up " the unfortunate householder next day, for the amount of his legal 16 36o SKETCHES BY BOZ, reward. We never saw a parish engine at a regular fire but once. It came up in gallant style — three miles and a half an hour, at least ; there was a capital supply of water, and it was first on the spot. Bang went the pumps — the people cheered • — the beadle perspired profusely ; but it was unfortunately discovered, just as they were going to put the fire out, that nobody understood the process by which the engine was filled with water ; and that eighteen boys, and a man, had exhausted themselves in pumping for twenty minutes, without producing the slightest effect ! The personages next in importance to the beadle, are the master of the workhouse and the parish schoolmaster. The vestry-clerk, as everybody knows, is a short, pudgy little man, in black, with a thick gold watch-chain of considerable length, terminating in two large seals and a key. He is an attorney, and generally in a bustle ; at no time more so, than when he is hurr}dng to some parochial meeting, with his gloves crum- pled up in one hand, and a large red book under the othei arm. As to the churchwardens and overseers, we exclude them altogether, because all we know of them is, that they are usually respectable tradesmen, who wear hats with brims inclined to flatness, and who occasionally testify in gilt letters on a blue ground, in some conspicuous part of the church, to the important fact of a gallery having been enlarged and beau- tified, or an organ rebuilt. The master of the workhouse is not, in our parish — nor is he usually in any other — one of that class of men the better part of whose existence has passed away, and who drag out the remainder in some inferior situation, with just enough thought of the past, to feel degraded by, and discontented with, the present. We are unable to guess precisely to our own satisfaction what station the man can have occupied be- fore ; we should think he had been an inferior sort of attor- ney's clerk, or else the master of a national school — whatever he was, it is clear his present position is a change for the bet- ter. His income is small certainly, as the rusty black coat and threadbare velvet collar demonstrate ; but then he lives free of house-rent, has a limited allowance of coals and can- dles, and an almost unlimited allowance of authority in his petty kingdom. He is a tall, thin, bony man ; always wears shoes and black cotton stockings with his surtout ; and eyes you, as you pass his parlor-window, as if he wished you were a pauper, just to give you a specimen of his power. He is an THE BEADLE, ETC. 36 r ' admirable specimen of a small tyrant : morose, brutish, and ill-tempered ; bullying to his inferiors, cringing to his supe- riors, and jealous of the influence and authorit)^ of the beadle. Our schoolmaster is just the very reverse of this amiable official. He has been one of those men one occasionally hears of, on whom misfortune seems to have set her mark ; nothing he ever did, or was concerned in, appears to Rave prospered. A rich old relation who had brought him up, and openly announced his intention of providing for him, left him 10,000/. in his will, and revoked the bequest in a codicil. Thus unexpectedly reduced to the necessity of providing for himself, he procured a situation in a public office. The young clerks below him, died off as if there were a plague among them ; but the old fellows over his head, for the reversion of whose places he was anxiously waiting, lived on and on, as if they were immortal. He speculated and lost. He speculated again and won^but never got his money. His talents were great ; his disposition, easy, generous and liberal. His friends profited by the one, and abused the other. Loss suc- ceeded loss ; misfortune crowded on misfortune ; each suc- cessive day brought him nearer the verge of hopeless penury, and the quondam friends who had been warmest in their pro- fessions, grew strangely cold and indifferent. He had chil- dren whom he loved, and a wife on whom he doted. The • former turned their backs on him ; the latter died broken- hearted. He went with the stream — it had ever been his fail- ing, and he had not courage sufficient to bear up against so many shocks — he had never cared for himself, and the only being who had cared for him, in his poverty and distress, was spared to him no longer. It was at this period that he ap- plied for parochial relief. Some kind-hearted man who had known him in happier times, chanced to be churchwarden that year, and through his interest he was appointed to his present situation. He is an old man now. Of the many who once crowded round him in all the hollow friendship of boon-companionship, some have died, some have fallen like himself, some have prospered — all have forgotten him. Time and misfortune have mercifully been permitted to impair his memory, and use has habituated him to his present condition. Meek, un- complaining, and zealous in the discharge of his duties, he has been allowed to hold, his situation long beyond the usual period ; and he will no doubt continue to hold it, until infirm- 362 SKETCHES BY BOZ, ity renders him incapable, or death releases him. As the gray-headed old man feebly paces up and down the sunny side of the littie court-yard between school hours, it would be difficult, indeed, for the most intimate of his former friends to recognize their once gay and happy associate, in the person of the Pauper Schoolmaster. CHAPTER II. THE CURATE. THE OLD LADY. THE HALF-PAY CAPTAIN. We commenced our last chapter with the beadle of oul parish, because we are deeply sensible of the importance and dignity of his office. We will begin the present with the cler- gyman. Our curate is a young gentleman of such prepossess- ing appearance, and fascinating manners, that within one month after his first appearance in the parish, half the young lady inhabitants were melancholy with religion, and the other half, desponding with love. Never were so many young ladies seen in our parish-church on Sunday before ; and never had the little round angels' faces on Mr. Tomkins's monument in the side aisle, beheld such devotion on earth as they all ex- hibited. He was about five-and-twenty when he first came to astonish the parishioners. He parted his hair on the centre of his forehead in the form of a Norman arch, wore a brilliant of the first water on the fourth finger of his left hand (which he always applied to his left cheek when he read prayers), and had a deep sepulchral voice of unusual solemnity. Innu- merable were the calls made by prudent mammas on our new curate, and innumerable the invitations with which he was as- sailed, and which, to do him justice, he readily accepted. If his manner in the pulpit had created an impression in his favor, the sensation was increased tenfold, by his appearance in private circles. Pews in the immediate vicinity of the pul pit or reading-desk rose in value ; sittings in the centre aisle were at a premium : an inch of room in the front row of the gallery could not be procured for lov^ or money \ and some people even went so far as to assert, that the three •Miss Browns, who had an obscure family pew just behind the THE CURATE, ETC. 363 churchwardens \ were detected, one Sunday, in the free seats by the communion table, actually lying in wait for the curate as he passed to the vestry ! He began to, preach extempore sermons, "and even grave papas caught the infection. He got out of bed at half-past twelve o'clock one winter's night, to half-baptize a washerwoman's child in a slop-basin, and the gratitude of the parishioners knew no bounds — the very churchwardens grew generous, and insisted on the parish de- fraying the expense of the watch-box on wheels, which the new curate had ordered for himself, to perform the funeral service in wet weather. He sent three pints of gruel and a quarter of a pound of tea to a poor woman who had been brought to bed of four small children, all at once — the parish were charmed. He got up a subscription for her — the woman's fortune was made. He spoke for one hour and twenty-five minutes, at an anti-slavery meeting at the Goat and Boots — ■ the enthusiasm was at its height. A proposal was set on foot for presenting the curate with a piece of plate, as a mark of esteem for his valuable services rendered to the parish. The list of subscriptions was filled up in no time ; the contest was, not who should escape the contribution, but who should be the foremost to subscribe. A splendid silver inkstand was made, and engraved with an appropriate inscription ; the curate was invited to a public breakfast, at the before-men- tioned Goat and Boots ; the inkstand was presented in a neat speech by Mr. Gubbins, the ex-churchwarden, and acknowl- edged by the curate in terms which drew tears into the eyes of all present — the very waiters were melted. One would have supposed that, by this time, the theme of uni- versal admiration was lifted to the very pinnacle of popularity. No such thing. The curate began to cough ; four fits of coughing one morning between the Litany and the Epistle, and five in the afternoon service. Here was a discovery — the curate was consumptive. How interestingly melancholy ! If the young ladies were energetic before, their sympathy and solicitude now knew no bounds. Such a man as the curate — such a dear — such a perfect love — to be consumptive ! It was too much. Anonymous presents of black-currant jam. and lozenges, elastic waistcoats, bosom friends, and warm stockings, poured in upon the curate until he was as com- pletely fitted out, with winter clothing, as if he were on the verge of an expedition to the North Pole ; verbal bulletins of the state of his health were circulated throughout the parish 364 SKETCHES BY BOZ, half-a-dozen times a day ; and the curate was in the very zenith of his popularity. About this peripd, a change came over the spirit of the parish. A very quiet, respectable, dozing old gentleman, who had officiated in our chapel-of-ease for twelve years previously, died one fine morning, without having given any notice whatever of his intention. The circumstance gave rise to counter-sensation the first ; and the arrival of his suc- cessor occasioned counter-sensation the second. He was a pale, thin, cadaverous man, with large black eyes, and long straggling black hair : his dress was slovenly in the extreme, his manner ungainly, his doctrines startling ; in short, he was in every respect the antipodes of the curate. Crowds of our female parishioners flocked to hear him ; at first, because he was so odd-looking, then because his face was so expressive, then because he preached so well ; and at last, because they really thought that, after all, there was something about him which it was quite impossible to describe. As to the curate, he was all very well ; but certainly, after all, there was no denying that — that — in short, the curate wasn't a novelty, and the other clergyman was. The inconstancy of public opinion is proverbial : the congregation migrated one by one. The curate coughed till he was black in the face — it was in vain. He respired with difficulty — it was equally ineffectual in awakening sympathy. Seats are once again to be had in any part of our parish-church, and the chapel-of-ease is going to be enlarged, as it is crowded to suffocation every Sunday ! The best known and most respected among our parish- ioners, is an old lady, who resided in our parish long before our name was registered in the list of baptisms. Our parish is a suburban one, and the old lady lives in a neat row of^ houses in the most airy and pleasant part of it. The house is her own ; and it, and everything about it, except the old lady herself, who looks a little older than she did ten years ago, is in just the same state as when the old gentleman was living. The little front parlor, which is the old lady's ordinary sitting- room, is a perfect picture of quiet neatness ; the carpet is covered with brown Holland, the glass and picture-frames are carefully enveloped in yellow muslin ; the table-covers are never taken off, except when the leaves are turpentined and bees'-waxed, an operation which is regularly commenced every other morning at half-past nine o'clock — and the little nick- nacks are always arranged in precisely the same manner. The THE CURATE, ETC. 365 greater part of these are presents from little girls whose parents live in the same row ; but some of them, such as the two old- fashioned watches (which never keep the same time, one being always a quarter of an hour too slow, and the other a quarter of an hour too fast), the little picture of the Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold as they appeared in the Royal Box at Drury Lane Theatre, and others of the same class, have been in the old lady's possession for many years. Here the old lady sits with her spectacles on, busily engaged in needlework — near the window in summer time ; and if she sees you coming up the steps, and you happen to be a favorite, she trots out to open the street-door for you before you knock, and as you must be fatigued after that hot walk, insists on your swallowing two glasses of sherr}" before you exert yourself by talking. If you call in the evening you will find her cheerful, but rather more serious than usual, with an open Bible on the table, before her, of which Sarah," who is just as neat and methodical as her mistress, regularly reads two or three chapters in the parlor aloud. The old lady sees scarcely any company, except the little girls before noticed, each of whom has always a regular fixed day for a periodical tea-drinking with her, to which the child looks forward as the greatest treat of its existence. She sel- dom visits at a greater distance than the next door but one on either side ; and when she drinks tea here, Sarah runs out first and knocks a double-knock, to prevent the possibility of her Missis's " catching cold by having to wait at the door. She is very scrupulous in returning these little invitations, and when she asks Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so, to meet Mr. and Mrs. Somebody-else, Sarah and she dust the urn, and the best china tea-service, and the Pope Joan board ; and the visitors are received in the drawing-room in great state. She has but few relations, and they are scattered about in different parts of the country, and she seldom sees them. She has a son in India, whom she always describes to you as a fine, handsome fellow — so like the profile of his poor dear father over the sideboard, but the old lady adds, with a mournful shake of the head, that he has always been one of her greatest trials , and that indeed he once almost broke her heart; but it pleased God to enable her to get the better of it, and she would prefer your never mentioning the subject to her again. She has a great number of pensioners ; and on Saturday, after she comes back from market, there is a regular levee of old 366 men and women in the passage, waiting for their weekly* gratuity. Her name always heads the list of any benevolent subscriptions, and hers are always the most liberal donations to the Winter Coal and Soup Distribution Society. She sub- scribed twenty pounds towards the erection of an organ in our parish church, and was so overcome the first Sunday the children sang to it, that she was obliged to be carried out by the pew-opener. Her entrance into church on Sunday is always the signal for a little bustle in the side aisle, occasioned by a general rise among the poor people, who bow and curtsy until the pew-opener has ushered the old lady into her accus- tomed seat, dropped a respectful curtsy, and shut the door : and the same ceremony is repeated on her leaving church, when she walks home with the family next door but one, and talks about the sermon all the way, invariably opening the conversation by asking the youngest boy where the text was. Thus, with the annual variation of a trip to some quiet place on the sea-coast, passes the old lady's life. It has rolled on in the same unvarying and benevolent course for many years now, and must at no distant period be brought to its final close. She looks forward to its termination, with calmness and without apprehension. She has everything to hope and nothing to fear. A very different personage, but one who has rendered himself very conspicuous in our parish, is one of the old lady's next-door neighbors. He is an old naval officer on half- pay, and his bluff and unceremonious behavior disturbs the old lady's domestic economy, not a little. In the first place, he will smoke cigars in the front court, and when he wants something to drink v/ith them — which is by no means an un- common circumstance — he lifts up the old lady's knocker with his walking-stick, and demands to have a glass of table ale, handed over the rails. In addition to this cool proceeding, he is a bit of a Jack of all trades, or to use his own words, *' a regular Robinson Crusoe ; " and nothing delights him bet- ter than to experimentalize on the old lady's property. One morning he got up early, and planted three or four roots of full-grown marigolds in every bed of her front garden, to the inconceivable astonishment of the old lady, who actually thought when she got up and looked out of the window, that it was some strange eruption which had come out in the night. Another time he took to pieces the eight-day clock on the front landing, under pretence of cleaning the works, which he THE FOUR SISTERS. put together again, by some undiscovered procesSj in so won- derful a manner, tiiat the large hand has done nothing but trip up the little one ever since. Then he took to breeding silk-worms, which he would bring in two or three times a day, in little paper boxes, to show the old la^y, generally dropping a worm or two at every visit. The consequence was, that one morning a very stout silk-worm was discovered in the act of walking up stairs — prc>bjably with the view of inquiring after his friends, for, on further inspection, it appeared that some of his companions had already found their way to every room in the house. The old lady went to the seaside in despair, and during her absence he completely effaced the name from- her brass door-plate, in his attempts to polish it with aqua- fortis. But all this is nothing to his seditious conduct in public life. He attends every vestry-meeting that is held ; always opposes the constituted authorities of the parish, denounces the profligacy of the churchwardens, contests legal points against the vestry-clerk, will make the tax-gatherer call for his money till he won't call any longer, and then he sends it : finds fault with the sermon every Sunday, says that the organ- ist ought to be ashamed of himself, offers to back himself for any amount to sing the psalms better than all the children put together, male and female ; and, in short, conducts him- self in the most turbulent and uproarious manner. The worst of it is, that having a high regard for the old lady, he wants to make her a convert to his views, and therefore "walks into her little parlor with his newspaper in his hand, and talks vio- lent politics by the hour. He is a charitable, open-hearted old fellow at bottom, after all ; so, although he puts the old lady a little out occasionally, they agree very well in the main, and she laughs as much at each feat of his handiwork when it is all over, as anybody else. CHAPTER HI. THE FOUR SISTERS. The row of houses in which the old lady and her trouble- some neighbor reside, comprises, beyond all doubt, a greater 368 SKETCHES BY BOZ. number (©f characters within its circumscribed limits, than all the rest of the parish put together. As we cannot, consist- ently with our present plan, however, extend the number of our parochial sketches beyond six, it will be better perhaps, to select the most peculiar, and to introduce them at once without further prefad?. The four Miss Willises, then, settled in our parish thirteen years ago. It is a melancholy reflection that the old adage, " time and tide wait for no man," applies with equal force to the fairer portion of the creation ; and willingly would we conceal the fact, that even thirteen years ago the Miss Willises were far from juvenile. Our duty as faithful parochial chroni- clers, however, is paramount to every other consideration, and we are bound to state, that thirteen years since, the authori- ties in matrimonial cases, considered the youngest Miss Willis in a very precarious state, while the eldest sister was posi- tively given over, as being far beyond all human hope. Well, the Miss Willises took a lease of the house ; it was fresh painted and papered from top to bottom : the paint inside was all wainscoted, the marble all cleaned, the old grates taken down, and register-stoves, you could see to dress by, put up ; four trees were planted in the back garden, several small bas- kets of gravel sprinkled over the front one, vans of elegant furniture arrived, spring blinds were fitted to the windows, carpenters who had been employed in the various preparations, alterations, and repairs," made confidential statements to the different maid-servants in the row, relative to the magnificent scale on which the Miss Willises were commencing ; the maid- servants told their "Missises," the Missises told their friends, and vague rumors were circulated throughout the parish, that No. 25, in Gordon-place, had been taken by four maiden ladies of immense property. At last, the Miss Willises moved in ; and then the " call- ing " began. The house was the perfection of neatness — so were the four Miss Willises. Every thing was formal, stiff, and cold — so were the four Miss Willises. Not a single chair of the whole set was ever seen out of its place — not a single Miss Willis of the whole four was ever seen out of hers. There they always sat, in the same places, doing precisely the same things at the same hour. The eldest Miss Willis used to knit, the second to draw, the two others to play duets on the piano. They seemed to have no separate existence, but to have made up their minds just to winter through life tO' THE FOUR SISTERS, gether. They were three long graces in drapery, with the addition, hke a school-dinner, of another long grace afterwards — the three fates with another Sister — the Siamese twins mul- tiplied by two. The eldest Miss Willis grew bilious — the four Miss Willises grew bilious immediately. The eldest Miss Willis grew ill-tempered and religious — the four Miss Willises were ill-tempered and religious directly. Whatever the eldest did, the others did, and whatever anybody else did, they all disapproved of ; and thus they vegetated — living in Polar har- mony among themselves, and, as they sometimes went out, or saw company ^' in a quiet-way " at home, occasionally iceing the neighbors. Three years passed over in this way, when an unlookecl for and extraordinary phenomenon occurred. The Miss Willises showed symptoms of summer, the frost gradually broke up; a complete thaw took place. Was it possible ? one of the four Miss Willises was going to be mar- ried ! Now, where on earth the husband came from, by what feelings the poor man could have been actuated, or by what process of reasoning the four Miss Willises succeeded in per- suading themselves that it was possible for a man to marry one of them, without marrying them all, are questions too profound for us to resolve : certain it is, however, that the visits of Mr. Robinson (a gentleman in a public ofBce, with a good salary and a little property of his own, beside) were re- ceived — that the four Miss Willises were courted in due form by the said Mr. Robinson — that the neighbors w^ere perfectly frantic in their anxiety to discover which of the four Miss Willises was the fortunate fair, and that the difficulty they ex- perienced in solving the problem was not at all lessened by the announcement of the eldest Miss Willis. — " We are going to iriarry Mr. Robinson." It was very extraordinary. They were so completely identi- fied, the one with the other, that the curiosity of the whole row — even of the old lady herself — was roused almost beyond endurance. The subject was discussed at every little card table and tea-drinking. The old gentleman of silkworm notoriety did not hesitate to express his decided opinion that Mr. Robinson was of Eastern descent, and contemplated marrying the whole family at once ; and the row, generally, shook their heads with considerable gravity, and declared the business to be very mysterious. They hoped it might ?\\ end well ; — it certainly had a very singular appearance, but still if 370 SKETCHES BY BOZ, would be uncharitable to express any opinion without good grounds to go upon, and certainly the Miss Willises were quite old enough to judge fcfl: themselves, and to be sure people ought to know their own business best, and so forth. At last, one fine morning, at a quarter before eight o'clock, A.M., two glass-coaches drove up to the Miss Willises' door, at which Mr. Robinson had arrived in a cab ten minutes before, dressed in a light-blue coat and double-milled kersey pantaloons, white neckerchief, pumps, and dress-gloves, his manner denoting, as appeared from the evidence of the house- maid at No. 23, who was sweeping the door-steps at the time, a considerable degree of nervous excitement. It was also hastily reported on the same testimony, that the cook who opened the door, wore a large white bow of unusual dimen- sions, in a much smarter head-dress than the regulation cap to which the Miss Willises invariably restricted the somewhat excursive tastes of female servants in general. The intelligence spread rapidly from house to house. It was quite clear that the eventful morning had at length arrived ; the whole row stationed themselves behind their first and second-floor blinds, and waited the result in breathless expectation. At last the Miss Willises' door opened ; the door of the first glass-coach did the same. Two gentlemen, and a pair of ladies to correspond — friends of the family, no doubt ; up went the steps, bang went the door, off went the first glass- coach and up came the second. The street door opened again ; the excitement of the whole row increased — Mr. Robinson and the eldest Miss Willis. I thought so," said the lady at No. 19 ; "I always said it was Miss Willis ! " — Well, I never ! " ejaculated the young lady at No. 18 to the young lady at No. 17 — Did you ever, dear ! " responded the young lady at No. 17 to the young lady at No. 18. It's too ridiculous ! " exclaimed a spinster of an ///^certain age, at No. 16, joining in the conversation. But who shall portray the astonishment of Gordon-place, when Mr. Robinson handed in all the Miss Willises, one after the other, and then squeezed himself into an acute angle of the glass-coach, which forthwith proceeded at a brisk pace, after the other glass-coach, which other glass-coach had itself pro- ceeded, at a brisk pace, in the direction of the parish church ! Who shall depict the perplexity of the clergyman, when all the Miss Willises knelt down at the communion table^ and THE FOUR SISTERS, 37^ repeated the responses incidental to the marriage service in an audible voice — or who shall describe the confusion which prevailed, when — even after the difficulties thus occasioned had been adjusted — all the Miss Willises went into hysterics at the conclusion of the ceremony, until the sacred edifice resounded with their united wailings ! As the four sisters and Mr. Robinson continued to occupy the same house, after this memorable occasion, and as the married sister, whoever she was, never appeared in public without the other three, we are not quite clear that the neigh- bors ever would have discovered the real Mrs. Robinson, but for a circumstance of the most gratifying description, which will happen occasionally in the best regulated families. Three quarter-days elapsed, and the row, on whom a new light ap- peared to have been bursting for some time, began to speak with a sort of implied confidence on the subject, and to wonder how Mrs. Robinson — the youngest Miss Willis that was — got on ; and servants might be seen running up the steps, about nine or ten o'clock every morning, with Missis's compliments, and wishes to know how Mrs. Robinson finds herself this morning ? " And the answer always was, Mrs. Robinson's compliments, and she's in very good spirits, and doesn't find herself any worse." The piano was heard no longer, the knitting-needles were laid aside, drawing was neglected, and mantua-making and millinery, on the smallest scale imagin- able, appeared to have become the favorite amusement of the whole family. The parlor wasn't quite as tidy as it used to be, and if you called in the morning, you w^ould see lying on a table, with an old newspaper carelessly thrown over them, two or three particularly small caps, rather larger than if they had been made for a moderate-sized doll, with a small piece of lace, in the shape of a horse-shoe, let in behind : or per- haps a white robe, not very large in circumference, but very much out of proportion in point of length, with a little tucker round the top, and a frill round the bottom ; and once when we called, we saw a long white roller, with a kind of blue margin down each side, the probable use of which, we were at a loss to conjecture. Then we fancied that Mr. Dawson, the surgeon, &c., who displays a large lamp with a different color in every pane of glass, at the corner of the row, began to be knocked up at night oftener than he used to be ; and once we were very much alarmed by hearing a hackney-coach stop at Mrs. Robinson's door, at half-past two o'clock in the 372 SKETCHES BY BOZ, morning, out of which there emerged a fat old woman, in a cloak and nightcap, with a bundle in one hand, and a pair of pattens in the other, who looked as if she had been suddenly knocked up out of bed for some very special purpose. When we got up in the morning we saw that the knockei was tied up in an old white kid glove ; and we, in our inno- cence (we were in a state of bachelorship then), wondered what on earth it all meant, until we heard the eldest Miss Willis, in propria persond, say, with great dignity, in answer to the next inquiry, " My compliments, and Mrs. Robinson's doing as well as can be expected, and the little girl thrives wonderfully.'^ And then, in common with the rest of the row, our curiosity was satisfied, and we began to wonder it had never occurred to us what the matter was, before. CHAPTER IV. THE ELECTION FOR BEADLE. A GREAT event has recently occurred in our parish. A contest of paramount interest has just terminated ; a parochial convulsion has taken place. It has been succeeded by a glorious triumph, which the country — or at least the parish — ■ it is all the same — will long remember. We have had an election ; an election for beadle. The supporters of the old beadle system have been defeated in their stronghold, and the advocates of the great new beadle principles have achieved a proud victory. Our parish, which, like all other parishes, is a little world of its own, has long been divided into two parties, whose contentions, slumbering for a while, have never failed to burst forth with unabated vigor, on any occasion on which they could by possibility be renewed. Watching-rates, lighting- rates, paving-rates, sewer's-rates, church-rates, poor' s-rates— all sorts of rates, have been in their turns the subjects of a grand struggle ; and as to questions of patronage, the asperity and determination with which they have been contested is scarcely credible. The leader of the official party — the steady advocate of THE ELECTION FOR BEADLE. 373 the churchwardens, and. the unflinching supporter of the over- seers — is an old gentleman who lives in our row. He owns some half a dozen houses in it, and always walks on the oppo- site side of the way, so that he may be able to take in a view of the whole of his property at once. He is a tall, thin, bony man, with an interrogative nose, and little restless perking eyes, which appear to have been given him for the sole pur- pose of peeping into other people's affairs with. He is deeply impressed with the importance of our parish business, and prides himself, not a little, on his style of addressing the par- ishoners in vestry assembled. His views are rather confined than extensive ; his principles more narrow than liberal. He has been heard to declaim very loudly in favor of the liberty of the press, and advocates the repeal of the stamp duty on newspapers, because the daily journals who now have a mo- nopoly of the public, never give verbatim reports of vestry meetings. He would not appear egotistical for the world, but at the same time he must say, that there are speeches — that celebrated speech of his own, on the emoluments of the sex- ton, and the duties of the office, for instance — which might be communicated to the public, greatly to their improvement and advantage. His great opponent in public life is Captain Purday, the old naval officer on half -pay, to whom we have already intro- duced our readers. The captain, being a determined oppo- nent of the constituted authorities, whoever they may chance to be, and our other friend being their steady supporter, with an equal disregard of their individual merits, it will readily be supposed, that occasions for their coming into di- rect collision are neither few nor far between. They divided the vestry fourteen times on a motion for heating the church with warm water instead of coals : and made speeches about liberty and expenditure, and prodigality and hot water, which threw the whole parish into a state of excitement. Then the captain, when he was on the visiting committee, and his op- ponent overseer, brought forward certain distinct and specific charges relative to the management of the workhouse, boldly expressing his total want of confidence in the existing author- ities, and moved for " a copy of the recipe by which the pau- pers' soup was prepared, together with any documents relat- ing thereto." This the overseer steadily resisted ; he forti- fied himself by precedent, appealed to the established usage, and declined to produce the papers, on the ground of the in- 374 SKETCHES BY BOZ, jury that would be done to the public* service^, if documents of a strictly private nature, passing between the master of the workhouse and the cook, were to be thus dragged to light on the motion of any individual member of the viestry. The mo- tion was lost by a majority of two ; and then the captain, who never allows himself to be defeated, moved for a committee of inquiry into the whole subject. The affair grew serious ; the question was discussed at meeting after meeting, and ves- try after vestry ; speeches were made, attacks repudiated, per- sonal defiances exchanged, explanations received, and the greatest excitement prevailed, until at last, just as the ques- tion was going to be finally decided, the vestry found that somehow or other, they had become entangled in a point of form, from which it was impossible to escape with propriety. So, the motion was dropped, and everybody looked extremely important, and seemed quite satisfied with the meritorious nature of the whole proceeding. This was the state of affairs in our parish a week or two since, when Simmons, the beadle, suddenly died. The la- mented deceased had over-exerted himself, a day or two pre- viousl}^, in conveying an aged female, highly intoxicated, to the strong room of the workhouse. The excitement thus oc- casioned, added to a severe cold, which this indefatigable offi- cer had caught in his capacity of director of the parish en- gine, by inadvertantly playing over himself instead of a - fire, proved too much for a constitution already enfeebled by age, and the intelligence was conveyed to the Board one evening that Simmons had died, and left his respects. The breath was scarcely out of the body of the deceased functionary, when the field was filled with competitors for the vacant office, each of whom rested his claims to public sup- port, entirely on the number and extent of his family, as if the office of Beadle were originally instituted as an encour- agement for the propagation of the human species. " Bung for Beadle. Five small children ! " — Hopkins for BeadlCo Seven small children 1 ! — " Timkins for Beadle. Nine small children ! ! ! " Such were the placards in large black letters on a white ground, which were plentifully pasted on the walls, and posted in the windows of the principal shops. Timkins's success was considered certain : several mothers of families half promised their votes, and the nine small children would have run over the course, but for the production of another placard, announcing the appearance of a still more meritorious THE ELECTION FOR BEADLE. 375 candidate. " Spruggins for Beadle. Ten small children (two of them twins), and a wife ! ! ! " There was no resisting this ; ten small children would have been almost irresistible in themselves, without the twins, but the touching parenthesis about that interesting production of nature, and the still more touching allusion to Mrs. Spruggins, must insure success. Spruggins was the favorite at once, and the appearance of his lady, as she went about to solicit votes (which encouraged confident hopes of a still further addition to the house of Spruggins at no remote period), increased the general prepos- session in his favor. The other candidates, Bung alone ex- cepted, resigned in despair. The day of election was fixed ; and the canvass proceeded with briskness and perseverance on both sides. The members of the vestry could not be supposed to es- cape the contagious excitement inseparable from the occasion. The majority of the lady inhabitants of the parish declared at once for Spruggins ; and the quondam overseer took the same side, on the ground that men v/ith large families always had been elected to the office, and that although he must admit, that, in other respects^ Spruggins was the least qualified candi- date of the two, still it was an old practice, and he saw no rea- son w^hy an old practice should be departed from. This was enough for the captain. He immediately sided with Bung, canvassed for him personally in all directions, wrote squibs on Spruggins, and got his butcher to skewer them up on con- spicuous joints in his shop-front ; frightened his neighbor, the old lady, into a palpitaTtion of the heart, by his awful denun- ciations of Spruggins's party ; and bounced in and out, and up and down, and backwards and forwards, until all the sober inhabitants of the parish thought it inevitable that he must die of a brain fever, long before the election began. The day of election arrived. It was no longer an indi- vidual struggle, but a party contest between the ins and outs. The question was, whether the withering influence of the over- seers, the domination of the churchwardens, and the blighting despotism of the vestry-clerk, should be allowed to render the election of beadle a form — a nulHty : whether they should im- pose a vestry-elected beadle on the parish, to do their bidding and forward their views, or whether the parishioners, fear- lessly asserting their undoubted rights, should elect an inde- pendent beadle of their own. The nomination was fixed to take place in the vestry, but 37^ SKETCHES BY BOZ. SO great was the throng of anxious spectators, that it was found necessary to adjourn to the church, where the ceremony commenced with due solemnity. The appearance of the churchwardens and overseers, and the ex-churchwardens and ex-overseers, with Spruggins in the rear, excited general at- tention. Spruggins was a little thin man, in rusty black, with a long pale face, and a countenance expressive of care and fatigue, which might either be attributed to the extent of his family or the anxiety of his feelings. His opponent appeared in a cast-off coat of the captain's — a blue coat with bright buttons : white trowsers, and that description of shoes famil- iarly known by the appellation of high-lows." ^ There was a serenity in the open countenance of Bung — a kind of moral dignity in his confident air — an I wish you may get it " sort of expression in his eye — which infused animation into his supporters, and evidently dispirited his opponents. The ex-churchwarden rose to propose Thomas Spruggins for beadle. He had known him long. He had had his eye upon him closely for years ; he had watched him with twofold vigilance for months. (A parishioner here suggested that this might be termed " taking a double sight," but the obser- vation was drowned in loud cries of " Order ! ") He would repeat that he had had his eye upon him for years, and this he would say, that a more well-conducted, a more well-be- haved, a more sober, a more quiet man, with a more well-reg- ulated mind, he had never met with. A man with a larger family he had never known (cheers). The parish required a man who could be depended on Hear ! " from the Sprug- gins side, answered by ironical cheers from the Bung party). Such a man he now proposed (" No," " Yes "). He would not allude to individuals (the ex-churchwarden continued, in the celebrated negative style adopted by great speakers). He would not advert to a gentleman who had once held a high rank in the service of his majesty; he would not say, that that gentleman was no gentleman ; he would not assert, that that man was no man ; he would not say, that he was a turbulent parishioner ; he would not say, that he had grossly misbehaved himself, not only on this, but on all former occa- sions ; he would not say, that he was one of those discoit- tented and treasonable spirits, who carried confusion and dis- order wherever they went ; he would not say, that he harbored in his heart envy and hatred, and malice, and all uncharita- bleness. No ! He wished to have everything comfortable THE ELECTION EOR BEADLE^ 377 and pleasant, and therefore, he would say — nothing about him (cheers). The captain replied in a similar parliamentary style. He would not say, he was astonished at the speech they had just heard ; he would not say, he was disgusted (cheers). He would not retort the epithets which had been hurled against him (renewed cheering) ; he would not allude to men once in office, but now happily out of it, who had mismanaged the workhouse, ground the paupers, diluted the beer, slack-baked the bread, boned the meat, heightened the work, and lowered the soup (tremendous cheers). He would not ask what such men deserved (a voice, " Nothing a-day, and find them- selves ! "). He would not say, that one burst of general in- dignation should drive them from the parish they polluted with their presence (** Give it him ! '"). He would not allude to the unfortunate man who had been proposed — he would not say, as the vestry's tool, but as Beadle. He would not advert to that individual's family ; he would not say, that nine children, twins, and a wife, were very bad examples for pau- per imitation (loud cheers). He would not advert in detail to the qualifications of Bung. The man stood before him, and he would not say in his presence, what he might be dis- posed to say of him, if he w^ere absent. (Here Mr. Bung tel- egraphed to a friend near him, under cover of his hat, by contracting his left eye, and applying his right thumb to the tip of his nose.) It had been objected to Bung that he had only five children (" Hear, hear ! " from the opposition). Well : he had yet to learn that the legislature had affixed any precise amount of infantine qualification to the office of bea- dle ; but taking it for granted that an extensive family were a great requisite, he entreated them to look to facts, and com- pare data^ about which there could be no mistake. Bung was 35 years of age. Spruggins — of whom he wished to speak with all possible respect — was 50. Was it not more than pos- sible — was it not very probable — that by the time Bung at- tained the latter age, he might see around him a family, even ' exceeding in number and extent, that to which Spruggins at present laid claim (deafening cheers and waving of handker- chiefs) ? The captain co^ncluded, amidst loud applause, by calling upon the parishioners to sound the tocsin, rush to the poll, free themselves from dictation, or be slaves for ever. On the following day the polling began, and we never have had such a bustle in our parish since we got up our fa' 37S SKETCHES BY BOZ- mous anti-slavery petition, wluch was such an important one^ that the House of Commons ordered it to be printed, on the motion of the member for the district. The captain engaged two hackney-coaches and a cab for' Bung's people — the cab for the drunken voters, and the two coaches for the old la- dies, the greater portion of whom, owing to the captain's im- petuosity, were driven up to the poll and home again, before they recovered from their flurry sufficiently to know, with any degree of clearness, what they had been doing. The oppo site party wholly neglected these precautions, and the conse- quence was, that a great many ladies who were walking lei- surely up to the church — for it was a very hot day — to vote for Spruggins, were artfully decoyed into the coaches, and voted for Bung. The captain's arguments, too, had produced considerable effect : the attempted influence of the vestry produced a greater. . A threat of exclusive dealing was clearly established against the vestry-clerk — a case of heartless and profligate atrocity. It appeared that the delinquent had been in the habit of purchasing six penn' orth of muffins, weekly, from an old woman who rents a small house in the parish, and resides among the original settlers ; on her last weekly visit, a message was conveyed to her through the me- dium of the cook, couched in mysterious terms, but indicating with sufficient clearness, that the vestry-clerk's appetite for muffins, in future, depended entirely on her vote on the bea- dleship. This was sufficient : the stream had been turning previously, and the impulse thus administered directed its final course. The Bung party ordered one shilling's worth of muffins weekly for the remainder of the old woman's natural life ; the parishioners were loud in their exclamations ; and the fate of Spruggins was sealed. It was in vain that the twins were exhibited in dresses of the same pattern, and night-caps to match, at the church door : the boy in Mrs. Spruggins's right arm, and the girl in her left — even Mrs. Spruggins herself failed to be an object of sympathy any longer. The majority attained by Bung on the gross poll was four hundred and twenty-eight, and the cause of the parishioners triumphed. THE BROKER'S MAN, 379 CHAPTER V. THE broker's man. The excitement of the late election has subsided, and our parish being once again restored to a state of comparative tranquillity, we are enabled to devote our attention to those parishioners who take little share in our party contests or in the turmoil and bustle of public life. And we feel sincere pleasure in acknowledging here, that in collecting materials for this task we have been greatly assisted by Mr. Bung him- self, who has imposed on us a debt of obligation which we fear we can never repay. The life of this gentleman has been one of a very chequered description : he has undergone transitions — ^not from grave to gay, for he never was grave — not from lively to severe, for severity forms no part of his disposition ; fluctuations have been between poverty in the extreme, and poverty modified, or, to use his own emphatic language, between nothing to eat and just half enough." He is not, as he forcibly remarks, one of those fortunate men who, if they were to dive under one side of a barge stark- naked, would come up on the other with a new suit of clothes on, and a ticket for soup in the waistcoat-pocket : " neither is he one of those, whose spirit has been broken beyond re- demption by misfortune and want. He is just one of the careless, good-for-nothing, happy fellows, who float, cork-like, on the surface, for the world to play at hockey with : knocked here, and - there, and everywhere : now to the right, then to the left, again up in the air, and anon to the bottom, but al- ways reappearing and bounding with the stream buoyantly and merrily along. Some few months before he was prevailed upon to stand a contested election for the oflice of beadle, necessity attached him to the service of a broker ; and on the opportunities he here acquired of ascertaining the condition of most of the poorer inhabitants of the parish, his patron, the captain, first grounded his claims to public support. Chance threw the man in our way a short time since. We 38o SKETCHES BY BOZ. were, in the first instance, attracted by his prepossessing im- pudence at the election ; we were not surprised, on further acquaintance, to find him a shrewd knowing fellow, with no inconsiderable power of observation ; and, after conversing with him a little, were somewhat struck (as we dare say out readers have frequently been in other cases) with the power some men seem to have, not only of sympathizing with, but to all appearance of understanding feelings to which they themselv^es are entire strangers. We had been expressing to the new functionary our surprise that he should ever have served in the capacity to which we have just adverted, when we gradually led him into one or two professional anecdotes. As we are induced to think, on reflection, that they will tell better in nearly his own words, than with any attempted em- bellishments of ours, we will at once entitle them MR. bung's narrative. It's very true, as you say, sir,'^ Mr. Bung commenced, that a broker's man's is not a life to be envied ; and in course you know as well as I do, though you don't say it, that people hate and scout 'em because they're the ministers of wretchedness, like, to poor people. But what could I do, sir t The thing was no worse because I did it, instead of somebody else ; and if putting me in possession of a house would put me in possession of three and sixpence a day, and levying a distress on another man's goods would relieye my distress and that of my family, it can't be expected but what I'd take the job and go through with it. I never liked it, God knows ; I always looked out for something else, and the moment I got other work to do, I left it. If there is anything wrong in being the agent in such matters — not the principal, mind you — I'm sure the business, to a beginner like I was, at all events, carries its own punishment along with it. I wished again and again that the people would only blow me up, or pitch into me — that I wouldn't have minded, it's all in my way ; but it's the being shut up by yourself in one room for five days, without so much as an old newspaper to look at, or anything to see out o' the winder but the roofs and chim- neys at the back of the house, or anything to listen to, but the ticking, perhaps, of an old Dutch clock, the sobbing of, the missis, now and then, the low talking of friends in the next THE BROKER'S MAN, room, who speak in whispers, lest ' the man ' should overhear them, or perhaps the occasional opening of the door, as a child peeps in to look at you, and then runs half-frightened away — It's all this, that makes you feel sneaking somehow^ and ashamed of yourself ; and then, if it's winter time, they just give you fire enough to make you think you'd like more, and bring in your grub as if they wished it 'ud choke you — as I dare say they do, for the matter of that, most heartily. If they're very civil, they make you up a bed in the room at night, and if they don't, your master sends one in for you ; but there you are, without being washed or shaved all the time, shunned by everybody, and spoken to by no one, unless some one comes in at dinner time, and asks you whether you want any more, in a tone as much as to say, ' I hope you don't,' or, in the evening, to inquire whether you wouldn't rather have a candle, after you've been sitting in the dark half the night. When I was left in this way, I used to sit, think, think, thinking, till I felt as lonesome as a kitten in a wash- house coj^per with the lid on ; but T believe the old broker's men who are regularly trained to it, never think at all. I have heard some on 'em say, indeed, that they don't know how ! " I put in a good many distresses in my time (continued Mr. Bung), and in course I wasn't long in finding, that some people are not as much to be pitied as others are, and that people with good incomes who get into difficulties, which they keep patching up day after day, and week after week, get so used to these sort of things in time, that at last they come scarcely to feel them at all. I remember the very first place I was put in possession of, was a gentleman's house in this parish here, that everybody would suppose couldn't help hav- ing money if he tried. I went with old Fixern, my old master, 'bout half arter eight in the morning ; rang the area-bell ; servant in livery opened the door : ^ Governor at home ? ' — ^ Yes, he is,' says the man ; "but he's breakfasting just now.' ''Never mind,' says Fixem, * just you tell him there's a gen- tleman here, as wants to speak to him partickler.' So the servant he opens his eyes, and stares about him all ways — looking for the gentleman, as it struck me, for I don't think anybody but a man as was stone-blind would mistake Fixem for one ; and as for me, I was as seedy as a cheap cowcumber. Hows'ever, he turns round, and goes to the breakfast-parlor, which was a little snug sort of room at the end of the passage, 382 SKETCHES BY BOZ. and Fixem fas we always did in that profession), without, w^aiting to be announced, walks in arter him, and before the servant could get out, * Please, sir, here's a man as wants to speak to you,' looks in at the door as familiar and pleasant as may be. ^ Who the devil are you, and how dare you w-alk into a gentleman's house without leave ? ' says the master, as fierce as a bull in fits. ' My name,' says Fixem, winking to the master to send the servant away, and putting the warrant into his hands folded up like a note, ^ My name's Smith,' says he, ' and I called from Johnson's about that business of Thompson's ' — * Oh,' says the other, quite down on him di rectly, ^ How is Thompson ? ' says he ; ' Pray sit dowm, Mr. Smith : John, leave the room.' Out went the servant ; and the gentleman and Fixem looked at one another till they couldn't look any longer, and then they varied the amusements by looking at me, who had been standing on the mat all this time. ^ Hundred and fifty pounds, I see,' said the gentleman at last. ' Hundred and fifty pounds,' said Fixem, ' besides cost of levy, sheriff's poundage, and all other incidental ex- penses,' — ^Um,' says the gentleman, ^ I shan't be able to settle this before to-morrow^ afternoon.' — ' Very sorry ; but I shall be obliged to leave my man here till then,' replies Fixem, pretending to look very miserable over it. ^ That's very un- fort'nate,' says the gentleman, 'for I have got a large party here to-night, and I'm ruined if those fellows of mine get an inkling of the matter — just step here, Mr. Smith,' says he, after a short pause. So Fixem w^ilks with him up to the window, and after a good deal of whispering, and a little chinking of suverins, and looking at me, he comes back and says, ' Bung, you're a handy fellow, and very honest I know. This gentle- man wants an assistant to clean the plate and wait at table to-day, and if you're not particularly engaged,' says old Fixem, grinning like mad, and shoving a couple of suverins into my hand, ' he'll be very glad to avail himself of your ser- vices.' Well, I laughed, and the gentleman laughed, and we all laughed ; and I went home and cleaned myself, leaving Fixem there, and when I went back, Fixem went away, and I polished up the plate, and waited at table, and gammoned the servants, and nobody had the least idea I was in possession, though it very nearly came out after all ; for one of the last gentlemen who remained, came down stairs into the hall where I was sitting pretty late at night, and putting half-a- crown into my hand, says, ' Here, my man,' says he, 'run THE BROKER'S MAN. . 383 and get me a coach, will you? ' I thought it was a do, to get me out of the house, and was just going to say so, sulkily enough, when the gentleman (who was up to everything) came running down stairs, as if he was in great anxiety. ' Bung,' says he, pretending to be in a consuming passion. ' Sir,' says I. * Why the devil ain't you looking after that plate t ' — ' I was just going to send him for a coach for me,' says the other gentleman. ' And I was just a-going to say,' says I — = * Anybody else, my dear fellow/ interrupts the master of the house, pushing me down the passage to get out of the way — ' anybody else ; but I have put this man in possession of all the plate and valuables, and I cannot allow him on any con- sideration whatever, to leave the house. Bung, you scoun- drel, go and count those forks in the breakfast-parlor instantly.' You may be sure I went laughing pretty hearty when I found it was all right. The money was paid next day, with the ad- dition of something else for myself, and that was the best job that I (and I suspect old Fixem too) ever got in that line. " But this is the bright side of the picture, sir, after all," resumed Mr. Bung, laying aside the knowing look, and flash air, with which he had repeated the previous anecdote — " and I'm sorry to say, it's the side one sees -very, very seldom, in comparison with the dark one. The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none ; and there's a consolation even in being able to patch up one diffi- culty, to make way for another, to which very poor people are strangers. I was once put into a house down George 's-yard — that little dirty court at the back of the gas-works ; and I never shall forget the misery of them people, dear me ! It was a distress for half a year's rent — two pound ten I think. There was only two rooms in the house, and as there was no passage, the lodgers up stairs always went through the room of the people of the house, as they passed in and out; and every tmie they did so — which, on the average, was about four times every quarter of an hour — they blowed up quite frightful ; for their things had been seized too, and included in the inventory. There was a little piece of enclosed dust in • front of the house, with a cinder-path leading up to the door, and an open rain-water butt on one side. A dirty striped curtain, on a \^ry slack string, hung in the window, and a little triangular bit of broken looking:glass rested on the sill inside. I suppose it was meant for the people's use, but their appearance was so wretched, and so miserable, that I'm cer- 1? 3H SKETCHES BY BOZ. tain they never could have plucked up courage to look them« selves in the face a second time, if they survived the fright of doing so once. There was two.^or three chairs, that might have been worth, in their best days, from eightpence to a shilling a-piece ; a small deal table, an old corner cupboard with nothing in it, and one of those bedsteads which turn up half way, and leave the bottom legs sticking out for you to knock your head against, or hang your hat upon ; no bed, no bedding. There was an old sack, by way of rug, before the fire-place, and four or five children were grovelling about, among the sand on the floor. The execution was only put in, to get 'em out of the house, for there was nothing to take to pay the expenses ; and here I stopped for three days, though that was a mere form too; for, in course, I knew, and we all knew, they could never pay the money. In one of the chairs, by the side of the place where the fire ought to have been, was an old 'ooman — the ugliest and dirtiest I ever see — ^who sat rocking herself backwards and forwards, back- wards and forwards, without once stopping except for an instant now and then, to clasp together the withered hands w^hich, with these exceptions, she kept constantly rubbing upon her knees, just raising and depressing her fingers con- vulsively, in time to the rocking of the chair. On the other side sat the mother with an infant in her arms, which cried till it cried itself to sleep, and when it woke, cried till it cried itself olf again. The old 'ooman's voice I never heard : she seemed completely stupefied ; and as to the mother's, it would have been better if she had been so too, for misery had changed her to a devil. If you had heard how she cursed the little naked children as was rolling on the floor, and seen how savagely she struck the infant when it cried with hunger, you'd have shuddered as much as I did. There they remained all the time : the children ate a morsel of bread once or twice, and I gave 'em best part of the dinners my missis brought me, but the woman ate nothing ; they never even laid on the bed- stead, nor was the room swept or cleaned all the time. The neighbors were all too poor themselves to take any notice of 'em, but from what I could make out from the abuse of the woman up stairs, it seemed the husband had been transported a few weeks before. When the time was up, the landlord and old Fixem too, got rather frightened about the family, and so they made a stir about it, and had 'em taken to the workhouse. They sent the sick couch for the old 'ooman, THE BROKER'S MAN. 38s and Simmons took the children away at night. The old 'ooman went into the infirmary, and very soon died. The children are all in the house to this day, and very comforta- ble they are in comparison. As to the mother, there was no taming her at all. She Tiad been a quiet, hard-working woman, I believe, but her misery had actually drove her wild ; so after she had been sent to the house of correction half-a-dozen times, for throwing inkstands at the overseers, blaspheming jhe churchwardens, and smashing everybody as come near her, she burst a blood-vessel one mornin', and died too ; and a happy release it was, both for herself and the old paupers, male and female, which she used to tip over in all directions, as if they were so many skittles and she the ball. Now this was bad enough,^' resumed Mr. Bung, taking a half-step towards the door, as if to intimate that he had nearly concluded. " This was bad enough, but there was a sort of quiet misery — if you understand what I mean by that, sir — about a lady at one house I was put into, as touched me a good deal more. It doesn't matter where it was exactly : indeed, I'd rather not say, but it was the sam.e sort o' job. I went with Fixem in the usual way — there was a year's rent in arrear ; a very small servant-girl opened the door, and three or four fine-looking little children was in the front parlor we were shown into, which was very clean, but very scantily fur- nished, much like the children themselves. ' Bung,' says Fixem to me, in a low voice, when we w^ere left alone for a minute, ^ I know something* about this here family, and my opinion is, it's no go.' ' Do you think they can't settle \ ' says I, quite anxiously ; for I liked the looks of them children. Fixem sliook his head, and was just about to reply, when the door opened and in came a lady, as white as ever I see any one in my days, except about the eyes, which were red witli crying. She walked in, as firm as I could have done ; shut the door carefully after her and sat herself down with a face as composed as if it was made of stone. * What is the matter, gentlemen ? ' says she, in a surprising steady voice. ' Is this an execution? ' * It is, mum,' says Fixem. The lady looked at him as steady as ever : she didn't seem to have understood him. ' It is, mum,' says Fixem again ; * this is my warrant of distress, mum,' says he, handing it over as polite as if it w^as a newspaper which had been bespoke arter the next gentle- man. The lady's lip trembled as she took the printed paper. 386 SKETCHES B V BOZ. She cast her eye over it, and old Fixem began to explain the form, but I saw she w^asn't reading it, plain enough, poor thing. ^ Oh, my God ! ' says she, suddenly a-bursting out crying, letting the warrant fall, and hiding her face in her hands, ' Oh, my God ! what will become of us ! ' The noise she made, brought in a young lady of about nineteen or twenty, who, I suppose, had been a-listcning at the door, and who had got a little boy in her arms : she sat him down in the lady's lap, without speaking, and she hugged the poor little fellow to her bosom, and cried over him, till even old Fixem put on his blue spectacles to hide the two tears, that was a-trickling down one on each side of his dirty face. * Now, dear ma,' says the young lady, ^ you know how much you have borne. For all our sakes — for i3a's sake,' says she, ^ don't give way to this ! ' — ^ No, no, I won't ! ' says the lady, gathering herself up, hastily, and drying her eyes ; * I am very foolish, but I'm better now — much better.' And then she roused herself up, went with us into every room while we took the inventory, opened all the drawers of her own accord, sorted the children's little clothes to make the work easier; and, except doing everything in a strange sort of hurry, seemed as calm and composed as if nothing had happened. When we came down stairs again, she hesitated a minute or two, and at last says, ' Gentlemen,' says she, * I am afraid I have done wrong, and perhaps it may bring you into trouble. I secreted just now,.' she says, * the only trinket I have left in the world — here it is.' So she lays down on the table a little miniature mounted in gold. * It's a miniature,' she says, ' of my poor dear father ! I little thought once, that I should ever thank God for depriv- ing me of the original, but I do, and have done for years back most fervently. Take it away, sir,' she says, * it's a face that never turned from me in sickness or distress, and I can hardly bear to turn from it now, when, God knows, I suffer both in no ordinary degree.' I couldn't say ^nothing, but I raised my head from the inventory which I was filling up, and looked at Fixem ; the old fellow nodded to me significantly, so I ran my pen through the Mini^ I had just written, and left the mini- ature on the table, ^' Well, sir, to make short of a long story, I was left in possession, and in possession I remained ; and though I was an ignorant man, and the master of the house a clever one, I saw what he never did, but what he w^ould give worlds now (if he had 'em) to have seen in time. I saw, sir, that his wife THE LADIES' SOCIETIES. 387 was wasting away, beneath cares of which she never com- plained, and griefs she never told. I saw that she was dying before his eyes ; I knew that one exertion from him might have saved her, but he never made it. I don't blame him : I don't think he could rouse himself. She had so long antici- pated all his wishes, and acted for him, that he was a lost man when left to himself. I used to think when I caught sight of her, in the clothes she used to wear, which looked shabby even upon her, and would have been scarcely decent on any one else, that if I was a gentleman it would wring my very heart to see the woman that was a smart and merry girl when I courted her, so altered through her love for me. Bitter cold and damp weather it was, yet, though her dress was thin, and her shoes none of the best, during the whole three days, from morning to night, she was out of doors run- ning about to try and raise the money. The money was raised and the execution was paid out. The whole family crowded into the room where I was, when the money arrived. The father was quite happy as the inconvenience was removed — I dare say he didn't know how ; the children looked merry and cheerful again ; the eldest girl was bustling about, making preparations for the first comfortable meal they had had since the distress was put in j and the mother looked pleased to see them all so. But if ever I saw death in a woman's face, I saw it in hers that night. I was right, sir," continued Mr. Bung, hurriedly passing his coat-sleeve over his face ; " the family grew more pros- perous, and good fortune arrived. But it was too late. Those children are motherless now, and their father would give up all he has since gained — house, home, goods, money : all that he has, or ever can have, to restore the wife he has lost," CHAPTER VI. THE ladies' societies. Our Parish is very prolific in ladies' charitable institu- tions. In v/inter, when wet feet are common, and colds not scarce, we have the ladies' soup distribution society, the 388 SKETCHES BY BOZ. ladies' coal distribution society, and the ladies' blanket dis-^ tribution society ; in summer, when stone fruits flourish and stomach aches prevail, we have the ladies' dispensary, and the ladies' sick visitation committee ; and all the year round we have the ladies' child's examination society, the ladies' bible and prayer-book circulation society, and the ladies' childbed-linen monthly loan society. The two latter are de- cidedly the most important ; whether they are productive ot more benefit than the rest, it is not for us to say, but we can take upon ourselves to affirm, with the utmost solemnity, that they create a greater stir and more bustle, than all the others put together. We should be disposed to affirm, on the first blush of the matter, that the bible and prayer-book society is not so popu- lar as the childbed-linen society ; the bible and prayer-book society has, however, considerably increased in importance within the last year or two, having derived some adventitious aid from the factious opposition of the child's examination society ; which factious opposition originated in manner fol- lowing : — When the young curate was popular, and all the unmarried ladies in the parish took a serious turn, the charity children all at once became objects of peculiar and especial interest. The three Miss Browns (enthusiastic admirers of the curate) taught, and exercised, and examined, and re-ex- amined the unfortunate children, until the boys grew pale, and the girls consumptive with study and fatigue. The three Miss Browns stood it out very well, because they relieved each other ; but the children, having no relief at all, exhibited, decided symptoms of weariness and care. The unthinking part of the parishioners laughed at all this, but the more re- flective portion of the inhabitants abstained from expressing any opinion on the subject until that of the curate had been clearly ascertained. The opportunity was not long wanting. The curate preached a charity sermon on behalf of the charity school, and in the charity sermon aforesaid, expatiated in glowing terms on the praiseworthy and indefatigable exertions of cer- tain estimable individuals. Sobs were heard to issue from the three Miss Browns' pew ; the pew-opener of the division was seen to hurry down the centre aisle to the vestry door, and to return immediately, bearing a glass of water in her hand. A low moaning ensued ; two more pew-openers rushed to the spot, and the three Miss Browns, each supported by a SOCIETIES. pew-opener, were led out of the church, and led in again after the lapse of five minutes with white pocket-handkerchiefs to their eyes, as if they had been attending a funeral in the churchyard adjoining. If any doubt had for a moment ex- isted, as to whom the allusion was intended to apply, it was at once removed. The wish to enlighten the charity children became universal, and the three Miss Browns were unani- mously besought to divide the school into classes, and to assign each class to the superintendence of two young ladies. A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a little patronage is more so ; the three Miss Browns appointed all the old maids, and carefully excluded the young ones. Maiden aunts triumphed, mammas were reduced to the lowest depths of despair, and there is no telling in what act of violence the general indignation against the three Miss Browns might have vented itself, had not a perfectly providential occurrence changed the tide of public feeling. Mrs. Johnson Parker, the mother of seven extremely fine girls — all unmarried — hastily reported to several other mammas of several other unmarried families, that five old men, six old women, and children innu- merable, in the free seats near her pew, were in the habit of coming to church every Sunday, without either bible or prayer-book. Was this to be borne in a civilized country Could such things be tolerated in a Christian land ? Never ! A ladies' bible and prayer-book distribution society was in- stantly formed : president, Mrs. Johnson Parker ; treasurers, auditors, and secretary, the Misses Johnson Parker : sub- scriptions were entered into, books were bought, all the free- seat people provided therewith, and when the first lesson was given out, on the first Sunday succeeding these events, there was such a dropping of books, and rustling of leaves, that it was morally impossible to hear one word of the service for five minutes afterwards. The three Miss Browns, and their party, saw the approach- ing danger, and endeavored to avert it by ridicule and sarcasm. Neithei the old men nor the old women could read their books, now they had got them, said the three Miss Browns. Never mind ; they could learn, replied Mrs. Johnson Parker. The children couldn't read either, suggested the three Miss Brown's. No matter; they could be taught, retorted Mrs. Johnson Parker. A balance of parties took place. The Miss Browns publicly examined — popular feeling inclined to the child's examination society. The Miss Johnson Parkers 390 SKETCHES BY BO/.. publicly distributed — a reaction took place in favor of the prayer-book distribution. A feather would have turned the scale, and a feather did turn it. A missionary returned from the West Indies ; he was to be presented to the Dissenters' Missionary Society oil his marriage with a wealthy widow. Overtures were made to the Dissenters by the Johnson Par- kers. Their object was the same, and why not have a joint meeting of the two societies ? The proposition was accepted. The meeting was duly heralded by public announcement, and the room was crowded to suffocation. The Missionary ap- peared on the platform ; he was hailed with enthusiasm. He repeated a dialogue he had heard between two negroes, be- hind a hedge, on the subject of distribution societie^i ; the ap- probation was tumultuous. He gave an imitation of the two negroes in broken English ; the roof was rent with applause. From that period we date (with one trifling exception; a daily increase in the popularity of the distribution society, and an increase of popularity, which the feeble and impotent opposi- tion of the examination party has only tended to augment, Now, the great points about the childbed-linen monthly loan society are, that it is less dependent on the fluctuations of public opinion than either the distribution or the child's examination ; and that, come what may, there is never any lack of objects on which to exercise its benevolence. Our parish is a very populous one, and, if anything, contributes, we should be disposed to say, rather more than its due share to the aggregate amount of births in the metropolis and its en- virons. The consequence is, that the monthly loan society flourishes, and invests its members with a most enviable amount of bustling patronage. The society (whose only no- tion of dividing time, would appear to be its allotment into months) holds monthly tea-drinkings, at which the monthly report is received, a secretary elected for the month ensuing, and such of the monthly boxes as may not happen to be out on loan for the month, carefully examined. We were never present at one of these meetings, from all of which it is scarcely necessary to say, gentlemen are care- fully excluded ; but Mr. Bung has been called before the board once or twice, and we have his authority for stating, that its proceedings are conducted with great order and regularity : not more than four members being allowed to speak at one time on any pretence whatever. The regular committee is composed exclusively of married ladies, but a vast number of young unmarried ladies of from eighteen to twenty-five years THE LADIES' ' SOCIE TIES. 3 9 x of age, respectively, are admitted as honorary members, partly because they are very useful in replenishing the boxes, and visiting the confined ; partly because it is highly desirable that they should be initiated, at an early period, into the more serious and matronly duties of after-life ; ana partly, because prudent mammas have not unfrequently been known to turn this circumstance to wonderfully good account in matrimonial speculations. In addition to the loan of the monthly boxes (which are always painted blue, with the name of the society in large white letters on the lid), the society dispense occasional grants of beef-tea, and a composition of warm beer, spice, eggs, and sugar, commonly known by the name of "caudle," to its patients. And here again the services of the honorary mem- bers are called into requisition, and most cheerfully conceded. Deputations of twos or threes are sent out to visit the patients, and on these occasions there is such a tasting of caudle and beef-tea, such a stirring about of little messes in tiny sauce- .pans on the hob, such a dressing and undressing of in- fants, such a tying, and folding, and pinning ; such a nursing and warming of little legs and feet before the fire, such a de- lightful confusion of talking and cooking, bustle, importance, and officiousness, as never can be enjoyed in its full extent but on similar occasions. In rivalry of these two institutions, and as a last expiring effort to acquire parochial popularity, the child's examination people determined, the other day, on having a grand public examination of the pupils ; and the large school-room of the national seminary was, by and with the consent of the parish authorities, devoted to the purpose. Invitation circulars were forwarded to all the principal parishioners, including, of course, the heads of the other two societies, for whose especial be- hoof and edification the display was intended ; and a large audience was confidently anticipated on the occasion. The floor was carefully scrubbed the day before, under the imme- diate superintendence of the three Miss Browns ; forms were placed across the room for the accommodation of the visitors, specimens in writing were carefully selected, and as carefully patched and touched up, until they astonished the children who had written them, rather more than the company who read them ; sums in compound addition were rehearsed and re-rehearsed until all the children had the totals by heart ; and the preparations altogether were on the most laborious and comprehensive scale. The morning arrived : the childie?? 392 SKETCHES BY BOZ, were yellow-soaped and flannelled, and towelled, till theil faces shone again ; every pupil's hair was carefully combed into his or her eyes, as the case might be ; the girls were adorned with snow-white tippets, and caps bound round the head by a single purple ribbon: the necks of the- elder boys were fixed into collars of startling dimensions. The doors were thrown open, and the Misses Brown and Co. were discovered in plain white muslin dresses, and caps of the same — the child's examination uniform. The room filled : the greetings of the company were loud and cordial. The distributionists trembled, for their popularity w^as at stake. The eldest boy fell forward, and delivered a propi- tiatory address from behind his collar. It was from the pen of Mr. Henry Brown ; the applause was universal, and the Johnson Parkers were aghast. The examination proceeded v/ith success, and terminated in triumph. The child's exami- nation society gained a momentary victory, and the Johnson Parkers retreated in despair. A secret council of the distributionists was held that night, . with Mrs. Johnson Parker in the chair, to consider of the best means of recovering the ground they had lost in the favor of the parish. What could be done ? Another meeting ! Alas ! who was to attend it ? The Missionary would not do twice ; and the slaves were emancipated. A bold step must be taken. The parish must be astonished in some way or other ; but no one was able to suggest what the step should be. At length, a very old lady was heard to mumble, in indistinct tones, " Exeter Hall." A sudden light broke in upon the meeting. It was unanimously resolved, that a deputation of old ladies should wait upon a celebrated orator, imploring his assistance, and the favor of a speech ; and the deputation should also wait on two or three other imbecile old women, not resident in the parish, and entreat their attendance. The application was successful, the meeting was held ; the orator (an Irishman) came. He talked of green isles — other shores ' — vast Atlantic — bosom of the deep — Christian charity — blood and extermination — mercy in hearts — arms in hands— altars and homes — household gods. He wiped his eyes, he blew his nose, and he quoted Latin. The effect was tremendous — the Latin was a decided hit. Nobody knew exactly what it was about, but everybody knew it must be affecting, because even the orator was overcome. The popularity of the distribution society among the ladies of our parish is unprecedented ; and the child's examination is going fast to decay. OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 393 CHAPTER VII. OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. We are very fond of speculating as we walk through a street, on the character and pursuits of the people who in- habit it ; and nothing so materially assists us in these specu- lations as the appearance of the house doors. The various expressions of the human countenance afford a beautiful and interesting study ; but there is something in the physiognomy of street-door knockers, almost as characteristic, and nearly as infallible. Whenever we visit a man for the first time, we contemplate the features of his knocker with the greatest curiosity, for we well know, that between the man and his knocker, there will inevitably be a greater or less degree of resemblance and sympathy. For instance, there is one description of knocker that used to be common enough, but which is fast passing away — a large round one, with the jolly face of a convivial lion smiling blandly at you, as you twist the sides of your hair into a curl, or pull up your shirt-collar while you are waiting for the door to be opened ; we never saw that knocker on the door of a churlish man — so far as our experience is concerned, it in- variably bespoke hospitality and another bottle. No man ever saw this knocker on the door of a small at- torney or bill-broker; they always patronize the other lion ; a heavy ferocious-looking fellow, with a countenance expressive of savage stupidity — a sort of grand master among the knock- ers, and a great favorite with the selfish and brutal. Then there is a little pert Egyptian knocker, with a long thin face, a pinched up nose, and a very sharp chin ; fie is most in vogue with your government-office people, in light drabs and starched cravats ; little spare priggish men, who are perfectly satisfied with their own opinions, and consider themselves of paramount importance. We were greatly troubled a few years ago, by the innova- tion of a new kind of knocker, without any face at all, com- posed of a wreath, depending from a hand or small truncheon. A little trouble and attention, however, enabled us to over- come this difficulty, and to reconcile the new system to our favorite theory. Vou will invariably find this knocker on th« 394 SKE rCHES B Y BOZ. doors of cold and formal people, who always ask you why yoy don't come, and never say do. Everybody knows the brass knocker is common to sub- urban villas, and extensive boarding-schools ; and having no- ticed this genus we have recapitulated all the most prominent and strongly-defined species. Some phrenologists affirm, that the agitation of a man's brain by different passions, produces corresponding develop- ments in the form of his skull. Do not let us be understood as pushing our theory to the full length of asserting, that any alteration in a man's disposition would produce a visible ef- fect on the feature of his knocker. Our position merely is, that in such a case, the magnetism which must exist between a man and his knocker, would induce the man to remove, and seek some knocker more congenial to his altered feelings. If you ever find a man changing his habitation without any reasonable pretext, depend upon it, that, although he may not be aware or the fact himself, it is because he and his knocker are at variance. This is a new theory, but we venture to launch it, nevertheless, as being quite as ingenious and infalli- ble as many thousands of the learned speculations which are daily broached for public good and private fortune- making. Entertaining these feelings on the subject of knockers, it will be readily imagined with what consternation we viewed the entire removal of the knocker from the door of the next house to the one we lived in, some time ago, and the substitu- tion of a bell. This was a calamity we had never anticipated. The bare idea of anybody being able to exist without a knocker appeared so wild and visionary, that it had never for one in- stant entered our imagination. We sauntered moodily from the spot, and bent our steps towards Eaton-square, then just building. What was our astonishment and indignation to find that bells were fast be- coming the rule, and knockers the exception ! Our theory trembled beneath the shock. W^e hastened home : and fan- cying we foresaw in the swift progress of events, its entire abolition^ resolved from that day forward to vent our specula- tions on our next-door neighbors in person. The house ad- joining ours on the left hand v/as uninhabited, and we had. therefore, plenty of leisure to observe our next-door neighbors on the other side. The house v/ithout the knocker was in the occupation of a city clerk, and there was a neatly-written bill in the parloi OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR, 39S window, intimating that lodgings for a single gentleman were to be let within. It was r. neat, dull little house, on the shady side of the way, with new, narrow floorcloth in the passage, and new, narrow stair-carpets up to the first floor. The paper was new, and the paint was new, and the furniture was new ; and all three, paper, paint, and furniture, bespoke the limited means of the tenant. There was a little red and black carpet in tlie drawing-room, with a border of flooring all the way round ; a few stained chairs, and a pembroke table. A pink shell was dis- played on each or the little sideboards, which, with the addi- tion oi a tea-tray and caddy, a few more shells on the mantel- piece, and three peacock's feathers tastefully arranged above them, completed the decorative furniture of the apartment. This was the room destined for the reception of the sin- gle gentleman during the day, and a little Back room on the same floor was assigned as his sleeping apartment by night. The bill had not been long in the window, when a stout, good-humored looking gentleman, of about five-and-thirty, ap- peared as a candidate for the tenancy. Terms were soon ar- ranged, for the bill was taken down immediately after his first visit. In a day or two the single gentleman came in, and shortly afterwards his real character came out. First of all, he displayed a most extraordinary partiality for sitting up till three or four o'clock in the morning, drinking whiskey-and-water, and smoking cigars ; then he invited friends home, who used to come at ten o'clock^ and begin to get happy about the small hours, when they evinced their perfect con- tentment by singing songs with half-a-dozen verses of two lines each, and a chorus of ten, which chorus used to be shouted forth by the whole strength of the company, in the most enthusiastic and vociferous manner, to the great annov- ance of the neighbors, and the special discomfort of another single gentleman overhead. Now, this was bad enough, occurring as it did three times a week on the average, but this was not all; for when tiK^ company did go away, instead of walking quietly down tlie street, as anybody else's company would have done, they amused themselves by making alarming and frightful noises, and counterfeiting the shrieks of females in distress ; and one nighi, a red-.aced gentleman in a white hat knocked in the mos'c urgent manner at the door of the powdered-headed old gentleman at No. 3, and when the powdered-headed old 39^ SKETCHES BY BOZ. gentleman, who thought one of his married daughters must have been taken ill prematurely, had groped down stairs, and after a great deal of unbolting and key-turning, opened the street door, the red-faced man in the white hat said he hoped he'd excuse his giving him so much trouble, but he'd feel ob- liged if he'd favor him with a glass of cold spring water, and the loan of a shilling for a cab to take him home, on which the old gentleman slammed the door and went up stairs, and threw the contents of his water jug out of window — very straight, only it went over the wrong man ; and the whole street was involved in confusion. A joke's a joke ; and even practical jests are very capital in their way, if you can only get the other party to see the fun of them ; but the population of our street were so dull of ap- prehension, as to be quite lost to a sense of the drollery of this proceeding ; and the consequence was, that our next-door neighbor was obliged to tell the single gentleman, that unless he gave up entertaining his friends at home, he really must be compelled to part with him. The single gentleman received the remonstrance v/ith great good-humor, and promised from that time forward, to spend his evenings at a coffee-house — a de- termination which afforded general and unmixed satisfaction. The next night passed off very well, everybody being de- lighted with the ^ change ; but on the next, the noises were renewed with greater spirit than ever. The single gentleman's friends being unable to see him in his own house every alternate night, had come to the determination of seeing him home every night ; and what with the discordant greetings of the friends at parting, and the noise created by the single gentleman in his passage up stairs, and his subsequent struggles to get his boots off, the evil was not to be borne. So, our next-door neighbor gave the single gentleman, who was a very good lodger in other respects, notice to quit ; and the single gentleman went away, and entertained his friends in other lodgings. The next applicant for the vacant first floor, was of a very different character from the troublesome single gentleman who had just quitted it. He was a tall, thin, young gentle- man, with a profusion of brown hair, reddish whiskers, and very slightly developed mustaches. He w^ore a braided surtout with frogs behind, light gray trousers, and wash- leather gloves, and had altogether rather a military appear- ance. So unlike the roystering single gentleman. Such OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 397 insinuating manners, and such a delightful address ? So seriously disposed, too ! When he first came to look at the lodgings, he inquired most particularly whether he was sure to be able to get a seat in the parish church ; and when he had agreed to take them, he requested to have a list of the different local charities, as he intended to subscribe his mite to the most deserving among them. Our next-door neighbor was now perfectly happy. He had got a lodger at last, of just his own way of thinking — a serious, well-disposed man, who abhorred gayety, and loved retirement. He took down the bill with a light heart, and pictured in imagination a long series of quiet Sundays, on which he and his lodger*would exchange mutual civilities and Sunday papers. The serious man arrived, and his luggage was to arrive from the country next morning. He borrowed a clean shirt, and a prayer-book, from our next-door neighbor, and retired to rest at an early hour, requesting that he might be called punctually at ten o'clock next morning — not before, as he was much fatigued. He was called, and did not answer : he was called again, but there was no reply. Our next-door neighbor became alarmed, and burst the door open. The serious man had left the house mysteriously ; carrying with him the shirt, the prayer-book, a teaspoon, and the bedclothes. Whether this occurrence, coupled with the irregularities of his former lodger, gave our next-door neighbor an aversion to single gentlemen, we know not ; we only know that the next bill which made its appearance in the parlor window intimated generally, that there were furnished apartments to let on the first floor. The bill was soon removed. The new lodgers at first attracted our curiosity, and afterwards excited our interest. They were a young lad of eighteen or nineteen, and his mother, a lady of about fifty, or it might be less. The mother wore a widow's weeds, and the boy was also clothed in deep mourning. They were poor — very poor ; for their only means of support arose from the pittance the boy earned, by copying writings, and translating for booksellers. They had removed from some country place and settled in London ; partly because it afforded better chances of em- ployment for the boy, and partly, perhaps, with the natural desire to leave a place where they had been in better circum- stances, and where their poverty was known. They were 39» SKETCHES BY BOZ. proud under their reverses, and above revealing their wants and privations to strangers. How bitter those privations were, and how hard the boy worked to remove them, no one ever knew but themselves. Night after night, two, three, four hours after midnight, could we hear the occasional raking ap of the scanty fire, or the hollow and half-stifled cough, wliich indicated his being still at work ; and day after day, could v. e see more plainly that nature had set that unearthly light in his plaintive face, which is the beacon of her worst disease. Actuated, we hope, by a higher feeling than mere curiosity, we contrived to establish, first an acquaintance, and then a close intimacy, with the poor strangers. Our worst fears were realized ; the boy was sinking fast. Through a part of the winter, and the whole of the following spring and summer, his labors were unceasingly prolonged : and t^e mother attempt- ed to procure needlework, embroidery — anything for bread. A few shillings now and then, were all she could earn. The boy worked steadily on ; dying by minutes, but nevei once giving utterance to complaint or murmur. One beautiful autumn evening we went to pay our cus tomary visit to the invalid. His little remaining strength had been decreasing rapidly for two or three days preceding, and he was lying on the sofa at the open window, gazing at the setting sun. His mother had been reading the Bible to him, for she closed the book as we entered, and advanced to meet us. " I was telling William,"' she said, that we must manage to take him into the country somewhere, so that he may get quite well. He is not ill, you know, but he is not very strong, and has exerted himself too much lately.'^ Poor thing ! Tlie tears that streamed through her fingers, as she turned aside, as if to adjust her close widow's cap, too plainly showed how fruitless was the attempt to deceive herself. We sat down by the head of the sofa, but said nothing, for we saw the breath of life was passing gently but rapidly from the young form before us. At every respiration, his heart beat more slowly. The boy placed one hand in ours, grasped his mother's "arm with the other, drew her hastily towards him, and fervently kissed her cheek. There was a pause. He sunk back upon his pillow, and looked long and earnestly in his mother's face. "William, M^illiam !" murmured the mother, after a long interval, " don't look at me so — speak to me, dear ! " THE STREETS—MORNING. 399 The boy smiled languidly, hut an instant afterwards his features resolved into the some cold, solemn gaze. "William, dear William! rouse ^'ourself ; don't look at me SO; love — oray don't ! Oh, my God ! what shall I do ! '' cried tne widow, clasping her hanas in agony — my dear boy ! he is dying ! The boy raised himsf/K by a violent ehort, and folded his hands together — Motlicr ! dear, dear mother, bury me in the open fields — anywhere but in these dreadful streets. I should like to be where you can see my grave, but not in these close crowded streets j they have killed me ; kiSS me again, mother \ put 3' our arm round my neck — " He fell back, and a strange expression stole upon his fea- tures ; not of pain or suffering, but an indescribable fixing of every line and m^ascle. The boy was dead. SCENES. CHAPTER I. THE STREETS MORNINGo The appearance presented by the streets of London an hour before sunrise, on a summer's morning, is most striking even to the few whose unfortunate pursuits of pleasure, or scarcely less unfortunate pursuits of business, cause them to be well acquainted with the scene. There is an aii of cold, solitary desolation about the noiseless streets which we are accustomed to see thronged at other times by a busy, eager crowd, and over the quiet, closely-shut luildings, which throughout the day are swarming with life and bustle, that is very impressive. The last drunken man, who shaH'hnd his way home be- fore sunlight, has just staggered heavily along, roaring out the burden of the drinking song of the previous night : the last houseless vagrant whom penury and police have left in 400 SKETCHES BY BOZ. the streets, has coiled up his chilly limbs in some paved corner, to dream of food and warmth. The drunken, the dissipated, and the wretched have disappeared ; the more sober and orderly part of the population have not yet awakened to the labors of the day, and the stillness of death is over the streets ; its very hue seems to be imparted to them, cold and lifeless as they look in the gray, sombre light of daybreak. The coach-stands in the larger thoroughfares are deserted ; the night-houses are clq^ed ; and the chosen promenades of profligate misery are empty. An occasional policeman may alone be seen at the street corners, listlessly gazing on the deserted prospect before him ; and now and then a rakish looking cat runs stealthily across the road and descends his own area with as much caution and slyness — bounding first on the water-butt, then on the dust-hole, and then alighting on the flag-stones — as if he were conscious that his character depended on his gallantry of the preceding night escaping public observation. A par- tially opened bedroom-window here and there, bespeaks the heat of the weather, and the uneasy slumbers of its occupant ; and the dim scanty flicker of the rushlight, through the win- dow-blind, denotes the chamber of watching or sickness. With these few exceptions, the streets present no signs of life, nor the houses of habitation. An hour wears away : the spires of the churches and roofs of the principal buildings are faintly tinged with the light of the rising sun ; and the streets, by almost imperceptible degrees, begin to resume their bustle and animation. Market- carts roll slowly along : the sleepy wagoner impatiently urg- ing on his tired horses, or vainly endeavoring to awaken the boy, who, luxuriously stretches on the top of the fruit-baskets, forgets, in happy oblivion, his long-cherished curiosity to be- hold the wonders of London. Rough, sleepy-looking animals of strange appearance, something between ostlers and hackney-coachmen, begin to take down the shutters of early public-houses ; and little deal tables, with the ordinary preparations for a street breakfast, make their appearance at the customary stations. Numbers of men and women (principally the latter), carrying upon their heads heavy baskets of fruit, toil down the park side of Pic- cadilly on their way to Covent Garden, and, following each other in rapid succession, form a long straggling line from thence to the turn of the road at Knightsbridge. THE STREETS— MORNING. 401 Here and there, a bricklayer's laborer, with the day's dinner tied up in a handkerchief, walks briskly to his work, and occasionally a little knot of three or four schoolboys on a stolen bathing expedition rattle merrily over the pavement, their boisterc^us mirth contrasting forcibly with the demeanor of the little sweep, who, having knocked and rung till his arm aches,, and being interdicted by a merciful legislature from en- dangering his lungs by calling out, sits patiently down on the door-step, until the housemaid may happen to awake. Covent Garden market, and the avenues leading to it, are thronged with carts of all sorts, sizes, and descriptions, from the heavy lumbering wagon, with its four stout horses, to the jingling costermonger's cart, with its consumptive don- key. The pavement is already strewed with decayed cabbage- leaves, broken hay-bands, and all the indescribable litter of a vegetable market ; men are shouting, carts backing, horses neighing, boys fighting, basket-women talking, piemen expa- tiating on the excellence of their pastry, and donkeys braying. These and a hundred other sounds form a compound discor- dant enough to a Londoner's ears, and remarkably disagreeable to those of country gentlemen who are sleeping at the Hum- mums for the first time. Another hour passes away, and the day begins in good earnest. The servant of all work, who, under the plea of sleeping very soundly, has utterly disregarded Missis's " ringing for half an hour previously, is warned by Master (whom Missis has sent up in his drapery to the landing-place for that purpose), that it's half-past six, whereupon she awakes all of a sudden, with well-feigned astonishment, and goes down stairs very sulkily, wishing, while she strikes a light, that the principle of spontaneous combustion would extend itself to coals and kitchen range. When the fire is lighted, she opens the street-door to take in the milk, when, by the most singular coincidence in the world, she discovers that the servant next door has just taken in her milk too, and that Mr, Todd's young man over the way, is, by an equally extraordinary chance, taking down his master's shutters. The inevitable consequence is, that she just steps, milk-jug in hand, as far as next door, just to say "good-morning," to Betsy Clark, and that Mr. Todd's young man just steps over the way to say " good-morning " to both of 'em; and as the aforesaid Mr. Todd's young man is almost as good-looking and fascinating as the baker himself, the conversation quickly becomes very interesting, and probably would become more so, if Betsy 402 SKETCHES BY BOZ. Clark's Missis, who always will be a-followin' her about, didn't give an angry tap at her bedroom window, on which Mr. Todd's young man tries to whistle coolly, as he goes back to his shop much faster than he came from it ; and the two girls run back to their respective places, and shut their street doors with surprising softness, each of them poking their heads out of the front parlor-window, a minute afterwards, however, os- tensibly with the view of looking at the mail which just then passes by, but really for the purpose of catching another glimpse of Mr. Todd's young man, who being fond of mails, but more of females, takes a short look at the mails, and a long look at the girls, much to the satisfaction of all parties concerned. The mail itself goes on to the coach-office in due course, and the passengers who are going out by the early coach, stare with astonishment at the passengers wdio are coming in by the early coach, who look blue and dismal, and are evi- dently under the influence of that odd feeling produced by travelling, which makes the events of yesterday morning seem as if they had happened at least six months ago, and induces people to wonder with considerable gravity whether the friends and relations they took leave of a fortnight before, have al- tered much since they have left them. The coach-office is all alive/and the coaches which are just going out, are surrounded by the usual crowd of Jews and nondescripts, who seem to consider. Heaven knows why, that it is quite impossible any man can mount a coach without requiring at least sixpenn}'- worth of oranges, a penknife, a pocket-book, a last year's annual, a pencil-case, a piece of sponge, and a small series of caricatures. Half an hour more, and the sun darts his bright rays cheerfully down the still half-empty streets, and shines with sufficient force to rouse the dismal laziness of the apprentice, who pauses every other minute from his task of svjeeping out the shop and watering th(S pavement in front of it, to tell another apprentice similarly employed, how hot it will be to- day, or to stand with his right hand shading his eyes, and liis left resting on the broom, gazing at the Wonder," or the Tally-ho," or the Nimrod," or some other fast coach, till it is out of sight, when he re-enters the shop, envying the pas- sengers on the out-side of the fast coach, and thinking of the old red brick house down in the country," where he went to school : the miseries of the milk and water, and thick bread and scrapings, fading into nothing before the pleasant recoh lection of the green field thp hovs used to pl?^^ in, and the THE STREETS— MORNING, green pond he was caned for presuming to fall into, and othel schoolboy associations. Cabs, with trunks and band-boxes between the drivers' legs and outside the apron, rattle briskly up and down the streets on their way to the coach-offices or steam-packet wharfs ; and the cab-drivers and hackney-coachmen who are on the stand polish up the ornamental part of their dingy vehicles — the former wondering how people can prefer "them wild beast cariwans of homnibuses, to a riglar cab with a fast trotter," and the latter admiring how people can trust their necks into one of " them crazy cabs, when they can have a 'spectable 'ackney cotche with a pair of 'orses as von't run away with no vun a consolation unquestionably founded on fact, seeing that a hackney-coach horse never was known to run at all, except," as the smart cabman in front of the rank ob- serves, "except one, and he run back'ards.' The shops are now completely opened, and apprentices and shopmen are busily engaged in cleaning and decking the win- dows for the day. The bakers' shops in town are filled with ser- vants and children waiting for the drawing of the first batch of rolls — an operation which \vas performed a full hour ago in the suburbs ; for the early clerk population of Somers and Cam- den towns, Islington, and Pentonville, are fast pouring into the city, or directing their steps towards Chancery-lane and the Inns of Court. Middle-aged men, w^hose salaries have by no means increased in the same proportion as their families, plod steadily along, apparently with no object in view but the counting-house ; knowing by sight almost everybody they meet or overtake, for they have seen them every morning (Sundays excepted) during the last twenty years, but speaking to no one. If they do happen to overtake a personal acquaintance, ^ they just exchange a hurried salutation, and keep walking on either by his side, or in front of him, as his rate of walking may chance to be. As to stopping to shake hands, or to take the friend's arm, they seem to think that as it is not included in their salary, they have no right to do it. Small office lads in large hats, who are made men before they are boys, hurry along in pairs, with their first coat carefully brushed, and the white trousers of last Sunday plentifully besmeared with dust and ink. It evidently requires a considerable mental struggle to avoid investing part of the day's dinner-money in the pur- chase of the stale tarts so temptingly exposed in dusty tins at the pastry-cooks' doors ; but a consciousness of their own im- 404 SKE TCHES B V BOZ. portance and the receipt of seven shillings a-week, with the prospect of an early rise to eight, comes to their aid, and they accordingly put their hats a little more on one side, and look under the bonnets of all the milliners' and staymakers' ap- prentices they meet — poor girls ! — the hardest worked, the worst paid, and too often, the worst used class of the com- munity. Eleven o'clock, and a new set of people fill the streets. The goods in the shop-windows are invitingly arranged ; the shopmen in their white neckerchiefs and spruce toats, look as if they couldn't clean a window if their lives depended on it ; the carts have disappeared from Covent Garden ; the wagon- ers have returned, and the costermongers repaired to their ordinary beats " in the suburbs ; clerks are at their offices, and gigs, cabs, omnibuses, and saddle-horses, are conveying their masters to the same destination. The streets are thronged with a vast concourse of people, gay and shabby, rich and poor, idle and industrious ; and we come to the heat, bustle, and activity of Noon. CHAPTER II. THE STREETS — NIGHT. But the streets of London, to be beheld in the very height of their glory, should be seen on a dark, dull, murky winter's night, when there is just enough damp gently stealing down to make the pavement greasy, without cleansing it of any of its impurities: and when the heavy lazy mist, which hangs over every object, makes the gas-lamps look brighter, and the brilliantly-lighted shops more splendid, from the contrast they present to the darkness around. All the people who are at home on such a night as this, seem disposed to make them- selves as snug and comfortable as possible ; and the passen- gers in the streets have excellent reasons to envy the fortunate individuals who are se^tted by their own firesides. In the larger and better kind of streets, dining parlor cur- tains are closely drawn, kitchen fires blaze brightly up, and savory steams of hot dinners salute the nostrils of the hungry THE STREETS— NIGHT, wayfarer, as he plods wearily by the area railings. In the s«burbs, the muffin boy rings his way down the little street, much more slowly than he is wont to do ; for Mrs. Macklin, of No. 4, has no sooner opened her little street-door, and screamed out Muffins ! " with all her might, than Mrs. Walker, at No. 5, puts her head out of the parlor window, and screams Muffins ! too ; and Mrs. Walker has scarcely got the words out of her lips, than Mrs. Peplow, over the way, lets loose Master. Peplow, who darts down the street, with a velocity Which nothing but buttered muffins in perspective could possibly inspire, and drags the boy back by main force, whereupon Mrs. Macklin and Mrs. Walker, just to save the boy trouble, and to say a few neighborly words to Mrs. Pep- low at the same time, run over the way and buy their muffins at Mrs. Peplow's door, when it appears from the voluntary statement of Mrs. Walker, that her " kittle's jist a-biling, and the cups and sarsers ready laid," and that, as it was such a wretched night out o' doors, she made up her mind to have a nice hot comfortable cup o' tea — a determination at which, by the most singular coincidence, the other two ladies had simul- taneously arrived. After a little conversation about the wretchedness of the weather and the merits of tea, with a digression relative to the viciousness of boys as a rule, and the amiability of Master Peplow as an exception, Mrs. Walker sees her husband com- ing down the street ; and as he must want his tea, poor man, after his dirty walk from the Docks, she instantly runs across, muffins in hand, and Mrs. Macklin does the same, and dfter a few words to Mrs. Walker, they all pop into their little houses, and slam their little street doors, which are not opened again for the remainder of the evening, except to the nine o'clock " beer," who comes round with a lantern in front of his tray, and says, as he lends Mrs. Walker " Yesterday's 'Tiser," that he's blessed if he can hardly hold the pot, much less feel the paper, for it's one of the bitterest nights he ever felt, 'cept the night when the man was frozen to death in the Brick-field. After a little prophetic conversation with the policeman at the street-corner, touching a probable change in the weather, and the setting-in of a hard frost, the nine o'clock beer re- turns to his master's house, and employs himself for the re- mainder of the evening, in assiduously stirring the tap-room fire, and deferentially taking part in the conversation of the worthies assembled round it. 4o6 SKETCHES BY BOZ. The streets in the vicinity of the Marsh-gate and Victoria Theatre present an appearance of dirt and discomfort on such a night, which the groups who lounge about them in no de- gree tend to diminish. Even the httle block-tin temple sacred to baked potatoes, surmounted by a splended design in varie- gated lamps, looks less gay than usual ; and as to the kidney^ pie stand, its glory is quite departed. The candle in the transparent lamp, manufactured of oil-paper, embellished with characters," has been blown out fifty times, so the kidney- pie merchant, tired with running backwards and forwards to the next wine-vaults to get a light, has given up the idea of illu- mination in despair, and the only signs of his "whereabout/^ are the bright sparks, of which a long irregular train is whirled down the street every time he opens his portable oven to hand a hot kidney-pie to a customer. Flat fish, oyster, and fruit venders linger hopelessly in the kennel, in vain endeavoring to attract customers ; and the ragged boys who usually disport themselves about the streets, stand crouched in little knots in some projecting doorway, or under the canvas blind of a cheesemonger's, where great flar- ing gas-lights, unshaded by any glass, display huge piles of bright red, and pale yellow cheeses, mingled with little five- penny dabs of dingy bacon, various tubs of weekly Dorset, and cloudy rolls of best fresh." Here they amuse themselves with theatrical converse, aris- ing out of their last half-price visit to the Victoria gallery, ad- mire the terrific combat, which is nightly encored, and expati- ate on the inimitable manner in which Bill Thompson can " come the double monkey," or go through the mysterious involutions of a sailor's hornpipe. It is nearly eleven o'clock, and the cold thin rain which has been drizzling so long, is beginning to pour down in good earnest ; the baked-potato man has departed — the kidne3^-pie man has just walked away with his warehouse on his arm — the cheesemonger has drawn in his blind, and the boys have dispersed. The constant clicking of pattens on the slippy and uneven pavement, and the rustling of umbrellas, as the wind blows against the shop windows, bear testimony to the in- clemency of the night ; and the policeman, with his oilskin cape buttoned closely round him, seems as he holds his hat on his head, and turns round to avoid the gust of wind and rain which drives against him at the street-corner, to be very far from congratulating himself on the prospect before him. THE STREETS— NIGHT. 407 The little chandler's shop with the cracked bell behind the door, whose melancholy tinkling has been regulated by the demand for quarterns of sugar and half-ounces of coffee, is shutting up. The crowds which have been passing to and fro during the whole da}^, are rapidly dwindling away ; and the noise of shouting and quarrelling which issues from the public-houses, is almost the only sound that breaks the melan- choly stillness of the night. There was another, but it has ceased. That wretched woman with the infant in her arms, round whose meagre form the remnant of her own scanty shawl is carefully wrapped, has been attempting to sing some popular ballad, in the hope of wringing a few pence from the compassionate passer-by. A brutal laugh at her weak voice is all she has gained. The tears fall thick and fast down her own pale face \ the child is cold and hungry, and its low half-stifled wailing adds to the misery of its wretched mother, as she moans aloud, and sinks despairingly down, on a cold, damp door-step. Singing ! How few of those who pass such a miserable creature as this, think of the anguish of heart, the sinking of soul and spirit, which the very effort of singing produces. Bitter mockery ! Disease, neglect, and starvation, faintly articulating the w^ords of the joyous ditty, that has enlivened your hours of feasting and merriment, God knows how often ! It is no subject of jeering. The weak tremulous voice tells a fearful tale of want and famishing ; and the feeble singer of this roaring song may turn away, only to die of cold and hunger. One o'clock ! Parties returning from the different thea- tres foot it through the muddy streets ; cabs, hackney-coaches, carriages, and theatre omnibuses, roll swiftly by ; w^atermen with dim dirty lanterns in their hands, and large brass plates upon their breasts, w4io have been shouting and rushing about for the last two hours, retire to their watering-houses, to solace themselves with the creature comforts of pipes and purl ; the half-price pit and box frequenters of the theatres throng to the different houses of refreshment ; and chops, kidneys, rab- bits, oysters, stout, cigars, and "goes" innumerable, are served up amidst a noise and confusion of smoking, running, knife-clattering, and waiter-chattering, perfectly indescribable The more m.usical portion of the play-going community betake themselves to some harmonic meeting. As a matter of curiosity let us follow them thither for a few moments. 18 4o8 * SKE TCHES B Y BOZ, In a lofty room of spacious dimensions, are seated some eighty or a hundred guests knocking Uttle pewter measures on the tables, and hammering away, with the handles of their knives, as if they were so many trunk-makers. They are ap- plauding a glee, which has just been executed by the three professional gentlemen " at the top of the centre table, one of whom is in the chair — the little pompous man with the bald head just emerging from the collar of his green coat. The others are seated on either side of him — the stout man with the small voice, and the thin-faced dark man in black. The little man in the chair is a most amusing personage, — such condescending grandeur, and such a voice ! " Bass ! " as the young gentleman near us with the blue stock forcibly remarks to his companion, " bass ! I b'iieve you ; he can go down lower than any man : so low sometimes that you can't hear him." And so he does. To hear him growling away, gradually low^er and lower down, till he can't get back again, is the most delightful thing in the world, and it is quite impossible to witness unmoved the impressive solemnity with w^hich he pours forth his soul in " My 'art's in the 'ighlands," or " The brave old Hoak." The stout man is also addicted to sentimentality, and warbles, Fly, fly from the world, my Bessy, with me," or some s'-ach song, with lady- like sweetness, and in the most seductive tones imaginable. " Pray give your orders, gen'l'm'n — pray give your orders," — says the pale-faced man with the red head ; and demands for goes " of gin and "goes " of brandy, and pints of stout, and cigars of peculiar mildness, are vociferously made from all parts of the room. The " professional gentlemen " are in the very height of their glory, and bestow condescending nods, or even a word or two of recognition, on the better- known frequenters of the room, in the most bland and pa- tronizing manner possible. That little round-faced man, with the small brown surtout, white stockings and shoes, is in the comic, line; the mixed air of self-denial, and mental consciousness of his own powers, with w^hich he acknowledges the call of the chair, is particu- larly gratifying. " Gen'l'men," says the little pompous man, accompanying the word with a knock of the president's ham- mer on the table — Gen'l'men, allow me to claim your atten- tion — our friend, Mr. Smuggins, will oblige." — " Bravo ! " shout the company ; and Smuggins, after a considerable quantity of coughing by way of symphony, and a most face- SHOPS AND THEIR TENANTS. Uous sniff or two, which afford general delight, sings a comic ftong, with a fal-de-ral — tol-de-rol chorus at the end of every verse, much longer than the verse itself. It is received with unbounded applause, and after some aspiring genius has vol- unteered a recitation, and failed dismally therein, the little pompous man gives another knock, and says " Gen'l'men, we will attempt a glee, if you please." This announcement calls forth tumultuous applause, and the more energetic spirits ex press the unqualified approbation it affords them, by knock- ing one or two stout glasses off their legs — a humorous device ; but one which frequently occasions some slight alter- cation when the form cf paying the damage is proposed to be gone through by the waiter. Scenes like these are continued until three or four o'clock in the morning ; and even when they close, fresh ones open to the inquisitive novice. But as a description of all of them, however slight, would require a volume, the contents of which, however instructive, would be by no means pleasing, we make our bow, and drop the curtain. CHAPTER IIL SHOPS AND THEIR TENANTS. What inexhaustible food for speculation, do the streets of London afford ! We never were able to agree with Sterne in pitying the man who could travel from Dan to Beersheba, and say that all was barren ; we have not the slightest com- miseration for the man who can take up his hat and stick, and walk from Covent-garden to St. Paul's Churchyard, and back into the bargain, without deriving some amusement — we had almost said instruction — from his perambulation. And yet there are such beings : we meet them every day. Large black stocks and light waistcoats, jet canes and discontented countenances, are the characteristics of the race ; other people brush quickly by you, steadily plodding on to business, or cheerfully running after pleasure. These men linger listlessly past, looking as happy and animated as a policeman on duty. Nothing seems to make an impression on their minds : noth- ing short of being knocked down by a porter, or run over by SKETCHES BY BOZ. a cab, will disturb their equanimity. You will meet them on a fine day in any of the leading thoroughfares : peep through the window of a west-end cigar shop in the evening, if you can manage to get a gUmpse between the blue curtains which intercept the vulgar gaze, and you see them in their only en- joyment of existence. There they are lounging about, on round tubs and pipe boxes, in all the dignity of whiskers, and gilt watch-guards ; whispering soft nothings to the young kdy in amber, with the large ear-rings, who, as she sits behind the counter in a blaze of adoration and gas-light, is the admira- tion of all the female servants in the neighborhood, and the envy of every milliner's apprentice within two miles round. One of our principal amusements is to watch the gradual progress — the rise or fall — of particular shops. We have formed an intimate acquaintance with several, in different parts of town, and are perfectly acquainted with their whole history. We could name off-hand, twenty at least, which we are quite sure have paid no taxes for the last six years. They are never inhabited for more than two months consecutively, and, we verily believe, have witnessed every retail trade in the directory. There is one, whose history is a sample of the rest, in whose fate we have taken especial interest, having had the pleasure of knowing it ever since it has been a shop. It is on the Surrey side of the water — a little distance beyond the Marshgate. It was originally a substantial, good-looking pri- vate house enough ; the landlord got into difficulties, the house got into Chancery, the tenant went away, and the house went to ruin. At this period our acquaintance with it com- menced ; the paint was all worn off ; the windows were bro- ken, the area was green with neglect and the overflowings of the water-butt ; the butt itself was without a lid, and the street- door was the very picture of misery. ^The chief pastime of the children in the vicinity had been to assemble in a body on the steps, and to take it in turn to knock loud double knocks at the door, to the great satisfaction of the neighbors generally, and especially of the nervous old lady next door but one. Numerous complaints were made, and several small basins of water discharged over the offenders, but without effect. In this state of things, the marine-store dealer at the corner of the street, in the most obliging manner took the knocker off, and sold it : and the unfortunate house looked more wretched than ever. :snui''b-AJ\^D THEIR TENANTS, 411 We deserted our friend for a few weeks. What v/as our surprise, on our return, to find no trace of its existence ! In its place was a handsome shop, fast approaching to a state of completion, and on the shutters were large bills, informing the public that it would shortly be opened with an exten- sive stock' of linen drapery and haberdashery." It opened in due course ; there was the name of the proprietor " and Co." in gilt letters, almost too dazzling to look at. Such rib- bons and shawls ! and two such elegant young men behind the counter, each in a clean collar and white neckcloth, like the lover in a farce. As to the proprietor, he did nothing but walk up and down the shop, and hand seats to the ladies, and hold important conversations with the handsomest of the young men, who was shrewdly suspected by the neighbors to be the Co." We saw all this with sor- row ; we felt a fatal presentiment that the shop was doomed — • and so it was. Its decay was slow, but sure. Tickets gradu- ally appeared in the v/indows ; then rolls of flannel, with la- bels on them, were stuck outside the door ; then a bill was pasted on the street-door, intimating that the first floor was to let ?/;^2furnished ; then one of the young men disappeared al- together, and the other took to a black neckerchief, and the proprietor took to drinking. The shop became dirty, broken panes of glass remained unmended, and the stock disappeared piecemeal. At last the company's man came to cut off the water, and then the linen-draper cut off himself, leaving the landlord his compliments and the key. The next occupant was a fancy stationer. The shop was more modestly painted than before, still it was neat ; but somehow we always thought, as we passed, that it looked like a poor and struggling concern. We wished the man well, but we trembled for his success. He v/as a widower evidently, and had employment elsewhere, for he passed us every morn- ing on his road to the city. The business was carried on by his eldest daughter. Poor girl ! she needed no assistance. We occasionally caught a glimpse of two or three children, in mourning like herself, as they sat in the little parlor behind the shop ; and we never passed at night without seeing the eldest girl at work, either for them, or in making some elegant little trifle for sale. We often thought, as her pale face looked more sad and pensive in the dim candle-light, that if those thoughtless females who interfere with the miserable market of poor creatures such as these, knew but one half of the SKETCHES BY BOZ. misery they suffer, and the bitter privations they endure, in their honorable attempts to earn a scanty subsistence, they would, perhaps, resign even opportunities for the gratification of vanity, and an immodest love of self-display, rather than drive them to a last dreadful resource, which it would shock the delicate feelings of these charitable ladies to hear named. But we are forgetting the shop. Well, we continued to jwatch it, and every day showed too clearly the increasing pov- erty of its inmates. The children were clean, it is true, but their clothes were threadbare and shabby ; no tenant had been procured for the upper part of the house, from the let- ting of which, a portion of the means of paying the rent was to have been derived, and a slow, wasting^onsumption pre- vented the eldest girl from continuing her exertions. Quar- ter-day arrived. The landlord had suffered from the extrava gance of his last tenant, and he had no compassion for the struggles of his successor ; he put in an execution. As we passed one morning, the broker's men were removing the little furniture there was in the house, and a newly-posted bill informed us it was again To Let." What became of the last tenant we never could learn ; we believe the girl is past all suffering, and beyond all sorrow. God help her ! We hope she is. ^ We were somewhat curious to ascertain what would be the next stage — for that the place had no chance of succeeding now, was perfectly clear. The bill was soon taken down, and some alteratioYis, were being made in the interior of the shop. We were in a fever of expectation ; we exhausted conjecture — we imagined all possible trades, none of which were perfectly reconcilable, with our idea of the gradual decay of the tene- ment. It opened, and we wondered why we had not guessed at the real state of the case before. The shop — not a large one at the best of times — had been converted into two : one was a bonnet-shape maker's, the other was opened by a tobacconist, who also dealt in walking-sticks and Sunday newspapers ; the two were separated by a thin partition, covered with tawdry striped paper. The tobacconist remained in possession longer than any tenant within our recollection. He was a red-faced, impu- dent, good-for-nothing dog, evidently accustomed to take things as they came, and to make the best of a bad job. Fie sold as many cigars as he could, and smoked the rest. He occupied the shop as long as he could make peace with the SCOTLAND' YARD. 413 fandlord, and when he could no longer live in quiet, he very coolly locked the door, and bolted himself. From this period the two little dens have undergone innumerable changes, The tobacconist was succeeded by a theatrical hair-dresser, who ornamented the window with a great variety of " charac- ters," and terrific combats. The bonnet-shape maker gave place to a green-grocer, and the histrionic barber was suc- ceeded, in his turn, by a tailor. So numerous have been the changes, that we have of late done little more than mark the peculiar but certain indications of a house being poorly in- habited. It has been progressing by almost imperceptible degrees. The occupiers of the shops have gradually given up room after room, until they have only reserved the little parlor for themselves. First there appeared a brass plate on the private door, with " Ladies' School " legibly engraved thereon ; shortly afterwards we observed a second brass plate, then a bell, and then another bell. When we paused in front of our old friend, and observed these signs of poverty, which are not to be mistaken, we thought as we turned away, that the house had attained its lowest pitch of degradation. We were wrong. When we last passed it, a dairy " was established in the area, and a party of melancholy-looking fowis were amusing themselves by running in at the front door, and out at the back one. CHAPTER IV, SCOTLAND- YARD. Scotland- YARD is a small — a very small — tract of land, bounded on one side by the river Thames, on the other by the gardens of Northumberland House : abutting at one end on the bottom of Northumberland-street, at the other on the back of Whitehall-place. When this territory was first acci- dentally discovered by a country gentleman who lost his way in the Strand, some years ago, the original settlers were found to be a tailor, a publican, two eating-house keepers, and a fruit-pie maker ; and it was also found to contain a race of strong and bulky men, who repaired to the wharfs in Scotland- yard regularly every morning, about five or six o'clock, to fill heavy wagons with coal, with which they proceeded to dis- 4 : 4 ^^'^^^ TCIIES B Y BOZ. ^ tant placer, up the country, and supplied the inhabitants with fuel. WliGii lliey liad emptied their wagons, they again re- turned for a fresh supply ; and this trade was continued throughout the year. As the settlers derived their subsistence from ministering to tlie wants of these primitive traders, the articles exposed for sale, and the places where they were sold, bore strong outward marks of being expressly adapted to their tastes and v/ishes. The tailor displayed in his window a Lilliputian pair of leather gaiters, and a diminutive round frock, while each doorpost was appropriately garnished with a model of a coal- sack. The two eating-house keepers exhibited joints of a magnitude, and puddings of a solidity, which coalheavers alone could appreciate ; and the fruit-pie maker displayed on his v/ell-scrubbed window-board large white compositions of flour and dripping, ornamented with pink stains, giving rich promise of the fruit within, which made their huge mouths water, as they lingered past. But the choicest spot in all Scotland -yard was the old public-house in the corner. Here, in a dark wainscoted-room of ancient appearance, cheered by the glow of a m.ighty fire, and decorated with an enormous clock, whereof the face was white, and the figures black, sat tlie lusty coalheavers, quaffing large draughts of Barclay's best, and puffing forth volumes of smoke, which wreathed heavily above their heads, and in- volved the room in a thick dark cloud. From this apartment might their voices be heard on a winter's night, penetrating to the very bank of the river, as they shouted out some sturdy chorus, or roared forth the burden of a popular song : dwelling upon the last few words with a strength and length of em- phasis which made the very roof tremble above them. Here, too, would they tell old legends of what the Thames was in ancient times, when the Patent Shot Manufactory wasn't built, and Waterloo-bridge had never been thought of ^ and then they would shake their heads with portentous looks^ to the deep edification of the rising generation of heavers, who crowded round them, and wondered where all this would end ; whereat the tailor would take his pipe solemnly from his mouth, and say, how that he hoped it might end well, but he very much doubted whether it would or not, and couldn't rightly tell what to make of it — a mysterious expression of opinion, delivered with a semi-prophetic air, which never failed to elicit the fullest concurrence of the assembled com* SCO TLAND- YARD. pany ; and so they would go on drinking and wondering till ten o'clock came, and with it the tailor's wife to fetch him home, when the little party broke up, to meet again in the same room, and say and do precisely the same things, on the following evening at the same hour. About this time the barges that came up the river began to bring vague rumors to Scotland-yard of somebody in the city having been heard to say, that the Lord Mayor had threat- ^ ened in so many words to pull down the old London-bridge, and ' build up a new one. At first these rumors were disregarded as idle tales, wholly destitute of foundation, for nobody in Scotland-yard doubted that if the Lord Mayor contemplated any such dark design, he would just be clapped up in the Tower for a week or two, and then killed off for high treason. By degrees, however, the reports grew stronger, and more frequent, and at last a barge, laden with numerous chaldrons of the best Wallsend, brought up the positive intelligence thar several of the arches of the old bridge were stopped, and that preparations were actually in progress for constructing the new one. What an excitement was visible in the old tap-roomi on that memorable night ! Each man looked into his neigh- bor's face, pale with alarm and astonishment, and read therein an echo of the sentiments which filled his own breast. The oldest heaver present proved to demonstration, that the moment the piers were removed, all the water in the Thames would run clean off, and leave a dry gully in its place. What was to become of the coal-barges — of the trade of Scotland- yard — of the very existence of its population ? The tailor shook his head more sagely than usual, and grimly pointing to a knife on the table, bid them wait and see what happened. He said nothing — not he ; but if the Lord Mayor didn't fall a victim to popular indignation, why he would be rather astonisLt-d ; that was all. They did wait ; barge after barge arrived, and still no tidings of the assassination of the Lord Mayor. The first stone was laid : it was done by a Duke — the King's brother. Years passed away, and the bridge was opened by the King himself. In course of time, the piers were removed ; and when the people in Scotland-yard got up next morning in the confident expectation of being able to step over to Pedlar's Acre without wetting the soles of their shoes, they found to their unspeakable astonishment that the water was just where it used to be. 410 SKE TCHES B Y BOZ. A result so different from that which they had anticipated from this first improvement, produced its full effect upon the inhabitants of Scotland-yard. One of the eating-house keepers began to court public opinion, and to look for customers among a new class of people. He covered his little dining- tables with white cloths, and got a painter's apprentice to inscribe something about hot joints from twelve to two, in one ot the little panes of his shop-window. Improvement began to march with rapid strides to the very threshold of Scotland- yard. A new market sprung up at Hungerford, and the Police Commissioners established their office in Whitehall- place. The traffic in Scotland-yard increased ; fresh Members w^ere added to the House of Commons, the Metropolitan Re- presentatives found it a near cut, and many other foot pas- sengers followed their example. We marked the advance of civilization, and beheld it with a sigh. The eating-house keeper who manfully resisted the innovation of table-cloths, was losing ground every day, as his opponent gained it, and a deadly feud sprung up between them. The genteel one no longer took his evening's pint in Scotland-yard, but drank gin and water at a " parlor " in Parliament-street. The fruit-pie maker still continued to visit the old room, but he took to smoking cigars, and began to call himself a pastrycook, and to read the papers. The old heavers still assembled round the ancient fireplace, but their talk was mournful : and the loud song and the joyous shout were heard no more. And what is Scotland-yard now! How have its old customs changed ; and how has the ancient simplicity of its inhabitants faded away ! The old tottering public-house is converted into a spacious and lofty " wine-vaults ; " gold leaf has been used in the construction of the letters which emblazon its exterior, and the poet's art has been called into requisition, to intimate that if you drink a certain description of ale, you must hold fast by the rail. The tailor exhibits in his window the pattern of a foreign-looking brown surtout, with silk buttons, a fur collar, and fur cuffs. He wears a stripe down the outside of each leg of his trousers : and we nave detected his assistants (for he has assistants now) in the act of sitting on the shop-board in the same uniform. At the other end of the little row of houses a boot-maker has established himself in a brick box, with the additional in- novation of a first floor ; and here he exposes for sale, boots SEVEN DIALS, 417 —real Wellington boots — an article which a few years ago, none of the original inhabitants had ever seen or heard of. It was but the other day, that a dress-maker opened another little box in the middle of the row ; and, when we thought that the spirit of change could produce no alteration beyond that, a jeweller appeared, and not content with exposing gilt rings and copper bracelets out of number, put up an announcement, which still sticks in this window, that ^' ladies' ears may be pierced within." The dress-maker employs a young lady who wears pockets in her apron ; and the tailor informs the public that gentlemen may have their own materials made up. Amidst all this change, and restlessness, and innovation, there remains but one old man, who seems to mourn the down- fall of this ancient place. He holds no converse with human kind, but, seated ofi a wooden bench at the angle of the wall which fronts the crossing from Whitehall-place, watches in silence the gambols of his sleek and well-fed dogs. He is the presiding genius of Scotland-yard. Years and years have rolled over his head ; but, in fine weather or in foul, hot or cold, wet or dry, hail, rain, or snow, he is still in his ac- customed spot. Misery and want are depicted in his counte- nance ; his form is bent by age, his head is gray with length of trial, but there he sits from day to day, brooding over the past ; and thither he will continue to drag his feeble limbs, until his eyes have closed upon Scotland-yard, and upon the world to- gether. A few years hence, and the antiquary of another genera- tion looking into some mouldy record of the strife and passions that agitated the world in these times, may glance his eye over the pages we have just filled : and not all his knowledge of the history of the past, not all his black-letter lore, or his skill in book-collecting, not all the dry studies of a long life, or the dusty volumes that have cost him a fortune, may help him to the whereabouts, either of Scotland-yard, or of any one of the landmarks we have mentioned in describing it. CHAPTER V. SEVEN DIALS. We have always been of opinion that if Tom King and the Frenchman had not immortalized Seven Dials, Seven Dials SKETCHES BY BOZ. would have immortalized itself. Seven Dials ! the region oX song and poetry — first effusions, and last dying speeches - hallowed by the names of Catnach and of Pitts — names thai will entwine themselves with costermongers, and barrel-organs, when penny magazines shall have superseded penny yards o/ song, and capital punishment be unknown ! Look at the construction of the place. The gordian knot was all very well in its way : so was the maze of Hampton Court : so is the maze at the Beulah Spa : so were the ties of stiff white neckcloths, when the difficulty of getting one on was only to be equalled by the apparent impossibility of ever getting it off again. But what involutions can compare with those of Seven Dials 1 Where is there such another maze of streets, courts, lanes, and alleys ? Where such a pure mix- ture of Englishmen and Irishmen, as in this complicated part of London ? W^e boldly aver that we doubt the veracity of the legend to which we have adverted. We ca7t suppose a man rash enough to enquire at random — at a house with lodgers too — for a Mr. Thompson, with all but the certainty before his eyes, of finding at least two or three Thompsons in any house of moderate dimensions ; but a Frenchman — a French- man in Seven Dials ! Pooh ' He was an Irishman. Tom King's education had been neglected in his infancy, and as he couldn't understand half the man said, he took it for granted he was talking French. The stranger who finds himself in The Dials " for the first time, and stands Belzoni-like, at the entrance of seven obscure passages, uncertain which to take, will see enough around him to keep his curiosity and attention awake for no inconsiderable time. From the irregular square into which he has plunged, the streets and courts dart in all directions, until they are lost in the unwholesome vapor which hangs over the house-tops, and renders the dirty perspective uncertain and confined; and lounging at every corner, as if they came there to take a few gasps of such fresh air as has found its way so far, but is too much exhausted already, to be enabled to force itself into the narrow alleys around, are groups of people, whose appearance and dwellings would fill any mind but a regular Londoner's with astonishment. On one side, a little crowd has collected round a couple oi ;adies, who having imbibed the contents of various " three outs " of gin and bitters in the course of the morning, have z\ length differed on some point of dcjnestic arrangement, an-i SEVEN DIALS. 419 are on the eve of settling the quarrel satisfactorily, by an appeal to blov/s, greatly to the interest of other ladies who live in the same house, and tenements adjoining, and who are all partisans on one side or other. " Vy don't you pitch into her, Sarah ? exclaims one half- dressed matron, by w^ay of encouragement. Vy don't you ? if my 'usband had treated her with a drain last night, unbe- known to me, I'd tear her precious eyes out — a wixen ! '' " What's the matter, ma'am ? " inquires another old woman, who had just bustled up to the spot. " Matter ! " replies the first speaker, talking at the obnox- ious combatant, " matter ! Here's poor dear Mrs. Sulliwin, as had five blessed children of her own, can't ger out a charing for one arternoon, but what hussies must be a comin', and 'ticing avay her oun' 'usband, as she's been married to twelve year come next Easter Monday, for I see the certificate ven I vas a drinkin' a cup o' tea vith her, only the werry last blessed Ven'sday as ever was sent. I 'appen'd to say promis- cuously, * Mrs. Sulliwin,' says I " *^ What do you mean by hussies ? " interrupts a champion of the other party, wdio has evinced a strong inclination throughout to get up a branch fight on her own account Hooroar," ejaculates a pot-boy in parenthesis, put the kye-bosk on her, Mary ! ") What do you mean by hussies ? " reiterates the champion. "Niver mind," replies the opposition expressively, ^^niver mind ; you go home, and, ven you're quite sober, mend your stockings." This somewhat personal allusion, not only to the lady's habits of intemperance, but also to the state of her wardrobe, rouses her utmost ire, and she accordingly complies with the urgent request of the bystanders to "pitch in," wdth consider- able alacrity. The scufile became general, and terminates, in minor play-bill phraseology, with " arrival of the policemen, interior of the station-house, and impressive denouement ^ In addition to the numerous groups who are idling about the gin-shops and squabbling in the centre of the road, every post in the open space has its occupant, who leans against it for hours, with listless perseverance. It is odd enough that one class of men in London appear to have no enjoyment beyond leaning against posts. We never saw a regular brick- layer's laborer take any other recreation, fighting excepted. Pass through St. Giles's in the evening of a week-day, there 420 SKETCHES BY BOZ. they are m their fustian dresses, spotted with brick-dust and whitewash, leaning against posts. Walk through Seven Dials on Sunday morning : there they are again, drab or light corduroy trousers, Blucher boots, blue coats, and great yellow waistcoats, leaning against posts. The idea of a man dressing himself in his best clothes, to lean against a post all day ! The peculiar character of these streets, and the close resemblance each one bears to its»neighbor, by no means tends to decrease the bewilderment in which the unexperienced way- farer through " the Dials finds himself involved. He traverses streets of dirty, straggling houses, with now and then an un- expected court composed of buildings as ill-proportioned and deformed as the half-naked children that wallow in the ken- nels. Here and there, a little dark chandler's shop, with a cracked bell hung up behind the door to announce the entrance of a customer, or betray the presence of some young gentle- man in whom a passion for shop tills has developed itself at an early age : others, as if for support, against some handsome lofty building, which usurps the place of a low dingy public- house; long rows of broken and patched windows expose plants that may have flourished when the Dials ''were built, in vessels as dirty as " the Dials " themselves ; and shops for the purchase of rags, bones, old iron, and kitchen-stuff, vie in cleanliness with the bird-fanciers and rabbit-dealers, which one might fancy so many arks, but for the irresistible convic- tion that no bird in its proper senses,* who was permitted to leave one of them, would ever come back again. Brokers' shops, which would seem to have been established by humane individuals, as refuges for destitute bugs, interspersed with announcements of day schools, penny theatres, petition-writers, 'mangles, and music for balls or routs, complete the still life " of the subjects ; and dirty men, filthy women, squalid children, fluttering shuttlecocks, noisy battledores, reeking pipes, bad fruit, more than doubtful oysters, attenuated cats, depressed dogs, and anatomical fowls, are its cheerful accompaniments. If the external appearance of the houses, or a glance at their inhabitants, present but few attractions, a closer ac- quaintance with either is little calculated to alter one's first impression. Every room has its separate tenant, and every tenant is, by the same mysterious dispensation which causes a country curate to " increase and multiply " most marvel- lously, generally the head of a numerous family. The man in the shop, perhaps, is in the baked " jemmy SEVEN DIALS. line, or the fire-wood and hearth-stone line, or any other line which requires a floating capital of eighteen-pence or there- abouts : and he and his family live in the shop, and the small back parlor behind it. Then there is an Irish laborer and///^ family in the back kitchen, and a jobbing man — carpet-beater and so forth — with his family in the front one. In the front one-pair, there's another man with another wife and family, and in the back one-pair, there's a young 'oman, as takes in tambour-work, and dresses quite genteel," who talks a good deal about *^my friend," and can't "a-bear anything low." The second floor front, and the rest of the lodgers, are just a second edition of the people below, except a shabby-genteel man in the back attic, who has his half-pint of coffee every morning from the coffee-shop next door but one, which boasts a little front den called a coffee-room, with a fire-place, over which is an inscription, politely requesting that, "to prevent mistakes," customers will please to pay on delivery." The shabby-genteel man is an object of some mystery, but as he leads a life of seclusion, and never was known to buy anything be- yond an occasional pen, except half-pints of coffee, penny loaves, and ha'porths of ink, his fellow-lodgers very naturally suppose him to be an author ; and rumors are current in the Dials, that he writes poems for Mr. Warren. Now anybody who passed through the Dials on a hot summer's evening, and saw the different women of the house gossiping on the steps, would be apt to think that all was harmony among them, and that a more primitive set of peo- ple than the native Diallers could not be imagined. Alas ! the man in the shop illtreats his family ; the carpet-beater extends his professional pursuits to his wife ; the one-pair front has an undying feud with the two-pair front, in conse- quence of the two-pair front persisting in dancing over his (the one-pair front's) head, when he and his family have re- tired for the night ; the two-pair back will interfere with the front kitchen's children ; the Irishman comes home drunk every other night, and attacks everybody; and the one-pair back screams at everything. Animosities spring up between floor and floor ; the very cellar asserts this equality. Mrs. A. "smacks " Mrs. B.'s child, for "making faces." Mrs. B. forth- with throws cold water over Mrs. A.'s child for " calling names." The husbands are embroiled — the quarrel becomes general — an assault is the consequence, and a police-oflicer the result. At2 SKETCHES BY BOZ, CHAPTER VI. MEDITATIONS IN MONMOUTH-STREET. We have always entertained a particular attachment to«^ wards Monmouth-street, as the only true and real emporium for second-hand wearing apparel. Monmouth-street is ven- erable from its antiquity, and respectable from its usefulness. Holywell-street we despise ; the red-headed and red-whiskered Jews who forcibly haul you into their squalid houses, and thrust you into a suit of clothes, whether you will or not, we detest. The inhabitants of Monmouth-street are a distinct class ; a peaceable and retiring race, who immure themselves for the most part in deep cellars, or small back parlors, and who seldom come forth into the world, except in the dusk and coolness of the evening, when they may be seen seated, in chairs on the pavement, smoking their pipes, or watching the gambols of their engaging children as they revel in the gutter, a happy troop of infantine scavengers. Their countenances bear a thoughtful and a dirty cast, certain indications of their love of traffic ; and their habitations are distinguished by that disregard of outward appearance and neglect of personal comfort, so common among people who are constantly im- mersed in profound speculations, and deeply engaged in sedentary pursuits. We have hinted at the antiquity of our favorite spot. " A Monmouth-street laced coat was a by-word a century ago ; and still we find Monmouth-street the same. Pilot greatcoats with wooden buttons, have usurped the place of the ponderous laced coats with full skirts ; embroidered waistcoats with large flaps, have yielded to double-breasted checks with roll- collars ; and three-cornered hats of quaint appearance, have given place to the low crowns and broad brims of the coach- man school ; but it is the times that have changed, not Monmouth-street. Through every alteration and every change, Monmouth-street has still remained the burial-place of the fash- ions; and such, to judge from all present appearances, it will remain until there are no more fashions to bury. We love to walk among these extensive groves of the illustrious dead, and to indulge in the speculationg to which MEDITATIONS IN MONMOUTII-STREET 423 they give rise ; now fitting a deceased coat, then a dead pair of trousers, and anon the mortal remains of a gaudy waist- coat, upon some being of our own conjuring up, and endeavor- ing, from the shape and fashion of the garment itself, to bring its former owner before our mind's eye. We have gone on speculating in this way, until whole rows of coats have started from their pegs and buttoned up, of their own accord, round the waists of imaginary wearers ; lines of trousers have jumped down to meet them ; waistcoats have almost burst with anxiety to put themselves on ; and half an acre of shoes have suddenly found feet to fit them, and gone stumping down the street with a noise which has fairly awakened us from our pleasant reverie, and driven us slowly away, with a bewildered stare, an object of astonishment to the good people of Mon- mouth-street, and of no slight suspicion to the policemen at the opposite street corner. We were occupied in this manner the other day, endeavor- ing to fit a pair of lace-up half-boots on an ideal personage, for whom to say the truth, they were full a couple of sizes too small, when our eyes happened to alight on a few suits of clothes ranged outside a shop-window, which it immediately struck us, must at different periods have all belonged to, and been worn by, the same individual, and had now, by one of those strange conjunctions of circumstances which will occur sometimes, come to be exposed together for sale in the same shop. The idea seemed a fantastic one, and we looked at the clothes again with a firm determination not to be easily led away. No, we were right ; the more we looked, the more we were convinced of the accuracy of our previous impression. There was the man's whole life written as legibly on those clothes, as if we had his autobiography engrossed on parch- ment before us. The first was a patched and much-soiled skeleton suit ; one of those straight blue cloth cases in which small boys used to be confined, before belts and tunics had come in, and old notions had gone out j an ingenious contrivance for dis- playing the full symmetry of a boy's figure, by fastening him into a very tight jacket, with an ornamental row of buttons over each shoulder, and then buttoning his trousers over it, so as to give his legs the appearance of being hooked on, just under the armpits. This was the boy's dress. It had be- longed to a town boy, we could see ; there was a shortness about the legs and arms of the suit ; and a bagging at the 424 SKETCHES BY BOZ. knees, peculiar to the rising youth of London streets. A small day-school he had been at, evidently. If it had been a regular boys' school they wouldn't have let him play on the floor so much, and rub his knees so white. He had an in- dulgent mother too, and plenty of halfpence, as the numerous smears of some sticky substance about the pockets, and just below the chin, which even the salesma^n's skill could not suc- ceed in disguising, sufficiently betokened. They were decent people, but not overburdened with riches, or he would not have so far out-grown the suit when he passed into those cor- duroys with the round jacket ; in which he went to a boys' school, however, and learnt to write — and in ink of pretty tolerable blackness, too, if the place where he used to wipe his pen might be taken as evidence. A black suit and the jacket changed into a diminutive coat. His father had died, and the mother had got the boy a message-lad's place in some office. A long-worn suit that one ; rusty and threadbare before it was laid aside, but clean and free from soil to the last. Poor woman ! We could im- agine her assumed cheerfulness over the scanty meal, and the refusal of her own small portion, that her hungry boy might have enough. Her constant anxiety for his welfare, her pride in his growth mingled sometimes with the thought, almost too acute to bear, that as he grew to be a man his old affection might cool, old kindnesses fade from his mind, and old promises be forgotten — the sharp pain that even then a careless word or a cold look would give her — all crowded on our thoughts as vividly as if the very scene were passing before us. These things happen every hour, and we all know it ; and yet we felt as much sorrow when we saw, or fancied we saw — it makes no difference which — the change that began to' take place now, as if we had just conceived the bare possibil- ity of such a thing for the first time. The next suit, smart but slovenly ; meant to be gay, and yet not half so decent as the threadbare apparel ; redolent of the idle lounge, and the blackguard companions, told us, we thought, that the widow's comfort had rapidly faded away. We could imagine that coat — imagine ! we could see it ; we had seen it a hundred times — sauntering in company with three or four other coats of the same cut, about some place of profligate resort at night. We dressedj from the same shop-window in an instant, MED IT A TIONS IN MONMOUTH-STREET, half a dozen boys of from fifteen to twenty; and putting cigars into their mouths, and their hands into their pockets, watched them as they sauntered down the street, and lingered at the corner, with the obscene jest, and the oft-repeated oath. We never lost sight of them, till they had cocked their hats a little more on one side, and swaggered into the public house : and then we entered the desolate home, where the mother sat late in the night, alone ; we watched her, as she paced the room in feverish anxiety, and every now and then opened the door, looked wistfully into the dark and empty street, and again returned, to be again and again disappointed. We be- held the look of patience with which she bore the brutish threat, nay, even the drunken blow ; and we heard the agony of tears -that gushed from her very heart, as she sank upon her knees in her solitary and wretched apartment. A long period had elapsed, and a greater change had taken place, by the time of casting oif the suit that hung above. It was that of a stout, broad-shouldered, sturdy- chested man ; and we knew at once, as anybody would, who glanced at that broad-skirted green coat, with the large metal buttons, that its wearer seldom walked forth without a dog at liis heels, and some idle ruffian, the very counterpart of him- self, at his side. The vices of the boy had grown with the man, and we fancied his home then — if such a place deserve the name. We saw the bare and miserable room, destitute of furni- ture, crowded with his wife and children, pale, hungry, and emaciated ; the man cursing their lamentations, staggering to the tap-room, from whence he had just returned, followed by his wife and sickly infant, clamoring for bread j and heard the street wrangle and noisy recrimination that his striking her occasioned. And then imagination led us to some metro- politan workhouse, situated in the midst of crowded streets and alleys, filled with noxious vapors, and ringing with boisterous cries, where an old and feeble woman, imploring par- don for her son, lay dying in a close dark room, with no child to clasp her hand, and no pure air from heaven to fan her brow. A stranger closed the eyes that settled into a cold unmeaning glare, and strange ears received the words that murmured from the white and half-closed lips. A coarse round frock, with a worn cotton neckerchief, and other articles of clothing of the commonest description, com- pleted the history. A prison, and tl:e !:entence — banishment 426 SKETCHES BY BOZ. or the gallows. What would the man have given then, to be once again the contented humble drudge of his boyish years ; to have restored to life, but for a week, a day, an hour, a minute, only for so long a time as would enable him to say one word of passionate regret to, and hear one sound of heart- felt forgiveness from, the cold and ghastly form that lay rot- ting in the pauper's grave ! The children wild in the streets/ the mother a destitute widow; both deeply tainted with the deep disgrace of the husband and father's name, and im pelled by sheer necessity, down the precipice that had led him to a lingering death, possibly of many years' duration, thousands of miles away. We had no clue to the end of the tale ; but it was easy to guess its termination. We took a step or two further on, and byway of restoring the naturally cheerful tone of our thoughts, began fitting visionary feet and legs into a cellar-board full of boots and shoes, with a speed and accuracy that would have astonished the most expert artist in leather, living. There was one pair of boots in particular — a jolly, good tempered, hearty-looking pair of tops, that excited our warmest regard ; and we had got a fine, red-faced, jovial fellow of a market gardener into them, before we had made their acquaintance half a minute. They were just the very thing for him. There were his huge fat legs bulging over the tops, and fitting them too tight to admit of his tucking in the loops he had pulled them on by ; and his knee-cords with an interval of stocking ; and his blue apron tucked up round his waist ; and his red neckerchief and blue coat, and a white hat stuck on one side of his head ; and there he stood with a broad grin on his great red face, whist- ling away, as if any other idea but that of being happy and comfortable had never entered his brain. This was the very man after our own heart ; we knew all about him ; we had seen him coming up to Covent-garden in his green chaise-cart, with the fat tubby little horse, half a thousand times ; and even while we cast an affectionate look upon his boots, at that instant, the form of a coquettish ser- vant-maid suddenly sprung into a pair of Denmark satin shoes that stood beside them, and we at once recognized the very girl who accepted his offer of a ride, just on this side ot the Hammersmith suspension-bridge, the very last Tuesday morning we rode into town from Richmond. A very smart female, in a showy bonnet, stepped into a pair of gray cloth boots, with black fringe and binding, that MEDITATIONS IN MONMOUTH-STREET, were studiously pointing out their toes on the other side of thn top'boots, and seemed very anxious to engage his atten- tion, but we didn't observe that our friend the market-gar- dener appeared at all captivated with these blandishments ; for beyond giving a knowing wink when they first began, as if to imply that he quite understood their end and object, he took no further notice of them. His indifference, however, was amply recompensed by the excessive gallantry of a very old gentleman with a silver-headed stick, who tottered into a pair of large list shoes, that were standing in one corner of the board, and indulged in a variety of gestures expressive of his admiration of the lady in the cloth boots, to the immeasurable amusement of a young fellow we put into a pair of long-quar- tered pumps, who we thought would have split the coat that slid down to meet him, with laughing. We had been looking on at this little pantOmine with great satisfaction for some time, when, to our unspeakable astonish- ment we perceived that the whole of the characters, includ- ing a numerous coj'ps de ballet of boots and shoes in the back- ground, into which v/e had been hastily thrusting as many feet as we could press into the service, were arranging themselves in order for dancing ; and some music striking up at the moment, to it they went without delay. It was perfectly delightful to witness the agility of the market-gardener. Out went the boots, first on one side, then on the other, then cutting, then shufflingj then setting to the Denmark satins, then advancing, then retreating, then going round, and then repeating the whole of the evolutions again, without appearing to suffer in the least from the violence of the exercise. Nor were the Denmark satins a bit behindhand, for they jumped and bounded about, in all directions ; and though they were neither so regular, nor so true to the time as the cloth boots, still, as they seemed to do it from the heart, and to enjoy it more, v/e candidly confess that we preferred their style of dancing to the other. But the old gentleman in the list shoes was the most amusing object in the whole party ; for, besides his grotesque attempts to appear youthful, and amorous, which were sufficiently entertaining in themselves, the young fellow in the pumps managed so artfully that every time the old gentleman advanced to salute the lady in the cloth boots, he trod with his whole weight on the old fellow's toes, which made him roar with anguish, and rendered all the others like to die of laughing. 428 SKETCHES BY BOZ, We were in the full enjoyment of these festivities when we heard a shrill, and by no means musical voice, exclaim. " Hope you'll know me again, imperence ! " and on looking intently forward to see from whence the sound came, we found that it proceeded, not from the young lady in the cloth boots, as we had at first been inclined to suppose, but from a bulky lady of elderly appearance who was seated in a chair at the head of the cellar-steps, apparently for the purpose of super- intending the sale of the articles arranged there. A barrel-organ, which had been in full force close behind us, ceased playing ; the people we had been fitting into the shoes and boots took to flight at the interruption ; and as we were conscious that in the depth of our meditations we might have been rudely staring at the old lady for half an hour with- out knowing it, we took to flight too, and were soon immersed in the deepest obscurity of the adjacent Dials." CHAPTER VH. HACKNEY-COACH STANDS. We maintain that hackney-coaches, properly so called, belong solely to the metropolis. We may be told, that there are hackney-coach stands in Edinburgh ; and not to go quite so far for a contradiction to our position, we may be remind- ed that Liverpool, Manchester, " and other large towns " (as the Parliamentary phrase goes), have their hackney-coach stands. We readily concede to these places, the possession of certain vehicles, which may look almost as dirty, and even go almost as slowly, as London hackney-coaches : but that they have the slightest claim to compete with the metropolis, either in point of stands, drivers, or cattle, we indignantly deny. Take a regular, ponderous, rickety, London hackney-coach of the old school, and let any man have the boldness to assert, if he can, that he ever beheld any object on the face of the earth which at all resembles it, unless, indeed, it were another hackney-coach of the same date. We have recently observed on certain stands, and we say it with deep regret, rather dap- per green chariots, and coaches of polished yellow, with four HA CKNE Y-COA CH STANDS. wheels of the same color as the coach, whereas it is perfectly notorious to every one who has studied the subject, that every wheel ought to be of a different color, and a different size. These are innovations, and, like other mis-called improve- ments, awful signs of the restlessness of the public mind, and the little respect paid to our time-honored institutions. Why should hackney-coaches be clean ? Our ancestors found them dirty, and left them so. Why should we, with a feverish wish to "keep moving,'^ desire to roll along at the rate of six miles an hour, while they were content to rumble over the stones at four ? These are solemn considerations. Hackney-coaches are part and parcel of the law of the land ; they were settled by the Legislature ; plated and numbered by the wisdom of Parliament. Then why have they been swamped by cabs and omni- buses ? Or why should people be allowed to ride quickly for eightpence a mile, after Parliament had come to the solemn decision that they should pay a shilling a mile for riding slowly? We pause for a reply; — and, having no chance of getting one, begin a fresh paragraph. Our acquaintance with hackney-coach stands is of long standing. We are a walking book of fares, feeling ourselves, half-bound, as it were, to be always in the right on contested points. We know all the regular watermen within three miles of Covent-garden by sight, and should be almost tempted to believe that all the hackney-coach horses in that district knew us by sight too, if one-half of them w^ere not blind. We take great interest in hackney-coaches, but we seldom drive, having a knack of turning ourselves over when we attempt to do so. We are as great friends to horses, hackney-coach and other- wise, as the renowned Mr. Martin, of costermonger notoriety, and yet w^e never ride. We keep no horse, but a clothes- horse ; enjoy no saddle so much- as a saddle of mutton ; and, following our own inclinations, have never followed the hounds. Leaving these fleeter means of getting over the ground, or of depositing oneself upon it, to those who like them, by hack- ney-coach stands we take our stand. There is a hackney-coach stand vmder the very vvindow at which we are writing ; there is only one coach on it now, but it is a fair specimen of the class of vehicles to which we have alluded — a great, lumbering, square concern of a dingy yellov^ color (like a bilious brunette), with very small glasses put very la?^ge frames ; the panels are ornamented with a SKETCHES B V BOZ. faded coat of arms, in shape something like a dissected bat^ the axletree is red, and the majority of the wheels are green. The box is partially covered by an old great-coat, with a mul- tiplicity of capes, and some extraordinary -looking clothes j and the straw, with which the canvas cushion is stuffed, is sticking up in several places, as if in rivalry of the hay, which is peeping through the chinks in the boot. The horses, with drooping heads, and each with a mane and tail as scanty and straggling as those of a worn-out rocking-horse, are standing patiently on some damp straw, occasionally wincing, and rattling the harness ; and nov/ and then, one of them lifts his mouth to the ear of his companion, as if he were saying, in a whisper, that he should like to assassinate the coachman. The coachman himself is in the watering-house ; and the waterman, with his hands forced into his pockets as far as they can possibly go, is dancing the " double shuffle," in front of the pump, to keep his feet warm, The servant-girl, with the pink ribbons, at No. 5, ojoposite, suddenly opens the street-door, and four small children forth- with rush out, and scream Coach ! with all their might and main. The waterman darts from the pump, seizes the horses by their respective bridles, and drags them, and the coach too, round to the house, shouting all the time for the coachman at the very top, or rather very bottom of his voice, for it is a deep bass growl. A response is heard from the tap-room ; the coachman, in his wooden-soled shoes, makes the street echo again as he runs across it ; and then there is such a struggling, and backing, and grating of the kennel, to get the coach-door opposite the house-door, that the chil- dren are in perfect ecstasies of delight. What a commotion ! The old lady, who has been stopping there for the last month, is going back to the country. Out comes box after box, and one side of the vehicle is filled with luggage in no time ; the children get into everybody's way, the youngest, who has upset himself in his attempts to carry an umbrella, is borne off wounded and kicking. The youngsters disappear, and a short pause ensues, during which the old lady is, no doubt, kissing them all round in the back parlor. She appears at last, followed by her married daughter, all the children, and both the servants, who, with the joint assistance of the coach- man and waterman, manage to get her safely into the coach. A cloak is handed in, and a little basket, which we could almost swear contains a small black bottle, anc| a paper of HACKNEY-COACH STANDS. sandwiches. Up go the steps, bang goes the door, " Golden- cross, Charing-cross, Tom," says the waterman ; " Good-by, grandma," cry the children, off jingles the coach at the rate of three miles an hour, and the mamma and children retire into the house, with the exception of one little villain, who runs up the street at the top of his speed, pursued by the servant ; not ill-pleased to have such an opportunity of dis- playing her attractions. She brings him back, and, after casting two or three gracious glances across the way, which are either intended for us or the potboy (we are not quite certain which), shuts the door and the hackney-coach stand is again at a standstill. We have been frequently amused with the intense delight with which a servant of all work," who is sent for a coach, deposits herself inside ; and the unspeakable gratification which boys, who have been despatched on a similar errand, appear to derive from mounting the box. But we never rec- ollect to have been more amused with a hackney-coach party, than one we saw early the other morning in Totten- ham-court-road. It was a wedding-party, and emerged from one of the inferior streets near Fitzroy-square. There were the bride, with a thin white dress, and a great red face ; and the bridesmaid, a little, dumpy, good-humored young woman, dressed, of course, in the same appropriate costume ; and the bridegroom and his chosen friend, in blue coats, yellow waistcoats, white trousers, and Berlin gloves to match. They stopped at the corner of the street, and called a coach with an air of indescribable dignity. The moment they were in, the bridesmaid threw a red shawl, which she had, no doubt, brought on purpose, negligently over the number on the door, evidently to delude pedestrians into the belief that the hackney-coach was a private carriage ; and away they went, perfectly satisfied that the imposition was successful, and quite unconscious that there was a great staring number stuck up behind, on a plate as large as a schoolboy's slate. A shilling a mile ! — the ride was worth five, at least, to them. What an interesting book a hackney-coach might produce, if it could carry as much in its head as it does in its body ! The autobiography of a broken-down hackney-coach, would surely be as amusing as the autobiography of a broken-down hackneyed dramatist ; and it might tell as much of its travels with the pole, as others have of their expeditions to it. How 432 SKETCHES BY BOZ. many stories might be related of the different people it had conveyed on matters of business or profit — pleasure or pain ! And how many melancholy tales of the same people at dif- ferent periods ! The country-girl — the showy, over-dressed woman — the drunken prostitute — ! The raw apprentice — the dissipated spendthrift — the thief 1 Talk of cabs ! Cabs are all very well in cases of expedi- tion, when it's a matter of neck or nothing, life or death, your temporary home or your long one. But, besides a cab's lacking that gravity of deportment which so peculiarly dis- tinguishes a hackney-coach, let it never be forgotten that a cab is a thing of yesterday, and that he never was anything better. A hackney-cab has always been a hackney-cab, from his first entry into life ; whereas a hackney-coach is a remnant of past gentility, a victim to fashion, a hanger-on of an old English family, wearing their arms, and, in days of yore, es- corted by men wearing their livery, stripped of his finery, and thrown upon the world, like a once-smart footman when he is no longer sufficiently juvenile for his office, progressing lower and lower in the scale of four-wheeled degradation, until at last it comes to — a stand! CHAPTER VIII. doctors' COM MONS Walking, without any definite object through St. Paul's Churchyard, a little while ago, we happened to turn down a street entitled " Paul's chain," and keeping straight forward for a few hundred yards, found ourself, as a natural conse- quence, in Doctors' Commons. Now Doctors' Commons being familiar by name to everybody, as the place where they grant marriage-licenses to love-sick couples, and divorces to un- faithful ones ; register the wills of people who have any prop- erty to leave, and punish hasty gentlemen who call ladies by unpleasant names, we no sooner discovered that we were really within its precincts, than we felt a laudable desire to become better acquainted therewith ; and as the first object of our curiosity was the Court, whose decrees can even iifi' DOCTORS' COMMONS. 433 loose the bonds of matrimony, we procured a direction to it ; and bent our steps thither without delay. Crossing a quiet and shady court-yard, paved with stone, and frowned upon by old red brick houses, on the doors of which were painted the names of sundry learned civilians, we paused before a small, green-baized, brass-headed-nailed door, which yielding to our gentle push, at once admitted us into an old quaint-looking apartment, with sunken windows, and black carved wainscoting, at the upper end of which, seated on a raised platform, of semicircular shape, were about a dozen solemn-looking gentlemen, in crimson gowns and wigs. At a more elevated desk in the centre, sat a very fat and red- faced gentleman, in tortoise-shell spectacles, whose dignified ap- pearance announced the judge ; and round a long green-baized table below, something like a billiard-table without the cush- ions and pockets, were a number of very self-important-look- ing personages, in stiff neckcloths, and black gowns with white fur collars, whom we at once set down as proctors. At the lower end of the billiard-table was an individual in an arm- chair, and a wig, whom we afterwards discovered to be the registrar ; and seated behind a little desk, near the door, wei e a respectable-looking man in black, of about twenty stone weight or thereabouts, and a fat-faced, smirking, civil-lookir.g body, in a black gown, black kid gloves, knee shorts, and silks, with a shirt-frill in his bosom, curls on his head, and a silver staff in his hand, whom we had no difficulty in recognizing as the officer of the Court. The latter, indeed, speedily set our mind at rest upon this point, for advancing to our elbow, and opening a conversation forthwith, he had communicated to us, in less than five minutes, that he was the apparitor, and the other the court-keeper ; that this was the Arches Court, and therefore the counsel wore red gowns, and the proctors fur collars ; aijd that when the other Courts sat .there, they didn't wear red gowns or fur collars either; with many other scraps of intelligence equally interesting. Besides these two officers, there was a little thin old man, with long grizzly liair, crouched in a remote corner, whose duty, our communicative friend informed us, was to ring a large hand-bell when the Court opened in the morning, and who, for aught his appear- ance betokened to the contrary, might have been similarly employed for the last two centuries at least. The red-faced gentleman in the tortoise-shell spectacles 28 434 SKETCHES BY BOZ. had got all the talk to himself just then, and very well he was doing it, too, only he spoke very fast, but that was habit ; and rather thick, but that was good living. So we had plenty of time to look about us. There was one individual who amused us mightily. This was one of the bewigged gentlemen in the red robes, who was straddling before the fire in the centre of the Court, in the attitude of the brazen Colossus, to the com- plete exclusion of everybody else. He had gathered up his robe behind, in much the same manner as a slovenly woman would her petticoats on a very dirty day, in order that he might feel the full warmth of the fire. His wig was put on all awry, with the tail straggling about his neck, his scanty gray trousers and short black gaiters, made in the worst possible style, imparted an additional inelegant appearance to his uncouth person ; and his limp, badly-starched shirt -collar almost obscured his eyes. We shall never be able to claim any credit as a physiognomist again, for, after a careful scrutiny of this gentleman's countenance, we had come to the conclusion that it bespoke nothing but conceit and silliness, when our friend with the silver staff whispered in our ear that he was no other than a doctor of civil law, and heaven knows what besides. So of course we were mistaken, and he must be a very talented man. He conceals it so well though — perhaps with the merciful view of not astonishing ordinary people too much — that you would suppose him to be one of the stupidest dogs alive. The gentleman in the spectacles having concluded his judgment, and a few minutes having been allowed to elapse, to afford time for the buzz in the Court to subside, the registrar called on the next cause, which was the office of the Judge promoted by Bumple against Sludberry.'' A general mov^e- ment was visible in the Court, at this announcement, and ^ the obliging functionary with a silver staff whispered us that ^' there woul(^ be some fun now, for this was a brawling case." We were not rendered much the wiser by this piece of in- formation, till we found by the opening speech of the counsel for the promoter, that, under a half-obsolete statute of one of the Edwards, the court was empowered to visit with the pen- alty of excommunication, any person who should be proved guilty of the crime of brawling," or " smiting," in any church or vestry adjoining thereto ; and it appeared, by some eighth' and-twenty affidavits, which were duly referred to, that on a certain night, at a certain vestry- jneeting, in a certain parish DOCTORS' COMMONS. 435 particularly set forth, Thomas Sludberry, the party appeared against in that suit, had made use of, and applied to Michael Bumple, the promoter, the words You be blowed ; " and that on the said Michael Bumple and others remonstrating with the said Thomas Sludberry, on the impropriety of his conduct, the said Thomas Sludberry repeated the aforesaid expression^ You be blowed ; " and furthermore desired and requested to know whether the said Michael Bumple "wanted anything for himself ; " adding, " that if the said Michael Bumple did want anything for himself, he, the said Thomas Sludberry, was the man to give it him ; " at the same time making use of other heinous and sinful expressions, all of which, Bumple sub- mitted, came within the intent and meaning of the Act; and therefore he, for the soul's health and chastening of Slud- berry, prayed for sentence of excommunication against him accordingly. Upon these facts a long argument was entered into, on both sides, to the great edification of a number of persons in- terested in the parochial squabbles, who crowded the court ; and when some very long and grave speeches had been made pro and con^ the red-faced gentleman in the tortoise-shell spec- tacles took a review of the case, which occupied half an hour more, and then pronounced upon Sludberry the awful sen- tence of excommunication for a fortnight, and payment of the costs of the suit. Upon this, Sludberry, who w^as a little, red- faced, sly-looking, ginger-beer seller, addressed the court, and said, if they'd be good enough to take off the costs, and ex^ communicate him for the term of his natural life instead, it would be much more convenient to him, for he never went to church at all. To this appeal the gentleman in the spectacles made no other reply than a look of virtuous indignation ; and Sludberry and his friends retired. As the man with the silver staff informed us that the court was on the point of rising, we retired too — pondering, as we walked away, upon the beauti- ful spirit of these ancient ecclesiastical laws, the kind and neighborly feelings they are calculated to awaken, and the strong attachment to religious institutions which they cannot fail to engender. We were so lost in these meditations, that we had turned into the street, and run up against a door-post, before wc rec- ollected where we were walking. On looking upwards to see what house we had stumbled upon, the words * Prerogative- Office," written in large characters, met our eye; and as we 43^ SKETCHES BY BOZ. were in a sight-seeing humor and the place was a public one, we walked in. The room into which we walked, was a long, busy-looking place, partitioned off, on either side, into a variety of little boxes, in which a few clerks were engaged in copying or ex- amining deeds. Down the centre of the room were several desks nearly breast high, at each of which, three or four peo- ple were standing, poring over large volumes. As we knevr that they were searching for wills, they attracted our attention at once. It was curious to contrast the lazy indifference of the attor- neys' clerks who were making a search for some legal pur- pose, with the air of earnestness and interest which distin- guished the strangers to the place, who were looking up the will of some deceased relative ; the former pausing every now and then with an impatient yawn, or raising their heads to look at the people who passed up and down the room ; the latter stooping over the book, and running down column after column of names in the deepest abstraction. There was one little dirty-faced man in a blue apron, who after a whole morning's search, extending some fifty years back, had just found the will to which he wished to refer, which one of the officials was reading to him in a low hurried voice from a thick vellum book with large clasps. It was perfectly evident that the more the clerk read, the less the man with the blue apron understood about the matter. When the volume was first brought down, he took off his hat, smoothed down his hair, smiled with great self-satisfaction, and looked up in the reader's face with the air of a man who had made up his mind to recollect every word he heard. The first two or three lines were intelligible enough ; but then the technicalities began, and the little man began to look rather dubious. Then came a whole string of compli- cated trusts, and he was regularly at sea. As the reader proceeded, it was quite apparent that it was a hopeless case, and the little man, with his mouth open and his eyes fixed upon his face, looked on with an expression of bewilderment and perplexity irresistibly ludicrous. A little further on, a hard-featured old man with a deepl}-- wrinkled face, was intently perusing a lengthy will with the aid of a pair of horn spectacles : occasionally pausing from his task, and slyly noting down some brief memorandum of the bequests contained in it. Every wrinkle about his toothless DOCTORS' COMMONS, 437 mouth, and sharp keen eyes, told of avarice and cunning. His clothes were nearly threadbare, but it was easy to see that he wore them from choice and not from necessity ; all his looks and gestures down to the very small pinches of snuff which he every now and then took from a little tin can- ister, told of wealth, and penury, and avarice. As he leisurely closed the register, put up his spectacles, and folded his scraps of paper in a large leathern pocket- book, we thought what a nice hard bargain he was driving with some poverty-stricken legatee, who, tired of waiting year after year, until some life-interest should fall in, was selling his chance, just as it began to grow most valuable, for a twelfth part of its worth. It was a good speculation — a very safe one. The old man stowed his pocket-book carefully in the breast of his great-coat, and hobbled away with a leer of triumph. That will had made him ten years younger at the lowest computation. Having commenced our observations, we should certainly have extended them to another dozen of people at least, had not a sudden shutting up and putting away of the worm-eaten old books, warned us that the time for closing the office had arrived ; and thus deprived us of a pleasure, and spared our readers an infliction. We naturally fell into a train of reflection as we walked homewards, upon the curious old records of likings and dislik- ings ; of jealousies and revenges ; of affection defying the power of death, and hatred pursued beyond the grave, which these depositories contain ; silent but striking tokens, some of them, of excellence of heart, and nobleness of soul ; melancholy examples, others, of the worst passions of human nature. How many men as they lay speechless and helpless on the bed of death, would have given worlds but for the strength and power to blot out the silent evidence of animosity and bitterness, which now stands registered against them in DoC' tors' Commons f 438 SKE TCHES B Y BOZ, CHAPTER IX. LONDON RECREATIONS. The wish of persons in the humbler classes of life, to ape the manners and customs of those whom fortune has placed above them, is often the subject of remark, and not unfre- quently of complaint. The inclination may, and no doubt does, exist to a great extent, among the small gentility — the would-be aristocrats — of the middle classes. Tradesmen and clerks, with fashionable novel-reading families, and circulating- library-subscribing daughters, get up small assemblies in humble imitation of Almack's, and promenade the dingy " large room of some second-rate hotel with as much com- placency as the enviable few who are privileged to exhibit their magnificence in that exclusive haunt of fashion and foolery. Aspiring young ladies, who read flaming accounts of some "fancy fair in high life," suddenly grow desperately charitable ; visions of admiration and matrimony float before their eyes ; some, wonderfully meritorious institution, which, by the strangest accident in the world, has never been heard of before, is discovered to be in a languishing condition : Thomson's great room, or Johnson's nursery-ground, is forth- with engaged, and the aforesaid young ladies, from mere charity, exhibit themselves for three days, from twelve to four, for the small charge of one shilling per head ! With the ex- ception of these classes of society, however, and a few weak and insignificant persons, we do not think the attempt at imi- tation to which we have alluded, prevails in any great degree. The different character of the recreations of different classes, has often afforded us amusement ; and we have chosen it for the subject of our present sketch, in the hope that it may possess some amusement for our readers. If the regular City man, who leaves Lloyd's at five o'clock, and drives home to Hackney, Clapton, Stamford-hill, or else- where, can be said to have any daily recreation beyond his dinner, it is his garden. He never does anything to it with his own hands ; but he takes great pride in it notwithstand- ing ; and if you are desirous of paying your addresses to the j^oungest daughter, be sure to be in raptures with every flower LONDON RECREA TIONS, 439 and shrub it contains. If your poverty of expression compel you to make any distinction between the two, we would cer- tainly recommend your bestowing more admiration on his gar- den than his wine. He always takes a walk round it, before he starts for town in the morning, and is particularly anxious that the fish-pond should be kept si^ecially neat. If you call on him on Sunday in summer-time, about an hour before dinner, you will find him sitting in an arm-chair, on the lawn behind the house, with a straw-hat on, reading a Sunday paper. A short distance from him you will most likely ob- serve a handsome paroquet in a large brass-wire cage ; ten to one but the two eldest girls are loitering in one of the side walks accompanied by a couple of young gentlemen, who are holding parasols over them — of course only to keep the sun off — while the younger children, with the under nursery-maid, are strolling listlessly about, in the shade. Beyond these occasions, his delight in his garden appears to arise more from the consciousness of possession than actual enjoyment of it. When he drives you down to dinner on a week-day, he is rather fatigued with the occupations of the morning, and tolerably cross into the bargain ; but when the cloth is re- moved, and he has drank three or four glasses of his favorite port, he orders the French windows of his dining-room (which of course look into the garden) to be opened, and throwing a silk handkerchief over his head, and leaning back in his arm- chair, descants at considerable length upon its beauty, and the cost of maintaining it. This is to impress you — who are a young friend of the family — with a due sense of the ex- cellence of the garden, and the wealth of its owner ; and when he has exhausted the subject, he goes to sleep. There is another and a very different class of men, whose recreation is their garden. An individual of this class, resides some short distance from town — say in the Hampstead-road, or thS Kilburn-road, or any other road where the houses are small and neat,- and have little slips of back garden. He and his wife — who is as clean and compact a little body as him- self — have occupied the same house ever since he retired from business twenty years ago. They have no family. They once had a son, who died at about five years old. The child's por- trait hangs over the mantelpiece in the best sitting-room, and a little cart he used to draw about, is carefully preserved as a relic. In fine weather the old gentleman is almost constantly in SKETCHES BY BOZ, the garden ; and when it is too wet to go into it, he will look out of the window at it, by the hour together. He has always something to do there, and you will see him digging, and sweeping, and cutting, and planting, with manifest delight. In spring time, there is no end to the sowing of seeds, and sticking little bits of wood over them, with labels, which look 1 ike epitaphs to their memory ; and in the evening, when C ie sun has gone down, the perseverance with which he lugs a ^reat watering-pot about is perfectly astonishing. The only other recreation he has, is the newspaper, which he peruses every day, from beginning to end, generally reading the most interesting pieces of intelligence to his wife, during breakfast. The old lady is very fond of flowers, as the hyacinth-glasses in the parlor-window, and geranium-pots in the little front court, testify. She takes great pride in the garden too : and when one of the four fruit-trees produces rather a larger gooseberry than usual, it is carefully preserved under a wineglass on the sideboard, for the edification of visitors, w^ho are duly informed that Mr. So-and-so planted the tree which produced it, with his own hands. On a summer's evening, w^hen the large watering-pot has been filled and emptied some fourteen times, and the old couple have quite exhausted themselves by trotting about, you will see them sitting happily together in the little summer-house, enjoying the calm and peace of the twilight, and w^atching the shadows as they fall upon the garden, and gradually growing thicker and more sombre, obscure the tints of their gayest flowers — no bad emblem of the years that have silently rolled over their heads, deadening in their course the brightest hues of early hopes and feelings which have long since faded away. These are their only recreation, and they require no more. They have within themselves, the mate rials of comfort and content ; and the only anxiety of each, is to die before the other. This is no ideal sketch. There used to be many old people of this description ; their numbers may have diminished, and may decrease still more. Whether the course female educa- tion has taken oi late days — whether the pursuit of giddy frivolities, and empty nothings, has tended to unfit women for that quiet domestic life in which they show far more beauti- fully than in the most crowded assembly, is a question we should feel little gratification in discussing : we hope not. Let us turn now, to another portion of the London popula- tion, whose recreations present about as strong a contrast as LONDON RECREA TIONS. 441 can well be conceived — we mean the Sunday pleasures ; and let us beg our readers to imagine themselves stationed by our side in some well-known rural " Tea-gardens." The heat is intense this afternoon, and the people, of whom there are additional parties arriving every moment, look as warm as the tables which have been recently painted, and have the appearance of being red-hot. What a dust and noise ! Men and women — boys and girls — sweethearts and married people — babies in arms, and children in chaises — pipes and shrimps — cigars and periwinkles — tea and tobacco. Gentle- men, in alarming waistcoats, and steel watch-guards, prom- enading about, three abreast, with surprising dignity (or as the gentleman in the next box facetiously observes, " cutting it uncommon fat ! — ladies, with great, long, white pocket- handkerchiefs like small table-cloths, in their hands, chasing one another on the grass in the most playful and interesting man- ner, with the view of attracting the attention of the aforesaid gentlemen — husbands in perspective ordering bottles of ginger- beer for the objects of their affections, with a lavish disregard of expense ; and the said objects washing down huge quanti- ties of "shrimps" and "winkles," with an equal disregard of their own bodily health and subsequent comfort — boys, with great silk hats just balanced on the top of their heads, smoking cigars, and trying to look as if they liked them — gentlemen in pink shirts and blue waistcoats, occasionally upsetting either themselves, or somebody else, with their own canes. Some of the finery of these people provokes a smile, but they are all clean, and happy, and disposed to be good-natured and sociable. Those two motherly-looking women in the smart pelisses, wdio are chatting so confidentially, inserting a " ma'am " at every fourth word, scraped an acquaintance about a quarter of an hour ago : it originated in admiration of the little boy who belongs to one of them — that diminutive speci- men of mortality in the three-cornered pink satin hat with black feathers. The two men in the blue coats and drab trousers, who are walking up and down, smoking their pipes, are their husbands. The party in the opposite box are a pretty fair specimen of the generality of the visitors. These are the father and mother, and old grandmother : a young man and woman, and an individual addressed by the eupho- nious title of " Uncle Bill," who is evidently the wit of the party. They have some half-dozen children with them, but it is scarcely necessary to notice the fact, for that is a matter of 442 SKETCHES BY BOZ. course here. Every woman in **the gardens/' who has been married for any length of time, must have had twins on two or three occasions; it is impossible to account for the extent of juvenile population in any other way. Observe the inexpressible delight of the old grandmother, at Uncle Bill's splendid joke of ^' tea for four : bread-and but- ter for forty ; " and the loud explosion of mirth which follows his wafering a paper ^' pigtail " on the waiter's collar. The young man is evidently "keeping company" with Uncle Bill's niece : and Uncle Bill's hints — such as " Don't forget me at the dinner, you know," "I shall look out for the cake, Sally," " I'll be godfather to your first — wager it's a boy," and so forth, are equally embarrassing to the young people, and de- lightful to the elder ones. As to the old grandmother, she is in perfect ecstasies, and does nothing but laugh herself into fits of coughing, until they have finished the " gin-and-water warm with," of which Uncle Bill .ordered "^glasses round" after tea, " just to keep the night air out, and do it up comfortable and riglar arter sitch an as-tonishing hot day ! " It is getting dark, and the people begin to move. The field leading to town is quite full of them ; the little hand chaises are dragged wearily along, the children are tired and amuse themselves and the company generally by crying, or resort to the much more pleasant expedient of going to sleep — the mothers begin to wish that they were at home again — sweethearts grow more sentimental than ever, as the time for parting arrives — the gardens look mournful enough, by the light of the two lanterns which hang against the trees for the convenience of smokers — and the waiters who have been running about incessantly for the last six hours, think they feel a little tired, as they count their glasses and their gains. CHAPTER X. THE RIVER. " Are you fond of the water ? " is a question very fre- quently asked, in hot summer weather, by amphibious-look' ing young men. " Very," is the general reply, " An't you ? THE RIVER. 443 1^^^ Hardly ever off it," is the response, accompanied by sun- dry adjectives, expressive of the speaker's heartfelt admiration of that element. Now, with all respect for the opinion of society in general, and cutter clubs in particular, we humbly suggest that some of the most painful reminiscences in the mind of every individual who has occasionally disported him- self on the Thames, must be connected with his aquatic recreations. Who ever heard of a successful represented on the canvas outside (three taps): no waiting, remember : no deception. The fe-ro-cious lion (tap, tap) who bit off the gentleman's head last Cambervel vos a twelve- month, and has killed on the awerage three keepers a-year ever since he arrived at matoority. No extra charge on this account recollect ; the price of admission is only sixpence." This address never fails to produce a considerable sensation, and sixpences flow into the treasury with wonderful rapidity. The dwarfs are also objects of great curiosity, and as a dwarf, a giantess, a living skeleton, a wild Indian, " a young lady of singular beauty, with perfectly white hair and pink eyes," and two or three other natural curiosities, are usually exhibited together for the small charge of a penny, they at- tract very numerous audiences. The best thing about a dwarf is, that he has always a little box, about t-wo feet six inches high, into which, by long practice, he can just manage to get, by doubling himself up like a boot-jack : this box is painted 462 SKETCHES BY BOZ, outside like a six-roomed house, and as the crowd see him ring a bell, or lire a pistol out of the first-floor window, they verily believe that it is his ordinary town residence, divided like other mansions into drawing-rooms, dining-parlor, and bedchambers. Shut up in this case, the unfortunate little object is brought out to delight the throng by holding a face- tious dialogue with the proprietor : in the course of which, the dwarf (who is always particularly drunk) pledges himself to sing a comic song inside, and pays various compliments to the ladies, which induce them to " come for'erd with great alacrity. As a giant is not so easily moved, a pair in inde- scribables of most capacious dimensions, and a huge shoe, are usually brought out, into which two or three stout men get all at once, to the enthusiastic delight of the crowd, who are quite satisfied with the solemn assurance that these habili- ments form part of the giant's everyday costume. The grandest and most numerousl3^-frequented booth in the whole fair, however, is The Crown and Anchor" — a temporary ball-room — we forget how many hundred feet long, the price of admission to which is one shilling. Imme- diately on your right hand as you enter, after paying your money, is a refreshment place, at which cold beef, roast and boiled, French rolls, stout, wine, tongue, ham, even fowls, if w^e recollect right, are displayed in tempting array. There is a raised orchestra, and the place is boarded all the way down, in patches, just wide enough for a country dance. There is no master of the ceremonies in this artificial Eden — all is primitive, unreserved, and unstudied. The dust is blinding, the heat insupportable, the company somewhat noisy, and in the highest spirits possible : the ladies, in the height of their innocent animation, dancing in the gentlemen's hats, and the gentlemen promenading " the gay and fes- tive scene " in the ladies' bonnets, or with the more expen- sive ornaments of false noses, and low-crowned, tinder-lDOx- looking hats : playing children's drums, and accompanied by ladies on the penny trumpet. The noise of these various instruments, the orchestra, the shouting, the " scratchers," and the dancing, is perfectly be- wildering. The dancing, itself, beggars description — every figure lasts about an hour, and the ladies bounce up and down the middle, with a degree of spirit which is quite inde- scribable. As to the gentlemen, they stamp their feet against the ground every time " hands four round " begins, go down PRIVATE THEATRES, 463 the middle and up again, with cigars in their mouths, and silk handkerchiefs in their hands, and whirl their partners round, nothing loth, scrambling and falling, and embracing, and knocking up against the other couples, until they are fairly - tired out, and can move no longer. The same scene is re- peated again and again (slightly varied by an occasional " row ") until a late hour at night : and a great many clerks and 'prentices find themselves next morning with aching heads, empty pockets, damaged hats, and a very imperfect recollection of how it was they did not get home. CHAPTER XIII. private theatres. " Richard the Third. — Duke of Glo'ster, 2/. ; Earl OF Richmond, \L\ Duke of Buckingham, 155-.; Catesby, 1 2 J*. ; Tressel, \os. 6d, ; Lord Stanley, 5^-. ; Lord Mayor OF London, 2s. 6d.'' Such are the written placards wafered up in the gentle- men's dressing-room, or the green-room (where there is any), at a private theatre ; and such are the sums extracted from the shop-till, or overcharged in the office expenditure, by the donkeys who are prevailed upon to pay for permission to ex- hibit their lamentable ignorance and boobyism on the stage of a private theatre. This they do, in proportion to the scope afforded by the character for the display of their imbecility. For instance, the Duke of Glo'ster is well worth two pounds, because he has it all to himself ; he must wear a real sword, and what is better still, he must draw it, several times in the course of the piece. The soliloquies alone are well worth fifteen shillings then there is the stabbing King Henry — decidedly cheap at the three-and-sixpence, that's eighteen- and-sixpence ; bullying the coffin-bearers — say eighteen-pence, though its worth much more — that's a pound. Then the love scene with Lady Ann, and the bustle of the fourth act can't be dear at ten shillings more — that's only one pound ten, including the " off with his head ! " — which is sure to bring down the applause, and it is very easy to do — " Orf with his ed " (very quick and loud j — then slow and sneeringly) — '"Sa 464 SKETCHES BY BOZ. much for Bu-u-u-uckingham 1 " Lay the emphasis on the " uck ; " get yourself gradually into a corner, and work with your right hand, while you're saying it, as if you were feeling your way, and it's sure to do. The tent scene is confessedly worth half-a-sovereign, and so you have the fight in, gratis, and everybody knows what an effect may be produced by a good combat. One — two — three — four — over ; then, one — two — three — four — under ; then thrust ; then dodge and slide about ; then fall down on one knee; then fight upon it, and then get up again and stagger. You may keep on doing this, as long as it seems to take — say ten minutes — and then fall down (backwards, if you can manage it without hurting your- self), and die game : nothing like it for producing an effect. They always do it at Astley's and Sadlers' Wells, and if they don't know how to do this sort of thing, who in the world does ? A small child, or a female in white, increases the interest of a combat materially — indeed, we are not aware that a regular legitimate terrific broadsword combat could be done without ; but it would be rather difficult, and somewhat unusual, to introduce this effect in the last scene of Richard the Third, so the only thing to be done, is, just to make the best of a bad bargain, and be as long as possible righting it out. The principal patrons of private theatres are dirty boys, low copying-clerks in attorneys' offices, capacious-headed youths from city counting-houses, Jews whose business, as lenders of fancy dresses, is a sure passport to the amateur stage, shop-boys who now and then mistake their masters' money for their own ; and a choice miscellany of idle vag- abonds. The proprietor of a private theatre may be an ex-scene-painter, a low coffee-house-keeper, a disappointed eighth-rate actor, a retired smuggler, or uncertificated bank- rupt. The theatre itself may be in Catherine-street, Strand, the purlieus of the city, the neighborhood of Gray's-inn-lane, or the vicinity of Sadlers' Wells; or it may, perhaps, form the chief nuisance of some shabby street, on the Surrey side of Waterloo-bridge. The lady performers pay nothing for their characters, and it is needless to add, are usually selected from one class of society ; the audiences are necessarily of much the same character as the performers, who receive, in return for their contributions to the management, tickets to the amount of the money they pay. PRIVATE THEATRES. 465 All the minor theatres in London, especially the lowest, constitute the centre of a little stage-struck neighborhood. Each of them has an audience exclusively its own ; and at any you will see dropping into the pit at half-price, or swag- gering into the back of a box, if the price of admission be a reduced one, divers boys of from fifteen to twenty-one years of age, who throw back their coat and turn up their wrist- bands, after the portrait of Count D'Orsay, hum tunes and whistle when the curtain is down, by way of persuading the people near them, that they are not at all anxious to have it up again, and speak familiarly of the inferior performers as Bill Such-a-one, and Ned so-and-so, or to tell each other how a new piece called The Unknown Bandit of the Invisible Cavern, is in rehearsal ; how Mister Palmer is to play The Unknown Bandit; how Charley Scarton is to take the part of an English sailor, and fight a broadsword combat with six unknown bandits, at one and the same time (one theatrical sailor is always equal to half a dozen men at least) ; how Mister Palmer and Charley Scarton are to go through a double hornpipe in fetters in the second act ; how the interior of the invisible cavern is to occupy the whole extent of the stage ; and other town-surprising theatrical announcements. These gentlemen are the amateurs — the Richards^ Shylocks^ Beverleys^ and OthcUos — the Young Dorntons, Rovers^ Captain Absolutes, and Charles Surfaces — of a private theatre. See them at the neighboring public-house or theatrical coffee-shop ! They are the kings of the place, supposing no real performers to be present ; and roll about, hats on one side, and arms a-kimbo, as if they had actually come into possession of eighteen shillings a-week, and a share of a ticket night. If one of them does but know an Astley's supernu- merary he is a happy fellow. The mingled air of envy and admiration with which his companions will regard him, as he converses familiarly with some mouldy-looking man in a fancy neckerchief, whose partially corked eyebrows, and half-rouged face, testify to the fact of his having just left the stage or the circle, .sufficiently shows in what high admiration these public characters are held. With the double view of guarding against the discovery of friends or employers, and enhancing the interest of an as- sumed character, by attaching a high-sounding name to its representative, these geniuses assume fictitious names, which are not the least amusing part of the play-bill of a private 30 466 SKETCHES BY BOZ. theatre. Belville, Melville, Treville, Berkeley, Randolpli, Byron, St. Clair, and so forth, are among the humblest ; and the less imposing titles of Jenkins, Walker, Thomson, Barker, Solomons, &c.,- are completely laid aside. There is some- thing imposing in this, and it is an excellent apology for shab- biness into the bargain. A shrunken, faded coat, a decayed hat, a patched and soiled pair of trousers — nay, even a very (Arty shirt (and none of these appearances are very uncommon among the members of the corps dramatiqiie)^ maybe worn for the purpose of disguise, and to prevent the remotest chance of recognition. Then it prevents any troublesome inquiries or explanations about employment and pursuits ; everybody is a gentleman at large, for the occasion, and there are none of those unpleasant and unnecessary distinctions to which even genius must occasionally succumb elsewhere. As to the ladies (God bless them), they are quite above any formal ab- surdities ; the mere circumstance of your being behind the scenes is a sufficient introduction to their society — for of course they know that none but strictly respectable^ persons would be admitted into that close fellowship v/ith them, which acting engenders. They place implicit reliance on the man- ager, no doubt ; and as to the manager, he is all affability when he knows you well, — or, in other words, when he has pocketed your money once, and entertains confident hopes of doino" so asrain. o o A quarter before eight — there will be a full house to-night — six parties in the boxes, already ; four little boys and a v/oman in the pit ; and two fiddles and a flute in the orches- tra, who have got through five overtures since seven o'clock (the hour fixed for the commencement of the performances), and have just begun the sixth. There will be plenty of it^ though, when it does begin, for there is enough in the bill to last six hours at least. That gentleman in the white hat and checked shirt, brown coat and brass buttons, lounging behind the stage-box on the O. P. side, is Mr. Horatio St. Julien, alias Jem Larkins. His line is genteel comedy — -his father's, coal and potato. He does PsXix^^ Highflier in the last piece, and very well he'll dc) it — at the price. The patrty of gentlemen in the opposite box, to whom he has just nodded, are friends and supporters of Mr. Beverley (otherwise Loggins), the Macbeth of the night. You observe their attempts to appear easy and gentlemanly, each member of the party, with his feet cocked upon the PRIVATE THEATRES. 46> cushion in front of the b9x ! They let them do these things here, upon the same humane principle which permits poor people's children to knock double knocks at the door of an empty house — because they can't do it anywhere else. The two stout men in the centre box, with an opera-glass ostenta- tiously placed before them, are friends of the proprietor — opu- lent country managers, as he confidentially niforms every in- dividual among the crew behind the curtain — opulent country managers looking out for recruits ; a representation whiai Mr, Nathan, the dresser, who is in the manager's interest, and has just arrived with the costumes, offers to confirm upon oath if required — corroborative evidence, however, is quite unnecessary, for the gulls believe it at once. The stout Jewess who has just entered, is the mother of the pale bony little girl, with the necklace of blue glass beads, sitting by her ; she is being brought up to " the profession." Pantomime is to be her line, and she is coming out to-night, in a hornpipe after the tragedy. The short thin man beside Mr. St. Julien, whose white face is so deeply seared with the small-pox, and whose dirty shirt-front is inlaid with open- work, and embossed with coral studs like ladybirds, is the low comedian and comic singer of the establishment. The remainder of the audience — a tolerably numerous one by this time — are a motley group of dupes and blackguards. The foot-lights have just made their appearance : the wicks of the six little oil lamps round the only tier of boxes, are being turned up, and the additional light thus afforded serves to show the presence of dirt, and absence of paint, which forms a prominent feature in the audience part of the house. As these preparations, however, announce the speedy commencement of the play, let us take a peep "behind," pre- vious to the ringing-up. The little narrow passages beneath the stage are neither especially clean nor too brilliantly lighted ; and the absence of any flooring, together with the damp mildewy smell which pen^ades the place, does not conduce any great degree to their comfortable appearance. Don't fall over this plate bas- ket — it's one of the " properties " — the caldron for the witches' cave ; and the three uncouth-looking figures, with broken clothes-props in their hands, who are drinking gin-and-water out of a pint pot, are the weird sisters. This miserable room, lighted by candles in scones placed at lengthened intervals round the wall, in the dressing-room, common to the gentle- 468 SKE TCHES BY BOZ. men performers, and the square hole in the ceiling is the trap- door of the stage above. You will observe that the ceiling is ornamented with the beams that support the boards, and tastefully hung with cobwebs. The characters in the tragedy are all dressed and their own clothes are scattered in hurried confusion over the wooden dresser which surrounds the room. That snuff-shop-looking figure, in front of the glass, is Banquo : and the young lady with the liberal display of legs, who is kindly painting his face with a hare's foot, is dressed for Fleance, The large woman, who is consulting the stage directions in Cumberland's edi- tion of Macbeth^ is the Lady Macbeth of the night ; she is al- w^ays selected to play the part, because she is tall and stout, and looks a little like Mrs. Siddons — at a considerable distance. That stupid-looking milksop, with light hair and bow legs — a kind of man whom you can warrant town-made — is fresh Caught ; he plays Malcolm to-night, just to accustom himself to an audience. He will get on better by degrees ; he will play Othello in a month, and in a month more, will very probably be apprehended on a charge of embezzlement. The black-eyed female with whom he is talking so earnestly, is dressed for the " gentlewoman." It is her first appearance, too— in that character. The boy of fourteen who is having his eyebrows smeared with soap and whitening, is Duncan, King of Scotland ; and the two dirty men with the corked countenances, in very old green tunics, and dirty drab boots, are the " army." " Look sharp below there, gents," exclaims the dresser, a red-headed and red-whiskered Jew, calling through the trap, " they're a-going to ring up. The flute says he'll be blowed if he plays any more, and they're getting precious noisy in front." A general rush immediately takes place to the half- dozen little steep steps leading to the stage, and the hetero- geneous group are soon assembled at the side scenes, in breathless anxiety and motley confusion. Now," cries the manager, consulting the written list which hangs behind the first P. S. wing, Scene i, open country — lamps down — thunder and lightning — all ready. White?" [This is addressed to one of the army.] ''All ready." — " Very well. Scene 2, front chamber. Is the front chamber down " — " Yes." — " Very well." — " Jones " [to the other army who is up in the flies]. " Hallo 1 " — " Wind up the open country when we ring up." — " I'll take care." — ■ VAUXHALL-GARDENS BY DA Y. 469 Scene 3, back perspective with practical bridge. Bridge ready, White? Got the tressels there ? " — All right." " Very well. Clear the stage/' cries the manager, hastily packing every member of the company into the little space there is between the wings and the wall, and one wing and 'another. Places, places. Now then. Witches — Duncan — Malcolm — bleeding officer — where's the bleeding officer? " — ■ Here ! " replies the officer, who has been rose-pinking for the character. Get ready, then; now, White, ring the second-music-bell." The actors who are to be discovered, are hastily arranged, and the actors who are not to be discovered place themselves, in their anxiety to peep at the house, just where the audience can see them. The bell rings, and the orchestra, in acknowledgment of the call, play three distinct chords. The bell rings — the tragedy (!) opens — and our de^ scription closes. CHAPTER XIV. VAUXHALL-GARDENS BY DAY. There was a time when if a man ventured to wonder how Vauxhall-gardens would look by day, he was hailed with a shout of derision at the absurdity of the idea. Vauxhall by daylight ! A porter-pot without porter, the House of Com- mons without the Speaker, a gas-lamp without the gas — pooh, nonsense, the thing was not to be thought of. It was rumored, too, in those times, that Vauxhall-gardens by day, were the scene of secret and hidden experiments ; that there, carvers were exercised in the mystic art of cutting a moderate- sized ham into slices thin enough to pave the whole of the grounds ; that beneath the shade of the tall trees, studious men were constantly engaged in chemical experiments, with the view of discovering how much water a bowl of negus could possibly bear ; and that in some retired nooks, appro- priated to the study of ornithology, other sage and learned men w^ere, by a process known only to themselves, incessantly employed in reducing fowls to a mere combination of skin and bone. V ague rumors of this kind, together with many others of 470 SKETCrrES BY BOZ. a similar nature, cast over Vauxhall-gardens an air of deep mystery ; and as there is a great deal in the mysterious, there is no doubt that to a good many people, at all events, the pleasure they afforded was not a little enhanced by this very circumstance. Of this class of people we confess to having made onCc We loved to wander among these illuminated groves, thinking of the patient and laborious researches which had been carried on there during the day, and witnessing their results in the suppers which were served up beneath the light of lamps and to the sound of music at night. The temples and saloons and cosmoramas and fountains glittered and sparkled before our eyes ; the beauty of the lady singers and the elegant de- portment of the gentlemen, captivated our hearts ; a few hundred thousand of additional lamps dazzled our senses ; a bowl or two of punch bewildered our brains ; and we were happy. In an evil hour, the proprietors of Vauxhall-gardens took to opening them by day. VVe regretted this, as rudely and harshly disturbing that veil of mystery which had hung about the property for many years, and which none but the noon- day sun, and the late Mr. Simpson, had ever penetrated. We shrunk from going ; at this moment we scarcely know why. Perhaps a morbid consciousness of approaching disappoint- ment — perhaps a fatal presentiment — perhaps the weather ; whatever it was, we did fiot go until the second or third announcement of a race between two balloons tempted us, and we went. We paid our shilling at the gate, and then we saw for the first time, that the entrance, if there had been any magic about it at all, was now decidedly disenchanted, being, in fact, nothing more nor less than a combination of very roughly- painted boards and sawdust. We glanced at the orchestra and supper-room as we hurried past — we just recognized them, and that was all. We bent our steps to the firework- ground ; there, at least, we should not be disappointed. We reached it, and stood rooted to the spot with mortification and astonishment. That the Moorish tower — that wooden shed with a door in the centre, and daubs of crimson and yellow all round, like a gigantic watch-case ! That the place where night after night we had beheld the undaunted Mr. Blackmore make his terrific ascent, surrounded by ^ames of fire, and peals of artillery, and where the white garments VA UXHALL-GARDENS BY DAY. oi Madame Somebody (we forget even her name now), who nobly devoted her life to the manufacture of fireworks, had so often been seen fluttering in the wind, as she called up a red, blue, or party-colored light to illumine her temple ! That the — but at this moment the bell rang \ the people scampered away, pell-mell, to the spot from whence the sound proceeded ; and we, from the mere force of habit, found ourself running among the first, as if for very life. It was for the concert in the orchestra. A small party of dismal men in cocked hats were executing " the overture to Tancredi, and a numerous assemblage of ladies and gentle- men, with their families, had rushed from their half-emptied stout mugs in the supper boxes, and crowded to the spot. Intense was the low murmur of admiration when a partic- ularly small gentleman, in a dress coat, led on a particularly tall lady in a blue sarcenet pelisse and bonnet of the same, ornamented with large white feathers, and forthwith com- menced a plaintive duet. We knew the small gentleman well ] we had seen a litho- graphed semblance of him, on many a piece of music, with his mouth wide open as if in the act of singing ; a wine-glass in his hand ; and a table with two decanters and four pine-apples on it in the background. The tali lady, too, we had gazed on, lost in raptures of admiration, many and many a time — how different people do look by daylight, and without punch, to be sure ! It was a beautiful duet : first the small gentle- man asked a question, and then the tall lady answered it ; then the small gentleman and the tall lady sang together most melodiously ; then the small gentleman went through a little piece of vehemence by himself, and got very tenor indeed, in the excitement of his feelings, to which the tall lady responded in a similar manner ; then the small gentleman had a^shake or two, after which the tall lady had the same, and then they both merged imperceptibly into the original air : and the band wound themselves up to a pitch of fury, and the small gentle- man handed the tall lady out, and the applause was rapturous. The comic singer, however, was the especial favorite ; we really thought that a gentleman with his dinner in a pocket- handkerchief, who stood near us, would have fainted with ex- cess of joy. A marvellously facetious gentleman that comic singer is ; his distinguishing characteristics are, a wig ap- proaching to the flaxen, and an aged countenance, and he bears the name of one of the English counties, if we recollect 472 SKE TCIIES BY BOZ. right. He sang a very good song about the seven ages, the first half-hour of which afforded the assembly the purest de- light ; of the rest we can make no report, as we did not stay to hear any more. We walked about, and met with a disappointment at every turn ; our favorite views were mere patches of paint ; the fountain that had sparkled so showily by lamp-light, presented very much the appearance of a water-pipe that had burst ; all the ornaments were dingy, and all the walks gloomy. There was a spectral attempt at rope-dancing in the little open thea- tre. The sun shone upon the spangled dresses of the per- formers, and their evolutions were about as inspiriting and appropriate as a country-dance in a family vault. So we re- traced our steps to the firework-ground, and mingled with the little crowd of people who were contemplating Mr. Green. Some half-dozen men were restraining the impetuosity of one of the balloons, which was completely filled, and had the car already attached ; and as rumors had gone abroad that a Lord v/as "going up," the crowd was more than usually anxious and talkative. There was one little man in faded black, with a dirty face and a rusty black neckerchief with a red border, tied in a narrow wisp round his neck, who entered into conversation with everybody, and had something to say upon every remark that was made within his hearing. He was standing with his arms folded, staring up at the balloon, and every now and then vented his feelings of reverence for the aeronaut, by saying, as he looked round to catch some- body's eye, " He's a rum 'un, is Green ; think o' this here be- ing up'ards of his two hundredth ascent ; ecod the man as is ekal to Green never had the toothache yet, nor won't have within this hundred year, and that's all about it. When you meets with real talent, and native, too, encourage it, that's what I say and when he had delivered himself to this ef- fect, he would fold his arms with more determination than ever, and stare at the balloon with a sort of admiring defiance of any other man alive, beyond himself and Green, that im- pressed the crowd with the opinion that he was an oracle. "Ah, you're very right, sir," said another gentleman, with his wife, and children, and mother, and wife's sister, and a host of female friends, in all the gentility of white pocket- handkerchiefs, frills, and spencers, " Mr. Green is a steadjf hand, sir, and there's no fear about him." VAUXHALL-GARDENS BY DAY. 473 " Fear ! said the little man : " isn't i^. a lovely thing io see him and his wife a going up in one balloon, and his own son and his wife a jostling up against them in another, and all of them going twenty or thirty mile in three hours or so, and then coming back in pochayses ? I don't know where this here science is to stop, mind you ; that's what bothers me." Here there was a considerable talking among the females in the spencers. " What's the ladies a laughing at, sir? " inquired the little man, condescendingly. " It's only my sister Mary," said one of the girls, as says she hopes his lordship won't be frightened when he's in the car, and want to come out again." Make yourself easy about that there, my dear," replied the little man. " If he was so much as to move a inch with- out leave. Green would jist fetch him a crack over the head with the telescope, as would send him into the bottom of the basket in no time, and stun him till they come down again." " Would he, though ? " inquired the other man. " Yes, would he," replied the little one, *'and think nothing of it, neither, if he was the king himself. Green's presence of mind is wonderful." Just at that moment all eyes were directed to the prepara- tions which were being made for starting. The car was at- tached to the second balloon, the two were brought pretty close together, and a military band commenced playing, with a zeal and fervor which would render the most timid man in existence but too happy to accept any means of quitting that particular spot of earth on which they were stationed. Then Mr. Green, sen., and his noble companion entered one car, and Mr. Green, jun., and his companion the other ; and then the balloons went up, and the aerial travellers stood up, and the crowd outside roared with delight, and the two gentlemen who had never ascended before, tried to wave their flags, as if they were not nervous, but held on very fast all the while \ and the galloons were wafted gently aw^ay, our little friend solemnly protesting, long after they were reduced to mere specks in the air, that he could still distinguish the white hat of Mr. Green. The gardens disgorged their multitudes, boys ran up and down screaming "bal-loon ; " and in all the crowded thoroughfares people rushed out of their shops into the mid- dle of the road, and having stared up in the air at two little 474 SKETCHES BY BOZ, black objects till they almost dislocated their necks, walked slowly in again, perfectly satisfied. The next day there was a grand account of the ascent in the morning papers, and the public were informed how it was the finest day but four in Mr. Green's remembrance ; how they retained sight of the earth till they lost it behind the clouds ] and how the reflection of the balloon on the undula- ting masses of vapor was gorgeously picturesque ; together with a little science about the refraction of the sun's rays, and some mysterious hints respecting atmospheric heat and eddy- ing currents o£ air. There was also an interesting account how a man in a boat was distinctly heard by Mr. Green, jun., to exclaim, My eye ! " which Mr. Green, jun., attributed to his voice rising to the balloon, and the sound being thrown back from its surface into the car ; and the whole concluded with a slight allusion to another ascent next Wednesday, all of which was very in- structive and very amusing, as our readers will see if they look to the papers. If we have forgotten to mention the date, they have only to w^ait till next summer, and take the account of the first ascent, and it will answer the purpose equally well. CHAPTER XV, EARLY COACHES. We have often wondered how many months' incessant travelling in a post-chaise it would take to kill a man ; and wondering by analogy, we should very much like to know how many months of travelling in a succession of early coaches, an unfortunate mortal could endure. Breaking a man alive upon the wheel, would be nothing to breaking his rest, his peace, his heart — everything but his fast — upon four ; and the pun- ishment of Ixion (the only practical person, by the bye, who has discovered the secret of perpetual motion) would sink into utter insignificance before the one we have suggested. If we had been a powerful churchman in those good times when blood was shed as freely as water, and men were mowed down like grass in the sacred cause of religion, we would have lain EARLY COACHES, 47S by very quietly till we got hold of some especially obstinate miscreant, who positively refused to be converted to our faith, and then we would have booked him for an inside place in a small coach, which travelled day and night : and securing the remainder of the places for stout men with a slight tendency to coughing and spitting, we would have started him forth on his last travels : leaving him mercilessly to all the tortures which the waiters, landlords, coachmen, guards, boots, cham- bermaids, and other familiars on his line of road, might think proper to inflict. Who has not experienced the miseries inevitably conse- quent upon a summons to undertake a hasty journey ? You receive an intimation from your place of business — wherever that may be, or whatever you may be — that it will be necessary to leave town without delay. You and your family are forthwith thrown into a state of tremendous excitement ; an express is immediately despatched to the washerwoman's; everybody is in a bustle ; and you, yourself, with a feeling of dignity which you cannot altogether conceal, sally forth to the booking-office to secure your place. Here a painful con- sciousness of your own unimportance first rushes on your mind — the people are as cool and collected as if nobody were going out of town, or as if a journey of a hundred odd miles were a mere nothing. You enter a mouldy-looking room, ornamented with large posting-bills ; the greater part of the place enclosed behind a huge lumbering rough counter, and fitted up with recesses that look like the dens of the smaller animals in a travelling menagerie, without the bars. Some half-dozen people are ^'booking " brown-paper parcels, which one of the clerks flings into the aforesaid recesses with an air of recklessness which you, remembering the new carpet-bag you bought in the morning, feel considerably annoyed at ; porters, looking like so many Atlases, keep rushing. in and out, with large packages on their shoulders ; and while you are waiting to make the necessary inquiries, you wonder what on earth the booking-office clerks can have been before they were booking-office clerks ; one of them with his pen behind his ear, and his hands behind him, is standing in front of the fire, like a full-length portrait of Napoleon ; the other with his hat half off his head, enters the passengers' names in the books with a coolness which is inexpressibly provoking ; and the villain whistles — actually whistles — while a man asks him what the fare is outside, all the way to Holyhead ! — in frosty 476 SKETCHES BY BOZ. weather, too ! They are clearly an isolated race, evidently possessing no sympathies or feelings in common with the rest of mankind. Your turn comes at last, and having paid the fare, you tremblingly inquire — " What time will it be necessary for me to be here in the morning ? " — " Six o'clock," replies the v/histler, carelessly pitching the sovereign you have just parted with, into a vv^ooden bowl on the desk. " Rather be- fore than arter," adds the man with the semi-roasted unmen- tionables, with just as much ease and complacency as if the whole world got out of bed at five. You turn into the street, ruminating as you bend your steps homewards on the extent to which men become hardened in cruelty, by custom. If there be one thing in existence more miserable than another, it most unquestionably is the being compelled to rise by candle-light. If you ever doubted the fact, you are pain- fully convinced of your error, on the morning of your de- parture. You left strict orders, overnight, to be called at half-past four, and you have done nothing all night but doze for five minutes at a time, and start up suddenly from a terrific dream of a large church-clock with the small hand running round, with astonishing rapidity, to every figure on the dial-plate. At last, completely exhausted, you fall gradually into a refreshing sleep — your thoughts grow con- fused — the stage-coaches, which have been " going-off " be- fore your, eyes all night, become less and less distinct, until they go off altogether ; one moment you are driving with all the skill and smartness of an experienced whip — the next you are exhibiting a la Ducrow, on the off-leader ; anon you are closely muflled up, inside, and have just recognized in the person of the guard an old schoolfellow, whose funeral, even in your dream, you remember to have attended eighteen years ago. At last you fall into a state of complete oblivion, from which you are aroused, as if into a new state of existence, by a singular illusion. You are apprenticed to a trunk-maker ; how, or why, or when, or wherefore, you don't take the trouble to inquire ; but there you are, pasting the lining in the lid of a portmanteau. Confound that other apprentice in the back shop, how he is hammering! — rap, rap, rap — wl^t an indus- trious fellow he must be ! you have heard him at work foi half an hour past, and he has been hammering incessantly the whole time. Rap, rap, rap, again — he's talking now — what's that he said ? Five o'clock ! You make a violent exertion, and start up in bed. The vision is at once dispelled ; tba EARLY COACHES, 477 trunk-maker's shop is your own bed-room, and the other ap- prentice your shivering servant, who has been vainly en- deavoring to wake you for the last quarter of an hour, at the imminent risk of breaking either his own knuckles or the k)anels of the door. You proceed to dress yourself, with all possible despatch. The flaring flat candle with the long snuff, gives light enough to show that the things you want, are not where they ought to be, and you undergo a trifling delay in consequence of having carefully packed up one of your boots in your over anxiety of the preceding night. You soon complete your toilet, however, for you are not particular on such an occasion, and you shaved yesterday evening ; so mounting your Petersham great-coat, and green travelling shawl, and grasping your carpet-bag in your right hand, you walk lightly down stairs, lest you shoulcf awaken any of the family, and after pausing in the commorj sitting-room for one moment, just to have a cup of coffeei (the said common sitting-room looking remarkably comfort- able, with everything out of its place, and strewed with tha crumbs of last night's supper), you undo the chain and bolts of the street-door, and find yourself fairly in the street. A thaw, by all fliat is miserable ! The frost is completely broken up. You look down the long perspective of Oxford- street, the gas-lights mournfully reflected on the wet pave- ment, and can discern no speck in the road to encourage the belief that there is a cab or a coach to be had — the very coach- men have gone home in despair. The cold sleet is drizzling down with that gentle regularity, \vhich betokens a duration of four-and-twenty hours at least ; the damp hangs upon the house-tops and lamp-posts, and clings to you like an invisible cloak. The water is coming in " in every area, the pipes have burst, the water-butts are running over ; the kennels seem to be doing matches against time, pump-handles descend of their own accord, horses in market-carts fall down, and there's no one to help them up again, policemen look as if they had been carefully sprinkled with powdered-glass ; here and there a milk-woman trudges slowly along, with a bit of list round each foot to keep her from slipping ; boys who " don't sleep in the house,'' and are not allowed much sleep out of it, can't wake their masters by thundering at the shop- door, and cry with the cold — the compound of ice, snow, and water on the pavement, is a couple of inches thick — nobody 478 SKE TCHES B V BOZ, ventures to walk fast to keep himself warm, and nobody could succeed in keeping himself warm if he did. It strikes a quarter past five as you trudge down Waterloo- place on your way to the Golden Cross, and you discover, for the first time, that you were called about an hour too early. You have not time to go back ; there is no place open to go into, and you have, therefore, no resource but to go forward, tvhich you do, feeling remarkably satisfied with yourself, and everything about you. You arrive at the ofiice, and look vistfuUy up the yard for the Birmingham High-flier, which, Tor aught you can see, may have flown away altogether, for no preparations appear to be on foot for the departure of any vehicle in the shape of a coach. You wander into the book- ing-oflice, which with the gas-lights and blazing fire, looks quite comfortable by contrast — that is to say, if any place can look comfortable at half-past five on a winter's morning. There stands the identical book-keeper in the same position as if he had not moved since you saw him yesterday. As he informs you, that the coach is up the yard, and will be brought round in about a quarter of an hour, you leave your bag, and repair to " The Tap " — not with any absurd idea of warming yourself, because you feel such a result to 'be utterly hopeless, but for the purpose of procuring some hot brandy-and-water, which you do, — when the kettle boils ! an event which occurs exactly two minutes and a half before the time fixed for the starting of the coach. The first stroke of six, peals from St. Martin's cliurch steeple, just as you take the first sip of the boiling liquid. You find yourself at the booking-office in two seconds, and the tap-waiter finds himself much comforted by your brandy-and- water, in about the same period. The coach is out ; the horses are in, and the guard and two or three porters, are stowing the luggage away, and running up the steps of the booking-office, and down the steps of the booking-office, with breathless rapidity. The place, which a few minutes ago was so still and quiet, is now all bustle ; the early vendors of the morning papers have arrived, and you are assailed on all sides with shouts of Tiines^ gen'lm'n, Times^^'' " Here's Chron — ^ Chron — Chron^^'' " ZT^r^Z^/- ma'am,'' " Highly interesting mur- der, gen'lm'n," " Curious case o' breach o' promise, ladies." The inside passengers are ah-eady in their dens, and the out- sides, with the exception of yourself, are pacing up and down the pavement to keep themselves warm ; they consist of two OMNIBUSES, 479 young men with very long hair, to which the sleet has com- municated the appearance of crystallized rats' tails ; one thin young woman cold and peevish, one old gentleman ditto ditto, and something in a cloak and* cap, intended to represent a military officer , every member of the party, with a large stiff shawl over his chin, looking exactly as if he were playing a set of Pan's pipes. " Take off the cloths, Bob," says the coachman, who now appears for the first time, in a rough blue great-coat, of which the buttons behind are so far apart, that you can't see them both at the same time. "Now, gen'lm'n," cries the guard, with the waybill in his hand. " Plve minutes behind time already ! " Up jump the passengers — the two young men smok- ing like lime-kilns, and the old gentleman grumbling audibly. The thin young woman is got upon the roof, by dint of a great deal of pulling, and pushing, and helping and troublft^ and she repays it by expressing her solemn conviction that she will never be able to get down again. ''AH right," sings out the guard at last, jumping up as the coach starts, and blowing his horn directly afterw^ards, in proof of the soundness of his wind. '' Let 'em go, Harry, give 'em their heads," cries the coachman — and off we start as briskly as if the morning were '* all right," as well as the coach : and looking forward as anxiously to the termination of our journey, as we fear our readers will have done, long since, to the conclusion of our paper. CHAPTER XVL OMNIBUSES, It is very generally allowed that public conveyances afford an extensive field for amusement and observation. Of all the public conveyances that have been constructed since the days of tiie Ark — we think that is the earliest on record — to the present time, commend us to an omnibus. A long stage is not to be despised, but there you have only six insides, and the chancer; are, that the same people go all the way with you — there is no change, no variety. Besides, after the first 21 480 SKETCHES BY BOZ, twelve hours or so, people get cross and sleepy, and when you have seen a man in his nightcap, you lose ail respect for him j at least, that is the case with us. Then on smooth roads people frequently get prosy, "and tell long stories, and even those who don't talk, may have very unpleasant predilections. We once travelled four hundred miles, inside a stage-coach, with a stout man, who had a glass of rum-and-water, warm, handed in at the window at every place where we changed horses. This was decidedly unpleasant. We have also travelled occasionally, with a small boy of a pale aspect, with light hair, and no perceptible neck, coming up to town frcm school under the protection of ihe guard, and directed to be left at the Cross Keys till called for. This is, perhaps, even worse than rum-and-water in a close atmosphere. Then there is the whole train of evils consequent on a change of the coachman : and the misery of the discovery — which the guard is sure to make the moment you begin to doze — that he wants a brown-paper parcel, which he distinctly remembers to have deposited under the seat on which you are reposing. A great deal of bustle and groping takes place, and when you are thoroughly awakened, and severely cramped, by holding your legs up by an almost supernatural exertion, Vvhile he is look- ing behind them, it suddenly occurs to him that he put it in the fore-boot. Bang goes the door ; the parcel is immediately found ; off starts the coach again ; and the guard plays the key-bugle as loud as he can play it, as if in mockery of your wretchedness. Now, you meet with none of these afflictions in an omni- bus : sameness there can never be. The passengers change as often in the course of one journey as the figures in a kaleidoscope, and though not so glittering, are far more amus- ing. We believe there is no instance on record, of a man's having gone to sleep in one of these vehicles. As to long stories, would any man venture to tell a long story in an omnibus ? and even if he did, where would be the harm ? no- body could possibly hear what he was talking about. Again ; children, though occasionally, are not often to be found in an omnibus ] and even when they are, if the vehicle be full, as is generally the case, somebody sits upon them, and we are un- conscious of their presence. Yes, after mature reflection, and considerable experience, w^e are decidedly of opinion, that of all known vehicles, from the glass-coach in which we were taken to be christened, to that sombre caravan in which we OMNIBUSES. ^ ,;8l must one day make our last earthly journey, there is nothing like an omnibus. We will back the machine in which we make our daily peregrination from the top of Oxford-street to the city, against" any " buss on the road, whether it be for the gaudiness of its exterior, the perfect simplicity of its interior, or the native coolness of its cad. This young gentleman is a singular in- stance of self-devotion ; his somewhat intemperate zeal on be- half of his employers, is constantly getting him into trouble, and occasionally into the house of correction. He is no sooner emancipated, however, than he resumes the duties of his profession with unabated ardor. His principal distinction is his activity. His great boast is, " that he can chuck an old gen'lm'n into the buss, shut him in, and rattle off, afore he knows where it's a-going to " — a feat which he frequently per- forms, to the infinite amusement of every one but the old gentleman concerned, who, somehow or other, never can see the joke of the thing. We are not aware that it has ever been precisely ascer- tained, how many passengers our omnibus will contain. The impression on the cad's mind, evidently is, that it is amply sufficient for the accommodation of any number of persons that can be enticed into it. Any room 1 " cries a very hot pedestrian. " Plenty o' room, sir," replies the conductor, gradually opening the door, and not disclosing the real state of the case, until the wretched man is on the steps. Where ? " inquires the entrapped individual, with an attempt to back out again. ^''Either side, sir," rejoins the cad, shoving him in, and slamming the door. ^' All right, Bill." Retreat is impos- sible ; the new-comer rolls about, till he falls down somewhere, and there he stops. As we get into the city a little before ten, four or five of our party are regular passengers. We always take them up at the same places, and they generally occupy the same seats ; they are always dressed in the same manner, and invariably discuss the same topics — the increasing rapidity of cabs, and the disregard of moral obligations evinced by omnibus men. There is a little testy old man, with a powdered head, vvho always sits on the right-hand side of the door as you enter, with his hands folded on the top of his umbrella. He is extremely impatient, and sits there for the purpose of keeping a sharp eye on the cad, with whom he generally holds a running dialogue. He is very officious in helping people in and out, 482 SKETCHES BY BOZ. and always volunteers to give the cad a poke with his umbrells, when any one wants to alight. He usually recommends ladies to have sixpence ready, to prevent delay ; and if anybody puts a window down, that he can reach, he immediately puts it up again. Now, what are you stopping for? "says the little man every morning, the moment there is the slightest indication of " pulling up at the corner of Regent-street, when some such dialogue as the following takes place between huii and the cad : " What are 3^ou stopping for? " Here the cad whistles, and affects not to hear the ques- tion. " I say [a poke], what are you stopping for? " For passengers, sir. Ba — nk. — Ty." I know you're stopping for passengers ; but you've no business to do so. Why are you stopping ? " " Vy, sir, that's a difficult question. 1 think it is because we perfer stopping here to going on." "Now mind," exclaims the little old man, with great vehemence, " I'll pull you up to-morrow ; I've often threatened to do it ; now I will," . ''Thankee, sir," replies the cad, touching his hat with a mock expression of gratitude : — " werry much obliged to you indeed, sir." Here the young men in the omnibus laugh very heartily, and the old gentleman gets very red in the face, and seems highly exasperated. The stout gentleman in the white neckcloth, at 'the other end of the vehicle, looks very prophetic, and says that some- thing must shortly be done with these fellows, or there's no saying where all this v/ill end ; and the shabby-genteel man with the green bag, expresses his entire concurrence in the opinion, as he has done regularly every morning for the last six months. A second omnibus now comes up, and stops immediately behind us. Another old gentleman elevates his cane in the air, and runs with all his might towards our omnibus ; we watch his progress with great interest ; the door is opened to receive him, he suddenly disappears — he has been spirited away by the opposition. Hereupon the driver of the opposi- tion taunts our people with his having " regularly done 'em out of that old swell," and the voice of the old swell" is heard, irainly protesting against this unlawful detention. We rattle THE LAST CAB-DRIVER, ETC. 483 off, the other omnibus rattles after us, and every time we stop to take up a passenger, they stop to take him too ; sometimes we get him ; sometimes they get him ; but whoever don't get him, say they ought to have had him, and the cads of tlie respective vehicles abuse one ahother accordingly. As we arrive m the vicinity of Lincoln's-inn-fields, Bedford- row, and other legal haunts, we drop a great many of our original passengers, and take up fresh ones who meet with a very sulky reception. It is rather remarkable, that the people already in an omnibus, always look at new-comers, as if they entertained some undefined idea that they have no business to come in at all. We are quite persuaded the little old man has some notion of this kind, and that he considers their entry as a sort of negative impertinence. Conversation is now entirely dropped ; each person gazes vacantly through the window in front of him, and everybody thinks that his opposite neighbor is staring at him. If one man gets out at Shoe-lane, and another at the corner of Farring- don-street, the little old gentleman grumbles, and suggests to the latter, that if he had got out at Shoe-lane too, he would have saved them the delay of another stoppage ; whereupon - the young men laugh again, and the old gentleman looks very solemn, and says nothing more till he gets to the Bank, when he trots off as fast as he can, leaving us to do the same, and to wish, as- we walk away, that we could impart to others any portion of the amusement we have gained for ourselves. CHAPTER XVII. THE LAST CAB-DRIVER, AND THE FIRST OMNIBUS CAD. Of all the cabriolet-drivers whom we have ever had the honor and gratification of knowing by sight — and our acquaint- ance in this way has been most extensive — there is one who made an impression on our mind which can never be effaced, and who awakened in our bosom a feeling of admiration and respect, which we entertain a fatal presentiment will never be called forth again by any human being. He was a man of most simple and prepossessing appearance. He was a brown- 484 SKETCHES BY BOZ. whiskered, white-hatted, no-coated cabman ; his nose was generally red, and his bright blue eye not unfrequently stood out in bold relief against a black border of artificial workman- ship ; his boots were of the Wellington form, pulled up to meet his corduroy knee-small^^, or at least to approach as near them as their dimensions would admit of ; and his neck was usually garnished with a bright yellow handkerchief. In summer he carried in his mouth a flower ; in winter, a straw — slight, but to a contemplative mind, certain indications of a love of nature, and a taste for botany. His cabriolet was gorgeously painted — a bright red ; and wherever w^e went, City or West End, Paddington or Holloway, North, East, West, or South, there was the red cab, bumping up against the posts at the street corners, and turning in and out, among hackney-coaches, and drays, and carts and wagons, and omnibuses, and contriving by some strange means or other, to get out of places which no other vehicle but the red cab could ever by any possibility have contrived to get into at all. Our fondness for that red cab w^as unbounded- How we should have liked to have seen it in the circle at Astley's ! Our life upon it, that it should have performed such evolutions as would have put the whole company to shame — Indian chiefs, knights, Swiss peasants and all. Some people object to the exertion of getting into cabs, and others object to the difficulty of getting out of them ; we think both these are objections which take their rise in per- verse and ill-conditioned minds. The getting into a cab is a very pretty and graceful process, which, when well performed, is essentially melodramatic. First, there is the expressive pantomime of every one of the eighteen cabmen on the stand, the momeat you raise your eyes from the ground. Then there is your own pantomime in reply — quite a little ballet. P'our cabs immediately leave the stand for your especial ac- commodation ; and the evolutions of the animals w^ho draw them are beautiful in the extreme, as thej grate the wheels of the cabs against the curb-stones, and sport playfully in the kennel. You single out a particular cab, and dart swiftly towards it. One bound, and you are on the first step ; turn your body lightly round to the right, and you are on the sec- ond ; bend gracefully beneath the reins, working round to the left at the same time, and you are in the cab. There is no difficulty in finding a seat ; the apron knocks you comfortably into it at once, and off you go. THE LAST CAB-DRIVER, ETC. 485 The getting out of a cab is, perhaps, rather more compli- cated in its theory, and a shade more difficult in its execution. We have studied the subject a great deal, and we think the best way is, to throw yourself out, and trust to chance for alighting on your feet. If you make the driver alight first, and then throw yourself upon him, you will find that he breaks your fall materially. In the event of your contemplating an offer of eightpence, on no account make the tender or show the money, until you are safely on the pavement. It is very bad policy attempting to save the fourpence. You are very much in the power of a cabman, and he considers it a kind of fee not to do you any wilful damage. Any instruction, how- ever, in the art of getting out of a cab, is wholly unneces- sary if you are going any distance, because the probability is, that you will be shot lightly out before you have completed the third mile. ~ We are not aware of any instance on record in which a cab horse has performed three consecutive miles without gov^ig down once. What of that ? It is all excitement. And in these days of derangement of the nervous system and uni- versal lassitude, people are content to pay handsomely for excitement ; where can it be procured at a cheaper rate ? But to return to the red cab ; it was omnipresent. You had but to walk down Holborn or Fleet streets, or any of the principal thoroughfares in which there is a great deal of traffic, and judge for yourself. You had hardly turned into the street, when you saw a trunk or two lying on the ground : an uprooted post, a hat-box, a portmanteau, and a carpet-bag, strewed about in a very picturesque manner : a horse in a cab standing by, looking about him with great unconcern ; and a crowd, shouting and screaming with delight, cooling their flushed faces against the glass windows of a chemist's shop. — What's the matter here, can you tell me ? " — " On'y a cab, sir." — ^'Anybody hurt, do you know? " — " O'ny the fare, sir. I see him a turnin' the corner, and I ses to another gen'lm'n ^ that's a reg'lar little oss that, and he's a comin' along rayther sweet, ain't he? ' — ' He just is,' says the other gen'lm'n, ven bump they cums agin the post, and out flies the fare like bricks." Need we say it was the red cab ; or that the gentle- men with the straw in his mouth, who emerged so coolly from the chemist's shop and philosophically climbing into the little dickey, started off at full gallop, was the red cab's licensed driver ? 486 SKE TCHES B Y BOZ. The ubiquity of this red cab, and the influence it exercised over the risible muscles of justice itself, was perfectly aston- ishing. You walked into the justice room of the Mansion- house ; the whole court resounded with merriment. The Lord Mayor threw himself back m his chair, ni a ; l^le of frantic delight at his own joke ; every vein in Mr. Hobler's counte-^ nance was swollen with laughter, partly at the Lord Mayor's facetiousness, but more at his own ; the constables and police officers were (as in duty bound) in ecstacies at Mr. Hobler and the Lord Mayor combined ; and the very paupers, glanc- ing respectfully at the beadle's countenance, tried to smile, as even he relaxed. A tall, weazen-faced man, with an impedi- ment in his speech, would be endeavoring to state a case of imposition against the red cab's driver; and the red cab's driver, and the Lord Mayor, and Mr. Hobler, would be having a little fun among themselves^ to the inordinate delight of everybody but the complainant. In the end, justice would be so tickled with the red-cab-driver's native humor, that the fine would be mitigated, and he would go away full gallop, in the red cab, to impose on somebody else without loss of time. The driver of the red cab, confident in the strength of his own moral principles, like many other philosophers, was wont to set the feelings and opinions of society at complete defiance. Generally speaking, perhaps, he would as soon carry a fare safely to his destination, as he would upset him — sooner, per- haps, because in that case he not only got the money, but had the additional amusement of running a longer heat against some smart rival. But society made war upon him in the shape of penalties, and he must make war upon society in his own way. This was the reasoning of the red-cab-driver. So, he bestowed a searching look upon the fare, as he put his hand in his waistcoat pocket, when he had gone half the mile, to get the money ready ; and if he brought forth eight- pence, out he went. The last time we saw our friend was one wet evening in Tottenham-court-road, when he was engaged in a very warm and somewhat personal altercation with a loquacious little gentleman in a green coat. Poor fellow ! there were great excuses to be made for him : he had not received above eighteenpence more than his fare, and consequently labored under a great deal of very natural indignation. The dispute had attained a pretty considerable height, when at last the loquacious little gentleman, making a mental calculation of the THE LAST CAB-DRIVER, ETC. 487 distance, and finding that he had already paid more than he ought, avowed his unalterable determination to " pull up " the cabman in the morning. " Now, just mark this, young man,'' said the little gentle- man, " I'll pull you up to-morrow morning." ^' No ! will you, though ? " said our friend, with a sneer. ^' I will," replied the little gentleman, " mark my words, that's all. If I live till to-morrow morning, you shall repent this." There was a steadiness of purpose, and indignation of speech, about the little gentleman, as he took an angry pinch of snuff, after this last declaration, which made a visible impres- sion on the mind of the red-cab-driver. He appeared to hesitate for an instant. It was only for an instant ; his resolve was soon taken. " You'll pull me up, will you ? " said our friend. " I will," rejoined the little gentleman, with even greater vehemence than before. " Very well," said our friend, tucking up his shirt sleeves very calmly. " There'll be three veeks for that. Wery good ; that'll bring me up to the middle o' next month. Three veeks more would carry me on to my birthday, and then I've got ten pound to draw. I may as well get board, lodgin' and washin' till then, out of the county, as pay for it myself ; consequently here goes ! " So, without more ado, the red-cab-driver knocked the little gentleman down, and then called the police to take himself into custody, with all the civility in the world. A story is nothing without the sequel ; and therefore, we may state, that to our certain knowledge, the board, lodging, and washing, were all provided in due course. We happen to know the fact, for it came to our knowledge thus : We went over the House of Correction for the county of Middle- sex shortly after, to witness the operation of the silent system ; and looked on all the " wheels " with the greatest anxiety, in search of our long-lost friend. He was nowhere to be seen, however, and we began to think that the little gentleman in the green coat must have relented, when, as we were traversing the kitchen-garden, which lies in a sequestered part of the prison, we were startled by hearing a voice, which apparently proceeded from the wall, pouring forth its soul in the plain- tive air of ''All round my hat," which was then just begin- ning to form a recognized portion of our national music. 488 SKETCHES BY BOZ, We started. — " What voice is that ? said we. The Governor shook his head. "Sad fellow," he replied, " very sad. He positively re fused to work on the wheel ; so, after many trials, I was com- pelled to order him into solitary confinement. He says he likes it very much though, and I am afraid he does, for he lies on his back on the floor, and sings comic songs all day ! " Shall we add, that our heart had not deceived us ; and that the comic singer was no other than our eagerly-sought friend, the red-cab-driver? We have never seen him since, but we have strong reason to suspect that this noble individual was a distant relative of a waterman of our acquaintance, who, on one occasion, when we were passing the coach-stand over which he presides, after standing very quietly to see a tall man struggle into a cab, ran up very briskly when it was all over (as his brethren in- variably do), and, touching his hat, asked, as a matter of course, for "a copper for the waterman." Now, the fare was by no means a handsome man ; and, waxing very indignant at the demand, he replied — " Money ! What for ? Coming up and looking at me, I suppose ? " — " Veil, sir," rejoined the waterman, v/ith a smile of immovable complacency, " Thafs worth twopence." This identical waterman afterwards attained a very promi- ment station in society ; and as we know something of his life, and have often thought of telling what we do know, per- haps we shall never have a better opportunity than the pres- ent. Mr. William Barker, then, for that was the gentleman's name, Mr. William Barker was born — But why need we relate where Mr. William Barker was born, or when ? Why scrutinize the entries in parochial ledgers, or seek to penetrate the Lucinian mysteries of lying-in hospitals Mr. William Barker was born, or he had never been. There is a son — there was a father. There is an effect — there was a cause. Surely this is sufficient information for the most Fatima-like curiosity ; and, if it be not, we regret our inability to supply any further evidence on the point. Can there be a more sat- isfactory, or more strictly parliamentary course ? Impossible. We at once avow a similar inability to record at what pre- cise period, or by what particular process, this gentleman's patronymic, of William Barker, became corrupted into " BiU THE LAST CAB-DRIVER, ETC* 489 Boorker.'' Mr. Barker acquired a high standing, and no in- considerable reputation, among the members of that profes- sion to which he more pecuharly devoted his energies ; and to them he was generally known, either by the familiar appel- lation of " Bill Boorker," or the flattering designation of Ag- gerawatin Bill," the latter being a playful and expressive sobriquet^ illustrative of Mr. Barker's great talent in " aggera- watin " and rendering wild such subjects of her Majesty as are conveyed from place to place, through the instrumentality of omnibuses. Of the early life of Mr. Barker little is known, and even that little is involved in considerable doubt and ob- scurity. A want of application, a restlessness of purpose, a thirsting after porter, a love of all that is roving and cadger- like in nature, shared in common with many other great geniuses, appear to have been his leading characteristics. The busy hum of a parochial free-school, and the shady re- pose of a county jail, were alike inefificacious in producing the slightest alteration in Mr. Barker's disposition. His feverish attachment to change and variety notning could re- press; his native daring no punishment could subdue. If Mr. Barker can be fairly said to have had any weakness in his earlier years, it was an amiable one — love ; love in its most comprehensive form — a love of ladies, liquids, and pocket-handkerchiefs. It vv^as no selfish feeling \ it was not confined to his own possessions, which but too many men re- gard with exclusive complacency. No ; it was a nobler love — a general principle. It extended itself with equal force to the property of other people. There is something very affecting in this. It is still more affecting to know, that such philanthropy is but imperfectly rewarded. Bow-street, Newgate, and Millbank, are a poor return for general benevolence, evincing itself in an irrepres- sible love for all created objects. Mr. Barker felt it so. Af- ter a lengthened interview with the highest legal authorities, he quitted his ungrateful country, with the consent, and at the expense, of its Government ; proceeded to a distant shore \ and there employed himself, like another Cincinnatus, in clearing and cultivating the soil — a peaceful pursuit, in which a term of seven years glided almost imperceptibly away. Whether, at the expiration of the period we have just men- tioned, the British Government required Mr. Barker's pres- ence here, or did not require his residence abroad, we have no distinct means of ascertaining. We should be inclined, SKETCHES B Y BOZ. however, to favor the latter position, inasmuch as we do not find that he was advanced to any other pubUc post on his re turn, then the post at the corner of the Hay-market, where he officiated as assistant-waterman to the hackney-coach-stand. Seated, in this capacity, on a couple of tubs near the curb^ stone, with a brass plate and number suspended round his neck by a massive chain, and his ankles curiously enveloped in haybands, he is supposed to have made those observations on human nature which exercised so material an influence over all his proceedings in later life. Mr. Barker had not officiated for many months in this capacity, when the appearance of the first omnibus caused the public mind to go in a new direction, and prevented a great many hackney-coaches from going in any direction at all. The genius of Mr. Barker at once perceived the whole extent of the injury that would be eventually inflicted on cab and coach stands, and, by consequence, on watermen also, by the pro- gress of the system of which the first omnibus was a part. He saw, too, the necessity of adopting some more profitable profession ; and his active mind at once perceived how much might be done in the way of enticing the youthful and unwary, and shoving the old and helpless, into the wrong buss, and carrying them off, until, reduced to despair, they ransomed themselves by the payment of sixpence a-head, or, to adopt his own figurative expression in all its native beauty, till they was rig'larly done over, and forked out the stumpy." An opportunity for realizing his fondest anticipations, soon presented itself. Rumors were rife on the hackney-coach- stands, that a buss was building, to run from Lisson-grove to the Bank, down Oxford-street and Holborn ; and the rapid increase of busses on the Paddington-road, encouraged the idea. Mr. Barker secretly and cautiously inquired m the proper quarters. The report was correct ; the " Royal Wil- liam " was to make it first journey on the following Monday. It was a crack affair altogether. An enterprising young cab- man, of established reputation as a dashing whip — for he had compromised with the parents of three scrunched children, and just worked out " his fine, for knocking down an old lady — was the driver ; and the spirited proprietor, knowing Mr. Barker's qualifications, appointed him to the vacant office of cad on the very first application. The buss began to run, and Mr. Barker entered into a new suit of clothes, and on a new sphere of action. THE LAST CAB'DRIVER, ETC 491 To recapitulate all the improvements introduced by this extraordinary man into the omnibus system — gradually, in- deed, but surely — would occupy a far greater space than we are enabled to devote to this imperfect memoir. To him is universally assigned the original suggestion of the practice which afterwards became so general — of the driver of a second buss keeping constantly behind the first one, and driving the pole of his vehicle either into the door of the other, every time it was opened, or through the body of any lady or gen- tleman who might make an attempt to get into it ; a humor- ous and pleasant invention, exhibiting all that originality of idea, and fine bold flow of spirits, so conspicuous in every action of this great man. Mr. Barker had opponents of course ; what man in public life has not t But even his worst enemies cannot deny that he has taken more old ladies and gentlemen to Paddington who wanted to go to the Bank, and more old ladies and gen- tlemen to the Bank who wanted to go to Paddington, than any six men on the road ; and however much malevolent spirits may pretend to doubt the accuracy of the statement, they well know it to be an established fact, that he has forci- bly conveyed a variety of ancient persons of either sex, to both places, who had not the slightest or most distant inten- tion of going anywhere at all. Mr. Barker was the identical cad who nobly distinguished himself, some time since, by keeping a tradesman on the step — the omnibus going at full speed all the time — till he had thrashed him to his entire satisfaction, and finally throwing him away, when he had quite done with him. Mr. Barker it ought to have been, who honestly indignant at being ignomini- ously ejected from a house of public entertainment, kicked the landlord in the knee, and thereby caused his death. We say it ought to have been Mr. Barker, because the action was not a common one, and could have emanated from no ordinary mind. It has now become matter of history ; it is recorded in the Newgate Calendar ; and we wish we could attribute this piece of daring heroism to Mr. Barker. We regret being compelled to state that it was not performed by him. Would, for the family credit we could add, that it was achieved by his brother ! It was in the exercise of the nicer details of his profession, that Mr, Barker's knowledge of human nature was beautifully 492 SKE TCHES B Y BOZ, displayed. He could tell at a glance where a passenget wanted to go to, and would shout the name of the place ac- cordingly, without the slightest reference to the real destina- tion of the vehicle. He knew exactly the kind of old lady that would be too much flurried by the process of pushing in and pulling out of the caravan, to discover where she hau been put down, until too late ; had an intuitive perception of what was passing in a passenger's mind when he inwardly re solved to pull that cad up to-morrow morning ; " and nevei failed to make himself agreeable to female servants, whom he would place next the door, and talk to all the way. Human judgment is never infallible, and it would occa- sionally happen that Mr. Barker experimentalized with the timidity or forbearance of the wrong person, in which case a summons to a Police-office, was, on more than one occasion, followed by a committal to prison. It was not in the power of trifles such as these, however, to subdue the freedom of his spirit. As soon as they passed away, lie resumed the duties of his profession with unabated ardor. We Lave spoken of Mr. Barker and of the red-cab-driver, in the past tense. Alas ! Mr. Barker has again become an absentee ; and the class of men to which they both belonged are fast disappearmg. Improvement has peered beneath the aprons of our cabs, and penetrated to the very innermost re- cesses of our omnibuses. Dirt and fustian will vanish before cleanliness and livery. Slang will be forgotten when civility becomes general : and that enlightened, eloquent, sage, and profound body, the Magistracy of London, will be deprived of half their amusement, and half their occupation. CHAPTER XVIIL A PARLIAMENTARY SKETCH. We hope our readers will not be alarmed at this rather ominous title. We assure them that we are not about to be- come political, neither have we the slightest intention of being more prosy than usual — if we can help it. It has occurred to us that a slight sketch of the general aspect of " the House," and the crowds that resort to it on the night of an important A J'-ARLIAMENTARY SKETCH. 40)3 debate, v/ould be productive of come amusement : and as we liave made some few calls at the aforesaid house in our lime — have visited it quite often enough for our purpose, and a great deal too often for our own personal peace and comfort — we have determined to attempt the description. Dismiss- ing from our minds, therefore, all that feeling of awe, which vague ideas of breaches of privilege, Sergeant-at-Arms, heavy denunciations, and still heavier fees, are calculated to awaken, we enter at once into the building, and upon our subject. Half-past four o'clock — and at five the mover of the Ad- dress will be " on his legs," as the newspapers announce sometimes by way of novelty, ?is if speakers were occasionally in. the habit of standing on their heads. The members are pouring in, one after the other, in shoals. The few spectators who can obtain standing-room in the passages, scrutinize them as they pass, with the utmost interest, and the man who can identify a member occasionally, becomes a person of great im- portance. Every now and then you hear earnest whispers of ''That's Sir John Thomson." "Which.? him with the gilt order round his neck 'i " " No, no ; that's one of the messen- gers — that other with the yellow gloves, is Sir John Thom- son." " Here's Mr. Smith." " Lor ! " " Yes, how d'ye do, sir ? — -(He is our new member) — How do you do, sir? " Mr. Smith stops : turns round with an air of enchanting urbanity (for the rumor of an intended dissolution has been very ex- tensively circulated this morning) ; seizes both the hands of his gratified constituent, and, after greeting him with the most enthusiastic warmth, darts into the lobby, with an extraordi- nary display of ardor in the public cause, leaving an immense impression in his favor on the mind of his " fellow-townsman." The arrivals increase in number, and the heat and noise increase in very unpleasant proportion. The livery servants form a complete lane on either side of the passage, and you reduce yourself into the smallest possible space to avoid being turned out>^ -You see that stout man with the hoarse voice, in the bli^e^coat, queer crowned, broad-brimmed hat, white corduroy breeches, and great boots who has been talk- ing incessantly for half an hour past, and whose importance has occasioned no small quantity of mirth among the strangers. That is the great conservator of the peace of Westminster. You cannot fail to have remarked the grace with which he saluted the noble Lord who passed just now, or the excessive dignity of his air, as he expostulates with the crowd. He is 494 SKETCHES BY BOZ. rather out of temper now, in consequence of the very irrever- ent behavior of those two young fellows behind him, who have done nothing but laugh all the time they have been here. " Will they divide to-night, do you think, Mr. ? " tim- idly inquires a little thin man in the crowd, hoping to concili- ate the man of office. How call you ask such questions, sir ? " replies the func tionary, in an incredibly loud key, and pettishly grasping the thick stick he carries in his right hand. Pray do not, sin I beg of you ; pray do not, sir." The little man looks re- markably out of his element, ^nd the uninitiated part of the throng are in positive convulsions of laughter. Just at this moment some unfortunate individual appeal's, with a very smirking air, at the bottom of the long passage. He has managed to elude the vigilance of the special consta- ble down stairs, and is evidently congratulating himself on having made his way so far. " Go back, sir — you must not come here,'' shouts the hoarse one, with tremendous emphasis of voice and gesture, the moment the offender catches his eye. The stranger pauses. " Do you hear, sir — will you go back ? " continues the official dignitary, gently pushing the intruder some half- dozen yards. Come, don't push me,'' replies the stranger turning angrily round. " I will, sir." " You won't, sir." " Go out, sir." "Take your hands off me, sir." "Go out of the passage, sir." "You're a Jack in-office, sir." "A what ? " ejaculates he of the boots. " A Jack-in-ofhce, sir, and a very insolent fellow," reiter- ates the stranger, now completely in a passion. Pray do not force me to put you out, sir," retorts the other — " pray do not — my instructions are to keep this pas- sage clear — it's the Speaker's orders, sir." " D — n the Speaker, sir ! " shouts the intruder. Here, Wilson ! — Collins ! " gasps the officer, actually paralyzed at this insulting expression, which in his mind is all but high treason ; " take this man out — take him out, I say! How dare you, sir? " and down goes the unfortunate A PARLIAMENTARY SKETCH. man five stairs at a time, turning round at eveiy stoppage, to come back again, and denouncing bitter vengeance against the commander-in-chief, and all his supernumeraries. " Make way, gentlemen, — pray make way for the Mem- bers, I beg of you ! " shouts the zealous officer, turning back, and preceding a v/hole string of the liberal and indepen- dent. You see this ferocious-looking gentleman, with a complex- ion almost as sallow as his linen, and whose large black mustache would give him the appearance of a figure in a hair-dresser's window, if his countenance possessed the thought which is communicated to those waxen caricatures of the human face divine. He is a militia-officer, and the most amusing person in the House.. Can anything be more exquisitely absurd than the burlesque grandeur of his air, as he strides up to the lobby, his eyes rolling like those of a Turk's head in a cheap Dutch clock ? He never appears without that bundle of dirty papers which he carries under his left arm, and which are generally supposed to be the mis- cellaneous estimates for 1804, or some equally important documents. He is very punctual in his attendance at the House, and his self-satisfied He-ar-He-ar," is notunfrequent- ly the signal for a general titter. This is the gentleman who once actually sent a messenger up to the Strangers' gallery in the old House of Commons^ to inquire the name of an individual who was using an eye-glass, in order that he might complain to the Speaker that the per- son in question was quizzing him ! On another occasion, he is reported to have repaired to .Bellamy's kitchen — a refresh- ment-room, where persons who are not Members are admitted on sufferance, as it were — and perceiving two or three gentle- men at supper, who he was aware were not Members, and could not, in that place, very w^ell resent his behavior, he indulged in the pleasantry of sitting with his booted leg on the table at which they were supping ! He is generally harmless^ though, and always amusing. By dint of patience, and some little interest with our friend the constable, we have contrived to make our way to the Lobby, and you can just manage to catch an occasional glimpse of the House, as the door is opened for the admission of Members. It is tolerably full already, and little groups of Members are congregated together here, discussing the inter esting topics of the day. 496 SKETCHES B Y BOZ That smart-iooking fellow in the black coat with velvet facings and cuffs^ who wears his U Orsay hat so rakishly, is " Honest Tom,'" a metropolitan representative ; and the large man in the cioak 'with the white lining — not the man by the pillar , the other with the light hair hanging over his coat- pollar behmd — is his colleague. The quiet gentlemanly-look- ing man in the blue curtout, gray trousers, white neckerchief, and gloves, whose closely-buttoned coat displays his manly figure and broad chest to great advantage, is a very well known character. He has fought a great many battles in his time, and. conquered hke the heroes of old. with no other arms than those the gods gave him. The old hard-featured man who - tandmg near him, is really a good specimen of a class of men, now nearly extinct. He is a county Member, and has been from time whereof the memory of man is not to the contrary. Look at his loose, wide, brown coat, with ca- pacious pockets on each side ; the knee-breeches and boots, the immensely long waistcoat, and silver watch-chain dangling below it, the wide-brimmed brown hat, and the white handker- chief tied in a great bow, with straggling ends sticking out beyond his shirt-frill. It is a custom one seldom sees nowa- days, and when the few who wear it have died off, it will be quite extinct. He can tell yoii long stories of Fox, Pitt, Sheridan, and Canning, and how much better the House was managed in those times, when they used to get up at eight or nine o'clock, except on regular field-days, of which everybody was apprised beforehand. He has a great contempt for all young Members of Parliament, and thinks it quite impossible that a man can say anything, worth hearing, unless he has sat in the House for fifteen years at least, without saying any- thing at all. He is of opinion that " that young Macaulay " was a regular impostor ; he allows, that Lord Stanley may do something one of these days, " but he is too young, sir — too young," Pie is an excellent authority on points of precedent, and when he grows talkative, after his wine, will tell you how Sir Somebody Something, when he was whipper-in for the Government, brought four men out of their beds to vote in the majority, three of whom died on their way home again \ how the House once divided on the question, that fresh can- dles be now brought in ; how the Speaker was once upon a time left in the chair by accident, at the conclusion of busi- ness, and was obliged to sit in the house by himself for three hours, till some Member could be knocked up and brought A PA RL I A ME NT A R Y SKE TCIL 497 back again, to move the adjournment ; and a great many other anecdotes of a similar description. There he stands, leaning on his stick ; looking at the throng of Exquisites around him with most profound con- tempt ; and conjuring up, before his mind's eye, the scenes he beheld in the old House, in days gone by when his own feelings were fresher and brighter, and when, as he imagines, wit, talent, and patriotism flourished more brightly too. You are curious to know who that young man in the rough great-coat is, who has accosted every Member who has en- tered the House since w^e have been standing here. He is not a Member; he is only an hereditary bondsman," or, in other words, an Irish correspondent of an Irish newspaper, who has just procured his forty-second frank from a Member whom he never saw in his life before. There he goes again — another ! Bless the man, he has his hat and pockets full already. We will try our fortune at the Strangers' gallery, though the nature of the debate encourages very little hope of suc- cess. What on' earth are you about? Holding up your or der as if it were a talisman at whose command the wicket would fly open ? Nonsense. Just preserve the order for an autograph, if it be worth keeping at all, and make your ap- pearance at the door with your thumb and forefinger expres- sively inserted in your waistcoat-pocket. This tall stout man in black is the door-keeper. Any room ? " " Not an inch — two or three dozen gentlemen waiting down stairs on the chance of somebody's going out." Pull out your purse — " Are you quite sure there's no room ? " — I'll go and look," replies the door-keeper, with a wistful glance at your purse, "but I'm afraid there's not." He returns, and with real feeling assures you that it is morally impossible to get near the gal- lery. It is of no use waiting. When you are refused admis- sion into the Strangers' gallery at the House of Commons, under such circumstances, you may return home thoroughly satisfied that the place must be remarkably full indeed."^ Retracing our steps through the long passage, descending the stairs, and crossing Palace-Yard, we halt at a small tem- porary door-way adjoining the King's entrance to the House of Lords. The order of the serjeant-at arms will admit you into the Reporters' gallery, from whence you can obtain a * This paper was written before the practice of exhibiting Members of Parliamenti like other curiosities, for the small charge of liri f-r. -crown, was abolished. SA ETCHES B V BOZ. tolerably good view of the House. Take care of the stairs, they are none of the best ; through this little wicket — there. As soon as your eyes become a little used to the mist of the place, and the glare of the chandeliers below you, you will see that some unimportant personage on the Ministerial side of the Plouse (to your right hand) is speaking, amidst a hum of voices and confusion v;hich would rival Babel, but for the circumstance of its being all in one language. The "hear, hear," which occasioned that laugh, proceeded from our warlike friend with the mustache : he is sitting on the back seat against the wall, behind the Member who is speaking, looking as ferocious and intellectual as usual. Take one look around you, and retire ! The body of the House and the side galleries are full of Members ; some, with their legs on the back of the opposite seat ; some, with theirs stretched out to their utmost length on the floor ; some going out, others coming in ; all talking, laughing, lounging, cough- ing, o-ing, questioning, or groaning ; presenting a conglomer- ation of noise and confusion, to be met with in no other place in existence, not even excepting Smithfield on a market-day, or a cock-pit in its glory. But let us not omit to notice Bellamy's kitchen, or, in other words, the refreshment-room, common to both Houses of Parliament, where Ministerialists and Oppositionists, Whigs and Tories, Radicals, Peers, and Destructives, strangers from the gallery, and the more favored strangers from beloM the bar, are alike at liberty to resort ; where divers honorable members prove their perfect independence by remaining dur- ing the whole of a heavy debate, solacing themselves with the creature comforts ; and whence they are summoned by whip- pers-in, when the House is on the point of dividing; either to give their conscientious votes" on questions of which tliey are conscientiously innocent of knowing anything whatever, or to find a vent for the playful exuberance of their wine-in- spired fancies, in boisterous shouts of Divide," occasionally varied with a little howling, barking, crowing, or other ebulli- tions of senatorial pleasantry. When you have ascended the narrow staircase which, in the present temporary House of Commons, leads to the place we are describing, you will probably observe a couple of rooms on your right hand, with tables spread for dining. Neither of these is the kitchen, although they are both devoted to the same purpose ; the kitchen is further on to our left, up these A PA RLIA MENTA R Y SKE TC/l. 499 half-dozen stairs. Before we ascend the staircase, however, we must request you to pause in front of this Httle bar-place with the sash-windows ; and beg your particular attention to the steady honest-looking old fellow in black, who \z its sole occupant. Nicholas (we do not mind mentioning the old fel low's name, for if Nicholas be not a public man, who is ? — ^ and public men's names are public property) — Nicholas ir. the butler of Bellamy's, and has held the same place, dressed exactly in the same manner, and said precisely the same things, ever since the oldest of its present visitors can re- member. An excellent servant Nicholas is — an unrivalled compounder of salad-dressing — an admirable preparer of soda-water and lemon — a special mixer of cold grog and punch — and, above all, an unequalled judge of cheese. If the old man have such a thing as vanity in his composition, this is certainly his pride ; and if it be possible to imagine that anything in this world could disturb his impenetrable calmness, we should say it would be the doubting his judg^ ment on this important point. We needn't tell you all this, however, for if you have an atom of observation, one glance at his sleek, knowing-looking head and face — his prim white neckerchief, with the wooden tie into which it has been regularly folded for twenty years past, merging by imperceptible degrees into a small-plaited shirt-frill — and his comfortable-looking form encased in a well-brushed suit of black— would give you a better idea of his real character than a column of our poor description could convey. Nicholas is rather out of his element now ; he cannot see the kitchen as he used to in the old House ; there, one window of his glass-case opened into the room, and then, for the edification and behoof of more juvenile questioners, he would stand for an hour together, answering deferential ques- tions about Sheridan, and Percival, and Castlereagh, and Heaven knows w^io beside, with manifest delight, always in- serting a Mister ■ before every commoner's name. Nicholas, like all men of his age and standing, has a great idea of the degeneracy of the times. He seldom expresses any political opinions, but we managed to ascertain, just before the passing oi: the Reform Bil'i, that Nicholas was a thorough Reformer. What was our astonishment to discover shortly after the meeting of the first reformed Parliament, that he was a most inveterate and decided Tory ! It was very 500 SKETCHES BY BOZ. odd : some men change their opinions from necessity, others from expediency, others from inspiration ; but that Nicholas should undergo any change in any respect, was an event we had never contemplated, and should have considered impos- sible. His strong opinion against the clause which em- powered the metropolitan districts to return Members to Par liament, too, was perfectly unaccountable. We discovered the secret at 'last ; the metropolitan Mem- bers always dined at home. The rascals ! As for giving ad- ditional Members to Ireland, it was even worse — decidedly unconstitutional. Why, sir, an Irish Member would go up there, and eat more dinner than three English Members put together. He took no wine ; drank table-beer by the half- gallon ; and went home to Manchester-buildings, or Millbank- street, for his whiskey -and water. And what was the conse- quence 1 Why the concern lost — actually lost, sir — by his patronage. A queer old fellow is Nicholas, and as com- pletely a part of the building as the house itself. We wonder he ever left the old place, and fully expected to see in the papers, the morning after the fire, a pathetic account of an old gentleman in black, of decent appearance, who was seen at one of the upper windovv^s when the flames w^ere at their height, and declared his resolute intention of falling with the floor. He must have been got out by force. How^ever, he was got out — here he is again, looking as he always does, as if he had been in a bandbox ever since the last session. There he is, at his old post every night, just as we have de- scribed him : and, as characters are scarce, and faithful ser- vants scarcer, long may he be there, say we ! Now, when you have taken your seat in the kitchen, and duly noticed the large fire and roasting-jack at one end of the room — the little table for washing glasses and draining jugs at the other — the clock over the window opposite St. Marga- ret's Church — the deal tables and wax candles — the damask table-cloths and bare floor — the plate and china on the tables, and Ihe gridiron on the fire ; and a few other anomalies pe- culiar to the place — we will point out to your notice two or three of the people present, whose station or absurdities ren- der them the most worthy of remark. It \z half-past twelve o'clock, and as the division is not expected for an hour or two, a few Members are lounging away the time here in preference to standing at the bar of the House, or sleeping in one of the side galleries. That singu- A PARLIAMENTARY SKETCH. 5°^ larly awkward and ungainly-looking man, in the brownish- white hat, with the straggling black trousers which reach about half-way down the leg of his boots, who is leaning against the meat-screen, apparently deluding himself into the belief that he is thinking about something, is a splendid sam pie of a Member of the House of Commons concentrating in his own person the wisdom of a constituency. Observe the wig, of a dark hue but indescribable color, for if it be natu- rally brown, it has acquired a black tint by long service, and if it be naturally black, the same cause has imparted to it a tinge of rusty browar ; and remark how very materially the great blinker-like spectacles assist the expression of that most intelligent face. Seriously speaking, did you ever see a countenance so expressive of the most hopeless extreme of heavy dullness, or behold a form so strangely put together ? He is no great speaker : but when he does address the House the effect is absolutely irresistible. The small gentleman wdth the sharp nose, who has just sa- luted him, is a Member of Parliament, an ex-Alderman, and a sort of amateur fireman. He, and the celebrated fireman's dog, were observed to be remarkably active at the conflagra- tion of the two Houses of Parliament — they both ran up and down, and in and out, getting under people's feet, and into everybody's w^ay, fully impressed with the belief that they were doing a great deal of good, and barking tremendously. The dog went quietly back to his kennel wdth the engine, but the gentleman kept up such an incessant noise for some wrecks after the occurrence, that he became a positive nuisance. As no more parliamentary fires have occurred, however, and as he has consequently had no more opportunities of writing to the newspapers to relate how, by way of preserving pictures he cut them out of their frames, and performed other great na- tional services, he has gradually relapsed into his old state of calmness. That female in black — not the one whom the Lord's-Day- Bill Baronet has just chucked under the chin ; the shorter of the two — is Jane : " the Hebe of Bellamy's. Jane is as great a character as Nicholas, in her way. Her leading fea- tures are a thorough contempt for the great majority of her visitors ; her predominant quality, love of admiration, as you cannot fail to observe, if you mark the glee with which she listens to something the young Member near her mutters somewhat unintelligibly in her ear (for his speech is rather 502 ^ . SKETCHES BY BGZ. thick from some cause or other), and how playfully she digs the handle ol a fork into the arm with which he detains her, by way of reply. Jane is no bad hand at repartees, and showers them about, with a degree of liberality and total absence of reserve or constraint, which occasionally excites no small amazement in the minds of strangers. She cuts jokes with Nicholas, too. but looks up to him with a great deal of respect : the immov- able stolidity with which Nicholas receives the aforesaid jokes, and looks on, at certain pastoral friskings and romp- ings (Jane's only recreations, and they are very innocent too) which occasionally take place in the passage, is not the least amusing part of his character. The two persons who are seated at the table in the cor- ner, at the farther end of the room, have been constant guests here, for many years past ; and one of them has feasted within these walls, many a time, with the most brilliant char- acters of a brilliant period. He has gone up to the other House since then ; the greater part of his boon companions have shared Yorick's fate, and his visits to Bellamy's are comparatively few. If he really be eating his supper now, at what hour can he poss'bly have dined ! A second solid mass of rump-steak has disappeared, and he eat the first in four minutes and three quarters, by the clock over the window. Was there ever such a personification of Falstaff ! Mark the air with which he gloats over that Stilton, as he removes the napkin which has been placed beneath his chin to catch the super- fluous gravy of the steak, and with what gusto he imbibes the porter which has been fetched, expressly for him, in the pew- ter pot. Listen to the hoarse sound of that voice, kept down aG it is by layers of solids, and deep draughts of rich wine, and tell us if you ever saw such a perfect picture of a regular goiinnand ; and whether he is not exactly the man whom you would pitch upon as having been the partner of Sheridan's parliamentary carouses, the volunteer driver of the hackney- coach that took him home, and the involuntary upsetter of the whole party ? What an amusing contrast between his voice and appear- ance, and that of the spare, squeaking old man, who sits at the same table, and who, elevating a little cracked bantam sort pf voice to its highest pitch, invokes damnation upon his own eyes or somebody else's at the commencement of every PUBLIC DINNERS. sentence he utters. " The Captain," as they call him, is a very old frequenter of Bellamy's ; much addicted to stopping after the House is up " (an inexpiable crime in Jane's eyes), and a complete walking reservoir of spirits and water. The old Peer — or rather, the old man — for his peerage is of comparatively recent date — has a huge tumbler o,^ hot punch brought to him ; and the other damns and drinks, and drinks and damns, and smokes. Members arrive every mo- ment in a great bustle to report that The Chancellor of the Exchequer's up," and to get glasses of brandy-and-water to sustain them during the division ; people who have ordered supper, countermand it, and prepare to go down stairs, when suddenly a bell is heard to ring with tremendous violence, and a cry of " Di-vi-sion ! " is heard in the passage. This is enough ; away rush the members pell-mell. The room is cleared in an instant ; the noise rapidly dies away ; you hear the creaking of the last boot on the last stair, and are left alone with the leviathan of rump-steaks. CHAPTER XIX. PUBLIC DINNERS. All public dinners in London, from the Lord Mayor's annual banquet at Guild-hall, to the Chimney-sweepers' anni- versary at White Conduit House ; from the Goldsmiths' to the Butchers', from the Sheriffs' to the Licensed Victuallers' ; are amusing scenes. Of all entertainments of this descrip- tion, however, we think the annual dinner of some public charity is the most amusing. At a Company's dinner, the people are nearly all alike — regular old stagers, who make it a matter of business, and a thing not to be laughed at. At a political dinner, everybody is disagreeable, and inclined to speechify — much the same thing, by the bye ; but at a charity dinner you see people of all sorts, kinds, and descriptions. The wine may not be remarkably special, to be sure, and we have heard some hard-hearted monsters grumble at the col- lection ; but we really think the amusement to be derived from the occasion, sufficient to counterbalance, even these disadvantages. U 504 SKETCHES BY BOZ, Let us suppose you are induced to attend a dinner of this description — " Indigent Orphans' Friends' Benevolent Insti- tution," we think it is. The name of the charity is a line or two longer, but never mind the rest. You have a distinct recollection, however, that you purchased a ticket at the solicitation of some charitable friend : and you deposit your- self in a hackney-coach, the driver of which — no doubt that you may do the thing in style — turns a deaf ear to your ear- nest entreaties to be set down at the corner of Great Queen- street, and persists in carrying you to the very door of the Freemasons', round which a crowd of people are assembled to witness the entrance of the indigent orphans' friends. You hear great speculations as you pay the fare, on the possibility of your being the noble Lord who is announced to fill the chair on the occasion, and are highly gratified to hear it event- ually decided that you are only a wocalist." The first thing that strikes you, on your entrance, is the astonishing importance of the committee. You observe a door on the first landing, carefully guarded by two waiters, in and out of which stout gentlemen with very red faces keep running, with a degree of speed highly unbecoming the gravity of persons of their years and corpulency. You pause, quite alarmed at the bustle, and thinking, in your innocence, that two or three people must have been carried out of the dining- room in fits, at least. You are immediately undeceived by the waiter — " Up stairs, if you please, sir ; this is the conv mittee-room." Up stairs you go, accordingly ; wondering, as you mount, what the duties of the committee can be, and whether they ever do anything beyond confusing each other, and running over the waiters. Having deposited your hat and cloak, and received a re- markably small scrap of pasteboard in exchange (which, as a matter of course, you lose, before you require it again), you enter the hall, down wdiich there are three long tables for the less distinguished guests, with a cross table on a raised plat- form at the upper end for the reception of the very particular friends of the indigent orphans. Being fortunate enough to find a plate without anybody's card in it, you wisely seat your- self at once, and have a little leisure to look about you. Waiters, with wine-baskets in their hands, are placing decan- ters of sherry down the tables, at very respectable distances j melancholy-looking salt-cellars, and decayed vinegar-cruets, which might have belonged to the parents of the indigent orphans in their time, are scattered at distant intervals on the cloth ; and the knives and forks look as if they had done duty at every public dinner in London snice the accession of George the Plrst. The musicians are scraping and grating and screwing tremendously — playing no notes but notes of preparation ; and several gentlemen are gliding along the sides of the tables, looking into plate after plate with frantic eagerness, the expression of their countenances growing more and more dismal as they meet with everybody's card but theii own. You turn round to take a look at the table behind you, and — not being in the habit of attending public dinners — are somewhat struck by the appearance of the party on which your eyes rest. One of its principal members appears to be a little man, with a long and rather inflamed face, and gray hair brushed bolt upright in front ; he wears a wisp of black silk round his neck, without any stiffener, as an apology for a neckerchief, and is addressed by his com: nions by the familiar appellation of " Fitz," or some such monosyllable. Near him is a stout man in a white neckerchief and buff waist- coat, with shining dark hair, cut very short in front, and a great round healthy-looking face, on which he studiously pre- serves a half sentimental simper. Next him, again, is a large- headed man, with black hair and bushy whiskers ; and oppo- site them are two or three others, one of whom is a little round faced person, in a dress-stock and blue under waist- coat. There is something peculiar in their air and manner, though you could hardly describe what it is ; you cannot divest yourself of the idea that they have come for some other pur- pose than mere eating and drinking. You have no time to debate the matter, however, for the waiters (who have been arranged in lines down the room, placing the. dishes on table) retire to the lower end ; the dark man in the blue coat and bright buttons, who has the direction of the music, looks up to the gallery, and calls out "band " in a very loud voice ; out burst the orchestra, up rise the visitors, in march fourteen stewards, each with a long wand in his hand, like the evil genius in a pantomime , then the chairman, then the titled visitors ; they all make their way up the room, as fast as they can, bowing, and smiling, and smirking, and looking remark- ably amiable. The applause ceases, grace is said, the clatter of plates and dishes begins ; and every one appears highly gratified, either with the presence of the distinguished visitors, or the commencement of the anxiously-expected dinner. 5o6 SKE TCHES B V BOZ. As to the dinner itself — the mere dinner — it goes off much the same everywhere. Tureens of soup are emptied with a^'ful rapidity — waiters take plates of turbot away, to get lob- ster-sauce, and bring back plaltes of lobster-sauce without turbot ; people who can carve poultry, are great fools if they own it, and people who can't have no wish to learn. The knives and forks form a pleasing accompaniment to Auber's music, and Auber's music would form a pleasing accompani- ment to the dinner, if you could hear anything besides the cymbals. The substantials disappear — moulds of jelly vanish like lightning — hearty eaters wipe their foreheads, and appear rather overcome by their recent exertions — people who have looked very cross hitherto, become remarkably bland, and ask you to take wdne in the most friendly manner possible — old gentlemen direct your attention to the ladies' gallery, and take great pains to impress you with the fact that the charity is always peculiarly favored in this respect — every one appears disposed to become talkative — and the hum of conversation is loud and general. ''Pray, silence, gentlemen, if you please, for JVo7i nohis shouts the toast-master with stentorian lungs — a toast-master's shirt-front, waistcoat, and neckerchief, by the bye, always ex- hibit three distinct shades of cloudy-white. — "Pray, silence gentlemen, for Non nobis ! " The singers, whom you discover to be no other than the very party that excited your curiosity at first, after '' pitching " their voices immediately begin too- too\T\g most dismally, on which the regular old stagers burst into occasional cries of — '' Sh — Sh — waiters ! — Silence, waiters — stand still, waiters — keep back, waiters," and other exor- cisms, delivered in a tone of indignant remonstrance. The grace is soon concluded, and the company resume their seats. The uninitiated portion of the guests applaud Non 7iohis as vehemently as if it were a capital comic song, greatly to the scandal and indignation of the regular diners, who immediately attempt to quell this sacrilegious approbation, by cries of " Hush, hush ! " whereupon the others, mistaking these sounds for hisses, applaud more tuniultuously than before, and, by way of placing their approval beyond the possibility of doubt, shout Eiicore !''' most vociferously. The moment the noise ceases, up starts the toast-master : — '' Gentlemen, charge your glasses, if you please ! " Decan- ers having been handed about, and glasses filled, the toast- master proceeds, in a regular ascending scale : — " Gentlemen P PUBLIC DINNERS. ^oy — -air — you — ail charged ? Pray — silence — f eatlemen — for — the cha — i — r ! " The chairman rises, and, after stating that he feels it quite unnecessary to preface the toast he is about to propose, with any observations whatever, wanders into a maze of sentences, and flounders about in the most extraordinary manner, presenting a lamentable spectacle of mystified humanity, until he arrives at the words, " constitu- tional sovereign of these realms," at which elderly gentlemen exclaim Bravo ! " and liammer the table tremendously with their knife-handles. ''Under any circumstances, it would give him the greatest pride, it would give him the greatest pleas- ure — he might almost say, it w^ould afford him satisfaction [cheers] to propose that toast. What must be his feelings, then, when he has the gratification of announcing, that he has received her Majesty's commands to apply to the Treasurer of her Majesty's Household, for her Majesty's annual dona- tion of 25/. in aid of the funds of this charity ! " This an- nouncement (which has been regularly made by every chair- man, since the first foundation of the charity, forty-tv/o years ago) calls forth the most vociferous applause ; the toast is drunk with a great deal of cheering and knocking ; and God save the Queen " is sung by the ''professional gentlemen the unprofessional gentlemen joining in the chorus, and giving the national anthem an effect which the newspapers, v/ith great justice, describe as " perfectly electrical." The other " loyal and ]:)atnotic " toasts ha\'ing been drunk with all due enthusiasm, a comic song having been well sung by the gentleman with the small neckerchief, and a senti- mental one by the second of the party, we come to the most important toast of the evening — " Prosperity to the charity." Here again we are compelled to adopt newspaper phraseology, and to express our regret at being " precluded from giving even the substance of the noble lord's observations." Suffice it to say, that the speech, which is somewhat of the longest, is rapturously received ; and the toast having been drunk, the stewards (looking more important than ever) leave the room, and presently return, heading a procession of indigent or- phans, boys and girls, who walk round the room, curtseying, and bowing, and treading on each other's heels, and looking very much as if they would like a glass of wine apiece, to the high gratification of the company generally, and especially of the lady patronesses in the gMery- Exetint children, and re- enter stewards, each with a blue plate his hand. The band SKETCHES BY BOZ. plays a lively air ; the majority of the company put theii hands in their pockets and look rather serious ; and the noise of sovereigns, rattling on crockery, is heard from all parts of the room. After a short interval, occupied in singing and toasting, the secretary puts on his spectacles, and proceeds to read the leport and list of subscriptions, the latter being listened to with great attention. ''Mr. Smith, one guinea — Mr. Tomp- kins, one guinea — Mr. Wilson, one guinea — Mr. Hickson, one guinea — Mr. Nixon, one guinea — Mr. Charles Nixon, one guinea — [hear, hear !] — Mr. James Nixon, one guinea — Mr. Thomas Nixon, one pound one [tremendous api^lause]. Lord Fitz Binkle, the chairman of the day, in addition to an annual donation of fifteen pounds — thirty guineas [prolonged knock- ing : several gentlemen knock the stems off their wine-glasses, in the vehemence of their approbation]. Lady Fitz Binkle, in addition to an annual donation of ten pound — twenty pound " [protracted knocking and shouts of " Bravo ! "] The list being at length concluded, the chairman rises, and pro- poses the health of the secretary, than whom he knows no more zealous or estimable individual. The secretary, in re- turning thanks, observes that he knows no more excellent in dividual than the chairman — except the senior officer of the charity, whose health he begs to propose. The senior officer, in returning thanks, observes that he knows no more worthy man than the secretary — except Mr. Walker, the auditor, whose health begs to propose. Mr. Walker, in returning thanks, discovers some other estimable individual, to whom alone the senior officer is inferior — and so they go on toasting and lauding and thanking : the only other toast of importance being "^he Lady- Patronesses now ^^resent ! " on which all the gentlemen turn their faces towards the ladies' gallery, shouting tremendously ; and little priggish men, who have imbibed more wine than usual, kiss their hands and exhibit distressing contortions of visage. We have protracted our dinner to so a great a length, that we have hardly time to add one word by way of grace. We can only entreat our readers not to imagine, because we hai^e attempted to extract some amusement from a charity dinner, that we are at all disposed to underrate, either the excellence of the benevolent institutions with which London abounds, ol the estimable motives of those who support them. I'HE FIRST OF MA K 509 CHAPTER XX. THE FIRST OF MAY, ** Now ladies, up in the sky-parlor: only once a year, if you please! " Young Lady with Brass Ladle. *' Sweep — sweep — sw-e-ep ! " Illegal Watchword. The first of May ! There is a merry freshness in the sound, calling to our minds a thousand thoughts of all that is pleasant in nature and beautiful in her most delightful form. What man is there, over whose mind a bright spring morning does not exercise a magic influence — carrying him back to the days of his childish sports, and conjuring up before him the old green field with its gently-waving trees, where the birds sang as he has never heard them since — where the but- terfly fluttered far more gayly than he ever sees him now, in all his ramblings — where the sky seemed bluer, and the sun shone more brightly — where the air blew more freshly over greener grass, and sweeter-smelling flowers — where everything wore a richer and more brilliant hue than it is ever dressed in now ! Such are the deep feelings of childhood, and such are the impressions which every lovely object stamps upon its heart ! The hardy traveller wanders through the maze of thick and pathless woods, where the sun's rays never shone, and heaven's pure air never played ; he stands on the brink of the roaring waterfall, and, giddy and bewildered, watches the foaming mass as it leaps from stone to stone, and from crag to crag ; he lingers in the fertile plains of a land of per- petual sunshine, and revels in the luxury of their balmy breath. But what are the deep forests, or the thundering waters, or the richest landscapes that bounteous nature ever spread, to charm the eyes, and captivate the senses of man, compared Vv^th the recollection of the old scenes of his early youth ? Magic scenes indeed ; for the fancies of childhood dressed them in colors brighter than the rainbow, and almost as fleeting. In former times, spring brought with it not only such as- • sociations as these, connected with the past, but sports and SKETCHES BY BQZ games for the present — merry dances round rustic pillars, adorned with emblems of the season, and reared in honor of its coming. Where are they now ! Pillars we have, but they are no longer rustic ones ; and as to dancers, they are used to rooms, and lights, and would not show well in the open air. Think of the immorality, too ! What would your sab- bath enthusiasts say, to an aristocratic ring encircling tl:e Duke of York's column in Carlton terrace — a grand poussette of the middle classes, round Alderman Waithman's monument in Fleet-street, — or a general hands-four-rbund of ten-pound householders, at the foot of the Obelisk in St. George's-fields ? Alas ! romance can make no head against the riot act ; and pastoral simplicity is not understood by the police. Well ; many years ago we began to be a steady and matter-of-fact sort of people, and dancing in spring being beneath our dignity, w^e gave it up, and in course of time it descended to the sweeps — a fall certainly, because, though sweeps are very good fellows in their way, and moreover very useful in a civilized community, they are not exactly the sort of people to give the tone to the little elegances of society. The sweeps, however, got the dancing to themselves, and they kept it up, and handed it dowqi. This \vas a severe blow to the romance of spring time, but, it did not entirely destroy it, either ; for a portion of it descended to the sweeps with the dancing, and rendered them objects of great interest. A mystery hung over the sweeps in those days. Legends were in existence of wealthy gentlemen who had lost children, and who, after many years of sorrow and suffering, had found them in the character of svv^eeps. Stories were related of a young boy wdio, having been stolen from his parents in his infancy, and devoted to the occupation of chimney-sweeping, was sent, in the course of his professional career, to sweep the chimney of his mother's bedroom ; and how, being hot and tired when he came out of the chimney, he got into the bed he had so often slept in as an infant, and was discovered" and recognized therein by his mother, who once every yeai of her life, thereafter, requested the pleasure of the company of every London sweep, at half-past one o'clock, to roast beef, plum-pudding, porter, and sixpence. Such stories as these, and there were many such, threw an air of mystery round the sweeps, and produced for them some of those good effects which animals derive from the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. No one (except the THE FIRST OF MA V. masters) thought of ill-treating a sweep, because no one knew who he might be, or what nobleman's or gentleman's son he might turn out. Chimney-sweeping was, by many be- lievers in the marvellous, considered as a sort of probationary term, at an earlier or later period of which, divers young noblemen were to come into possession of their rank and titles : and the profession was held by them in great respect accordingly. We remember, in our young days, a little sweep about our own age, with curly hair and white teeth, whom we devoutly and sincerely believed to be the lost son and heir of some illustrious personage — an impression which was resolved into an unchangeable conviction on our infant mind, by the sub- ject of our speculations informing us, one day, in reply to our question, propounded a few moments before his ascent to the summit of the kitchen chimney, " that he believed he'd been born in the vurkis, but he'd never know'd his father." We felt certain, from that, time forth, that he would one day be owned by a lord ; and we never heard the church-bells ring, or saw a flag hoisted in the neighborhood, vvdthout thinking that the happy event had at last occurred, and that his long-lost parent had arrived in a coach and six, to take him home to Grosvenor-square. He never came, however ; and, at the present moment, the young gentleman in question is settled down as a master svv^eep in the neighborhood of Battle bridge, his distinguishing characteristics being a de- cided antipathy to washing hmiself, and the possession of a pair of legs very inadequate to the support of his unwieldy and corpulent body. The romance of spring having gone out before our time, we were fain to console ourselves as we best could with the u.icertainty that enveloped the birth and parentage of its attendant dancers, the sweeps ; and we did console ourselves with it, for many years. But, even this wretched source of comfort received a shock from which it has never recovered — a shock which has been in reality its death-blow. We could not disguise from ourselves the fact that whole families of sweeps were regularly born of sweeps, in the rural districts of Somers Town and Camden Town — that the eldest son succeeded to the father's business, that the other branches assisted him therein, and commenced on their own account ; that their children again, were educated to the profession ; and that about their identity there could be no mistake what- SKE TCHES B Y BOZ. ever. We could not be blind, we say, to this melancholy truth, but we could not bring ourselves to admit it, neverthe- less and we lived on for some years in a state of voluntary ignorance. We were roused from our pleasant slumber by certain dark insinuations thrown out by a friend of ours, to the effect that children in the lower ranks of life were be2:in- ning to choose chimney-sweepmg as their particular walk ; that applications had been made by various boys to the con- stituted authorities, to allow them to pursue the object of their ambition with the full concurrence and sanction of the law ; that the affair, in short, was becoming one of mere legal contract. We turned a deaf ear to these rumors at first, bur slowly and surely they stole upon us. Month after month, week after week, nay, day after day, at last, did we meet with accounts of similar applications. The veil was removed, all mystery was at an end, and chimney-sweeping had become a favorite and chosen pursuit. There is no longer any occasion to steal boys ; for boys flock in cjowds to bind themselves. The romance of the trade has fled, and the chimney-sweeper of the present day, is no more like unto him of thirty years ago, than is a Fleet-street pickpocket to a Spanish brigand, or Paul Pry to Cabel Williams. This gradual decay and disuse of the practice of leading noble youths' into captivity, and compelling them to ascend chimneys, was a severe blow, if we may so speak, to the ro- mance of chimney-sweeping, and to the romance of spring at the same time. But even this was not all, for some few years ago the dancing on May-day began to decline ; small sweeps weie observed to congregate in twos or threes, unsupported by a "green," with no My Lord" to act as master of the ceremonies, and no " My Lady " to preside over the ex- chequer. Even in companies where there was a " green " it was an absolute nothing — a mere sprout — and the instru- mental accompaniments rarely extended beyond the shovels and a set of Pan-pipes, better known to the many, as a " mouth- organ." These were signs of the times, portentous omens of a coming change ; and what was the result which they shadowed forth ? Why, the master sweeps, influenced by a restless spirit of innovation, actually interposed their authority, in opposition to the dancing, and substituted a dinner — an an- niversary dinner at White Conduit House — where clean faces appeared in lieu of black ones smeared with rose pink ; and THE FIRST OF MA Y. knee cords and tops superseded nankeen drawers and ro- setted shoes. Gentlemen who were in the habit of riding shy horses ; and steady-going people who have no vagrancy in their souls, lauded this alteration to the skies, and the conduct of the master sweeps was described as beyond the reach of praise. But how stands the real fact ? Let any man deny, if he can, that when the cloth had been removed, fresh pots and pipes laid upon the table, and the customary loyal and patriotic toasts proposed, the celebrated Mr. Sluffen, of Adam-and- Eve-court, whose authority not the most malignant of our opponents can call in question, expressed himself in a manner following : " That now he'd cotcht the cheerman's hi, he vished he might be jolly veil blessed, if he worn't a gcin' to have his* innings, vich he vould say these here obserwashuns — that how some mischeevus coves as know'd nuffin about the consarn, had tried to sit people again the mas'r swips, and take the shine out o' their bis'nes, and the bread out o' ^he traps o' their preshus kids, by a makin' o' this here re- mark, as chimblies could be as veil svept by 'sheenery as by boys ; and that the makin' use o' boys for that there purpuss vos barbareous ; vereas, he 'ad been a chummy — he begged the cheerman's parding for usin' such a wulgar hexpression — more nor thirty year — he might say he'd been born in a chim- bley — and he know'd uncommon veil as 'sheenery vos vus nor o' no use : and as to kerhewelty to the boys, everybody in the chimbley line know'd as veil as he did, that they liked the climbin' better nor nuffin as vos." From this day, we date the total fall of the last lingering remnant of May-day danc- ing, among the elite of the profession : and from this period we commence a new era in that portion of our spring associa- tions v/hich relates to the ist of May. We are aware that the unthinking part of the population will meet us here, wdth the assertion, that dancing on Ma}^- day still continues — that "greens " are annually seen to roll along the streets — that youths in the garb of clowns, precede them, giving vent to the ebullitions of their sportive fancies ; and that lords and ladies follow in their wake. Granted. We are ready to acknowledge that in outward show, these processions have greatly improved : we do not deny- the introduction of solos on the drum ; w^e will even go so far us to admit an occasional fantasia on the triangle., but h'^re our admissions end. We positively deny that the sweeps 514 SKE TCHES BY BOZ. have art or part in these proceedings. We distinctly charge the dustmen with throwing what they ought to clear away, into the eyes of the public. We accuse scavengers, brick- makers, and gentlemen who devote their energies to the cos* termongering line, with obtaining money once a-year, under false pretences. We cling with peculiar fondness to the ^custom of days gone by, and have shut out conviction as long jas we could, but it has forced itself upon us ; and we now proclaim to a deluded public, that the May-day dancers are not sweeps. The size of them, alone, is sufficient to repudiate the idea. It is a notorious fact that the widely- spread taste "for register -stoves has materially increased the demand for small boys ; whereas the men, who, under a fictitious char- acter, dance about the streets on the first of May nowadays, would be a tight fit in a kitchen flue, to say nothing of the parlor. This is strong presumptive evidence, but we have positive proof — the evidence of our own senses. And here is our testimony. Upon the morning of the second of the merry month of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty-six, we went out for a stroll, with a kind of forlorn hope of seeing something or other which might induce us to believe that it was really spring, and not Christmas. After wandering as far as Copenhagen House, without meeting anything calculated to dispel our impression that there was a mistake in the almanacs, we turned back down Maiden-lane, with the intention of passing through the extensive colony lying between it and Battle-bridge, which is inhabited by pro- prietors of donkey-carts, boilers of horse-flesh, makers of tiles, and sifters of cinders j through which colony we should have passed, without stoppage or interruption, if a little crowd gathered round a shed had not attracted our attention, and induced us to pause. When we say a " shed," we do not mean the conservatory sort of building, which, according to the old song, Love ten- anted when he was a young man, but a wooden house with windows stuffed with rags and paper, and a small yard at the side, with one dust-cart, two baskets, a few shovels, and little heaps of cinders, and fragments of china and, tiles, scattered about it. Before this inviting spot we paused ; and the longer we looked, the more we wondered what exciting cir- cumstance it could be, that induced the foremost members of the crowd to flatten thejr noses against the parlor window, in THE FIRST OF MA K the vain hope of catching a gUmpse of what was going on inside. After staring vacantly about us for some minutes, we appealed, touching the cause of this assemblage, to a gentle- man in a suit of tarpauling, who was smoking his pipe on our right hand ; but as the only answer we obtained was a playful inquiry whether our mother had disposed of her mangle, we determined to await the issue in silence. Judge of our virtuous indignation, when the street-door of the shed opened, and a party emerged therefrom, clad in the costume and emulating the appearance, of May-day sweeps ! The first person who appeared was "my lord," habited in a blue coat and bright buttons, with gilt paper tacked over the seams, yellow knee-breeches, pink cotton stockings, and shoes ; a cocked hat, ornamented with shreds of various- colored paper, on his head, a bouquet^ the size of a prize cauliflower in his button-hofe, a long Belcher handkerchief in his right hand, and a thin cane in his left. A murmur of ap- plause ran through the crowd (which was chiefly composed of his lordship's personal friends), when this graceful figure made his appearance, which swelled into a burst of applause as his fair partner in the dance bounded forth to join him. Her ladyship was attired in pink crape over bed-furniture, with a low body and short sleeves. The symmetry of hei ankles was partially concealed by a very perceptible pair of frilled trousers ; and the inconvenience which might have resulted from the circumstance of her white satin shoes bein^ a few sizes too large, was obviated by their being firmly at- tached to her legs with strong tape sandals. Her head was ornamented with a profusion of artificial flowers ; and in her hand she bore a large brass ladle, where- in to receive what she figuratively denominated the tin." The other characters were a young gentleman in girl's clothes and a widow's cap ; two clowns who walked upon their hands in the mud, to the immeasurable delight of all the spectators; a man with a drum ; another man with a flageolet ; a dirty woman in a large shawl, with a box under her arm for the money, — and last, though not least, the green," animated by no less a personage than our identical friend in the tar- pauling suit. The man hammered away at the drum, the flageolet squeaked, the shovels rattled, the green" rolled about, pitching first on one side and then on the other ; my lady threw her right foot over her left ankle, and her left foot over 5 T 6 ^-/iTi TCHES B Y BOZ, her right ankle, alternately; my lord ran a few paces forward, and butted at the green," and then a few paces backward upon the toes of the crowd, and then went t(f the right, and then to the left, and then dodged my lady round the " green ; " and finally drew her arm through his, and called upon the boys to shout, which they did lustily — for this was the dancing. We passed the same group, accidentally, in the evening. We never saw a "green" so drunk, a lord so quarrelsome (no : not even in the house of peers after dinner), a pair of clowns so melancholy, a lady so muddy, or a party so miser- able. How has May-day decayed ! CHAPTER XXI. brokers' and marine-store shops. When we affirm that brokers' shops are strange places, and that if an authentic history of their contents could be pro- cured, it would furnish many a page of amusement, and many a melancholy tale, it is necessary to explain the class of shops to which we allude. Perhaps when we make use of""" the term " Brokers' Shop," the minds of our readers will at once pic- ture large, handsome warehouses, exhibiting a long perspect- ive of French-polished dining-tables, rosewood chiffoniers, and mahogany wash-hand-stands, with an occasional vista of a four-post bedstead and hangings, and an appropriate fore- ground of dining-room chairs. Perhaps they will imagine that we mean an humble class of second-hand furniture reposi- tories. Their imagination will then naturally lead them to that street at the back of Long-acre, which is composed almost entirely of brokers' shops ; where you walk through groves of deceitful, showy-looking furniture, and where the prospect is occasionally enlivened by a bright red, blue, and yellow hearth- rug, embellished with the pleasing device of a mail-coach at full-speed, or a strange animal, supposed to have been orig- inally intended for a dog, with a mass of worsted-work in his mouth, which conjecture has likened to a basket of flowers. This, by the bye, is a tempting article to young wives in the BROKERS' AMD MARINE-STORE SHOPS. humbler ranks of life, who have a first-floor front to furnish — • they are lost in admiration, and hardly know which to admire most. The dog is very beautiful, but they have a dog already on the best tea-tray, and two more on the mantel-piece. Then, there is something so genteel about that mail-coach ; and the passengers outside (who are all hat) give it such an air oi reality ! The goods here are adapted to the taste, or rather to the means, of cheap purchasers. There are some of the most beautiful looking Pembroke tables that were ever beheld, the wood as green as the trees in the Park, and the leaves almost as certain to fall off in the course of a year, ^here is also a most extensive assortment of tent and turn-up bedsteads, made of stained wood, and innumerable specimens of that base imposition on. society — a sofa bedstead. A turn-up bedstead is a blunt, honest piece of furniture ; it may be slightly disguised with a sham drawer ; and some- times a mad attempt is even made to pass it off for a book- case ; ornament it as you will, however, the turn-up Kedstead seems to defy disguise, and to insist on having it distinctly understood that he is a turn-up bedstead, and nothing else — ■ that he is indispensably necessary, and that being so useful, he disdains to be ornamental. How different is the demeanor of a sofa bedstead ! Ashamed of its real use, it strives to appear an article of luxury and gentility — an attempt in which it miserably fails. It has neither the respectability of a sofa, nor the virtues of a bed ; every man who keeps a sofa bedstead in his house, becomes a party to a wilful and designing fraud — we ques- tion whether you could insult him more, than by insinuating that you entertain the least suspicion of its real use. To return from this digression, we beg to say, that neither of these classes of brokers' shops, forms the subject of this sketch. The shops to which we advert, are immeasurably inferior to those on whose outward appearance we have slightly touched. Our readers must often have observed in some by- street, in a poor neighborhood, a small dirty shop, exposing for sale the most extraordinary and confused jumble of old, worn-out, wretched articles, that can well be imagined. Our wonder at their ever having been bought, is only to be equalled by our astonishment at the idea of their ever being sold again. On a board, at the side of the door, are placed about twenty books — all odd volumes ; and as many wineglasses — all difter^ SKETCHES BY BOZ. ent patterns ; several locks, an old earthenware pan full of rust} keys ; two or three gaudy chimney-orname»ts — cracked, of course ; the remains of a lustre, without any drops y a round frame like a capital O, which has once held a mirror ; a flute, complete with the exception of the middle joint ; a pair of curling-irons i and a tinder-box. In front of the shop-window, are ranged some half-dozen high-backed chairs, with spinal complaints a^d wasted legs ; a corner cupboard ; two or three very dark mahogany tables with flaps like mathematical problems ; some pickle-jars, some surgeons' ditto, with gilt labels and without stoppers ; an unframed portrait of some lady who flourished about the beginning of the thirteenth century, by an artist who never flourished at all ; an incalculable host of miscella- nies of every description, including bottles and cabinets, rags and bones, fenders and street-door knockers, fire-irons, wear- ing apparel and bedding, a hall-lamp, and a room-door. Im- agine, in addition to this incongruous mass, a black doll in a white frock, with two faces — one looking up the street, and the other looking down, swinging over the door ; a board v/ith the squeezed-up inscription ^' Dealer in marine stores," in lanky white letters, whose height is strangely out of propor- tion to their width ; and you have before you precisely the kind of shop to which we wish to direct your attention. Although the same heterogeneous mixture of things will be found at all these places, it is curious to observe how truly and accurately some of the minor articles which are exposed for sale — articles of wearing apparel, for instance — mark the character of the neighborhood. Take Drury-lane and Cov- ent-garden for example. This is essentially a theatrical neighborhood. There is not a potboy in the vicinity who is not, to a greater or less extent, a dramatic character. The errand-boys and chandler's- shop-keepers' sons, are all stage -struck : they " gets up " plays in back kitchens hired for the purpose, and will stand before a shop-window for hours, contemplating a great staring por- trait of Mr. somebody or other, of the Royal Coburg Theatre, as he appeared in the character of Tongo the Denounced." The consequence is, that there is not a marine-store shop in the neighborhood, which does not exhibit for sale some faded articles of dramatic finery, such as three or four pairs of soiled buff boots with turn-over red tops, heretofore worn by a fourth robber," or fifth mob;" a pair of rusty broad- swords, a few gauntlets, and certain resplendent ornamentSy BROKERS' AND MARINE-STORE SHOPS. which, if they were yellow instead of white, might be taken for insurance plates of the Sun Fire-office. There are several of these shops in the narrow streets and dirty courts, of which there are so many near the national theatres, and they all have tempting goods of this description, with the addition, perhaps, of a lady's pink dress covered with spangles ; white wreaths, stage shoes, and a tiara like a tin lamp reflecior. They have been purchased of some wretched supernumeraries, or sixth-rate actors, and are now offered for the benefit of the rising generation, who, on condition of making certain weekly payments, amounting in the whole to about ten times their value, may avail themselves of such desirable bargains. Let us take a very different quarter, and apply it to the same test. Look at a marine-store dealer's, in that reservoir of dirt, drunkenness, and drabs : thieves, oysters, baked pota- toes, and pickled salmon — Ratcliff-highway. Here, the wear- ing apparel is all nautical. Rough blue jackets, with mother- of-pearl buttons, oil-skin hats, coarse checked shirts, and large canvas trousers that looked as if they were made for a pair of bodies instead of a pair of legs, are the staple commodities. Then, there are large bunches of cotton pocket-handkerchiefs, in color and pattern unlike any one ever saw before, with the exception of those on the backs of the three young ladies with- out bonnets who passed )ust now. The furniture is much the same as elsewhere, with the addition of one or two models of ships, and some old prints of naval engagements in still older frames. In the window, are a few compasses, a small tray containing silver watches in clumsy thick cases ; and tobacco- boxes, the lid of each ornamented with a ship, or an anch-^r, or some such trophy. A sailor generally pawns or sells all he has before he has been long ashore, and if he does not, come favored companion kindly saves him the trouble. In either case, it is an even chance that he afterwards uncon- sciously repurchases the same things at a higher price than he gave for them at first. ^ Again pay a visit with a similar object, to a part of Lon- don, as unlike both of these as they are to each other. Cross over to the Surrey side, and look at such shops of this de- scription as are to be found near the King's Bench prison, and in '^the Rules." How different, and how strikingly illustrative of the decay of some of the unfortunate residents in this part of the metropolis ! Imprisonment and neglect have done their work. There is contamination in the profii- S20 SKETCHES BY BOZ. gate denizens of- a debtor's prison ; old friends have fallen off ; the recollection of former prosperity has passed away ; and with it all thoughts for the past, all care for the future. First, watches and rings, then cloaks, coats, and all the more expensive articles of dress, have found their way to the pawn- broker's. That miserable resource has failed at last, and the sale of some trifling article at one of these shops, has been the only mode left of raising a shilling or two, to meet the uigent demands of the moment. Dressing-cases and writing- desks, too old to pawn but too good to keep ; guns, fishing- rods, musical instruments, all in the same condition ; have first been sold, and the sacrifice has been but slightly felt. But hunger must be allayed, and what has already become a habit, is easily resorted to, when an emergency arises. Light articles of clothing, first of the ruined man, then of his wife, at last of their children, even of the youngest, have been parted with, piecemeal. There they are, thrown carelessly together until a purchaser presents himself, old, and patched and repaired, it is true ; but the make and materials tell of better days ; and the older they are, the greater the misery and destitution of those whom they adorned. CHAPTER XXII. GIN-SHOPS. It is a remarkable circumstance, that different trades ap^ pear to partake of the disease to which elephants and dogs are especially liable, and to run stark, staring, raving mad, periodically. The great distinction between the animals and trades, is, that the former run mad with a certain degree of propriety — they are very regular in their irregularities. We know the period at which the emergency will arise, and pro- vide against it accordingly. If an elephant run mad, we are all ready for him — kill or cure — pills or bullets, calomel in conserve of roses, or lead in a musket-barrel. If a dog hap- pen to look unpleasantly warm in the summer months, and to trot about the shady side of the streets with a quarter of a ^•ard of tqngue hanging out of his mouthy a thick leather GIN-SHOPS. 521 niuzi:le, which has been previously prepared in compliance with the thoughtful injunctions of the Legislature, is instantly clapped over his head, by way of making him cooler, and he either looks remarkably unhappy for the next six weeks, or becomes legally insane, and goes mad, as it were, by act of Parliament. But these trades are as eccentric as comers ; nay, worse, for no one can calculate on the recurrence of the strange appearances which betoken the disease. Moreover, the contagion is general, and the quickness with which it dif- fuses itself, almost incredible. We will cite two or three cases in illustration of our mean- ing. Six or eight years ago, the epidemic began to display itself among the linen-drapers and haberdashers, llie pri- m.ary symptoms were an inordinate love of plate-glass, and a passion for gas-light and gilding. The disease gradually pro- gressed, and at last attained a fearful height. Quiet dusty old shops in different parts of town, were pulled down ; spa- cious premises with stuccoed fronts and gold letters, were erected instead ; floors, were covered with Turkey carpets ; roofs, supported by massive pillars ; doors, knocked into windows ; a dozen squares of glass into one ; one shopman into a dozen ; and there is no knowing what would have been done, if it had not been fortunately discov^ered, just in time, that the Commissioners of Bankruptcy were as compe- tent to decide such cases as the Commissioners of Lunacy, and that a little confinement and gentle examination did v/on- ders. The disease abated. It died away. A year or two of comparative tranquillity ensued. Suddenly it burst out again amongst the chemists ; the symptoms were the same, with the addition of a strong desire to stick the royal arms over the shop-door, and a great rage for mahogany, varnish and ex- pensive floor cloth. Then, the hosiers were infected and be- gan to pull down their shop-fronts with frantic recklessness. The mania again died away, and the public began to congrat- ulate themselves on its entire disappearance, when it burst forth with tenfold violence among the publicans, and keepers of wine vaults.'^ From that moment it has spread among them with unprecedented rapidity, exhibiting a concatenation of all the previous symptoms ; onward it has rushed to every part of town, knocking down all the old public-houses, and depositing splendid mansions, stone balustrades, rosewood fittings, immense lamps, and illuminated clocks, at the corner of every street. 522 SKE TCHES B Y BOZ, The extensive scale on which these places are established, and the ostentatious manner in which the business of even the smallest among them is divided into branches, is amusing. A handsome plate of ground glass in one door directs you " To the Counting-house 3 " another to the " Bottle Depart- ment ; " a third to the '^Wholesale Department ; " a fourth, to The Wine Promenade ; " and so forth, until we are in daily expectation of meeting with a Brandy Bell," or a " Whiskey Entrance," Then, ingenuity is exhausted in devising attract- ive titles for the different descriptions of gin ; and the dram- drinking portion of the community as they gaze upon the gi- gantic black and white announcements, which are only to be equalled in size by the figures beneath them, are left in a state of pleasing hesitation between "The Cream of the Valley," "The Out and Out," "The No Mistake," "The Good for Mixing," " The real Knock-me-down," " The cele- brated Butter Gin," " The regular Flare-up," and a dozen other, equally invitmg and wholesome liqueurs. Although places of this description are to be met with on every second street, they are invariably numerous and splendid in precise pro- portion to the dirt and poverty of the surrounding neighborhood. The gin-shops in and near Drury-Lane, Holborn, St. Giles's, Covent-Garden, and Clare-market, are the handsomest in London. There is more filth and squalid misery near those great thoroughfares than in any part of this mighty city. We will endeavor to sketch the bar of a large gin-shop, and its ordinary customers, for the edification of such readers as may not have had opportunities of observing such scenes ; and on the chance of finding one suited to our purpose, we will make for Drury-Lane, through the narrow streets and dirty courts which divide it from Oxford-street, and that classi- cal spot adjoining the brewery at the bottom of Tottenham- court-road, best known to the initiated as the " Rookery." The filthy and miserable appearance of this part of Lon- don can hardly be imagined by those (and there are many such) who have not witnessed it. Wretched houses with broken windows patched with rags and paper : every room let out to a different family, and in many instances to two or even three — fruit and "sweet-stuff " manufacturers in the cellars, bar- bers and red-herring vendors in the front parlors, cobblers in the back ; a bird-fancier in the first floor, three families on the second, starvation in the attics. Irishmen in the passage, a " musician" in the front kitchen, and a charwoman and five GIN-SHOPS. hungry children in the back one— filth everywhere — a gutter before the houses and a drain behind — clothes drying and slops emptying, from the windows ; girls of fourteen or fifteen, with matted hair, walking about barefoot, and in white great- coats, almost their only covering ; boys of all ages, in coats of all sizes and no coats at all ; men and women, in every variety of scanty and dirty apparel, lounging, scolding, drink- ing, smoking, squabbling, fighting, and swearing. You turn the corner. What a change ! All is light and brilliancy. The hum of many voices issues from that splendid gin-shop which forms the commencement of the two streets opposite ; and the gay building with the fantastically orna- mented parapet, the illuminated clock, the plate-glass win- dows surrounded by stucco rosettes, and its profusion of gas- lights in richly-gilt burners, is perfectly dazzling when con- trasted with the darkness and dirt we have just left. The in- terior is even gayer than the exterior. A bar of French pol- ished mahogany, elegantly carved, extends the whole width of the place ; and there are two side-aisles of great casks, painted green and gold, enclosed within alight brass rail, and bearing such inscriptions, as " Old Tom, 549 ; " Young Tom, 360 " Samson, 142 1 " — the figures agreeing, we presume, with " gallons, understand. Beyond the bar is a lofty and spacious saloon, full of the same enticing vessels, with a gallery running round it equally well furnished. On the counter, in addition to the usual spirit apparatus, are two or three little baskets of cakes and biscuits, which are carefully secured at top with wicker-work, to prevent their contents being unlawfully abstracted. Behind it, are two showily-dressed damsels with large necklaces, dispensing the spirits and ''compounds." They are assisted by the ostensi- ble proprietor of the concern, a stout coarse fellow in a fur cap, put on very much on one side to give him a knowing air, and to display his sandy whiskers to the best advantage. The two old washerwomen, who are seated on the little bench to the left of the bar, are rather overcome by the head- dresses and haughty demeanor of the young ladies who offici- ate. They receive their half-quartern of gin and peppermint, with considerable deference, prefacing a request for '' one of them soft biscuits," witha'^Jist be good enough, ma'am." They are quite astonished at the impudent air of the young fellow in a brown coat and bright buttons, who, ushering in his two companions, and walking up to the bar in as careless S24 SKETCHES BY BOZ. a manner as if be had been used to green and gold ornaments all his life, winks at one of the young ladies with singular coolness, and calls for a ^' kervorten and a three-out-glass," just as if the place were his own. Gin for you, sir ? " says the young lady when she has drawn it : carefully looking every way but the right one, to show that the wink had no effect upon her. " For me, Mary, my dear,'' replies the gentleman in brown. "My name an't Mary as it happens," says the young girl, rather relaxing as she delivers the change. " Weil, if it an't, it ought to be," responds the irresistible one ; " all the Marys as ever / see, was handsome gals." Here the young lady, not precisely remembering how blushes are man- aged in such cases, abruptly ends the flirtation by addressing the female in the faded feathers who has just entered, and who, after stating explicitly, to prevent any subsequent mis- understanding, that "this gentleman pays," calls for "a glass of port wine and a bit of sugar." Those two old men who came in "just to have a drain," finished their third quartern a few seconds ago ; they have made themselves crying drunk ; and the fat comfortable-look- ing elderly women, who had " a glass of rum-srub " each, having chimed in with their complaints on the hardness of the times, one of the women has agreed to stand a glass round, jocularly observing that "grief never mended no bro- ken bones, and as good people's wery scarce, Avhat I says is, make the most on 'em, and that's all about it ! " a sentiment wdrich appears to afford unlimited satisfaction to those who have nothing to pay. It is growing late, and the throng of men, women, and children, who have been constantly going in and out, dwindles down to two or three occasional stragglers — cold, wretched- looking creatures, in the last stage of emaciation and disease. The knot of Irish laborers at the lower end of the place, who have been alternately shaking hands with, and threatening the life of each other, for the last hour, become furious in their disputes, and finding it impossible to silence one man who is particularly anxious to adjust the difference, they resort to the expedient of knocking him down and jumping on him afterwards. The man in the fur cap, aikl the potboy rush out ; a scene of riot and confusion ensues ; half the Irishmen get shut out, and the other half get shut in ; the potboy is knocked among the tubs in no time ; the landlord hits everybody, and everybody hits the landlord ; the barmaids scream ; the po THE PA WNBROKER'S SHOP, lice come in ; the rest is a confused mixture of arms, legs, staves, torn coats, shouting, and struggling. Some of the party are borne off to the station-house, and the remainder slink home to beat their wives for complaining, and kick the children for daring to be hungry. We have sketched this subject very slightly, not only be- cause our limits compel us to do so, but because, if it were pursued farther- it would be painful and repulsive. Well- disposed gentlemen, and charitable ladies, would alike turn with coldness and disgust from a description of the drunken besotted men, and wretctied broken-down miserable women, who form no inconsiderable portion of the frequenters of these haunts ; forgetting, in the pleasant consciousness of their own rectitude, the poverty of the one, and the tempta- tion of the other. Gin-drinking is a great vice in England, but wretchedness and dirt are a greater ; and until you im- prove the homes of the poor, or persuade a half-famished wretch not to seek relief in the temporary oblivion of his own ' misery, with the pittance which, divided among his family, would furnish a morsel of bread for each, gin-shops will in- crease in number and splendor. If Temperance Societies would suggest an antidote against hunger, filth, and foul air, or could establish dispensaries for the gratuitous distribution of bottles of Lethe-water, gin-palaces would be numbered among the things that were. CHAPTER XXIII. THE pawnbroker's SHOP. Of the numerous receptacles for misery and distress with which the streets of London unhappily abound, there are, perhaps, none which present such striking scenes as the pawn- brokers' shops. The very nature and description of these places occasions their being but little known, except to the unfortunate beings whose profligacy or misfortune drives them to seek the temporary relief they offer. The subject may appear, at first sight, to be anything but an inviting one, but w^" venture on it nevertheless, in the hope that, as far as the 526 SKETCHES BY BOZ. lirrats of our present paper are concerned, it will present no- thing to disgust even the most fastidious reader. There are some pawnbrokers' shops of a very superior description. There are grades in pawning as in everydiing else, and distinctions must be observed even in poverty. The aristocratic Spanish cloak and the plebeian calico shirt, the silver fork and the flat iron, the muslin cravat and the Belcher n.eckerchief, would but ill assort together ; so^- the better sort of pawnbroker calls himself a silversmith, and decorates his shop with handsome trinkets and expensive jewelry, while the more humble money-lender boldly advertises his caUing, and invites observation. It is with pawnbrokers' shops of the latter class, that we have to do. We have selected one for our purpose, and will endeavor to describe it. The pawnbroker's shop is situated near Drury-lane, at the corner of a court, which affords a side entrance for the accommodation of such customers as may be desirous of avoid- ing the observation of the passers-by, or the chance of recog- nition in the public street. It is a low, dirty-looking, dusty shop, the door of which stands always doubtfully, a little way open : half inviting, half repelling the hesitating visitor, who if he be as yet uninitiated, examines one of the old garnet brooches in the window for a minute or two with affected eagerness, as if he contemplated making a purchase ; and then looking cautiously round to ascertain that no one watches him, hastily slinks in : the door closing of itself after him, to just its former width. The shop front and the window-frames bear evident marks of having been once painted ; but, what the color was originally, or at what date it was probably laid on, are at this remote period questions which may be asked, but cannot be answered. Tradition states that the transparency in the front door, which displays at night three red balls on a blue ground, once bore also, inscribed in graceful waves, the words Money advanced on plate, jewels, wearing apparel, and every description of property," but a few illegible hiero- glyphics are all that now remain to attest' the fact. The plate and jewels would seem to have disappeared, together with the announcement, for the articles of stock, which are displayed in some profusion in the window, do not include any very valuable luxuries of either kind, A few old china cups ; some modern vases, adorned with pciltry paintings of three Spanish cavaliers playing three Spanish guitars ; or a party of boors carousing : each boor with one leg painfully elevated in the THE PA IVNBROKER'S SHOP. air, by way of expressing his perfect freedom and gayety; several sets of chessmen, two or three flutes, a few fiddles, a round-eyed portrait staring in astonishment from a very dark ground ; some gaudily-bound prayer-books and testaments, two rows of silver watches quite as clumsy and almost as large as Ferguson's first ; numerous old-fashioned table and tea spoons, displayed, fan-like, in half-dozens ; strings of coral with great broad gilt snaps ; cards of rings, and brooches, fastened and labelled separately, like the insects in the British Museum ; cheap silver pen-holders and snuff-boxes, with a masonic star, complete the jewelry department ; while five or six beds in smeary clouded ticks, strings of blankets and sheets, silk and cotton handkerchiefs, and wearing apparel of every description, form the more useful, though even less ornamental, part, of the articles exposed for sale. An ex- tensive collection of planes, chisels, saws, and other carpenters' tools, which have been pledged, and never redeemed, form the foreground of the picture ; while the large frames full of ticketed bundles, which are dimly seen through the dirty casement up stairs — the squalid neighborhood — the adjoining houses, straggling, shrunken and rotten, with one or two filthy, unwholesome-looking heads, thrust out of every window, and old red pans and stunted plants exposed on the tottering parapets, to the manifest hazard of the heads of the passers- by — the noisy men loitering under the archway at the corner of the court, or about the gin-shop next door — and their wives patiently standing on the curb-stone, with large baskets of cheap vegetables slung round them for sale, are its immediate auxiliaries. If the outside of the pawnbroker's shop, be calculated to attract the attention, or excite the interest, of the speculative pedestrian, its interior cannot fail to produce the same effect in an increased degree. The front doer, which we have before noticed, opens into the common shop, which is the resort of all those customers whose habitual acquaintance with such scenes renders them indifferent to the observation of their companions in poverty. Vhe side door opens into a small passage from which some half-dozen doors (which maybe secured on the inside by bolts) open into a corresponding number of little dens, or closets, which face the counter. Here, the more timid or respectable portion of the crowd shroud themselves from the notice of the remainder, and i3atiently wait until the gentleman behind the counter, with the S28 SKE TCHES BY BOZ. curly black hair, diamond ring, and double silver watch-guard shall feel disposed to favor them with his notice — a consum- mation which depends considerably on the temper of the aforesaid gentleman for the time being. At the present moment, this elegantly-attired individual is m the act of entering the duplicate he has just made out, in a thick book : a process from which he is diverted occasionally, by a conversation he is carrying on with another young man similarly employed at a little distance from him, whose allu- sions to that last bottle of soda-water last night," and how regularly round my hat he felt himself when the young 'ooman gave 'em in charge," would appear to refer to the consequences of some stolen joviality of the preceding evening. The cus- tomers generally, however, seem unable to participate in the amusement derivable from this source, for an old sallow- looking woman, who has been leaning with both arms on the counter with a small bundle before her, for half an hour pre- viously, suddenly interrupts the conversation by addressing the jewelled shopman — Now, Mr. Henry, do make haste, tiiere's a good soul, for my two grandchildren's locked up at home, and I'm afeer'd of the fire." The shopman slightly raises his head, with an air of deep abstraction, and resumes his entry with as much deliberation as if he were engraving. ^' You're in a hurry, Mrs. Tatham, this ev'nin', an't you " is the only notice he deigns to take, after the lapse of five minutes or so. ^' Yes, I am indeed, Mr. Henry ; now, do serve me next, there's a good creetur. I wouldn't worry you, only it's all along o' them botherin' children." What have you got here " inquires the shopman, unpinning the bundle — old concern, I suppose — pair o' stays and a petticut. You must look up somethin' else, old 'ooman ; I can't lend you anything more upon them ; they're completely worn out by this time, if it's only by putting in, and taking out again, three times a week." *^()h! you're a rum un' you are," replies the old woman, laughing extremel}', as in duty bound: "I wish Tr^ got the gift of the gab like you ; see if I'd be up the spout so often then ! No, no ; it an't the petticut; it's a child's frock and a beautiful silk-ankecher, as belongs to my husband. He gave four shillin' for it, the werry same blessed day as he broke his arm." — " What do you w*ant upon these?" inquires Mr. Henry, slightly glancing at the articles, which in all prob- ability are old acquaintances. ''What do you want upoa these ? " — Eighteenpence." — " Lend you ninepenpe."— Qh^ THE PA WNBROKER'S SHOP. make it a shillin' ; there's a dear — do now?" — Not an- other farden." — ^^Well, I suppose I must take it." The duplicate is made out, one ticket pinned on the parcel, the other given to the old woman ; the parcel is flung carelessly down into a corner, and some other customer prefers his claim to be served without further delay. The choice falls on an unshaven, dirty, sottish-looking fellow, whose tarnished paper-cap, stuck negligently over one eye, communicates an additionally repulsive expression to his very uninviting countenance. He was enjoying a little relax- ation from his sedentary-pursuits a quarter of an hour ago, in kicking his wife up the court. He has come to redeem some tools : — probably to complete a job with, on account of which he has already received some money, if his inflamed countenance and drunken stagger, may be taken as evidence of the fact. Having waited some little time, he makes his presence known by venting his ill-humor on a ragged urchin, who, being unable to bring his face on a level with the counter by any other process, has employed himself in climb- ing up, and then hooking himself on with his elbows — an uneasy perch, from which he has fallen at intervals, generally alighting on the toes of the person in his immediate vicinity. In the present case, the unfortunate little wretch has received a cuff which sends him reeling to the door ; and the donor of the blow is immediately the object of general indigna- tion. " What do you strike the boy for, you brute ? " exclaimed a slipshod woman, with two flat irons in a little basketo Do you think he's your wife, you willin ? " Go and hang yourself ! " replies the gentleman addressed, with a drunken look of savage stupidity, aiming at the same time a blow at the woman which fortunately misses its object. Go and hang yourself ; and wait till I come and cut you down." — • "Cut you down," rejoins the woman, "I wish I had the cut- ting of you up, you wagabond ! (loud.) Oh ! you precious Tvagabond ! (rather louder.) Where's your wife, you willin ? (louder still ; women of this class are always sympathetic, and work themselves into a tremendous passion on the short- est notice.) Your poor dear wife as you uses worser nor a dog — strike a woman — you a man ! (very shrill ;) I wish I had you — I'd murder you, I would, if I died for it ! " — " Now be civil," retorts the man fiercely. '^Be civil, you wiper!" ejaculates the woman contemptuously. An't it shocking ? * 34 53^ SKETCHES BY BOZ. she continues, turning round, and appealing to an old woman f who is peeping out of one of the little closets we have before ' described, and who has not the slightest objection to join in the attack, possessing, as she does, the comfortable convic- tion that she is bolted in. " An't it shocking, ma'am ? (Dreadful ! says the old woman in parenthesis, not exactly knowing what the question refers to.) He's got a wife^ ma'am, as takes in mangling, and is as 'dustrious and hard- working a young 'ooman as can be (very fast), as lives in the back parlor of our 'ous, which my husband and me lives in the front one (with great rapidity) — and we hears him a beaten' on her sometimes when he comes home drunk, the whole night through, and not only a beaten' her, but beaten' his own child too, to make her more miserable — ugh, you beast ! and she, poor creature, won't swear the peace agin him, nor do nothin', because she likes the wretch arter all — worse luck 1 " Here, as the woman has completely run herself out of breath, the pawnbroker himself, who has just appeared behind the counter in a gray dressing-gown, embraces the favorable opportunity of putting in a word : — " Now I won't have none of this sort of thing on my premises ! '\ he inter- poses with an air of authority. Mrs. Mackin, keep yourself to yourself, or you don't get fourpence for a flat iron here ; and Jinkins, you leave your ticket here till youVe sober, and send your wife for them two planes, for I won't have you in my shop at no price ; so make yourself scarce, before I make you scarcer." This eloquent address produces anything but the effect desired ; the women rail in concert ; the man hits about him in all directions, and is in the act of establishing an indis- putable claim to gratuitous lodgings for the night, when the entrance of his wife, a wretched worn-out woman, apparently in the last stage of consumption, whose face bears evident marks of recent ill-usage, and whose strength seems hardly equal to the burden — light enough, God knows ! — of the thin, sickly child she carries in her arms, turns his cowardly rage in a safer direction. " Come home, dear," cries the miser- able creature, in an imploring tone ; " do come home, there's a good fellow, and go to bed." — " Go home yourself," rejoins the furious ruffian. ^' Do come home quietly," repeats the wife, bursting into tears. Go home yourself," retorts the husband again, enforcing his argument by a blow which sends the poor creature flying out of the shop. Her natural pro- THE PA WNBROKER'S SHOP, 531 lector " follows her up the court, alternately venting nis rage in accelerating her progress, and in knocking the little scanty blue bonnet of the unfortunate child over its still more scanty and faded-looking face. In the last box, which is situated in the darkest and most obscure corner of the shop, considerably removed from either of the gas-lights, are a young delicate girl of about twenty, and an elderly female, evidently her mother from the resem- blance between them, who stand at some distance back, as if to avoid the observation even of the shopman. It is not their first visit to a pawnbroker's shop, for they ansvvcr with- out a moment's hesitation the usual questions, put in a rather respectful manner, and in a much lower tone than usual, of " What name shall I say ? — Your own property of course ? — Where do you live ? — Housekeeper or lodger 1 " They bar- gain, too, for a higher loan than the shopman is at first inclined to offer, which a perfect stranger would be little dis- posed to do ; and the elder female urges her daughter on, in scarcely audible whispers, to exert her utmost powers of per- suasion to obtain an advance of the sum, and expatiate on the value of the articles they have brought to raise a present supply upon. They are a small gold chain and a Forget me not " ring : the girl's property, for they are both too'small for the mother ; given her in better times ; prized, perhaps, once, for the giver's sake, but parted with now without a struggle ; for want has hardened the mother, and her example has hardened the girl^ and the prospect of receiving money, coupled with a recollection of the misery they have both endured from the want of it— the coldness of old friends — the stern refusal of some, and the still more galling compassion of others — appears to have obliterated the consciousness of self-humiliation, which the idea of their present situation would once have aroused. In the next box, is a young female, whose attire, miserably poor, but extremely gaudy, wretchedly cold but extravagantly fine, too plainly bespeaks her station. The rich satin gown with its faded trimmings, the worn-out thin shoes, and pink silk stockings, the summer bonnet in winter, and tlie sunken face, where a daub of rouge only serves as an index to the ravages of squandered health never to be regained, and lost happiness never to be restored, and where the practised smile is a wretched mocker}^ of the misery of the heart, can- not be mistaken. There is something in the glimpse she has 53^ SKETCHES BY BOZ. just caught of her young neighbor, and in the sight of the little trinkets she has offered in pawn, that seems to have awakened in this woman's mind some slumbering recollection, and to have changed, for an instant, her whole demeanor. Her first hasty impulse was to bend forward as if to scan more minutely the appearance of her half-concealed compan- ions ; her next, on seeing them involuntarily shrink from her, to retreat to the back of the box, cover her face with hei hands, and burst into tears. There are strange chords in the human heart, which will lie dormant through years of depravity and wickedness, but Vv^hich vibrate at last to some slight circumstance apparently trivial in itself, but connected by some undefined and mdis- tinct association, with past days that can never be recalled, and with bitter recollections from which the most degraded creature in existence cannot escape. There has been another spectator, in the person of a woman in the common shop ; the lowest of the low ; dirty, unbonneted, flaunting, and slovenly. Her curiosity was at first attracted by the little she could see of the group ; then her attention. The half-intoxicated leer changed to an ex- pression of something like interest, and a feeling similar to that we have described, appeared for a moment, and only a moment, to extend itself even to her bosom. Who shall say how soon these women may change places ? The last has but two more stages — the hospital and the grave. How many females situated as her two companions are, and as she may have been once, have terminated the same wTCtched course, in the same wretched manner. One is already tracing her footsteps with frightful rapidity. How soon may the other follow her example ! How many have done the same I CHAPTER XXIV. CRIMINAL COURTS, We shall never forget the mingled feelings of awe and re^ spect with which we used to gaze on the exterior of Newgate in our schoolboy days. How^ dreadful its rough heavy w^alls, CRIMINAL COURTS. S33 and low massive doors, appeared to us — the latter looking as if they were made for the express purpose of letting people in, and never letting them out again. Then the fetters over the debtors' door, which we used to think were a bond fide set of irons, just hung up there, for convenience sake, ready to be taken down at a moment's notice, and riveted on the limbs of some refractory felon ! We were never tired of wondering how the hackney-coachman on the opposite stand could cut jokes in the presence of such horrors, and drink pots of half- and-half so near the last drop. Often have we strayed here, in sessions time, to catch a glimpse of the whipping-place, and that dark building on one side of the yard, in which is kept the gibbet with all its dread- ful apparatus, and on the door of which we half expected to see brass plate, with the inscription "Mr. Ketch;'' for we never imagined that the distinguished functionary could by possibility live anywhere else ! The days of these childish dreams have passed away, and with them many boyish ideas of a gayer nature. But we still retain so much of our original feeling, that to this hour we never pass the building without something like a shudder. What London pedestrian is there who has not, at some time or other, cast a hurried glance through the wicket at which prisoners are admitted into this gloomy mansion, and surveyed the few objects he could discern, with an indescrib- able feeling of curiosity ? The thick door, plated with iron and mounted with spikes, just low enough to enable you to see, leaning over them, an ill-looking fellow, in a broad- brimmed hat, belcher handkerchief and top-boots : with a brown coat, something between a great-coat and a " sporting " jacket, on his back, and an immense key in his left hand. Perhaps you are lucky enough to pass, just as the gate is be- ing opened; then, you see on the other side of the lodge, another gate, the image of its predecessor, and two or three more turnkeys, who look lilie multiplications of the first one, seated round a fire which just lights up the whitewashed apartment sufficiently to enable you to catch a hasty glimpse of those different objects. We have a great respect for Mrs. Fry, but she certainly ought to have written more romances than Mrs. Radcliffe. We were walking leisurely down the Old Bailey, some time ago, when, as we passed this identical gate, it was opened by the officiating "jurnkey. We turned quickly round, as a matter 534 SKETCHES BY BOZ. of course, and saw two persons descending the steps. We could not help stopping and observing them. They were an elderly woman, of decent: appearance, though evidently poor, and a boy of about fourteen or fifteen. The woman was crying bitterly ; she carried a small bundle in her hand, and the boy followed at a short distance behind her. Their little history was obvious. The boy was her son, to whose early comfort she had perhaps sacrificed her own — for whose sake she had borne misery without repining, and pov- erty without a murmur — looking steadily forward to the time, when he who had so long witnessed her struggles for himself, might be enabled to make some exertions for their joint sup- port. He had formed dissolute connections ; idleness had led to crime ; and he had been committed to take his trial for some petty theft. He had been long in prison, and after re- ceiving some trifling additional punishment, had been ordered to be discharged that morning. It was his first offence, and his poor old mother, still hoping to reclaim him, had been waiting at the gate to implore him to return home. We cannot forget the boy; he descended the steps with a dogged look, shaking his head with an air of bravado and ob- stinate determination. They walked a few paces, and paused. The woman put her hand upon his shoulder in an agony of entreaty, and the boy sullenly raised his head as if in refusal. It was a brilliant morning, and every object looked fresh and happy in the broad, gay sunlight ; he gazed round him for a few moments, bewildered with the brightness of the scene, for it was long since he had beheld anything save the gloomy walls of a prison. Perhaps the wretchedness of his mother made some impression on the boy's hearty perhaps some un- defined recollection of the time when he was a happy child, and she his only friend, and best companion, crowded on him— he burst into tears ; and covering his face with one hand, and hurriedly placing the other in his mother's, walked away with her. Curiosity has occasionally led us into both Courts at the Old Bailey. Nothing is so likely to strike the person who en- ters them for the first time, as the calm indifference with which the proceedings are conducted; every trial seems a mere matter of business. There is a great deal of form, but no compassion ; considerable interest, but no sympathy. Take the Old Court for example. There sit the Judges, with whose great dignity everybody is acquainted, and of whom CRIMINAL COURTS, 535 therefore we need say no more. Then, there is the Lord Mayor in the centre, looking as cool as a Lord Mayor can look, with an immense bouquet before him, and habited in ail * the splendor of his office. Then, there are the Sheriffs, who are almost as dignified as the Lord Mayor himself j and the Barristers, who are quite dignified enough in their own opinion ; and the spectators, who having paid for their admis-' sion, look upon the whole scene as if jt were got up especially for their amusement. Look upon the whole group in the body of the Court — some wholly engrossed in the morning papers, others carelessly conversing in low whispers, and others, again, quietly dozing away an hour — and you can scarcely believe that the result of the trial is a matter of life or death to one wretched being present. But turn your eyes to the dock : watch the prisoner attentively for a few mo- ments ; and the fact is before you, in all its painful reality. Mark how restlessly he has been engaged for the last ten minutes, in forming all sorts of fantastic figures with the herbs which are strewed upon the ledge before him ; observe the ashy paleness of his face when a particular witness ap- pears, and how he changes his position and wipes his clammy forehead, and feverish hands, when the case for the prose- cution is closed, as if it were a relief to him to feel that the jury knew the worst. The defence is concluded ; the judge proceeds to sum up the evidence ; and the prisoner watches the countenances of the jury, as a dying man, clinging to life to the very last, vainly looks in the face of his physician for a slight ray of hope. They turn round to consult \ you can almost hear the man's heart beat, as he bites the stalk of rosemary, with a desperate effort to appear composed. They resume their places — a dead silence prevails as the foreman delivers in the verdict — "Guilty!" A shriek bursts from a female in the gallery ; the prisoner casts one look at the quarter from whence the noise proceeded ; and is immediately hurried from the dock by the jailer. The clerk directs one of the officers of the court to " take the woman out," and fresh business is proceeded with, as if nothing had occurred. No imaginary contrast to a case like this, could be as complete as that which is constantly presented in the New Court, the gravity of. which is frequently disturbed in no small degree, by the cunning and pertinacity of juvenile offenders. A boy of thirteen is tried, say for picking the pocket of some 536 SKETCHES B Y BOZ. subject of her Majesty, and the offence is about as clearly proved as an offence can be. He is called upon for his de- fence, and contents himself with a little declamation about the jurymen and his country — asserts that all the witnesses haye committed perjury, and hints that the police force generally have entered into a conspiracy " again " him. However prob- able this statement may be, it fails to convince the Court, and some such scene as the following then takes place : Court: Have you any witnesses to speak to your character, boy ? Boy: Yes, my Lord ; fifteen gen'lm'n is a vaten outside, and vos a vaten all day yesterday, vich they told me the night afore my trial vos a comin' on. Court: Inquire for these witnesses. Here, a stout beadle runs out, and vociferates for the wit- nesses at the very top of his voice ; for you hear his cry grow fainter and fainter as he descends the steps into the court- yard below. After an absence of five minutes, he returns, very warm and hoarse, and informs the Court of what it knew perfectly well before — namely, that there are no such wit- nesses in attendance. Hereupon, the boy sets up a most awful howling; screws the lower j)art of the palms of his hands into the corners of his eyes ; and endeavors to look the picture of injured innocence. The jury at once find him guilty,'^ and his endeavors to squeeze out a tear or two are redoubled. The governor of the jail then states, in reply to an inquiry from the bench, that the prisoner has been under his care twice before. This the urchin resolutely denies in some such terms as — ^^S'elp me, gen'lm'n, I never vos in trouble afore — indeed, my Lord, I never vos. It's all a howen to my having a twin brother, vich has wrongfully got into trouble, and vich is so exactly like me, that no vun ever knows the difference atween us." This representation, like the defence, fails in producing the desired effect, and the boy is sentenced, perhaps, to seven years' transportation. Finding it impossible to excite com- passion, he gives vent to his feelings in an imprecation bear- ing reference to the eyes of old big vig ! " and as he declines to take the trouble of walking from the dock, is forthwith carried out, congratulating himself on having succeeded in giving everybody as much trouble as possible. A VISIT TO NEWGATE, A VISIT TO NEWGATE. CHAPTER XXV. 537 " The force of habit " is a trite phrase in ever}^body's mouth ; and it is not a httle remarkable that those who use it most as appUed to others, unconsciously afford in their own persons singular examples of the power which habit and custom exercise over the minds of men, and of the little reflection they are apt to bestow on subjects with which ever}* day's experience has rendered them familiar. If Bedlam could be suddenly removed like another Aladdin's palace, and set down on the space now occupied by Newgate, scarcely one man out of a hundred, whose road to business every morning lies through Newgate-street, or the Old Bailey, would pass the building without bestowing a hasty glance on its small, grated windows, and a transient thought upon the con- dition of the unhapp)^ beings immured in its dismal cells ; and yet these same men, day by day, and hour by hour, pass and repass this gloomy depository of the guilt and -misery of Lon- don, in one perpetual stream of life and bustle, utterly un- mindful of the throng of wretched creatures pent up within it — nay, not even knowing, or if they do, not heeding, the fact, that as they pass one particular angle of the massive wall with a light laugh or a^ merry whistle, they stand within one yard of a fellow-creature, bound and helpless, whose hours are numbered, from whom the last feeble ray of hope has fled for ever, and whose miserable career will shortly terminate in a violent and shameful death. Contact with death even in its least terrible shape, is solemn and appalling. How much more awful is it to reflect on this near vicinity to the dying — to men in full health and vigor, in the flower of youth or the prime of life, with all their faculties and perceptions as acute and perfect as your own ; but dying, nevertheless — dying as surely — with the hand of death imprinted upon them as indelibly — as if mortal disease had wasted their frames to shadows, and corruption had already begun ! It was with some such thoughts as these that we de- termined, not many weeks since, to visit the interior of New- gate — in an amateur capacity, of course : and, having- carried 1 [^38 SKETCHES B V BOZ. our intention into effect, we proceed to lay its results before our readers, in the hope — founded more upon the nature of the subject, than on any presumptuous confidence in our own descriptive powers — that this paper may not be found wholly devoid of interest. We h^tve only to promis'C, that we do not intend to fatigue the reader with any statistical accounts oi 'the prison ; they will be found at length in numerous reports of numerous committees, and a variety of authorities of equal weight. We took no notes, made no memoranda, measured none of the yards, ascertained the exact number of inches in no particular room : are unable even to report of how many apartments the jail is composed. We saw the prison, and saw the prisoners ; and what we did see, and what we thought, we will tell at once in our own way. Having delivered our credentials to the servant who answered our knock at the door of the governor's house, we were ushered into the " office ; " a little room, on the right- hand side as you enter, with two windows looking into the Old Bailey : fitted up like an ordinary attorney's office, or mer- chant's counting-house, with the usual fixtures — a wainscoted partition, a shelf or two, a desk, a couple of stools, a pair of clerks, an almanac, a clock, and a few maps. After a little delay, occasioned by sending into the interior of the prison for the officer whose duty it was to conduct us, that func- tionary arrived ; a respectable-looking man of about two or three and fifty, in a broad-brimmed hat, and full suit of black, who, but for his keys, would have looked quite as much like a clergyman as a turnkey. We were disappointed ; he had not even top-boots on. Following our conductor by a door opposite to that at which we had entered, we arrived at a small -room, without any other furniture than a little desk, with a book for visitors' autographs, and a shelf, on which were a few boxes for papers, and casts of the heads and faces of the two notorious murderers. Bishop and Williams ; the fo^'mer, in particular, exhibiting a style of head and set of features, which might have afforded sufficient moral grounds for his instant execution at any time, even had there been no other evidence against him. Leaving this room also, by an opposite door, we found ourself in the lodge which opens on the Old Bailey ; one side of which is plentifully garnished with a choice collection of heavy sets of irons, including those worn by the redoutable Jack Sheppard — genuine ; and those A VISIT TO NEWGATE, S39 saidio have been graced by the sturdy Hmbs of the no less celebrated Dick Turpin — doubtful. From this lodge, a heavy oaken gate, bound with iron, studded with nails of the same material, and guarded by another turnkey, opens on a fev; steps, if we remember right, which terminate in a narrow and dismal stone passage, running parallel with the Old Bailey, and leading to the different yards, through a number of tortuous and intricate windings, guarded in their turn by huge gates and gratings, whose appearance is sufficient to dispel at once the slightest hope of escape that any new comer may have entertained ; and the very recollection of which, on eventually traversing the place again, involves one in a maze of confusion. It is necessary to explain here, that the buildings in the prison, or in other words the different wards — form a square, of which the four sides abut respectively on the Old Bailey, the old College of Physicians (now forming a part of New- gate-market), the Sessions-house, and Newgate-street. The intermediate space is divided into several paved yards, in which the prisoners take such air and exercise as can be had in such a place. These yards, with the exception of that in which prisoners under sentence of death are confined (of which we shall presently give a more detailed description), run par- allel with Newgate-street, and consequently from the Old Bailey as it were, to Newgate-market. The women's side is in the right wing of the prison nearest the Sessions-house. As we were introduced into this part of the building first, we will adopt the same order, and introduce our readers to it also. Turning to the right, then, down the passage to which we just now adverted, omitting any mention of intervening gates — for if we noticed every gate that was unlocked for us to pass through, and locked again as soon as we had passed, we should require a gate at every comma — we came to a door composed of thick bars of wood, through which were dis- cernible, passing to and fro in a narrow yard, some twenty tvomen : the majority of whom, however, as soon as they were aware of the presence of strangers, retreated to their wards. One side of this yard is railed off at a considerable distance, and formed into a kind of iron cage, about five feet ten inches in height, roofed at the top, and defended in front by iron bars, from which the friends of the female prisoners communicate with them. In one corner of this singular-looking den, was a S40 SKETCHES BY BOZ. yellow, haggard, decrepit old woman, in a tattered gown that had once been black, and the remains of an old straw bonnet, with faded ribbon of the same hue, in earnest conversation with a young girl — a prisoner, of course — of about two-and- twenty. It is impossible to imagine a more poverty-stricken object, or a creature so borne down in soul and body, by excess of misery and destitution as the old woman. The girl was a good-looking robust female, with a profusion of hair streaming about in the wind — for she had no bonnet on — and a man's silk pocket-handkerchief loosely thrown over a most ample pair of shoulders. The old woman was talking in that low, stifled tone of voice which tells so forcibly of mental anguish ; and every now and then burst into an irrepressible sharp abrupt cry of grief, the most distressing sound that ears can hear. The girl was perfectly unmoved. Hardened beyond all hope of re- demption, she listened doggedly to her mother's entreaties, whatever they were : and beyond inquiring after Jem,'^ and eagerly catching at the few halfpence her miserable parent had brought her, took no more apparent interest in the conversa- tion than the most unconcerned spectators. Heaven knows there were enough of them, in the persons pf the other pris- oners in the yard, who were no more concerned by what was passing before their eyes, and within their hearing, than if they were blind and deaf. Why should they be ? Inside the prison, and out, such scenes were too familiar to them, to excite even a passing thought, unless of ridicule or con- tempt for feelings which they had long since, forgotten. A little farther on, a squalid-looking woman in a slovenly, thick-bordered cap, with her arms muffled in a large red shawl, the fringed ends of which straggled nearly to the bottom of a dirty white apron, was communicating some instructions to her visitor — her daughter evidently. The girl was thinly clad., and shaking with the cold. Some ordinary word of recogni- tion passed between her and her mother when she appeared at the grating, but neither hope, condolence, regret, nor affec- tion was expressed on either side. The mother whispered her instructions, and the girl received them with her pinched- up half-starved features twisted into an expression of careful cunning. It was some scheme for the woman's defence that she was disclosing, perhaps ; and a sullen smile came over the girl's face for an instant, as if she were pleased ; not so much at the probability of her mother's liberation, as at the chance of her " getting off " in spite of her prosecutors. The dialogue A VISIT TO NEWGATE. was soon concluded ; and with the same careless indifference with which they had approached each other, the mother turned towards the inner end of the yard, and the girl to the gate at which she had entered. The girl belonged to a class — unhappily but too extensive — the very existence of which should make men's hearts bleed. Barely past her childhood, it required but a glance to discover that she was one of those children, born and bred in neglect and vice, who have never known what childhood is ; who have never been taught to love and court a parent's smile, or to dread a parent's frown. The thousand nameless endearments of childhood, its gayety and its innocence, are alike unknown to them. They have entered at once upon the stern realities and miseries of life, and to their better nature it is almost hopeless to appeal in aftertimes, by any of the references which will awaken, if it be only for a moment, some good feeling in ordi- nary bosoms, however corrupt they may have become. Talk to them of parental solicitude, the happy days of childhood, and the merry games of infancy ! Tell them of hunger and the streets, beggary and stripes, the gin-shop, the station-house, and the pawnbroker's, and they will understand you. Two or three women were standing at different parts of the grating, conversing with their friends, but a very large proportion of the prisoners appeared to have no friends at all, beyond such of their* old companions as might happen to be within the walls. So, passing hastily down the yard, and pausing only for an instant to notice the little incidents we have just recorded, we were conducted up a clean and well- lighted flight of stone stairs to one of the wards. There are several in this part of the building, but a description of one is a description of the whole. It was a spacious, bare, whitewashed apartment, lighted of course, by windows looking into the interior of the prison, but far more light and airy than one could reasonably expect to find in such a situation. There was a large fire with a deal table before it, round which ten or a dozen women were seated on wooden forms at dinner. Along both sides of the room ran a shelf ; below it, at regular intervals, a row of large hooks were fixed in the wall, on each of which was hung the sleep- ing mat of a prisoner : her rug and blanket being folded up, and placed on the shelf above. At night these mats are placed on the floor, each beneath the hook on which it hangs during the day ; and the ward is thus made to answer the 542 SKETCHES B Y BOZ, purposes both of a day-room and sleeping apartment. Ovei the fireplace, was a large sheet of pasteboard, on which were displayed a variety of texts from Scripture, which were al^o scattered about the room in scraps about the size and shape of the copy-slips which are used in schools. On the table was a sufficient provision of a kind of stewed beef and brown dread, in pewter dishes, which are kept perfectly bright and displayed on shelves in great order and regularity when they are not in use. The women rose hastily, on our entrance, and retired in a hurried manner to either side of the fireplace. They were all cleanly — many of them decently — attired, and there was noth- ing peculiar, either in their appearance or demeanor. One or two resumed the needlework which they had probably laid aside at the commencement of their meal ; others gazed at the visitors with listless curiosity ; and a few retired behind their companions to the very end of the room, as if desirous to avoid even the casual observation of the strangers. Some old Irish women, both in this and other wards, to whom the thing was no novelty, appeared perfectly indifferent to our presence, and remained standing close to the seats from which they had just risen ; but the general feeling among the females seemed to be one of uneasiness during the period of our stay among them : which was very brief. Not a word was uttered during the time of our remaining, unless, indeed, by the wardswoman in reply to some question which we put to the turnkey who accompanied us. In every ward on the female side, a wardswoman is appointed to preserve order, and a similar regulation is adopted among the males. The wards- men and wardswomen are all prisoners, selected for good con- duct. They alone are allowed the privilege of sleeping on bedsteads ; a small stump bedstead being placed in every ward for that purpose. On both sides of the jail, is a small receiving-room, to which prisoners are conducted on their first reception, and whence they cannot be removed until they have been examined by the surgeon of the prison.* Retracing our steps to the dismal passage in which we found ourselves at first (and which, by the bye, contains three or four dark cells for the accommodation of refractory pris- oners), we were led through a narrow yard to the " school " — * The regulations of the prison relative to the confinement of prisoners during the day, their sleeping at night, their taking their meals, and other matters of jail economy, have been all altered — greatly for the better — snice this sketch was first published. Even the construction of the prison itself has been changed* A VISI T TO N-EWGATE. 543 a portion of the prison set apart for boys under fourteen years of age. In a tolerable-sized room, in which were writing-ma- terials and some copy-books, was the school-master, with a couple of his pupils ; the remainder having been fetched from an adjoining apartment, the whole were drawn up in a line for our inspection. There were fourteen of them in all, some with shoes, some without ; some in pinafores without jackets, others in jackets without pinafores, and one in scarce anything at all. The whole number, without an exception we believe, had been committed for trial on charges of pocket-picking ; and fourteen such terrible little faces we never beheld. — There was not one redeeming feature among them — not a glance of honesty — not a wink expressive of anything but the gallows and the hulks, in the whole collection. As to anything like shame or contrition, that was entirely out of the question. They were evidently quite gratified at being thought worth the trouble of looking at ; their idea appeared to be, that we had come to see Newgate as a grand affair, and that they were an indispensable part of the show ; and every boy as he fell in " to the line, actually seemed as pleased and important as if he had done something excessively meritorious in getting there at all. We never looked upon a more disagreeable sight, because we never saw fourteen such hopeless creatures of neglect, before. On either side of the school-yard is a yard for men, in one of which — that towards Newgate-street — prisoners of the more respectable class are confined. Of the other, we have little description to offer, as the different wards necessarily partake of the same character. They are provided, like the wards on the women's side, with mats and rugs, which are dis- posed of in the same manner during the day; the only very striking difference between their appearance and that of the wards inhabited by the females, is the utter absence of any employment. Huddled together on two opposite forms, by the fireside, sit twenty men perhaps ; here, a boy in livery : there, a man in a rough great-coat and top-boots; farther on. a desperate-looking fellow in his shirt sleeves, with an old Scotch cap upon his shaggy head ; near him again, a tall ruf- fian, in a smock-frock ; next to him, a miserable being of dis- tressed appearance, with his head resting on his hand ; — all alike in one respect, all idle and listless. When they do leave the fire, sauntering moodily about, lounging in the window, or leaning against the wall, vacantly swinging their bodies to and 544 SKETCHES BY BOZ, fro. With the exception of a man reading an old newspaper, in two or three instances, this was the case in every ward we entered. The only communication these men have with their friends, is through two close iron gratings, with an mtermediate space of about a yard in width between the two, so that nothing can be handed across, nor can the prisoner have any commu- nication by touch with the person who visits him. The mar- ried men have a separate grating, at which to see their wives, but its construction is the same. The prison chapel is situated at the back of the govxr..or's bouse : the latter having no windows looking into the inferior of the prison. Whether the associations connected with the place — the knowledge that here a portion of the burial ser- vice is, on some dreadful occasions, performed over the quick and not upon the dead — cast over it a still more gloomy and sombre air than art has imparted to it, we know not, but its appearance is very striking. There is something in a silent and deserted place of worship, solemn and impressive at any time j and the very dissimilarity of this one from any we have been accustomed to, only enhances the impression. The meanness of its appointments — the bare and scanty pulpit, with the paltry painted pillars on either side — the women's gallery with its great heavy curtain — the men's with its un- painted benches and dingy front — the tottering little table at the altar, with the commandments on the wall above it scarcely legible through lack of paint, and dust and damp — so unlike the velvet and gilding, the marble and wood, of a modern church — are strange and striking. There is one object, too, which rivets the attention and fascinates the gaze, and from which we may turn horror-stricken in vain, for the recollection of it will haunt us waking and sleeping, for a long time after- wards. Immediately below the reading desk, on the floor of the chapel, and forming the most conspicuous object in its little area, is the condemned pew ; a huge black pen, in which the wretched people, who are singled out for death, are placed on the Sunday preceding tlieir execution, in sight of all their fellow-prisoners, from many of whom they may have been separated but a week before, to hear prayers for their own souls, to join in the responses of their own burial service, and to listen to an address, warning their recent companions to take example by their fate, and urging themselves, while there is yet time — nearly four-and-twenty hours — to " turn and flee A VISIT TO NEWGATE. 545 from the wrath to come ! Imagine what have been the feel- ings of the men whom that fearful pew has enclosed, and of whom, between the gallows and the knife, no mortal remnant may now remain ! Think of the hopeless clinging to life to the last, and the wild despair, far exceeding in anguish the felon's death itself, by which they have heard the certainty of their speedy transmission to another world, with all their crimes upon their heads, rung into their ears by the officiating clergyman ! At one time — and at no distant period either — the coffins of the men about to be executed, were placed in that pew, upon the seat by their side, during the whole service. It may seem incredible, but it is true. Let us hope that the increased spirit of civilization and humanity which abolished this fright- ful and degrading custom, may extend itself to other usages equally barbarous ; usages which have not even the plea of utility in their defence, as every year's experience has shown them to be more and more inefficacious. Leaving the chapel, descending to the passage so fre- quently alluded to, and crossing the yard before noticed as being allotted to prisoners of a more respectable description than the generality of men confined here, the visitor arrives at a thick iron gate of great size and strength. Having been admitted through it by the turnkey on duty, he turns sharp round to the left and pauses before another gate ; and, having passed this last barrier, he stands in the most terrible part of this gloomy building — the condemned ward. The press-yard, well known by name to newspaper readers, from its frequent mention in accounts of executions, is at the corner of the building, and next to the ordinary's house, in New- gate-street : running from Newgate-street, towards the centre ot the prison, parallel with Newgate-market. It is a long, narrow court, of which a portion of the wall in Newgate-street forms one end, and the gate the other. At the upper end, on the left-hand — that is, adjoining the wall in Newgate-street — is a cistern of water, and at the bottom a double grating (of which the gate itself forms a part) similar to that before described. Through these grates the prisoners are allowed to see their friends ; a turnkey always remaining in the vacant space be- tween, during the whole interview. Immediately on the right as you enter, is a building containing the press-room, day* room, and cells ; the yard is on every side surrounded by lofty walls guarded hy chevaux de frise ; and the whole is under the constant inspection of vigilant and experienced turnkeys. 546 SKETCHES BY BOZ. In the first apartment into which we were conducted — ■ which was at the top of a staircase, and immediately over the press-room — were five-and-twenty or thirty prisoners, all under sentence of death, awaiting the result of the recorder's re- port — men of all ages and appearances, from a hardened old offender with swarthy face and grizzly beard of three days' growth, to a handsome boy, not fourteen years old, and of singularly youthful appearance even for that age, who had been condemned for burglary. There was nothing remark- able in the appearance of these prisoners. One or two decently-dressed men were brooding with a dejected air over the fire ; several little groups of two or three had been en- gaged in conversation at the upper end of the room, or in the windows ; and the remainder were crowded round a young man seated at a table, who appeared to be engaged in teach- ing the younger ones to write. The room was large, airy, and clean. There was very little anxiety or m.ental suffering de- picted in the countenance of any of the men ; — they had all been sentenced to death, it is true, and the recorder's report had not yet been made ; but, we question whether there was a man among them, notwithstanding, who did not k7W7o that although he had undergone the ceremony, it never was in- tended that his life should be sacrificed. On the table lay a Testament, but there were no tokens of its having been in recent use. In the press-room below, were three men, the nature of whose offence rendered it necessary to separate them, even from their companions in guilt. It is a long, sombre room, with two windows sunk into the stone wall, and here the wretched men are pinioned on the morning of their execution, before moving towards the scaffold. The fate of one of these prisoners was uncertain ; some mitigatory circumstances hav- ing come to light since his trial, which had been humanely represented in the proper quarter. The other two had noth- ing to expect from the mercy of the crown ; their doom was sealed ; no plea could be urged in extenuation of their crime, and they well knew that for them there was no hope in this world. " The two short ones," the turnkey whispered, were dead men.*' The man to whom we have alluded as entertaining some hopes of escape, was lounging, at the greatest distance he could place between himself and his companions, in the win- dow nearest to the door. He was probably aware of our i 'JSiT TO NEWGATE. 547 tipproach, and had assumed an air of courageous indifference \ ills face was purposely averted towards the window, and he stirred not an inch while we were present. The other two men were at the upper end of the room. One of them, who was imperfectly seen in the dim light, had his back towards us, and was stooping over the fire, with his right arm on the mantel-piece, and his head sunk upon it. The other, was leaning on the sill of the farthest window. The light fell full upon him, and communicated to his pale, haggard face,> and disordered hair, an appearance which, at that distance, was ghastly. His cheek rested upon his hand ; and, with his face a little raised, and his eyes wildly staring before him, he seemed to be unconsciously intent on counting the chinks in the opposite wall. We passed this room again afterwards. The first man was pacing up and down the court with a firm mil- itary step — he had been a soldier in the foot guards — and a cloth cap jauntily thrown on one side of his head. He bowed respectfully to our conductor, and the salute was returned. The other two still remained in the positions we have de- scribed, and were as motionless as statues. A few paces up the yard, and forming a continuation of the building, in which are the two rooms we have just quitted, lie the condemned cells. The entrance is by a narrow and obscure staircase leading to a dark passage, in which a char- coal stove casts a lurid tint over the objects in its immediate vicinity, and diffuses something like warmth around. From the left-hand side of this passage, the massive door of every cell on the story opens; and from it alone can they be ap- proached. There are three of these passages, and three of these ranges of cells, one above the other ; but in size, furni- ture and appearance, they are all precisely alike. Prior to the recorder's report being made, all the prisoners under sentence of death are removed from the day-room at five o'clock in the afternoon, and locked up in these cells, where they are allowed a candle until ten o'clock ; and here they remain until seven next morning. When the warrant for a prisoner's execution arrives, he is removed to the cells and confined in one of them until he leaves it for the scaffold. He is at liberty to walk in the yard ; but, both in his walks and in his cell,' he is con- stantly attended by a turnkey who never leaves him on any pretence. * These two men were executed shortly afterwards. The other was respited du/ # Ills Majesty's pleasure. 548 SKE TCHES B Y BOZ. We entered the first cell. It was a stone dungeon, eight feet long by six wide, with a bench at the upper end, undei which were a common rug, a bible, and prayer-book. An iron candlestick was fixed into the wall at the side ; and a small hisfh window in the back admitted as much air and lio^ht as could struggle in between a double row of heavy, crossed iron bars. It contained no other furniture of any description. Conceive the situation of a man spending his last night on earth in this cell. Buoyed up with some vague and un- defined hope of reprieve, he knew not why — indulging in some wild and visionary idea of escaping, he knew not how — hour after hour of the three preceding days allowed him for preparation, has fled with a speed which no man living would deem possible, for none but this dying man can know. He has wearied his friends with entreaties, exhaus'ted the attend- ants with importunities, neglected in his feverish restlessness the timely warnings of his spiritual consoler ; and, now that the illusion is at last dispelled, now that eternity is before him and guilt behind, now that his fears of death amount al- most to madness, and an overwhelming sense of his helpless, hopeless state rushes upon him, he is lost and stupified, and has neither thoughts to turn to, nor power to call upon, the Almighty Being, from whom alone he can seek mercy and forgiveness, and before whom his repentance can alone avail. Hours have glided by, and still he sits upon the same stone bench with folded arms, heedless alike of the fast decreasing time before him, and the urgent entreaties of the good man at his side. The feeble light is wasting gradually, and the deathlike stillness of the street without, broken only by the rumbling of some passing vehicle which echoes mournfully through the empty yards, warns him that the night is waning fast away. The deep bell of St. Paul's strikes — one ! He heard it ; it has roused him. Seven hours left ! He paces the narrow limits of his cell with rapid strides, cold drops of terror starting on his forehead, and every muscle of his frame quivering with agony. Seven hours ! He suffers himself to be led to his seat, mechanically takes the bible which is placed in his hand, and tries to read and listen. No : his thoughts will wander. The book is torn and soiled by use — and like the book he read his lessons in, at school, just forty years ago ! He has never bestowed a thought upon it, perhaps, since he left it as a child : and yet the place, the time, the room — nay, the very boys he played with, crowd as vividlj A VISIT TO NEWGATE, 549 before him as if they were scenes of yesterday ; and some for- gotten phrase, some childish word, rings in his ears like the echo of one uttered but a minute since. The voice of the clergyman recalls him to himself. He is reading from the sacred book its solemn promises of pardon for repentance and its awful denunciation of obdurate men. He falls upon his knees and clasps his hands to pray. Hush ! what sound was that 1 He starts upon his feet. It cannot be two yet. Hark 1 Two quarters have struck; — the third — the fourth. It is! Six hours left. Tell him not of repentance 1 Six hours' re- pentance for eight times six years of guilt and sin ! He buries his face in his hands, and throws himself on the bench. Worn with watching and excitement, he sleeps, and the same unsettled state of mind pursues him in his dreams. An insupportable load is taken from his breast ; he is walking with his wife in a pleasant field, with the bright sky above them, and afresh and boundless prospect on every side — how differ ent from the stone walls of Newgate ! She is looking — not as she did when he saw her for the last time in that dreadful place, but as she used when he loved her — long, long ago, before misery and ill-treatment had altered her looks, and vice had changed his nature, and she is leaning upon his arm, and looking up into his face with tenderness and affection — and he does 7/^/ strike her now, nor rudely shake her from him. And oh ! how glad he is to tell her all he had forgotten in that last hurried interview, and to fall on his knees before her and fervently beseech her pardon for all the unkindness and cruelty that wasted her form and broke her heart ! The scene suddenly changes. He is on his trial again : there are the judge and jury, and prosecutors, and witnesses, just as they were before. How full the court is — what a sea of heads — with a gallows, too, and a scaffold — and how all those people stare at hini ! Verdict, " Guilty." No matter ; he will es- cape. The night is dark and cold, the gates have been left open, and in an instant he is in the street, flying from the scene of his imprisonment like the wind. The streets are cleared, the open fields are gained and the broad wide country lies before him. Onward he dashes in the midst of darkness, over hedge and ditch, through mud and pool, bounding from spot to spot with a speed and lightness, astonishing even to himself. At length he pauses ; he must be safe from pursuit now ; he wilJ stretch himself on that bank and sleep till sunrise. 55° SKE TCHES BY BOZ. A period of unconsciousness succeeds. He wakes cold, and wretched. The dull gray light of morning is stealing into the cell, and falls upon the form of the attendant turnkey. Confused by his dreams, he starts from his uneasy bed in momentary uncertainty. It is but momentary. Every object in the narrow cell is too frightfully real to admit of doubt or mistake. He is the condemned felon again, guilty and despairing ; and in two hours more will be dead. CHARACTERS. CHAPTER I. THOUGHTS ABOUT PEOPLE. It is strange with how little notice, good, bad, or indiffer- ent, a man may live and die in London. He awakes no sym- pathy in the breast of any single person ; his existence is a matter of interest to no one save himself ; he cannot be said to be forgotten when he dies, for no one remembered him when he was alive. There is a numerous class of jDCople in this great metropolis who seem not to possess a single friend, and whom nobody appears to care for. Urged by imperative necessity in the first instance, they have resorted to London in search of employment, and the means of subsistence. It is hard, we know, to break the ties which bind us to our homes and friends, and harder still to efface the thousand recollec- tions of happy days and old times, which have been slumber- ing in our bosoms for years, and only rush upon the mind, to bring before it associations connected with the friends we have left, the scenes we have beheld too probably for the last time, and the hopes we once cherished, but may entertain no more. These men, however, happily for themselves, have long forgotten such thoughts. Old country friends have died or emigrated ; former correspondents have become lost, like themselves, in the crowd and turmoil of some busy city; and THOUGHTS ABOUT PEOPLE. they have gradually settled down into mere passive creatures of habit and endurance. We were seated in the enclosure of St. James's Park the other day, when our attention was attracted by a man whom we immediately put down in our own mind as one of this class. He was a tall, thin, pale person, in a black coat, scanty gray trousers, little pinched-up gaiters, and brown beaver gloves. He had an umbrella in his hand — not for use, for the day was fine — but, evidently, because he always carried one to the office in the morning. He walked up and down before the little patch of grass on which the chairs are placed for hire, not as if he were doing it for pleasure or^ recreation, but as if it were a matter of compulsion, just as he would walk to the office every morning from the back settlements of Isling- ton. It was Monday ; he had escaped for four-and-twenty hours from the thraldom of the desk ; and was walking here for exercise and amusement — perhaps for the first tlir.e in his life. We were inclined to think he had never had a holiday before, and that he did not know what to do with himself. Children were playing on the grass ; groups of people were loitering about, chatting and laughing ; but the man walked steadily up and down, unheeding and unheeded, his spare pale face looking as if it were incapable of bearing the expression of curiosity or interest. There was something in the man's manner and appear- ance which told us, we fancied, his whole life, or rather his whole day, for a man of this sort has no variety of days. We thought we almost saw the dingy little back office into which he walks every morning, hangmg his hat on the same peg, and placing his legs beneath the same desk : first, taking off that black coat which lasts the year through, and putting on the one which did duty last year, and which he keeps in his desk to save the other. There he sits till five o'clock, working on, all day, as regularly as the dial over the mantel-piece, whose loud ticking is as monotonous as his whole existence : only raising his head when some one enters the counting-house, ot when in the midst of some difficult calculation, he looks up to the ceiling as if there were inspiration in the dusty skylight with a green knot in the centre of every pane of glass. About five, or half-past, he slowly dismounts from his accustomed stool, and again changing his coat, proceeds to his usual din- ing-pkce, somewhere near Bucklersbury. The waiter recites the bill of fare in a rather confidential manner — ^for he is a 24 552 SKETCHES BY BOZ. regular customer — and after inquiring " What's in the best cut ? " and " What was up last ? " he orders a small plate of roast beef, with greens, and half-a-pint of porter. He has a small plate to-day, because greens are a penny more than pota- toes, and he had ^'two breads '* yesterday, with the additional enormity of a cneese " the day before. This important point settled, he hangs up his hat — he took it off tl:e moment he sat down — and bespeaks the paper after the next gentleman. If he can get it while he is at dinner, he eats with much greater zest ; balancing it against the water-bottle, and eating a bit of beef, and reading a line or two, alternately. Exactly at five minutes before the hour is up, he produces a shilling, pays the reckoning, carefully deposits the change in his waist- coat-pocket (first deducting a penny for the waiter), and re- turns to the ofiice, from which, if it is not foreign post night, he again sallies forth in about half an hour. He then walks home, at his usual pace, to his little back room at Islington, where he has his tea ; perhaps solacing himself during the meal with the conversation of his landlady's little boy, whom he occasionally rewards with a penny, for solving problems in simple addition. Sometimes, there is a letter or two to take up to his employer's, in Russell-sqfuare ; and then, the wealthy man of business, hearing his voice, calls out from the dining- parlor, — Come in, Mr. Smith and Mr. Smith, putting his hat at the feet of one of the hall chairs, w^alks timidly in, and being condescendingly desired to sit down, carefully tucks his legs under his chair, and sits at a considerable distance from the table while he drinks the glass of sherry which is poured out for him by the eldest boy, and after drinking which, he backs and slides out of the room, in a state of nervous agita- tion from which he does not perfectly recover, until he finds himself once more in the Islington-road. Poor, harmless creatures such men are ; contented but not happy ; broken- spirited and humbled, they may feel no pain, but they never know pleasure. Compare these men with another class of beings who, like them, have neither friend nor companion, but whose position in society is the result of their own choice. These are gen- erally old fellows with white heads and red faces, addicted to port wine and Hessian boots, who from some cause, real or imaginary — generally the former, the excellent reason being that they are rich, and their relations poor — grow suspicious of everybody, and do the misanthropical in chambers, taking THOUGHTS ABOUT PEOPLE 553 great delight in thinking themselves unhappy, and making everybody they come near, miserable. You may see such men as these, anywhere ; you will know them at coffee-houses by their discontented exclamations and the luxury of their dinners ; at theatres, by their always sitting in the same place and looking with a jaundiced eye on all the young people near them ; at church, by the pomposity with which they enter, and the loud tone in which they repeat the responses \ at parties, by their getting cross at whist, and hating music. An old fellow of this kind will have his chambers splendidly furnished, and collect books, plate, and pictures about him in profusion ; not so much for his own gratification, as to be superior to those who have the desire, but not the means, to compete with him. He belongs to two or three clubs, and is envied, and flattered, and hated by the members of them all. Sometimes he will be appealed to by a poor relation — a mar- ried nephew perhaps — for some little assistance : and then he will declaim with honest indignation on the improvidence of young married people, the worthlessness of a wife, the insolence of having a family, the atrocity of getting into debt with a hun- dred and twenty-five pounds a-year, and other unpardonable crimes ; winding up his exhortations with a complacent re- view of his own conduct, and a delicate allusion to parochial relief. He dies, some day after dinner, of apoplexy, having bequeathed his property to a Public Society, and the Institu- tion erects a tablet to his memory, expressive of their admira- tion of his Christian conduct in this world, and their com- fortable conviction of his happiness in the next. But, next to our very particular friends, hackney-coach- men, cabmen and cads, whom we admire in proportion to the extent of their cool impudence and perfect self-possession, there is no class of people who amuse us more than London apprentices. They are no longer an organized body, bound down by solemn compact to terrify his majesty's subjects whenever it pleases them to take offence in their heads andi staves in their hands. They are only bound, now, by inden-| tures-; and, as to their valor, it is easily restrained by the' wholesome dread of the New Police, and a perspective view of a damp station-house, terminating in a police-office and a reprimand. They are still, however, a peculiar class, and not the less pleasant for being inoffensive. Can any one fail to have noticed them in the streets on Sunday } And were there ever such harmless efforts at the grand and magnificent as , 554 SKETCHES BY BOZ. the young fellows display ! We walked down the Strand, 3 Sunday or two ago, behind a little group ; and they furnished food for our amusement the whole way. They had come out of some part of the city ; it Vv^as between three and four o'clock in the afternoon ; and they were on their way to the Park. There were four of them, all arm-in-arm, with white kid gloves like so many bridegrooms, light trousers of unpre- cedented patterns, and coats for which the English language has yet no name — a kind of cross between a great-coat and a surtout, with the collar of the one, the skirts of the other, and pockets peculiar to themselves. Each of the gentlemen carried a thick stick, with a large tassel at the top, which he occasionally twirled gracefully round ; and the whole four, by way of looking easy and un- concerned, were walking with a paralytic, swagger irresistibly ludicrous. One of the party had a watch ^bout the size and shape of a reasonable Ribstone pippin, jammed into his waistcoat-pocket, which he carefully compared Vv^ith the clocks at St. Clement's and the New Church, the illuminated clock at Exeter 'Change, the clock of St. Martin's Church, and the clock of the Horse Guards. When they at last arrived in Saint James's Park, the member of the party who had the best made boots on, hired a second chair expressly for his feet, and flung himself on this two-pennyworth of sylvan luxury with an air which levelled all distinctions between Brookes's and Snooks's, Crockford's and Bagnigge Weils. We may smile at such people, but they can never excite our anger. They are usually on the best terms with them- selves, and it follows almost as a matter of course, in good humor with everyone about them. Besides, they are always the faint reflection of higher lights ; and, if they do display a little occasional foolery in their own proper persons, it is surely mere tolerable than precocious puppyism in the Quad^ rant, whiskered dandyism in Regent-street and Pall-mall, 01 gallantry xu iU dotage anywhere. A CHRISTMAS DINNER, 555 CHAPTER II. A CHPwISTMAS DINNER. Christmas time ! That man must be a misanthrope in- deed, in whose breast something Hke a jovial feeling is not roused — in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened — by the recurrence of Christmas. There are people who will tell you that Christmas is not to them what it used to be ; that each succeeding Christmas has found some cherished hope, or happy prospect, of the year before, dimmed or passed away ; that the present only serves to remind them of reduced circumstances and straitened in- comes — of the feasts they once bestowed on hollow friends, and of the cold looks that meet them now, in adversity and misfortune. Never heed such dismal reminiscences. There are few men who have lived long enough in the world, who cannot call up such thoughts any day in the year. Then do not select the merriest of the three hundred and sixty-five, for your doleful recollections, but draw your chair nearer the blazing fire — fill the glass and send round the song — and if your room be smaller than it was a dozen years ago, or if your glass be filled with reeking punch, instead of sparkling wine, put a good face on the matter, and empty it off-hand, and fill another, and troll off the old ditty you used to sing, and thank God it's no worse. Look on the merry faces of your children (if you have any) as they sit roun 1 the fire. One little seat may be empty ; one slight form that glad- dened the father's heart, and roused the mother's pride to look upon, may not be there. Dwell not upon the past ; think not that one short year ago, the fair child now resolving into dust, sat before you, with the bloom of health upon its cheek, and the gayety of infancy in its joyous eye. Reflect upon your present blessings — of which every man has mar.y — not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some. Fill your glass again, with a merry face and contented heart. Our life on it, but your Christmas shall be merry, and youi new year a happy one I Who can be insensible to the outpourings of good feeling, •and the honest interchange of affectionate attachment, which 556 SKETCHES BY BOZ, abound at this season of the year ? A Christmas family- party ! We know nothing in nature more deUghtful ! There seems a magic in the very name of Christmas. Petty jealousies and discords are forgotten ; social feelings are awakened, in bosoms to which they have long been strangers ; father and son, or brother and sister, who have met anc'. passed with averted gaze, or a look of cold recognition, for months before, proffer and return the cordial embrace, and bury their past animosities in their present happiness. Kindly hearts that have yearned towards each other, but have been withheld by false notions of pride and self-dignity, are again reunited, and all is kindness and benevolence ! Would that Christmas lasted the whole year through (as it ought), and that the prejudices and passions which deform our better nature, were never called into action among those to whom they should ever be strangers ! The Christmas family-party that we mean, is not a mere assemblage of relations, got up at a week or two's notice, originating this year, having no family precedent in the last, and not likely to be repeated in the next. No. It is an an- nual gathering of all the accessible members of the family, young or old, rich or poor ^ and all the children look forward to it for two months beforehand, in a fever of anticipation. Formerly, it was held at grandpapa's ; but grandpapa getting old, and grandmamma getting old too, and rather infirm, they have given up housekeeping, and domesticated themselves with uncle George ; so, the party always takes place at uncle George's house, but grandmamma sends in most of the good things, and grandpapa always will toddle down, all the way to Newgate-market, to buy the turkey, which he engages a porter to bring home behind him in triumph, always insisting on the man's being rewarded with a glass of spirits, over and above his hire, to drink a merry Christmas and a happy new year" to aunt George. As to grandmamma, she is very secret and mysterious for two or three days beforehand, but not sufficiently so, to prevent rumors getting afloat that she has purchased a beautiful new cap with pink ribbons for each of the servants, together with sundry books, and pen-knives, and pencil-cases, for the younger branches ; to say nothing of divers secret additions to the order originally given by aunt George at the pastry-cook's, such as another dozen of mince- pies for the dinner, and a large plum-cake for the children^ On Christmas-eve, grandmamma is always in excellent A CHRISTMAS DINNER, 557 Spirits, and after employing all the children, during the day, in stoning the plums, and all that, insists, regularly every year, on uncle George coming down into the kitchen, taking off his coat, and stirring the pudding for half an hour or so, which uncle George good-humoredly does, to the vociferous delight of the children and servants. The evening concludes with a glorious game of blind-man's-buff, in an early stage of which grandpapa takes great care to be caught, in order that he may have an opportunity of displaying his dexterity. On the following morning, the old couple, with as manv of the children as the pew will hold, go to church in great state : leaving aunt George at home dusting decanters and filling castors, and uncle George carrying bottles into the dining- parlor, and calling for corkscrews, and getting into everybody's way. When the church-party returned to lunch, grandpapa pro- duces a small sprig of mistletoe from his pocket, and tempts the boys to kiss their little cousins under it — a proceeding which affords both the boys and the old gentleman unlimited satisfaction, but which rather outrages grandmamma's ideas of decorum, until grandpapa says, that when he was just thir- teen years and three months old, he kissed grandmamma under a mistletoe too, on which the children clap their hands, and laugh very heartily, as do aunt George and uncle George ; and grandmamma looks pleased, and says, with a benevolent smile, that grandpapa was an impudent young dog, on which the children laugh very heartily again, and grandpapa more heartily than any of them. But all these diversions are nothing to the subsequent excitement when grandmamma in a high cap, and slate- colored silk gown ; and grandpapa with a beautifully plaited shirt-frill, and white neckerchief ; seat themselves on one side of the drawing-room fire, with uncle George's children and little cousins innumerable, seated in the front, waiting the arrival of the expected visitors. Suddenly a hackney-coach is heard to stop, and uncle George, w^ho has been looking out of the window, exclaims " Here's Jane ! " on which the children rush to the door, and helter-skelter down stairs ; and uncle Robert and aunt Jane, and the dear little baby, and the nurse, and the whole party, are ushered up stairs amidst tumultuous shouts of " Oh, my ! " from the children, and frequently re- peated warnings not to hurt baby from the nurse. And grand- papa takes the child, and grandmamma kisses her daughteii 558 SKETCHES BY BOZ. and the confusion of this first entry has scarcely subsided, when some other aunts and uncles with more cousins arrive, and the grown-up cousins flirt with each other, and so do the little cousins too, for that matter, and nothing is to be heard but a confused din of talking, laughing, and merriment. A hesitating double knock at the street-door, heard during a momentary pause in the conversation, excites a general in- quiry of Who's that ? " and two or three children, who have been standing at the window, announce in a low voice, that it's " poor aunt Margaret.'^ Upon which, aunt George leaves the room to welcome the newcomer; and grandmamma draws herself up, rather stiff and stately : for Margaret married a poor man without her consent, and poverty not being a suffi- ciently weighty punishment for her offence, has been discard- ed by her friends, and debarred the society of her dearest relatives. But Christmas has come round, and the unkind feelings that have struggled against better dispositions during the year, have melted away before its genial influence, like half-formed ice beneath the morning sun. It is not difhcult in a moment of angry feeling for a parent to denounce a dis- obedient child ; but, to banish her at a period of general good- will and hilarity, from the hearth, round which she has sat on so many anniversaries of the same day, expanding by slow degrees from infancy to girlhood, and then bursting, almost imperceptibly, into a woman, is widely different. The air of conscious rectitude, and cold forgiveness, which the old lady has assumed, sits ill upon her : and when the poor girl is led in by her sister, pale in looks and broken in hope — not from poverty, for that she could bear, but from the consciousness of undeserved neglect, and unmerited unkindncss — it is easy to see how nmch of it is assumed. A momentar^^ pause succeeds ; the girl breaks suddenly from her sister and throws herself, sobbing, on her mother's neck. The father steps hastily forward, and takes her husband's hand. Friends crowd round to offer their hearty congratulations, and happiness and harmony again prevail. As to the dinner, it's perfectly delightful — nothing goes wrong, and everybody is in the very best of spirits, and dis- posed to please and be pleased. Grandpapa relates a cir- cumstantial account of the purchase of the turkey, wdth a slight digression relative to the purchase of previous turkeys, on former Ghristmas-days, which grandmamma corroborates in the minutest particular. Uncle George tells stories, and THE NEW YEAR. 559 carves poultry, and takes wine, and jokes with the children at the side-table, and winks at the cousins that are making love, or being made love to, and exhilarates everybody with his goodhumor, and hospitality ; and wdien, at last, a stout ser- vant, staggers in with a gigantic pudding, with a sprig of holly in the top, there is such a laughing, and shouting, and clap- ping of little chubby hands, and kicking up of fat dumpy legs, as can only be equalled by the applause with which the astonishing feat of pouring lighted brandy into mince-pies, is received by the younger visitors. Then the dessert ! — and the wine ! — and the fun ! Such beautiful speeches, and such songs, from aunt Margaret's husband, who turns out to be such a nice man, and so attentive to grandmamma ! Even grandpapa not only sings his annual song with unprecedented vigor, but on being honored w^ith an unanimous encore^ accord- ing to annual custom, actually comes out with a new one which nobody but grandmamma e\ er heard before ; and a young scape-grace of a cousin, v;bo has been in some disgrace with the old people, for certain heinous sins of omission and commission — neglecting to call, and persisting in drinking Burton Ale — astonishes everybody into convulsions of laughter by volunteering the most extraordinary comic songs that ever were heard. And thus the evening passes, in a strain of rational good-will and cheerfulness, doing more to awaken the sympathies of every member of the party in behalf of his neighbor, and to perpetuate their good feeling during the ensuing year, than half the homilies that have ever been written, by half the Divines that have ever lived. CHAPTER III. THENEWYEAR. Next to Christmas-day, the most pleasant annual epoch in existence is the advent of the New Year. There are a lachrymose set of people who usher in the New Year with watching and fasting, as if they were bound to attend as chief mourners at the obsequies of the old one. Now, we cannot but think it a great deal more complimentary, both to the old 560 SKE TCHES B Y BOZ. year that has rolied away, and to the New Year that is just beginning to dawn upon us, to see the old fellow out, and the new one in, with gayety and glee. There must have been some few occurrences in the past year to which we can look back, with a smile of cheerful rec- ollection, if not with a feeling of heartfelt thankfulness. And we are bound by every rule of justice and equity to give the New Year credit for being a good one, until he proves him- self unworthy the confidence we repose in him. This is our view of the matter ; and entertaining it, not- withstanding our respect for the old year, one of the few re- maining moments of whose existence passes away with every word we write, here we are, seated by our fireside on this last night of the old year, one thousand eight hundred and thirty- six, penning chis article with as jovial a face as if nothing ex- traordinary had happened, or was about to happen, to disturb our good-humor. Hackney-coaches and carriages keep rattling up the street and down the street in rapid succession, conveying, doubtless, smartly-dressed coachfuls to crowded parties ; loud and re- peated double knocks at the house with green blinds, oppo- site, announce to the whole neighborhood that there's one large party in the street at all events ; and we saw through the window, and through the fog too, till it grew so thick that we rung for candles, and drew our curtains, pastrycooks' men with green boxes on their heads, and rout-fiirnitu re-ware- house-carts, with cane seats and French lam]), . luirrying to the numerous houses where an annual festival is held in honor of the occasion. We can fancy one of these parties, we think, as well as if we were duly dress-coated and pumped, and had just been announced at the drawing-room door. Take the house with the green blinds for instance. We know it is a quadrille party, because we saw some men taking up the front drawing-room carpet while we sat at breakfast this morning, and if further evidence be required, and we must tell the truth, we just now saw one of the young ladies " doing another of the young ladies' hair, near one of the bed-room windows, in an unusual style of splendor, which nothing else but a quadrille party could possibly justify. The master of the house with the green blinds is in a public office : we know the fact by the cut of his coat, the tie of his neckcloth, and the self-satisfaction of his gait — the very THE NEW YEAR, green blinds themselves have a Somerset House air about them. Hark ! — a cab ! That's a junior clerk in the same office ; a tidy sort of young man, with a tendency to cold and corns, who comes in a pair of boots with black cloth fronts, and brings his shoes in his coat-pocket, which shoes he is at this very moment putting on in the hall. Now he is announced by the man in the passage to another man in a blue coat, who is a disguised messenger from the office. The man on the first landing precedes him to the draw- ing-room door. "Mr. Tupple ! " shouts the messenger. " How are you, Tupple ? " says the master of the house, advancing from the fire, before which he -has been talking politics and airing himself. " My dear, this is Mr. Tupple (courteous sa- lute from the lady of the house) ; Tupple, my eldest daugh- ter ; Julia, my dear, Mr. Tupple ; Tupple, my other daugh- ters ; my son, sir ; " Tupple rubs his hands very hard, and smiles as if it were all capital fun, and keeps constantly bow- ing and turning himself round, till the whole family have been introduced, when he glides into a chair at the corner of the sofa, and opens a miscellaneous conversation with the young ladies upon the weather, and the theatres, and the old year, and the last new murder, and the balloon, and the ladies' sleeves, and the festivities of the season, and a great many other topics of small talk. More double knocks ! what an extensive party ! what an incessant hum of conversation and general sipping of coffee ! We see Tupple now, in our mind's eye, in the height of his glory. He has just handed that stout old lady's cup to the servant ; and now, he dives among the crowd of young men by the door, to intercept the other servant and secure the rnuffin-plate for the old lady's daughter, before he leaves the room ; and now, as he passes the sofa on his way back, he bestows a glance of recognition and patronage upon the young ladies, as condescending and familiar as if he had known them from infancy. Charming person Mr. Tupple — perfect ladies' man — such a delightful companion, too ! Laugh ! — nobody ever under- stood papa's jokes half so well as Mr. Tupple, who laughs himself into convulsions at every fresh burst of facetiousness. Most delightful partner ! talks through the whole set ! and although he does seem at first rather gay and frivolous, so ro- mantic and with so much feeling ! Quite a love. No great 5^2 SKETCHES BY BOZ, favorite with the young men, certainly, who sneer at. and af- fect to despise him ; but everybody knows that's only envy, and they needn't give themselves the trouble to depreciate his merits at any rate, for Ma says he shall be asked to every future dinner-party, if it's only to talk to people between the courses, and distract their attention when there's any unex- pected delay in the kitchen. At supper, Mr. Tupple shows to still greater advantage than he has done throughout the evening, and when Pa re- quests every one to fill their glasses for the purpose of drink ing happiness throughout the year, Mr. Tupple is so droll \ insisting on all the young ladies having their glasses filled, notwithstanding their repeate'd assurances that they never can, by any possibility think of emptying them : and subse- quently begging permission to say a few words on the senti- ment which has just been uttered by Pa — when he makes one of the most brilliant and poetical speeches that can possibly be imagined, about the old year and the new one. After the toast has been drunk, and when the ladies have retired, Mr. Tupple requests that every gentleman will do him the favor of filling his glass, for he has a toast to propose : on which all the gentlemen cry Hear ! hear ! " and pass the decanters accord- ingly : and Mr. Tupple being informed by the master of the house that they are all charged, and waiting for his toast, rises, and begs to remind the gentlemen present, how much they have been delighted by the dazzling array of elegance and beauty which the drawing-room has exhibited that night, and how their senses have been charmed, and their hearts capti- vated, by the bewitching concentration of female loveliness which that very room has so recently displayed. (Loud cries of " Hear ! ") Much as he (Tupple) would be disposed to deplore the absence of the ladies, on other grounds, he cannot but de- rive some consolation from the reflection that the very cir- cumstance of their not being present, enables him to propose a toast, which he would have otherwise been prevented from giving — that toast he begs to say is — ^' The Ladies ! " (Great applause.) The Ladies ! among whom the fascinating daugh- ters of their excellent host, are alike conspicuous for their beauty, their accomplishments, and their elegance. He begs them to drain a bumper to The Ladies, and a happy ^new year to them ! " (Prolonged approbation ; above which the noise of the ladies dancing the Spanish dance among them* selves, overhead, is distinctly audible.) THE NEW YEAR The applause consequent on this toast, has scarcely sub- sided, when a young gentleman in a pink under- waistcoat, sit- ting towards the bottom of the table, is observed to grow very restless and fidgety, and to evnice strong indications of some latent desire to give vent to his feelings in a speech, which the wary Tupple at once perceiving, determines to forestall by speaking himself. He, therefore, rises again, with an air ot solemn importance, and trusts he may be permitted to propose another toast (unqualified approbation, and Mn Tupple pro- ceeds). He is sure they must all be deeply impressed with the hospitality — he may say the splendor— with which the\' have been that night received by their worthy host and hostess. (Unbounded applause.) Although this is the first occasion on which he has had the pleasure and delight of sitting at that board, he has known his friend Dobble long and intimately ; he has been connected with him in business — he wishes every body present knew Dobble as well as he does. (A cough from the host.) He (Tupple) can lay his hand upon his (Tupple's) heart, and declare his confident belief that a better man, a better husband, a better father, a better brother, a better son, a better relation in any relation of life, than Dobble, nev^er existed. * (Loud cries of " Hear ! ") They have seen him to- night in the peaceful bosom of his family ; they should see him in the morning, in the trying duties of his office. Calm in the perusal of the morning papers, uncompromising in the signa- ture of his name, dignified in his replies to the inquiries of stranger applicants, deferential in his behavior to his superiors, majestic in his deportment to the messengers. (Cheers.) When he bears this merited testimony to the excellent qualities of his friend Dobble, what can he say in approaching such a subject as Mrs. Dobble ? Is it requisite for him to expatiate on the qualities of that amiable woman ? No ; he will spare his friend Dobble's feelings ; he will spare the feelings of his friend — if he will allow him to have the honor of calling him so — Mr. Dobble, junior. (Here Mr. Dobble, junior, who has been previously distending his mouth to considerable width, by thrusting a particularly fine orange into that feature, suspends operations, and assumes a proper appearance of intense mel- ancholy.) He will simply say — and he is quite certain it is a sentiment in which all who hear him will readily concur — that his friend Dobble is as superior to any man he ever knew, as Mrs. Dobble is far beyond any woman he ever saw (except her daughter) : and he will conclude by proposing their worthy 5^4 SKETCHES BY BOZ, " Host and Hostess, and may they live to enjoy many more new years ! The toast is drunk with acclamation ; Dobble returns thanks, and the whole party rejoin the ladies in the drawing-room. Young men who were too bashful to dance before supper, find tongues and partners ; the musicians exhibit unequivocal symptoms of having drunk the new year in, while the company were out ; and dancing is kept up, until farjn the first morning of the new year. We have scarcely written the last word of the previous sen- tence, when the first stroke of twelve, peals from the neighbor- ing churches. There certainly — we must confess it now — is something awful in the sound. Strictly speaking, it may not be more impressive now, than at any other time ; for the hours steal as swiftly on, at other periods, and their flight is little heeded. But, we measure man's life by years, and it is a solemn knell that warns us we have passed another of the landmarks which stand between us and the grave. Disguise it as we may, the reflection will force itself on our minds, that when the next bell announces the arrival of a new year, we may be insensible alike of the timely warning we have so often neglected, and of all the warm feelings that glorw within us now. CHAPTER IV. MISS EVANS AND THE EAGLE. Mr. Samuel Wilkins was a carpenter, a journeyman car- penter of small dimensions, decidedly below the middle size — bordering, perhaps, upon the dwarfish. His face was round and shining, and his hair carefully twisted into the outer corner of each eye, till it formed a variety of that description of semi-curls, usually known as aggerawators." His earnings were all-suflicient for his wants, varying from eighteen shillings to one pound five, weekly — his manner undeniable — his sab- bath waistcoat dazzling. No wonder that, with these qualifi- cations, Samuel Wilkins found favor in the eyes of the other sex : many women have been captivated by far less substantial qualifications. But, Samuel was proof against their blandish- MISS EVANS AND THE EAGLE ments, until at length his eyes rested on those of a being for whom, from that time forth, he felt fate had destined him. He came, and conquered — proposed, and was accepted — loved^ and was beloved Mr. Wilkins " kept company " with Jemima Evans. Miss Evans (or Ivins, to adopt the pronunciation most in vogue with her circle of acquaintance) had adopted in early life the useful pursuit of shoe-binding, to which she had after- wards superadded the occupation of a straw-bonnet maker. Herself, her maternal parent, and two sisters, formed an har- monious quartette in the most secluded portion of Camden- town ; and here it was that Mr. Wilkins presented himself, one Monday afternoon, in his best attire, with his face more shining and his waistcoat more bright than either had ever appeared before. The family were just going to tea, and were so glad to see him. It was quite a little feast ; two ounces of seven-and-sixpenny green, and a quarter of a pound of the best fresh ; and Mr. Wilkins had brought a pint of shrimps, neatly folded up in a clean belcher, to give a zest to the meal, and propitiate Mrs. Ivins. Jemima was " cleaning herself up stairs ; so Mr. Samuel Wilkins sat down and talked do- mestic economy with Mrs. Ivins, whilst the two youngest Miss Ivinses poked bits of lighted brown paper between the bars under the kettle, to make the water boil for tea. " I wos a thinking," said Mr. Samuel Wilkins, during a pause in the conversation — " I wos a thinking of taking J'mimato the Eagle to-night." — my ! " exclaimed Mrs. Ivins. Lor ! how nice ! " said the youngest Miss Ivins. '^W^ell, I declare ! " added the youngest Miss Ivins but one. " Tell J'mima to put on her white muslin, Tilly," screamed Mrs. Ivins, with motherly anxiety ; and down came J'mima herself soon afterwards in a white muslin gown carefully hooked and eyed, a little red shawl, plentifully pinned, a white straw bonnet trimmed with red ribbons, a small necklace, a large pair of bracelets, Denmark satin shoes, and open-worked stockings ; white cotton gloves on her fingers, and a cambric pocket-hand- kerchief, carefully folded up, in her hand — all quite genteel and ladylike. And away went Miss J'mima Ivins and Mr. Samuel Wilkins, and a dress cane, with a gilt knob at the top, to the admiration and envy of the street in general, and to the high gratification of Mrs. Ivins, and the two youngest Miss Ivinses in particular. They had no sooner turned into the Pancras road, than who should Miss J'mima Ivins stumble S66 SKETCHES BY IWZ, upon, by the most fortunate accident in the world, but a young lady as she knew, with her young man! — And it is so strange how things do turn out sometimes — they were actually going to the Eagle too. So Mr. Samuel Wilkins was introduced to Miss J'mima Jvins's friend's young man, and t"ey all walked on together, talking, and laughing, and jokiug away like any- thing ; and when they got as far as Pentonville, Miss Ivins's friend's young man would have the ladies go into the Crown, to taste some shrub, which, after a great blushing and giggling, and hiding of faces in elaborate pocket-handkerchiefs, they consented to do. Having tasted it once, they w^ere easily pre- vailed upon to taste again ; and they sat out in the garden tasting shrub, and looking at the Busses alternately, till it was just the proper time to go to the Eagle ; and then they re- sumed their journey, and walked very fast, for fear they should lose the beginning of the concert in the rotunda. '^How ev'nly r" said Miss J'mima Ivins, and Miss J'mima Ivins's friend, both at once, when they had passed the gate and were fairly inside the gardens. There were the walks, beautifully gravelled and planted — and the refreshment-boxes, painted and ornamented like so many snuff-boxes — and the variegated lamps shedding their rich light upon the company's heads — and the place for dancing ready chalked for the com- pany's feet — and a Moorish band playing at one end of the gardens — and an opposition military band playing away at the other. Then, the waiters w^ere rushing to and fro with glasses of negus, and glasses of brandy-and-water, and bottles of ale, and bottles of stout ; and ginger-beer was going off in one place, and practical jokes were going on in another ; and people were crowding to the door of the Rotunda \ and in short the whole scene was, as Miss J'mima Ivins, inspired by the novelty, or the shrub, or both, observed — one of dazzling excitement/' As to the concert-room, never was anything half so splendid. There was an orchestra for the singers, all paint, gilding, and plate-glass ; and such an organ 1 Miss J'mima Ivins's friend's young man whispered it had cost ''four hundred pound,'*' which Mr. Samuel Wilkins said was '' not dear neither ; " an opinion in which the ladies perfectly coincided. The audience were seated on elevated benches round the room, and crowded into every part of it ; and everybody was eating and drinking as comfortably as possi- ble. Just before the concert commenced,. Mr^ Samuel Wil- kins ordered two glasses of rum-and-water " warm with — " M/SS EVANS AND THE EAGLE. 567 and two slices of lemon, for himself and the other young man, together with ^' a pint o' sherry wine for the ladies, and some sweet carraway-seed biscuits and they would have been quite comfortable and happy, only a strange gentleman with large whiskers would stare at Miss J'mima [vins, and cinother gentleman in a plaid waistcoat woicld wink at Miss J'mima Ivins's friend; on which Miss J'mima Ivins's friend's young man exhibited symptoms of boiling over, and began to mutter about "people's imperence, " and "swells out o' luck ; " and to intimate, in oblique terms, a vague intention of knocking somebody's head off ; which he was only prevented from announcing more emphatically, by both Miss J'mima Ivins and her friend threatening to faint away on the spot if he said another word. The concert commenced — overture on the organ. " How solemn ! " exclaimed Miss J'mima Ivins, glancing, perhaps un- consciously, at the gentleman with the whiskers. Mr. Samuel Wilkins, who had been muttering apart for some time past, as if he were holding a confidential conversation with the gilt knob of the dress cane, breathed hard — breathing vengeance, perhaps — but said nothing. ^'The soldier tired," Miss Some- body in white satin. " Ancore ! " cried Miss J'mima Ivins's friend. "Ancore ! " shouted the gentleman in the plaid waist- coat immediately, hammering the table with a stout-bottle. Miss J'mima Ivins's friend's young man eyed the man behind the waistcoat from head to foot, and cast a look of interro- gative contempt towards Mr. Samuel Wilkins. Comic song, accompanied on the organ. Miss J'mima Ivins was convulsed with laughter — so was the man with the whiskers. Every- thing the ladies did, the plaid waistcoat and whiskers did, by way of expressing unity of sentiment and congeniality of soul ; and Miss J'mima Ivins's friend, grew lively and talk- ative, as Mr. Samuel Wilkins, and Miss J'mima Ivins's friend's young man, grew morose and surly in inverse proportion. Now, if the matter had ended here, the little party might soon have recovered their former equanimity : but Mr. Samuel Wilkins and his friend began to throw looks of defiance upon the waistcoat and whiskers. And the waistcoat and whiskers, by way of intimating the slight degree in which they were affected by the looks aforesaid, bestowed glances of increased admiration upon Miss J'mima Ivins and friend. The concert and vaudeville concluded, they promenaded the gardens. The waistcoat and whiskers did the same ; and made divers re- S68 SKETCHES BY BOZ, marks complimentary to the ankles of Miss Jemima Ivins and friend, in an audible tone. At length, not satisfied with these numerous atrocities, they actually came up and asked Miss J'mima Ivins, and Miss J'mima Ivins's friend, to dance, with- out taking no more notice of Mr. Samuel Wilkins, and Miss J'mima Ivins's friend's young man than if they was nobody ! " What do you mean by that, scoundrel ? " exclaimed Mr. Samuel Wilkins, grasping the gilt-knobbed dress-cane firmly in his right hand. What's the matter with yoii^ you little humbug 1 " replied the whiskers. ^' How dare you insult me and my friend ? " inquired the friend's young man. "You and your friend be hanged ! " responded the waistcoat. " Take that," exclaimed Mr. Samuel Wilkins. The ferrule of the gilt-nobbed dress-cane was visible for an instant, and then the light of the variegated lamps shone brightly upon it as it whirled into the air, cane and all. ^^Give it him," said the waistcoat. " Horficer ! " screamed the ladies. Miss J'mima Ivins's beau, and the friend's young man, lay gasping on the gravel, and the waistcoat and whiskers were seen no more. Miss J'mima Ivins and friend being conscious that the affray was in no slight degree attributable to themselves, of course went into hysterics forthwith ; declared themselves the most injured of women ; exclaimed, in incoherent ravings, that they had been suspected — wrongfully suspected — oh! that they should ever have lived to see the day — and so forth ; suffered a relapse every time they opened their eyes and saw their unfortunate little admirers ; and were carried to their respective abodes in a hackney-coach, and a state insensibility, compounded of shrub, sherry, and excitement. CHAPTER V, THE PARLOR ORATOR. We had been lounging one evening, down Oxford-street, Holborn, Cheapside, Coleman-street, Finsbury-square, and so on, with the intention of returning westward, by Pentonville and the New-road, when we began to feel rather thirsty, and disposed to rest for five or ten minutes. So, we turned bacl^ THE PARLOR ORATOR. towards an old, quiet, decent public-house, which we remem- bered to have passed but a moment before (it was not far from the City-road), for the purpose of solacing ourselves with a glass of ale. The house was none of your stuccoed, French-polished, illuminated palaces, but a modest public- house of the old school, with a little old bar, and a little old landlord, who, with a wife and daughter of the same pattern, was comfortably seated in the bar aforesaid — a snug little room with a cheerful fire, protected by a large screen : from behind which the young lady emerged on our representing our inclination for a glass of ale. "Won't you walk into the parlor, sir? "said the young lady, in seductive tones. You had better walk into the parlor, sir," said the little old landlord, throwing his chair back, and looking round one side of the screen, to survey our appearance. " You had much better step into the parlor, sir," said the little old lady, popping out her head, on the other side of the screen. We cast a slight glance around, as if to express our igno- rance of the locality so much recommended. The little old landlord observed it ; bustled out of the small door of the small bar ; and forthwith ushered us into the parlor itself. It was an ancient, dark-looking room, with oaken wains- coting, a sanded floor, and a high mantelpiece. The walls were ornamented with three or four old colored prints in black frames, each print representing a naval engagement, with a couple of men-of-war banging away at each other most vigor- ously, while another vessel or two were blowing up in the distance, and the foreground presented a miscellaneous col- lection of broken masts and blue legs sticking up out of the water. Depending from the ceiling in the centre of the room, were a gas-light and bell-pull ; on each side were three or four long narrow tables, behind which was a thickly-planted row of those slippery, shiny-looking wodden chairs, peculiar to hostelries of this description. The monotonous appearance of the sanded boards w^as relieved by an occasional spittoon ; and a triangular pile of those useful articles adorned the two upper corners of the apartment. At the furthest table, nearest the fire, with his face to* wards the door at the bottom of the room, sat a stout? sh man of about forty, whose short, stiff, black hair curled closely round a broad high forehead, and a face to which something 57^ SKETCHES BY BOZ. besides water and exercise had communicated a rather in« flamed appearance. He was smoking a cigar, with his eyes fixed on the ceiUng, and had that confident oracular air which marked him as the leading politician, general author- ity, and universal anecdote-relater, of the place. He had evidently just delivered himself of something very weighty \ for the remainder of the company were puffing at their re- spective pipes and cigars in a kind of solemn abstraction, as if quite overwhelmed with the magnitude of the subject recently under discussion. On his right hand sat an elderly gentleman with a white head, and broad-brimmed brown hat ; on his left, a sharp- nosed, Hght-haired man in a brown surtout reaching nearly to his heels, who took a whiff at his pipe, and an admiring glance of the red-faced man, alternately. " Very extraordinary ! said the light-haired maii after a pause of five minutes. A murmur of assent ran through the company. " Not at all extraordinary — not at all," said the red-faced man, awakening suddenly from his reverie, and turning upon the light-haired man, the moment he had spoken. " Why should it be extraordinary? — wdiy is it extraordi- nary ? — prove it to be extraordinary ! " " Oh, if you come to that — " said the light-haired man, meekly. Come to that 1 " ejaculated the man with the red face ; but we must come to that. We stand in these times, upon a calm elevation of intellectual attainment, and not in the dark recess of mental deprivation. Proof, is what I require — proof, and not assertions, in these stirring times. Every gen'lem'n that knows me, knows what was the nature and effect of my observations, when it was in the contemplation of the Old-street Suburban Representative Discovery Society, to recommend a candidate for that place in Cornwall there — I forget the name of it. **** Mr. Snobee,' said Mr. Wilson, 'is a fit and proper person to represent the borough in Parliament.' ' Prove it,' says I. ' He is a friend to Reform,' says Mr. W^ilson. ' Prove it,' says I. * The abolitionist of the national debt, the unflinching opponent of pensions, the uncompromis- ing advocate of the negro, the reducer of sinecures and the duration of Parliaments ; the extender of nothing but the suffrages of the people,' says Mr. Wilson. * Prove it/ says L * His acts prove it,' says he. * Prove them^^ says L THE PARLOR ORATOR. ^-71 And he could not prove them," said tlie red-faced man, looking round triumphantly; " and the borough didn't have him ; and if you carried this principle to the tuil extent, you'd nave no debt, no pensions, no smecures, no negroes, no noth- ing. And then, standing upon an elevation of intellectual attainment, and having reached the summit of popular proS' perity, you might bid defiance to the nations of the earth, and erect yourselves in the proud confidence of wisdom and sii- l^eriority. This is my argument — this always has been my :\rgument — and if I was a Member of the House of Commons lo-morrow, I'd make 'em shake m their shoes with it." And the red-faced man, having struck the table very hard with his clenched fist, to add weight to the declaration, smoked away like a brewery. " Well ! " said the sharp-nosed man, in a very slow and soft voice, addressing the company in general, I always do say, that of all the gentlemen 1 have the pleasure of meeting in this room, there is not one whose conversation I like to hear so much as Air. Rogers's, or who is such improving coit:- pany." " Improving company ! " said Mr. Rogers, for that, it seemed, was the name of the red-faced man, You may' say I am improving company, for I've improved you all to some purpose ; though as to my conversation being as my friend Mr. Ellis here describes it, that is not for me to say anything about. You, gentlemen, are the best judges on that point ; but this I will say, when I came into this parish, and first used this room, ten years ago, I don't believe there was one man in it, who knew he was a slave — and now you all know it, and writhe under it. Inscribe that upon my tomb, and I am satisfied." "Why, as to inscribing it on your tomb," said a little greengrocer with a chubby face, " of course you can have anything chalked up, as you likes to pay for, so far as it re- lates to yourself and your affairs ; but when you come to talk about slaves, and that there abuse, you'd better keep it in the family, ' cos I for one don't like to be called them names, night after night." You are a slave," said the red-faced man, " and the m.ost pitiable of all slaves." Werry hard if I am," interrupted the greengrocer, ''for I got no good out of the twenty million that was paid fol 'mancipation, anyhow." 572 SKETCHES BY BOZ. A willing slave," ejaculated the red-faced man, getting more red with eloquence, and contradiction — resignnig the dearest birthright of your children — neglecting the sacred call of Liberty — who, standing imploringly before you, appeals to the warmest feelings of your heart, and points to your helpless infants, but in vain.'' " Prove it," said the greengrocer. *' Prove it ! " sneered the man with the red-face. " What \ bending beneath the yoke of an insolent and factious oligar- chy ; bowed down by the domination oL Ciuel laws ; groaning beneath tyranny and oppression on every hand, at every side, and in every corner. Prove it ! — The red-faced man ab- ruptly broke off, sneered melp-dramatically, and buried his countenance and his indignation together, in a quart pot. Ah, to be sure, Mr. Rogers," said a stout broker in a large waistcoat, who had kept his eyes fixed on this luminary all the time he was speaking. Ah, to be sure," said the broker with a sigh, that's the point." ''Of course, of course," said divers members of the com- pany, who understood almost as much about the matter as the broker himself. "You had better let him alone. Tommy," said the broker, by way of advice to the little greengrocer, " he can tell what's o'clock by an eight-day, without looking at the minute hand, he can. Try it on, on some other suit ; it won't do with him. Tommy." " What is a man ? " continued the red-faced specimen of the species, jerking his hat indignantly from its peg on the wall. " What is an Englishman 1 Is he to be trampled upon by every oppressor ? Is he to be knocked down at every- body's bidding ? What's freedom ? Not a standing army. What's a standing army ? Not freedom. What's genera] happiness ? Not universal misery. Liberty ain't the window- tax, is it? The Lords ain't the Commons, are they?" And the red-faced man, gradually bursting into a radiating sen- tence, in which such adjectives as dastardly," " oppressive," "violent," and "sanguinary," formed the most conspicuous words, knocked his hat indignantly over his eyes, left the room, and slammed the door after him. " W^onderful man ! " said he of the sharp nose. " Splendid speaker ! " added the broker. " Great power ! " said everybody but the greengrocer. And as they said it, the whole party shook their heads mys- THE HOSPITAL PATIENT 573 teriously, and one by one retired, leaving us alone in the old parlor. If we had followed the established precedent in all such instances, we should have fallen into a fit of musing, without delay. The ancient appearance of the room — the old panell- ing of the wall — the chimney blackened with smoke and age — would have carried us back a hundred years at least, and we should have gone dreaming on, until the pewter-pot on the table, or the little beer-chiller on the fire, had started into life, and addressed to us a long story of days gone by. But. by some means or other, we were not in a romantic humor ; and although we tried very hard to invest the furniture with vitality, it remained perfectly unmoved, obstinate, and sullen. Being thus reduced to the unpleasant necessity of musing about ordmary matters, our thoughts reverted to the red-faced man, and his oratorical display. A numerous race are these red-faced men ; there is not a parlor, or club-room, or benefit society or humble party of any kind, without its red-faced man. Weak-pated dolts they are, and a great deal of mischief they do to their cause, how- ever good. So, just to hold a pattern one up, to know the others by, we rook his likeness at once, and put him in here. And that is the reason why we have written this paper. CHAPTER VI. THE HOSPITAL PATIENT. In our rambles through the streets of London after even- ing has set in, we often pause beneath the windows of some public hospital, and picture to ourself the gloomy and n]0urn- ful scenes that are passing within. The sudden moving of a taper as its feeble ray shoots from window to window, until its light gradually disappears, as if it were carried farther back into the room to the bedside of some suffering patient, is enough to awaken a whole crowd of reflections ; the mere glimmering of the low-burning lamps, which, when all other habitations are wrapped in darkness and slumber, denote the chamber where so many forms are writhing with pain or 574 SKETCHES BY BOZ. wasting with disease, is sufficient to check the most boister- ous merriment. Who can tell the anguish of those weary hours, when the only sound the sick man hears, is the disjointed wanderings Df some feverish slumberer near him, the low moan of pain, or perhaps the muttered, long-forgotten prayer of a dying man ? Who, but they who have felt it, can imagine the sense of loneliness and desolation which must be the portion of those who in the hour of dangerous illness are left to be tended by strangers ; for what hands, be they ever so gentle, can wipe the clammy brow, or smooth the restless bed, like those of mother, wife, or child ? Impressed with these thoughts, we have turned away, through the nearly-deserted streets ; and the sight of the few miserable creatures still hovering about them, has not tended to lessen the pain which such meditations awaken. The hospital is a refuge and resting-place for hundreds, who but for such institutions must die in the streets and doorways; but what can be the feelings of some outcasts when they are stretched on the bed of sickness with scarcely a hope of re- covery ? The wretched \voman who lingers about the pave- ment, hours after midnight, and the miserable shadow of a man — the ghastly remnant that want and drunkenness have left — which crouches beneath a window-ledge, to sleep where there is some shelter from the rain, have little to bind them to life, but what have they to look back upon, in death ? What are the unwonted comforts of a roof and a bed, to them, when the recollections of a whole life of debasement stalk be- fore them ; v/hen repentance seems a mockery, and sorrow comes too late ? About a twelvemonth ago, as we were strolling through Covent-garden (we had been thinking about these things overnight), we were attracted by the very prepossessing ap- pearance of a pickpocket, who having declined to take the trouble of walking to the Police-office, on the ground, that lie hadn't the slightest wisli to go there at all, was being con - veyed thither in a wheelbarrow, to the huge delight of a crowd. Somehow, we never can resist joining a crowd, so we turned back with the mob, and entered the- office, in company with our friend the pickpocket, a couple of policemen, and as many dirty-faced spectators as could squeeze their way in. There was a powerful, ill-looking young fellow at the bar, THE HOSPITAL PATIENT who was undergoing an examination, on the very common charge of having, on the previous night, ill-treated a woman, with whom he lived in some court hard by. Several wit- nesses bore testimony to acts of the grossest brutality ; and a certificate was read from the house-surgeon of a neighboring hospital, describing the nature of the injuries the woman had received, and intimating that her recovery was extremely doubtful. Some question appeared to have been raised about the identity of the prisoner ; for when it was agreed that the two magistrates should visit the hospital at eight o'clock that evening, to take her deposition, it w^as settled that the man should be taken there also. He turned pale at this, and we saw him clench the bar very hard when the order was given. He was removed directly afterwards, and he spoke not a word. We felt an irrepressible curiosity to witness this interview, although it is hard to tell why, at this instant, for we knew it must be a painful one. It was no very difficult matter for us to gain permission, and we obtained it. The prisoner, and the officer who had him in custody, were already at the hospital when we reached it, and waiting the arrival of the magistrates in a small room below stairs. The man was handcuffed, and his hat was ^pulled forward over his eyes. It was easy to see, though, by the whiteness of his countenance, and the constant twitching of the muscles of his face, that he dreaded what was to come. After a short interval, the magistrates and clerk were bowed in by the house-surgeon and a couple of young men who smelt very strong of tobacco-smoke — they were introduced as "dressers'' — and after one magistrate had complained bitterly of the cold, and the other of the absence of any news in the even- ing paper, it was announced that the patient was prepared ; and we were conducted to the "casualty ward " in which she was lying. The dim light which burnt in the spacious room, increased rather than diminished the ghastly appearance of U^e hapless creatures in the beds, which were ranged in two long rows on either side. In one bed, lay a child enveloped in band- ages, with its body half-consumed by fire ; in another, a fe- male, rendered hideous by some dreadful accident, was wildly beating her clenched fists on the coverlet, in pain ; on a third, there lay stretched a young girl, apparently m the heavy stupor often the immediate precursor of death : her face was (Jo 576 SKETCHES BY BOZ. Stained with blood, and h*er breast and arms were bound up in folds of linen. Two or three of the beds were empty, and their recent occupants were sitting beside them, but with faces so wan, and eyes so bright and glassy, that it was fear- ful to meet their gaze. On every face was stamped the ex- pression of anguish and suffering. The object of the visit was lying at the upper end of the room. She was a fine young woman of about two or three and twenty. Her long black hair, which had been hastily cut from near the wounds on her head, streamed over the pillow in jagged and matted locks. Her face bore deep marks of the ill-usage she had received: her hand was pressed upon her side, as if her chief pain were there ; her breathing was short and heavy; and it was plain to see that she was dying fast. She murmured a few words in reply to the magistrate's inquiry whether she was in great pain ; and, having been raised on the pillow by the nurse, looked vacantly upon the strange countenances that surrounded her bed. The magis- trate nodded to the officer, to bring the man forward. He did so, and stationed him at the bedside. The girl looked on with a wild and troubled expression of face ; but her sight was dim, and she did not know him. " Take off his hat,'' said the magistrate.- The officer did as he was desired, and the man's features were disclosed. The girl started up, with an energy quite preternatural ; the fire gleamed in her heavy eyes, and the blood rushed to her pale and sunken cheeks. It was a convulsive effort. She fell back upon her pillow, and covering her scarred and bruised face with her hands, burst into tears. The man cast an anxious look towards her, but otherwise appeared wholly unmoved. After a brief pause the nature of the errand was explained, and the oath tendered. Oh, no, gentlemen," said the girl, raising herself once more, and folding her hands together ; " no, gentlemen, for God's sake ! I did it myself — it was nobody's fault — it was an accident. He didn't hurt me ; he wouldn't for all the world. Jack, dear Jack, you know you wouldn't ! " Her sight was fast failing her, and her hand groped over the bedclothes in search of his. Brute as the man was, he was not prepared for this. He turned his face from the bed, and sobbed. The girl's color changed, and her breathing grew more difficult. She was evidently dying. We respect the feeling-s which prompt you to this," said MISPLA CED A TTA CHMENT OF MR. JOHN BOUNCE, 577 the gentleman who had spoken first, " but let me warn you, not to persist in what you know to be untrue, until it is too late. It cannot save him." "Jack," murmured the girl, laying her hand upon his arm, they shall not persuade me to swear your life away. He didn't do it, gentlemen. He never hurt me." She grasped his arm tightly, and added, in a broken whisper, " I hope God Almighty will forgive me all the wrong I have done, and the life I have led. God bless you. Jack. Some kind gentle- man take my love to my poor old father. Five years ago, he said he wished I had died a child. Oh, I wish I had ! I wish I had ! " The nurse bent over the girl for a few seconds, and then drew the sheet over her face. It covered a corpse. CHAPTER VII. THE MISPLACED ATTACHMENT OF MR. JOHN BOUNCE. If we had to make a classification of society, there are a particular kind of men whom we should immediately set down under the head of " Old Boys ; " and a column of most ex- tensive dimensions the old boys would require. To what precise causes the rapid advance of old boy population is to be traced, we are unable to determine. It would be an in- teresting and curious speculation, but, as we have not sufficient space to devote to it here, we simply state the fact that the num- bers of the old boys, have been gradually augmenting within the last few years, and that they are at this moment alarmingly on the increase. Upon a general review of the subject, and without con- sidering it minutely in detail, we should be disposed to sub- divide the old boys into two distinct classes — the gay old boys, and the steady old boys. The gay old boys, are paunchy old men in the disguise of young ones, who frequent the Quad- rant and Regent-street in the day time ; the theatres (especi- ally theatres under lady management) at night ; and who as- sume all the foppishness and levity of boys, without the excuse of youth or inexperience. The steady old boys are cer* 578 SKE TCHES B Y BOZ, tain stout old gentlemen of clean appearance, who are always to be seen in the same taverns, at the same hours every even- ing, smoking and drinking in the same company. There was once a fine collection of old boys to be seen round the circular table at Offley's every night, between the hours of half-past eight and half-past eleven. We have lost sight of them for some time. There were, and may be still, for aught we know, two splendid specimens in full blossom at the Rainbow Tavern in Fleet-street, who always used to sit in the box nearest the fireplace, and smoked long cherry-stick pipes which went under the table, with the bowls resting on the floor. Grand old boys they were — fat, red-faced, white-headed old fellows — always there — one on one side the table, and the other opposite puffing and drinking away ni great state. Everybody knew them, and it was supposed by some people that they were both immortal. Mr. John Dounce was an old boy of the latter class (we don't mean immortal, but steady), a retired glove and braces maker, a widower, resident with three daughters — all grown up, and all unmarried — in Cursitor-street, Chancery-lane. He was a short, round, large-faced, tubbish sort of man, with a broad-brimmed hat, and a square coat ; and had that grave, but confident, kind of roll, peculiar to old boys in general. Regular as clockwork — breakfast at nine — dress and tittivate a little — down to the Sir Somebody's Head — a glass of ale and the paper — come back again, and take daughters out for a walk — dinner at three — glass of grog and pipe— nap — tea — little walk — Sir Somebody's Head again — capital house — delightful evenings. There were Mr. Harris, the law-stationer, and Mr. Jennings, the rope-maker (two jolly young fellows like himself), and Jones, the barrister's clerk — rum fellow that Jones — capital company — full of anecdote ! — and there they sat every night till just ten minutes before twelve, drinking their brandy-and-water, and smoking their pipes, and telling stories, and enjoying themselves with a kind of solemn jovi- ality particularly edifying. Sometimes Jones would propose a half-price visit to Drury Lane or Covent Garden, to see two acts of a five-act play, and a new farce, perhaps, or a ballet, on which occasion the whole four of them went together ; none of your hurrying and non- sense, but having their brandy-and-water first, comfortably, and ordering a steak and some oysters for their supper against they came back, and then walking coolly into the pit. MISPLACED ATTACHMENT OF MR. JOHN BOUNCE. when the " rush " had gone in, as all sensible people do, and did when Mr. Bounce was a young man, except when the celebrated Master Betty was at the height of his popularity, and then, sir, — then — Mr. Bounce perfectly well remembered getting a holiday from business ; and going to the pit doors at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, and waiting there, till six in the afternoon, wdth some sandwiches in a pocket-handker- chief and some wine in a phial ; and fainting after all, with the heat and fatigue before the play began ; in which situa- tion he was lifted out of the pit, into one of the dress boxes, sir, by five of the finest women of that day, sir, who compas- sionated his situation and administered restoratives, and sent a black servant, six foot high, in blue and silver livery, next morning with their compliments, and to know how he found himself, sir — by G — ! Between the acts Mr. Bounce and Mr. Harris, and Mr. Jennings, used to stand up, and look round the house, and Jones — knowing fellow that Jones — knew everybody — pointed out the fashionable and celebrated lady So-and-So in the boxes, at the mention of whose name Mr. Bounce, after brushing up his hair, and adjusting his neckerchief, would inspect the aforesaid Lady So-and-So through an immense glass, and remark, either, that she was a " fine woman — very fine woman, indeed," or that "there might be a little more of her, — eh, Jones 1 " just as the case might happen to be. When the dancing began, John Bounce and the other old boys were particularly anxious to see what was going forward on the stage, and Jones — wicked dog that Jones — whispered little critical remarks into the ears of John Bounce, which John Bounce retailed to Mr. Harris, and Mr, Harris to Mr. Jennings ; and then they all four laughed, until the tears ran dowm, out of their eyes. When the curtain fell, they w^alked back together, two and two, to the steaks and oysters ; and when they came to the second glass of brandy-and-water, Jones — hoaxing scamp that Jones — used to recount how he had observed a lady in white feathers, in one of the pit-boxes, gazing intently on Mr. Bounce all the evening, and how he had caught Mr. Bounce, whenever he thought no one was looking at hrm, bestownig ardent looks of intense devotion on the lady in return ; on which Mr. Harris and Mr. Jennings used to laugh very heart- ily, and John Bounce more heartily than either of them, acknowledging, however, that the time had been when he might have done such things ; upon which Mr. Jones used to S8o SKETCHES BY BOZ, poke him in the ribs, and tell him he had been a sad dog in Ills time, which John Bounce, with chuckles confessed. And aftft: Mr. Harris and Mr. Jennings had preferred their claims to the character of having been sad dogs too, they separated harmoniously, and trotted home. The decrees of P^ate, and the means by which they are brought about, are mysterious and inscrutable. John Bounce had led this life for twenty years and upwards, without wish for change, or care for variety, when his whole social system was suddenly upset, and turned completely topsy-turvy — not by an earthquake, or some other dreadful convulsion of nature, as the reader would be inclined to suppose, but by the simple agency of an oyster ; and thus it happened. Mr. John Bounce was returning one night from the Sir Somebody's Head, to his residence on Cursitor-street — not tipsy, but rather excited, for it was Mr. Jennings's birthday, and they had had a brace of partridges for supper, and a brace of extra glasses afterwards, and Jones had been more than ordinarily amusing — when his eyes rested on a newly-opened oyster shop, on a magnificent scale, with natives laid, one deep, in circular marble basins in the windows, together with little round barrels of oysters directed to Lords and Baronets, and Colonels and Captains, in every part of the habitable globe. Behind the natives were the barrels, and behind the barrels was a young lady of about five-and-twent}^, all in blue, and all alone — splendid creature, charming face and lovely fig- ure ! It is difficult to say whether Mr. John Bounce's red coun- tenance, illuminated as it was by the flickering gas-light in the window before which he paused, excited the lady's risibility, or whether a natural exuberance of animal spirits proved too much for that staidness of demeanor which the forms of society rather dictatorially prescribe. But certain it is, that the lady smiled ; then put her finger upon her lip, with a striking recollection of what was due to herself, and finally re- tired, in oyster-like bashfulness, to the very back of the •counter. The sad-dog sort of feeling came strongly upon John Bounce : he Ungered — the lady in blue made no sign. He coughed — still she came not. He entered the shop. ^' Can you open me an oyster, my dear ? " said Mr. John Bounce. "Bare say I can, sir," replied the lady in blue, with play- fulness. And Mr. John Bounce eat one oyster, and then MIS PL A CED A TTA CHMENT OF MR. JOHN D O UNCE. 58 1 looked at the young lady, and then eat another, and then squeezed the young lady's hand as she was opening the third, and so forth, until he had devoured a dozen of those at eight- pence in less than no time. "Can you open me a half-a-dozen more, my dear?'' in- quired Mr. John Bounce. " I'll see what I can do for you, sir," replied the young lady in blue, even more bewitchingly than before ; and Mr. John Bounce eat half a dozen more of those at eightpence. " You couldn't manage to get me a glass of brandy-and- water, my dear, I suppose 1 " said Mr. John Bounce, when he had finished the oysters ; in a tone which clearly implied his supposition that she could. I'll see, sir," said the young lady ; and away she ran out of the shop, and down the street, her long auburn ringlets shaking in the wind in the most enchanting manner ; and back she came again, tripping over the coal cellar lids like a whipping-top, with a tumbler of brandy-and-water, which Mr. John Bounce insisted on her taking a share of, as it was regular lady's grog — hot, strong, sweet, and plenty of it. So, the young lady sat down with Mr. John Bounce, in a Kttle red box with a green curtain, and took a small sip of the brandy-and-water, and a small look at Mr. John Bounce, and then turned her head away, and went through various other serio-pantomimic fascinations, which forcibly reminded Mr. John Bounce of the first time he courted his first wife, and which made him feel more affectionate than ever; in pursu- ance of which affection, and actuated by which feeling, Mr. John Bounce sounded the young lady on her matrimonial engagements, when the young lady denied having formed any such engagements at all — she couldn't abear the men, they were such deceivers ; thereupon Mr. John Bounce inquired whether this sweeping condemnation was meant to include other than very young men ; on which the young lady blushed deeply — at least she turned away her head, and said Mr. John Bounce had made her blush, so of course she did blush — and Mr. John Bounce was a long time drinking the brandy- and-water ; and, at last, John Bounce went home to bed, and dreamed of his first wife, and his second wife, and the young lady, and partridges, and oysters, and brandy-and-water, and disinterested attachments. The next morning John Bounce was rather feverish with the extra brandy-and-water of the previous night : and partly SKETCHES BY BOZ. in the hope of cooling himself with an oyster, and partly with the view of ascertaining whether he owed the young lady any- thing, or not, went back to the oyster shop. If the young lady had appeared beautiful by night, she was perfectly irre- sistible by day ; and, from this time forward, a change came over the spirit of John Bounce's dream. He bought shirt- pins ; wore a ring on his third finger ; read poetry ; bribed a cheap miniature-painter to perpetrate a faint resemblance to a youthful face, with a curtain over his head, six large books in the background, and an open country in the distance (this he called his portrait) ; went on " altogether in such an up- roarious manner that the three Miss Bounces went off on small pensions, he having made the tenement in Cursitor- street too warm to contain them ; and in short, comported and demeaned himself in every respect like an unmitigated old Saracen, as he was. As to his ancient friends, the other old boys, at the Sir Somebody's Head, he dropped off from them by gradual de- grees ; for, even when he did go there,^ Jones — vulgar fellow that Jones — persisted in asking " when it was to be ? " and whether he was to have any gloves ? " together with other inquiries of an equally offensive nature : at which not only Harris laughed, but Jennings also ; so, he cut the two, alto- gether, and attached himself solely to the blue young lady at the smart oyster-shop. Now comes the moral of the story — for it has a moral after all. The last mentioned young lady, having derived sufficient profit and emolument from John Bounce's attachment, rot only refused, when matters came \o a crisis, to take l.im ^or better for worse, but expressly declared, to use her own for- cible words, that she wouldn't have him at no price ; " and John Bounce, having lost his old friends, alienated his rela- tions, and rendered himself ridiculous to everybody, made offers successively to a schoolmistress, a landlady, a feminine tobacconist, and a housekeeper ; and, being directly rejected by each and every of them, was accepted by his cook, with whom he now lives, a henpecked husband, a melancholy mon- ument of antiquated misery, and a living warning to all uxo- rious old boys. THE MISTAKEN MILLINER, CHAPTER VIII. THE MISTAKEN MILLINER. A TALE OF AMBITION. Miss Amelia Martin was pale, tallish, thin, and two-and- thirty — what ill-natured people would call plain, and police reports interesting. She was a milliner and dressmaker, living on her business and not above it. If you had been a young lady in service, and had wanted Miss Martin, as a great many young ladies in service did, you would just have stepped up, in the evening, to number forty-seven, Drummond-street, George-street, Euston-square, and after casting your eye on a brass door-plate, one foot ten by one and a half, ornamented with a great brass knob at each of the four corners, and bear- ing the inscription Miss Martin ; millinery and dressmaking, in all its branches ; you'd just have knocked two loud knocks at the street-door ; and down would have come Miss Martin herself, in a merino gown of the newest fashion, black velvet bracelets on the genteelest principle, and other little elegan- cies of the most approved description. If Miss Martin knew the young lady who called, or if the young lady who called had been recommended by any other young lady whom Miss Martin knew. Miss Martin would forthwith show her up stairs into the two-pair front, and chat she would — so kind, and so comfortable — it really wasn't like a matter of business, she was so friendly ; and, then Miss Martin, after contemplating the figure and general appearance of the young lady in service with great apparent admiration, would say how well she would look, to be sure, in a low dress with short sleeves : made very full in the skirts, with four tucks in the bottom ; to which the young lady in service would reply in terms expressive of her entire concurrence in the notion, and of the virtuous indignation with which she reflected on the tyranny of " Missis," who wouldn't allow a young girl to wear a short sleeve of an arternoon — no, nor nothing smart, not even a pair of ear-rings ; let alone hiding people's heads of hair under them frightful caps. At the ter- mination of this complaint. Miss Amelia Martin would distantly suggest certain dark suspicions that some people were jealous on account of their own daughters, and were obliged to keep SKETCHES BY BOZ. their servants' charms under, for fear they should get married first, which was no uncommon circumstance — leastways she had known two or three young ladies in service, who had married a great deal better than their missises, and they were not very good-looking either ; and then the young lady would inform Miss Martin in confidence, that how one of their young ladies was engaged to a young man and was a-going to be married, and Misses was so proud about it there was no bearing of her ; but how she needn't hold her head quite so high neither, for, after all, he was only a clerk. And, after expressing due contempt for clerks in general, and the engaged clerk in particular, and the highest opinion possible of them selves and each other, Miss Martin and the young lady in ser- vice would bid each other good-night, in a friendly but per- fectly genteel manner ; and the one went back to her "place," and the other, to her room on the second-floor front. There is no saying how long Miss Amelia Martin might have continued this course of life ; how extensive a connec- tion she might have established among young ladies in service ; or what amount her demands upon their quarterly receipts might have ultimately attained, had not an unforeseen train of circumstances directed her thoughts to a sphere of action very different from dressmaking or millinery. A friend of Miss Martin's who had long been keeping company with an ornamental painter and decorator's journey- man, at last consented (on being at last asked to do so) to name the day which would make the aforesaid journeyman a happy husband. It was a Monday that was appointed for the celebration of the nuptials, and Miss Amelia Martin was in- vited, among others, to honor the wedding-dinner with her presence. It was a charming party ; Somers'-town the local- ity, and a front parlor the apartment. The ornamental painter and decorator's journeyman had taken a house — no lodgings nor vulgarity of that kind, but a house — four beau- tiful rooms, and a delightful little washhouse at the end of the passage — which was the most convenient thing in the world, for the bridesmaids could sit in the front parlor and receive ^ the company, and then run into the little washhouse and see how the pudding and boiled pork were getting on in the cop- per, and then pop back into the parlor again, as snug and comfortable as possible. And such a parlor as it was ! Beau- tiful Kidderminster carpet — six bran-new cane-bottomed, stained chairs — three wineglasses and a tumbler on each side THE MISTAKEN MILLINER. board — farmer's girl and farmer's boy on the mantelpiece : girl tumbling over a stile, and boy spitting himself, on .the handle -of a pitchfork — long white dimity curtains in the win- dow — and, in short, everything on the most genteel scale imaginable. Then, the dinner. There was baked leg of mutton at the top, boiled leg of mutton at the bottom, pair of fowls and leg of pork in the middle ; porter-pots at the corners ; jDepper, mustard, and vinegar in the centre; vegetables on the floor; and plum-pudding and apple-pie and tartlets without number : to say nothing of cheese, and celery, and water-cresses, and all that sort of thing. As to the company ! Miss Amelia Martin herself declared, on a subsequent occasion, that, much as she had heard of the ornamental painter's journeyman's connection, she never could have supposed it was half so gen- teel. There was his father, such a tunny old gentleman — and his mother, such a dear old lady — and his sister, such a charm- ing girl — and his brother, such a manly-looking young man — with such a eye ! But even all these were as nothing when compared with his musical friends, Mr. and Mrs. Jennings Rodolph, from White Conduit, with whom the ornamental painter's journeyman had been fortunate enough to contract an intimacy while engaged in decorating the concert- room of that noble institution. To hear them sing separately, was divine, but when they went through the tragic duet of Red Ruffian, retire ! " it was, as Miss Martin afterwards remarked, thrilling.''' And w4iy (as Mr. Jennings Rodolph observed) why were they not engaged at one of the patent theatres ? If he was to be told that their voices were not powerful enough to fill the House, his only reply was, that he v/ould back him- self for any amount to fill Russell-square — a statement in which the company, after hearing the duet expressed their full belief ; so they all said it was shameful treatment ; and both Mr. and Mrs. Jennings Rodolph said it was shameful too ; and Mr. Jennings Rodolph looked very serious, and said he knew who his malignant opponents were, but they had better take care how far they went, for if they irritated him too much he had not quite made up his mind whether he wouldn't bring the subject before Parliament ; and they all agreed that it " 'ud serve 'em quite right, and it was very proper that such people should be made an example of." So Mr. Jennings Rodolph said he'd think of it. When the conversation resumed its former tone, Mr. Jen- 586 SKETCHES BY BOZ, nings Rodolph claimed his right to call upon a lady, and the right being conceded, trusted Miss Martin would favor the company — a proposal which met with unanimous approbation, whereupon Miss Martin, after sundry hesitatings and cough- ings, with a preparatory choke or two, and an introductory declaration that she was frightened to death to attempt it be- fore such great judges of the art, commenced a species of treble chirruping containing frequent allusions to some young gentleman of the name of Hen-e-ry, with an occasional refer- ence to madness and broken hearts. Mr. Jennings Rodolph, frequently interrupted the progress of the song, by ejacula- ting " Beautiful Charming ! " — Brilliant ! " — " Oh ! splendid," &c. , and at its close the admiration of himself, and his lady, knew no bounds. ^' Did you ever hear so sweet a voice, my dear ? " inquired Mr. Jennings Rodolph of Mrs. Jennings Rodolph. Never ; indeed I never did, love ; " replied Mrs. Jen- nings Rodolph. " Don't you think Miss Martin, with a little cultivation, would be very like Signora Marra Boni, my dear " asked Mr. Jennings Rodolph. " Just exactly the very thing that struck me, my love ; " answered Mrs. Jennings Rodolph. And thus the time passed away ; Mr. Jennings Rodolph played tunes on a walking-stick, and then went behind the parlor-door and gave his celebrated imitations of actors, edge- tools, and animals ; Miss Martin sang several other songs with increased admiration every time ; and even the funny old gentleman began singing. His song had properly seven verses, but as he couldn't recollect more than the first one he sang that over, seven times, apparently very much to his own personal gratification. And then all then all the company sang the national anthem with national independence — each for himself, without reference to the other — and finally sepa- rated : all declaring that they never spent so pleasant an even- ing : and Miss Martin inwardly resolving to adopt the advice of Mr. Jennings Rodolph, and to come out " without delay. Now, coming out," either in acting, or singing, or socie- ty, or facetiousness, or anything else, is all very well, and re- markably pleasant to the individual principally concerned, if he or she can but manage to come out witli a burst, and being out, to keep out, and not go in again ; but, it does unfortu- nately happen that both consummations are extremely diffi- THE MISTAKEN MILLINER. 5^7 cult to accomplish, and that the difficulties, of getting out at all in the first instance, and if you surmount them, of keeping out in the second, are pretty much on a par, and no slight ones either — and so Miss Amelia Martin shortly discovered. It is a singular fact (there being ladies in the case) that Miss Amelia Martin's principal foible was vanity, and the leading characteristic of Mrs. Jennings Rodolph an attachment to dress. Dismal wailings were heard to issue from the second- floor front, of number forty-seven, Drummond-street, George- street, Euston-square ; it was Miss Martin practising. Half- suppressed murmurs disturbed the calm dignity of the White Conduit orchestra at the commencement of the season. It was the appearance of Mrs. Jennings Rodolph in full dress, that occasioned them. Miss Martin studied incessantly — the practising was the consequence. Mrs. Jennings Rodolph taught gratuitously now and then — the dresses were the result. Weeks passed away ; the White Conduit season had be- gun, and progressed, and was more than half over. The dressmaking business had fallen off, from neglect , and its profits had dwindled away almost imperceptibly. A benefit- night approached ; Mr. Jennings Rodolph yielded to the earnest solicitations of Miss Amelia Martin, and introduced her personally to the " coniic gentleman " whose benefit it was. The comic gentleman was all smiles and blandness — he had composed a duet, expressly for the occasion, and Miss Martin should sing it with him. The night arrived ; there was an immense room — ninety-seven sixpenn'orths of gin- and-water, thirty-two small glasses of brandy-and-water, five- and-twenty bottled ales, and forty-one neguses : and the orna- mental painter's journeyman, with his wife and a select circle of acquaintance, were seated at one of the side tables near the orchestra. The concert began. Song — sentimental — by a light-haired young gentleman in a blue coat, and bright basket buttons — [applause]. Another song, doubtful, by another gen- tleman in another blue coat and more bright basket buttons — [increased applause]. Duet, Mr. Jennings Rodolph, and Mrs. Jennings Rodolph, " Red Ruffian, retire ! " — [great applause.] Solo, Miss Julia Montague (positively on this occasion only)— - ^' I am a Friar " — [enthusiasm]. Original duet, comic — Mr. H. Taplin (the comic gentleman) and Miss Martin — " The Time of Day." " Brayvo ! — Brayvo ! " cried the ornamental painter's journeyman's party, as Miss Martin was gracefully led in by the comic gentleman. *' Go to work, Harry," cried the comic 588 SKETCHES BY DOZ, gentleman's personal friends. Tap — tap — tap," went the leader's bow on the music-desk. The symphony began, and was soon afterwards followed by a faint kind of ventriloquial chirping, proceeding apparently from the deepest recesses of the interior of Miss Amelia Martin. " Sing out " — shouted one gentleman in a white great-coat. Don't be afraid to put the; steam on, old gal," exclaimed another, " S — s — s — s — s — s — s" — went the five-and twenty -bottled ales. Shame, shame ! " remonstrated the ornamental painter's journeyman's party — S — s — s — s " — went the bottled ales again, accom- panied by all the gins, and a majority of the brandies. Turn them geese out," cried the ornamental painter's journeyman's party, with great indignation. " Sing out," whispered Mr. Jennings Rodolph " So I do," responded Miss Amelia Martin. Sing louder," said Mrs. Jennings Rodolph, " I can't," replied Miss Amelia Martin, " Off, off, off," cried the rest of the audience. " Bray-vo ! '^ shouted the painter's party. It wouldn't do — Miss Amelia Martin left the orchestra, with much less cer- emony than she had entered it ; and, as she couldn't sing out, never came out. The general good-humor was not restored until Mr. Jennings Rodolph had become purple in the face, by imitating divers quadrupeds for half an hour, without being able to render himself audible ; and, to this day, neither has Miss Amelia Martin's good-humor been restored, nor the dresses made for and presented to Mrs. Jennings Rodolph, nor the vocal abilities which Mr. Jennings Rodolph once staked his professional reputation that Miss Martin possessed. CHAPTER IX. THE DANCING ACADEMY. Of all the dancing academies that ever were established, there never was one more popular in its immediate vicinity than Signer Billsmethi's, of the King's Theatre." It was not in Spring-gardens, or Newman-street, or Berners-street, or Gower-street, or Charlotte-street, or Percy-street, or anj THE DANCING ACADEMY. S89 Other of the numerous streets, which have been devoted time out of mind to professional people, dispensaries, and board- ing-houses ; it was not in the West-end at all — it rather ap- proximated to the eastern portion of London^ being situated in the populous and improving neighborhood of Gray's-inn- lane. It was not a dear dancing academy — four-and-sixpence a quarter is decidedly cheap upon the whole. It was very select, the number of pupils being strictly limited to seventy five, and a quarter's payment in advance being rigidly ex- acted. There was public tuition and private tuition — an as- sembly-room and a parlor. Signor Billsmethi's family were always thrown in with the parlor, and mcluded in parlor price ; that is to say, a private pupil had Signor Billsmethi's parlor to dance and Signor Billsmethi's family to dance with ; and when he had been sufficiently broken in in the parlor, he began to run in couples in the Assembly room. Such was the dancing academy of Signor Billsmethi, when Mr. Augustus Cooper, of Fetter-lane, first saw an unstamped advertisement walking leisurely down Holborn-hill, announc- ing to the world that Signor Billsmethi, of the King's The- atre, intended opening for the season with a Grand Ball. Now, Mr. Augustus Cooper was in the oil and "color line — just of age, with a little money, a little business, and a little mother, who, having managed her husband and his busi- ness 'n his lifetime, took to managing her son and his busi- ness p.£ter his decease ; and so, somehow or other, he had been cooped up in the little back parlor behind the shop on week-days, and in a little deal box without a lid (called by courtesy a pew) at Bethel Chapel, on Sundays, and had seen no more of the world than if he had been an infant all his days ; whereas Young White, at the gas-fitter's over the way, three years younger than him, had been flaring away like winkin' — going to the theatre — supping at harmonic meetings — eating oysters by the barrel — drinking stout by the gallon — - even stopping out all night, and coming home as cool in the morning as if nothing had happened. So Mr. Augustus Cooper made up his mind that he v/ould not stand it any longer, and had that very morning expressed to his mother a firm determination to be blowed,'' in the event of his not being instantly provided with a street-door key. And he was walking down Holborn-hill, thinking about all these things, and wondering how he could manage to get introduced into genteel society for the first time, when his eyes rested on SKETCHES BY BOZ, Signer Billsmethi's announcement, which it immediately struck him was just the very thmg he wanted ; for he should not only be able to select a genteel circle of acquaintance at once, out of the five-and-seventy pupils at four-and-sixpence a quarter, but should qualify himself at the same time to go through a hornpipe in private society, with perfect ease to himself and great delight to his friends. So, he stopped the unstamped advertisement — an animated sandwich, composed of a boy between two boards — and having procured a very small card with the Signer's address indented thereon, walked straight at once to the Signer's house — and very fast he walked too, for fear the list should be filled up, and the five- and-seventy completed, before he got there. The Signor was at home, and, what was still more gratifying, he was an Eng- lishman ! Such a nice man — and so polite ! The list was not full, but it was a most extraordinary circumstance that there was only just one vacancy, and even that one would have been filled up, that very morning, only Signor Billsmethi was dissatisfied with the reference, and, being very much afraid that the lady wasn't select, wouldn't take her. "And very much delighted I am, Mr. Cooper," said Sig- nor Billsmethi, " that I did not take her. I assure you, Mr. Cooper — I don't say it to flatter you, for I know you're above it — that I consider myself extremely fortunate in hav- ing a gentleman of your manners and appearance, sir." " 1 am very glad of it too, sir," said Augustus Cooper. " And I hope we shall be better acquainted, sir," said Signor Billsmethi. "And I'm sure I hope v/e shall too, sir," responded Au- gustus Cooper. Just then, the door opened, and in came a young lady, with her hair curled in a crop all over her head, and her shoes tied in sandals all over her ankles. " Don't run away, my dear," said Signor Billsmethi ; for the young lady didn't know Mr. Cooper was there when she ran in, and was going to run out again in her modesty, all in confusion-like. " Don't run away, my dear," said Signor Bill- smethi, "this is Mr. Cooper — Mr. Cooper, of Fetter-lane. Mr, Cooper, my daughter, sir — Miss Billsmethi, sir, who I hope will have the pleasure of dancing many a quadrille, minuet, gavotte, country-dance, fandango, double-hornpipe, and farinagholkajingo with you, sir. She dances them all, sir; and so shall you, sir, before you're a quarter older, sir." And Signor Billsmethi slapped Mr. Augustus Cooper or THE DANCING ACADEMY. 59' the back, as if he had known him a dozen years, — so friendly , — and Mr. Cooper bowed to the young lady, and the young lady curtseyed to him, and Signer Billsmethi said they were as handsome a pair as ever he'd wish to see ; upon which the young lady exclaimed, " Lor, Pa ! " and blushed as red as Mr. Cooper himself — you might have thought they were both standing under the red lamp at a chemist's shop ; and before Mr. Cooper went away it was settled that he should joui the family circle that very night — taking them just as they were — no ceremony nor nonsense of that kind — and learn his posi- tions in order that he might lose no time, and be able to come out at the forthcoming ball. Well ; Mr. Augustus Cooper went away to one of the cheap shoemakers' shops in Holborn, where gentlemen's dress- pumps are seven and sixpence, and men's strong walking just nothing at all, and bought a pair of the regular seven-and-six- . penny, long-quartered, town mades, in which he astonished himself quite as much as his mother, and sallied forth to Sig- ner Billsmethi's. There were four other private pupils, in the parlor : two ladies and two gentlemen. Such nice people ! Not a bit of pride about them. One of the ladies in particu- lar, who was in training for a Columbine, was remarkably affable ; and she and Miss Billsmethi took such an interest m Mr. Augustus Cooper, and joked, and smiled, and looked so bewitching, that he got quite at home, and learnt his steps in no time- After the practising was over, Signor Billsmethi, and Miss Billsmethi, and Master Billsmethi, and a young lady, and the two ladies, and the two gentlemen, danced a quadrille — none of your slipping and sliding about, but regu- lar warm work, flying into corners, and diving among chairs, and shooting out at the door, — something like dancing ! Signor Billsmethi in particular, notwithstanding his having a little fiddle to play all the time, w^as out on the landing every figure, and Master Billsmethi, when everybody else was breathless, danced a hornpipe, with a cane in his hand, and a cheese-plate on his head, to the unqualified admiration of the whole company. Then, Signor Billsmethi insisted as they were so happy, that they should all stay to supper, and pro- posed sending Master Billsmethi for the beer and spirits, whereupon the two gentlemen swore, " strike 'em wulgar if they'd stand that ; " and were just going to quarrel who should pay for it, when Mr. Augustus Cooper said he would, if they'd have the kindness to allow him — and they had the 592 SKETCHES BY BOZ. kindness to allow him ; and Master Billsmethi brought the beer in a can, and the rum in a quart-pot. They had a regu- ular night of it ; and Miss Billsmethi squeezed Mr. Augustus Cooper's hand under the table ; and Mr. Augustus Cooper returned the squeeze, and returned home too, at something to six o'clock in the morning, when he was put to bed by main force by the apprentice, after repeatedly expressing an uncon- trollable desire to" pitch his revered parent out of the second- floor window, and to throttle the apprentice with his own neck-handkerchief. Weeks had worn on, and the seven-and-sixpenny town- mades had nearly worn out, when the night arrived for the grand dress-ball at which the whole of the five-and-seventy pupils were to meet together, for the first time that season, and to take out some portion of their respective four-and- sixpences in lamp-oil and fiddlers. Mr. Augustus Cooper had ordered a new coat for the occasion — a two-pound-tenner from Turnstile. It was his first appearance in public ; and, after a grand Sicilian shawl-dance by fourteen young ladies in character, he was to opgn the quadrille department with Miss Billsmethi herself, with whom he had become quite intimate since his first introduction. It was a night ! Every- thing was admirably arranged. The sandwich-boy took the hats and bonnets at the street-door ; there was a turn-up bedstead in the back parlor, oii which Miss Billsmethi made tea and coffee for such of the gentlemen chose to pay for it, and such of the ladies as the gentlemen treated ; red port- wine negus and lemonade were handed round at eighteen- pence a head ; and in pursuance of a previous engagement with the public-house at the corner of the street, an extra pot- boy was laid on for the occasion. In short, nothing could exceed the arrangements, except the company. Such ladies ! Such pink silk stockings 1 Such artificial flowers ! Such a number of cabs ! No sooner had one cab set down a couple of ladies, than another cab drove up and set down another couple of ladies, and they all knew : not only one another, but the majority of the gentlemen into the bargain, which made it all as pleasant and lively as could be. Signer Billsmethi, in black tights, with a large blue bow in his buttonhole, intro- duced the ladies to such of the gentlemen as were strangers : and the ladies talked away — and laughed they did — it was delightful to see them. As to the shawl-dance, it was the most exciting thing that THE DANCING ACADEMY. 593 ever was beheld ; there was such a whisking, and rustUng, and fanning, and getting ladies into a tangle with artificial flowers, and then disentangling them again ! And as to Mr. Augustus Cooper s share in the quadrille, he got through it admirably. He was missing from his partner, now and then, certainly, and discovered on such occasions to be either dancing with laudable perseverance in another set, or sliding about in perspective, without any definite object ;but, generally speaking, they managed to shove him through the figure, until he turned up in the right place. Be this as it may, when he had finished, a great many ladies and gentlemen came up and complimented him very much, and said they had never seen a beginner do anything like it before ; and Mr. Augustus Cooper was perfectly satisfied with himself, and everybody else into the bargain ; and stood considerable quantities of spirits-and-water, negus, and compounds, for the use and behoof of two or three dozen very particular friends, selected from the select circle of five-and-seventy pupils. Now^, whether it was the strength of the compounds, or the beauty of the ladies, or what not, it did so happen that Mr. Augustus Cooper encouraged, rather than repelled, the very flattering attentions of a young lady in brown gauze over white calico who had appeared particularly struck with him from the first ; and when the encouragements had been pro- longed for some time, Miss Billsmethi betrayed her spite and jealousy thereat by calling the young lady in brown gauze a creeter," which induced the young lady in brown gauze to retort, in certain sentences containing a taunt founded on the payment of four-and-sixpence a quarter, which reference Mr. Augustus Cooper, being then and there in a state of con- siderable bewilderment, expressed his entire concurrence in. Miss Billsmethi, thus renounced, forthwith began screaming in the loudest key of her voice, at the rate of fourteen screams a minute ; and being unsuccessful, in an onslaught on the eyes and face, first of the lady m gauze and then of Mr. Augustus Cooper, called distractedly on the other three-and- seventy pupils to furnish her with oxalic acid for her own private drinking , and, the call not being honored, made another rush at Mr. Cooper, and then had her stay-lace cut, and was carried off to bed. Mr. Augustus Cooper, not being remarkable for quickness of apprehension, was at a loss to understand what all this meant, until Signor Billsmethi ex- plained it in a most satisfactory manner, by stating to the 594 SKETCHES BY BOZ. pupils, that Mr. Augustus Cooper had made and confirmed divers promises of marriage to his daughter on divers occasions, and had now basely deserted her ; on which, the indignation of the pupils became universal ; and as several chivalrous gentlemen inquired rather pressingly of Mr. Augustus Cooper, whether he required anything for his own use, or, in other words, whether he wanted anything for himself,^' he deemed it prudent to make a precipitate retreat. And the upshot of the matter was, that a lawyer's letter came next day, and an action w^as commenced next week ; and that Mr. Augustus Cooper, after walking twice to the Serpentine for the purpose of drowning himself, and coming twice back without doing it, made a confidante of his mother, who compromised the matter with twenty pounds from the till : which made twenty pounds four shillings and sixpence paid to Signer Billsmethi, exclusive of treats and pumps. And Mr. Augustus Cooper w^ent back and lived ^vith his mother, and there he lives to this day ; and as he has lost his ambition for society, and never goes into the w^orld, he will never see this account of himself, and will never be any the wiser. CHAPTER X. SHABBY-GENTEEL PEOPLE. There are certain descriptions of people who, oddly enough, appear to appertain exclusively to the metropolis. You meet them, every da}^, in the streets of London, but no one ever encounters them elsewhere ; they seem indigenous to the soil, and to belong as exclusively to London as its own smoke, or the dingy bricks and mortar. We could illustrate the remark by a variety of examples, but, in our present sketch, we will only advert to one class as a specimen — that class which is so aptly and expressively designated as " shabby- genteel." Now, shabby people, God knows, may be found anywhere, and genteel people are not articles of greater scarcity out of London than in it ; but this compound of the two — this shabby-gentility — is as purely local as the statue at Charing- \ SHABBY-GENTEEL PEOPLE, S9S cross, or the pump at Aldgate. It is worthy of remark, too, that only men are shabby-genteel ; a woman is always either dirty and slovenly in the extreme, or neat and respectable, however poverty-stricken in appearance. A very poor man, " who has seen better days," as the phrase goes, is a strange compound of dirty-slovenliness and wretched attempts at faded smartness. We will endeavor to explain our conception of the termj which forms the title of this paper. If you meet a man^ lounging up Drury-Lane, or leaning with his back against a post in Long-acre, with his hands in the pockets of a pair of drab trousers plentifully besprinkled with grease-spots : the trousers made very full over the boots, and ornamented with two cords down the outside of each leg — wearing, also, what has been a brown coat with bright buttons, and a hat very much pmched up at the sides, cocked over his right eye — don't pity him. He is not shabby-genteel. The ^' harmonic meetings " at some fourth-rate public house, or the purlieus of a private theatre, are his chosen haunts ^ he entertains a rooted antipathy to any kind of work, and is on familiar terms with several pantomime men at the large houses. But, if you see hurrying along a by -street, keeping as close as he can to the area-railings, a man of about forty or fifty, clad m an old rusty suit of threadbare black cloth which shines with con- stant wear as if it had been beeswaxed — the trousers tightly strapped down, partly for the look of the thing and partly to keep his old shoes from slipping off at the heels, — if you observe, too, that his yellowish-white neckerchief is carefully pinned up, to conceal the tattered garment underneath, and that his hands are encased in the remains of an old pair of beaver gloves, you may set him down as a shabby-genteel man. A glance at that depressed face, and timorous air of conscious poverty, will make your heart ache — always sup- posing that you are neither a philosopher nor a political econ- omist We were once haunted by a shabby-genteel man ; he was bodily present to our senses all day, and he was in our mind's eye all night. The man of whom Sir Walter Scott speaks in his Demonology, did not suffer half the persecution from his imaginary gentleman-usher in black velvet, that we sustained from our friend in quondam black cloth. He first attracted our notice, by sitting opposite to us in the reading-room at the British Museum ; and what made the man more remark* 596 SKETCHES BY BOZ. able was, that he always had before him a couple of shabby genteel books — two old dogs-eared folios, in mouldy worm-eater covers, which had once been smart. He was in his chair, every morning, just as the clock struck ten ; he was always the last to leave the room in the afternoon ; and when he did, he quitted it with the air of a man who knew not where else to go, for warmth and quiet. There he used to sit all day, as close to the table as possible, in order to conceal the lack of buttons on his coat : with his old hat carefully de- posited at his feet, where he evidently flattered himself it escaped observation. About two o'clock, you would see him munching a French roll or a penny loaf ; not taking it boldly out of his pocket at once, like a man who knew he was only making a lunch ; but breaking off little bits in his pocket, and eating them by stealth. He knew too well it was his dinner. When we first saw this poor object, we thought it quite impossible that his attire could ever become worse. We even went so far, as to speculate on the possibility of his shortly ap- pearing in a decent second-hand suit. We knew nothing about the matter ^ he grew more and more shabby-genteel every day. The buttons dropped off his waistcoat, one by one ; then, he buttoned his coat ; and when one side of his coat was reduced to the same condition as the waistcoat, he but- toned it over on the other side. He looked somewhat better at the beginning of the week than at the conclusion, because the neckerchief, though yellow, was not quite so dingy ; and, in the midst of all this wretchedness, he never appeared with- out gloves and straps. He remained in this state for a week or two. At length, one of the buttons on the back of the coat fell off, and then the man himself disappeared, and we thought he was dead. We were sitting at the same table about a week after his disappearance, and as our eyes rested on his vacant chair, we insensibly fell into a train of meditation on the subject of his retirement from public life. We were wondering whether he had hung himself, or thrown himself off a bridge — whether he really was dead or had only been arrested — when our con- jectures were suddenly set at rest by the entry of the man himself. He had undergone some strange metamorphosis, and walked up the centre of the room with an air which showed he was fully conscious of the improvement in his ap- pearance. It was very odd. His clothes were a fine, deep. SHABBY-GENTEEL PEOPLE. 597 glossy black ; and yet they looked lik^ the same suit ; nay, there were the very darns with which old acquaintance had made us familiar. The hat, too — nobody could mistake the shape of that hat, with its high crown gradually increasing in circumference towards the top. Long service had imparted to it a reddish-brown tint ; but, now, it was as black as the coat. The truth flashed suddenly upon us — they had been ''revived." It is a deceitful liquid that black and blue reviver ; we have watched its. effects on many a shabby-gen- teel man. It betrays its victims into a temporary assumption of importance : possibly into the purchase of a new pair of gloves, or a cheap stock, or some other trifling article of dress. It elevates their spirits for a week, only to depress them, if possible, below their original level. It was so in this case ; the transient dignity of the unhappy man decreased, in exact proportion as the " reviver " wore off. The knees of the unmentionables, and the elbows of the coat, and the seams generally, soon began to get alarmingly white. The hat was once more deposited under the table, and its owner crept into his seat as quietly as ever. There was a week of incessant small rain and mist. At its expiration the " reviver " had entirely vanished, and the shabby-genteel man never afterwards attempted to effect any improvement in his outward appearance. It would be difficult to name any particular part of town as the principal resort of shabby-genteel men. We have met a great many persons of this description in the neighborhood of the inns of court. They may be met with, in Holborn, between eight and ten any morning ; and whoever has the curiosity to enter the Insolvent Debtors' Court will observe, both among spectators and practitioners, a great variety of them. We never went on 'Change, by any chance, without seeing some shabby-genteel men, and we have often wondered what earthly business they can have there. They will sit there, for hours, leaning on great, dropsical, mildewed um- brellas, or eating Abernethy biscuits. Nobody speaks to them, nor they to any one. On consideration, we remember to have occasionally seen two shabby-genteel men conversing together on 'Change, but our experience assures us that this is an uncommon circumstance, occasioned by the offer of a pinch of snuff, or some such civility. It would be a task of equal difficulty, either to assign any particular spot for the residence of these beings, or to en- 59^ SKETCHES BY BOZ. deavor to enumerate tl>eir general occupations. We were nevei engaged in business with more than one shabby-genteel man ^ and he was a drunken engraver, and lived in a damp black parlor in a new row of houses at Camden-town, half street, half brick-field, somewhere near the canal. A shabby-genteel man may have no occupation, or he may be a corn agent, or a coal agent, or a wine merchant, or a collector of debts, or a broker's assistant, or a broken-down attorney. He may be a clerk of the lowest description, or a contributor to the press of the same grade. Whether our readers have noticed these men, in their walks, as often as we have, we know not ; this we know — that the miserably poor man (no matter whether he owes his distresses to his own conduct, or that of others) who feels his poverty and vainly strives to conceal it, is one of the most pitiable objects in human nature. Such objects, with few exceptions, are shabby-genteel people. CHAPTER XI. MAKING A NIGHT OF IT. Damon and Pythias were undoubtedly very good fellows in their way : the former for his extreme readiness to put in special bail for a friend : and the latter for a certain trump- like punctuality in turning up just in the very nick of time, scarcely less remarkable. Many points in their character have, however, grown obsolete. Damons are rather hard to find, in these days of imprisonment for debt (except the sham ones, and they cost half-a-crown) ; and, as to the Pythiases, the few that have existed in these degenerate times, have had an unfortunate knack of making themselves scarce, at the very moment when their appearance would have been strictly classical. If the actions of these heroes, however, can find no parallel in modern times, their friendship can. We have Damon and Pythias on the one hand. We have Potter and Smithers on the other ; and, lest the two last-mentioned names should never have reached the ears of our unenlightened readers, we can do no better than make them acquainted with the owners thereof. MAKING A NIGHT OF IT. 599 Mr. Thomas Potter, then, was a clerk in the city, and Mr. Robert Smithers was a ditto in the same ; their incomes were limited, but their friendship was unbounded. They lived in the same street, walked into town every morning at the ^ame hour, dined at the same slap-bang every day, and r«ve]-ed in each other's company every night. They were knii" together by the closest ties of intimacy and friendship, or, as Mr. Thomas Potter touchingly observed, they were thick-and- thin pals, and nothing but it." There was a spice of romance in Mr. Smithers's disposition, a ray of poetry, a gieam of mis- ery, a sort of consciousness of he didn't exactly know what, coming across him he didn't precisely know why — which stood out in fine relief against the off-hand, dashing, ama- teur-pickpocket-sort-of-manner, which distinguished Mr. Pot- ter in an eminent degree. The peculiarity of their respective dispositions, extended itself to their individual costume. Mr. Smithers generally appeared in public in a surtout and shoes, with a narrow black neckerchief and a brown hat, very much turned up at the sides — peculiarities which Mr. Potter wholly eschewed, for it Vv^as his ambition to do something to the celebrated kiddy" or stage-coach way, and he had even gone so far as to invest capital in the purchase of a rough blue coat with wooden but- tons, made upon the fireman's principle, in which, with the addition of a low-crowned, flower-pot-saucer-shaped hat, he had created no inconsiderable sensation at the Albion in Little Russell-street, and divers other places of public and fashion- able resort. Mr. Potter and Mr. Smithers had mutually agreed that, on the receipt of their quarter's salary, they would jointly and in company " spend the evening " — an evident misnomer — the spending applying, as everybody knows, not to the evening itself but to all the money the individual may chance to be possessed of, on the occasion to. which reference is made ; and they had likewise agreed that, on the evening aforesaid, they would make a night of it " — an expressive term, imply- ing the borrowing of several hours from to-morrow morning, adding them to the night before, and manufacturing a com- pound night of the whole. The quarter-day arrived at last — we say at last, because quarter-days are as eccentric as comets : moving wonderfully quick when you have good deal to pay, and marvellously slow when you have a Uttle to receive. Mr. Thomas Potter and 26 6oo SKETCHES BY BOZ. Mr. Robert Smithers met by appointment to begin the even- ing with a dinner ; and a nice, snug, comfortable dinner they had, consisting of a Uttle procession of four chops and four kidneys, following each other, supported on either side by a pot of the real draught stout, and attended by divers cushions of bread, and wedges of cheese. When the cloth was removed, Mr. Thomas Potter ordered the waiter to bring in, two goes of his best Scotch whiskey, with warm water and sugar, and a couple of his " very mild- est " Havannas, which the waiter did. Mr. Thomas Potter mixed his grog, and lighted his cigar ; Mr. Robert Smithers did the same ; and then, Mr. Thomas Potter jocularly pro- posed as the first toast, " the abolition of all offices whatever (not sinecures, but counting-houses), which was immediately drunk by Mr. Robert Smithers, with enthusiastic applause. So they went on, talking politics, puffing cigars, and sipping whiskey-and-water, until the ^'goes" — most appropriately so called — were both gone, which Mr. Robert Smithers perceiv- ing, immediately ordered in two more goes of the best Scotch whiskey, and two more of the very mildest Havannas ; and the goes kept coming in, and the mild Havannas kept going out, until, what with the drinking, and lighting, and puffing, and the stale ashes on the table, and the tallow-grease on the cigars, Mr. Robert Smithers began to doubt the mildness of the Havannas, and to feel very much as if he had been sitting in a hackney-coach with his back to the horses. As to Mr. Thomas Potter, he would keep laughing out loud, and volunteering inarticulate declarations that he was "all right in proof of which, he feebly bespoke the evening paper after the next gentleman, but finding it a matter of some difficulty to discover any news in its columns, or to ascertain distinctly whether it had any columns at all, walked slowly out to look for the moon, and, after coming back quite pale wdth looking up at the sky so long, and attempting to express mirth at Mr. Robert Smithers having fallen asleep, by various galvanic chuckles, laid his head on his arm, and went to sleep, also. When he awoke again, Mr. Robert Smithers awoke too, and they both very gravely agreed that it was extremely unwise to eat so many pickled walnuts with the chops, as it was a notorious fact that they always made people queer and sleepy; indeed, if it had not been for the whiskey and cigars, there was no knowing what harm they mightn^t have done 'em. So they took some coffee, and after paying the bill, — twelve MAKING A NIGHT OF IT. 60 1 and twopence the dinner, and the odd tenpence for the waiter . — thirteen shillings in all — started out on their expedition to manufacture a night. It was just half-past eight, so they thought they couldn't do better than go at half-price to the slips at the City Theatre, which they did accordingly. Mr. Robert Smithers, who had become extremely poetical after the settlement of the bill, enlivening the walk by informing Mr. Thomas Potter in con- fidence that he felt an inward presentiment of approaching dissolution, and subsequently embellishing the theatre, by falling asleep, with his head and both arms gracefully droop- ing over the front of the boxes. Such was the quiet demeanor of the unassuming Smithers, and such were the happy effects of Scotch whiskey and Havannas on that interesting person ! But Mr. Thomas Potter, whose great aim it was to be considered as a ^' know- ing card,'' a " fast goer," and so forth, conducted himself in a very different manner, and commenced going very fast indeed — rather too fast at last, for the patience of the audience to keep pace with him. On his first entry, he contented himself by earnestly calling upon the gentlemen in the gallery to flare up," accompanying the demand with another request, expressive of his wish that they would instantaneously *'form a union," both which requisitions were responded to, in the manner most in vogue on such occasions. Give that dog a bone ! " cried one gentleman in his shirt- sleeves. " Where have you been a having half a pint of intermediate beer ? " cried a second. Tailor ! " screamed the third. Bar- ber's clerk !" shouted a fourth. "Throw him o — ver ! " roared a fifth ; while numerous voices concurred in desiring Mr. Thomas Potter to " go home to his mother ! " All these taunts Mr. Thomas Potter received with supreme contempt, cocking the low-crowned hat a little more on one side, when- ever any reference was made to his personal appearance, and, standing up with his arms a-kimbo, expressing defiance melo dramatically. The overture — to which these various sounds had been an ad libitum accompaniment — concluded, the second piece be- gan, and Mr. Thomas Potter, emboldened by impunity, pro ceeded to behave in a most unprecedented and outrageous manner. First of all, he imitated the shake of the principal female singer ; then, groaned at the blue fire, then, affected 602 SKETCHES BY BOZ. to be frightened into convulsions of terror at the appearance of the ghost ; and, lastly, not only made a running commentary, in an audible voice, upon the dialogue on the stage, but actually awoke Mr. Robert Smithers, who, hearing his com- panion making a noise, and having a very indistinct notion where he was, or what was required of him, immediately, by way of imitating a good example, set up the most unearthly unremitting, and appalling howling that ever audience h^rd. It was too much. " Turn them out ! " was the general cry. A noise, as of shuffling of feet, and men being knocked up with violence against wainscoting, was heard • a hurried dia- logue of Come out ? " — "I won't ! " — " You shall ! " — "I shan't ! " — Give me your card. Sir ? '' — You're a scoundrel, Sir ! " and so forth, succeeded. A round of applause beto- kened the approbation of the audience, and Mr. Robert Smithers and Mr. Thomas Potter found themselves shot with astonishing swiftness into the road, without having had the trouble of once putting foot to ground during the whole pro- gress of their rapid descent. Mr. Robert Smithers, being constitutionally one of the slow-goers, and having had quite enough of fast-going, in the course of his recent expulsion, to last until the quarter-day then next ensuing at the very least, had no sooner emerged with his companion from the precincts of Milton-street, than he proceeded to indulge in circuitous references to the beauties of sleep, mingled with distant allusions to the propriety of returning to Islington, and testing the influence of their patent Bramahs over the street-door locks to which they re- spectively belonged. Mr. Thomas Potter, however, was valor- ous and peremptory. They had come out to make a night of it : and a night must be made. So Mr. Robert Smithers, who was three parts dull, and the other dismal, despairingly assented ; and they went into a wine-vault, to get materials for assisting them in making a night ; where they found a good many young ladies, and various old gentlemen and a plentiful sprinkling of hackney-coachmen and cab-drivers, all drinking and talking together ; and Mr. Thomas Potter and Mr. Robert Smithers drank small glasses of brandy, and large glasses of soda, until they began to have a very confused idea, either of things in general, or of anything in particular ; and, when they had done treating themselves they began to treat everybody else ; and the rest of the entertainment was a con- fused mixture of heads and heels, black eyes and blue uniforms, mud and gas-lights, thick doors, and stone paving. THE PRISONERS' VAN: 603 Then, as standard novelists expressively inform us — " all was a blank ! " and in the morning the blank was filled up with the words " Station-house." and the station-house was filled up with Mr. Thomas Potter, Mr. Robert Smithers, and the major part of their wine-vault companions of the preceding night, with a comparatively small portion of clothing of any kind. And it was disclosed at the Police-office, to the indigna- tion of the Bench, and the astonishment of the spectators, how one Robert Smithers, aided and abetted bv one Thomas Potter, had knocked down and beaten, in divers streets, at different times, five men, four boys, and three women ; how the said Thomas Potter had feloniously obtained possession of five door-knockers, two bell-handles, and a boni^et ; how Robert Smithers, his friend, had sworn, at least forty pounds' worth of oaths, at the rate of five shillings a piece ; terrified whole streets full of Her Majesty's subjects with awful shrieks and alarms of fire ; destroyed the uniforms of five policemen ; and committed various other atrocities, too numerous to recapitulate. And the magistrate, after an appropriate repri- mand, fined Mr. Thomas Potter and Mr. Robert Smithers five shillings each, for being, what the law vulgarly terms, drunk ; and thirty-four pounds for seventeen assaults at forty shillings a-head, with liberty to speak to the prosecutors. The prosecutors were spoken to, and Messrs. Potter and Smithers lived on credit, for a quarter, as best they might ; and, although the prosecutors expressed their readiness to be assaulted twice a week, on the same terms, they have never since been detected in making a night of it." CHAPTER XII. THE prisoners' VAN. We w^ere passing the corner of Bow-street, on our return from a lounging excursion the other afternoon, when a crowd, assembled round the door of the Police Office, attracted our attention. We turned up the street accordingly. There were thirty or forty people, standing on the pavement and half across the road ; and a few stragglers were patiently stationed 6o4 SKETCHES BY BOZ. on the opposite side of the way — all evidently waiting in ex< pectation of some arrival. We waited too, a few minutes, but nothing occurred ; so, we turned round to an unshorn, sallow- looking cobbler, who was standing next us with his hands under the bib of his apron, and put the usual question of What's the matter ? " The cobbler eyed us from head to foot, with superlative contempt, and laconically replied ^' Nuffin." Now, we were perfectly aware that if two men stop in the street to look at any given object, or even to gaze in the air, two hundred men will be assembled in no time ; but, as we knew very well !i;aw him whispering to her, and she crying; and then I'll 640 SKETCHES BY BOZ. swear I heard him say something about to-night when we were all in bed/' " They're talking of us ! " exclaimed the agonized Mrs. Tibbs, as the painful suspicion, and a sense of their situation, flashed upon her mind. I know it — I know it," replied Evenson, with a melan- choly consciousness that there was no mode of escape. " What's to be done t we cannot both stop here !" ejacu- lated Mrs. Tibbs, in a state of partial derangement. " I'll get up the chimney," replied Evenson, who really meant what he said. "You can't," said Mrs. Tibbs, in despair. " You can't — it's a register stove." " Hush I " repeated John Evenson. " Hush — hush ! " cried somebody down stairs. What a d — d hushing ! " said Alfred Tomkins, who be- gan to get rather bewildered. " There they are ! " exclaimed the sapient Wisbottle, as a rustling noise was heard in the store-room. " Hark ! " whispered both the young men. " Hark ! " repeated Mrs. Tibbs and Evenson. Let me alone, sir," said a female voice in the store- room. Oh, Hagnes ! " cried another voice, which clearly be- longed to Tibbs, for nobody else ever owned one like it. "Oh, Hagnes — lovely creature ! " "Be quiet, sir! " (A bounce.) " Hag—" " Be quiet, sir — I am ashamed of you. Think of your wife, Mr„ Tibbs. Be quiet, sir ! " " My wife ! " exclaimed the valorous Tibbs, who was clearly under the influence of gin-and-water, and a misplaced attachment ^ " I ate her ! Oh, Hagnes ! when I was in the volunteer corps, in eighteen hundred and — " " I declare I'll scream. Be quiet, sir, will you?" (An- Dther bounce and a scuffle.) " What's that ? " exclaimed Tibbs, with a start. " What's what ? " said Agnes, stopping short. " Why, that ! " " Ah ! you have done it nicely now, sir," sobbed the fright- ened Agnes, as a tapping was heard at Mrs. Tibbs's bedroom door, which would have beaten any dozen woodpeckers hol< low. THE BOARDING-HOUSE, 641 " Mrs. Tibbs ! Mrs. Tibbs ! " called out M rs. Bloss. " Mrs. Tibbs, pray get up." (Here the imitation of a woodpecker was resumed with tenfold violence.) " Oh, dear — dear ! " exclaimed the wretched partner of the depraved Tibbs. " She's knocking at my door. We must be discovered ! What will they think ? " " Mrs. Tibbs ! Mrs. Tibbs ! " screamed the woodpecker again, " What's the matter ! " shouted Gobler, bursting out of the back drawing-room, like the dragon at Astley's. Oh, Mr. Gobler ! " cried Mrs. Bloss, with a proper ap- proximation to hysterics ; " I think the house is on fire, or else there's thieves in it. I have heard the most dreadful noises 1" f The devil you have ! " shouted Gobler again, bouncing back into his den, in happy imitation of the aforesaid dragon, and returning immediately with a lighted candle. " Why, what's this ? Wisbottle ! Tomkins ! O 'Bleary ! Agnes ! What the deuce ! all up and dressed ? " " Astonishing ! " said Mrs. Bloss, who had run down stairs and taken Mr. Gobler's arm. Call Mrs. Tibbs directly, somebody," said Gobler, turn - ing into the front drawing-room. — What ! Mrs. Tibbs and Mr. Evenson ! ! " Mrs. Tibbs and Mr. Evenson ! " repeated everybody, as that unhappy pair were discovered : Mrs. Tibbs seated in an arm-chair by the fireplace, and Mr. Evenson standing by her side. We must leave the scene that ensued to the reader's imagination. We could tell, how Mrs. Tibbs forthwith fainted away, and how it required the united strength of Mr. Wisbottle and Mr. Alfred Tomkins to hold her in her chair ; how Mr. Evenson explained, and how his explanation was evidently disbelieved ; how Agnes repelled the accusations of Mrs. Tibbs by proving that she was negotiating with Mr. O'Bleary to influence her mistress's affections in his behalf ; and how Mr. Gobler threw a damp counterpane on the hopes of Mr. O'Bleary by avowing that he (Gobler) had already proposed to, and been accepted by, Mrs. Bloss ; how Agnes was dis- charged from that lady's service ; how Mr. O'Bleary dis- charged himself from Mrs. Tibbs's house, without going through the form of previously discharging his bill ; and how that disappointed young gentleman rails against England and 64^ SKE TCHES B V BOZ. the English, and vows there is no virtue or fine feeling extant, except in Ireland." We repeat that we cotild X,^\\ all this, but we love to exercise our self-denial, and we therefore prefer leaving it to be imagined. The lady whom we have hitherto described as Mrs. Bloss, is no more. Mrs. Gobler exists : Mrs. Bloss has left us for ever. In a secluded retreat in Newington Butts, far, far re- moved from the noisy strife of that great boarding-house, the world, the enviable Gobler and his pleasing wife revel in re- tirement : happy in their complaints, their table, and their medicine ; wafted through life by the grateful prayers of all the purveyors of animal food within three miles round. We would willingly stop here, but we have a painful duty imposed upon us, which we must discharge. Mr. and Mrs. Tibbs have separated by mutual consent, Mrs. Tibbs receiving one moiety of 43/. 15^-. 10^., which we before stated to be the amount of her husband's annual income, and Mr. Tibbs the other. He is spending the evening of his days in retirement ; and he is spending also, annually, that small but honorable independence. He resides among the original settlers at Walworth ; and it has been stated, on unquestionable authority, that the conclusion of the volunteer story has been heard in a small tavern in that respectable neighborhood. The unfortunate Mrs. Tibbs has determined to dispose of the whole of her furniture by public auction, and to retire from a residence in which she has suffered so much. Mr. Robins has been applied to, to conduct the sale, and the transcendent abilities of the literary gentlemen connected with his establishment are now devoted to the task of drawing up the preliminary advertisement. It is to contain, among a variety of brilliant matter, seventy-eight words in large capitals, and six original quotations in inverted commas. CHAPTER II. MR. MINNS AND HIS COUSIN. Mr. Augustus Minns was a bachelor, of about forty as he said — of about eight-and-forty as his friends said. He was always exceedingly clean, precise, and tidy ; perhaps some- what priggish, and the most retiring man in the world. He MR. MINNS AND HIS COUSIN, 643 usually wore a brown frock-coat without a wrinkle, light inex- plicables without a spot, a neat neckerchief with a remarkably neat tie, and boots without a fault ; moreover, he always carried a brown silk umbrella with an ivory handle. He was a clerk in Somerset-house, or, as he said himself, he held a responsible situation under Government," He had a good and increasing salary, in addition to some 10,000/. of his own (invested in the funds), and he occupied a first floor in Tavistock-street, Covent-garden, where he had resided for twenty years, having been in the habit of quarrelling with his landlord the whole time : regularly giving notice of his inten- tion to quit on the first day of every quarter, and as regularly countermanding it on the second. There were two classes of created objects which he held in the deepest and most un- mingled horror ? these were dogs, and children. He was not unamiable, but he could, any time, have viewed the execution of a dog, or the assassination of an infant, with the liveliest satisfaction. Their habits were at variance with his love of order ; and his love of order was as powerful as his love of life. Mr. Augustus Minns had no relations, in or near Lon- don, with the exception of his cousin, Mr. Octavius Budden, to whose sgn, whom he had never seen (for he disliked the father) he had .consented to become godfather by proxy. Mr. Budden having realized a moderate fortune by exercising the trade or calling of a corn-chandler, and having a great pre- dilection for the country, had purchased a cottage in the vicinity of Stamford-hill, whither he retired with the wife of his bosom, and his only son, Master Alexander Augustus Budden. One evening, as Mr. and Mrs. B. were admiring their son, discussing his various merits, talking over his education, and disputing whether the classics should be made an essential part thereof, the lady pressed so strongly upon her husband the propriety of cultivating the friendship of Mr. Minns in be- half of their son, that Mr. Budden at last made up his mind, that it should not be his fault if he and his cousin were not in future more intimate. I'll break the ice, m'y love," said Mr. Budden, stirring up the sugar at the bottom of his glass of brandy-and-water, and casting a sidelong look at his spouse to see the effect of the announcement of his determination, "by asking Minns down to dine with us, on Sunday." " Then, pray Budden write to your cousin at once," re- plied Mrs. Budden. " Who knows, if we could only get him 644 SKETCHES BY DOZ. down here, but he might take a fancy to our Alexander, and leave him his property ? — Alick, my dear, take your legs off the rail of the chair ! " " Very true," said Mr. Budden, musing, " very true indeed, my love ! " On the following morning, as Mr. Minns was sitting at his breakfast-table, alternately biting his dry toast and casting a look upon the columns of his morning paper, which he always read from the title to the printer's name, he heard a loud knock at the street-door ; which was shortly afterwards fol- lowed by the entrance of his servant, who put into his hand a particularly small card, on which was engraven in immense letters, " Mr. Octavius Budden, Amelia Cottage (Mrs. B.'s name was Amelia), Poplar-walk, Stamford-hill." Budden ! " ejaculated Minns, ^' what can bring that vulgar man here ! — say I'm asleep — say I'm out, and shall never be home again — anything to keep him down stairs." " But please, sir, the gentleman's coming up," replied the servant, and the fact was made evident, by an appalling creaking of boots on the staircase accompanied by a pat- tering noise ; the cause of which, Minns could not, for the life of him divine. " Hem — show the gentleman in," said the unfortunate bachelor. Exit servant, and enter Octavius preceded by a large white dog, dressed in a suit of fleecy hosiery, with pink eyes, large ears, and no perceptible tail. The cause of the pattering on the stairs was but too plain. Mr. Augustus Minns staggered beneath the shock of the dog's appearance. My dear fellow, how are you ? " said Budden, as he entered. He always spoke at the top of his voice, and always said the same thing half-a-dozen times. How are you, my hearty ? " " How do you do, Mr. Budden ? — pray take a chair ! " politely stammered the discomfited Minns. " Thank you — thank you — well — how are you, eh ? " Uncommonly well, thank you," said Minns, casting a diabolical look at the dog, who, with his hind legs on the floor, and his fore paws resting on the table, was dragging a bit of bread and butter out of a plate, preparatory to devouring it, with the buttered side next the carpet. " Ah, you rogue ! " said Budden to his dog ; " you see, MR. MINNS AND HIS COUSIN. 64S Minns, he's like me, always at home, eh, my boy ? — Egad, I'm precious hot and hungry! I've walked all the way from Stamford-hill this morning." " Have you breakfasted ? " inquired Minns. " Oh, no ! — came to breakfast with you ; so ring the bell, my dear fellow, will you ? and let's have another cup and saucer, and the cold ham. — Make myself at home, you see ! " con- tinued Budden, dusting his boots with a table-napkin. " Ha ! — ^ha ! — ha !— 'pon my life, I'm hungry." Minns rang the bell, and tried to smile. " I decidedly never was so hot in my life," continued Octavius, wiping his forehead ; ^' well, but how are you, Minns } 'Pon my soul, you wear capitally ! " " D'ye think so 1 " said Minns ; and he tried another smile. " 'Pon my life, I do ! " " Mrs. B. and — what's his name — quite well ? " " Alick — my son, you mean ; never better — never better. But at such a place as we've got at Poplar-walk, you know, he couldn't be ill if he tried. When I first saw it, by Jove ! it looked so knowing, with the front garden, and the green railings, and the brass knocker, and all that — I really thought it was a cut above me." " Don't you think you'd like the ham better," interrupted Minns, if you cut it the other way ? " He saw, with feelings which it is impossible to describe, that his visitor was cutting or rather maiming the ham, in utter violation of all established rules. " No, thank ye," returned Budden, with the most bar- barous indifference to crime, I prefer it this way, it eats short. But I say, Minns, when will you come down and see us t You will be delighted with the place ; I know you will. Amelia and I were talking about you the other night, and Amelia said — another lump of sugar, please \ thank ye — she said, don't you think you could contrive, my dear, to say to Mr. Minns, in a friendly way — come down, sir — damn the dog ! he's spoiling your curtains, Minns — ha ! — ha ! — ha ! " Minns leaped from his seat as though he had received the discharge from a galvanic battery. ^' Come out, sir ! — go out, hoo ? " cried poor Augustus, keeping nevertheless, at a very respectful distance from the dog ; having read of a case of hydrophobia in the paper of that morning. By dint of great exertion, much shouting, and 646 SKETCHES B Y BOZ. a marvellous deal of poking under the tables with a stick and umbrella, the dog was at last dislodged, and placed on the landing outside the door, where he immedia'tely commenced a most appalling howling ; at the same tim.e vehemently scratching the paint off the two nicely-varnished bottom panels, until they resembled the interior of a back-gammon- board. A good dog for the country that ! " coolly observed Budden to the distracted Minns, but he's not much used to confinement. But now, Minns, when will you come down ? I'll take no denial, positively. Let's see, to-day's Thursday. — Will you come on Sunday ? We dine at five, don't say no —do." After a great deal of pressing, Mr. Augustus Minns, driven to despair, accepted the invitation, and promised to be at Poplar-walk on the ensuing Sunday, at a quarter before five to the minute. " Now mind the direction," said Budden : the coach goes from the Flower-pot, in Bishopsgate-street, every half hour. When the coach stops at the Swan, you'll see, immediately opposite you, a white house." " Which is your house — I understand," said Minns, wishing to cut short the visit, and the story, at the same time. No, no, that's not mine ; that's Grogus's, the great iron- monger's. I was going to say — you turn down by the side of the white house till you can't go another step further — mind that 1 — and then you turn to your right, by some stables — • well ; close to you, you'll see a wall with * Beware of the Dog ' written on it in large letters — (Minns shuddered) — go along by the side of that wall for about a quarter of a mile — and anybody will show you which is my place." " Very well — thank ye — good-by." "Be punctual." " Certainly ; good-morning." " I say, Minns, you've got a card." " Yes, I have ; thank ye." And Mr. Octavius Budden departed leaving his cousin looking forward to his visit on the following Sunday, with the feelings of a penniless poet to the weekly visit of his Scotch landlady. Sunday arrived ; the sky was bright and clear ; crowds of people were hurrying along the streets, intent on their different schemes of pleasure for the day ; everything and MR. MINNS AND HIS COUSIN. 647 everybody looked cheerful and happy except Mr. Augustus Minns. The day was fine, but the heat was considerable ; when Mr. Minns had fagged up the shady side of Fleet-street, Cheapside, and Threadneedie-street, he had become pretty warm, tolerably dusty, and it was getting late into the bargain. By the most extraordinary good fortune, however, a coach was waiting at the Flower-pot, into which Mr. Augustus Minns got, on the solemn assurance of the cad that the vehicle would start in three minutes — that being the very ut- most extremity of time it was allowed to wait by Act of Parlia- ment. A quarter of an hour elapsed, and there were no signs of moving. Minns looked at his watch for the sixth time. " Coachman, are you going or not ? bawled Mr. Minns, with his head and half his body out of the coach-window. " Di — rectly, sir,*' said the coachman, with his hands in his pockets, looking as much unlike a man in a hurry as possible. " Bill, take them cloths off.'' Five minutes more elapsed : at the end of which time the coachman mounted the box, from whence he looked down the street, and up the street, and hailed all the pedestrians for another five minutes. " Coachman ! if you don't go this moment, I shall get out," said Mr. Minns, rendered desperate by the lateness of the hour, and the impossibility of being in Poplar-walk at the appointed time. "Going this minute, sir," was the reply; — and, accord- ingly, the machine trundled on for a couple of hundred yards, and then stopped again. Minns doubled himself up in a corner of the coach, and abandoned himself to his fate, as a child, a mother, a bandbox and a parasol, became his fellow passengers. The child was an affectionate and an amiable infant ; the Httle dear mistook Minns for his other parent, and screamed to embrace him. " Be quiet, dear," said the mamma, restraining the impet- uosity of her darling, whose little fat legs were kicking, and stamping, and twining themselves into the most complicated forms, in an ecstasy of impatience. " Be quiet, dear, that's not your papa." " Thank Heaven I am not ! " thought Minns, as the first gleam of pleasure he had experienced that morning shone like a meteor throusfh his wretchedness. 28 648 SKETCHES BY DOZ. Playfulness was agreeably mingled with affection in the disposition of the boy. When satisfied that Mr. Minns was not his parent, he endeavored to attract his notice by scraping his drab trousers with his dirty shoes, poking his chest with his mamma's parasol, and other nameless endearments pecu- liar to infancy, with which he beguiled the tediousness of the ride, apparently very much to his own satisfaction. When the unfortunate gentleman arrived at the Swan, he found to his great dismay, that it was a quarter past five. The white house, the stables, the "'Beware of the Dog," — every landmark was passed, with a rapidity not unusual to a gentle- man of a certain age when too late for dinner. After the lapse of a few minutes, Mr. Minns found himself opposite a yellow brick house with a green door, brass knocker, and door-plate, green window-frames and ditto railings, with " a garden in front, that is to say, a small loose bit of gravelled ground, with one round and two scalene triangular beds, con- taining a fir-tree, twenty or thirty bulbs, and an unlimited number of marigolds. The taste of Mr. and Mrs. Budden was further displayed by the appearance of a Cupid on each side of the door, perched upon a heap of large chalk flints, variegated with pink conch-shells. His knock at the door was answered by a stumpy boy, in drab livery, cotton stock- ings and high-lows, who, after hanging his hat on one of the dozen brass pegs which ornamented the passage, denominated by courtesy " The Hall," ushered him into a front drawing- room commanding a very extensive view of the backs of the neighboring houses. The usual ceremony of introduction, and so forth, over, Mr, Minns took his seat ; not a little agitated at finding that he was the last comer, and, somehow or other the Lion of about a dozen people, sitting together in a small drawing-room, getting rid of that most tedious of all time, the time preceding dinner, "Well, Brogson," said Budden, addressing an elderly gen- tleman in a black coat, drab knee-breeches, and long gaiters, who, under pretence of inspecting the prints in an Annual, had been engaged in satisfying himself on the subject of Mr. Minus's general appearance, by looking at him over the tops of the leaves — " Well, Brogspn, what do Ministers mean to do ? Will they go out, or what ? " " Oh — why — really, you know, I'm the last person in the world to ask for news. Your cousin, from his situation, is the most likely person to answer the question," MR. MINNS AND HIS COUSIN 649 Mr. Minns assured the last speaker, that although he was in Somerset-house, he possessed no official communication relative to the projects of his Majesty's Ministers. But his remark was evidently received incredulously ; and no further conjectures being hazarded on the subject, a long pause en- sued, during which the company occupied themselves in coughing and blowing their noses, until the entrance of Mrs. Budden caused a general rise. The ceremony of introduction being over, dinner was an- nounced, and down stairs the party proceeded accordingly — Mr. Minns escorting Mrs. Budden as far as the drawing-room door, but being prevented, by the narrowness of the stair- case, from extending his gallantry any farther. The dinner passed off as such dinner^ usually do. Ever and anon, amidst the clatter of knives and forks, and the hum of con- versation, Mr, B.'s voice might be heard, asking a friend to take wine, and assuring him he was glad to see him ; and a great deal of by-play took place between Mrs. B. and the servants, respecting the removal of the dishes, during which her countenance assumed all the variations of a weather-glass, from stormy " to set fair." Upon the dessert and wine being placed on the table, the servant, in compliance with a significant look from Mrs. B., brought down " Master Alexander," habited in a sky-blue suit with silver buttons ; and possessing hair of nearly the same color as the metal. After sundry praises from his mother, and various admonitions as to his behavior from his father, he was introduced to his godfather. Well, my little fellow — you are a fine boy, ain't you ? " said Mr. Minns, as happy as a tomtit on birdline. "Yes." " How old are you t " " Eight, next We'nsday. How old are you ? '' "Alexander," interrupted his mother, "hnw dare you ask Mr. Minns how old he is ! " " He asked me how old / was," said the precocious child^ to whom Minns had from that moment internally resolved that he never would bequeath one shilling. As soon as the titter occasioned by the observation, had subsided, a little smirking man with red whiskers, sitting at the bottom of the table, who during the whole of dinner had been endeavoring to obtain a listener to some stories about Sheridan, called out, with a very patronizing air, Alick, v/hat part of speech is beJ^ SKE TCHES B Y BOZ " A verb." "That's a good boy," said Mrs. Budden, with all a mother's pride. ^' Now, you know what a verb is ? " " A verb is a word which signifies to be, to do, or to suf- fer j as, I am — I rule — I am ruled. Give me an apple, Ma." " I'll give you an apple, replied the man with the red whiskers, who was an established friend of the family, or in other words was always invited by Mrs Budden, whether Mr. Budden liked it or not, " if you'll tell me what is the mean- ing of be.'^ "Be?" said the prodigy, after a little hesitation — "an insect that gathers honey." " No, dear," frowned Mrs. Budden ; " B double E is the substantive." " I don't think he knows much yet about coinmon substan- tives," said the smirking gentleman, who thought this an admirable opportunity for letting off a joke. " It's clear he's not very well acquainted with proper names. He ! he ! he ! " " Gentlemen," called out Mr. Budden from the end of the table, in a stentorian voice, and with a very important air, " will you have the goodness to charge your glasses ? I have a toast to propose." "Hear! hear!" cried the gentlemen, passing the de- canters. After they had made the round of the table, Mr. Budden proceeded — " Gentlemen ; there is an individual present — " " Hear 1 hear !" said the little man with red whiskers. Pray be quiet, Jones," remonstrated Budden. " I say, gentlemen, there is an individual present," re- sumed the host, " in whose society, I am sure' we must take great delight — and — and — the conversation of that individual must have afforded to every one present, the utmost pleas- ure." [" Thank Heaven, he does not mean me ! " thought Minns, conscious that his diffidence and exclusiveness had prevented his saying above a dozen words since he entered the house.] "Gentlemen, 1 am but a humble individual myself, and I perhaps ought to apologize for allowing any individual feelings of friendship and affection for the person I allude to, to induce me to venture to rise, to propose .the health of that person — a person that, I am sure — that is to say, a person whose virtues must endear him to those who know him — and those who have not the pleasure of knowing him, cannot dislike him." MR. MINNS AND HIS COUSIN 651 " Hear ! hear ! " said the company, in a tone ot encour* agement and aiDproval. " Gentlemen," continued Budden, " my cousin is a man who — who is a relation of my own." (Hear ! hear !) Minns groaned audibly. "Who I am most happy to see here, and who, if he were not here, would certainly have deprived us of the great pleasure we all feel in seeing him. (Loud cries of hear !) Gentlemen, I feel that I have already trespassed on your attention for too long a time. With every feeling — of — with every sentiment of — of — " " Gratification " — suggested the friend of the family. " — Of gratification, I beg to propose the health of Mr. Minns." " Standing, gentlemen ! " shouted the indefatigable little man with the whiskers — " and with the honors. Take your time from me, if you please. Hip ! hip ! hip ! — Za ! — Hip ! hip! hip !— Za !— Hip ! hip !— Za— a— a 1 " All eyes were now fixed on the subject of the toast, who by gulping down port wine at the imminent hazard of suffo- cation, endeavored to conceal his confusion. After as long a pause as decency would admit, he rose, but, as the news- papers sometimes say in their reports, "we regret that we are quite unable to give even the substance of the honorable gentlemen's observations." The words " present company — honor — present occasion," and "great happiness" — heard occasionally, and repeated at intervals, with a countenance expressive of the utmost confusion and misery, convinced the company that he was making an excellent speech ; and, ac- cordingly, on his resuming his seat, they cried " Bravo ! " and manifested tumultuous applause. Jones, who had been long watching his opportunity, then darted up. " Budden," said he, " will you allow me to propose a toast ? " "(Certainly," replied Budden, adding in an undertone to Minns right across the table. " Devilish sharp fellow that : you'll be very much pleased with his speech. He talks equally well on any subject," Minns bowed, and Mr. Jones proceeded : It has on several occasions, in various instances, under many circamstances, and in different companies, fallen to my lot to propose a toast to those by whom, at the time, I have had the honor to be surrounded. I have sometimes, I will cheerfully own — for why should I deny it ? — felt the over 652 SKE TCHES B Y BOZ. whelming nature of the task I have undertaken, and my own utter incapability to do justice to the subject. If such have been my feelings, however, on former occasions, what must they be now — now — under the extraordinary circumstances in which I am placed. (Hear ! hear !) To describe my feelings accurately, would be impossible ; but I cannot give * you a better idea of them, gentlemen, than by refernng to a circumstance whicK happens, oddly enough, to occur to my mind at the moment. On one occasion, when that truly great and illustrious map, Sheridan, was — " Now, there is no knowing what new villainy in the form of a joke would have been heaped on the grave of that very ill- used man, Mr. Sheridan, if the boy in drab had not at that moment entered the room in a breathless state, to report, that, as it was a very wet night, the nine o'clock stage had come round, to know whether there was anybody going to town, as, in that case^ he (the nine o'clock) had room for one inside. Mr. Minns starlerl up ; and, despite countless exclama- tions of surprise, and entreaties to stay, persisted in his de- termination to acc(?pt the vacant place. But, the brown silk umbrella was nowhce to be found ; and as the coachman couldn't wait, he drove back to the Swan, leaving word for Mr. Minns to run round " and catch him. However, as it did not occur to Mr. Minns for some ten minutes or so, that he had left the brown silk umbrella with the ivory handle in the other coach, coming down ; and, moreover, as he was by no means remarkable for speed, it is no matter of surprise that when he accomplished the feat of " running round " to the Swan, the coach — the last coach — had gone without him. It was somewhere about three o'clock in the morning, when Mr. Augustus Minns knocked feebly at the street-door of his lodgings in Tavistock-street, cold, wet, cross, and mis- erable. He made his will next morning, and his professional man informs us, in that strict confidence ii? which we inform the public, that neither the name of Mr. Octavius Puddea nor of Mrs. Amelia Budden, nor oi Master Alexander Augus tus Budden, appeared therein. SENTIMENT, 653 CHAPTER IIL SENTIMENT. The Miss Crumptons, or to quote the authority of the inscription on the garden-gate of Minerva House, Hammer- smith, "The Misses Crumpton," were two unusually tall, particularly thin, and exceedingly skinny personages : very upright, and very yellow. Miss Amelia Crumpton owned to thirty-eight, and Miss Maria Crumpton admitted she was forty ; an admission which was rendered perfectly unnecessary by the self-evident fact of her being at least fifty. They dressed in the most interesting manner — like twins ! and looked as happy and comfortable as a couple of marigolds run to seed. They were very precise, had the strictest pos- sible ideas of propriety, wore false hair, and always smelt very strongly of lavender. Minerva H^ouse, conducted under the auspices of the two sisters, was a " finishing establishment for young ladies," where some twenty girls of the ages of from thirteen to nine- teen inclusive, acquired a smattering of everything, and a knowledge of nothing; instruction in French and Italian, dancing lessons twice a-week ; and other necessaries of Hfe. The house was a white one, a little removed from the road- side, with close palings in front. The bed-room windows were always left partly open, to afford a bird's-eye view of numerous little bedsteads with very white dimity furniture, and thereby impress the passer-by with a due sense of the luxuries of the establishment ; and there was a front parlor hung round with highly varnished maps which nobody ever looked at, and filled with books which no one ever read, appropriated exclusively to the reception of parents, who, whenever they called, could not fail to be struck with the very deep appearance of the place. " Amelia, my dear," said Miss Maria Crumpton, entering the school-room one morning, with her false hair in papers : as she occasionally did, in order to impress the young ladies with a conviction of its reality. " Amelia, my dear, here is a post grati.f3dng note I have just received. You needn't mind readirig'it aioild.'^^ ^54 SKETCHES nv noz. Miss Amelia, thus advised, proceeded to read the follow ing note with an air of great triumph : "Cornelius Brook Dingwall, Esq., M.P., presents his com- pliments to Miss Crumpton, and will feel much obliged by Miss Crumpton's calling on him, if she conveniently can, to- morrow morning at one o'clock, as Cornelius Brook Dingwall, Esq., M.P., is anxious to see Miss Crumpton on the subject of placing Miss Brook Dingwall under her charge. " Adelphi." " Monday morning." A Member of Parliament's daughter ! " ejaculated Amelia, in an ecstatic tone. A Member of Parliament's daughter ! " repeated Miss Maria, with a smile of delight, which, of course, elicited a con- current titter of pleasure from all the young ladies. " It's exceedingly delightful ! " said Miss Amelia ; where upon all the young ladies murmured their admiration again Courtiers are but school-boys, and court-ladies school-girls. So important an announcement, at once superseded the business of the day. A holiday was declared, in commemora- tion of the great event ; the Miss Crumptons retired to their private apartment to talk it over ; the smaller girls discussed the probable manners and customs of the daughter of a Mem- ber of Parliament ; and the young ladies verging on eighteen wondered whether she was engaged, whether she was pretty, whether she wore much bustle, and many other ivheihers of equal importance. The two Miss Crumptons proceeded to the Adelphi at the appointed time next day, dressed, of course, in their best style, and looking as amiable as they possibly could — which, by the bye, is not saying much for them. Having sent in their cards, through the medium of a red-hot looking footman in bright livery, they were ushered into the august presence of the pro- found Dingwall. Cornelius Brook Dingwall, Esq., M.P., was very haughty, solemn, and portentous. He had, naturally, a somewhat spas- modic expression of countenance, which was not rendered the less remarkable by his wearing an extremely stiff cravat. He was wonderfully proud of the M.P. attached to his name, and never lost an opportunity of reminding people of his dignity. He had a great idea of his own abilities, which must have been SENTIMENT, a great comfort to him, as no one else had ; and in diplomacy, on a small scale, in his own family arrangements, he considered Iiimself unrivalled. He was a county magistrate, and dis- charged the duties of his station with all due justice and im- partiality ; frequently committing poachers, and occasionally committing himself. Miss Brook Dingwall Avas one of that numerous class of young ladies, who, like adverbs, may be known by their answering to a commonplace question, and doing nothing else. On the present occasion, this talented individual was seated in a small library at a table covered with papers, doing nothing, but trying to look busy — playing at shop. Acts of Parliament, and letters directed to Cornelius Brook Ding wall, Esq., M. P.,'' were ostentatiously scattered over the table ; at a little distance from which, Mrs. Brook Dingwall was seated at work. One of those public nuisances, a spoiled child, was playing about the room, dressed after the most ap- proved fashion — in a blue tunic with a black belt a quarter of a yard wide, fastened with an immense buckle — looking like a robber in a melodrama, seen through a diminishing glass. After a little pleasantry from the sweet child, who amused himself by running away with Miss Maria Crumpton's chair as fast as it was placed for her, the visitors were seated, and Cornelius Brook Dingw^all, Esq., opened the conversation. He had sent for Miss Crumpton, he said, in consequence of the high character he had received of her establishment from his friend. Sir Alfred Muggs. Miss Crumpton murmured her acknowledgments to him (Muggs), and Cornelius proceeded. One of my principal reasons. Miss Crumpton, for parting with my daughter, is, that she has lately acquired some senti- mental ideas, w^hich it is most desirable to eradicate from her young mind." (Here the little innocent before noticed, fell out of an arm-chair with an awful crash.) " Naughty boy ! said his mamma, who appeared more surprised at his taking the liberty of falling down than at any- thing else ; I'll ring the bell for James to take him away." " Pray don't check him, my love," said the diplomatist, as soon as he could make himself heard amidst the unearthly howling consequent upon the threat and the tumble. It all arises from his great flow of spirits." This last explanation was addressed to Miss Crumpton. ' • Certainly, sir," replied the antique Maria : not exactly 6s6 . SKETCHES BY BOZ. seeing, however, the connection between a flow of animal spirits, and a fall from an arm-chair. Silence was restored, and the M.P. resumed : ^' Now, I know nothing so likely to effect this object, Miss Crmnpton, as her mixing constantly in the society of girls of her own age ; and, as I know that in your establishment she will meet such as are not likely to contaminate her young mind, I propose to send her to you/' The youngest Miss Crumpton expressed the acknowl- edgments of the establishment generally. Maria was rendered speechless by bodil)^ pain. The dear little fellow, having re- covered his animal spirits, was standing upon her most tender foot, by way of getting his face (which looked like a capital O in a red lettered play-bill) on a level with the writing-table. " Of course, Lavinia will be a parlor boarder," continued the enviable father ; " and on one point I wish my directions to be strictly observed. The fact is, that some ridiculous love affair, v/ith a person much her inferior in life, has been the cause of her present state of mind. Knov/ing that of course, under your care, she can have no opportunity of meeting this person, 1 do not object to — indeed, I should rather prefer — her mixing with such society as you see yourself.'^ This important statement was again interrupted by the high- spirited little creature, in the excess of his joyousness break- ing a pane of glass, and nearly precipitating himself into an adjacent area. James was rung for ; considerable confusion and screaming succeeded j two little blue legs were seen to kick violently in the air as the man left the room, and the child was gone. Mr. Erook Dingwall would like Miss Brook Dingwall to learn everything," said Mrs. Brook Dingwall, who hardly ever said anything at all. •'Certainly,'' said both the Miss Crumptons together. " And as I trust the plan I have devised will be effectual In weaning my daughter from this absurd idea, Miss Crumj)- ton," continued the legislator, " I hope you will have the good- ness to comply, in all respects, with any request 1 may forward to you." The promise was of course made ; and after a lengthened discussion, conducted on behalf of the Dingwalls with the most becoming diplomatic gravity, and on that of the Crump- tons with profound respect, it was finally arranged that Mis5 Lavinia should be forwarded to Hammerjsmith Qi^ thg n^xt |da3f SENTIMENT. es7 but one, on which occasion the half-yearly ball given at the establishment was to take place. It might divert the dear girl's mind. This, by the way, was another bit of diplomacy. Miss Lavinia was introduced to her future governess, and both the Miss Crumptons pronounced her " a most charming girl an opinion which, by a singular coincidence, they always entertained of any new pupil. Courtesies were exchanged, acknowledgments expressed, condescension exhibited, and the interview terminated. Preparations, to make use of theatrical phraseology, "on a scale of magnitude never before attempted," were inces- santly made at Minerva House to give every effect to the forthcoming ball. The largest room in the house was pleas- ingly ornamented with blue calico roses, plaid tulips, and other equally natural-looking artificial flowers, the work of the young ladies themselves. The carpet was taken up, the fold- ing-doors were taken down, the furniture was taken out, and rout-seats were taken in. The linen-drapers of Hammer- smith were astounded at the sudden demand for blue sarsenet ribbon, and long white gloves. Dozens of geraniums were purchased for bouquets, and a harp and two violins were be- spoke from town, in addition to the grand piano already on the premises. The young ladies who were selected to show off on the occasion, and do credit to the establishment, prac- tised incessantly, much to their own satisfaction, and greatly to the annoyance of the lame old gentleman over the way; and a constant correspondence was kept up, between the Miss&s Crumpton and the Hammersmith pastrycook. The evening came ; and then there was such a lacing of stays, and tying of sandals, and dressing of hair, as never can take place with the proper degree of bustle out of a boarding- school. The smaller girls managed to be in everybody's way, and were pushed about accordingly ; and the elder ones dressed, and tied, and flattered, and envied, one another, as earnestly and sincerely as if they had actually com'e out. " How^ do I look, dear?" inquired Miss Emily Smithers, the belle of the house, of Miss Caroline Wilson, who was her bosom friend, because she was the ugliest girl in Hammer- smith, or out of it. " Oh ! charming, dear. How do I ? " " Delightful ! you never looked so handsome,'* returned the belle, adjusting her own dress, and not bestowing a glance on her poor companion. SKETCHES BY BOZ, I hope young Hilton will come early," said another young lady to Miss somebody else, in a fever of expectation. I'm sure he'd be highly flattered if he knew it," returned the other, who was practising Vete, Oh ! he's so handsome," said the first. Such a charming person ! " added a second. Such a distingue air ! " said a third. " Oh, what do you think ? " said another girl, running into the room ; Miss Crumpton says her cousin's coming." What ! Theodosius Butler ? " said everybody in rap- tures. " Is he handsome ? " inquired a novice. " No, not particularly handsome," was the general reply ,* but, oh, so clever ! " Mr. Theodosius Butler was one of those immortal geniuses who are to be met with in almost every circle. They have, usually, very deep, monotonous voices. They always per- suade themselves that they are wonderful persons, and that they ought to be very miserable, though they don't precisely know why. They are very conceited, and usually possess half an idea ; but, with enthusiastic young ladies, and silly young gentlemen, they are very wonderful persons. The in- dividual in question, Mr. Theodosius, had written a pamphlet containing some very weighty considerations on the expedi- ency of doing something or other ; and as every sentence contained a good many words of four syllables, his admirers took it for granted that he meant a good deal. " Perhaps that's he," exclaimed several young ladies, as the first pull of the evening threatened destruction to the bell of the gate. An awful pause ensued. Some boxes arrived and a young lady — Miss Brook Dingwall, in full ball costume, with an im- mense gold chain round her neck, and her dress looped up with a single rose ; an ivory fan in her hand, and a most in- teresting expression of despair in her face. The Miss Crumptons inquired after the family, with the most excruciating anxiety, and Miss Brook Dingwall was formally introduced to her future companions. The Miss Crumptons conversed with the young ladies in the most mel- lifluous tones, in order that Miss Brook Dingwall might be properly impressed with their amiable treatment. Another pull at the bell. Mr. Dadson the writing-master, and his wife. The wife in green silk, with shoes and cap SENTIMENT, trimmings to coi respond ; the writing-master in a white waistcoat, black knee-shorts, and ditto silk stockings, display- ing a leg large enough for two writing-masters. The young ladies whispered one another, and the writing-master and his wife flattered the Miss Crumptons, who were dressed in am- ber, with long sashes, like dolls. Repeated pulls at the bell, and arrivals too numerous to particularize : papas and mammas, and aunts and uncles, the owners and guardians of the different pupils ; the singing- master, Signor Lobskini, in a black wig ; the piano-forte player and the violins ; the harp, in a state of intoxication , and some twenty young men, who stood near the door, and talked to one another, occasionally bursting into a giggle. A general hum of conversation. Coffee handed round, and plentifully partaken of by fat mammas, who looked like the stout people who come on in pantomimes for the sole pur- pose of being knocked down. The popular Mr. Hilton was the next arrival ; and he having, at the request of the Miss Crumptons, undertaken the office of Master of the Ceremonies, the quadrilles commenced with considerable spirit. The young men by the door grad- ually advanced into the middle of the room, and in time became sufficiently at ease to consent to be introduced to partners. The writing-master danced every set, springing about with the most fearful agility, and his wife played a rub- ber in the back-parlor — a little room with five book-shelves, dignified by the name of the study. Setting her down to whist was a half-yearly piece of generalship on the part of the Miss Crumptons ; it was necessary to hide her somewhere, on account of her being a fright. The interesting Lavinia Brook Dingwall was the only girl present, who appeared to take no interest in the proceedings of the evening. In vain was she solicited to dance ; in vain was the universal homage paid to her as the daughter of a member of parliament. She was equally unmoved by the splendid tenor of the inimitable Lobskini, and the brilliant execution of Miss Laetitia Parsons, whose performance of " The Recollections of Ireland " was universally declared to be almost equal to that of Moscheles himself. Not even the announcement of the arrival of Mr. Theodosius Butler could induce her to leave the corner of the back drawing-room in which she was seated. " Now, Theodosius," said Miss Maria Crumpton, aftet 66o SKETCHES BY BOZ. that enlightened pamphleteer had nearly run the gauntlet of the whole company, " I must introduce you to our new pupil.'' Theodosius looked as if he cared for nothing earthly. She's the daughter of a member of parliament," said Maria. — Theodosius started. And her name is ? " he inquired. Miss Brook Dingwall." " Great Heaven ! " poetically exclaimed Theodosius, in a low tone. Miss Crumpton commenced the introduction in due form Miss Brook Dingwall languidly raised her head, Edward ! " she exclaimed, with a half-shriek, on seeing the well-known nankeen legs. Fortunately, as Miss Maria Crumpton possessed no re- markable share of penetration, and as it w^as one of the diplo- matic arrangements that no attention was to be paid to Miss Lavinia's incoherent exclamations, she was perfectly uncon- scious of the mutual agitation of the parties; and therefore, seeing that the offer of his hand for the next quadrille was accepted, she left him by the side of Miss Brook Dingwall. Oh, Edward ! " exclaimed . that most romantic of all romantic young ladies, as the light of science seated himself beside her, Oh, Edward, is it you ? " Mr. Theodosius assured the dear creature, in the most im- passioned manner, that he was not conscious of being anybody but himself. " Then why — why — this disguise Oh ! Edward M 'Neville Walter, what have 1 not suffered on your account ? " Lavinia, hear me," replied the hero, in his most poetic strain. '' Do not condemn me unheard. If anything that emanates from the soul of such a wretch as I, can occupy a place in your recollection — if any being, so vile, deserve your notice — you may remember that I once published a pamphlet (and paid for its publication) entitled ' Considerations on the Policy of Removing the Duty on Bees'-wax.' " I do — I do ! " sobbed Lavinia. "That," continued the lover, ''w^as a subject to which your father was devoted, heart and soul." He was — he was ! " reiterated the sentimentalist. " I knew it," continued Theodosius, tragically ; " I knew' it — I forwarded him a copy. He wished to know me. Could I disclose my real name ? Never ! No, I assumed that name SENTIMENT, which you have so often pronounced in tones of endearment As M'Neville Walter, I devoted myself to the stirring cause; as M^Neville Walter I gained your heart ; in the same char- acter I was ejected from your house by your father's domestics ; and in no character at all have I since been enabled to see you. We now meet again, and I proudly own that I am Theodosius Butler.'* The young lady appeared perfectly satisfied wdth this argumentative address, and bestowed a look of the most ardent affection, on the immortal advocate of bees'-wax. " May I hope,'' said he, " that the promise your father's violent behavior interrupted, may be renewed ? " " Let us join this set," replied Lavinia, coquettishly — for girls of nineteen can coquette. " No," ejaculated he of the nankeens ; " I stir not from this spot, writhing under this torture of suspense. May I — may I — hope ? ' You may. *^The promise is renewed ? " It is." " I have your permission ? " " You have." " To the fullest extent 1 " "You know it," returned the blushing Lavinia. The contortions of the interesting Butler's visage expressed his raptures. We could dilate upon the occurrences that ensued. How Mr. Theodosius and Miss Lavinia danced, and talked, and sighed for the remainder of the evening — how the Miss Crumptons w^ere delighted thereat. How the writing-master continued to frisk about with one-horse power, and how his wife, from some unaccountable freak, left the whist-table in the little back-parlor, and persisted in displaying her green head- dress in the most conspicuous part of the drawing-room. How the supper consisted of small triangular sandwiches in trays, and a tart here and there by way of variety ; and how^ the visitors coilsumed warm water disguised with lemon, and dotted with nutmeg, under the denomination of negus. These, and other matters of as much interest, however, we pass over, for the purpose of describing a scene of even more import- ance. A fortnight after the date of the ball, Cornelius Brook Dingwall, Esq., M.P., was seated at the same library-table, and in the same room, as we have before described. He was 662 SKE TCHES B Y BOZ. alone, and his face bore an expression of deep thought and solemn gravity — he was drawing up " A Bill for the better observance of Easter Monday." The footman tapped at the door — the legislator started from his reverie, and "Miss Crumpton " was announced. Permission was given for Miss Crumpton to enter the sanctum ; Maria came sliding in, and having taken her seat with a due ^ portion of affectation, the footman retired, and the governess was left alone with the M.P. Oh ! how she longed for the presence of a third party ! Even the facetious young gentle- man would have been a relief. Miss Crumpton began the duet. She hoped Mrs. Brook Dingwall and the handsome little boy were in good health. They were. Mrs. Brook Dingwall and little Frederick were at Brighton. " Much obliged to you, Miss Crumpton,'^ said Cornelius, in his most dignified manner, " for your attention in calling this morning. I should have driven down to Hammersmith, to see Lavinia, but your account was so very satisfactory, and my duties in the House occupy me so much, that I determined to postpone it for a week. How has she gone on ? " " Very well indeed, sir," returned Maria, dreading to in- form the father that she had gone off. " Ah, I thought the plan on which I proceeded would be a match for her." Here was a favorable opportunity to say that somebody else had been a match for her. But the unfortunate governess was unequal to the task. "'You have persevered strictly in the line of conduct I pre- *icribed. Miss Crumpton ? " " Strictly, sir." " You tell me in your note that her spirits gradually im- proved." " Very much indeed, sir." " To be sure. I was convinced they would." " But I fear, sir," said Miss Crumpton, with visible emotion, '* I fea.' the plan has not succeeded, quite so well as we could have wished." " No ! " exclaimed the prophet. " Bless me ! Miss Crumpton, you look alarmed. What has happened ? " " Miss Brook Dingwall, sir " " Yes, ma'am ? " " Has gone, sir " — said Maria, exhibiting a strong inclina tion to faint. SENTIMENT, 663 " Gone ! " " Eloped, sir." " Eloped ! — Who with — when — where — how ? " almost shrieked the agitated diplomatist. The natural yellow of the unfortunate Maria's face changed to all the hues of the rainbow, as she laid a small packet on the member's table. He hurriedly opened it. A letter from his daughter, and another from Theodosius. He glanced over their contents — Ere this reaches you, far distant — appeal to feelings — love to distraction — bees'-wax — slavery," &c., &c. He dashed his hand to his forehead, and paced the room with fearfully long strides, to the great alarm of the precise Maria. " Now mind ; from this time forward," said Mr. Brook Dingwall, suddenly stopping at the table, and beating time upon it with his hand ; " from this time forward, I never will, under any circumstances whatever, permit a man who writes pamphlets to enter any other room of this house but the kitchen. — I'll allow my daughter and her husband one hun- dred and fifty pounds a year, and never see their faces again ; and, damme ! ma'am, I'll bring in a bill for the abolition of finishing- schools." Some time has elapsed since this passionate declaration. Mr. and Mrs. Butler are at present rusticating in a small cot- tage at Ball's-pond, pleasantly situated in the immediate vi- cinity of a brick-field. They have no family. Mr. Theodosius looks very important, and writes incessantly ; but, in conse- quence of a gross combination on the part of publishers, none of his productions appear in print. His young wife begins to think that ideal misery is preferable to real unhappiness ; and that a marriage, contracted in haste, and repented at leisure, is the cause of more substantial wretchedness than she ever anticipated. On cool reflection, Cornelius Brook Dingwall, Esq., M. P., was reluctantly compelled to admit that the untoward re- sult of his admirable arrangements was attributable, not to the Miss Crumptons,but his own diplomacy. He however con- soles himself, like some other small diplomats, by satisfacto- rily proving that if his plans did not succeed, they ought to have done so. Minerva House is in statu quo^ and " The Misses Crumpton " remain in the pqaceable and undisturbed enjoyment of all the advantages resulting from their Finish- ing-School. 664 ^^^^ TCHES B Y B02. CHAPTER IV. THE TUGGS'S AT RAMSGATE. Once upon a time, there dwelt, in a narrow street on the Surrey side of the water, within three minutes' walk of old London Bridge, Mr. Joseph Tuggs — a little dark-faced man, with shiny hair, twinkling eyes, short legs, and a body of very considerable thickness, measuring from the centre but- ton of his waistcoat in front, to the ornamental buttons of his coat behind. The figure of the amiable Mrs. Tuggs, if not perfectly symmetrical, was decidedly comfortable ; and the form of her only daughter, the accomplished Miss Char- lotte Tuggs, was fast ripening into that state of luxuriant plumpness which had enchanted the eyes, and captivated the heart, of Mr. Joseph Tuggs in his earlier days. Mr. Simon Tuggs, his only son, and Miss Charlotte Tuggs's only brother, was as differently formed in body, as he was differently con- stituted in mind, from the remainder of his family. There was that elongation of his thoughtful face, and that tendency to weakness in his interesting legs, which tell so forcibly of a great mind and romantic disposition. The slightest traits of character in such a being, possess no mean interesc to specu- lative minds. He usually appeared in public, in capacious shoes with black cotton stockings ; and was observed to be particularly attached to a black glazed stock, without tie or ornament of any description. There is perhaps no profession, however useful ; no pur- suit, however meritorious ; which can escape the attacks of vulgar minds. Mr. Joseph Tuggs was a grocer. It might be supposed that a grocer was beyond the breath of calumny ; but no — the neighbors stigmatized him as a chandler ; and the poisonous voice of envy distinctly asserted that he dis- pensed tea and coffee by the quartern, retailed sugar by the ounce, cheese by the slice, tobacco by the screw, and butter by the pat. These taunts, however, were lost upon the Tuggs's. Mr. Tuggs attended to the grocery department ] Mrs. Tuggs to the cheesemongeiy ; and Miss Tuggs to her education. Mr. Simon Tuggs kept his father's books and his own counsel. TFTE TUGGS'S A T RAMSGA TE. 66$ One fine spring afternoon, the latter gentleman was seated on a tub of weekly dorset, behind the little red desk with a wooden rail, which ornamented a corner of the counter ; w^hen a stranger dismounted from a cab, and hastily entered the shop. He was habited in black cloth, and bore with him, a green umbrella, and a blue bag. " Mr. Tuggs ? " said the stranger, inquiringly, " My name is Tuggs, replied Mr. Simon. "It's the other Mr. Tuggs," said the stranger, looking towards the glass door which led into the parlor behind the shop, and on the inside of which, the round face of Mr. Tuggs,senior, was distinctly visible, peeping over the curtain. Mr. Simon gracefully waved his pen, as if in intimation of his wish that his father would advance. Mr. Joseph Tuggs, with considerable celerity, removed his face from the curtain and placed it before the stranger. " I come from the Temple," said the man with the bag. " From the Temple ! " said Mrs. Tuggs, flinging open the door of the little parlor and disclosing Miss Tuggs in per- spective. " P'rom the Temple ? said Miss Tuggs and Mr. Simon Tuggs at the same moment. " From the Temple ! " said Mr. Joseph Tuggs, turning as pale as a Dutch cheese. " From the Temple," repeated the man with the bag r " from Mr. Cower's, the solicitor's. Mr. Tuggs, I congratu- late you, sir. Ladies, I wish you joy of your prosperity ! We have been successful." And the man with the bag leisurely divested himself of his umbrella and glove, as a preliminary to shaking hands with Mr. Joseph Tuggs. Now the words " We have been successful," had no sooner issued from the mouth of the man with the bag, than Mr. Simon Tuggs rose from the tub of weekly Dorset, opened his eyes very wide, gasped for breath, made figures of eight in the air with his pen, and finally fell into the arms of his anxious mother, and fainted away without the slightest osten sible cause or pretence. " Water ! " screamed Mrs. Tuggs. " Look up, my son," exclaimed Mr. Tuggs. " Simon ! dear Simon ! " shrieked Miss Tuggs. " I'm better now," said Mr. Simon Tuggs. "What! suc- cessful ! " And then, as corroborative evidence of his being better, he fainted away again, and was borne into the little 666 SKETCHES BY BOZ. parlor by the united efforts of the remainder of the family, and the man with the bag. To a casual spectator, or /:o r.ny one unacquainted with the position of the family, this fainting would have been un- accountable. To those who understood the mission of the man with the bag, and were moreover acquainted with the excitability of the nerves of Mr. Simon Tuggs, it was quite comprehensible. A long-pending law-suit respecting the va lidity of a will, had been unexpectedly decided ; and Mr. Jo- seph Tuggs was the possessor of twenty thousand pounds. A prolonged consultation took place, that night, in the little parlor — a consultation that was to settle the future des- tinies of the Tuggs's. The shop was shut up at an unusually early hour ; and many were the unavailing kicks bestowed upon the closed door by applicants for quarterns of sugar, or half-quarterns of bread, or penn'orths of pepper, which were to have been " left till Saturday/' but which fortune had de- creed were to be left alone altogether. " We must certainly give up business," said Miss Tuggs. Oh, decidedly," said Mrs. Tuggs. " Simon shall go to the bar," said Mr. Joseph Tuggs. And I shall always sign myself ' Cymon ' in future," said his son. And I shall call myself Charlotta," said Miss Tuggs. ** And you must always call ^? no, not for a thousand pounds I I wouldn't care if he had the good sense to conceal the disgrace he is to the family ; but he's so fond of his horrible business, that he will let people know what he is." Mr. Jacob Barton, the individual alluded to, was a large grocer ; so vulgar, and so lost to all sense of feeling, that he actually never scrupled to avow that he wasn't above his busi- ness : 'Mie'd made his money by it, and he didn't care who know'd it." " Ah ! Flamwell, my dear fellow, how d'ye do ? " said Mr. Malderton, as a little spofhsh man, with green spectacles, en- tered the room. You got my note ? " " Yes, I did ; and here 1 am in consequence." You don't happen to know this Mr. Sparkins by name ? You know everybody ? '• Mr. Flamwell was one of those gentlemen of remarkably extensive information whom one occasionally meets in society, who pretend to know everybody, but in reality know nobody. At Malderton's, where any stories about great people were received with a greedy ear, he w^as an especial favorite ; and, knowing the kind of people he had to deal with, he carried his passion of claiming acquaintance with everybody, to the most immoderate length. He had rather a singular way of telling his greatest lies in a parenthesis, and with an air of self-denial, as if he feared being thought egotistical. ** Why, no, I don't know him by that name,'* returned Flamwell, in a low tone, and with an air of immense impor- tance. " I have no doubt I know him, though. Is he tall ?" " Middle sized," said Miss Teresa. With black hair.^ " inquired Flamwell, hazarding a bold guess. Yes," returned Miss Teresa, eagerly. " Rather a snub nose ? " No," said the disappointed Teresa, " he has a Roman nose." " I said a Roman nose, didn't I ? " inquired Flamwell, •* He's an elegant young man ? '' ''Oh, certainly." HORA TIO SPARKINS. 691 With remarkably prepossessing manners ? " Oh, yes ! said all the family together. " You must know him." "Yes, I thought you knew him, if he was anybody," tri- umphantly exclaimed Mr. Malderton. " Who d'ye think he is ? " " Why, from your description," said Flamwell, ruminating, and sinking his voice, almost to a whisper, " he bears a strong resemblance to the Honorable Augustus Fitz-Edward Fitz- John Fitz-Osborne. He's a very talented young man, and rather eccentric. It's extremely probable he may have changed his name for some temporary purpose." Teresa's heart beat high. Could he . be the Honorable Augustus Fitz-Edward Fitz-John Fitz-Osborne ! What a name to be elegantly engraved upon two glazed cards, tied together with a white satin ribbon ! " The honorable Mrs. Augustus Fitz-Edward Fi:z-John Fitz-Osborne ! " The thought was transport. "It's five minutes to five," said Mr. Malderton, looking at his watch : " I hope he's not going to disappoint us." " There he is ! " exclaimed Miss Teresa, as a loud double- knock was heard at the door. Everybody endeavored to look — as people when they particularly expect a visitor always do — as if they were perfectly unsuspicious of the approach of anybody, The room-door opened, — " Mr. Barton ! " said the ser* vant. " Confound the man!" murmured Malderton. "Ah! my dear sir, how d'ye do ! Any news ? " "Why no," returned the grocer, in his usual bluff manner. " No, none partickler. None that I am much aware of. How d'ye do, gals and boys 1 Mr. Flamwell, sir — glad to see you." " Here's Mr. Sparkins ! " said Tom, who had been looking out at the window, " on such a black horse ! " There was Horatio, sure enough, on a large black horse, curvetting and prancing along, like an Astley's supernumerary. After a great deal of reining in, and pulling up, with the accompani- ment of snorting, rearing, and kicking, the animal consented to stop at about a hundred yards from the gate, where Mr. Sparkins dismounted, and confided him to the care of Mr. Malderton's groom. The ceremony of introduction was gone through, in all due form. Mr. Flamwell looked from behind 692 SKETCHES BY BOZ. his greeA spectacles at Horatio with an air of mysterious im* portance ; and the gallant Horatio looked unutterable things at Teresa. " Is he the Honorable Mr. Augustus what's his name ? " whispered Mrs. Malderton to Flamwell, as he was escorting her to the dining-room. " Why, no — at least not exactly,'^ returned that great au- thority — " not exactly." " Who is he then ? " Hush ! " said Flamwell, nodding his head with a grave air, importing that he knew very well ; but was prevented, by some grave reasons of state, from disclosing the important secret. It might be one of the ministers making himself ac- quainted with the views of the people. ^' Mr. Sparkins," said the delighted Mrs. Malderton, *'pray divide the ladies. John, put a chair for the gentleman between Miss Teresa and Miss Marianne." This was addressed to a man who, on ordinary occasions, acted as half-groom, half- gardener ; but who, as it was important to make an impression on Mr. Sparkins, had been forced into a white neckerchief and shoes, and touched up, and brushed, to look like a second footman. The dinner was excellent ; Horatio was most attentive to Miss Teresa, and every one felt in high spirits, except Mr. Malderton, who, knowing the propensity of his brother-in-law, Mr. Barton, endured that sort of agony which the newspapers inform us is experienced by the surrounding neighborhood when a pot-boy hangs himself in a hay-loft, and which is much easier to be imagined than described." " Have you seen your friend. Sir Thomas Noland, lately, Flamwell ? " inquired Mr. Malderton, casting a sidelong look at Horatio, to see what effect the mention of so great a man had upon him. " Why, no — not very lately. I saw Lord Gubbleton the day before yesterday." Ah ! I hope his lordship is very well " said Malderton, in a tone of the greatest interest. It is scarcely necessary to say that, until diat moment, he had been quite innocent of the existence of such a person. " Why, yes ; he was very well — very well indeed. He's a devilish good fellow. I met him in the City, and had a long chat with him. Indeed, I'm rather intimate with him. I couldn't stop to talk to him as long as I could wish thought HORATIO SPAR KINS. 693 because I was on my way to a banker's, a very rich man, and a member of Parliament, with whom I am also rather, indeed 1 may say very, intimate.'' know whom you mean," returned the host, consequen- tially — in reality knowing as much about the matter as Flam- well himself. ''He has a capital business." This was touching on a dangerous topic. "Talking of business," interposed Mr. Barton, from the centre of the table. "A gentleman whom you knew very well, Malderton, before you made that first lucky spec of yours, called at our shop the other day, and — " "Barton, may I trouble you for a potato," interrupted the wretched master of the house, hoping to nip the story in the bud. " Certainly," returned the grocer, quite insensible of his brother-in-law's object — " and he said in a very plain man- ner " " Floury, if you. please," interrupted Malderton again ; dreading the termination of the anecdote, and fearing a repe- tition of the word " shop." "He said, says he," continued the culprit, after despatch- ing the potato ; " says he, how goes on your business ? So I said, jokingly — you know my way — says I, I'm never above my business, and I hope my business will never be above me. Ha, ha ! " " Mr. Sparkins," said the host, vainly endeavoring to con* ceal his dismay. " a glass of wine ? " "With the utmost pleasure, sir." " Happy to see you." " Thank you." "We were talking the other evening," resumed the host, addressing Horatio, partly with the view of displaying the conversational powers of his new acquaintance, and partly in the hope of drowning the grocer's stories — " we were talking the other night about the nature of man. Your argument struck me very forcibly." " And me," said Mr. Frederick. Horatio made a grace- ful inclination of the head, " Pray, what is your opinion of woman, Mr, Sparkins " inquired Mrs. Malderton. The young ladies simpered. " Man," replied Horatio, " man, whether he ranged the bright, gay, -flowery, plains of a second Eden, or the more sterile, barren, and I may say, commonplace regions, tc which SKETCHES BY BOZ. we are compelled to accustom ourselves, in times such ah these ; man, under any circumstances, or in any place— whether he were bending beneath the withering blasts of the frigid zone, or scorching under the rays of a vertical sun — man, without woman, would be — alone." ^' I am very happy to find you entertain such honorable opinions, Mr. Sparkins," said Mrs. Malderton. " And I," added Miss Teresa. Horatio looked his de- light, and the young lady blushed. Now, it's my opmion," said Mr. Barton I know what you're going to say," interposed Malderton, determined not to give his relation another opportunity, " and I don't agree with you." " What ! " inquired the astonished grocer. " I am sorry to differ from you. Barton," said the host, in as positive a manner as if he really were contradicting a position which the other had laid down, " but I cannot give my assent to what I consider a very monstrous proposition." " But I meant to say — " You never can convince me," said Malderton, with ar air of obstinate determination. Never." "And I," said Mr. Frederick, following up his father's attack," " cannot entirely agree in Mr. Sparkins's argument." "What!" said Horatio, who became more metaphysical, and more argumentative, as he saw the female part of the family listening in wondering delight — " what ! Is effect the consequence of cause ? Is cause the precursor of effect ? " " That's the point," said Flamwell. " To be sure," said Mr. Malderton. " Because, if effect is the consequence of cause, and if cause does precede effect, I apprehend you are wrong," added Horatio. " Decidedly," said the toad-eating Flamwell. " At least, I apprehend that to be the just and logical deduction ? " said Sparkins, in a tone of interrogation. " No doubt of it," chimed in Flamwell again. " It settles the point." " Well, perhaps it does," said Mr. Frederick ; " I didn't see it before." " I don't exactly see it now," thought the grocer ; " but I suppose it's all right." " How wonderfully clever he is ! " whispered Mrs. Mal- derton to her daughters, as they retired to the drawing-room HORA no SPARKINS, " Oh, he's quite a love ! said both the young ladies to- gether ; he talks like an oracle. He must have seen a great deal of life." The gentlemen being left to themselves, a pause ensued, during which everybody looked very grave, as if they were quite overcome by the profound nature of the previous dis- cussion. Flamwell, who had made up his mind to find out who and what Mr. Horatio Sparkins really was, first broke silence. " Excuse me, sir," said that distinguished personage, I presume you have studied for the bar ? I thought of enter- ing once, myself — indeed, I'm rather intimate with some of the highest ornaments of that distinguished profession." " N — no ! " said Horatio, with a little hesitation ; " not exactly." But you have been much among the silk gowns, or I mistake ? " inquired Flamwell, deferentially. " Nearly all my life," returned Sparkins. The question was pretty well settled in the mind of Mr. Flamwell. He was a young gentleman about to be called." " I shouldn't like to be a barrister," said Tom, speaking for the first time, and looking round the table to find somebody who would notice the remark. No one made any reply. " I shouldn't like to wear a wig," said Tom, hazarding an other observation. " Tom, I beg you will not make yourself ridiculous," said his father. Pray listen, and improve yourself by the con- versation you hear, and don't be constantly making these absurd remarks. " Very well, father," replied the unfortunate Tom, who had not spoken a word since he had asked for another slice of beef at a quarter-past five o'clock, P. m., and it was then eight. Well, Tom," observed his good-natured uncle, " nevei mind ! /think with you. /shouldn't like to wear a wig. I'd rather wear an apron." Mr. Malderton coughed violently. Mr. Barton resumed — " For if a man's above his business — " The cough returned with tenfold violence, and did not cease until the unfortunate cause of it, in his alarm, had quite forgotten what he intended to say. " Mr. Sparkins," said Flamwell, returning to the charge, 696 SKETCHES BY BOZ. " do you happen to know Mr. Delafontaine, of Bedford- square ? " " I have exchanged cards with him ; since which, indeed, T have had an opportunity of serving him considerably," re- phed Horatio, sHghtly coloring ; no doubt, at having been be- trayed into making the acknowledgment. " You are very lucky, if you have had an opportunity of obliging that great man,"' observed Flam well, with an air of profound respect. I don't know who he is,'' he wdiispered to Mr. Malderton, confidentially, as they followed Horatio up to the drawing- room. It's quite clear, however, that he belongs to the law, and that he is somebody of great importance, and very highly connected. No doubt, no doubt," returned his companion. The remainder of the evening passed away most delight- fully. Mr. Malderton, relieved from his apprehensions by the circumstance of Mr. Barton's falling into a profound sleep, v/as as affable and gracious as possible. Miss Teresa played the Fall of Paris," as Mr. Sparkins declared, in a most masterly manner, and both of them, assisted by Mr. Frederick, tried over glees and trios without number ; they having made the pleasing discovery that their voices harmonized beautifully. To be sure, they all sang the first part ; and Horatio, in addi- tion to the slight drawback of having no ear, was perfectly in- nocent of knowing a note of music ; still they passed the time very agreeably, and it was past twelve o'clock before Mr. Sparkins ordered the mourning-coach-looking steed to be brought out — an order which was only complied with, on the distinct understanding that he was to repeat his visit on the following Sunday. ^' But, perhaps, Mr. Sparkins will form one of our party to-morrow evening?" suggested Mrs. M. ''Mr. Malderton intends taking the girls to see the pantomine." Mr. Sparkins bowed, and promised to join the party in box 48, in the course of the evening. '' We will not tax you for the morning," said Miss Teresa, bewitchingly ; ''for ma is going to take us to all sorts of places, shopping. I know that gentlemen have a great hor- ror of that employment." Mr. Sparkins bowed again, and declared that he should be delighted, but business of import- ance occupied him in the morning. Flamwell looked at Malderton significantly. — '^ It's term time !*" he whispered. HORATIO SPARKINS, 697 At twelve o'clock on the following morning, the " fly " was at the door of Oak Lodge, to convey Mrs. Malderton and her daughters on their expedition for the day. They were to dine and dress for the play at a friend's house. First, driving thither with their band-boxes, they departed on their first errand to make some purchases at Messrs. Jones, Spruggins, and Smith's, of Tottenham-court-road ; after which, they were to go to Redmayne's in Bond-street ; thence, to innumerable places that no one ever heard of. The young ladies beguiled the tediousness of the ride by eulogizing Mr. Horatio Spark- ins, scolding their mamma for taking them so far to save a shilling, and wondering whether they should ever reach their destination. At length, the vehicle stopped before a dirty- looking ticketed linen-draper's shop, with goods of all kinds, and labels of all sorts and sizes, in the window. There were dropsical fibres of seven with a little three farthings in the corner ; perfectly invisible to the naked eye ; " three hundred and fifty thousand ladies' boas,y>"(9;;/ one shilling and a penny halt-penny ; real French kid shoes, at two and nine-pence per pair ; green parasols, at an equally cheap rate j and " every description of goods," as the proprietors said — and they must know best — ^* fifty per cent, under cost price." " Lor ! ma, what a place you have brought us to ! " said Miss Teresa ; " what would Mr. Sparkins say if he could see us!" " Ah ! what, indeed ! " said Miss Marianne, horrified at the idea. Pray be seated, ladies. What is the first article ? " in- quired the obsequious master of the ceremonies of the estab- lishment, who, in his large white neckcloth and formal tie, looked like a bad portrait of a gentleman " in the Somerset- house exhibition. " I want to see some silks," answered Mrs. Malderton. " Directly, ma'am. — Mr. Smith ! Where is Mr. Smith? " " Here, sir," cried a voice at the back of the shop. Pray make haste, Mr. Smith," said the M.C. " You never are to be found when you're wanted, sir." Mr. Smith, thus enjoined to use all possible despatch, leaped over the counter with great agility, and placed him- self before the newly-arrived customers. Mrs. Malderton uttered a faint scream ; Miss Teresa, who had been stooping down to talk to her sister, raised her head, and beheld—* Horatio Sparkins ^ 698 SKE TCITES B V BOZ. "We will draw a veil/' as novel writers say, over the scene that ensued. The mysterious, philosophical, romantic, meta- physical Sparkins — he who, to the interesting Teresa, seemed like the embodied idea of the young dukes and poetical ex- quisites in blue silk dressing-gowns, and ditto ditto slippers, of whom she had read and dreamed, but had never expected to behold, was suddenly converted into Mr. Samuel Smith, the assistant at a cheap shop the junior partner in a slippery firm of some three weeks' existence. The dignified evanish- ment of the hero of Oak Lodge, on this unexpected recogni- tion, could only be equalled by that of a furtive dog with a considerable kettle at his tail. All the hopes of the Malder- tons were destined at once to melt away, like the lemon ices at a Company's dinner ; Almacks was still to them as distant as the North Pole ; and Miss Teresa had as much chance of a husband as Captain Ross had of the north-wes4: passage. Years have elapsed since the occurrence of this dreadful morning. The daisies have thrice bloomed on Camberwell- green ; the sparrows have thrice repeated their vernal chirps in Camberwell-grove ; but the Miss Maldertons are still un- mated. Miss Teresa's case is more desperate than ever ; but Flamwell is yet in the zenith of his reputation ; and the family have the same predilection for aristocratic personages, with an increased aversion to anything low. CHAPTER VI, THE BLACK VEIL. One winter's evening, towards the close of the year iSoa, or within a year or two of that time, a young medical prac- titioner, recently established in business, was seated by a cheerful fire in his little parlor, listening to the wind which was beating the rain in pattering drops against the window, or rumbling dismally in the chimney. The night was wet and cold ; he had been walking through mud and water the whole day, and was now comfortably reposing in his dressing-gown and slippers, more than half asleep and less than half awak«^ THE BLACK VEIL. revolving a thousand matters in his wandering imagination. First, he thought how hard the wind was blowing, and how the cold, sharp rain would be at that moment beating in his face, if he were not comfortably housed at home. Then, his mind reverted to his annual Christmas visit to his native place and dearest friends ; he thought how glad they would all be to see him, and how happy it would make Rose if he could only tell her that he had found a patient at last, and hoped to have more, and to come down again, in a few months' time, and marry her, and take her home to gladden his lonely fire-- side, and stimulate him to fresh exertions. Then, he began to wonder when his first patient would appear, or whether he was destined, by a special dispensation of Providence, never to have any patients at all ; and then, he thought about Rose again, and dropped to sleep and dreamed about her, till the tones of her sweet merry voice sounded in his ears, and her soft tiny hand rested on his shoulder. There luas a hand upon l\is shoulder, but it was neither soft nor tiny ; its owner being a corpulent round-headed boy, who, in consideration of the sum of one shilling per week and his food, was let out by the parish to carry medicine and mes- sages. As there was no demand for the medicine, however, and no necessity for the messages, he usually occupied his unemployed hours — averaging fourteen a day — in abstract- ing peppermint drops, taking animal nourishment, and going to sleep. " A lady, sir — a lady ! " whispered the boy, rousing his master with a shake. " What lady t " cried our friend, starting up, not quite certain that his dream was an illusion, and half expecting that it might be Rose herself. — " What lady ? Where ? " There, sir ! replied the boy, pointing to the glass door leading into the surgery, with an expression of alarm which the very unusual apparition of a customer might have tended to excite. The surgeon looked towards the door, and started himself, for an instant, on beholding the appearance of his unlocked for visitor. It was a singularly tall woman, dressed in deep mourning, and standing so close to the door that her face almost touched the glass. The upper part of her figure was care- fully muffled in a black shawl, as if for the purpose of con- cealment ; and her face was shrouded by a thick black veil, SKETCHES B V BOZ. She stood perfectly erect, her figure was drawn up to its full height, and though the surgeon felt that the eyes beneath the veil were fixed on him, she stood perfectly motionless, and evinced, by no gesture whatever, the slightest consciousness of his having turned towards her. " Do you wish to consult me ? " he inquired, with some hesitation, holding open the door. It opened invv^ards, and therefore the action did not alter the position of the figure, which still remained motionless on the same spot. She slightly inclined her head, in token of acquiescence, " Pray walk in," said the surgeon. The figure moved a step forward ; and then, turning its head in the direction of the boy — to his infinite horror— ap- peared to hesitate. Leave the room, Tom," said the young man, addressing the boy, whose large round eyes had been extended to their utmost width during this brief interview. Draw the curtain, and shut the door." The boy drew a green curtain across the glass part of the door, retired into the surgery, closed the door after him, and immediately applied one of his large eyes to the keyhole on the other side. The surgeon drew a chair to the fire, and motioned the visitor to a seat. The mysterious figure slowly moved to- wards it. As the blaze shone upon the black dress, the sur- geon observed that the bottom of it was saturated with mud and rain. You are very wet," he said. "I am," said the stranger, in a low deep voice. "And you are ill.? " added the surgeon, compassionately, for the tone was that of a person in pain. I am," was the reply — " very ill : not bodily, but men- tally. It is not for myself, or on my own behalf," continued the stranger, " that I come to you. If I labored under bod- ily disease, I should not be out, alone, at such an hour, or on such a*night as this ; and if I were afflicted widi it, twenty- four hours hence, God knows how gladly I would lie down and pray to die. It is for another that I beseech your aid, sir. I may be mad to ask it for him — I think I am ; but, nignt after night, through the long dreary hours of watching and weeping, the thought has been ever present to my mind ; and though even / see the hopelessness of human assistance availing him, the bare thought of laying him in his grave THE BLACK VEIL, 701 without it makes my blood run cold ! ". And a shudder, such as the surgeon well knew art could not produce, tr'embled through the speaker's frame. There was a desperate earnestness in this woman's man- ner, that went to the young man's heart. He was young in his profession, and had not yet witnessed enough of the mis- eries which are daily presented before the eyes of its mem- bers, to have grown comparatively callous to human suffering, '*If," he said, rising hastily, "the person of whom you speak, be in so hopeless a condition as you describe, not a moment is to be lost. I will go with you instantly. Why did you not obtain medical advice before ? " Because it would have been useless before — because it is useless even now," replied the woman, clasping her hands passionately. The surgeon gazed, for a moment, on the black veil, as if to ascertain the expression of the features beneath it; its thickness, however, rendered such a result impossible. You are ill," he said, gently, although you do not know it. The fever which has enabled you to bear, without feeling it, the fatigue you have evidently undergone, is burn- ing within you now. Pat that to your lips," he continued, pouring out a glass of water — " compose yourself for a few moments, and then tell me, as calmly as you can, what the disease of the patient is, and how long he has been ill. When I know what it is necessary I should know, to render my visit serviceable to him, I am ready to accompany you." The stranger lifted the glass of water to her mouth, with- out raising the veil ; put it down again untasted ; and burst into tears. " 1 know," she said, sobbing aloud, " that what I say to you now, seems like the ravings of fever. I have been told so before, less kindly than by you. I am not a young woman ; and they do say, that as life steals on towards its final close, the last short remnant, worthless as it may seem to all beside, is dearer to its possessor than all the years that have gone before, connected though they be with the recollec- tion of old friends long since dead, and young ones — children perhaps— who have fallen off from, and forgotten one as com- pletely as if they had died too. My natural term of life can- not be many years longer, and should be dear on that account j but I would lay it down without a sigh — with cheerfulness — • with joy — if what I tell you now, were only false, or imaginary. 702 SKETCHES BY BOZ. To-morrow morning he of whom I speak will be, I know^ though I would fain think otherwise beyond the reach of hu- man aid ; and yet, to-night, though he is in deadly peril, you must not see, and could not serve, him.'' "lam unwilling to increase your distress," said the sur- geon, after a short pause, " by making any comment on what you have just said, or appearing desirous to investigate a sub- ject you are so anxious to conceal ; but there is an inconsist- ency in your statement which I cannot reconcile with prob- ability. This person is dying to-night, and I cannot see him when my assistance might possibly avail ; you apprehend it will be useless to-morrow, and yet you would have me see him then ! If he be, indeed, as dear to you, as your words and manner would imply, why not try to save his life before delay and the progress of his disease render it impracti- cable ? " God help me ! " exclaimed the woman, weeping bitterly, " how can 1 hope strangers will believe what appears incred- ible, even to myself t You will not see him then, sir ? " she added, rising suddenly. " I did not say that I declined to see him," replied the surgeon ; but I warn you, that if you persist in this extraor- dinary procrastination, and the individual dies, a fearful re- sponsibility rests with you." " The responsibility will rest heavily somewhere," replied the stranger bitterly. " Whatever responsibility rests with me, I am content to bear, and ready to answer." " As I incur none," continued the surgeon, " by acceding to your request, I will see him in the morning, if you leave me the address. At what hour can he be seen 1 " ^' Nine,'' replied the stranger. "You must excuse my pressing these inquiries," said the surgeon. " But is he in your charge now ? " " He is not," was the rejoinder. " Then if I give you instructions for his treatment through the night, you could not assist him? " The woman wept bitterly, as she replied, "I could not.*' Finding that there was but little prospect of obtaining more information by prolonging the interview ; and anxious to spare the woman's feelings, which, subdued at first by a violent effort, were now irrepressible and most painful to witness ; the surgeon repeated his promise of calling in the morning at the appointed hour. His visitor, after giving him THE BLACK VEIL. 7^3 a direction to an obscure part of Walworth, left the house in the same mysterious manner in which she had entered it. It will be readily believed that so extraordinary a visit pro- duced a considerable impression on the mind of the young surgeon ; and that he speculated a great deal and to very little purpose on the possible circumstances of the case. In common with the generality of people, he had often heard and read of singular instances, in which a presentiment of death, at a particular day or even minute, had been entertained and realized. At one moment he was inclined to think that the present might be such a case ] but, then, it occurred to him that all the anecdotes of the kind he had ever heard, were of persons who had been troubled with a foreboding of their own death. This woman, however, spoke of another person — a man ; and it was impossible to suppose that a mere dream or delusion of fancy would induce her to speak of his ap- proaching dissolution with such terrible certainty as she had spoken. It could not be that the man was to be murdered ii) the morning, and that the woman originally a consenting party, and bound to secresy by an oath, had relented, and, though unable to prevent the commission of some outrage on the victim, had determined to prevent his death if possible, by the timely interposition of medical aid ? The idea of such things happening within two miles of the metropolis appeared too wild and preposterous to be entertained beyond the in- stant. Then, his original impression that the woman's intel- lects were disordered, recurred \ and, as it was the only mode of solving the difficulty with any degree of satisfaction, he obstinately made up his mind to believe that she was mad. Certain misgivings upon this point, however, stole upon his thoughts at the time, and presented themselves again and again through the long dull course of a sleepless night ; during which, in spite of all his efforts to the contrary, he was unable to banish the black veil from his disturbed imagination. The back part of Walworth, at its greatest distance from town, is a straggling miserable place enough, even in these days : but five-and-thirty years ago, the greater portion of it was little better than a dreary waste, inhabited by a few scattered people of questionable character, whose poverty prevented their living in any better neighborhood, or whose pursuits and mode of life rendered its solitude desirable. Very many of the houses which have since sprung up on all sides, were not built until some years afterwards ; and the great majority even 704 SKETCHES BY BOZ, of those which were sprinkled about, at Irregular intervals w^re of the rudest and most miserable description. The appearance of the place through which he walked in the morning, was not calculated to raise the spirits of the young surgeon, or to dispel any feeling of anxiety or depres- sion which the singular kind of visit he was about to make, had awakened. Striking off from the high road, his way lay across a marshy common, through irregular lanes, with here and there a ruinous and dismantled cottage fast falling to pieces with decay and neglect. A stunted tree, or pool of stagnant water, roused into a sluggish action by the heavy rain of the preceding night, skirted the path occasionally; and, now and then, a miserable patch of garden -ground, with a few old boards knocked together for a summer house, and old palings imperfectly mended with stakes pilfered from the neighboring hedges, bore testimony, at once to the poverty of the inhabitants, and the little scruple they entertained in ap- propriating the property of other people to their own use. Occasionally, a filthy-looking woman would make her appear- ance from the door of a dirty house, to empty the contents of some cooking utensil into the gutter in front, or to scream after a little slip-shod girl, who had contrived to stagger a few yards from the door under the weight of a sallow infant almost as big as herself ; but, scarcely anything was stirring around : and so much of the prospect as could be faintly traced through the cold damp mist which hung heavily over it, presented a lonely and dreary appearance perfectly in keep- mg with the objects we have described. After plodding wearily through the mud and mire \ making many inquiries for the place to which he had been directed ; and receiving as many contradictory and unsatisfactory replies in return • the young man at length arrived before the house \vhich had been pointed out to him as the object of his desti- nation. It was a small low building, one story above the ground, v/ith even a more desolate and unpromising exterior than any he had yet passed. An old yellow curtain was closely drawn across the window up stairs, and the parlor shutters were closed, but not fastened. The house was detached from any other, and, as it stood at an angle of a narrow lane, there was no other Jjiabitation in sight. When we say that the surgeon hesitated, and walked a few paces beyond the house, before he could prevail upon himself to lift the knocker, we say nothing that need raise a smilt? THE BLACK VEIL, UfneiT^ the facft of the boldest reader. The police of London were ^ very dliierent body in that day ; the isolated position of me suburbs, when the rage for building and the progress of imptovement had not yet begun to connect them with the main bcdy of ihc city and its environs, rendered many of them (aiiof this in particular) a place of resort for the worst and most depraveci characters. Even the streets in the gayest parts of Loudon wore imperfectly lighted, at that time ; and such places as these, were left entirely to the mercy of the moon and stars. Tne chances of detecting desperate charac- ters, or of tracing them to their haunts, were thus rendered very few, and their offences naturally increased in boldness, as the consciousness of comparative security became the more impressed upon them by daily experience. Added to these considerations, it must be remembered that the young man had spent some time in the public hospitals of the metropolis ; and, aUhough neither Burke nor Bishop had then gained a horrible notoriety, his own observation might have suggested to him how easily the atrocities to which the former has since given his name, might be committed. Be this as it may, whatever reflection made hmi hesitate, he did hesitate : but, being a young man of strong mind and great personal courage, it was only for an instant ; — he stepped briskly back and knocked gently at the door. A low whispering was audible, immediately afterwards, as if some person at the end of the passage were conversing stealthily with another on the landing above. It was succeeded by the noise of a pair of heavy boots upon the bare floor. The door-chain was softly unfastened ^ the door opened ; and a tall, ill-favored man, with black hair, and a face, as the surgeon often declared afterwards, as pale and haggard, as the countenance of any dead man he ever saw, presented himself. "Walk in, sir," he said in a low tone. The surgeon did so, and the man having secured the door again, by the chain, led the way to a small back parlor at the extremity of the passage. "Am I in time ? " "Too soon,'' replied the man. The surgeon turned hastily round, with a gesture of astonishment not unmixed with alarm, which he found it impossible to repress. " If you'll step in here, sir," said the man, who had evidently noticed the action — " if you'll step in here, sir, you won't be detained five minutes. I assure you." 7o6 SKETCHES BY BOZ, The surgeon at once walked into the room. The man closed the door, and left him alone. It was a little cold room, with no other furniture than two deal chairs, and a table of the same material. A handful of fire, unguarded by any fender, was burning in the grate, which brought out the damp if it served no more comfortable pur pose, for the unwholesome moisture was stealing down the walls, in long sluglike tracks. The window, which was broken and jDatched in many places, looked into a small enclosed piece of ground, almost covered with water. Not a sound was to be heard, either within the house, or without. The young surgeon sat down by the fire-place, to await the result of his first professional visit. He had not remained in this position, many minutes, when the noise of some approaching vehicle struck his ear. It stopped ; the street-door w^as opened ; a low talking succeeded, accompanied with a shuffling noise of footsteps, along the passage and on the stairs, as if two or three men were engaged in carrying some heavy body to the room above. The creak- ing of the stairs, a few second afterw^ards, announced that the new comers having completed their task, whatever it was, were leaving the house. The door was again closed, and the former silence was restored. Another five minutes had elapsed, and the surgeon had resolved to explore the house, in search of some one to whom he might make his errand known, when the room-door opened, and his last night's visitor, dressed in exactly the same manner, with the veil lowered as before, motioned him to advance. The singular height of her form, coupled with the circum- stance of her not speaking, caused the idea to pass across his brain for an instant, that it might be a man disguised in woman's attire. The hysteric sobs which issued from beneath the veil, and the convulsive attitude of grief of the whole figure, however, at once exposed the absurdity of the suspicion ; and he hastily followed. The woman led the way up stairs to the front room, and paused at the door, to let him enter first. It was scantily furnished with an old deal box, a few chairs, and a tent bed- stead, wdthout hangings or cross-rails, which was covered with a patchwork counterpane. The dim light admitted through the curtain which he had noticed from the outside, rendered the objects in the room so indistinct, and communicated to all of them so uniform a hue, that he did not, at first, perceive THE BLACK VEIL, 707 the object on which his eye at once rested when the woman rushed frantically past him, and flung herself on her knees by the bedside. Stretched upon the bed, closely enveloped in a linen wrapper, and covered with blankets, lay a human form, stiff and motionless. The head and face, which were those of a man, were uncovered, save by a bandage which passed over the head and under the chin. The eyes were closed. The left arm lay heavily across the bed, and the woman held the passive hand. The surgeon gently pushed the woman aside, and took the hand in his. " My God ! " he exclaimed, letting it fall involuntarily — " the man is dead ! " The woman started to her feet and beat her hands to^ gether. " Oh ! don't say so, sir,'' she exclaimed, with a burst of passion, amounting almost to frenzy. Oh ! don't say so, sir ! I can't bear it ! Men have been brought to life, before, when unskilful people have given them up fgir lost \ and men have died, who might have been restored, if proper means had been resorted to. Don't let him lie here, sir, without one effort to save him ! This very moment life may be passing away. Do try, sir, — do, for Heaven's sake!" — And while speaking, she hurriedly chafed, first the forehead,- and then breast, of the senseless form before her ; and then, wildly beat the cold hands, which, when she ceased to hold them, fell listlessly and heavily back on the coverlet. " It is of no use, my good woman," said the surgeon, sooth- ingly, as he withdrew his hand from the man's breast. " Stay — undraw that curtain ! " ^ " Why ? " said the woman, starting up. " Undraw that curtain ! " repeated the surgeon in an agitated tone. "/darkened the room on purpose," said the woman, throwing herself before him as he rose to undraw it. — " Oh ! sir, have pity on me ! If it can be of no use, and he is really dead, do not expose that form to other eyes than mine ? " " This man died no natural or easy death," said the surgeon, " I must see the body ! " With a motion so sudden, that the woman hardly knew that he had slipped from beside her, he tore open the curtain, admitted the full light of day, and returned to the bedside. " There has been violence here," he said, pointing towards 7o8 SKE TCHES B V BOZ, the body, and gazing intently on the face, from which thft black veil was now, for the first time, removed. In the ex- citement of a minute before, the female had thrown off the bonnet and veil, and now stood with lier eyes fixed upon him. Her features were those of a woman about fifty, who had once been handsome. Sorrow and weeping had left traces upon them which not time itself would ever have produced without their aid ; her face was deadly pale , and there was a nervous contortion of the lip, and an unnatural fire in her eye, which showed too plainly that her bodily and mental powers had nearly sunk, beneath an accumulation of misery. There has been violence here," said the surgeon, pre serving his searching glance. There has ! replied the woman. This man has been muidered." " That I call God to witness he has," said the woman, passionately ; " pitilessly, inhumanly murdered ! " " By whom ? " said the surgeon, seizing the woman by the arm. " Look at the butchers' marks, and then ask me ! " she replied. The surgeon turned his face towards the bed, and bent over the body which now lay full in the light of the window. The throat was swollen, and a livid mark' encircled it. The truth flashed suddenly upon him. This is one of the men who were hanged this morning ! " he exclaimed, turning away with a shudder. " It is," replied the woman, with a cold, unmeaning stare. Who was he ? " inquired the surgeon. " My S07Z,'" rejoined the woman ; and fell senseless at his feet. It was true. A companion, equally guilty with himself, had been acquitted for want of evidence ; and this man had been left for death, and executed. To recount the circum- stances of the case, at this distant period, 'must be un- necessary, and might give pain to some persons still alive. The history was an every day one. The mother w^as a widow without friends or money, and had denied herself necessaries to bestow them on her orphan boy. That boy, unmindful of her prayers, and forgetful of the sufferings she had endured for him — incessant anxiety of mind, and voluntary starvation of body — had plunged into a career of dissipation and crime. THE STEAM EXCURSION. And this was the result ; his own death by the hangman's hands, and his mother's shame, and incurable insanity. For many years after this occurrence, and when profitable and arduous avocations would have led many men to forget that such a miserable being existed, the young surgeon was a daily visitor at the side of the harmless mad woman ; not only soothing her by his presence and kindness, but alle- viating the rigor of her condition by pecuniary donations for her comfort and support^ bestowed with no sparing hand. In the transient gleam of recollection and consciousness which preceded her death, a prayer for his welfare and pro- tection, as fervent as mortal ever breathed, rose from the lips of this poor friendless creature. That prayer flew to Heaven, and was heard. The blessings he was instrumental in con- ferring, have been repaid to him a thousand-fold ; but, amid all the honors of rank and station which have since been heaped upon L m, and which he has so well earned, he can have no reminiscence more gratifying to his heart than that connected with The Black Veil. CHAPTER Vn. THE STEAM EXCURSION. Mr. Percy Noakes was a law student, inhabiting a set of chambers on the fourth floor, in one of those houses in Gray's-inn-square which command an extensive view of the gardens, and their usual adjuncts — flaunting nursery-maids, and town-made children, with parenthetical legs. Mr. Percy Noakes was what is generally termed — a devilish good fellow.'' He had a large circle of acquaintance, and seldom dined at his own expense. He used to talk politics to papas, flatter the vanity of mrma 3, do the amiable to their daughters, make pleasure engager. ent3 with their sons, and romp with the younger branches. Like those paragons of perfection, advertising footmen out of place, he was always willing to make himself generally useful." If any old lady, whose son was in India, gave a ball, Mr. Percy Noakes was master of the ceremonies ; if any young lady made a stolen match, Mr. SKETCHES BY BOZ. Percy Noakes gave her away ; if a juvenile wife presented hei husband with a blooming cherub, Mr. Percy Noakes was either godfather, or deputy-godfather ; and if any member of a friend's family died, Mr. Percy Noakes was invariably to be seen in the second mourning coach, with a white handkerchief to his eyes, sobbing — to use his own appropriate and ex- pressive description — like winkin' ! " It may readily be imagined that these numerous avocations were rather calculated to interfere with Mr. Percy Noakes's professional studies. Mr. Percy Noakes was perfectly aware of the fact, and had, therefore, after mature reflection, made up his mind not to study at all — a laudable determination, to which he adhered in the most praiseworthy manner. His sitting-room presented a strange chaos of dress-gloves, boxing- gloves, caricatures, albums, invitation-cards, foils, cricket- bats, card-board drawings, paste, gum, and fifty other mis- cellaneous articles, heaped together in the strangest confusion. He was always making something for somebody, or planning some party of pleasure, which was his great forte. He invariably spoke with astonishing rapidity ; was smart, spofiish, and eight-and-twenty. " Splendid idea, 'pon my life ! " soliloquized Mr. Percy Noakes, over his morning's coffee, as his mind reverted to a suggestion which had been thrown out on the previous night, by a lady at whose house he had spent the evening. " Glorious idea! — Mrs. Stubbs." Yes, sir," replied a dirty old woman with an inflamed countenance, emerging from the bed-room, with a barrel of dirt and cinders. — This was the laundress. Did you call, sir ? " " Oh ! Mrs. Stubbs, I'm going out. If that tailor should call again, you'd better say — you'd better say I'm out of town, and shan't be back for a fortnight ; and if that boot-maker should come, tell him I've lost his address, or I'd have sent him that little amount. Mind he writes it down ; and if Mr. Hardy should call — you know Mr. Hardy ? " The funny gentleman, sir " " Ah ! the funny gentleman. If Mr. Hardy should call, say I've gone to Mrs. Taunton's about that water-party." " Yes, sir." And if any fellow calls, and says he's come about a steamer, tell him to be here at five o'olock this afternoon, Mrs. Stubbs." THE STEAM EXCURSION. 711 " Very well, sir." Mr. Percy Noakes brushed his hat, whisked the crumbs off his inexplicables with a silk handkerchief, gave the ends of his hair a persuasive roll round his forefinger, and sallied forth for Mrs. Taunton's domicile in Great Marlborough- street, where she and her daughters occupied the upper part of a house. She was a good-looking widow of fifty, with the form of a giantess and the mind of a child. The pursuit of pleasure, and some means of killing time, were the sole end of her existence,. She doted on her daughters, who were as frivolous as herself. A general exclamation of satisfaction hailed the arrival of Mr. Percy Noakes, who went through the ordinary salutations, and threw himself into an easy chair near the ladies' work- table, with the ease of a regularly established friend of the family. Mrs. Taunton was busily engaged in planting im- mense bright bows on every part of a smart cap on which it was possible to stick one ; Miss Emily Taunton was making a watch-guard ; Miss Sophia was at the piano, practicing a new song — poetry by the young officer, or the police officer, or the custom-house officer, or some other interesting amateur. " You good creature ! " said Mrs. Taunton, addressing the gallant Percy. " You really are a good soul ! You've come about the water-party, I know." " I should rather suspect I had," replied Mr. Noakes, triumphantly. " Now, come here, girls, and I'll tell you all about it." Miss Emily and Miss Sophia advanced to the table. Now," continued Mr. Percy Noakes, "it seems to me that the best way will be, to have a committee of ten, to make all the arrangements, and manage the whole set-out. Then, I propose that the expenses shall be paid by these ten fellows jointly." " Excellei>t, indeed ! " said Mrs. Taunton, who highly ap- proved of this part of the arrangements. Then, my plan is, that each of these ten fellows shall have the power of asking five people. There must be a meet ing of the committee, at my chambers, to make all the arrange- ments, and these people shall be then named ; every member of the committee shall have the power of black-balling any one who is proposed ; and one black baU shall exclude that, person. This will insure our having a pleasant party, you know," 712 SKETCHES BY BOZ. What a manager you are ! " interrupted Mrs. Taunton again. " Charming ! " said the lovely Emily. I never did ! ejaculated Sophia. Yes, I think it'll do," replied Mr. Percy Noakes, who was now quite in his element. "I think it'll do. Then you know we shall go down to the Nore, and back, and have a regular capital cold dinner laid out in the cabin before we start, so that everything may be ready without any confusion; and we shall have the luncli laid out, on deck, in those little tea-garden-looking concerns by the paddle-boxes — I don't know what you call 'em. Then, we shall hire a steamer ex- pressly for our party, and a band, and have the deck chalked, and we shall be able to dance quadrilles all day ; and then, whoever we know that's musical, you know, why, they'll make themselves useful and agreeable ; and — and — upon the w^hole, I really hope we shall have a glorious day, you know ! " The announcement of these arrangements was received with the utmost enthusiasm. Mrs. Taunton, Emily, and Sophia, were loud in their praises. " Well, but tell me, Percy," said Mrs. Taunton, " who are the ten gentlemen to be 1 " " Oh ! I know plenty of fellows who'll be delighted with the scheme," replied Mr. Percy Noakes ; ^' of course we shall have " " Mr. Hardy ! " interrupted the servant announcing a visi- tor. Miss Sophia and Miss Emily hastily assumed the most interesting attitudes that could be adopted on so short a notice. How are you ? " said a stout gentleman of about forty, pausing at the door in the attitude of an awkward harlequin. This was Mr. Hardy, whom we have before described, on the authority of Mrs. Stubbs, as the funny gentleman." He was an Astley-Cooperish Joe Miller — a practical joker, im- mensely popular with married ladies, and a general favorite with young men. He was always engaged in some pleasure excursion or other, and delighted in getting somebody into a scrape on such occasions. He could sing comic songs, imitate hackney-coachmen and fowls, play airs on his chin, and exe- cute concertos on the Jews'-harp. He always eat and drank most immoderately, and was the bosom friend of Mr. Percy Noakes. He had a red face, a somewhat husky voicQ, and a tremendous laugh. THE STEAM EXCURSION, How are you ? " said this worthy, laughing, as if it were the finest joke in the world to make a morning call, and shak- ing hands with the ladies with as much vehemence as if their arms had been so many pump-handles. ^' You're just the very man I wanted,'^ said Mr. Percy Noakes, who proceeded to explain the cause of his being in requisition. " Ha ! ha ! ha ! " shouted Hardy, after hearing the state- ment, and receiving a detailed account of the proposed excur- sion. " Oh, capital ! glorious ! What a day it will be ! what fun ! — But, I say, when are you going to begin making the arrangements ? " " No time lilce the present — at once, if you please. " Oh, charming ! " cried the ladies. " Pray, do ! " Writing materials were laid before Mr. Percy Noakes, and the names of the different members of the committee were agreed on, after as much discussion between him and Mr. Hardy as if the fate of nations had depended on their appoint- ment. It was then agreed that a meeting should take place at Mr. Percy Noakes's chambers on the ensuing Wednesday evening at eight o'clock, and the visitors departed. Wednesday evening arrived ; eight o'clock came, and eight members of the committee were punctual in their atten- dance. Mr. Loggins, th^ solicitor, of Boswell-court, sent an excuse, and Mr. Samuel Briggs, the ditto of Furnival's Inn, sent his brother : much to his (the brother's) satisfaction, and greatly to the discomfiture of Mr. Percy Noakes. Between the Briggses and the Tauntons there existed a degree of im- placable hatred, quite unprecedented. The animosity betw^een the Montagues and the Capulets, was nothing to that which prevailed between these two illustrious houses. Mrs. Briggs was a widow, with three daughters and two sons ; Mr. Samuel, the eldest, was an attorne}^, and Mr. Alexander, the youngest, was under articles to his brother. They resided in Portland- street, Oxford-street, and moved in the same orbit as the Tauntons — hence their mutual dislike. If the Miss Briggses appeared in smart bonnets, the Miss Tauntons eclipsed them with smarter. If Mrs. Taunton appeared in a cap of all the colors of the rainbow, Mrs. Briggs forthwith mounted a toque, with all the patterns of the kaleidoscope. If Miss Sophia Taunton learnt a new song, two of tlie Miss Briggses came out with a new duet. The Tauntons had once gained a tem- porary triumph with the assistance of a harp, but the Briggses 7U SKETCHES BY BOZ. brought three guitars into the field, and effectually routed the enemy. There was no end to the rivalry between them. Now, as Mr. Samuel Briggs was a mere machine, a sort of self-acting legal walking-stick \ and as the party was known to have originated, however remotely, with Mrs. Taunton, the female branches of the Briggs family had arranged that Mr. Alexander should attend, instead of his brother ; and as the said Mr. Alexander was deservedly celebrated for possessing all the pertinacity of a bankruptcy-court attorney, combined with the obstinacy of that useful animal which browses on the thistle, he required but little tuition. He was especially en- joined to make himself as disagreeable as possible ; and, above all, to black-ball the Tauntons at every hazard. The proceedings of the evening were opened by Mr. Percy Noakes. After successfully urging on the gentlemen present the propriety of their mixing some brandy-and-water, he briefly stated the object of the meeting, and concluded by observing that the first step must be the selection of a chair- man, necessarily possessing some arbitrary — he trusted not unconstitutional — powers, to whom the personal direction of the whole of the arrangements (subject to the approval of the committee) should be confided. A pale young gentleman, in a green stock and spectacles of the same, a member of the honorable society of the Inner Temple, immediately rose for the purpose of proposing Mr. Percy Noakes. He had known him long, and this he would say, that a more honorable, a more excellent, or a better-hearted fellow, never existed. — (Hear, hear !) The young gentleman, who was a member of a debating society, took this opportunity of entering into an examination of the state of the English law, from the days of William the Conqueror down to the present period ; he briefly adverted to the code established by the ancient Druids ; slightly glancing at the principles laid down by the Athenian law-givers ; and concluded with a most glowing eulogium on picnics and constitutional rights. Mr. Alexander Briggs opposed the motion. He had the highest esteem for Mr. Percy Noakes as an individual, but he did consider that he ought not to be intrusted with these immense powers — (oh ! oh !) — He believed that in the pro- posed capacity Mr. Percy Noakes would not act fairly, impar- tially, or honorably ; but he begged it to be distinctly under- stood, that he said this, without the slightest personal disre- spect. Mr. Hardy defended his honorable friend, in*a voice THE STEAM EXCURSION. rendered partially unintelligible by emotion and brandy-and- water. The proposition was put to the vote, and there ap- pearing to be only one dissentient voice, Mr. Percy Noakes was declared duly elected, and took the chair accordingly. The business of the meeting now proceeded with rapidity The chairman delivered in his estimate of the probable ex- pense of the excursion, and every one present subscribed his portion thereof. The question was put that " The Endeavor be hired for the occasion ; Mr. Alexander Briggs moved as an amendment, that the word ^' Fly be substituted for the word " Endeavour;" but after some debate consented to with- draw his opposition. The important ceremony of balloting then commenced. A tea-caddy was placed on a table in a dark corner of the apartment, and every one was provided with two backgammon men, one black and one white. The chairman with great solemnity then read the follow- ing list of the guests whom he proposed to introduce : — Mrs. Taunton and two daughters, Mr. Wizzle, Mr, Simson. The names were respectively balloted for, and Mrs. Taunton and her daughters were declared to be black-balled. Mr. Percy Noakes and Mr. Hardy exchanged glances. Is your list prepared, Mr. Briggs ? " inquired the chair- man. It is," replied Alexander, delivering in the following : — Mrs. Briggs and three daughters, Mr. Samuel Brings. The previous ceremony was repeated, and Mrs. Briggs and three daughters were declared to be black-balled. Mr. Alexander Briggs looked rather foolish, and the remainder of the com- pany appeared somewhat overawed by the mysterious nature of the proceedings. The balloting proceeded ; but, one little circumstance which ]\^r. Percy Noakes had not originally forseen, prevented the system from working quite as well as he had anticipated. Everybody was black-balled. Mr. Alexander Briggs, by way of retaliation, exercised his power of exclusion in every instance, and the result was, that after three hours had been consumed in hard balloting, the names of only three gentle- men were found to have been agreed to. In this dilemma what was to be done ? either the whole plan must fall to the ground, or a compromise must be effected. The latter alter- native was preferable ; and Mr. Percy Noakes therefore pro- posed that the form of balloting should be dispensed with, and that every gentleman should merely be required to state 7l6 SKETCHES B Y BOZ. whom he intended to bring. The proposal was acceded to ; the Tauntons and the Briggses were reinstated ; and the party was formed. The next Wednesday was fixed for the eventful day, and it was unanimously resolved that every member of the com- mittee should wear a piece of blue sarsenet ribbon round his left arm. It appeared from the statement of Mr. Percy Noakes, that the boat belonged to the General Steam Nav- igation Company, and was then lying off the Custom-house ; and, as he proposed that the dinner and wines should be pro- vided by an eminent city purveyor, it was arranged that Mr, Percy Noakes should be on board by seven o'clock to super- intend the arrangements, and that the remaining members of the committee, together with the company generally, should be expected to join her by nine o'clock. More brandy-and- water was despatched ; several speeches were made by the different law students present ; thanks were voted to the chairman ; and the meeting separated. The weather had been beautiful up to this period, and beautiful it continued to be. Sunday passed over, and Mr. Percy Noakes became unusually fidgety — rushing, constantly, to and from the Steam Packet Wharf, to the astonishment of the clerks, and the great emolument of the Holborn cabmen. Tuesday arrived, and the anxiety of Mr. Percy Noakes knew no bounds^. He was every instant running to the window, to look out for clouds ; and Mr. Hardy astonished the whole square by practising a new comic song for the occasion, in the chairman's chambers. Uneasy were the slumbers of Mr. Percy Noakes that night ; he tossed and tumbled about, and had confused dreams of steamers starting off, and gigantic clocks with the hands pointing to a quarter-past nine, and the ugly face of Mr. Alexander Briggs looking over the boat's side, and grinning, as if in derision of his fruitless attempts to move. He made a violent effort to get on board, and awoke. The bright sun was shining cheerfully into the bed-room, and Mr. Percy Noakes started up for his watch, in the dreadful expectation of finding his worst dreams realized. It was just five o'clock. He calculated the time — he should be a good half-hour dressing himself ; and as it was a lovely morning, and the tide would be then running down, he would walk leisurely to Strand-lane, and have a boat to the Custom-house. THE STEAM EXCURSION. He dressed himself, took a hasty apology for a breakfast, and sallied forth. The streets looked as lonely and deserted as if they had been crowded, overnight, for the last time. Here and there, an early apprentice, with quenched -looking sleepy eyes, was taking down the shutters of a shop ; and a policeman or milk-woman might occasionally be seen pacing slowly along ; but the servants had not yet begun to clean the doors, or light the kitchen fires, and London looked the picture of desolation. At the corner of a by-street, near Temple-bar, was stationed a street-breakfast." The coffee was boiling over a charcoal fire, and large slices of bread and butter were piled one upon the other, like deals in a timber- yard. The company were seated on a form, which, with a view both to security and comfort, was placed against a neighboring wall. Two young men, whose uproarious mirth and disordered dress bespoke the conviviality of the preced- ing evening, were treating three ladies " and an Irish, laborer. A little sweep was standing at a short distance, casting a longing eye at the tempting delicacies ; and a police- man was watching the group from the opposite side of the street. The wan looks, and gaudy finery of the thinly-clad women contrasted as strangely with the gay sun-light, as did their forced merriment with the boisterous hilarity of the two young men, who, now and then, varied their amusements by bonneting" the proprietor of this itinerant coffee-house. Mr. Percy Noakes walked briskly by, and when he turned down Strand-lane, and caught a glimpse of the glistening water, he thought he had never felt so important or so happy in his life. " Boat, sir ? " cried one of the three watermen who were mopping out their boats, and all whistling. Boat, sir 1 " No," replied Mr. Percy Noakes, rather sharply ; for the inquiry was not made in a manner at all suitable to his dignity. Would you prefer a wessel, sir?" inquired another, to the infinite delight of the " Jack-in-the-water." Mr. Percy Noakes replied wdth a look of supreme con- tempt. " Did you want to be put on board a steamer, sir t " in- quired an old fireman-waterman, very confidentially. He was dressed in a faded red suit, just the color of the cover of a very old Court-guide. " Yes, make haste — the Endeavour — off the Custom- house." 7i8 SKE TCHES B V BOZ. " Endeavour ! " cried the man who had convulsed tho " Jack before. " Vy, I see the Endeavour go up half an hour ago." " So did I," said another ; " and I should think she'd gone down by this time, for she's a precious sight too full of ladies and gen'lemen." Mr. Percy Noakes affected to disregard th^ese represen- tations, and stepped into the boat, which the old man, by dint of scrambling, and shoving, and' grating, had brought up to the causeway. Shove her off ! " cried Mr. Percy Noakes, and away the boat glided down the river ; Mr. Percy Noakes seated on the recently mopped seat, and the watermen at the stairs offering to bet him any reasonable sum that he'd never reach the " Custum-us." " Here she is, by Jove ! " said the delighted Percy, as they ran alongside the Endeavour. " Hold hard ! " cried the steward over the side, and Mr. Percy Noakes jumped on board. Hope you will find everything as you wished, sir. " She looks uncommon well this morning." She does, indeed," replied the manager, in a state of ecstasy which it is impossible to describe. The deck was scrubbed, and the seats were scrubbed, and there was a bench for the band, and a place for dancing, and a pile of camp- stools, and an awning ; and then, Mr. Percy Noakes bustled down below, and there were the pastrycook's men, and the steward's wife, laying out the dinner on two tables the \vhole length of the cabin ; and then Mr. Percy Noakes took off his coat and rushed backwards and forwards, doing nothing, but quite convinced he was assisting everybody ; and the steward's wife laughed till she cried, and Mr. Percy Noakes panted with the violence of his exertions. And then the bell at Londonbridge wharf rang ; and a Margate boat was just starting ; and a Gravesend boat was just starting, and people shouted, and porters ran down the steps with luggage that would crush any men but porters ; and sloping boards, with bits of ^vood nailed on them were placed between the outside boat and the inside boat ; and the passengers ran along them, and looked like so many fowls coming out of an area, and then, the bell ceased, and the boards were taken away, and the boats started, and the whole scene was one of the most delightful bustle and confusion. The time wore on ; half-past eight o'clock arrived , the THE STEAM EXCURSION, pastrycook's men went ashore ; the dinner was completely laid out ; and Mr. Percy Noakes locked the principal cabin, and put the key in his pocket, in order that it might be suddenly disclosed, in all its magnificence, to the eyes of the astonished company. The band came on board, and so did the wine. Ten minutes to nine, and the committee embarked in a body. There was Mr. Hardy, in a blue jacket and waistcoat, white trousers, silk stockings, and pumps' — in full aquatic costume, with a straw^ hat on his head, and an immense telescope under his arm ; and there was the young gentleman with the green spectacles, in nankeen inexplicables, with a ditto waistcoat and bright buttons, like the pictures of Paul — not the saint, but he of Virginia notoriety. The remainder of the committee, dressed in white hats, light jackets, waistcoats, and trousers, looked something between waiters and West India planters. Nine o'clock struck, and the company arrived in shoals. Mr. Samuel Briggs, Mrs. Briggs, and the Misses Briggs, made their appearance in a smart private wherry. The three guitars, in their respective dark green cases, were carefully stowed away in the bottom of the boat, accompanied by two immense portfolios of music, which it would take at least a week's in- cessant playing to get through. The Tauntons arrived at the same moment with more music, and a lion — a gentleman with a bass voice and an incipient red mustache. The colors of the Taunton party were pink ; those of the Briggses a light blue. The Tauntons had artificial flowers in their bonnets ; here the Briggses gained a decided advantage — they wore feathers. "How d'ye do, dear?" said the Misses Briggs to the Misses Taunton. (The word " dear " among girls is fre- quently synonymous with wretch.") " Quite well, thank you, dear," replied the Misses Taunton to the Misses Briggs ; and then, there was such a kissing, and congratulating, and shaking of hands, as might have induced one to suppose that the two families were the best friends in the world, instead of each wishing the other overboard, as they most sincerely did, Mr. Percy Noakes received the visitors, and bowed to the strange gentleman, as if he should like to know who he was. This was just what Mrs. Taunton wanted. Here was an op ' portunity to astonish the Briggses. 31 720 SKETCHES BY BOZ. " Oh ! I beg your pardon," said the general of the Taun- ton party, with a careless air. — " Captain Helves — Mr. Percy Noakes — Mrs. Briggs — Captain Helves." Mr. Percy Noakes bowed very low ; the gallant captain did the same with all due ferocity, and the Briggses were clearly overcome. " Our friend, Mr. Wizzle, being unfortunately prevented from coming, resumed Mrs. Taunton, " I did myself the pleasure of bringing the captain, w^hose musical talents J knew would be a great acquisition." " In the name of the committee I have to thank you foi doing so, and to offer you welcome, sir," replied Percy. (Here the scraping was renewed.) " But pray be seated— won't you walk aft .^^ Captain, will you conduct Miss Taun- ton ? — Miss Briggs, will you allow me ? " " Where could they have picked up that military man ? " inquired Mrs. Briggs of Miss Kate Briggs, as they followed the little party. " I can't imagine," replied Miss Kate, bursting with vexation ; for the very fierce air with which the gallant captain regarded the company, had impressed her with a high sense of his importance. Boat after boat came alongside, and guest after guest arrived. The invites had been excellently arranged : Mr. Percy Noakes having considered it as important that the number of young men should exactly tally with that of the young ladies, as that the quantity of knives on board should be in precise proportion to the forks. *' Now, is every one on board ? " inquired Mr. Percy Noakes. The committee (who, with their bits of blue ribbon, looked as if they were all going to be bled) bustled about to ascertain the fact, and reported that they might safely start. " Go on ! " cried the master of the boat from the top of one of the paddle-boxes. Go on ! " echoed the boy, who was stationed over the hatchway to pass the directions down to the engineer ; and away went the vessel with that agreeable noise which is peculiar to steamers, and which is composed of a mixture of creaking, gushing, clanging, and snorting. " Hoi — oi — oi — oi — oi — oi — o — i — i — i ! " shouted half-a- dozen voices from a boat, a quarter of a mile astern. "Ease Her! " cried the captain: "do these people be long to us, sir t " THE STEAM EXCURSION. Noakes/' exclaimed Hardy, who had been looking at every object, far and near, through the large telescope, " it's the Fleetwoods and the Wakefields — and two children with them, by Jove 1 " " What a shame to bring children ! " said everybody ; " how very inconsiderate ! " " I say it would be a good joke to pretend not to see 'em, w^ouldn't it ? " suggested Hardy, to the immense delight of the company generally. A council of war was hastily held, and it was resolved that the new comers should be taken on board, on Mr. Hardy's solemnly pledging himself to tease the children during the whole of the day. " Stop her ! " cried the captain. "Stop her I" repeated the boy; whizz went the steam, and all the young ladies, as in duty bound, screamed in con- cert. They were only appeased by the assurance of the mar- tial Helves, that the escape of steam consequent on stopping a vessel was seldom attended with any great loss of human life. Two men ran to the side ; and after some shouting and swearing, and angling for the wherry with a boat-hook, Mr. Fleetwood and Mrs. Fleetwood, and Master Fleetwood, and Mr. Wakefield, and ^ Mrs. Wakefield, and Miss Wakefield, were safely deposited on the deck. The girl was about six years old, the boy about four ; the former was dressed in a white frock with a pink sash and dog's-eared-looking little spencer : a straw bonnet and green veil, six inches by three and a half ; the latter was attired for the occasion in a nankeen frock, between the bottom of which, and the top of his plaid socks, a considerable portion of two small mottled legs was discernible. He had a light blue cap with a gold band and tassel on his head, and a damp piece of gingerbread in his hand, with which he had slightly embossed his countenance. The boat once more started off ; the band played Off she goes ; " the major part of the company conversed cheer- fully in groups ; and the old gentlemen walked up and down the deck in pairs, as perseveringly and gravely as if they were doing a match against time for an immense stake. They ran briskly down the Pool ; the gentlemen pointed out the Docks, the Thames Police-ofiice, and other elegant public edifices ; and the young ladies exhibited a proper display of horror at the appearance of the coal-whippers and ballast- heavers. Mr. Hardy told stories to the married ladies, at 722 SKETCHES BY BOZ, ';\'hich they laughed very much in their pocket-handkeichietSj and hit him on the knuckles with their fans, declaring him to be a naughty man — a shocking creature" — and so forth ; and Captain Helves gave slight descriptions of bat- tles and duels, with a most bloodthirsty air, which made him the admiration of the women, and the envy of the men. Quadrilling commenced ; Captain Helves danced one set with Miss Emily Taunton, and another set with Miss vSophia Taun- ton. Mrs. Taunton was in ecstasies. The victory appeared to be complete ; but alas ! the inconstancy of man ! Having performed this necessary duty, he attached himself solely to Miss Julia Briggs, with whom he danced no less than three sets consecutively, and from \vhose side he evinced no intention of stirring for the remainder of the day. Mr. Hardy, having played one or tw^o very brilliant fan- tasias on the Jews'-harp, and having frequently repeated the exquisitely amusing joke of slyly chalking a large cross on the back of some member of the committee, Mr. Percy Noakes expressed his hope that some of their musical friends would oblige the company by a display of their abilities. " Perhaps," he said in a very insinuating manner, " Cap- tain Helves will oblige us ? " Mrs. Taunton's countenance lighted up, for the captain only sang duets, and couldn't sing them with anybody but one of her daughters. " Really," said that warlike individual, " I should be very happy, but — " " Oh ! pray do," cried all the young ladies. " Miss Sophia, have you any objection to join in a duet " " Oh ! not the slightest," returned the young lady, in a tone which clearly showed she had the greatest possible objection. " Shall I accompany you, dear.^ " inquired one of the Miss Briggses, wdth the bland intention of spoiHng the effect. " Very much obliged to you. Miss Briggs," sharply retorted Mrs. Taunton, who saw through the manoeuvre ; my daugh- ters always sing without accompaniments." " And without voices," tittered Mrs. Briggs, in a low tone. " Perhaps," said Mrs. Taunton, reddening, for she guessed the tenor of the observation, though she had not heard it clearly — Perhaps it would be as well for some people, if their voices were not quite so audible as they are to other people." And, perhaps, if gentlemen who are kidnapped to pay attention to some persons' daughters, had not sufficient dis* THE STEAM EXCURSION. 723 cernment to pay attention to other persons' daughters," re- turned Mrs. Briggs, some persons would not be so ready to display that ill-temper which, thank God, distinguishes them from other persons." ''Persons ! " ejaculated Mrs. Taunton. Persons," replied Mrs. Briggs. " Insolence ! " " Creature ! " " Hush ! hush ! " interrupted Mr. Percy Noakes, who was one of the very few by whom this dialogue had been over- heard. " Hush ! — pray, silence for the duet." After a great deal of preparatory crowing and humming, the captain began the following duet from the opera of Paul and Virginia," in that grunting tone in which a man gets down. Heaven knows where, with the remotest chance of ever getting up again. This, in private circles, is frequently des- ignated a bass voice." *' See (sung the captain) from o — ce — an ri — sing Bright flames the or — b of d — ay. From yon gro — ove, the varied so — ongs — " Here, the singer was interrupted by varied cries of the most "dreadful description, proceeding from some grove in the immediate vicinity of the starboard paddle-box. My child ! " screamed Mrs. Fleetwood. " My child ! it is his voice — I know it." Mr. Fleetwood, accompanied by several gentlemen, here rushed to the quarter from whence the noise proceeded, and an exclamation of horror burst from the company ; the gen- eral impression being, that the little innocent had either got his head in the water, or his legs in the machinery. " What is the matter? " shouted the agonized father, as he returned with the child in his arms. Oh ! oh ! oh ! " screamed the small sufferer again. *'What is the matter, dear.?" inquired the father once more — hastily stripping off the nankeen frock, for the purpose of ascertaining whether the child had one bone which was not smashed to pieces. Oh ! oh !— I'm so frightened ! " " What at, dear ? what at ? " said the mother, soothing the sweet infant. "Oh ! he's been making such dreadful faces at me," cried the boy, relapsing, into convulsions at the bare recollection. " He ! — who } " cried everybody, crowdings round him. 724 SKETCHES BY BOZ. ^^Oh! — him ! replied the child, pointing at Hardy, who affected to be the most concerned of the whole group. The real state of the case at once flashed upon the minds of all present, with the exception of the Fleetwoods and tha Wakefields. The facetious Hardy, in fulfilment of his prom- ise, had watched the child to a remote part of the vessel, and, suddenly appearing before him with the most awful contortions of visage, had produced his paroxysm of terror. Of course, he now observed that it was hardly necessary for him to deny the accusation ; and the unfortunate little victim was accordingly led below, after receiving sundry thumps on the head from both his parents, for having the wickedness to tell a story. This little interruption having been adjusted, the captain resumed, and Miss Emily chimed in, in due course. The duet was loudly applauded, and, certainly, the perfect independence of the parties deserved great commendation. Miss Emily sung her part, without the slightest reference to the captain ; and the captain sang so loud, that he had not the slightest idea what was being done by his partner. After having gone through the last few eighteen or nineteen bars by himself, therefore, he acknowledged the plaudits of the circle with that air of self-denial which men usually assume when they think they have done something to astonish the company. " Now," said Mr. Percy Noakes, who had just ascended from the fore-cabin, where he had been busily engaged in de- canting the wine, " if the Misses Briggs will oblige us with something before dinner, I am sure we shall be very much de- lighted." One of tkose hums of admiration followed the suggestion, which one frequently hears in society, when nobody has the most distant notion what he is expressing his approval of. The three Misses Briggs looked modestly at their mamma, and the mamma looked approvingly at her daughters, and Mrs. Taunton looked scornfully at all of them. The Misses Briggs asked for their guitars, and several gentlemen seriously damaged the cases in their anxiety to present them. Then, there was a very interesting production of three little keys for the aforesaid cases, and a melodramatic expression of horror at finding a string broken ; and a vast deal of screwing and tightening, and winding, and tuning, during which Mrs. Briggs expatiated to those near her on the immense difficulty of play- ing a guitar, and hinted at the wondrous proficiency of her daughters in that mystic art. Mrs. Taunton whispered to a THE STEAM EXCURSION. neighbor that it was *' quite sickening ! " and the Misses Taunton looked as if they knew how to play, but disdained to do it. At length, the Misses Briggs began in real earnest. It was a new Spanish composition, for three voices and three guitars. The effect was electrical. All eyes were turned upon the captain, who was reported to have once passed through Spain with his regiment, and who must be well acquainted with the national music. He was in raptures. This was sufficient ; the trio was encored ; the applause was universal ; and never had the Tauntons suffered such a complete defeat. " Bravo ! bravo ! " ejaculated the captain ; — " Bravo ! " " Pretty ! isn't it, sir t " inquired Mr. Samuel Briggs, with the air of a self-satisfied showman. By the bye, these were the first words he had been heard to utter since he left Boswell- court the evening before. De — lightful 1 returned the captain, with a flourish, and a military cough ; — " de — lightful ! " " Sweet instrument ? said an old gentleman with a bald head, who had been trying all the morning to look through a telescope, inside the glass of which Mr. Hardy had fixed a large black wafer. " Did you ever hear a Portuguese tambourine ? " inquired that jocular individual. " Did^^^// ever hear a tom-tom, sir ? " sternly inquired the captain, who lost no opportunity of showing off his travels, real or pretended. " A what t " asked Hardy, rather taken aback. " A tom-tom.'* * Never ! " Nor a gum-gum ? '* « Never ! ** What is a gum-gum ? eagerly inquired several young ladies. *'When I was in the East Indies," replied the captain. (Here was a discovery — he had been in the East Indies !) — " When I was in the East Indies, I was once stopping a few thousand miles up the country, on a visit at the house of a very particular friend of mine. Ram Chowdar Doss Azuph Al Bowlar — a devilish pleasant fellow. As we were enjoying our hookahs, one evening, in the cool veranda in front of his villa, we were rather surprised by the suddei. appearance of thirty-four of his Kit-ma-gars (for he had rathei a large estab- 726 SKETCHES BY BOZ. lishment there), accompanied by an equal number of Con-su- mars, ajDproaching the house with a threatening aspect, and beating a tom-tom. The Ram started up " ^'Who?" inquired the bald gentleman, intensely inter ested. The Ram — Ram Chowdar — " ^' Oh ! " said the old gentleman, " I beg your pardon pray go on/' " — Started up and drew a pistol. * Helves,' said he, ' my boy,' — he always called me, my boy — * Helves,^ said he, ' do you hear that tom-tom ? ' 'I do,' said I. His countenance, which before was pale, assumed a most frightful appearance ; his whole visage was distorted, and his frame shaken by vio- lent emotions. ' Do you see that gum-gum ? ' said he. ' No,' said I, staring about me. * You don't?' said he. ^ No, I'll be damned if I do,' said I ; 'and what's more, I don't know what a gum-gum is,' said I. I really thought the Ram would have dropped. He drew me aside, and with an expression of agony I shall never forget, said in a low whisper " '' Dinner's on the table, ladies," interrupted the steward's wife. " Will you allow me ? " said the captain, immediately suit- ing the action to the word, and escorting Miss Julia Briggs to the cabin with as much ease as if he had finished the story. ''What an extraordinary circumstance!" ejaculated the same old gentleman, preserving his listening attitude. " What a traveller ! " said the young ladies. "What a singular name!" exclaimed the gentlemen, rather confused by the coolness of the whole affair. " I wish he had finished the story," said an old lady. " I wonder what a gum-gum really is ? " " By Jove ! " exclaimed Hardy, who until now had been lost in utter amazement, " I don't know what it may be in India, but in England I think a gum-gum has very much the same meaning as a hum-bug." " How illiberal ! how envious ! " cried everybody, as they made for the cabin, fully impressed with a belief in the cap- tain's amazing adventures. Helves was the sole lion for the remainder of the day — impudence and the marvellous are pretty sure passports to any society. The party had by this time reached their destination, and put about on their return home. The wind, which had been with them the whole day, was now directly in their teeth ; THE STEAM EXCURSION, 727 the weather had become gradually more and more overcast; and the sky, water, and shore, were all of that dull, heavy, uniform lead-color, w^hich house-painters daub in the first in stance over a street-door, w^hich is gradually approaching a state of convalescence. It had been " spitting " with rain for the last half-hour, and now began to pour in good earnesi. The wind was freshening very fast, and the waterman at the wheel had unequivocally expressed his opinion that there would shortly be a squall. A slight emotion on the part of the vessel, now and then, seemed to suggest the possibility of its pitching to a very uncomfortable extent in the event of its blowing harder ; and every timber began to creak, as if the boat w^ere an overladen clothes-basket. Sea-sickness, how- ever, is like a belief in ghosts — every one entertains some mis- givings on the subject, but few wdll acknowledge any. The majority of the company, therefore, endeavored to look pe- culiarly happy, feeling all the while especially miserable. Don't it rain ? " inquired the old gentleman before noticed, when, by dint of squeezing and jamming, they were all seated at table. " I think it does — a little," replied Mr. Percy Noakes, who could hardly hear himself speak, in consequence of the patter- ing on the deck. " Don't it blow ? " inquired some one else. No — I don't think it does," responded Hardy, sincerely wishing that he could persuade himself that it did not ; for he sat near the door, and was almost blown off his seat. It'll soon clear up," said Mr. Percy Noakes, in a cheer- ful tone. " Oh, certainly ! " ejaculated the committee generally. " No doubt of it 1 " said the remainder of the company, whose attention was now pretty well engrossed by the serious business of eating, carving, taking wdne, and so forth. The throbbing motion of the engine was but too percep- tible. There was a large, substantial, cold boiled leg of mut- ton, at the bottom of the table, shaking like blanc-mange ; a previously hearty sirloin of beef looked as if it had been sud- denly seized with the palsy ; and some tongues, which were placed on dishes rather too large for them, went through the most surprising evolutions ; darting from side to side, and from end to end, like a fly in an inverted wine-glass. Then, the sweets shook and trembled, till it w^as quite impossible t(? help them, and people gave up the attempt in despair ; and 728 SKE TCHES BY BOZ. the pigeon-pies looked as if the birds, whose legs were- stuck outside, was trying to get them in. The table vibrated and started like a feverish pulse, and the very legs were convulsed — everything was shaking and jarring. The beams in the roof or the cabin seemed as if they were put there for the sole purpose of giving people headaches, and several elderly gentle men became ill-tempered in consequence. As fast as the steward put the fire-irons up, they would fall down again ; an-d the more the ladies and gentlemen tried to sit comfortably on their seats, the more the seats seemed to slide away from the ladies and gentlemen. Several ominous demands were made for small glasses of brandy ; the countenances of the company gradually underwent most extraordinary changes ; one gentle- man was observed suddenly to rush from table without the slightest ostensible reason, and dart up the steps with in- credible swiftness : thereby greatly damaging both himself and the steward, who happened to be coming down at the same moment. The cloth was removed ; the dessert was laid on the table ; and the glasses were filled. The motion of the boat increased ; several members of the party began to feel rather vague and misty, and looked as if they had only just got up. The young gentleman with the spectacles, who had been in a fluctuating state for some time — at one moment bright, and at another dismal, like a revolving light on the sea-coast — rashly an- nounced his wish to propose a toast. After several ineffectual attempts to preserve his perpendicular, the young gentleman, having managed to hook himself to the centre leg of the table with his left hand, proceeded as follows : Ladies and gentlemen. A gentleman is among us — I may say a stranger — (here some painful thought seemed to strike the orator ; he paused, and looked extremely odd) — whose talents, whose travels, whose cheerfulness — " " I beg your pardon, Edkins,'' hastily interrupted Mn Percy Noakes, — Hardy, what's the matter ? " Nothing," replied the " funny gentleman," who had just life enough left to utter two consecutive syllables. " Will you have some brandy } " No ! " replied Hardy, in a tone of great indignation, and looking as comfortable as Temple-bar in a Scotch mist ; what should I want brandy for 1 " " Will you go on deck ? " **No, I will noty This was said with a most determined "THEREBY BOTH GREATLY DAMAGING HIMSELF AND THE STEWARD, T.T.C. P^S' 728. OF THE THE STEAM EXCURSIOiV. air, and in a voice which might have been taken for an imita- tion of anything ; it was quite as much hke a guinea-pig as a bassoon. "I beg your pardon, Edkins/' said the courteous Percys *' I thought our friend was ill. Pray go on.^' A pause. " Pray go on." Mr. Eldkins is gone," cried somebody. I beg your pardon, sir," said the steward, running up to Mr. Percy Noakes, " I beg your pardon, sir, but the gentle- man has just went on deck — him with the green spectacles — ■ is uncommon bad, to be sure : and the young man as played the wiolin says, that unless he has some brandy he can't answer for the consequences. He says he has a wife and two children, whose werry subsistence depends on his breaking a wessel, and he expects to do so every moment. The flageolet's been wery ill, but he's better, only he's in a dreadful prus- peration." All disguise was now useless ; the company staggered on deck ; the gentlemen tried to see nothing but the clouds ; and the ladies, muffled up in such shawls and cloaks as they had brought with them, lay about on the seats, and under the seats, in the most wretched condition. Never was such a blowing, and raining, and pitching, and tossing, endured by any pleasure party before. Several remonstrances were sent down below, on the subject of Master Fleetwood, but they were totally unheeded in consequence of the indisposition of his natural protectors. That interesting child screamed at the top of his voice, until he had no voice left to scream with ; and then. Miss Wakefield began, and screamed for the re- mainder of the passage. Mr. Hardy was observed, some hours afterwards, in an attitude which induced his friends to suppose that he was busily engaged in contemplating the beauties of the deep ; they only regretted that his taste for the picturesque should lead him to remain so long in a position, very injurious at all times, but especially so, to an individual laboring under a tendency of blood to the head. The party arrived off the Custom house at about two o'clock on the Thursday morning dispirited and worn out. The Tauntons were too ill to quarrel with the Briggses, and the Briggses were too wretched to annoy the Tauntons. One of the guitar-cases was lost on its passage to a hackney-coach. 730 SKETCHES BY BOZ. and Mrs. Briggs has not scrupled to state that the Tauntons bribed a porter to throw it down an area. Mr. Alexander Briggs opposes vote by ballot — he says from personal ex- perience of its inefficacy ; and Mr. Samuel Briggs, whenever he is asked to express his sentiments on the point, says he has no opinion on that or any other subject. Mr. Edkins — the young gentleman in the green spectacles — makes a speech on every occasion on which a speech can possibly be made : the eloquence of which can only be equalled by its length. In the event of his not being previously ap- pointed to a judgeship, it is probable that he will practise as a barrister in the New Central Criminal Court. Captain Helves continued his attention to Miss Julia Briggs, whom he might possibly have espoused, if it had not unfortunately happened that Mr. Samuel arrested him, in the way of business, pursuant to instructions received from Messrs. Scroggins and Payne, whose town-debts the gallant captain had condescended to collect, but whose accounts, with the in- discretion sometimes peculiar to military minds, he had omitted to keep with that dull accuracy which custom has ren- dered necessary. 3irs. Taunton complains that she has been much deceived in him. He introduced himself to the family on board a Gravesend steam-packet, and certainly, therefore, ought to have proved respectable. Mr. Percy Noakes is as light-hearted and careless as ever. CHAPTER VHI, THE GREAT WINGLEBURY DUEL. The little town of Great Winglebury is exactly forty-two miles and three-quarters from Hyde Park corner. It has a long, straggling, quiet High-street, with a great black and white clock at a small red Town-hall, half way up — a market- place — a cage — an assembly-room — a church — a bridge — a chapel — a theatre — a library — an inn — a pump — and a Post- office. Tradition tells of a ^' Little Winglebury,'^ down some cross-road about two miles off ; and, as a square mass of dirty paper, supposed to have been originally intended for a letter, with certain tremulous characters inscribed thereon, in which THE GREAT WINGLEBURY DUEL, 73^ a lively imagination might trace a remote resemblance to the word Little," was once stuck up to be owned in the sunny window of the Great Winglebury Post-office, from which it only disappeared when it fell to pieces with dust and extreme old age, there would appear to be some foundation for the legend. Common belief is inclined to bestow the name upon a little hole at the end of a muddy lane about a couple of miles long, colonized by one wheelwright, four paupers, and a beer-shop ; but, even this authority, slight as it is, must be re- garded with extreme suspicion, inasmuch as the inhabitants of the hole aforesaid, concur in opining that it never had any name at all, from the earliest ages down to the present day. The Winglebury Arms, in the centre of the High-street, opposite the small building with the big clock, is the principal inn of Great Winglebury — the commercial-inn, posting-house, and excise-office ; the Blue " house at every election, and the Judges' house at every assizes. It is the head-quarters of the Gentlemen's Whist Club of Winglebury Blues (so called in opposition to the Gentlemen's Whist Club of Winglebury Buffs, held at the other house, a little further down) : and whenever a juggler, or wax-work man, or concert-giver, takes Great Winglebury in his circuit, it is immediately placarded all over the town that Mr. So-and-so, " trusting to that liberal support which the inhabitants of Great Winglebury have long been so liberal in bestowing, has at a great expense engaged the elegant and commodious assembly-rooms, attached to the Winglebury Arms." The house is a large one, with a red brick and stone front ; a pretty spacious hall, ornamented with evergreen plants, terminates in a perspective view of the bar, and a glass case, in which are displayed a choice variety of delicacies ready for dressing, to catch the eye of a new- comer the moment he enters, and excite his appetite to the highest possible pitch. Opposite doors lead to the coffee" and "commercial " rooms; and a great wide, rambling stair- case, — three stairs and a landing — four stairs and another landing — one step and another landing — half-a-dozen stairs and another landing — and so on — conducts to galleries of bedrooms, and labyrinths of sitting-rooms, denominated pri- vate," where you may enjoy yourself, as privately as you can in any place where some bewildered being walks into your room every five minutes, by mistake, and then walks out again, to open all the doors along the gallery until he finds his own. Such is the Winglebury Arms, at this day, and such was 732 SKETCHES BY BOZ. the Winglebury Arms some time since — no matter when — > two or three minutes before the arrival of the London stage. Four horses with cloths on — change for a coach — were stand- ing quietly at the corner of the yard surrounded by a listless group of post-boys in shiny hats and smock-frocks, engaged in discussing the merits of the cattle ; half a dozen ragged boys were standing a little apart, listening with evident in- terest to the conversation of these worthies ; and a few loungers were collected round the horse-trough, awaiting the arrival of the coach. The day was hot and sunny, the town in the zenith of its dullness, and with the exception of these few idlers, not a liv- ing creature was to be seen. Suddenly, the loud notes of a key-bugle broke the monotonous stillness of the street ; in came the coach, rattling over the uneven paving with a noise startling enough to stop even the large-faced clock itself. Down got the outsides, up went the windows in all directions, out came the waiters, up started the ostlers, and the loungers, and the post-boys, and the ragged boys, as if they were elec- trified^ — unstrapping, and unchaining, and unbuckling, and dragging willing horses out, and forcing reluctant horses in, and making a most exhilarating bustle. Lady inside, here ! said the guard. " Please to alight, ma'am," said the waiter. " Private sitting-room ? " interrogated the lady. " Certainly, Ina'am," responded the chambermaid. " Nothing but these 'ere trunks, ma'am ? " inquired the guard. " Nothing more,'* replied the lady. Up got the outsides again, and the guard, and the coachman ; oif came the cloths, with a jerk ; " All right," was the cry ; and away they went. The loungers lin- gered a minute or two in the road, watching the coach until it turned the corner, and then loitered away one by one. The street was clear again, and the town, by contrast, quieter than ever. " Ladv in number twenty-five," screamed the landlady. — - " Thomas ! " " Yes, ma'am." Letter just been left for the gentleman in number nine- teen. Boots at the Lion left it. No answer." Letter for you, sir," said Thomas, depositing the letter on number nineteen's table. For me ? " said number nineteen, turning from the win- dow, out of which he had been surveying the scene just de scribed. THE GREAT WINGLEBURY DUEL. 733 Yes, sir," — (waiters always speak in hints, and never utter complete sentences,)^ — yes, sir, — Boots at the Lion, sir, — Bar, sir, — Missis said number nineteen, sir — Alexander Trott, Esq., sir ? — Your card at the bar, sir, I think, sir ? " " My name is Trott," replied number nineteen, breaking the seal. " You may go, waiter." The waiter pulled down the window-blind, and then pulled it up again — for a regular waiter must do something before he leaves the room — adjusted the glasses on the sideboard, brushed a place that was not dusty, rubbed his hands very hard, walked stealthily to the door, and evaporated. There was, evidently, something in the contents of the letter, of a nature, if not wholly unexpected, certainly extremely disagreeable. Mr. Alexander Trott laid it down, and took it up again, and walked about the room on particular squares of the carpet, and even attempted, though unsuccessfully, to whistle an air. Tt wouldn't do. He threw himself into a chair, and read the following epistle aloud : *' Blue Lion and Stomach-warmer, Great Winglebury. Wednesday Morni?tg. " Sir. Immediately on discovering your intentions, I left our counting house, and followed you. I know the pur- port of your journey ; — that journey shall never be com- pleted. " I have no friend here, just now, on whose secresy I can rely. This shall be no obstacle to my revenge. Neither shall Emily Brown be exposed to the mercenary solicitations of a scoundrel, odious in her eyes, aj^id contemptible in everybody else's ; nor will I tamely submit to the clandestine attacks of a base umbrella-maker. " Sir. From Great Winglebury church, a footpath leads through four meadows to a retired spot known to the townspeo- ple as Stiffun's Acre." [Mr. Trott shuddered.] " I shall be waiting there alone, at twenty minutes before six o'clock to-* morrow morning. Should I be disappointed in seeing you there, I will do myself the pleasure of calling with a horsewhip. Horace Hunter. " PS. There is a gunsmith's in the High-street ; and they won't sell gunpowder after dark — you understand me. " PPS. You had better not order your breakfast in the 734 SKETCHES BY BOZ. morning until you have met me. It may be an unnecessary exiDense." Desperate-minded villain ! I knew how it would be ! " ejaculated the terrified Trott. " I always told father, that once start me on this expedition, and Hunter would pursue me like the Wandering Jew. It'sbad enough as it is, to marry with the old people's commands, and without the girl's con- sent ; but what will Emily think of me, if I go down there breathless with running away from this infernal salamander? What shall I do ? What ca7i I do ? If I go back to the city, I'm disgraced for ever — lose the girl — and, what's more, lose the money too. Even if I did go on to the Browns' by the coach. Hunter would be after me in a post-chaise ; and if I go to this place, this Stiff un's Acre (another shudder), I'm as good as dead. I've seen him hit the man at the Pall-mall shooting- gallery, in the second button-hole of the waistcoat, five times out of every six, and when he didn't hit there, he hit him in the head." With this consolatory reminiscence Mr. Alexander Trott again ejaculated, " What shall I do ? " Long and weary were his reflections, as, burying his face in his hand, he sat, ruminating on the best course to be pur- ^ sued. His mental direction-post pointed to London. He thought of the "governor's " anger, and the loss of the for- tune which the paternal Brown had promised the paternal Trott his daughter should contribute to the coffers of his son. Then the words " To Brown's " were legibly inscribed on the said direction-post, but Horace Hunter's denunciation rung in his ears ; — last of all it bore^ in red letters, the words, " To Stiffun's Acre ; " and then Mr. Alexander Trott decided on adopting a plan which he presently matured. First and foremost, he despatched the under-boots to the Blue Lion and Stomach-warmer, with a gentlemanly note to Mr. Horace Hunter, intimating that he thirsted for his de- struction and would do himself the pleasure of slaughtering him next morning, without fail. He then wrote another letter, and requested the attendance of the other boots — for they kept a pair. A modest knock at the room door was heard. " Come in," said Mr. Trott. A man thrust in a red head with one eye in it, and being again desired to " come in," brought in the body and the legs to which the head belonged, and a fur cap which belonged to the head. You are the upper-boots, I think ? " inquired Mr. Trott THE GREAT WINGLEBURY DUEL, 73S " Yes, I am the upper-boots," replied a voice from inside a velveteen case, with mother-of-pearl buttons — that is, Tm the boots as b'longs to the house ; the other man's my man, as goes errands and does odd jobs. Top-boots and half-boots I calls us." You're from London ? " inquired Mr. Trott. *^Driv a cab once," was the laconic reply. Why don't you drive it now ? " asked Mr. Trott. "Over-driv the cab, and driv over a 'ooman," replied the top-boots, with brevity. " Do you know the mayor's house ? " inquired Mr. Trott. " Rather," replied the boots, significantly, as if he had some good reason to remember it. Do you think you could manage to leave a letter there ? " interrogated Trott. " Shouldn't wonder," responded boots. "But this letter," said Trott, holding a deformed note with a paralytic direction in one hand, and five shillings in the other — "this letter is anonymous." " A — what ? " interrupted the boots. Anonymous — he's not to know who it comes from." " Oh 1 I see./' responded the reg'lar, with a knowing wink, but without evincing the slightest disinclination to undertake the charge — " I see — bit o' Sving, eh ^ " and his one eye wandered round the room, as if in quest of a dark lantern and phosphorus-box. " But, I say ! " he continued, recalling the eye from its search, and bringing it to bear on Mr. Trott. " I say, he's a lawyer, our mayor, and insured in the County, If you've a spite agen him, you'd better not burn his house down — blessed if I don't think it would be the greatest favor you could do him." And he chuckled inwardly. If Mr, Alexander Trott had been in any other situation, his first act would have been to kick the man down stairs by deputy ; or, in other words, to ring the bell, and desire the landlord to take his boots off. He contented himself, however, with doubling the fee and explaining that the letter merely re lated to a breach of ti^e peace. The top-boots retired, solemnly pledged to secresy ; and Mr. Alexander Trott sat down to a fried sole, maintenon cutlet, Madeira, and sundries, with greater composure than he had experienced since the receipt of Horace Hunter's letter of defiance. The lady who alighted from the London coach had no sooner been installed in number twenty-five, and made som« 736 SKETCHES B V BOZ. alteration in her travelling-dress, than she indited a note to Joseph Overton, esquire, solicitor, and mayor of Great VVingle- bury, requesting his immediate attendance on private business of paramount importance — a summons which that worthy func- tionary lost no time in obeying; for after sundry openings of his eyes, divers ejaculations of " Bless me ! ^' and other mani- festations of surprise, he took his broad-brimmed hat from its accustomed peg in his little front office, and walked briskly down the High-street to the Winglebury Arms ; through the hall and up the staircase of which establishment he was ushered by the landlady, and a crowd of officious waiters, to the door of number twenty-five. " Show the gentleman in," said the stranger lady, in reply to the foremost waiter's announcement. The gentleman v/as shown in accordingly. The lady rose from the sofa ; the mayor advanced a step from the door; and there they both paused, for a minute or two, looking at one another as if by mutual consent. The mayor saw before him a buxom richly-dressed female of about forty ; the lady looked upon a sleek man, about ten years older, in drab shorts and continuations, black coat, neckcloth, and gloves. Miss Julia Manners ! " exclaimed the mayor at length, " you astonish me." " That's very unfair of you, Overton," replied Miss Julia, " for I have known you, long enough, not to be surprised at anything you do, and you might extend equal courtesy tome." " But to run away — actually run away — wdth a young man ! " remonstrated the mayor. " You wouldn't have me actually run away with an old one, I presume " was the cool rejoinder. " And then to ask me — me — of all people in the world — a man of my age and appearance — mayor of the town — to pro- mote such a scheme ! " pettishly ejaculated Joseph Overton ; throwing himself into an arm-chair, and producing Miss Julia's letter from his pocket, as if to corroborate the asser- tion that he had been asked. Now, Overton," replied the lady, " I want your assist ance in this matter, and I must have it. In the lifetime of that poor old dear, Mr. Cornberry, who — who — " " Who was to have married you, and didn't, because he died first ; and who left you his property unencumbered with the addition of himself," suggested the mayor. THE ORE AT WINGLEBURY DUEL, 737 "Well," replied Miss Julia, reddening slightly, "in the lifetime of the poor old dear, the property had the incum- brance of your management ; and all I will say of that, is, that I only wonder it didn't die of consumption instead of its master. You helped yourself then : — help me now." Mr. Joseph Overton was a man of the world, and an at- torney ; and as certain indistinct recollections of an odd thousand pounds or two, appropriated by mistake, passed across his mind, he hemmed deprecatingly, smiled blandly, remained silent for a few seconds; and finally inquired, " What do you wish me to do ? " " I'll tell you," replied Miss Julia — " I'll tell you in three words. Dear Lord Peter — " " That's the young man, I suppose — " interrupted the mayor. " That's the young Nobleman," replied the lady, with a great stress on the last word. Dear Lord Peter is consid- erably afraid of the resentment of his family ; and we liave therefore thought it better to make the match a stolen one He left town, to avoid suspicion, on a visit to his friend, the Honorable Augustus Flair, whose seat, as you know, is about thirty miles from this, accompanied only by his favorite tiger. We arranged that I should come here alone in the London coach ; and that he, leaving his tiger and cab behind him, should come on, and arrive here as soon as possible this afternoon." " Very well," observed Joseph Overton, " and then he can order the chaise, and you can go on to Gretna Green together, without requiring the presence of interference of a third party, can't you 1 " "No," replied Miss Julia. "We have every reason to be- lieve — dear Lord Peter not being considered very prudent or sagacious by his friends, and they having discovered his at- tachment to me — that, immediately on his absence being observed, pursuit will be made in this direction : — to elude which, and to prevent our being traced, I wish it to be under- stood in this house, that dear Lord Peter is slightly deranged, though perfectly harmless ; and that I am, unknown to him, awaiting his arrival to convey him in a post-chaise to a pri- vate asylum — at Berwick, say. If I don't show myself much, I dare say I can manage to pass for his mother." The thought occurred to the mayor's mind that the lady might show herself a good deal without fear of detection ; SKETCHES BY BOZ. seeing that she was about double the a^e of hei intended husband. He said nothing, liowever, and the lady proceeded. " With the whole of this arrangement dear Lord Peter is acquainted ; and all I want you to do, is, to make the delu- sion more complete by giving it the sanction of your influence in this place, and assigning this as a reason to the people of the house for my taking the young gentleman away. As it would not be consistent with the story that I should see him until after he has entered the chaise, I also wish you to com municate with him, and inform him that it is all going on well.'^ Has he arrived } inquired Overton. "I don't know," replied the lady. "Then how am I to know!" inquired the mayor. '•Of course he will not give his own name at the bar." "I begged him, immediately on his arrival, to Vvrite you a note," replied Miss Manners ; " and to prevent the possibil- ity of our project being discovered through its means, I desired him to write anonymously, and in mysterious terms, to acquaint you with the number of his room." " Bless me ! '* exclaimed the mayor, rising from his seat, and searching his pockets — " most extraordinary circumstance — he /las arrived — mysterious note left at my house in a most mysterious manner, just before yours — didn't know what to make of it before, and certainly shouldn't have attended to it. — Oh ! here it is." And Joseph Overton pulled out of an inner coat-pocket the identical letter penned by Alexander Trott. "Is this his lordship's hand ? " *' Oh yes," replied Julia ; " good, punctual creature ! I have not seen it more than once or twice, but I know he writes very badly and very large. These dear, wild young noblemen, you know, Overton — " " Ay, ay, I see," replied the mayor — " Horses and dogs, play and wine — ^grooms, actresses, and cigars — the stable, the green-room, the saloon, and the tavern ; and the legislative assembly at last.*' " Here's what he says," pursued the mayor ; " ' Sir, — A young gentleman in number nineteen at the Winglebury Arms, is bent on committing a rash act to-morrow^ morning at an early hour.' (That's good — he means marrying.) * If you have any regard for the peace of this town, or the preservation of one — it may be two — human lives ' — What the deuce does he mean by that ? THE GREAT WINGLEBURY DUEL. 739 "That he's so anxious for the ceremony, he will expire if it's put off, and that I may possibly do the same," replied the lady with great complacency. *'Oh ! I see — not much fear of that ; — well — 'two human lives, you will cause him to be removed to-night.' (He wants to start at once.) * Fear not to do this on your responsibil- ity : for to-morrow the absolute necessity of the proceeding will be but too apparent. Remember : number nineteen. The name is Trott. No delay ; for life and death depend upon your promptitude.' Passionate language, certainly. Shall I see him 1 " "Do," replied Miss Julia; "and entreat him to act his part well. I am half afraid of him. Tell him to be cautious." " I will," said the mayor. " Settle all the arrangements." " I will," said the mayor again. " And say I think the chaise had better be ordered for one o'clock." " Very well," said the mayor once more ; and, ruminating on the absurdity of the situation in which fate and old ac- quaintance had placed him, he desired a waiter to herald his approach to the temporary representative of number nineteen. The announcement, " Gentleman to speak with you, sir," induced Mr. Trott to pause half-way in the glass of port, the contents of which he was in the act of imbibing at the mo- ment ; to rise from his chair ; and retreat a few paces towards the window, as if to secure a retreat, in the event of the visitor assuming the form and appearance of Horace Hunter. One glance at Joseph Overton, however, quieted his apprehensions. He courteously motioned the stranger to a seat. The waiter, after a little jingling with the decanter and glasses, consented to leave the room ; and Joseph Overton, placing the broad- brimmed hat on the chair next him, and bending his body gently forward, opened the business by saying in a very low and cautious tone, " My lord—" " Eh " said Mr. Alexander Trott, in a loud key, with the vacant and mystified stare of a chilly somnambulist. " Hush — hush ! " said the cautious attorney : " to be sure —quite right — no titles here — my name is Overton, sir." " Overton > " " Yes : the mayor of this place — you sent me a letter with anonymous information, this afternoon." 740 SKETCHES BY BOZ. " I, sir ? exclaimed Trott with ill-dissembled surprise , for, coward as he was, he would willingly have repudiated the authorship of the letter in question. I, sir ? " " Yes, you, sir ; did you not ? ' responded Overton, an- noyed with what he supposed to be an extreme degree of un necessary suspicion. Either this letter is yours, or it is not If it be, we can converse securely upon the subject at once If it be not, of course 1 have no more to say/' " Stay, stay," said Trott, " it is mine ; I did write it. What could I do, sir ? I had no friend here.'' " To be sure, to be sure," said the mayor, encouragingly, " you could not have managed it better. Well, sir ; it will be necessary for you to leave here to-night in a post-chaise and four. And the harder the boys drive, the better. You are not safe from pursuit." " Bless me ! " exclaimed Trott, in an agony of apprehen- sion, " can such things happen in a country like this t Such unrelenting and cold-blooded hostility ! " He wiped off the concentrated essence of cowardice that was oozing fast down his forehead, and looked aghast at Joseph Overton. " It certainly is a very hard case," replied the mayor with a smile, " that, in a free country, people can't marry whom they like, without being hunted down as if they were criminals. However, in the present instance the lady is willing, you know, and that's the main point, after all." "Lady willing," repeated Trott, mechanically. How do you know the lady's willing ? " Come, that's a good one," said the mayor, benevolently tapping Mr. Trott on the arm with his broad-brimmed hat ; " I have known her, well, for a long time ; and if anybody could entertain the remotest doubt on the subject, I assure you I have none, nor need you have." " Dear me ! " said Mr. Trott, ruminating. This is very extraordinary ! " " Well, Lord Peter," said the mayor, rising. " Lord Peter ? " repeated Mr. Trott. " Oh — ah, I forgot. Mr. Trott, then — Trott — very good, ha ! l!a ! — Well, sir, the chaise shall be ready at half-past twelve." And what is to become of me until then ? " inquired Mr, Trott, anxiously. " Wouldn't it save appearances, if I were placed under some restraint ? " " Ah ! " replied Overton, " very good thought — capital idea THE GREAT WTNGLEBURY DUEL. 741 indeed. I'll send somebody up directly. And if you make a little resistance when we put you in the chaise it wouldn't be amiss — look as if you didn't want to be taken away, you know." " To be sure," said Trott — " to be sure." " Well, my lord," said Overton, in a low tone, "until then, I wish your lordship a good-evening." " Lord — lordship ? " ejaculated Trott again, falling back a step or two, and gazing, in unutterable wonder, on the counte- nance of the mayor. " Ha-ha ! I see, my lord — practising the madman ? — very good indeed — very vacant look — capital, my lord, capital — good-evening, Mr. — Trott — ha ! ha ! ha ! " " That mayor's decidedly drunk," soliloquized Mr. Trott, throwing himself back in his chair, in an attitude of reflection. " He is a much cleverer fellow than I thought him, that young nobleman — he carries it off uncommonly well," thought Overton, as he went his way to the bar, there to complete his arrangements. This was soon done. Every word of the story was implicitly believed, and the one-eyed boots was im- mediately instructed to repair to number nineteen to act as custodian of the person of the supposed lunatic until half-past twelve o'clock. In pursuance of this direction, that some- what eccentric gentleman armed himself with a walking-stick of gigantic dimensions, and repaired, with his usual equanimity of manner, to Mr. Trott's apartment, which he entered with- out any ceremony, and mounted guard in, by quietly deposit- ing himself on a chair near the door, where he proceeded to beguile the time by whistling a popular air with great apparent satisfaction. What do you want here, you scoundrel t " exclaimed Mr. Alexander Trott, with a proper appearance of indignation at his detention. The boots beat time with his head, as he looked gently round at Mr. Trott with a smile of pity, and whistled an adagio movement. " Do you attend in this room by Mr. Overton's desire ? " inquired Trott, rather astonished at the man's demeanor. Keep yourself to yourself, young feller," calmly responded the boots, **and don't say nothin' to nobody." And he whistled again. Now, mind !" ejaculated Mr. Trott, anxious to keep up the farce of wishing with great earnestness to fight a duel ii 742 SKETCHES BY BOZ, they'd let him. " I protest against being kept here. I deny that I have any intention of fighting with anybody. But as it's useless contending with superior numbers, I shall sit quietly down." " You'd better," observed the placid boots, shaking the large stick expressively. " Under protest, however," added Alexander Trott, seat ing himself with indignation in his face, but great content in his heart. " Under protest." " Oh, certainly ! " responded the boots ; " anything you please. If you're happy, I'm transported ; only don't talk too much — it'll make you worse." Make me worse t " exclaimed Trott, in unfeigned aston- ishment : the man's drunk ! " You'd better be quiet, young feller," remarked the boots, going through a threatening piece of pantomime with the stick. " Or mad 1 " said Mr. Trott, rather alarmed. *' Leave the room, sir, and tell them to send somebody else." Won't do ! " replied the boots. Leave the room ! " shouted Trott, ringing the bell vio- lently : for he began to be alarmed on a new score. Leave that 'ere bell alone, you wretched loo-nattic ! " said the boots, suddenly forcing the unfortunate Trott back into his chair, and brandishing the stick aloft. " Be quiet, you miserable object, and don't let everybody know there's a madman in the house." " He is a madman ! He is a madman ! " exclaimed the terrified Mr. Trott, gazing on the one eye of the red-headed boots with a look of abject horror. Madman ! " replied the boots, " dam'me, I think he is a madman with a vengeance ! Listen to me, you unfort'nate. Ah ! would you ? " [a slight tap on the head with the large stick, as Mr. Trott made another move towards the bell- handle] " I caught you there ! did I ? " Spare my life ! " exclaimed Trott, raising his hands im ploringly. " I aon't want your life," replied the boots, disdainfully. " though I think it 'ud be a charity if somebody took it." " No, no, it wouldn't," interrupted poor Mr. Trott, hur- riedly ; " no, no, it wouldn't ! I — I — 'd rather keep it ! " " O werry well," said the boots : " that's a mere mattei of taste — ev'ry one to his liking. Hows'ever, all I've got to THE GREAT WINGLEBURY DUEL. 743 say is this here : You sit quietly down in that chair, and I'll sit hoppersite you here, and if you keep quiet and don't stir, I won't damage you ; but, if you move hand or foot till halt- past twelve o'clock, I shall alter the expression of your coun- tenance so completely, that the next time you look in the glass you'll ask vether you're gone out of town, and ven you're likely to come back again. So sit down." I will — I will," responded the victim of mistakes ; and down sat Mr. Trott and down sat the boots too, exactly op- posite him, with the stick ready for immediate action in case of emergency. Long and dreary were the hours that followed. The bell of Great VVinglebury church had just struck ten, and two hours and a half would probably elapse before succor arrived. For half an hour, the noise occasioned by shutting up the shops in the street beneath, betokened something like life in the town, and rendered Mr. Trott's situation a little less in- supportable ; but, when even these ceased, and nothing was heard beyond the occasional rattling of a post-chaise as it drove up the yard to change horses, and then drove away again, or the clattering of horses' hoofs in the stables behind, it became almost unbearable. The boots occasionally moved an inch or two, to knock superfluous bits of wax off the candles, which were burning low, but instantaneously resumed his former position ; and as he remembered to have heard, somewhere or other, that the human eye had an unfailing effect in controlling mad people, he kept his solitary organ of vision constantly fixed on Mr. Alexander Trott. That un fortunate individual stared at his companion in his turn, until his features grew more and more indistinct — his hair gradually less red — and the room more misty and obscure. Mr. Alex- ander Trott fell into a sound sleep, from which he. was awakened by a rumbling in the street, and a cry of ** Chaise- and-four for number twenty-five ! " A bustle on the stairs succeeded ; the room door was hastily thrown open ; and Mr. Joseph Overton entered, followed by four stout waiters, and Mrs. Williamson, the stout landlady of the Winglebury Arms. Mr. Overton ! " exclaimed Mr. Alexander Trott, jumping up in a frenzy, Look at this man, sir ; consider the situation in which I have been placed for three hours past — the person you sent to guard me, sir, was a madman — a madman — a raging, ravaging, furious madman." Bravo ! " whispered Overton. «2 744 SKETCHES BY BOZ, " Poor dear ! " said the compassionate Mrs. Williamson. " mad people always thinks other people's mad." "Poor dear!'' ejaculated Mr. Alexander Trott. "What the devil do you mean by poor dear ! Are you the landlady of this house ? " Yes, yes," replied the stout old lady, " don't exert your self, there's a dear ! Consider your health, now 5 do." " Exert myself ! " shouted Mr. Alexander Trott, it's a mercy, ma'am, that 1 have any breath to exert myself with ! I might have been assassinated three hours ago by that one- eyed monster with the oakum head. How dare you have a madman, ma'am — how^ dare you have a madman, to assault and terrify the visitors to your house ? " I'll never have another," said Mrs. Williamson, casting a look of reproach at the mayor. " Capital, capital," whispered Overton again, as he envel- oped Mr. Alexander Trott in a thick travelling-cloak. " Capital, sir ! " exclaimed Trott, aloud, ''it's horrible. The very recollection makes me shudder. I'd rather fight four duels in three hours, if I survived the first three, than I'd sit for that time face to face with a madman." " Keep it up, my Lord, as you go down stairs," whispered Overton, ''your bill is paid, and your portmanteau in the chaise." And then he added aloud, " Now, waiters, the gen- tleman's ready." At this signal, the waiters crowded round Mr. Alexander Trott. One took one arm ; another, the other ; a third, walked before with a candle ; the fourth, behind with another candle ; the boots and Mrs. Williamson brought up the rear ; and down stairs they went : Mr. Alexander Trott expressing alternately at the very top of his voice either his feigned re- luctance to go, or his unfeigned indignation at being shut up with a madman. Mr. Overton was waiting at the chaise-door, the boys were ready mounted, and a few ostlers and stable nondescripts were standing round to witness the departure of " the mad gentleman." Mr. Alexander Trott's foot was on the step, when he observed (which the dim light had prevented his doing before) a figure seated in the chaise, closely mufifled up in a cloak like his own. '* Who's that? " he inquired of Overton, in a whisper. " Hush, hush," replied the mayor : " the other party of course." THE GREAT WINGLEBURY DUEL, ** The other party ! " exclaimed Trott, with an effort to retreat. " Yes, yes ; you'll soon find that out, before you go far, I should think— but make a noise, you'll excite suspicion if you whisper to me so much." I won't go in this chaise ! " shouted Mr. Alexander Trott, all his original fears recurring with tenfold violence. "I shall be assassinated — I shall be — " " Bravo, bravo," whispered Overton. " I'll push you in." "But I won't go," exclaimed Mr. Trott. Help here, help ! They're carrying me away against my will. This is a plot to murder me." "Poor dear ! " said Mrs. Williamson again. " Now, boys, put 'em along," cried the mayor, pushing Trott in and slamming the door. " Off with you, as quick as you can, and stop for nothing till you come to the next stage —all right ! " " Horses are paid, Tom," screamed Mrs. Williamson ; and away went the chaise, at the rate of fourteen miles an hour, with Mr. Alexander Trott and Miss Julia Manners carefully shut up in the inside. Mr. Alexander Trott remained coiled up in one corner of the chaise, and his mysterious companion in the other, for the first two or three miles ; Mr. Trott edging more and more into his corner, as he felt his companion gradually edging more and more from hers ; and vainly endeavoring in the darkness to catch a glimpse of the furious face of the sup- posed Horace Hunter. " We may speak now," said his fellow traveller, at length ; " the postboys can neither see nor hear us." " That's not Hunter's voice ! " — thought Alexander, aston- ished. " Dear Lord Peter ! " said Miss Julia, most winningly : putting her arm on Mr. Trott's shoulder. " Dear Lord Peter. Not a word ? " " Why, it's a woman ! " exclaimed Mr. Trott, in a low tone of excessive wonder. " Ah ! Whose voice is that } " said Julia ; " 'tis not Lord Peter's." " No, — it's mine," replied Mr. Trott. "Yours!" ejaculated Miss Julia Manners; "a strange man ! Gracious heaven ! How came you here 1 " "Whoever you are, you might have known that I cam« 746 SKETCHES B Y BOZ. against my will, ma'am," replied Alexander, "for I made noise enough when I got in." " Do you come from Lord Peter ? " inquired Miss Manners. " Confound Lord Peter," replied Trott pettishly. " I don't know any Lord Peter. I never heard of him before to- night, when I've been Lord Peter'd by one and Lord Peter'd by another, till I verily believe I'm mad, or dreaming — " Whither are we going ? " inquired the lady tragically. " How should / know, ma'am " replied Trott with a singular coolness ; for the events of the evening had com- pletely hardened him. " Stop ! stop ! " cried the lady, letting down the front glasses of the chaise. " Stay, my dear ma'am ! " said Mr. Trott, pulling the glasses up again with one hand, and gently squeezing Miss Julia's waist with the other. " There is some mistake here ; give me till the end of this stage to explain my share of it. We must go so far ; you cannot be set down here alone, at this hour of the night." The lady consented ; the mistake was mutually explained. Mr. Trott was a young man, had highly promising whiskers, an undeniable tailor, and an insinuating address — he wanted nothing but valor, and who wants that with three thousand a-year ? The lady had this, and more ; she wanted a young husband, and the only course open to Mr. Trott to retrieve his disgrace was a rich wife. So, they came to the conclusion that it would be a pity to have all this trouble and expense for nothing ; and that as they were so far on the road already, they had better go to Gretna Green, and marry each other ; and they did so. And the very next preceding entry in the Blacksmith's book, was an entry of the marriage of Emily Brown with Horace Hunter. Mr. Hunter took his wife home, and begged pardon, and was pardoned ; and Mr. Trott took his wife home, begged pardon too, and was pardoned also. And Lord Peter, who had been detained beyond his time by drink- ing champagne and riding a steeple-chase, went back to the Honorable Augustus Flair's, and drank more champagne, and rode another steeple-chase, and was thrown and killed. And Horace Hunter took great credit to himself for practising on the cowardice of Alexander Trott ; and all these circumstances were discovered in time, and carefully noted down; and if you ever stop a week at the Winglebury Arms, they will give you just this account of The Great Winglebury Duel. MRS. JOSEPH PORTER, 747 CHAPTER IX, MRS. JOSEPH PORTER. Most extensive were the preparations at Rose Villa, Clap ham Rise, vs\ the occupation of Mr. Gattleton (a stock-broker in especially comfortable circumstances), and great was the anxiety of Mr. Gattleton's interesting family, as the day fixed for the representation of the Private Play which had been many months in preparation," approached. The whole family was infected with the mania for Private Theatricals ; the house, usually so clean and tidy, was, to use Mr. Gattle- ton's expressive description, " regularly turned out o' win- dows;" the large dining-room, dismantled of its furniture and ornaments, presented a strange jumble of flats, flies, wings, lamps, bridges, clouds, thunder and lightning, festoons and flowers, daggers and foil, .and various other messes in theatrical slang included under the comprehensive name of properties." The bedrooms were crowded with scenery, the kitchen was occupied by carpenters. Rehearsals took place every other night in the drawing-room, and every sofa in the house was more or less damaged by the perseverance and spirit with which Mr. Sempronius Gattleton, and Miss Lucina, rehearsed the smothering scene in Othello " — it having been determined that that tragedy should form the first portion of the evening's entertainments. When we're a leetle more perfect, I think it will go ad- mirably," said Mr. Sempronius, addressing his corps drama- tique^ at the conclusion of the hundred and fiftieth rehearsal. In consideration of his sustaining the trifling inconvenience of bearing all the expenses of the play, Mr. Sempronius had been, in the most handsome manner, unanimously elected stage-manager. Evans," continued Mr. Gattleton, the younger, addressing a tall, thin, pale young gentleman, with extensive whiskers. " Evans, you play Roderigo beautifully.' Beautifully," echoed the three Miss Gattletons ; for Mr. Evans was pronounced by all his lady friends to be " quite a dear." He looked so interesting, and had such lovely whis- . kers : to say nothing of his talent for writing verses in albums and playing the flute ! Roderigo simpered and bowed. 748 SKE rCHES B V BOZ. " But I think," added the manager, "you are hardly peiv feet in the — fall— in the fencing-scene, where you are — you understand ? " " It's very difficult," said Mr. Evans, thoughtfully ; " I've fallen about, a good deal, in our counting-house lately, for practice, only I find it hurts one so. Being obliged to fall backward you see, it bruises one's head a good deal." " But you must take care you don't knock a wing down," said Mr, Gattleton, the elder, who had been appointed promp- ter, and who took as much interest in the play as the young- est of the company. "The stage is very narrow, you know." " Oh ! don't be afraid," said Mr. Evans, with a very self- satisfied air : " I shall fall with my head ' off,' and then I can't do any harm." " But, egad," said the manager, rubbing his hands, " we shall make a decided hit in ' Masaniello.' Harleigh sings that music admirably." Everybo(J^ echoed the sentiment. Mr. Harleigh smiled, and looked foolish — not an unusual thing with him — hummed " Behold how brightly breaks the morning," and blushed as red as the fisherman's nightcap he was trying on. " Let's see," resumed the manager, telling the number on his fingers, "we shall have three dancing female peasants, besides Fenella^ and four fishermen. Then, there's our man Tom ; he can have a pair of ducks of mine, and a check shirt of Bob's, and a red nightcap, and he'll do for another — that's five. In the choruses, of course, we can sing at the sides ; and in the market-scene we can walk about in cloaks and things. When the revolt takes place, Tom must keep rushing in on one side and out on the other, with a pickaxe, as fast as he can. The effect will be electrical ; it will look exactly as if there were aiT immense number of 'em. And in the eruption scene we must burn the red fire, and upset the tea-trays, and make all sorts of noises — and it's sure to do." " Sure ! sure ! " cried all the performers una voce — and away hurried Mr. Sempronius Gattleton to wash the burnt cork off his face, and superintend the " setting up " of some of the amateur-painted, but never-sufficiently-to-be-admired, scenery. Mrs. Gattleton was a kind, good-tempered, vulgar soul, exceedingly fond of her husband and children, and entertain- ing only three dislikes. In the first place, she had a nat- ural antipathy to anybody else's unmarried daughters ; in the MRS. JOSEPH PORTER. 749 second, she was in bodily fear of anything in the shape of ridicule ; lastly — almost a necessary consequence of this feel- ing — she regarded, with feelings of the utmost horror, one Mrs. Joseph Porter over the way. However, the good folks of Clapham and its vicinity stood very much in awe of scandal and sarcasm ; and thus Mrs. Joseph Porter was courted, and flattered, and caressed, and invited, for much the same reason that induces a poor author, without a farthing in his pocket, to behave with extraordinary civility to a two-penny postman. Never mind, ma,*' said Miss Emma Porter, in colloquy with her respected relative, and trying to look unconcerned ; " if they had invited me, you know that neither you nor pa would have allowed me to take part in such an exhibition." " Just what I should have thought from your high sense of propriety, returned the mother. I am glad to see, Emma, you know how to designate the proceeding." Miss P., by the bye, had only the week before made an exhibition " of herself for four days, behind a counter at a fancy fair, to all and every of her Majesty's liege subjects who were disposed to pay a shilling each for the privilege of seeing some four dozen girls flirting with strangers, and playing at shop. "There!" said Mrs. Porter, looking out of window; " there are two rounds of beef and a ham going in — clearly for sandwiches ; and Thomas, the pastry-cook, sa^^s, there have been twelve dozen tarts ordered, besides blanc-mange and jellies. Upon my word ! think of the Miss Gattletons in fancy dresses, too ! " Oh, it's too ridiculous ! " said Miss Porter, hysterically. " I'll manage to put them a little out of conceit with the business, however," said Mrs. Porter ; and out she went on her charitable errand. Well, my dear Mrs. Gattleton," said Mrs. Joseph Porter, after they had been closeted for some time, and when, by dint of indefatigable pumping, she had managed to extract all the news about the play, well, my dear, people may say what they please ; indeed we know they will, for some folks are so ill-natured. Ah, my dear Miss Lucina, how d'ye do ? I was just telling your mamma that I have heard it said, that " "What?" " Mrs. Porter is alluding to the play, my dear," said Mrs. Gattleton ; " she was, I am sorry to say, just informing me that " SKETCHES BY BOZ. " Oh, now pray don't mention it," interrupted Mrs. Por- ter ; it's most absurd — quite as absurd as young What's-his- name saying he wondered how Miss Caroline, with such a foot and ankle, could have the vanity to play Fenella,^^ " Highly impertinent, whoever said it," said Mrs. Gattle- ten, bridling up. Certainly, my dear," chimed in the delighted Mrs. Porter ; " most undoubtedly ! Because, as I said, if Miss Caroline does play Fenella, it doesn't follow, as a matter of course, that she should think she has a pretty foot ; — and then — such pup- pies as these young men are — he had the impudence to say, that " How far the amiable Mrs. Porter might have succeeded in her pleasant purpose, it is impossible to say, had not the en- trance of Mr. Thomas Balderstone, Mrs. Gattleton's brother, familiarly called in the family " Uncle Tom," changed the course of conversation, and suggested to her mind an excellent plan of operation on the evening of the play. . Uncle Tom was very rich, and exceedingly fond of his nephews and nieces : as a matter of course, therefore, he was an object of great importance in his own family. He was one of the best-hearted men in existence : always in a good temper, and always talking. It was his boast that he wore top-boots on all occasions, and had never worn a black silk neckerchief : and it was his pride that he remembered all the principal playo of Shakspeare from beginning to end — and so he did. The result of this parrot-like accomplishment was, that he was not only perpetually quoting himself, but that he could never sit by, and hear a misquotation from the " Swan of Avon " without setting the unfortunate delinquent right. He was also something of a wag ; never missed an opportu- nity of saying what he considered a good thing, and invari- ably laughed until he cried at anything that appeared to him mirth-moving or ridiculous. " Well, girls 1 " said Uncle Tom, after the preparatory ceremony of kissing and how-d'ye-do-ing had been gone through — " how d'ye get on ? Know your parts, eh : — Lncina, my dear, act ii., scene i — place, left — cue—-' Unknown fate, What's next, eh ? — Go on — ' The Heavens — ' " " Oh, yes," said Miss Lucina, I recollect — ' The heavens forbid But that our loves and comforts should increase kven as cur days do grow ! ' *' MRS, JOSEPH PORTER. Make a pause here and there," said the old gentleman, who was a great critic. " * But that our loves and comforts should increase ' — emphasis on the last syllable, 'crease,' — loud * even,' — one, two, three, four ; then loud again, ' as our days do grow ; ' emphasis on days. That's the way, my dear ; trust to your uncle for emphasis. Ah ! Sem, my boy, how are you ? " " Very well, thankee, uncle," returned Mr. Sempronius, who had just appeared, looking something like a ringdove, with a small circle round each eye : the result of his constant corking. " Of course we see you on Thursday." " Of course, of course, my dear boy." What a pity it is your nephew didn't think of making you prompter, Mr. Balderstone ! " whispered Mrs. Joseph Porter ; "you would have been invaluable." Well, I flatter myself, I should have been tolerably up to the thing," responded Uncle Tom. , I must bespeak sitting next you on the night," resumed Mrs. Porter ; and then, if our dear young friends here, should be at all wrong, you will be able to enlighten me. I shall be so interested." " I am sure I shall be most happy to give you any assist- ance in my power." " Mind, it's a bargain." "Certainly." "I don't know how it is," said Mrs. Gattleton to her daughters, as they were sitting round the fire in the evening, looking over their parts, but I really very much wish Mrs. Joseph Porter w^asn't coming on Thursday. I am sure she's scheming something." "She can't make //i* ridiculous, however," observed Mr. Sempronius Gattleton, haughtily. " The long-looked-for Thursday arrived in due course, and brought with it, as Mr. Gatdeton, senior, philosophically ob- served, " no disappointments, to speak of." True, it was yet a matter of doubt whether Cassio would be enabled to get into the dress which had been sent for him from the masquer- ade warehouse. It was equally uncertain whether the princi- pal female singer would be sufficiently recovered from the in- fluenza to make her appearance ; Mr. Harleigh, the Masaniello of the night, was hoarse, and rather unwell, in consequence of the great quantity of lemon and sugar-candy he had eaten to improve his voice ; and two flutes and a violoncello had 752 SKETCHES BY BOZ. pleaded severe colds. What of that ? the audience were all coming. Everybody knew his part : the dresses were covered with tinsel and spangles ; the white plumes looked beautiful ; Mr. Evans had practised falling until he was bruised from head to foot and quite perfect ; lago was sure that, in the* stabbing -scene, he should make a decided hit." A self- taught deaf gentleman, who had kindly offered to bring his flute, would be a most valuable addition to the orchestra \ Miss Jenkins's talent for the piano was too well known to be doubted for an instant ; Mr. Cape had practised the violin accompaniment with her frequently ; and Mr. Brown, who had kindly undertaken, at a few hours' notice, to bring his violoncello, would, no doubt, manage extremely well. Seven o'clock came, and so did the audience ; all the rank and fashion of Clapham and its vicinity was fast filling the theatre. There were the Smiths, the Gubbinses, the Nixons, the Dixons, the Hickscv^s, people with all sorts of names, two aldermen, a sheriff in perspective, Sir Thomas Glumper (who had been knighted in the last reign for carrying up an address on somebody's escaping from nothing) ; and last, not least, there were Mrs. Joseph Porter and Uncle Tom, seated in the centre of the third row from the stgge ; Mrs. P. amus- ing Uncle Tom with all sorts of stories, and Uncle Tom amusing every one else by laughing most immoderately. Ting, ting, ting ! went the prompter's bell at eight o'clock precisely, and dash went the orchestra into the overture to "The Men of Prometheus." The piano-forte player ham- mered away with laudable perseverance ; and the violoncello, which struck in at intervals, " sounded ver}' well, considering." The unfortunate individual, however, who had undertaken to play the flute accompaniment at sight," found, from fatal experience, the perfect truth of the old adage, " out of sight, out of mind ; " for being very near-sighted, and being placed at a considerable distance from his music-book, all he had an opportunity of doing was to play a bar now and then in the wrong place, and put the other performers out. It is, however, but justice to Mr. Brown to say that he did this to admiration. The overture, in fact, was not unlike a race between the different instruments ; the piano came in first by several bars, and the violoncello next, quite distancing the poor flute ^ for the deaf gentleman too-too'd away, quite unconscious that he was at all wrong, until apprised, by the applause of the audience, that the overture was concluded. A considerable MRS. JOSEPH PORTER. 753 bustle and shuffling of feet was then heard upon tne stage ac- companied by whispers of " Here's a pretty go ! — what's to be done ? " &c. The audience applauded again, by way of raising the spirits of the performers ; and then Mr. Sempro- nius desired the prompter, in a very audible voice, to clear the stage, and ring up." Ting, ting, ting ! went the bell again. Everybody sat down ; the curtain shook ; rose sufficiently high to display several pair of yellow boots paddling about ; and there re- mained. Ting, ting, ting ! went the bell again. The curtain was violently convulsed, but rose no higher; the audience tittered ; Mrs. Porter looked at Uncle Tom \ Uncle Tom looked at everybody, rubbing his hands, and laughing with perfect rap- ture. After as much ringing with the little bell as a muffin- boy would make in going down a tolerably long street, and a vast deal of whispering, hammering, and calling for nails and cord, the curtain at length rose, and discovered Mr. Sem- pronius Gattleton solus., and decked for Othello. After three distinct rounds of applause, during which Mr. Sempronius applied his right hand to his left breast, and bowed in the most approved«iianner, the manager advanced and said : " Ladies and Gentlemen — I assure you it is with sincere regret, that I regret to be compelled to inform you, that lago who was to have played Mr. Wilson — I beg your pardon, Ladies and Gentlemen, but I am naturally somewhat agitated (applause) I mean, Mr. Wilson, who was to have played Jago^ is — that is, has been — or, in other words. Ladies and Gentle- men, the fact is, that I have just received a note, in which I am informed that lago is unavoidably detained at the Post- office this evening. Under these circumstances, I trust — a — a — amateur performance — a — another gentleman undertaken to read the part — request indulgence for a short time — courtesy and kindness of a British audience." Overwhelming applause. Exit Mr. Sempronius Gattleton, and curtain falls. The audience were, of course, exceedingly good-humored ; the whole business was a joke ; and accordingly they waited for an hour with the utmost patience, being enlivened by an interlude of rout-cakes and lemonade. It appeared by Mr. Sempronius's subsequent explanation, that the delay would not have been so great, had it not so happened that when the substitute lago had finished dressing, and just as the play was on the point of commencing, the original lago unex- 8 SKETCHES B Y BOZ. pectedly arrived. The former was therefore compelled to undress, and the latter to dress for his part ; which, as he found some difficulty in getting into his clothes, occupied no inconsiderable time. At last, the tragedy began in real earnest. It went off well enough, until the third scene ot the first act, in which Othello addresses the Senate : the only remarkable circumstance being, that as Jago could not get on any of the stage boots, in consequence of his feet being vio lently swelled with the heat and excitement, he was undei the necessity of playing the part in a pair of Wellingtons, which contrasted rather oddly with his richly embroidered pantaloons. When Othello started wiin his address to the Senate (whose dignity was represented by, the Duke, a car- penter, two men engaged on the recommendation of the gar- dener, and a boy), Mrs. Porter found the opportunity she sc anxiously sought. Mr. Sempronius proceeded: ** * Most potent, grave and reverend signiors, My very noble and approv'd good masters, That I have ta'en away this old man's daughter, It is most true ; — rude am I in my speech ' " " Is that right ? " whispered Mrs. Porter to Uncle Tom. "No.'' " Tell him so, then." " I will. Sem ! " called out Uncle Tom, " that's wrong, my boy." " What's wrong. Uncle } " demanded Othello, quite for- getting the dignity of his situation. " You've left out something. ' True I have married ' " " Oh, ah ! " said Mr. Sempronius, endeavoring to hide his confusion as much and as ineffectually as the audience at- tempted to conceal their half-suppressed tittering, by coughing with extraordinary violence — " ' true I have married her ; The very head and front of my offending Hath this extent ; no more.' {Aside) Why don't you prompt, father? " "Because I've mislaid my spectacles," said poor Mr. Gat- tleton, almost dead with the^heat and bustle. " There, now it's ' rude am I,' " said Uncle Tom. "Yes, I know it is," returned the unfortunate manager^ proceeding with his part. It would be useless and tiresome to quote the number of MRS. JOSEPH FOR TER. 755 instanc/s in which Uncle Tom, now completely in his element, and instigated by the mischievous Mrs. Porter, corrected the mistakes of the performers ; suffice it to say, that having mounted his hobby, nothing could induce him to dismount ; so, during the whole remainder of the play, he performed a kind of running accompaniment, by muttering everybody's part as it was being delivered, in an under tone. The audience were highly amused, Mrs. Porter delighted, the per- formers embarrassed ; Uncle Tom never was better pleased in all his life ; and Uncle Tom's nephews and nieces had never, although the declared heirs to his large property, so heartily wished him gathered to his fathers as on that memor- able occasion. Several other minor causes, too, united to damp the ardor of the dramatis personce. None of the performers could walk in their tights, or move their arms in their jackets ; the pantaloons were too small, the boots too large, and the swords of all shapes and sizes. Mr. Evans, naturally too tall for the scenery, wore a black velvet hat with immense white plumes, the glory of which was lost in the flies ; " and the only other inconvenience of which was, that when it was off his head he could not put it on, and when it was on he could not take it off. Notwithstanding all his practice, too, he fell with his head and shdulders as neatly through one of the side scenes, as a harlequin would jump through a panel in a Christmas pantomime. The pianoforte player, overpowered by the ex- treme heat of the room, fainted away at the commencement of the entertainment, leaving the music of " Masaniello " to the flute and yoloncello. The orchestra complained that Mr. Harleigh put them out, and Mr. Harleigh declared that the orchestra prevented his singing a note. The fishermen, who were hired for the occasion, revolted to the very life, posi- tively refusing to play without an increased allowance of spirits ; and, their demand being complied with, getting drunk in the eruption scene as naturally as possible. The red fire, which was burnt at the conclusion of the second act, not only nearly suffocated the audience, but nearly set the house on fire into the bargain ; and, as it was, the remainder of the piece was acted in a thick fog. In short, the whole affair was, as Mrs. Joseph Porter triumphantly told everybody, "a complete failure." The audience went home at four o'clock in the morning, exhausted with laughter, suffering from severe headaches, and smelling 75^ SKETCHES BY BOZ. terribly of brimstone and gunpowder. The Messrs. Gattleton, senior and junior, retired to rest, with the vague idea of emi- grating to Swan River early in the ensuing week. Rose Villa has once again resumed its wonted appear- ance ; the dining-room furniture has been replaced; the tables are as nicely polished as formerly : the horsehair chairs are ranged against the wall, as regularly as ever ; Venetian blinds have been fitted to every window in the house to intercept the prying gaze of Mrs. Joseph Porter. The subject of theatri- cals is never mentioned in the Gattleton family, unless, indeed, by Uncle Tom, who cannot refrain from sometimes expressing his surprise and regret at finding that his nephews and nieces appear to have lost the relish they once possessed for the beauties of Shakspeare, and quotations from the works of that immortal bard. CHAPTER X. A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF MR. WATKINS TOTTLE. CHAPTER THE FIRST. Matrimony is proverbially a serious undertaking. Like an overweening predilection for brandy and water, it is a mis- fortune into which a man easily falls, and from which he finds it remarkably difficult to extricate himself. It is of no use telling a man who is timorous on these points, that it is but one plunge, and all is over. They say the same thing at the Old Bailey, and the unfortunate victims derive as much comfort from the assurance in the one case as in the other. Mr. Watkins Tottle was a rather uncommon compound of strong uxorious inclinations, and an unparalleled degree of anti-connubial timidity. He was about fifty years of age ; stood four feet six inches and three-quarters in his socks — for he never stood in stockings at all — plump, clean, and rosy. He looked something like a vignette to one of Richardson's novels, and had a clean-cravatish formality of manner, and kitchen-pokerness of carriage, which Sir Charles Grandi- MR, WATKINS TOTTLE. 757 son himself might have envied. He lived on an annuity, which was well adapted to the individual who received it, in one respect — it was rather sma^l. He received it in periodi- cal payments on every alternat«e Monday ; but he ran himself out, about a day after the expiration of the first week, ar. regularly as an eight-day clock ; and then, to make the com- parison complete, his landlady wound him up, and he went on with a regular tick. Mr. Watkins Tottle had long lived in the state of single blessedness, as bachelors say, or single cursedness, as spin- sters think ; but the idea of matrimony had never ceased to haunt him. Wrapt in profound reveries on this never-failing theme, fancy transformed his small parlor in Cecil-street, Strand, into a neat house in the suburbs; the half-hundredweight of coals under the kitchen-stairs suddenly sprang up into three tons of the best Walls-end ; his small French bedstead was converted into a regulai matrimonial four-poster ; and in the empty chair on the opposite side of the fire-place, imagination seated a beautiful young lady with a very little independence or will of her own, and a very large independence under a will of her father's. Who's there? " inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle, as a gentle tap at his room door disturbed these meditations one even- ing. " Tottle, my dear fellow, how do you do ? " said a short elderly gentleman with a gruffish voice, bursting into the room, and replying to the question by asking another. Told you I should drop in some evening," said the short gentleman, as he delivered his hat into Tottle's hand, after a little struggling and dodging. Delighted to see you, I'm sure," said Mr. Watkins Tottle, • wishing internally that his visitor had "dropped in" to the Thames at the bottom of the street, instead of dropping. into his parlor. The fortnight was nearly up, and Watkins was hard up. " How is Mrs. Gabriel Parsons ? ^' inquired Tottle. " Quite well, thank you," replied Mr. Gabriel Parsons, for that was the name the short gentleman revelled in. Here there was a pause; the short gentleman looked at the left hob of the fireplace ; Mr. Watkins Tottle stared vacancy out of countenance. Quite well," repeated the short gentleman, when five minutes had expired. " I may say remarkably well." And SKETCHES BY BOZ. he rubbed the palms of his hands as hard as if he were going to strike a Hght by friction. " What will you take ?" inquired Tottle, with the desperate suddenness of a man who knew that unless the visitor took his leave, he stood very little chance of taking anything else. Oh, I don't know — have you any whiskey ? " Why," replied Tottle very slowly, for all this was gaining time, I had some capital, and remarkably strong whiskey last week ; but it's all gone — and therefore its strength " Is much beyond proof ; or, in other words, impossible to be proved," said the short gentleman ; and he laughed very heartily, and seemed quite glad the whiskey had been drunk. Mr. Tottle smiled — but it was the smile of despair. When Mr. Gabriel Parsons had done laughing, he delicately insinu- ated that, in the absence of whiskey, he would not be averse to brandy. And Mr. Watkins Tottle, lighting a flat candle very ostentatiously ; and displaying an immense key, which belonged to the street-door, but which, for the sake of appear- ances, occasionally did duty in an imaginary wine-cellar ; left the room to entreat his landlady to charge their glasses, and charge them in the bill. The application was successful ; the spirits were speedily called — not from the vasty deep, but the adjacent wine-vaults. The two short gentlemen mixed their grog ; and then sat cosily down before the fire — a pair of shorts, airing themselves. "Tottle," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, "you know my way — off-hand, open, say what . I mean, mean what I say, hate reserve, and can't bear affectation. One, is a bad domino, which only hides what good people have about' em, without making the bad look better ; and the other is much about the same thing as pinking a white cotton stocking to make it look- like a silk one. Now listen to what I^m going to say." Here, the little gentleman paused, and took a long pull at his brandy-and-water. Mr. Watkins Tottle took a sip of his, stirred the fire, and assumed an air of profound attention. " It's of no use humming and ha'ing about the matter," resumed the short gentleman. — "You want to get married." " Why," replied Mr. Watkins Tottle evasively ; for he trembled violently, and felt a sudden tingling throughout his whole frame ; " why — I should certainly — at least I thmk I should like—" " Won't do," said the short gentleman. — " Plain and free — or there's an end of the matter. Do you want money .^" MR. W ATKINS TOTTLE. 759 "You know I do." You admire the sex "I do." " And you'd like to be married ? " " Certainly." Then you shall be. There's an end of that." Thus saying, Mr. Gabriel Parsons took a pinch of snuff, and mixed another glass. Let me entreat you to be more explanatory," said Tottle. Really, as the party principally interested, I cannot consent to be disposed of in this way." I'll tell you," replied Mr. Gabriel Parsons, warming with the subject, and the brandy-and -water — " I know a lady — she's stopping with my wife now — who is just the thing for you. Well educated ; talks French ; plays the piano ; knows a good deal about flowers, and shells, and all that sort of thing ; and has five hundred a year, with an uncontrolled power of disposing of it, by her last will and testament." " I'll pay my addresses to her," said Mr. VVatkins Tottle. She isn't very young — is she ? " " Not very ; just the thing for you. I've said that al- ready." " What colored hair has the lady ? " inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle. Egad, I hardly recollect," replied Gabriel, with coolness. " Perhaps I ought to have observed, at first, she wears a front." A what 1 " ejaculated Tottle. *^ One of those things with curls, along here," said Par- sons, drawing a straight line across his forehead, just over his eyes, in illustration of his meaning. I know the front's black ; I can't speak quite positively about her own hair ; be- cause, unless one walks behind her, and catches a glimpse of it under her bonnet, one seldom sees it \ but I should say that it was rather lighter than the front — a shade of a grayish tinge, perhaps." Mr. Watkins Tottle looked as if he had certain misgivings of mind. Mr. Gabriel Parsons perceived it, and thought it would be safe to begin the next attack without delay. Now, were you ever in love, Tottle ? " he inquired. Mr. Watkins Tottle blushed up to the eyes, and down to the chin, and exhibited a most extensive combination of colors as he confessed the soft impeachment. 760 SKE TCHES B Y BOZ, " I suppose you popped the question, more than once when you were a young — I beg your pardon — a younger- man," said Parsons. " Never in my life ! " replied his friend, apparently indig-= nant at being suspected of such an act. Never ! The fact is, that I entertain, as you know, peculiar opinions on these subjects. I am not afraid of ladies, young or old — far from it ; but, I think, that in compliance with the custom of the present day, they allow too much freedom of speech and man- ner to marriageable men. Now, the fact is, that anything like this easy freedom I never could acquire ; and as I am always afraid of going too far, I am generally, I dare say, considered formal and cold." " I shouldn't wonder '\i you were," remarked Parsons, gravely ; I shouldn't wonder. However, you'll be all right in this case ; for the strictness and delicacy of this lady's ideas greatly exceed your own. Lord bless you, why when she came to our house, there was an old portrait of some man or other, with two large black staring eyes, hanging up in her bedroom ; she positively refused to gg to bed there, till it was taken down, considering it decidedly wrong." " I think so, too," said Mr. Watkins Tottle ; " certain- ly." \ " And then, the other night — I never laughed so much in my life " — resumed Mr. Gabriel Parsons ; I had driven home in an easterly wind, and caught a devil of a face-ache. Well ; as Fanny — that's Mrs. Parsons, you know — and this friend of hers, and I, and Frank Ross, were playing a rubber, I said, jokingly, that when I went to bed I should wrap my head in Fanny's flannel petticoat. She instantly threw up her cards,- and left the room." " Quite right ! " said Mr. Watkins Tottle ; " she could not possibly have behaved in a more dignified manner. What did you do ? " "Do.^ — Frank took dummy ; and I won sixpence," " But, didn't you apologize for hurting her feelings ? " " Devil a bit. Next morning at breakfast, we talked it over. She contended that any reference to a flannel petticoat was improper ; — men ought not to be supposed to know that such things were. I pleaded my coverture ; being a married man." " And what did the lady say to that 1 " inquired Tottle, deeply interested. MR. WATKINS TOTTLE., *' Changed her ground, and said that Frank being a single man, its impropriety was obvious." " Noble-minded creature ! " exclaimed the enraptured Tottle. " Oh ! both Fanny and I said, at once, that she was regu- larly cut out for you." A gleam of placid satisfaction shone on the circular face of Mr. Watkins Tottle, as he heard the prophecy. " There's one thing I can't understand," said Mr. Gabriel Jparsons, as he rose to depart ; " I cannot, for the life and Soul of me imagine, how the deuce you'll ever contrive to come together. The lady would certainly go into convulsions if the subject w^ere mentioned." Mr. Gabriel Parsons sat down again, and laughed until he was weak. Tottle owed hihi money, so he had a perfect right to laugh at Tottle's expense. Mr. Watkins Tottle feared, in his own mind, that this was another characteristic which he had in common with this modern Lucretia. He, however, accepted the invitation to dine with the Parsonses on the next day but one, with great firmrtess ; and looked forward to the introduction, when again left alone, with tolerable composure. The sun that rose on the next day but one, had neyer be- held a sprucer personage on the outside of the Norwood stage, than Mr. Watkins Tottle ; and when the coach drew up be- fore a card-board looking house with disguised chimneys, and a lawn like a large sheet of green letter-paper, he certainly had never lighted to his place of destination a gentleman who felt more uncomfortable. The coach stopped, and Mr. Watkins Tottle jumped — we beg his patdon — alighted, with great dignity. All right ! " said he, and away went the coach up the hill with that beau- tiful equaniihity of pace for which short " stages are gener- ally remarkable. Mr. Watkins Tottle gave a faltering jerk to the handle of the garden-gate bell. He essayed a more energetic tug, and his previous nervousness was not at all diminished by hearing the bell ringing like a fire alarum. Is Mr. Parsons at home ? " inquired Tottle of the man who opened the gate. He could hardly hear himself speak, for the bell had not yet done tolling. Here I am," Shouted a voice on the lawn, and there was Mr. Gabriel ParsonI in a flannel jacket, running backwards 762 SKETCHES BY BOZ, and forwards, from a wicket to two hats piled on each other, and from the two hats to the wicket, in the most violent man^ ner, while another gentleman with his coat off was getting down the area of the house, after a bail. When the gentle- man without the coat had found it — which he did in less than ten minutes — he ran back to the hats, and Gabriel Parsons pulled up. Then, the gentleman without the coat called out " play,'' very loudly, and bowled. Then Mr. Gabriel Parsons knocked the ball several yards, and took another run. Then, the other gentleman aimed at the wicket, and didn't hit it \ and Mr. Gabriel Parsons, having finished running on his own account, laid down the bat and ran after the ball, which went into a neighboring field. They called this cricket. Tot tie, will you 'go in?'" inquired Mr. Gabriel Par- sons, as he approached him, wiping the perspiration off hia face. Mr. Watkins Tottle declined the offer, the bare idea of accepting which made him even warmer than his friend. " Then we'll go into the house, as it's past four, and I shall have to wash my hands before dinner," said Mr. Ga- briel Parsons. " Here, I hate ceremony, you know ! Tnnson, that's Tottle — Tottle, that's Timson ; bred for the church, which fear will never be bread for him ;" and he chuckled at the old joke. Mr. Timson bowed carelessly. Mr. Wat- kins Tottle bowed stiffly. Mr. Gabriel Parsons led the way to the house. He was a rich sugar-baker, -who mistook rude- ness for honesty, and abrupt bluntness for an open and can- did manner ; many besides Gabriel mistake bluntness for sin- cerity. Mrs. Gabriel Parsons received the visitors most graciously on the steps, and preceded them to the drawing-room. On the sofa, was seated a lady of very prim appearance, and re- markably inanimate. She was one of those persons at whose age it is impossible to make any reasonable guess \ her fea- tures might have been remarkably pretty when she was younger, and they might always have presented the same ap- pearance. Her complexion — with a slight trace of powder here and there — was as clear as that of a well-made wax-doll, and her face as expressive. She was handsomely dressed, and was winding up a gold watch. Miss Lillerton, my dear, this is our friend Mr. Watkins Tottle ; a very old acquaintance I assure you," said Mrs. Parsons, presenting the Strephon of Cecil-street, Strand MR, WATKINS TOTTLE. The lady rose, and made a deep courtesy ; Mr. Watkin3 Tot tie made ii bow. " Splendid, majestic creature ! thought Tottle. Mr. Timson advanced, and Mr. Watkins Tottle began to hate him. Men generally discover a rival instinctively, and Mr. Watkins Tottle felt that his hate was deserved. " May I beg," said the reverend gentleman, — " May I beg, to call upon you, Miss Lillerton, for some trifling donation to my soup, coals, and blanket distribution society ? " " Put my name down, for two sovereigns, if you please," responded Miss Lillerton. " You are truly charitable, madam, ' said the Reverend Mr. Timson, " and we know that charity will cover a multi- tude of sins. Let me beg you to understand that I do not say this from the supposition that you have many sins which re- quire palliation ; believe me when I say that I never yet met any one who had fewer to atone for, than Miss Lillerton." Something like a bad imitation of animation lighted up the lady's face, as she acknowledged the compliment. Wat- kins Tottle incurred the sin of wishing that the ashes of the Reverend Charles Timson were quietly deposited in the churchyard of his curacy, wherever it might be. " I'll tell you what,'^ interrupted Parsons, who had just appeared with clean hands, and a black coat, " it's my private opinion, Timson, that your ' distribution society ' is rather a humbug." " You are so severe," replied Timson, with a Christian smile ; he disliked Parsons, but liked his dinners. " So positively unjust ! " said Miss Lillerton. " Certainly," observed Tottle. The lady looked up ; her eyes met those of Mr. Watkins Tottle. She withdrew them in a sweet confusion, and Watkins Tottle did the same — the confusion was mutual. "Why," urged Mr. Parsons, pursuing his objections, " what on earth is the use of giving a man coals who has nothing to cook, or giving him blankets when he hasn't a bed, or giving him soup when he requires substantial food t ' like sending them ruffles when wanting a shirt.' Why not give 'em a trifle of money, as I do, when I think they deserve it, and let them purchase what they think best ? Why ? — be- cause your subscribers wouldn't see their names flourishing in print on the church-door — that's the reason." Really, Mr. Parsons, I hope you don't mean to insinuate 764 SKETCHES BY BOZ. that I wish to see my name in print, on the church-door/' in terrupted Miss Lillerton. " 1 hope not," said Mr. Watkins Tottle, putting in an- other word, and getting another glance. " Certainly not,'' replied Parsons. " I dare say you wouldn't mind seeing it in writing, though, in the church register — eh ? " " Register ! What register ? " inquired the lady, gravely. " Why, the register of marriages, to be sure," replied Par- sons, chuckling at the sally, and glancing at Tottle. Mr. Wat- kins Tottle thought he should have fainted for shame, and it is quite impossible to imagine what effect the joke would have had upon the lady, if dinner had not been, at that moment, an- nounced. Mr. Watkins Tottle, with an unprecedented effort of gallantry, offered the tip of his little finger ; Miss Lillerton accepted it gracefully, with maiden modesty : and they pro- ceeded in due state to the dinner-table, where they were soon deposited side by side. The room was very snug, the dinner very good, and the little party in spirits. The conversation became pretty general, and when Mr. Watkins Tottle had ex- tracted one or two cold observations from his neighbor, and had taken wine with her, he began to acquire confidence rap- idly. The cloth was removed ; Mrs. Gabriel Parsons drank four glasses of port on the plea of being a nurse just then ; and Miss Lillerton took about the same number of sips, on the plea of not wanting any at all. At length, the ladies re- tired, to the great gratification of Mr. Gabriel Parsons, who had been coughing and frowning at his wife, for half-an-hour previously — signals which Mrs. Parsons never happened to observe, until she had been pressed to take her ordinary quanj:um, which, to avoid giving trouble, she generally did at once. " What do you think of her ? " inquired Mr. Gabriel Par- sons of Mr. Watkins Tottle, in an under tone. " I dote on her with enthusiasm already ! " replied Mr, Watkins Tottle. Gentlemen, pray let us drink ' the ladies,' '' said the Reverend Mr. Timson. " The ladies ! " said Mr. Watkins Tottle, emptying his glass. In the fulness of his confidence, he felt as if he could make love to a dozen ladies, off hand. " Ah ! " said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, " I remember when I was a young man — fill your glass, Timson." MR, W ATKINS TOTTLE, * I have this moment emptied it.'- « Then fill again/' " I will/' said Timson, suiting the action to the word. "I remember," resumed Mr. Gabriel Parsons, "when I was a younger man, with what a strange compound of feelings I used to drink that toast, and how I used to think every woman was an angel." Was that before you were married ? " mildly inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle. " Oh ! certainly," replied Mr. Gabriel Parsons, I have never thought so since ; and a precious milksop 1 must have been, ever to have thought so at all. But, you know, I married Fanny under the oddest, and most ridiculous circum- stances possible." "What were they, if one may inquire.'*" asked Timson, who had heard the story, on an average, twice a week for the last six months. Mr. Watkins Tottle listened attentively in the hope of picking up some suggestion that might be useful to him in his new undertaking. " 1 spent my wedding-night in a back-kitchen chimney," said Parsons, by way of a beginning. In a back-kitchen chimney ! " ejaculated Watkins Tottle. " How dreadful ! " Yes, it wasn't very pleasant," replied the small host. The fact is, Fanny's father and mother liked me well enough as an individual, but had a decided objection to my becoming a husband. You see, I hadn't any money in those days, and they had ^ and so they wanted Fanny to pick up somebody else. However, we managed to discover the state of each other's affections somehow. I used to meet her, at some mutual friends' parties ; at first we danced together, and talked and flirted, and all that sort of thing ; then, I used to like nothing so well as sitting by her side — we didn't talk so much then, but I remember I used to have a great notion of look- ing at her out of the extreme corner of my left eye — and then 1 got very miserable and sentimental, and began to write verses, and use Mascassar oil. At last I couldn't bear it any longer, and after I had walked up and down the sunny side of Oxford-street in tight boots for a week — and a devilish hot summer it was too — in the hope of meeting her, I sat down and wrote a letter, and begged her to manage to see me clandestinely, for I wanted to hear her decision from her own mouth. I said I had discovered^ to my perfect satisfaction, 766 SKETCHES BY BOZ, that I couldn't live without her, and that if she didn't have me, I had made up my mind to take prussic acid, or take to drinking, or emigrate, so as to take myself off in some way or other. Well, I borrowed a pound, and bribed the house- maid to give her the note, which she did." And what was the reply ? " inquired Timson, who had found, before, that to encourage the repetition of old stories is to get a general invitation. " Oh, the usual one ! Fanny expressed herself very miserable : hinted at the possibility of an early grave ; said that nothing should induce her to swerve from the duty she owed her parents ; implored me to forget her, and find out somebody more deserving, and all that sort of thing. She said she could, on no account, think of meeting me unknown to her pa and ma ; and entreated me, as she should be in a particular part of Kensington Gardens at eleven o'clock next morning, not to attempt to meet her there." You didn't go, ot course ? " said Watkins Tottle. Didn't I ? — Of course I did. There she was, with the identical housemaid in perspective, in order that there might be no interruption. We walked about, for a couple of' hours ; jnade ourselves delightfully miserable ; and were regularly engaged. Then, we began to ' correspond ' — that is to say, we used to exchange about four letters a day ; what we used to say in 'em I can't imagine. And I used to have an inter- view, in the kitchen, or the cellar, or some such place, every evening. Well, things went on in this way for some time ; and we got fonder of each other every day. At last, as our love was raised to such a pitch, and as my salary had been raised too, shortly before, we determined on a secret marriage. Fanny arranged to sleep at a friend's, on the previous night ; we were to be married early in the morning ; and then we were to return to her home and be pathetic. She was to fall at the old gentleman's feet, and bathe his boots with her tears ; and I was to hug the old lady and call her * mother,' and use my pocket handkerchief as much as possible. Married we were, the next morning; two girls — friends of Fanny's — acting as bridesmaids ; and a man, who was hired for five shillings and a pint of porter, officiating as father. Now, the old lady unfortunately put off her return from Ramsgate, where she had been paying a visit, until the next morning; and as we placed great reliance on her, we agreed to postpone our con- fession for four-and-twenty hours. My newly-made wife re* MR. W ATKINS TOTTLE, 767 turned home, and I spent my wedding-day in strolling about Hampstead-heath, and execrating my father-in-law. Of course, I went to comfort my dear little wife at night, as much as I could, with the assurance that our troubles would soon be over. I opened the garden-gate, of which I had a key, and was shown by the servant to our old place of meeting — a back kitchen, with a stone-floor and a dresser ; upon which, in the absence of chairs, we used to sit and make love.'' " Make love upon a kitchen-dresser ! " interrupted Mr, Watkins Tottle, whose ideas of decorum vv^ere greatly outraged. " Ah ! On a kitchen-dresser ! " replied Parsons, " And let me tell you, old fellow, that, if you were really over head- and-ears in love, and had no other place to make love in, you'd be devilish glad to avail yourself of such an opportunity. However, let me see ; — where was I ? " On the dresser,'' suggested Timson. " Oh — ah ! Well, here I found poor Fanny, quite dis- consolate and uncomfortable. The old boy had been very cross all day, which made her feel still more lonely ; and she was quite out of spirits. So, I put a good face on the matter, and laughed it olf, and said we should enjoy the pleasure of a matrimonial life more by contrast ; and, at length, poor Fanny brightened up a little. I stopped there, till about eleven o'clock, and, just as I was taking my leave for the fourteenth time, the girl came running down the stairs, with- out her shoes, in a great fright, to tell us that the old villain — Heaven forgive me for calling him so, for he is dead and gone now ! — prompted 1 suppose by the prince of darkness, was coming down, to draw his own beer for supper — a thing he had not done before, for six months, to my certain knowl- edge ; for the cask stood in that very back kitchen. If he discovered me there, explanation would have been out of the question ] for he was so outrageously violent, when at all ex- cited, that he never would have listened to me. There was only one thing to be done. The chimney was a very wide one ; it had been originally built for an oven ; went up per- pendicularly for a few feet, and then shot backward aud formed a sort of small cavern. My hopes and fortune — the means of our joint existence almost — were at stake. I scram- bled in like a squirrel ; coiled myself up in this recess ; and, as Fanny and the girl replaced the deal chimney-board, I could see the light of the candle which my unconscious father- in-law carried in his hand. I heard him draw the beer ; and 768 SKE TCHES B Y BOZ, I never heard beer run so slowly. He was just leaving the kitchen, and I was preparing to descend, when down came the infernal chimney-board with a tremendous crash. He stopped and put down the candle and the jug of beer on the dresser; he was a nervous old fellow, and any unexpected noise annoyed him. He coolly observed that the fireplace was never used, and sending the frightened servant into the next kitchen for a hammer and nails, actually nailed up the board, and locked the door on the outside. So, there was I, on my wedding-night, in the light kerseymere trousers, fancy waist- coat, and blue coat, that I had been married in in the morn- ing, in a back-kitchen chimney, the bottom of which was nailed up, and the top of which had been formerly raised some fifteen feet, to prevent the smoke from annoying the neigh- bors. And there," added Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as he passed the bottle, there I remained till half-past seven the next morning, when the housemaid's sweetheart, who was a car- penter, unshelled me. The old dog had nailed me up so securely, that, to this very hour, I firmly believe that no one but a carpenter could ever have got me out." " And what did Mrs. Parsons's father say, when he found you were married " inquired Watkms Tottle, who, although he never saw a joke, was not satisfied until he heard a story to the very end. " Why, the affair of the chimney so tickled his fancy, that he pardoned us off-hand, and allowed us something to live on till he went the way of all flesh. I spent the next night in his second-floor front, much more comfortable than I had spent the preceding one ; for, as you will probably guess " " Please, sir, missis has made tea," said a middle-aged female servant, bobbing into the room. "That's the very housemaid that figures in my story," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons. " She went into Fanny's service when we were first married, and has been with us ever since ] but I don't think she has felt one atom of respect tor me since the morning she saw me released, when she went into violent hysterics, to which she has been subject ever since. Now, shall we join the ladies ? " " If you please," said Mr. Watkins Tottle. By all means," added the obsequious Mr. Timson ; and the trio made for the drawing-room accordingly. Tea being concluded, and the toast and cups having been duly handed, and occasionally upset, by Mr. Watkins Tottle, a MR. W ATKINS TOT TLB. 769 rubber was proposed. They cut for partners — Mr, and Mrs. Parsons ; and Mr. Watkins Tottle and Miss Lillerton. Mr. Timson having conscientious scruples on the subject of card- playing, drank brandy-and-water, and kept up a running spar with Mr. Watkins Tottle. The evening went off well ; Mr. Watkins Tottle was in high spirits, having some reason to be gratified with his reception by Miss Lillerton ; and before he left, a small party was made up to visit the Beulah Spa on the following Saturday. " It's all right, I think,'' said Mr. Gabriel Parsons to Mr. Watkins Tottle as he opened the garden gate for him. I hope so," he replied, squeezing his friend's hand. " You'll be down by the first coach on Saturday," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons. " Certainly," replied Mr. Watkins Tottle. " Undoubtedly." But fortune had decreed that Mr. Watkins Tottle should not be down by the first coach on Saturday. His adventures on that day, however, and the success of his wooing, are sub- jects for another chapter. CHAPTER THE SECOND. " The first coach has not come in yet, has it, Tom > " in- quired Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as he very complacently paced up and down the fourteen feet of gravel which bordered the "lawn," on the Saturday morning which had been fixed upon for the Beulah Spa jaunt. No, sir; I haven't seen it," replied a gardener in a blue apron, who let himself out to do the ornamental for half-a- crown a day and his "keep." " Time Tottle was down," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, ru- minating — ^' Oh, here he is, no doubt," added Gabriel, as a cab drove rapidly up the hill ; and he buttoned his dressing- gown, and opened the gate to receive the expected visitor. The cab stopped, and out jumped a man in a coarse Petersham great-coat, whity-brown neckerchief, faded black suit, gam- boge-colored top-boots, and one of those large-crowned hats, formerly seldom met with, but now very generally patronized by gentlemen and costermongers. " Mr. Persons " said the man, looking at the superscript tion of a note he held in his hand, and addressing GabrieJ with an inquiring air. " J/y name is Parsons," responded the sugar-baker. 770 SKETCHES BY BOZ. " Tve brought this here note," replied the individual in the painted tops, in a hoarse whisper: "Tve brought this here note from a gen'lm'n as come to our house this mornin'.'* I expected the gentleman at my house/^ said Parsons, as he broke the seal, which bore the impression of her Ma- jesty's profile as it is seen on a sixpence. " I've no doubt the gen'lm'n would ha' been here,'' re- plied the stranger, " if he hadn't happened to call at our house first ; but we never trusts no gen'lm'n furder nor we can see him — no mistake about that there" — added the un- known, with a facetious grin ; beg your pardon, sir, no of- fence meant, only — once in, and I wish you may — catch the idea, sir ? " Mr. Gabriel Parsons was not remarkable for catching any- thing suddenly, but a cold. He therefore only bestowed a glance of profound astonishment on his mysterious companion and proceeded to unfold the note of which he had been the bearer. Once opened and the idea was caught with very lit- tle difficulty. Mr. Watkins Tottle had been suddenly arrested for 33/. los. 4^/., and dated his communication from a lock-up house in the vicinity of Chancery-lane. " Unfortunate affair this ! " said Parsons, refolding the note "Oh ! nothin' ven you're used to it," coolly observed. thv** man in the Petersham. " Tom ! " exclaimed Parsons, after a few minutes' consid- eration, just put the horse in, will you ? — Tell the gentle man that I shall be there almost as soon as you are," he con- tinued, addressing the sheriff-officer's Mercury, " Werry well," replied that important functionary ; adding in a confidential manner, " I'd adwise the gen'lm'n's friends to settle. You see it's a mere trifle ; and unless the gen'lm'n means to go up afore the court, it's hardly worth while waiting for detainers you know. Our governor's wide awake, he is. I'll never say nothin' agin him, nor no man ; but he knows what 's o'clock, he does, uncommon." Having delivered this eloquent, and, to Parsons, particularly intelligible harangue, the meaning of which was eked out by divers nods and wdnks, the gentleman in the boots reseated himself in the cab, which went rapidly off, and was soon out of sight. Mr. Gabriel Parsons continued to pace up and down the pathway for some minutes, apparently absorbed in deep meditation. The result of his cogitations seemed to be perfectly satisfactory to him- MR. WATKINS TOTTLE. 771 self, for he ran briskly into the house \ said that business had suddenly summoned him to town ; that he had desired the messenger to inform Mr. Watkins Tottleof the fact ; and that they would return together to dinner. He then hastily equipped himself for a drive, and mounting his gig, was soon on his way to the establishment of Mr. Solomon Jacobs, situate (as Mr. Watkins Tottle had informed him) in Cursitor- street, Chancery-lane. When a man is in a violent hurry to get on, and has a specific object in view, the attainment of which depends on the completion of his journey, the difficulties which interpose themselves in his way appear not only to be innumerable, but to have been called into existence especially for the occasion. The remark is by no means a new one, and Mr. Gabriel Parsons had practical and painful experience of its justice in the course of his drive. There are three classes of animated objects which prevent your driving with any degree of com- fort or celerity through streets which are but little frequented — they are pigs, children, and old women. On the occasion we are describing, the pigs were luxuriating on cabbage-stalks, and the shuttlecocks fluttered from the little deal battledores, and the children played in the road ; and women, with a basket in one hand, and the street-door key in the other, would cross just before the horse's head, until Mr. Gabriel Parsons was perfectly savage with vexation, and quite hoarse with hoi-ing and imprecating. Then, when he got into Fleet-street there was a stoppage," in which people in vehicles have the satisfaction of •remaining stationary for half an hour, and envying the slowest pedestrians ; and where policemen rush about, and seize hold of horses' bridles, and back them into shop-windows, by way of clearing the road and preventing confusion. At length Mr. Gabriel Parsons turned into Chan- cery-lane, and having inquired for, and been directed to Cursitor-street (for it was a locality of which he was quite ignorant), he soon found himself opposite the house of Mr. Solomon Jacobs. Confiding his horse and gig to the care of one of the fourteen boys who had followed him from the other side of Blackfriars-bridge on the chance of his requiring their services, Mr. Gabriel Parsons crossed the road and knocked at an inner door, the upper part of which was of glass, grated like the windows of this inviting mansion with iron bars — painted white to look comfortable. The knock was answered by a sallow-faced red-haired /72 SKETCHES BY BOZ. sulky boy, who, after surveying Mr. Gabriel Parsons through the glass, applied a large key to an immense wooden excres- cence, which was in reality a lock, but which, taken in con- junction with the iron nails with which the panels were stud* ded, gave the door the appearance of being subject to warts. " I want to see Mr. Watkins Tottle," said Parsons. It's the gentleman that come in this morning, Jem," screamed a voice from the top of the kitchen-stairs, which belonged to a dirty woman who had just brought her chin to a level with the passage-floor. "The gentleman's in the coffee-room." " Up stairs, sir," said the boy, just opening the door wide enough to let Parsons in without squeezing him, and double- locking it the moment he had made his way through the aperture — " First floor — door on the left." Mr. Gabriel Parsons thus instructed, ascended the un- carpeted and ill-lighted staircase, and after giving several subdued taps at the before-mentioned " door on the left," which were rendered inaudible by the hum of voices within the room, and the hissing noise attendant on some frying operations which were carrying on below stairs, turned the handle, and entered the apartment. Being informed that the unfortunate object of his visit had just gone up stairs to write a letter, he had leisure to sit down and observe the scene before him. The room — which was a small, confined den — was parti- tioned off into boxes, like the common-room of some inferior eating-house. The dirty floor had evidently been as long a stranger to the scrubbing-brush as to carpet or floor-cloth : and the ceiling was completely blackened by the flare of the oil-lamp by which the room was lighted at night. The gray ashes on the edges of the tables, and the cigar ends which were plentifully scattered about the dusty grate, fully account- ed for the intolerable smell of tobacco which pervaded the place ; and the empty glasses and half-saturated slices of lemon on the tables, together with the porter pots beneath them, bore testimony to the frequent libations in which the individuals who honored Mr. Solomon Jacobs by a temporary residence in his house indulged. Over the mantel-shelf was a paltry looking-glass, extending about half the width of the chimney-piece ; but by way of counterpoise, the ashes were confined by a rusty fender about twice as long as the hearth. From this cheerful room itself, the attention of Mr. GabrieJ MR. IV AT KINS TOTTLE. 773 Parsons was naturally directed to its inmates. In one of the boxes two men were playing at cribbage with a very dirty pack of cards, some with blue, some with green, and some with red backs — selections from decayed packs. The cribbage board had been long ago formed on the table by some inge- nious visitor with the assistance of a pocket-knife and a two- pronged fork, with which the necessary number of holes had been made in the table at proper distances for the reception of the wooden pegs. In another box a stout, hearty-looking man, of about forty, was eating some dinner which his wife — ■ an equally comfortable-looking personage — had brought him in a basket : and in a third, a genteel-looking young man was talking earnestly, and in a low tone, to a young female, whose face was concealed by a thick veil, but whom Mr. Gabriel Parsons immediately set down in his own mind as the debtor's wife. A young fellow of vulgar manners, dressed in the very extreme of the prevailing fashion, was pacing up and down the room, with a lighted cigar in his mouth and his hands in his pockets, ever and anon puffing forth volumes of smoke, and occasionally applying, with much apparent relish, to a pint pot, the contents of which were ''chilling" on the "hob. " Fourpence more, by gum ! " exclaimed one of the crib- bage-players, lighting a pipe, and addressing his adversary at the close of the game ; " one 'ud think you'd got luck in a pepper-cruet, and shook it out when you wanted it." '' Well, that a'n't a bad un,'^ replied the other, who was a horse-dealer from Islington. ''No ; I'm blessed if it is," mterposed the jolly-looking fellow, who, having finished his dinner, was drinking out of the same glass as his wife, in truly conjugal harmony, some hot gin-and-water. The faithful partner of his cares had brought a plentiful supply of the anti-temperance fluid in a large flat stone bottle, which looked like a half-gallon jar that had been successfully tapped for the dropsy. " You're a rum chap, you are, Mr. Walker — will you dip your beak into this, sir ? " '• Thank'ee, sir," replied Mr. Walker, leaving his box, and advancing to the other to accept the proffered glass. " Here's your health, sir, and your good 'ooman's here. Gentlemen all — yours, and better luck still. Well, Mr. Willis," continued the facetious prisoner, addressing the young man with the cigar, you seem rather down to-day — floored, as one may say. What's the matter, sir ? Never say die, you know." 774 SKETCHES BY BOZ, ''0\i\ Vm all right," replied the smoker. "I shall be bailed out to-morrow." " Shall you, though ? " inquired the other. " Damme, I wish I could say the same. I am as regularly over head and ears as the Royal George, and stand about as much chance of being bailed out. Ha ! ha ! ha 1 " *'Why," said the young man, stopping short, and speak- ing in a very loud key, *Mook at me. What d'ye think I've stopped here two days for " 'Cause you couldn't get out, I suppose," interrupted Mr. Walker, winking to the company. " Not that you're exactly obliged to stop here, only you can't help it. No compulsion, you know, only you must — eh " " A'n't he a rum un t " inquired the delighted individual, who had offered the gin-and-water, of his wife. " Oh, he just is ! " replied the lady, who was quite over- come by these flashes of imagination. Why, my case," frowned the victim, throwing the end of his cigar into the fire, and illustrating his argument by knock- ing the bottom of the pot on the table, at intervals, — " my case is a very singular one. My father's a man of large property, and I am his son." " That's a very strange circumstance ! " interrupted the jocose Mr. Walker, e7t passant. — I am his son, and have received a liberal education. I don't owe no man nothing — not the value of a farthing, but I was induced, you see, to put my name to some bills for a friend — bills to a large amount, I may say a very large amount, for which I didn't receive no consideration. What's the consequence } " " Why, I suppose the bills went out, and you came in. The acceptances weren't taken up, and you were, eh ? " in- quired Walker. " To be sure," replied the liberally educated young gen- tleman. " To be sure ; and so here I am, locked up for a matter of twelve hundred pound." "Why don't you ask your old governor to stump up 1 " in- quired Walker, with a somewhat skeptical air. " Oh ! bless you, he'd never do it," replied the other, in a tone of expostulation — " Never ! " "Well, it is very odd to — be — sure," interposed the ownet of the flat bottle, mixing another glass, "but I've been in dif- ficulties, as one may say, now for thirty year. I went to MR. W ATKINS TOTTLE. 775 pieces when I was in a milk-walk, thirty year ago ; afterwards, when I was a fruiterer, and kept a spring wan ; and arter that again in the coal and 'tatur line — but all that time I never see a youngish chap come into a place of this kind, who wasn't going out again directly, and who hadn't been arrested on bills which he'd given a friend and for which he'd received nothing whatsomever — not a fraction." " Oh ! it's always the cry," said Walker. " I can't see the use on it ; that's what makes me so wild. Why, I should have a much better opinion of an individual, if he'd say at once in an honorable and gentlemanly manner as he'd done everybody he possible could." " Ay, to be sure," interposed the horse-dealer, with whose notions of bargain and sale the axiom perfectly coincided, " so should I." The young gentleman, who had given rise to these observa- tions, was on the point of offering a rather angry reply to these sneers, but the rising of the young man before noticed, and of the female who had been sitting by him, to leave the room, interrupted the conversation. She had been weeping bitterly, and the noxious atmosphere of the room acting upon her excited feelings and delicate frame, rendered the support of her companion necessary as they quitted it together. There was an air of superiority about them both, and something in their appearance so unusual in such a place, that a respectful silence was observed until the whirr — r — > bang of the spring door announced that they were out of hearing. It was broken by the wife of the ex-fruiterer. " Poor creetur ! " said she, quenching a sigh in a rivulet of gin-and-water. " She's very young." She's a nice-looking 'ooman too," added the horse- dealer. " What's he in for, Ikey t " inquired Walker, of an indi- vidual who was spreading a cloth with numerous blotches of mustard upon it, on one of the tables, and whom Mr. Gabriel Parsons had no difficulty in recognizing as the man who had called upon him in the morning. " Vy," responded the factotum, it's one of the rummiest rigs you ever heard on. He come in here last Vensday, which by the bye he's going over the water to-night — howso- ever that's neither here nor there. You see I've been a going back'ards and for'ards about his business, and ha' managed to pick up some of his story from the servants and them ; and 776 SKETCHES BY BOZ. SO far as I can make it out, it seems to be summat to this here effect " Cut it short, old fellow," interrupted Walker, who knew from former experience that he of the top-boots was neither very concise nor intelligible in his narratives. Let me alone," replied Ikey, ^*and I'll ha' vound up, and made my lucky in five seconds. This here young gen'^ Im'n's father — so I'm told, mind ye — and the father o' the young voman, have always been on very bad, out-and-out, rig'lar knock-me-down sort o' terms ; but somehow or another, when he was a wisitin' at some gentlefolk's house, as he knowed at college, he came into contract with the young lady. He seed her several times, and then he up and said he'd keep company with her, if so be as she vos agreeable. Veil, she vos as sweet upon him as he vos upon her, and so I s'pose they made it all right ; for they got married 'bout six months arterwards, unbeknown, mind ye, to the two fathers— leastways so I'm told. When they heard on it — my eyes, there was such a combustion ! Starvation vos the very least that vos to be done to 'em. The young gen'lm'n's father cut him off vith a bob, 'cos he'd cut himself off vith a wife ; and the young lady's father he behaved even worser and more un- nat'ral, for he not only blow'd her up dreadful, and swore he'd never see her again, but he employed a chap as I knows — and as you knows, Mr. Valker, a precious sight too well — to go about and buy up the bills and them things on which the young husband, thinking his governor 'ud come round . agin, had raised the vind just to blow himself on vith for a time ; besides vich, he made all the interest he could to set other people agin him. Consequence vos, that he paid as long as he could ; but things he never expected to have to meet till he'd had time to turn himself round come fast upon him, and he vos nablDcd. He vos brought here, as I said afore, last Vensday, and I think there's about — ah, half-a- dozen detainers agin him down stairs now. I have been," added Ikey, in the purfession these fifteen year, and I never met vith such windictiveness afore ! " " Poor creeturs ! " exclaimed the coal-dealer's wife once more : again resorting to the same excellent prescription for nipping a sigh in the bud : Ah ! when they've seen as much trouble as I and my old man here have, they'll be as comfort- able under it as we are." The young lady's a pretty creature," said Walker, " only MR. W ATKINS TOTTLE. 777 5he's a little too delicate for my taste — there ain't enough of her. As to the young cove, he may be very respectable and what not, but he's too down in the mouth for me — he ain't game." " Game ! " exclaimed Ikey, who had been altering the position of a green-handled knife and fork at least a dozen times, in order that he might remain in the room under the pretext of having something to do. He's game enough ven there's anything to be fierce about ; but who could be game as you call it, Mr. Walker, with a pale young creetur like that, hanging about him ? — It's enough to drive any man's heart into his boots to see 'em together — and no mistake at all about it. I never shall forget her first comin' here \ he wrote to her on the Thursday to come — I know he did, 'cos I took the letter. Uncommon fidgety he was all day to be sure, and in the even- ing he goes down into the office, and he says to Jacobs, says he, ' Sir, can I have the loan of a private room for a few min- utes this evening, without incurring any additional expense — just to see my wife in ? ' says he. Jacobs looked as much as to say — * Strike me bountiful if you ain't one of the modest sort ! ' but as the gen'lm'n who had been in the back parlor had just gone out, and had paid for it for that day, he says — werry grave — ' Sir,' says he, 'it's agin our rules to let private rooms to our lodgers on gratis terms, but,' says he, 'for a gentleman, I don't mind breaking through them for once.' So then he turns round to me, and says, ' Ikey, put two mould candles in the back parlor, and charge 'em to this gen'lm'n's account, vich I did. Veil, by and by a hackney- coach comes up to the door, and there, sure enough, was the young lady, wrapped up in a hopera-cloak, as it might be, and all alone. I opened the gate that night, so I went up when the coach come, and he vos a waitin' at the parlor-door — and wasn't he a trembling, neither ? The poor creetur see him, and could hardly walk to meet him. ' Oh, Harry ! ' she says, * that it should have come to this ; and all for my sake,' says she, putting her hand upon his shoulder. So he puts his arm round her pretty little waist, and leading her gently a little way into the room, so that he might be able to shut the door, he says, so kind and soft-like — 'Why, Kate,' say he '^ " Here's the gentleman you want," said Ikey, abruptly breaking off in his story, and introducing Mr. Gabriel Parsons to the crest-fallen Watkins Tottle, who at that moment entered the room. Watkins advanced with a wooden expression of 778 SKE TCHES B Y BOZ. passive endurance, and accepted the hand which Mr. Gabriel Parsons held out. " I want to speak to you," said Gabriel, with a look strongly expressive of his dislike of the company. "This way," replied the imprisoned one, leading the way to the front drawing-room, where rich debtors did the luxuri- ous at the rate of a couple of guineas a day. " Well, here I am," said Mr. Watkins, as he sat down on the sofa ; and placing the palms of his hands on his knees, anxiously glanced at his friend's countenance. *^ Yes ; and here you're likely to be," said Gabriel, coolly, as he rattled the money in his unmentionable pockets, and looked out of the window. " What's the amount with the costs } " inquired Parsons, after an awkward pause. "37/. 3^. 10./." " Have you any money ? " " Nine and sixpence halfpenny." Mr. Gabriel Parsons walked up and down the room for a few seconds, before he could make up his mind to disclose the plan he had formed ; he was accustomed to drive hard bar- gains, but was always most anxious to conceal his avarice. At length he stopped short, and said, — " Tottle, you owe me fifty pounds." " I do." " And from all I see, I infer that you are likely to owe it to me." " I fear I am." Though you have every disposition to pay me if you could > " Certainly." ^- Then," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, " listen : here's my proposition. You know my way of old. Accept it — yes or no — I will or 1 wont. I'll pay the debt and costs, and I'll lend you 10/. more (which, added to your annuity, will enable you to carry on the war well) if you'll give me your note of hand to pay me one hundred and fifty pounds within six months after you are married to Miss Lillerton." " My dear " Stop a minute — on one condition ; and that is, that you propose to Miss Lillerton at once." *^ At once ! My dear Parsons, consider." •'It's for you to consider, not me. She knows you well MR. W ATKINS TOTTLE. from reputation, though she did not know you personally until lately. Notwithstanding all her maiden modesty, I think she'd be deviHsh glad to get married out of hand with as little delay as possible. My wife has sounded her on the subject, and she has confessed.'' What — what ? " — eagerly interrupted the enamored Wat- kins. Why," replied Parsons, " to say exactly what she has confessed, would be rather difficult, because they only spoke in hints, and so forth ; but my wife, who is no bad judge in these cases, declared to me that what she had confessed was as good as to say that she was not insensible of your merits — in fact, that no other man should have her." Mr. Watkins Tottle rose hastily from his seat, and rang the bell. What's that for ? " inquired Parsons. I want to send the man for the bill stamp," replied Mr. Watkins Tottle. "Then you've made up your mind ? " I have," — and they shook hands most cordially. The note of hand was given — the debt and costs were paid — I key was satisfied for his trouble, and the two friends soon found themselves on that side of Mr. Solomon Jacobs's establish- ment, on which most of his visitors were very happy when they found themselves once again — to wit, the ounds per annum^ with an uncontrolled power of disposing oi: it by her last will and testament," was somehow or othei' ihe foremost. He had gone through the interview so well, and it had terminated so admirably, that he almost began to wish he had expressly stipulated for the settlement of the ^nnxul five hundred on himself. " May I come in ? " said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, peeping in at the door. " You may," replied Watkins. " Well, have you done it?" anxiously inquired Gabriel. "Have I done it! "said Watkins Tottle, "Hush— I'm going to the clergyman." " No I " said Parsons. " How well you have managed it ! " "Where does Timson live? " inquired Watkins. " At his uncle's," replied Gabriel, "just round the lane. He's waiting for a living, and has been assisting his uncle here for the last two or three months. But how well you 788 SKETCHES BY BOZ, have done it — I didn't think you coi;ld have carried it off so ! " Mr. Watkins Tottle was proceeding to demonstrate that the Richardsonian principle was the best on which love could possibly be made, when he was interrupted by the entrance of Martha, with a little pink note folded like a fancy cocked- hat. Miss Lillerton's compliments," said Martha, as she de- livered it into Tottle's hands, and vanished. " Do you observe the delicacy ? " said Tottle, appealing to Mr. Gabriel Parsons. " Co?npliments not love^ by the servant, eh.?" Mr. Gabriel Parsons didn't exactly know what reply to make, so he poked the forefinger of his right hand between the third and fourth ribs of Mr. Watkins Tottle. " Come," said Watkins, when the explosion of mirth, con- sequent on this practical jest, had subsided, we'll be off at once — let's lose no time." " Capital ! " echoed Gabriel Parsons ; and in five minutes they were at the garden-gate of the villa tenanted by the uncle of Mr. Timson. " Is Mr. Charles Timson at home .? " inquired Mr. Wat- kins Tottle of Mr. Charles Timson's uncle's man. " Mr. Charles is at home," replied the man, stammering ; " but he desired me to say he couldn't be interrupted, sir, by any of the parishioners." "7 am not a parishioner," replied Watkins. Is Mr. Charles writing a sermon, Tom ? " inquired Par- sons, thrusting himself torward. " No, Mr. Parsons, sir ; he's not exactly writing a sermon, but he is practising the violoncello in his own bedroom, and gave strict orders not to be disturbed." " Say I'm here," replied Gabriel, leading the way across the garden ; " Mr. Parsons and Mr. Tottle, on private and particular business." They v;ere shown into the parlor, and the servant departed to deliver his message. The distant groaning of the violon- cello ceased ; footsteps were heard on the stairs ; and Mr. Timson presented himself, and shook hands with Parsons with the utmost cordiality. " How do you do, sir .? " said Watkins Tottle, with great solemnity. *'PIow do you do, sir.?" replied Timson, with as much MR. W ATKINS TOTTLE. 789 coldness as if it were a matter of perfect indifference to him how he did, as it very likely was. " I beg to deliver this note to you," said Watkins Tottle, producing the cocked-hat. From Miss Lillerton ! " said Timson, suddenly changing color. " Pray sit down." Mr. Watknis Tottle sat down ; and while Timson perused the note, fixed his eyes on an oyster-sauce-colored portrait of the Archbishop of Canterbury, which hung over the fireplace. Mr. Timson rose from his seat when he had concluded the note, and looked dubiously at Parsons — " May I ask," he inquired, appealing to Watkins Tottle, whether our friend here is acquainted with the object of your visit ? " " Our friend is in my confidence," replied Watkins, with considerable importance. " Then, sir," said Timson, seizing both Tottle's hands, " allow me in his presence to thank you most unfeignedly and cordially, for the noble part you have acted in this affair." " He thinks I recommended him," thought Tottle. "Con- found these fellows ! they never think of anything but theii fees." " I deeply regret having misunderstood your intentions, my dear sir," continued Timson. Disinterested and manly, indeed ! There are very few men who would have acted as you have done." Mr. Watkins Tottle could not help thinking that this last remark was anything but complimentary. He therefore in- quired, rather hastily, " When is it to be ? " "On Thursday," replied Timson, — "On Thursday morn- ing at half-past eight." " Uncommonly early," observed Watkins Tottle, with an air of triumphant self-denial. • " I shall hardly be able to get down here by that hour." (This was intended for a joke.) " Never mind, my dear fellow," replied Timson, all suavity, shaking hands with Tottle again most heartily, " so long as we see you to breakfast, you know — " " Eh ! " said Parsons, with one of the most extraordinary expressions of countenance that ever appeared in a human face. " What ! " ejaculated Watkins Tottle, at the same mo- ment. " I say that so long as we see you to breakfast," replied SKETCHES BY BOZ. Timson, " we will excuse your being absent from the cere* mony, though of course your presence at it would give us the utmost pleasure. Mr. Watkins Tottle staggered against the wall, and fixed his eyes on Timson with appalling preseverance. Timson," said Parsons, hurriedly brushing his hat with his left arm, " when you say ^ us,' whom do you mean ? " Mr. Timson looked foolish in his turn, when he replied, " Why — Mrs, Timson that will be this day week ; Miss Lillerton that is — " " Now don't stare at that idiot in the corner," angrily ex- claimed Parsons, as the extraordinary convulsions of Watkins Tottle's countenance excited the wondering gaze of Timson, — " but have the goodness to tell me in three words the con- tents of that note." This note," replied Timson, " is from Miss Lillerton, to whom I have been for the last five weeks regularly en- gaged. Her singular scruples and strange feeling on some points have hitherto prevented my bringing the engagement to that termination which I so anxiously desire. She informs me here, that she sounded Mrs. Parsons with the view of making her her confidante and go-between, that Mrs. Parsons informed this elderly gentleman, Mr. Tottle, of the circum- stance, and that he, in the most kind and delicate terms, offered to assist us in any way, and even undertook to convey this note, which contains the promise I have long sought in vain — an act of kindness for which I can never be sufficiently grateful." Good-night, Timson," said Parsons, hurrying off, and carrying the bewildered Tottle with him. Won't you stay — and have something? said Timson. " No, thank ye," replied Parsons ; " I've had quite enough ;" and away he went, followed by Watkins Tottle in a state of stupefaction. Mr. Gabriel Parsons whistled until they had walked some quarter of a mile past his own gate, when he suddenly stopped, and said — You are a clever fellow, Tottle, ain't you ? " I don't know," said the unfortunate Watkins. I suppose you'll say this is Fanny's fault, won't you ? " inquired Gabriel. " I don't know anything about it," replied the bewildered Tottle. THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING. Well/' said Parsons, turning on his heel to go home, the next time you make an offer, you had better speak plainly, and don't throw a chance away. And the next time you're locked up in a spunging-house, just wait there till I come and take you out, there's a good fellow." How, or at what hour, Mr. Watkins Tottle returned to Cecil-street is unknown. His boots were seen outside his bedroom-door next morning; but we have the authority of his landlady for stating that he neither emerged therefrom nor accepted sustenance for four-and-twenty hours. At the expiration of that period, and when a council of war was being held in the kitchen on the propriety of summoning the parochial beadle to break his door open, he rang his bell, and demanded a cup of milk-and-water. The next morning he went through the formalities of eating and drinking as usual, but a week afterwards he was seized with a relapse, while pe- rusing the list of marriages in a morning paper, from which he never perfectly recovered. A few weeks after the last named occurrence, the body of a gentleman unknown, was found in the Regent's canal. In the trousers-pockets were four shillings and threepence half- penny ; a matrimonial advertisement from a lady, which appeared to have been cut out of a Sunday paper ; a tooth- pick, and a card-case, which it is confidently believed would have led to the identification of the unfortunate gentleman, but for the circumstance of there being none but blank cards in it. Mr. Watkins Tottle absented himself from his lodgings shortly before. A bill, which has not been taken up, was presented next morning ; and a bill, which has not been taken down, was soon afterwards affixed in his parlor-window. CHAPTER XL THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING. Mr. Nicodemus Dumps, or, as his acquaintance called him, long Dumps," was a bachelor, six feet high, and fifty years old ; cross, cadaverous, odd, and ill-natured. He was never happy but when he was miserable ; and always miserable when he had the best reason to be happy. The only real 34 792 SKETCHES BY BOZ, comfort of his existence was to make everybody about him wretched — then he might be truly said to enjoy life. He was afflicted with a situation in the Bank worth five hundred a-year, and he rented a " first-floor furnished," at Pentonville, which he originally took because it commanded a dismal prospect of an adjacent churchyard. He was familiar with the face of every tombstone, and the burial service seemed to excite his strongest sympathy. His friends said he was surly — he insisted he was nervous ; they thought him a lucky dog, but he protested that he was " the most unfortunate man in the world.'' Cold as he was, and wretched as he declared himself to be, he was not wholly susceptible of attachments. He revered the memory of Hoyle, as he was himself an admirable and imperturbable whist-player, and he chuckled with delight at a fretful and impatient adversary. He adored King Herod for his massacre of the innocents ; and if he hated one thing more than another, it was a child. Hov/ever, he could hardly be said to hate anything in particular, because he disliked everything in general ; but perhaps his greatest antipathies were cabs, old women, doors that would not shut, musical amateurs, and omnibus cads. He subscribed to the " Society for the Suppression of Vice '' for the pleasure of putting a stop to any harmless amusements ; and he con- tributed largely towards the support of two itinerant methodist parsons, in the amiable hope that if circumstances rendered any people happy in this world, they might perchance be rendered miserable by fears for the next. Mr. Dumps had a nephew who had been married about a year, and who was somewhat of a favorite with his uncle, be- cause he was an admirable subject to exercise his misery- creating powers upon. Mr. Charles Kitterbell was a small, sharp, spare man, with a very large head, and a broad, good- * humored countenance. He looked like a faded giant, "dth the head and face partially restored ; and he had a car^^ in his eye which rendered it quite impossible for any one w^th whom he conversed to know where he was looking. His eyes appeared fixed on the wall, and he was staring you OMt of countenance ; in short, there was no catcl mg his eye, and per- haps it is a merciful dispensation of Providence that suck eyes are not catching. In addition to these characteristics, it may be added that Mr. Charles Kitterbell was one of the most credulous and matter-of-fact little personages that ever took to himself a wife, and for himself a house in Great Russell- THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTEIVING. 793 street, Bedford-square. (Uncle Dumps always dropped the "Bedford-square," and inserted in lieu thereof the dreadful words " Tottenham-court-road.") " No, but uncle, 'pon my life you must — you must promise to be godfather," said Mr. Kitterbell, as he sat in conversa- tion with his respected relative one morning. " I cannot, indeed I cannot," returned Dumps. "Well, but why not Jemima will think it very unkind. It's very little trouble." "As to the trouble," rejoined the most unhappy man in existence, " I don't mind that ; but my nerves are in that state — I cannot go through the ceremony. You know I don't like going out. — For God's sake, Charles, don't fidget with that stool so ; you'll drive me mad." Mr. Kitterbell, quite regardless of his uncle's nerves, had occupied himself for some ten minutes in describing a circle on the floor with one leg of the office-stool on which he was seated, keeping the other three up in the air, and holding fast on by the desk. " I beg your pardon, uncle," said Kitterbell, quite abashed, suddenly releasing his hold of the desk, and bringing the three wandering legs back to the floor, with a force sufficient to drive them through it. " But come, don't refuse. If it's a boy, you know, we must have two godfathers." If it's a boy!" said Dumps; "why can't you say at once whether it is a boy or not ? " " I should be very happy to tell you, but it's impossible I can undertake to say whether it's a girl or a boy, if the child isn't born yet." " Not born yet ! " echoed Dumps, with a gleam of hope lighting up his lugubrious visage. " Oh, well, it may be a girl, and then you won't want me ; or if it is a boy, it may dA.^ before it is christened." " I hope not," said the father that expected to be, looking very grave. " 1 hope not," acquiesced Dumps, evidently pleased with the subject. He was beginning to get happy, "/hope not, but distressing cases frequently occur during the first two or three days of a child's life ; fits, I am told, are exceedingly common, and alarming convulsions are almost matters of course." "Lord, uncle!" ejaculated little Kitterbell, gasping foi breath. SKETCHES BY BOZ. Yes ; my landlady was confined — let me see — last Tues- day : an uncommonly fine boy. On the Thursday night the nurse was sitting with him upon her knee before the fire, and he was as well as possible. Suddenly he became black in the face, and alarmingly spasmodic. The medical man was instantly sent for, and every remedy was tried, but — " How frightful ! " interrupted the horror-stricken Kitter bell. " The child died, of course. However, your child ^nay not die ; and if it should be a boy, and should /ive to be christened, why I suppose I must be one of the sponsors." Dumps was evidently good-natured on the faith of his antici pations. ^' Thank you, uncle,^' said his agitated nephew, grasping his hand as warmly as if he had done him some essential ser- vice. " Perhaps I had better not tell Mrs. K. what you have mentioned." " Why, if she's low spirited, perhaps you had better not mention the melancholy case to her," returned Dumps, who of course had invented the whole story ; though perhaps it would be but doing your duty as a husband to prepare her for the worst'' A day or iwo afterwards, as Dumps was perusing a morn- ing paper at the chop-house which he regularly frequented, the following paragraph met his eyes : — Births, — On Saturday, the i8th inst., in Great Russell-street, the lady of Charles Kitterbell, Esq.,of a son. " It is a boy ! " he exclaimed, dashing down the paper, to the astonishment of the waiters. " It is a boy ! " But he speedily regained his composure as his eye rested on a para- graph quoting the number of infant deaths from the bills of mortality. Six weeks passed away, and as no communication had been received from the Kitterbells, Dumps was beginning to flatter himself that the child was dead, when the following note painfully resolved his doubts : — Great Russell-street, Monday Morning, "Dear Uncle, — You will be delighted to hear that my dear Jemima has left her room, and that your future godson THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING. is getting on capitally. He was very thin at first, but he is getting much larger, and nurse says he is filling out every day. He cries a good deal, and is a very singular color, which made Jemima and me rather uncomfortable ; but as nurse says it's natural, and as of course we know nothing about these things yet, we are quite satisfied with what nurse says. We think he will be a sharp child ; and nurse says she's sure he will, because he never goes to sleep. You will readily believe that we are all very happy, only we're a little worn out for want of rest, as he keeps us awake all night ; but this we must expect, nurse says, for the first six or eight months. He has been vaccinated, but in consequence of the operation being rather awkwardly performed, some small par- ticles of glass were introduced into the arm with the matter. Perhaps this may in some degree account for his being rnther fractious ; at least, so nurse says. We propose to have him christened at twelve o'clock on Friday, at Saint George's church, in Hart-street, by the name of Frederick Charles William. Pray don't be* later than a quarter before twelve. Wc shall have a very few friends in the evening, when of course we shall see you. I am sorry to say that the dear boy appears rather restless and uneasy to-day : the cause, I fear is fever. ' Believe me, dear Uncle, " Yours affectionately, Charles Kitterbell. " P.S — I open this note to say that we have just discovered the cause of little Frederick's restlessness. It is not fever, as I apprehend, but a small pin, v/hich nurse accidentally stuck in his leg yesterday evening. We have taken it out, and he appears more composed, though he still sobs a good deal. ' It is almost unnecessary to say that the perusal of the above interesting statement v/as no great relief to the mind of the hypochondriacal Dumps. It was impossible to recede, however, and so he put the best face — that is to say, an un- commonly miserable one — upon the matter ; and purchased a handsome silver mug for the infant Kitterbell, upon which he ordered the initials " F. C. W. K.," with the customary un- trained grape-vine-looking flourishes, and a large full stop, to be engraved forthwith. 796 SKE TCHES BY BOZ. Monday was a fine clay, Tuesday was delightful, Wednes- day was equal to either, and Thursday was finer than ever ; four successive fine days in London ! Hackney-coachmen became revolutionary, and crossing-sweepers began to doubt the existence of a First Cause. The Morning Herald informed its readers that an old woman in Camden Town had been heard to say that the fineness of the season was ^' unprece- dented in the memory of the oldest inhabitant;" and Isling ton clerks, with large famiHes and small salaries, left off theii black gaiters, disdained to carry their once green cotton um- brellas, and walked to town in the conscious pride of white stockings and cleanly brushed Bluchers. Dumps beheld all this with an eye of supreme contempt — his triumph was at hand. He knew that if it had been fine for four wrecks in- stead of four days, it would rain when he went out ; he was lugubriously happy in the conviction that Friday would be a wretched day — and so it was. I knew how it would be," said Dumps, as he turned round opposite the Mansion-house at half-past eleven o'clock on the Friday morning. I knew how it would be. / am concerned, and that's enough ; " — and certainly the appearance of the day was sufBcient to depress the spirits of a much more buoyant-hearted individual than himself. It had rained, without a moment's cessation, since eight o'clock ; everybody that passed up Cheapside, and down Cheapside, looked wet, cold, and dirty. All sorts of forgotten and long-concealed umbrellas had been put in requisition. Cabs whisked about, with the " fare " as carefully boxed up behind two glazed calico curtains as any mysterious picture in any one of Mrs. Radcliffe's castles ; omnibus horses smoked like steam-engines ; nobody thought of " standing-up " under doorways or arches ; they were painfully convinced it was a hopeless case ; and so everybody went hastily along, jumb- ling and jostling, and swearing and perspiring, and slipping about, like amateur skaters behind wooden chairs on the Ser- pentine on a frosty Sunday. Dumps paused ; he could not think of walking, being rather smart for the christening. If he took a cab he was sure to be spilt, and a hackney-coach was too expensive for his economical ideas. An omnibus was waiting at the oppo- site corner — it was a desperate case — he had never heard of an omnibus upsetting or running away, and if the cad die? knock him down, he could ''pull him up" in return. " Now, sir ! " cried the young gentleman who ofHciated as THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING. 797 "cad'' to the Lads of the Village/' which was the name of the machine just noticed. Dumps crossed. " This vay, sir ! " shouted the driver of the " Hark-away,'^ pulling up his vehicle immediately across the door of the op- position — This vay, sir — he's full." Dumps hesitated, where- upon the Lads of the Village " commenced pouring out a torrent of abuse against the Hark-away ; " but the conduc- tor of the " Admiral Napier " settled the contest in a most satisfactory manner, for all parties, by seizing Dumps round the waist, and thrusting him into the middle of his vehicle which had just come up and only wanted the sixteenth inside. "All right," said the Admiral," and ol¥ the thing thun- dered, like a fire-engine at full gallop, with the kidnapped customer inside, standing in the position of a half doubled-up bootjack, and falling about with every jerk of the machine, first on the one side, and then on the other, like a "Jack-in- the-green," on May-day, setting to the lady with a brass ladle. " For Heaven's sake, where am I to sit ? " inquired the miserable man of an old gentleman, into whose stomach he had just fallen for the fourth time. " Anyw^here but on my chesty sir," replied the old gentle- man in a surly tone. "Perhaps the box would suit the gentleman better," sug- gested a very damp lawyer's clerk, in a pink shirt, and a smirk- ing countenance. After a great deal of struggling and falling about. Dumps at last managed to squeeze himself into a seat, which in addi- tion to- the slight disadvantage of being between a window that would not shut, and a door that must be open, placed him in close contact with a passenger, who had been walking about all the morning without an umbrella, and who looked as if he had spent the day in a full water-butt — only wetter. " Don't bang the door so," said Dumps to the conductor, as he shut it after letting out four of the passengers ; " I am very nervous — it destroys me." " Did any gen'l'm'n say anythink ? " replied the cad, thrusting in his head, and trying to look as if he didn't under- stand the request. " I told you not to bang the door so 1 ' repeated Dumps, with an expression of countenance like the knave of clubs, in convulsions. 798 SKETCHES BY BOZ. Oh ! vy, it's rather a singUer circumstance about this here door, sir, that it von't shut without banging," repUed the conductor ; and he opened the door very wide, and shut it again with a terrific bang, in proof of the assertion. " I beg your pardon, sir," said a Uttle prim, wheezing old gentleman, sitting opposite Dumps, I beg your pardon ; but have you ever observed, when you have been in an omnibus on a wet day, that four people out of five always come in witli large cotton umbrellas, without a handle at the top, or the brass spike at the bottom ? " Why, sir," returned Dumps, as he heard the clock strike twelve, " it never struck me before ; but now you mention it, I Hollo! hollo!" shouted the persecuted individual, as the omnibus dashed past Drury-lane, where he had directed to be set down. — " Where is the cad " " I think he's on the box, sir," said the young gentleman before noticed in the pink shirt, which looked like a white one ruled with red ink. I want to be set down ! " said Dumps in a faint voice, overcome by his previous efforts. " I think these cads want to be set dow7i^'^ returned the at torney's clerk, chuckling at his sally. Hollo ! " cried Dumps again. " Hollo ! " echoed the passengers. The omnibus passed St. Giles's church. " Hold hard ! " said the conductor ; " I'm blowed if we ha'n't forgot thegen'lm'n as vas to be set down at Doory-lane. ■ — Now, sir, make haste, if you please," he added, opening the door, and assisting Dumps out with as much coolness as if it was all right." Dump's indignation was for once get- ting the better of his cynical equanimity, Drury-lane ! " he gasped, with the voice of a boy in a cold bath for the first time. " Doory-lane, sir ? — yes, sir, — third turning on the right- hand side, sir." Dumps's passion was paramount : he clutched his um- brella,, and was striding off with the firm determination of not paying the fare. The cad, by a remarkable coincidence, hap- pened to entertain a directly contrary opinion, and Heaven knows how far the altercation would have proceeded, if it had not been most ably and satisfactorily brought to a close by the driver. Hollo ! " said that respectable person, standing up on THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING the box, and leaning with one hand on the roof of the omni- bus. " Hollo, Tom ! tell the gentleman if so be as he feels aggrieved, we will take him up to the Edge-er (Edgware) Road for nothing, and set him down at Doory-lane when we comes back. He can't reject that, anyhow.'^ The argument was irresistible : Dumps paid the disputed sixpence, and in a quarter of an hour was on the staircase of No. 14, Great Russell-street. Everything indicated that preparations were making for the reception of " a few friends in the evening. Two dozen extra tumblers, and four ditto wineglasses — looking anything but transparent, with little bits of straw in them — were on the slab in the passage, just arrived. There was a great smell of nutmeg, port wine, and almonds, on the staircase ; the covers were taken off the stair-carpet, and the figure of Venus on the first landing looked as if she were ashamed of the com- position-candle in her right hind, which contrasted beautifully with the lamp-blacked drapery of the goddess of love. The female servant (who looked very warm and bustling) ushered Dumps into a front drawing-room, very prettily furnished, with a plentiful sprinkling of little baskets, paper table-mats, china watchmen, pink and gold albums, and rainbow-bound little books on the different tables. "Ah, uncle," said Mr. Kitterbell, "how d'ye do.> Allow me — Jemima, my dear — my uncle. I think youVe seen Jemima before, sir t " " Have had the pleasure^^'' returned big Dumps, his tone and look making it doubtful whether in his life he had ever experienced the sensation. "I'm sure," said Mrs. Kitterbell, with a languid smile, and a slight cough. " I'm sure — hem — any friend — of Charles's —hem — much less a relation, is " " I knew you'd say so, my love," said little Kitterbell, who, while he appeared to be gazing on the opposite houses, was looking at his wife with a most affectionate air : " Bless you ! " The last two words were accompanied with a simper, and a squeeze of the hand, which stirred up all Uncle Dumps's bile. "Jane, tell nurse to bring down baby," said Mrs. Kitter- bell, addressing the servant. Mrs. Kitterbell was a tall, thin young lady, with very light hair, and a particularly white face — one of those young women who almost invariably, though one hardly knows why, recall to one's mind the idea of a cold fillet of veal. Out went the servant, and in came the nurse, 8oo SKETCHES BY BOZ. with a remarkably small parcel in her arms, packed up in a blue mantle trimmed with white fur. — This was the baby. " Now, uncle," said Mr. Kitterbell, lifting up that part of the mantle which covered the infant's face, with an air of great triumph, " Who do you think he's like " " He ! he ! Yes, who ? " said Mrs. K., putting her arm through her husband's, and looking up into Dumps's face with an expression of as much interest as she was capable of dis- playing. " Good God, how small he is ! cried the amiable uncle, starting back with well-feigned surprise ; " remarkably small indeed." '^Do you think so?" inquired poor little Kitterbell, rather alarmed. " He's a monster to what he was — ain't he, nurse ? " He's a dear," said the nurse, squeezing the child, and evading the question — not because she scrupled to disguise the fact, but because she couldn't afford to throw away the chance of Dumps's half-crown. Weil, but who is he like } " inquired little Kitterbell. Dumps looked at the little pink heap before him, and only thought at the moment of the best mode of mortifying the youthful parents. ^'^ I really don't know wka he's like," he answered, very well knowing the reply expected of him. " Don't you think he's like me ? " inquired his nephew with a knowing air. " Oh, decidedly not I " returned Dumps, with an emphasis not to be misunderstood. '^Decidedly not like you. — Oh, certainly not." " Like Jemima ? '^ asked Kitterbell, faintly. '•'^Oh, dear no; not in the least I'm no judge, of course, in such eases ; but I really think he's more like one of those little carved representations that one sometimes sees blowing a trumpet on a tombstone ! " The nurse stooped down over the child, and with great difficulty prevented an explosion of mirth. Pa and ma loeked almost as miserable as their amia- ble uncle. '^Welll"said the disappointed little father, "you'll be better able to tell what he's like by and by. You shall see liim this evening with his mantle off." "Thank you," said Dumps, feeling particularly grateful. " Now, my love," said Kitterbell to his wife, " it's time we were off. We're to meet the other godfather and the god- THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING. Sol mother at the church, uncle, — Mr. and Mrs. Wilson from over the way — uncommonly nice people. My love, are you wei! wrapped up ? " Yes, dear." " Are you sure you won't have another shawl ? " inquired the anxious husband. " No, sweet," returned the charming mother, accepting Dumps's proffered arm ; and the little party entered the hackney-coach that was to take them to the church ; Dumps amusing Mrs. Kitterbeil by expatiating largely on the danger of measles, thrush, teeth-cutting, and other interesting diseases to which children are subject. The ceremony (which occupied about five minutes) passed off without anything particular occurring. The clergyman had to dine some distance from town, and had two churchings, three christenings, and a funeral to perform in something less than an hour. The godfathers and godmother, therefore^ promised to renounce the devil and all his works — and all. that sort of thing" — as little Kitterbeil said — in less than no time and with the exception of Dumps nearly letting the child fall into the font when he handed it to the clergyman^ the whole affair went off in the usual business-like and matter- of-course manner, and Dumps re-entered the Bank-gates at two o'clock with a heavy heart, and the painful conviction th^t he was regularly booked for an evening party. Evening came — and so did Dumps's pumps, black silk stockings, and white cravat w^hich he had ordered to be for- w^arded, per boy, from Pentonville. The depressed godfather dressed himself at a friend's counting-house, from whence, with his spirits fifty degrees below proof, he sallied forth — as the weather had cleared up, and the evening was tolerably fine ■ — to walk to Great Russell-street- Slowly he paced up Cheap- side, Newgate-street, down Snow-hill, and up Holborn ditto, looking as grim as the figure-head of a man-of-war, and find- ing out fresh causes of misery at every step. As he was cross- Sng the corner of Hatton-garden, a. man apparently intoxicated rushed against him, and would have knocked him down, had he not been providentially caught by a very genteel young man, who happened to be close to him at the time. The shock so disarranged Dumps's nerves, as well as his dress, that lie could hardly stand. The gentleman took his arm, and in the kindest manner walked with hhn as far as Furnival's Inn, Dumps, for about the first time in his life, felt grateful and SI 8o2 SKE TCHES B V BOZ. polite ; and he and the gentlemanly-looking young man partdi with mutual expressions of good will. There are at least some well-disposed men in the world," ruminated the misanthropical Dumps, as he proceeded to- wards His destination. Rat — tat — ta-ra-ra-ra-ra-rat — knocked a hackney-coachman at Kitterbell's door, in imitation of a gentleman's servant, just as Dumps reached it ; and out came an old lady in a large toque, and an old gentleman in a blue coat, and three female copies of the old lady in pink dresses, and shoes to match. It's a large party," sighed the unhappy godfather, wiping the perspiration from his forehead, and leaning against the area-railings. It was some time before the miserable man could muster up courage to knock at the door, and when he did, the smart appearance of a neighboring greengrocer (who had been hired to wait for seven and sixpence, and whose calves alone were worth double the money), the lamp in the passage, and the Venus on the landing, added to the hum of many voices, and the sound of a harp and two violins, pain« fully convinced him that his surmises were but too well founded. ^'How are you.^" said little Kitterbell, in a greater bustle than ever, bolting out of the little back parlor with a corkscrew in his hand, and various particles of sawdust, looking like so many inverted commas, on his inexpressibles. Good God ! " said Dumps, turning into the aforesaid parlor to put his shoes on, which he had brought in his coat- pocket, and still more appalled by the sight of seven fresh- drawn corks, and a corresponding number of decanters. " How many people are there up stairs ? " Oh, not above thirty-five. We've had the carpet taken up in the back drawing-room, and the piano, and the card-tables are in the front. Jemima thought we'd better have a regular sit-down supper in the front parlor, because of the speechifying, and all that. But, Lord ! uncle, what's the matter ? " contin- ued the excited little man, as Dumps stood with one shoe on, rummaging his pockets with the most frightful distortion of visage. What have you lost ? Your pocket-book ? " No," returned Dumps, diving first into one pocket and then into the other, and speaking in a voice like Desdemona with the pillow over her mouth. " Your card-case ? snuff-box the key of your lodgings ? " continued Kitterbell, pouring question on question with the rapidity of lightning. THE BLOOMSBURY CHRlSTEiXlNG. 803 No! no!" ejaculated Dumps, still diving eagerly^into his empty pocket. " Not — not — the 7nug you spoke of this morning ? " "Yes, the mug T'' replied Dumps, sinking into a chair. " How could you have done it ? " inquired Kitterbell. " Are you sure you brought it out ? " " Yes ! yes ! 1 see it all ! " said Dumps, starting up as the idea flashed across his mind ; miserable dog that I am — I w^as born to suffer. I see it all : it was the gentlemanly-look- ing young man ! " " Mr. Dumps ! " shouted the greengrocer in a stentorian voice, as he ushered the somewhat recovered godfather into the drawing-room half an hour after the above declaration. " Mr. Dumps ! " — everybody looked at the door, and in<:ame Dumps, feeling about as much out of place as a salmon might be supposed to be on a gravel-walk Happy to see you again," said Mrs. Kitterbell, quite un- conscious of the unfortunate man^s confusion and misery ; " you must allow me to introduce you to a few of our friends : — my mama, Mr. Dumps — my papa and sisters." Dumps seized the hand of the mother as warmly as if she was his own pa- rent, bowed to the young ladies, and against a gentleman be- hind him, and took no notice whatever of the father, who had been bowing incessantly for three minutes and a quarter. Uncle," said little Kitterbell, after Dumps had been in- troduced to a select dozen or two, " you must let me lead you to the other end of the room, to introduce you to my friend Danton. Such a splendid fellow ! — I'm sure you'll like him — this way," — Dumps followed as tractably as a tame bear. Mr. Danton was a young man of about five-and-twenty, with a considerable stock of impudence, and a very small share of ideas : he was a great favorite, especially with young ladies of from sixteen to twenty-six years of age, both inclusive. He could imitate the French-horn to admiration, sang comic songs most inimitably, and had the most insinuating way of saying impertinent nothings to his doting female admirers. He had acquired, somehow or other, the reputation of being a great wit, and, accordingly, whenever he opened his mouth, every- body who knew him laughed very heartily. The introduction took place in due form. Mr. Danton bowed, and twirled a lady's handkerchief, wljjich he held in his hand, in a most comic way. Everybody smiled. 8©4 SKETCHES BY BOZ. Very warm," said Dumps, feeling it necessary to say something. ^' Yes. It was warmer yesterday," returned the brilliant Mr. Danton. — A general laugh. " I have great pleasure in congratulating you on your first appearance in the character of a father, sir," he continue*], addressing Dumps — " godfather, I mean." — The young ladies were convulsed, and the gentleman in ecstasies. A general hum of admiration interrupted the conversation, and announced the entrance of nurse with the baby An universal rush of the young ladies mimediately took place. (Girls are always so fond of babies in company.) " Oh, you dear ! " said one. " How sweet ! " cried another, in a low tone of most en- thusiastic admiration. " Heavenly ! " added a third. " Oh ! what dear little arms ! " said a fourth, holding up an arm and fist about the size and shape of the leg of a fowl cleanly picked. " Did you ever ! " — said a little coquette with a large bustle, who looked like a French lithograph, appealing to a gentleman in three waistcoats — " Did you ever ! " " Never, in my life," returned her admirer, pulling up his collar. "Oh ! do let me take it, nurse," cried another young lady. "The love ! " " Can it open its eyes, nurse ? "inquired another, affecting the utmost innocence. — Suffice it to say, that the single ladies unanimously voted him an angel, and that the married ones, nem. cojt,^ agreed that he was decidedly the finest baby they had ever beheld — except their own. The quadrilles were resumed with great spirit Mr. Danton was universally admitted to be beyond himself ; several young ladies enchanted the company and gained admirers, by sing- ing " We met " — " I saw her at the Fancy Fair " — and other equally sentimental and interesting ballads. " The young men," as Mrs. Kitterbell said, "made themselves very agree- able ; " the girls did not lose their opportunity ; and the evening promised to go off excellently. Dumps didn't mind it : he had devised a plan for himself — a little bit of fun in his own way-^and he was almost happy ! He played a rubber and lost every point. Mr. Danton said he could not have lost every point, because he made a point of losing : THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING, 805 everybody laughed tremendously. Dumps retorted with a better joke, and nobody smiled, with the exception of the host, who seemed to consider it his duty to laugh till he was black in the face, at everything. There was only one drawback — the musicians did not play with quite as much spirit as could have been wished. — The cause, however, was satisfactorily explained ; for it appeared, on the testimony of a gentleman who had come up from Gravesend in the after- noon, that they had been engaged on board a steamer all day, and had played almost without cessation all the way to Gravesend, and all the way back again. The "sit-down supper ''was excellent; there were four barley-sugar temples on the table, which would have looked beautiful if they had not melted away when the supper began \ and a water-mill, whose only fault was that instead of going round, it ran over the table-cloth. Then there were fowls, and tongue, ajd trifle, and sweets, and lobster salad, and potted beef — and everything. And little Kitterbell kept call- ing out for clean plates, and the clean plates did not come : and then the gentlemen who wanted the plates said they didn't mind, they'd take a lady's ; and then Mrs. Kitterbell applauded their gallantry, and the greengrocer ran about till he thought his seven and sixpence was very hardly earned ; and the young ladies didn't eat much for fear it shouldn't look romantic, and the married ladies eat as much as possible, for fear they shouldn't have enough; and a great deal of wine was drunk, and everybody talked and laughed considerably. " Hush ! hush ! " said Mr. Kitterbell, rising and looking very important. " My love (this was addressed to his wife at the other end of the table), take care of Mrs. Maxwell, and your mamma, and the rest of the married ladies ; the gentle- men will persuade the young ladies to fill their glasses, I am sure." " Ladies and gentlemen," said long Dumps, in a very sepulchral voice and rueful accent, rising from his chair like the ghost in Don Juan, " will you have the kindness to charge your glasses I am desirous of proposing a toast." "A dead silence ensued,and the glasses were filled — every- body looked serious. " Ladies and gentlemen," slowly continued the ominous Dumps, " I " — (here Mr. Danton imitated two notes from the French-horn, in a very loud key, which electrified the nervous toast-proposer, and convulsed his audience). 8o6 SKETCHES BY BOZ, " Order ! order ! " said little Kitterbell, endeavoring ta suppress his laughter. " Order ! " said the gentlemen. Danton, be quiet/' said a particular friend on the opposite side of the table. " Ladies and gentlemen," resumed Dumps, somewhat re covered, and not much disconcerted, for he was always a pretty good hand at a speech — " In accordance with what is. I believe, the established usage on these occasions, I, as one of the godfathers of Master Frederick Charles William Kitter- bell — (here the speaker's voice faltered, for he remembered the mug) — venture to rise to propose a toast. I need hardly say that it is the health and prosperity of that young gentle- man, the particular event of whose early life we are here met to celebrate — (applause). Ladies and gentlemen, it is im- possible to suppose that our friends here, whose sincere well- wishers we all are, can pass through life without some trials, considerable suffering, severe affliction, and heavy losses ! " — Here the arch-traitor paused, and slowly drew forth a long, white pocket-handkerchief — his example was followed by several ladies. ^'That these trials may be long spared them is my most earnest prayer, my most fervent wish (a distinct sob from the grandmother). I hope and trust, ladies and gentlemen, that the infant whose christening we have this even- ing met to celebrate, may not be removed from the arms of his parents by premature decay (several cambrics were in requisition) : that his young and now apparently healthy form, may not be wasted by lingering disease. (Here Dumps cast a sardonic glance around, for a great sensation was manifest among the married ladies.) You, 1 am sure, will concur with me in wishing that he may live to be a comfort and a blessing to his parents. (* Hear, hear ! ' and an audible sob from Mr. Kitterbell.) But should he not be what we could wish — should he forget in after times the duty which he owes to them — should they unhappily experience that distracting truth, * how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child.' " — Here Mrs. Kitterbell, with her handkerchief to her eyes, and accompanied by several ladies rushed from the room, and went into violent hysterics in the passage, leaving her better half in almost as bad a condition, and a general impression in Dumps's favor ; for people like sentiment, aftet all. It need hardly be added, that this occurrence quite put i THE DRUNKARD'S DEA TH. Stop to the harmony of the evening. Vinegar, hartshorn, and cold water, were now as much in request as negus, rout-cakes, and bon-bons had been a short time before. Mrs. Kitterbell was immediately conveyed to her apartment, the musicians were silenced, flirting ceased, and the company slowly de- parted. Dumps left the house at the commencement of the bustle, and walked home with a light step, and (for him) a cheerful heart. His landlady, who slept in the next room, has offered to make oath that she heard him laugh, in his peculiar manner, after he had locked his door. The assertion, how- ever, is so improbable, and bears on the face of it such strong evidences of untruth, that it has never obtained credence to this hour. The family of Mr. Kitterbell has considerably increased since the period to which we have referred ; he has now two sons and a daughter ; and as he expects, at no distant period, to have another addition to his blooming progeny, he is anxious to secure an eligible godfather for the occasion. He is determined, however, to impose upon him two conditions. He must bind himself, by a solemn obligation, not to make any speech after supper ; and it is indispensable that he should be in no way connected with " the most miserable man in the world/' CHAPTER Xn. THE drunkard's DEATH, We will be bold to say, that there is scarcely a man in the constant habit of walking, day after day, through any of the crowded thoroughfares of London, who cannot recollect among the people whom he knows by sight," to use a familiar phrase, some being of abject and wretched appearance whom he re- members to have seen in a very different condition, whom he has observed sinking lower and lower, by almost imperceptible degrees, and the shabbiness and utter destitution of whose appearance, at last, strike forcibly and painfully upon him, as he passes by. Is there any man who has mixed tnuch with society, or whose avocations have caused him to mingle, at one time or other, with a great number of people, who cannot call 8o8 SKE TCHES B V BOZ. to mind the time when some shabby, miserable wretch, in raga and filth, who shuffles past him now in all the squalor of disease and poverty, was a respectable tradesman, or clerk, or a man following some thriving pursuit, with good prospects, and decent means ? — or cannot any of our readers call to mind from amongst the list of their quondam acquaintance, some fallen and degraded man, who lingers about the pavement in hungry misery — from whom every one turns coldly away, and who preserves himself from sheer starvation, nobody knows how ? Alas ! such cases are of too frequent occurrence to be rare items in any man's experience ; and but too often arise from one cause — drunkenness — that fierce rage for the slow, sure poison, that oversteps every other consideration : that casts aside wife, children, friends, happiness, and station ; and hurries its victims madly on to degradation and death. Some of these men have been impelled, by misfortune and misery, to the vice that has degraded them. The ruin of worldly expectations, the death of those they loved, the sor- row that slowly consumes, but will not break the heart, has driven them wild ; and they present the hideous spectacle of madmen, slowly dying by their own hands. But by far the greater part have wilfully, and with open eyes, plunged into the gulf from which the man who once enters it never rises more, but into which he sinks deeper and deeper down, until recovery is hopeless. Such a man as this once stood by the bedside of his dying wife, while his children knelt around, and mingled low bursts of grief with their innocent prayers. The room was scantily and meanly furnished and it needed but a glance at the pale form from which the light of life was fast passing away, to know that grief, and want, and anxious care, had been busy at the heart for many a weary year. An elderly woman, with her face bathed in tears, was supporting the head of the dying woman — her daughter — on her arm. But it was not towards her that the wan face was turned ; it was not her hand that the cold and trembling fingers clasped ; they pressed the husband's arm ; the eyes so soon to be closed in death rested on his face, and the man shook beneath their gaze. His dress was slovenly and disordered, his face inflamed, his eyes bloodshot and heavy. He had been summoned from some wild debauch to the bed of sorrow and death. A shaded lamp by the bed-side cast a dim light on the figures around, and left the remainder of the room in thick, THE DRUNKARD'S DEATH, 809 deep shadow. The silence of night prevailed without the house, and the stillness of death was in the chamber. A watch hung over the mantel-shelf ; its low ticking was the only sound that broke the profound quiet, but it was a solemn one, for well they knew, who heard it, that before it had recorded the passing of another hour, it would beat the knell of a departed spirit. It is a dreadful thing to wait and watch for the approach of dejith ; to know that hope is gone, and recovery impossible ; and to sit and count the dreary hours through long, long nights — such nights as only watchers by the bed of sickness know. It chills the blood to hear the dearest secrets of the heart — the pent-up, hidden secrets of many years — -poured forth by the unconscious helpless being before you, and to think how little the reserve and cunning of a whole life will avail, when fever and delirium tear off the mask at last. Strange tales have been told in the wanderings of dying men ; tales so full of guilt and crime, that those who stood by the sick person's couch have fled in horror and affright, lest they should be scared to madness by what they heard and saw; and many a wretch has died alone, raving of deeds the very name of which has driven the boldest man away. But no such ravings were to be heard at the bedside by which the children knelt. Their half-stifled sobs and moan- ings alone broke the silence of the lonely chamber. And when at last the mother's grasp relaxed, and, turning one look from the children to the father, she vainly strove to speak, and fell backward on the pillow, all was so calm and tranquil that she seemed to sink to sleep. They leaned over her ; they called upon her name, softly at first, and then in the loud and piercing tones of desperation. But there was no reply. They listened for her breath, but no sound came. They felt for the palpitation of the heart, but no faint throb responded to the touch. That heart was broken, and she was dead ! The husband sunk into a chair by the bedside, and clasped his hands upon his burning forehead. He gazed from child to child, but when a weeping eye met his, he quailed beneath its look. No word of comfort was whispered in his ear, no look of kindness lighted on his face. All shrunk from and avoided him ; and when at last he staggered from the room, no one sought to follow or console the widower. The time had been when many a friend would have crowded round him in his affliction, and many a heartfelt 8io SKETCHES BY BOZ. condolence would have met him in his grief. Where were they now? One by one, friends, relations, the common ac- quaintance even, had fallen off from and deserted the drunk- ard. His wife alone had clung to him in good and evil, in sickness and poverty ; and how had he rewarded her ? He had reeled from the tavern to her bedside in time to see her die. He rushed from the house, and walked swiftly through the streets. Remorse, fear, shame, all crowded on his mind. Stupefied with drink, and bewildered with the scene he had just witnessed, he re-entered the tavern he had quitted shortly before. Glass succeeded glass. His blood mounted, and his brain whirled round. Death ! Everyone must die, and why not she. She was too good for him ; her relations had often told him so. Curses on them! Had they. not deserted her, and left her to whine away the time at home ? Well — she was dead, and happy perhaps. It was better as it was. Another glass — one more ! Hurrah ! It was a merry life while it lasted ; and he would make the most of it. Time w^ent on ; the three children who were left to him, grew up, and were children no longer. The father remained the same — poorer, shabbier, and more dissolute-looking, but the same confirmed and irreclaimable drunkard. The boys had long ago run wild in the streets, and left him ; the girl alone remained, but she worked hard, and words or blows could always procure him something for the tavern. So he went on in the old course, and a merry life he led. One night, as early as ten o'clock — for the girl had been sick for many days, and there was, consequently, little to spend at the public house — he bent his steps homeward, be- thinking himself that if he would have her able to earn money, it would be as well to apply to the parish surgeon, or, at all events, to take the trouble of inquiring what ailed her, which he had not yet thought it worth while to do. It was a wet December night ; the wind blew piercing cold, and the rain poured heavily down. He begged a few halfpence from a passer-by, and having bought a small loaf (for it was his in- terest to keep the girl alive, if he could), he shuffled onwards as fast as the wind and rain would let him. At the back of Fleet street, and lying between it and the water side, are several mean and narrow courts, which form a portion of Whitefriars ; it was to one of these that he directed his steps. THE DRUNKARD'S DEATH. 8ll / The alley into which he turned, might, for filth and misery, have competed with the darkest corner of this ancient sanctu- ary in its dirtiest and most lawless time. The houses, varying from two stories in height to four, were stained with every indescribable hue that long exposure to the weather, damp, and rottenness can impart to tenements composed originally of the roughest and coarsest materials. The windows were patched with paper, and stuffed with the foulest rags ; the doors were falling from their hinges; poles with lines on which to dry clothes, projected from every casement, and sounds of quar- relling or drunkenness issued from every room. The solitary oil lamp in the centre of the court had been blown out, either by the violence of the wind or the act of some inhabitant who had excellent reasons for objecting to his resi- dence being rendered too conspicuous ; and the only light which fell upon the broken and uneven pavement, was derived from the miserable candles that here and there twinkled in the rooms of such of the more fortunate residents as could afford to indulge in so expensive a luxury. A gutter ran down the center of the alley — all the sluggish odors of which had been called forth by the rain ; and as the wind whistled through the old houses, the doors and shutters creaked upon their hinges, and the windows shook in their frames, with a violence which every moment seemed to threaten the destruction of the whole place. The man whom we Iiave followed into this den, walked on in the darkness, sometimes stumbling into the main gutter, and at others into some branch repositories of garbage which had been formed by the rain, until he reached the last house in the court. The door, or rather what was left of it, stood ajar, for the convenience of the numerous lodgers ; and he proceeded to grope his way up the old and broken stair, to the attic story. He was within a step or two of his room door, when it opened, and a girl, whose miserable and emaciated appear- ance was only to be equalled by that of the candle which she shaded with her hand, peeped anxiously out. " Is that you, father? " said the girl. " Who else should it be 1 " replied the man gruffly. " What are you trembling at? It's little enough that I've had to drink to-day, for there's no drink without money, and no money without work. What the devil's the matter with the girl ? " 8l2 SKE TCHES B Y BOZ, I am not well, father — not at all well/^ said the girl, bursting into tears. Ah ! replied the man, in the tone of a person who is compelled to admit a very unpleasant fact, to which he would rather remain blind, if he could. " You must get better some- how, for we must have money. You must go to the parish doctor, and make him give you some medicine. They're paid for it, damn 'em. What are you standing before the door for \ Let me come in, can't you ? " Father," whispered the girl, shutting the door behind her, and placing herself before it, William has come back." ^' Who ! " said the man with a start. Hush," replied the girl, William ; brother William." " And what does he want ? " said the man, with an effort at composure — " money ? meat ? drink ? He's come to the wrong shop for that, if he does. Give me the candle — give me the candle, fool — I ain't going to hurt him." He snatched the candle from her hand, and walked into the room. Sitting on an old box, with his head resting on his hand, and his eyes fixed on a wretched cinder fire that was smoul- dering on the hearth, was a young man of about two-and- twenty, miserably clad in an old coarse jacket and trousers. He started up when his father entered. Fasten the door Mary," said the young man hastily — Fasten the door. You look as if you didn't know me, father. It's long enough, since you drove me from home ; you may well forget me." " And what do you want here, now ? " said the father, seating himself on a stool, on the other side of the fireplace. *'What do you want here, now? " Shelter," replied the son, Fm in trouble : that's enough. If Fm caught I shall swing ; that's certain. Caught I shall be, unless I stop here ; that's as certain. And there's an end of it." You mean to say, you've been robbing, or murdering, then ? " said the father. "Yes I do," replied the son. "Does it surprise you, father ? " He looked steadily in the man's face, but he with drew his eyes, and bent them on the ground. " Where's your brothers ? " he said after a long pause. " Where they'll never trouble you," replied his son " John's gone to America, and Henry's dead." " Dead ! " said the father, with a shudder, which even h< could not repress. THE DRUNKARD'S DEATH. 813 " Dead/^ replied the young man. He died in my arm — • shot like a dog, by a gamekeeper. He staggered back, I caught him, and his blood trickled down my hands. It poured out from his side like water. He was weak, and it blinded him, but he' threw himself down on his knees, on the grass, and prayed to God, that if his mother was in Heaven, He would hear her prayers for pardon for her youngest son. ^ I was her favorite boy. Will,' he said, ^ and I am glad to think, now, that when she was dying, though I was a very young child then, and my little heart was almost bursting, I knelt down at the foot of the bed, and thanked God for having made me so fond of her as to have never once done anything to bring the tears into her eye-s. O Will, why was she taken away, and father left ? ' There's his dying v/ords, father," said the young man ; make the best you can of 'em. You struck him across the face, in a drunken fit, the morning we ran away ; and here's the end of it." The girl wept aloud ; and the father, sinking his head upon his knees, rocked himself to and fro. " If I am taken," said the young man, " I shall be carried back into the country, and hung for that man's murder. They cannot trace me here, without your assistance, father. For aught I know, you may give me up to justice ; but unless you do, here I stop, until I can venture to escape abroad." For two whole days, all three remained in the wretched room, without stirring out. On the third evening, however, the girl was worse than she had been yet, and the few scraps of food they had were gone. It was indispensably necessary that somebody should go out ; and as the girl was too weak and ill, the father went just at nightfall. He got some medicine for the girl, and a trifle in the way of pecuniary assistance. On his way back, he earned six- pence by holding a horse ; and he turned homewards with enough money to supply their most pressing wants for two or three days to come. He had to pass the public-house. He lingered for an instant, walked past it, turned back again, lingered once more, and finally slunk in. Two men whom he had not observed, were on the watch. They were on the point of giving up their search in despair, when his loitering attracted their attention ; and when he entered the public- house, they followed him. " You'll drink with me, master," said one of them, proffer- ing him a glass of liquor 8i4 SKE rCHES BY BOZ. " And me too/' said the other, replenishing the glass as soon as it was drained of its contents. The man thought of his hungry children, and his son's danger. But they were nothing to the drunkard. He did drink ; and his reason left him. " A wet night, Warden," whispered one of the men in his ear, as he at length turned to go away, after spending in liquor one-half the money on which, perhaps, his daughter's life depended. ^' The right sort of night for our friends in hiding. Master Warden," whispered the other. Sit down here," said the one who had spoken first, draw- ing him into a corner. " We have been looking arter the young un. We came to tell him, it's all right now, but we couldn't find him, 'cause we hadn't got the precise direction. But that ain't strange, for I don't think he know'd it himself, when he came to London, did he ? " " No, he didn't," replied the father. The two men exchanged glances. There's a vessel down at the docks, to sail at midnight, when it's high water," resumed the first speaker, and we'll put him on board. His passage is taken in another name, and what's better than that, it's paid for. It's lucky we met you." Very," said the second. " Capital luck," said the first, with a wink to his com- panion. Great," replied the second, with a slight nod of intelli- gence. " Another glass here ; quick " — said the first speaker. And in five minutes more, the father had unconsciously yielded up his own son into the hangman's hands. Slowly and heavily the time dragged along, as the brother and sister, in their miserable hiding-place, listened in anxious suspense to the slightest sound. At length, a heavy footstep was heard upon the stair , it approached nearer ; it reached the landing ; and the father staggered into the room. The girl saw that he was intoxicated, and advanced with the candle in her hands to meet him ; she stopped short, gave a loud scream, and fell senseless on the ground. She had caught sight of the shadow of a man reflected on the floor. They both rushed in, and in another instant the young man was a prisoner, and handcuffed. THE DRUNKARD'S DEATH. " Very quietly done," said one of the men to his con^an- ion, " thanks to the old man. Lift up the girl, Tom — come, come, it's no use crying, young woman. It's all over now. and can't be helped." The young man stooped for an instant over the girl, and then turned fiercely round upon his father, who had reeled against the wall, and was gazing on the group with drunken stupidity. Listen to me, father," he said, in a tone that made the drunkard's flesh creep. " My brother's blood, and mine, on your head : I never had kind look, or word, or care trout you, and alive or dead, I never will forgive you. Die when you will, or how, I will be with you. I speak as a dead man now, and I warn you, father, that as surely as you must one day stand before your Maker, so surely shall your children be there, hand in hand, to cry for judgment against you." He raised his manacled hands in a threatening attitude, fixed his eyes on his shrinking parent, and slowly left the room ;-and neither father nor sister ever beheld him more on this side of the grave. When the dim and misty light of a winter's morning pen- etrated into the narrow court, and struggled through the begrimed window of the wretched room, Warden awoke from his heavy sleep, and found himself alone. He rose, and looked round him ; the old flock mattress on the floor was undisturbed ; everything was just as he had remembered to have seen it last ; and there were no signs of any one, save himself, having occupied the room during the night. He in- quired of the other lodgers, and of the neighbors ; but his daughter had not been seen or heard of. He rambled through the streets, and scrutinized each wretched face among the crowds that thronged them, with anxious eyes. But his search was fruitless, and he returned to his garret when night came on, desolate and weary. For many days he occupied himself in the same manner, but no trace of his daughter did he meet with, and no w^ord of her reached his ears. At length he gave up the pursuit as hopeless. He had long thought of the probability of her leaving him, and endeavoring to gain her bread in quiet, else- where. She had left him at last to starve alone. He ground his teeth, and cursed her. He begged his bread from door to door. Every halfpenny he could wring from the pity or credulity of those to whom 8i6 SKETCHES BY BOZ, he addressed himself, was spent in the old way, A yea? passed over his head ; the roof of a jail was the only one that had sheltered him for many months. He slept under arch- ways, and in brickfields — anywhere, where there was some warmth or shelter from the cold and rain. But in the last stage of poverty, disease, and houseless want, he was a drunk- ard still. At last, one bitter night, he sunk down on a door-step faint and ill. The permature decay of vice and protiigacy had worn him to the bone. His cheeks were hollow and livid ; his eyes were sunken, and their sight was dim. His legs trembled beneath his weight, and a cold shiver ran through every limb. And now the long-forgotten scenes of a misspent life crowded thick and fast upon him. He thought of the time when he had a home — a happy, cheerful home — and of those who peopled it, and flocked about him then, until the form^ of his elder children seemed to rise from the grave, and stand about him— so plam, so clear, and so distinct they were that he could touch and feel them. Looks that he had long forgotten were fixed upon him once more ; voices long since hushed in death sounded in his ears like the music of village bells. But it was only for an instant. The rain beat heavily upon him ; and cold and hunger were gnawing at his heart again. He rose, and dragged his feeble limbs a few paces further. The street was silent and empty ] the few passengers who passed by, at that late hour, hurried quickly on, and his tremulous voice was lost in the violence of the storm. Again that heavy chill struck through his frame, and his blood seemed to stagnate beneath it. He coiled himself up in a projecting doorway, and tried to sleep. But sleep had fled from his dull and glazed eyes. His mind wandered strangely, but he was awake, and conscious. The well-known shout of drunken mirth sounded in his ear, the glass was at his lips, the board was covered with choice rich food — they were before him : he could see them all, he had but to reach out his hand, and take them — and, though the illusion was reality itself, he knew that he was sitting alone in the deserted street, watching the rain-drops as they pattered on the stones ; that death was coming upon him by inches — and that there were none to care for or help him. Suddenly he started up, in the extremity of terror. He THE DRUNKARD'S DEATH. 817 had heard his own voice shouting in the night air, he knew not what, or why. Hark ! A groan ! — another ! His senses were leaving him : half-formed and incoherent words burst from his Hps ; and his hands sought to tear and lacerate his flesh. He was going mad, and he shrieked for help till his voice failed him. He raised his head, and looked up the long dismal street. He recollected that outcasts like himself, condemned to wan- der day and night in those dreadful streets, had sometimes gone distracted with their own loneliness. He remembered to have heard many years before that a homeless wretch had once been found in a solitary corner, sharpening a rusty knife to plunge into his own heart, preferring death to that endless, weary, wandering to and fro. In an instant his resolve was taken, his limbs received new life ; he ran quickly from the spot, and paused not for breath until he reached the river- side. He crept softly down the steep stone stairs that lead from the commencement of Waterloo Bridge, down to the water's level. He crouched into a corner, and held his breath, as the patrol passed. Never did prisoner's heart throb with the hope of liberty and life half so eagerly as did that of the wretched man at the prospect of death. The watch passed close to him, but he remained unobserved ; and after waiting till the sound of footsteps had died away in the distance, he cautiously descended, and stood beneath the gloomy arch that forms the landing-place from the river. The tide was in, and the water flowed at his feet. The rain had ceased, the wind was lulled, and all was, for the moment, still and quiet — so quiet, that the slightest sound on the opposite bank, even the rippling of the water against the barges that were moored there, was distinctly audible to his ear. The stream stole languidly and sluggishly on. Strange and fantastic forms rose to the surface, and beckoned him to approach ; dark gleaming eyes peered from the water, and seemed to mock his hesitation, while hollow murmurs from behind, urged him onwards. He retreated a few paces, took a short run, desperate leap, and plunged into the river. Not five seconds had passed when he rose to the water's surface — but what a change had taken place in that short time, in all his thoughts and feelings. Life — life in any forms, poverty, misery, starvation — anything but death. He fought and struggled with the water that closed over his head, and 8i8 SKETCHES BY BOZ, screamed in agonies of terror. The curse of his own son rang in his ears. The shore — but one foot of dry ground- he could almost touch the step. One hand's breadth nearer, and he was saved — but the tide bore him onward, under the dark arches of the bridge, and he sank to the bottom. Again he rose, and struggled for life. For one instant— for one brief instant — the buildings on the river's banks, the lights on the bridge through which the current had borne him, the black water, and the fast-flying clouds, were distinctly visible — once more he sunk, and once again he rose. Bright flames of fire shot up from earth to heaven, and reeled before his eyes, while the water thundered in his ears, and stunned him with its furious roar. A week afterwards the body was washed ashore, some miles down the river, a swollen and disfigured mass. Un- recognized and unpitied, it was borne to the grave ; and there it has long since mouldered away 1 TBS SMD CHARLES DICKENS' COMPLETE WORKS The following Index contains the names of all the writings of Mr. Charlfi Dickens, the numbers referring to the volume in which they .vill be found, in the order mentioned, as fol- lows : — 1. Pickwick Papers. 2. David Copperfield. 3. Martin Ckuzzlewit. 4. Nicholas Nickleby. 5. Bleak House. 6. Little Dorrit. 7. DoMBEY & Son. 8. Our Mutual Friend. 9. Oliver Twist, Pictures from Italy, and American Notes. 10. Old Curiosity Shop and Hard Times. 11. Tale of Two Cities and Sketches by Boz. 12. Barnaby Rudge and Myst- ery OF Edwin Drood. 13. Great Expectations, Un- commercial Traveller, and Miscellaneous. 14. Christmas Stories and Re* printed Pieces. 15. Child's History of England AND Miscellaneous. INDEX. Aboard Ship 13 1 Addit. Christmas Stories 14 Barlow, Mr 13 Barnaby Rudge 12 Battle of Life, The 14 Beadle, The 11 Begging-Letter Writer... 14 Bill-Sticking 14 Birth-Day Celebrations.. 13 American Notes 9 Anecdotes, Three Detec- tive 14 B. Births 14 Black Veil. The 11 Bleak House 5 Bloomsbury Christmas, The II Boarding House, The.. 11 Boiled Beef of N. Engl'd 13 Arcadian London 13 Astleys xi Bound for the Great Salt Lake 13 Boy at Mugby, The.. .. 14 Boz, Sketches by 11 Broker's Man, The zi Brokers* & Marine-Store Shops ti (819) 820 INDEX. Calais Night Mail, The.. 13 Chambers 13 Characters 11 Chatham Dockyard 13 Child's Dream of a Star. 14 Child's History of Eng- land 15 Child's Story, The 14 Chimes, The 14 Christmas Carol, A. ... 14 Christmas Dinner, A . . . . 11 Christmas Stories 14 Christmas Tree, A 14 Christmas Stories, Addi- tional 14 Chuzzlewit, Martin 3 City of London Churches 13 City of the Absent, The 13 Clock, Master Humph- rey's 15 Contradictory Couple. ... 13 Cool Couple, The 13 Copperfield, David 2 Couple who coddle them- selves, The 13 Couple who dote upon their Children, The... 13 Couples, young. Sketches 9f n Cricket in the Hearth, The .. 14 Crimmal Courts 11 Curate, The 11 Dancing Academy, The.. Detective Anecdotes.... Detective Police, The.. D. II I Doctor's Commons 14 Dombey & Son 14 1 Down with the Tide ... II j Drood, Edwin, Mystery of la 7 j Drunkard's Death, The. li 14 I Dullborough Town 13 Early Coaches Edwin Drood, Mystery of Egotistical Couple, The E. 11 I Election for Beadle 12 England, History of, 13 I Child's I r English Watering Place, Our 14 15 Expectations, Great.... 13 Fairy Tale, Prince Bull.. 14 First of May, The 11 First Omnibus Cad. ii F. Flight, A 14 Fly-Leaf in a Life, A. . .. 13 Formal Couple, The ... . 13 Four Sisters, The n French Flemish Country. 13 French Watering Place. 14 G. Ghost of Art, The 14 I Gin Shops it .Great Tasmania's Cargo 13 Ghost Stories, Two 14 Going into Society 15 Great Winglebury Duel, n Ghost's Bargains, The . . 14 | Great Expectations 13 Greenwich Fair 11 H. Hackney Coach Stand.. 11 Half-Pay Captain, The . . 11 Hard Times 10 Haunted House, The... 15 Haunted Man, The 14 His General Line of Busi- ness 13 History of England, Child's 15 Holiday Romance 15 Holly Tree Inn 10 Horatio Sparkins 11 Hospital Patient, The.. 11 Humphrey, Mast'r, clock 15 Inspector Field, On Duty I Italian Prisoner, The.... 13 I Italy, Pictures from 9 with 14 I ' L. Ladies' Societies, The.. 11 Lirriper's, Mrs., Legacy 14 London Recreations.... 11 Last Cab Driver, The.. 11 Little Dinner in an Hour, Long Voyage, The 14 Lirriper's, Mrs., Lodg- A 13 Loving Couple, The 13 ings 14 Little Dorrit 6 Lying Awake 14 Making a Night of It.. .. 11 Marigold, Dr 14 Master Humphrey's Clock 15 Medicine Men of Civil- ization 13 M. Meditations in Monmouth Street 11 Meek, Mrs., of a Son... 14 Minns, Mr., and his cousin n Misplaced Attachment of Mr. John Dounce n Mistaken Milliner, The. . 11 Miss Evan* and the Eagle 11 Monument of French Folly, A 14 Mudfog Association, The 15 INDEX. 821 N. Nice Little Couple, The 13 I Nobody's Story 14 Nickleby, Nicholas .... 4 No Thoroughfare 15 Night Walks 13 Notes, American 9 Noble Savage, The 14 | Nurse's Stories 13 New Uncommercial Sam- ples ■ 13 New Year, The 11 Newgate, A Visit to ix Old Couple, The 13 Old Curiosity Shop 10 Old Lady, The ii Old Stage Coaching House 13 Oliver Twist 9 Omnibuses \\ On an Amateur Beat 13 Parish Engine, The 11 Parish, Our 11 Parliamentary Sketch, A ir Parlor Orator, The i r Passage in the Life of Mr. Watkins Tottle 11 Pawnbroker's Shop, The 11 Pieces, Reprinted 14 Perils of certam English Refreshments for Travel- lers 13 Samples, New Uncom- mercial 13 Scenes 11 Schoolboy's Story, The 14 Schoolmaster, The ri Scotland Yard rr Sentiment 11 Seven Poor Travellers, The 14 Tale of Two Cities it Tales r r Thoughts about People., xi Three Detective Anec- dotes 14 O. On duty with Inspector Field. 14 Our Bore 14 Our English Watering Place 14 Our French Watering Place 14 P. Travellers 15 Pickwick Papers i Pictures from Italy 9 Piated Article, A 14 Plausible Couple, The.. 13 Plea for Total Abstin- ence 13 Poor Man's Tale of a Patent 14 R. Reprinted Pieces River, The S. Seven Dials Shabby Genteel People.. Shipwreck, The 13 Shops and their Tenants 11 Shy Neighborhoods 13 Signal Man, The 14 Silverman's, George, Ex- planation 15 Sketches by Boz ........ 11 T. Titbull's Alms-houses.. 13 Tom Tiddler's Ground . 15 Tramps 13 Traveller, Uncommercial 13 Travelling Abroad 13 Trial for Murder, The.. 14 U. V. Our Honorable Friend.. 14 Our Mutual Friend 8 Our Next Door Neighbor 11 Our Parish 11 Our School X4 Our Vestry 14 Out of the Season 14 Out of Town 14 Poor Mercantile Jack... 13 Poor Relation'? Story, The.. 14 Porter, Mrs. Joseph 11 Prince Bull, a Fairy Tale 14 Private Theatres 11 Prisoners' Van, The. . . . 11 Public Dinners 11 Sketches of Young Couples 13 Small Star in the East, A 13 Somebody's Luggage.. . . 14 Some Recollections of Mortality 13 Steam Excursion, The. . 11 Streets — Morning 11 Streets — Evening 11 Twist, Oliver 9 Two Ghost Stories 14 Two Views of a Cheap Theatre 13 Tugg's at Ramsgate, The ij 14 Romance, Holiday.. 15 II j Rudge, Barnaby 12 Uncommercial Samples, | Uncommercial Traveller 13 I Vauxhall Gardens by New 13 I Visit to Newgate 11 | Day l ' W. Y. Walk in a Workhouse, A 14 I Wreck of the Golden I Young Couple, The 13 Wapping Wortc+iouse. . .. 13 Mary 15 Young Couples, Sketches Workhouse, A Walk in a 14 I J of.... 13